Virtual reality (and in general, immersive and simulated environments) is definitely in widespread use.
My company develops high-fidelity vehicle simulation technologies for doing human-in-the-loop testing of vehicles. As you can see on our simulators page: http://www.simcreator.com/simulators.htm, we have used CAVE environments, HMD's, stereoscopic glasses, wands, motion bases, power-walls, and plain desktops for vehicle simulation, engineering, and design.
We also make heavy use of VRML for our visualization and terrain definition. Being an open-standard it is much easier to build and obtain tools for viewing and modifying the worlds.
Virtual Reality is very much alive. However, since it's not as new, cutting edge it doesn't make all of the up-front news. It's moved, as good technologies do, into use and active development in the real world.
What they failed to mention in the articles, is, at least when I worked there, the developers actually foot the bill for the beer on Friday afternoons.
Typically, during the week some developer was responsible for a large snafu that broke the software build or something else very heinous. It was then their responsibility to go out and fetch/pay for the beer.
Of course, it was still a nice perk.;)
Japanese I-Novel
on
Meet Joe Blog
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What I recently discovered was that this form of autobiographical 'drivel' is by no means a new form of literary expression.
The term I-novel started to be used in literary circles (called bundan) around the mid-1920s. Originally it meant contemporary autobiographical sketches whose authors appeared to write directly about their personal lives for a closed circle of fellow writers.
So yeah, the weblog is really nothing new, just a much easier form of distribution.
Your question sounds like something I would ask myself, phrase for phrase.
My interests have always been far-spread (again, from programming, robots, to playing an instrument, learning foreign languages, painting, etc). I've always compared myself akin to the "Renaissaince Men" of centuries past: Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin as good examples.
And no, I don't think it is trite of you to ask such a question. Too often our society looks down upon intelligence, and being bright. That's why all the US schools are doing away with Valedictorians, b/c it makes the not-top-students or bright ones feel "bad".
Anyways, back to your question, you will probably experience the same thing in University that you have been to date. You will manage to get by classes, everyone will think you *should* have a 4.0, when in reality you're getting by just barely on grades alone. My best suggestion is to learn what you can, get to be friends with the profs who actually take an interest in your education and learning and talk with them and share ideas. But also don't just give up on school. It definitely helps you meet people, open doors, and move onto things that you would have had difficulty without the schooling and degree.
Also, join out of class activities. Student groups, engineering teams, and so on. These are great chances to meet with people like you and do truly amazing things. I was a member of an engineering team that I became the head of during my second year of undergrad, raised $250k and built a 20-meter computerized, electric airship. The project let me expand beyond any syllabus or expectation set forth by standardization.
Don't lose your self-confidence. Sure, don't be "cocky" or overconfident, more than likely it will lead you to make stupid mistakes or just make people that don't know you dislike you. But being self-assured and self-reliant is a terrific asset.
I have an iPaq 1940 since I wanted the smallest possible form factor, but still have a bright screen, and some form of wireless (bluetooth) without all the useless stuff. I will *not* be listening to MP3's, mapping via GPS, recording extended voice notes, lighting a small room, etc. with this device (though I probably could do all the above)
However, what I have done is read about 15+ full novels (both Gutenberg, as well as various Stephenson, Orson Scott Card, Doctorow, Niven, Orwell, etc) I find the display large enough, and in fact I think I read faster on the screen since the smaller than a page viewing area allows me to scan faster. Not only that, but I could read whenever possible, on the bus, in a line, walking down the street. No more wasted moments.:)
I also use this on a Mac running 10.3 using PocketMac Pro and sync wireless via bluetooth. It's been flawless so far. I can drop plain text documents on there, or pre-formatted lit files and even pdfs (though I find the latter too large in size compared to the former). The *best* solution I have found is to take whatever document you want (Gutenberg text, webpage), drop it into MS Word on a Windoze box with the free Reader extension (http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/downlo ads/rmr.asp) installed, and then convert to ebook. Yes, I know, req's MS Windoze and Word, but has been the simplest solution I have found for taking any document and making it instantly readable on a PocketPC.
