This was the link to optical illusions: http://www.archimedes-lab.org/atelier.html?http:// www.archimedes-lab.org/page17b.html .
When submitting the story, I noticed that the portion of the URL after the ? was not *hidden*.
And in fact, this URL leads to a two-step process: first, an error, then a window with a frame. So I decided not to include the link in my submission.
Roland.
Is the Photonic Revolution Coming?
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I also commented this story here, but I also previously posted another column on this subject. Please read it if you're interested by the photonic revolution.
In all the comments, I haven't found what was the most important point in the whole article. with all this GPU horsepower, Nvidia Chief Scientist David Kirk said that "the question becomes not how many more pixels can be drawn per second, but how much better pixels can be made to look, by synthesizing them in very different ways." He added that "it's the end of graphics as we know. Many new things will soon be possible with large scale streaming processors, which will create a whole new revolution in graphics." You can read this summary of the long ExtremeTech article for more details.
Before flaming me, please note that this is the title of the review of the movie by David Edelstein, in Slate -- and not my own words.
Here is a short quote: "The grim news is that The Matrix Reloaded is as messy and flat-footed as its predecessor is nimble and shapely. It's an ugly, bloated, repetitive movie that builds to a punch line that should have come an hour earlier (at least). Then it ends as it's just beginning: Stay tuned for The Matrix Revolutions, coming in November to 8,000 theaters near you."
Please read the full review before replying.
I wrote this column a month ago about the Peacemaker and the Masterpeace. Besides my comments, you'll also find pictures of these expensive combination chair-computers.
In this column, I was just not giving the references to the three articles mentioned in this Slashdot story, but also I gave more comments on each story. Read it by yourself.
Roland Piquepaille.
Website: http://primidi.com/
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends: http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/
The link to my column about "The Interplanetary Internet" is http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/05.html, and not http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/04.html, which refers to another story.
Sorry about the mistake.
If Hemos or another member of the editorial committee of Slashdot reads this, please apply the correction.
Many thanks in advance.
Roland Piquepaille.
These kinds of rumors are a recurring phenomenon in this industry. Check for example "When will IBM buy Sun?" which is over a year now.
Sun has a market capitalization of around $12 billion (at its current stock price of $3.75).
To buy it with a good premium would mean a huge investment.
And considering that Sun always stands alone and that its products -- hardware as well as software -- are not really compatible with the rest of the industry, anyone who would buy Sun would only buy its customers. But for how long?
Sun customers are among the most loyal ones.
And you can believe me: I was working for one of its competitors.
Good morning,
There were two links in the Slashdot story, one to the original artcle by The Hindu, and one to my own blog for my comments. On my blog, there also was a reference to The Hindu.
Next time, please check your references before posting.
Tank you.
Roland.
The Register and The Inquirer have fought for our attention in the last couple of years. And I think this Inquirer's story beated the Register's one, at least because it was published one day earlier. And also because it didn't mention Linux, which is not really the engine behind the robot, but it tallks about neural networks software, which is the real tool used to train the robot.
In fact, the article from the New Scientist needs to be completed by reading this press release from the American Chemical Society. You also can read this article from Boston.com to get more information.
Real World Robots
on
Robots!
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sony is introducing a new robot, but this is only part of the story. Sony is betting its future on robots. Sony believes robotics will be bigger than the computer industry in 30 years. And there are many other robots coming, in hospitals, in New York steam pipes or on the battlefield. Look for example at Elvis, designed by Pyxis, which carries medications, or the future Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Wakamaru, a home caretaker for the elderly. Check this column for more details or read this Newsweekarticle.
As it was mentioned in an earlier comment, [ MobileWise also has an interesting product. "MobileWise has a clever solution: technology that lets a flat surface (like a desk pad, or maybe even a desk itself) transmit power to little conductive contacts on the bottom of a device (notebook computer, PDA, cell phone, etc.) when it's set down. The power flows right through an exposed grid of contacts via direct current, and yet the recharger never shorts out or presents a danger, because it doesn't turn on until it recognizes a device." Read this column for more details -- and a picture.
James Gilden is a travel journalist reporting for the Los Angeles Times. He once found a roundtrip fare on Travelocity for Los Angeles to Rome for $90. Of course, it was a mistake, but he booked it anyway. Read about his experience (free registration needed) with Travelocity. This company rejects 30 reservations per day (or about 10,000 per year) on a total of 10 million annual bookings. When you manipulate -- and refresh several times per day -- databases as big as the ones from Amazon or Travelocity, it's simply *normal* to see mistakes from time to time.
For more information about this wireless technology, please read this column. And for more comments abot today''s Washington Post article, check this one.