Lastly, while reading on my iPaq I can make bookmarks, highlight passages and have these show up in the MS reader on a computer or peruse through on my iPaq for favored sections.
I remember reading an article by Dvorak where he was looking at computers in a consumer electronics retail chain. As he was standing there, a young man walked into the store, jacked his iPod into a mac on display with firewire, drag and dropped the Office.X folder from the mac to his iPod, unjacked and walked out.
Unfortunately, ease of use can obviously be abused, but in such ingenious ways.;)
Actually, the company, CargoLifter, got several million Euro in backing. They were *very* slick. However, the technical difficulties ended up taking too long and costing too much money. This is also in addition to the huge cost of construction of a hangar and air facility to support such operations.
There are many other commercial blimps, Lightship, Goodyear, etc. Not to mention several student groups working on similar topics (check out Univ. of Virginia Solar Airship, Surrey, and Univ of Japan)
The final closing of military use of airship, the Snowbird in the 60's I believe, was heavily influenced by more political factors that technical or monetary.
Open speech in Firefox.
-A
-C
Open Word processor
-V
Click "little-r" (for ebook reader)
Conversion to eBook & sync'd to iPaq.
Now I can read why eBooks didn't make it on my handheld, like I have for all of his books, as well as about 3 dozen others.
Dreams jobs *sound* great, but they are typically always glamorous from the outside. When I look down that list of IEEE dream jobs I think "The Hawaiian Elec guy has to sit inside, in Hawaii, all the time". "Gage, Science chief of Sun, has to spend countless hours on planes, never gets to rest or spend time at the same place" etc. Jobs like these sound great, because you only here the good things. You don't hear the beauracracy, duldrum, tedium of much of the job as well.
I would say I have my dream job, or close enough. I develop and integrate virtual reality simulations for vehicles (like cars, etc.) I get to buy and play with the newest and greatest of commercial hardware (we just got in 6 Radeon 9800XT's), I have lunch every day with the President who I can also call my friend. All this and I am still just out of school.
But I still have to write documentation, commute to work, have stupid meetings with clients, and deal with other mundane tasks. So, I enjoy my job, but also realize that a job can be whatever you make of it.
Something I heard awhile ago, but haven't seen any discussion of is the importance of the *number* of charge/discharge cycles.
Li-Ion batteries are limited to about 1000 charge/discharge cycles. A cycle is defined as a switch between charging up and then discharging or vice-versa. Therefore, when you plug in your device to charge, -1 cycle. If you "use up" your cycles in 2 months by continually plugging & unplugging, so be it. Or over 3 years, same number of cycles.
This may explain the "left in charger" syndrome if a charge deactivates charging when it's topped off, but then restarts when the battery dips below 100%. This is like a bouncing affect and burns away your charge/discharge cycles.
Therefore, for my devices I attempt to limit the times I plug & unplug them. With laptops I go so far as to remove the battery before plugging it into the wall just to ensure that it isn't used if I know I'm going to be working at one place for awhile.
It may just be another myth, but I have 2 laptops, 1 that is 3.5 yrs old and another that is 1.5 yrs old and both are holding their charges fine! (iPod going on 1.5 years too)
Back in the halcyon days of RC5-56 and the DES Challenges, computers didn't make a distinction between idling and crunching, so it was a great idea to use those spare cycles for something (remotely) productive. But this is no longer true: modern-day power-sucking CPUs do have circuitry that lets them idle and cool off when the processor is just running NOPs. Thus, keeping a number cruncher running 24 hours a day will stress your processor, requiring full ventilation and running up your power bill.
Slashdot Mirror
My company develops high-fidelity vehicle simulation technologies for doing human-in-the-loop testing of vehicles. As you can see on our simulators page: http://www.simcreator.com/simulators.htm, we have used CAVE environments, HMD's, stereoscopic glasses, wands, motion bases, power-walls, and plain desktops for vehicle simulation, engineering, and design.
We also make heavy use of VRML for our visualization and terrain definition. Being an open-standard it is much easier to build and obtain tools for viewing and modifying the worlds.