IBM is not alone to work on text-to-speech technology and to have demos where you can type a phrase and listen to it. The Bell Labs Text-to-Speech system (TTS) has its own page featuring fun demos. "You can play with our basic interface for some of our Text-to-Speech systems: American English, German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian and Canadian French." This page is pretty old (it makes references to Netscape 3!!), but the demos still run fine.
The problem goes beyond specific aging hardware. It's also about keeping access to current software or even art. Here is the introduction for this column. "This article raises an interesting question: how can we preserve access to all the digital contents we are creating today. As you all know, technologies evolved -- and fast. How will you read an e-mail or an MP3 file twenty years from now? Maybe in a museum, maybe nowhere."
On art conservation, you can read "Art restoration and Technology: Two cultures united."
As some of you said, there were many stories published about the SCO vs IBM lawsuit. But I don't think I saw any comments about this Forbes story. Here is a short quote: "Not only has SCO Group filed a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM for misappropriation of trade secrets, but the tiny company says it will yank IBM's Unix license in 100 days if it does not cease what SCO deems are anti-competitive practices."
For more information about radio-frequency identification tags, or RFIDs, you can check these two columns, "Bye-Bye Bar Codes?" and "The Eerie Possibilities of RFID Tags". The first one contains illustrations about how RFID tags are tested at McDonalds or Prada.
Besides MSNBC, other medias are *revisiting* the SETI@home project. Read for instance this Space.com article, published yesterday (March 10, 2003). Tariq Malik wrote: "Researchers spearheading a worldwide effort to find ET, or anyone else out in space besides us humans, plan to revisit a group of their most likely candidate radio signals using the world's largest radio telescope." He added that "the Arecibo Observatory will work for three and a half days, starting March 18, to revisit the candidate signals identified by SETI@home users."
More links to NASA's space elevator project
on
The Space Elevator
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Slashdot Mirror
This was the link to optical illusions: http://www.archimedes-lab.org/atelier.html?http:// www.archimedes-lab.org/page17b.html .
When submitting the story, I noticed that the portion of the URL after the ? was not *hidden*.
And in fact, this URL leads to a two-step process: first, an error, then a window with a frame. So I decided not to include the link in my submission.
Roland.
I already commented in this column about this. But it was based on this Wired News article, Making Wines Finer With Wireless.
I also commented this story here, but I also previously posted another column on this subject. Please read it if you're interested by the photonic revolution.
In all the comments, I haven't found what was the most important point in the whole article. with all this GPU horsepower, Nvidia Chief Scientist David Kirk said that "the question becomes not how many more pixels can be drawn per second, but how much better pixels can be made to look, by synthesizing them in very different ways." He added that "it's the end of graphics as we know. Many new things will soon be possible with large scale streaming processors, which will create a whole new revolution in graphics." You can read this summary of the long ExtremeTech article for more details.
For more information about the hybrot, you can read A Hybrot, the Rat-Brained Robot or Researchers use lab cultures to control robotic device
Before flaming me, please note that this is the title of the review of the movie by David Edelstein, in Slate -- and not my own words. Here is a short quote: "The grim news is that The Matrix Reloaded is as messy and flat-footed as its predecessor is nimble and shapely. It's an ugly, bloated, repetitive movie that builds to a punch line that should have come an hour earlier (at least). Then it ends as it's just beginning: Stay tuned for The Matrix Revolutions, coming in November to 8,000 theaters near you." Please read the full review before replying.
I wrote this column a month ago about the Peacemaker and the Masterpeace. Besides my comments, you'll also find pictures of these expensive combination chair-computers.
In this column, I was just not giving the references to the three articles mentioned in this Slashdot story, but also I gave more comments on each story. Read it by yourself. Roland Piquepaille. Website: http://primidi.com/ Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends: http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/
The link to my column about "The Interplanetary Internet" is http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/05.html, and not http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2003/05/04.html, which refers to another story. Sorry about the mistake. If Hemos or another member of the editorial committee of Slashdot reads this, please apply the correction. Many thanks in advance. Roland Piquepaille.
These kinds of rumors are a recurring phenomenon in this industry. Check for example "When will IBM buy Sun?" which is over a year now.
Sun has a market capitalization of around $12 billion (at its current stock price of $3.75).
To buy it with a good premium would mean a huge investment.
And considering that Sun always stands alone and that its products -- hardware as well as software -- are not really compatible with the rest of the industry, anyone who would buy Sun would only buy its customers. But for how long?
Sun customers are among the most loyal ones.
And you can believe me: I was working for one of its competitors.
Good morning, There were two links in the Slashdot story, one to the original artcle by The Hindu, and one to my own blog for my comments. On my blog, there also was a reference to The Hindu. Next time, please check your references before posting. Tank you. Roland.
The Register and The Inquirer have fought for our attention in the last couple of years. And I think this Inquirer's story beated the Register's one, at least because it was published one day earlier. And also because it didn't mention Linux, which is not really the engine behind the robot, but it tallks about neural networks software, which is the real tool used to train the robot.
In fact, the article from the New Scientist needs to be completed by reading this press release from the American Chemical Society. You also can read this article from Boston.com to get more information.
Sony is introducing a new robot, but this is only part of the story. Sony is betting its future on robots. Sony believes robotics will be bigger than the computer industry in 30 years. And there are many other robots coming, in hospitals, in New York steam pipes or on the battlefield. Look for example at Elvis, designed by Pyxis, which carries medications, or the future Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Wakamaru, a home caretaker for the elderly. Check this column for more details or read this Newsweekarticle.
As it was mentioned in an earlier comment, [ MobileWise also has an interesting product. "MobileWise has a clever solution: technology that lets a flat surface (like a desk pad, or maybe even a desk itself) transmit power to little conductive contacts on the bottom of a device (notebook computer, PDA, cell phone, etc.) when it's set down. The power flows right through an exposed grid of contacts via direct current, and yet the recharger never shorts out or presents a danger, because it doesn't turn on until it recognizes a device." Read this column for more details -- and a picture.
James Gilden is a travel journalist reporting for the Los Angeles Times. He once found a roundtrip fare on Travelocity for Los Angeles to Rome for $90. Of course, it was a mistake, but he booked it anyway. Read about his experience (free registration needed) with Travelocity. This company rejects 30 reservations per day (or about 10,000 per year) on a total of 10 million annual bookings. When you manipulate -- and refresh several times per day -- databases as big as the ones from Amazon or Travelocity, it's simply *normal* to see mistakes from time to time.
I commented about this article two days ago here. In it, you could find references to the Evans Data Corporation (EDC) he based his story. Check Primary OS Prior to Mainly Targeting Linux OS or How Important Are 64-Bit Architectures? pages before arguing about Nicholas Petreley's article.
For more information about this wireless technology, please read this column. And for more comments abot today''s Washington Post article, check this one.
IBM is not alone to work on text-to-speech technology and to have demos where you can type a phrase and listen to it. The Bell Labs Text-to-Speech system (TTS) has its own page featuring fun demos. "You can play with our basic interface for some of our Text-to-Speech systems: American English, German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian and Canadian French." This page is pretty old (it makes references to Netscape 3!!), but the demos still run fine.
The problem goes beyond specific aging hardware. It's also about keeping access to current software or even art. Here is the introduction for this column. "This article raises an interesting question: how can we preserve access to all the digital contents we are creating today. As you all know, technologies evolved -- and fast. How will you read an e-mail or an MP3 file twenty years from now? Maybe in a museum, maybe nowhere." On art conservation, you can read "Art restoration and Technology: Two cultures united."
As some of you said, there were many stories published about the SCO vs IBM lawsuit. But I don't think I saw any comments about this Forbes story. Here is a short quote: "Not only has SCO Group filed a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM for misappropriation of trade secrets, but the tiny company says it will yank IBM's Unix license in 100 days if it does not cease what SCO deems are anti-competitive practices."
For more information about radio-frequency identification tags, or RFIDs, you can check these two columns, "Bye-Bye Bar Codes?" and "The Eerie Possibilities of RFID Tags". The first one contains illustrations about how RFID tags are tested at McDonalds or Prada.
Besides MSNBC, other medias are *revisiting* the SETI@home project. Read for instance this Space.com article, published yesterday (March 10, 2003). Tariq Malik wrote: "Researchers spearheading a worldwide effort to find ET, or anyone else out in space besides us humans, plan to revisit a group of their most likely candidate radio signals using the world's largest radio telescope." He added that "the Arecibo Observatory will work for three and a half days, starting March 18, to revisit the candidate signals identified by SETI@home users."
Besides previous Slashdot stories about NASA's space elevator project, I also wrote several columns about this concept in the last months. If you're interested, take a look at "NASA Plans Elevators to Space," "Pushing the space elevator closer to reality" or "Space tourism 'viable at $15,000 a seat'?."
The work of Achim Hartschuh, Erik J. Sánchez, X. Sunney Xie, and Lukas Novotny has been published by Physical Review Letters, Volume 90, Number 9, March 7, 2003. Here is a link to the abstract of their paper, "High-Resolution Near-Field Raman Microscopy of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes." You also can read the summary I wrote on this subject, "The Smallest Sight: Researchers Zoom In on the Nanoscale."