Virtual Reality is very much alive. However, since it's not as new, cutting edge it doesn't make all of the up-front news. It's moved, as good technologies do, into use and active development in the real world.
What they failed to mention in the articles, is, at least when I worked there, the developers actually foot the bill for the beer on Friday afternoons. Typically, during the week some developer was responsible for a large snafu that broke the software build or something else very heinous. It was then their responsibility to go out and fetch/pay for the beer. Of course, it was still a nice perk. ;)
What I recently discovered was that this form of autobiographical 'drivel' is by no means a new form of literary expression.
Taken from Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese ModernitySo yeah, the weblog is really nothing new, just a much easier form of distribution.
Agreed.
Your question sounds like something I would ask myself, phrase for phrase.
My interests have always been far-spread (again, from programming, robots, to playing an instrument, learning foreign languages, painting, etc). I've always compared myself akin to the "Renaissaince Men" of centuries past: Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin as good examples.
And no, I don't think it is trite of you to ask such a question. Too often our society looks down upon intelligence, and being bright. That's why all the US schools are doing away with Valedictorians, b/c it makes the not-top-students or bright ones feel "bad".
Anyways, back to your question, you will probably experience the same thing in University that you have been to date. You will manage to get by classes, everyone will think you *should* have a 4.0, when in reality you're getting by just barely on grades alone. My best suggestion is to learn what you can, get to be friends with the profs who actually take an interest in your education and learning and talk with them and share ideas. But also don't just give up on school. It definitely helps you meet people, open doors, and move onto things that you would have had difficulty without the schooling and degree.
Also, join out of class activities. Student groups, engineering teams, and so on. These are great chances to meet with people like you and do truly amazing things. I was a member of an engineering team that I became the head of during my second year of undergrad, raised $250k and built a 20-meter computerized, electric airship. The project let me expand beyond any syllabus or expectation set forth by standardization.
Don't lose your self-confidence. Sure, don't be "cocky" or overconfident, more than likely it will lead you to make stupid mistakes or just make people that don't know you dislike you. But being self-assured and self-reliant is a terrific asset.
I have an iPaq 1940 since I wanted the smallest possible form factor, but still have a bright screen, and some form of wireless (bluetooth) without all the useless stuff. I will *not* be listening to MP3's, mapping via GPS, recording extended voice notes, lighting a small room, etc. with this device (though I probably could do all the above)
:)
o ads/rmr.asp) installed, and then convert to ebook. Yes, I know, req's MS Windoze and Word, but has been the simplest solution I have found for taking any document and making it instantly readable on a PocketPC.
However, what I have done is read about 15+ full novels (both Gutenberg, as well as various Stephenson, Orson Scott Card, Doctorow, Niven, Orwell, etc) I find the display large enough, and in fact I think I read faster on the screen since the smaller than a page viewing area allows me to scan faster. Not only that, but I could read whenever possible, on the bus, in a line, walking down the street. No more wasted moments.
I also use this on a Mac running 10.3 using PocketMac Pro and sync wireless via bluetooth. It's been flawless so far. I can drop plain text documents on there, or pre-formatted lit files and even pdfs (though I find the latter too large in size compared to the former). The *best* solution I have found is to take whatever document you want (Gutenberg text, webpage), drop it into MS Word on a Windoze box with the free Reader extension (http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/downl
Lastly, while reading on my iPaq I can make bookmarks, highlight passages and have these show up in the MS reader on a computer or peruse through on my iPaq for favored sections.
I remember reading an article by Dvorak where he was looking at computers in a consumer electronics retail chain. As he was standing there, a young man walked into the store, jacked his iPod into a mac on display with firewire, drag and dropped the Office.X folder from the mac to his iPod, unjacked and walked out.
;)
Unfortunately, ease of use can obviously be abused, but in such ingenious ways.
Actually, the company, CargoLifter, got several million Euro in backing. They were *very* slick. However, the technical difficulties ended up taking too long and costing too much money. This is also in addition to the huge cost of construction of a hangar and air facility to support such operations.
There are many other commercial blimps, Lightship, Goodyear, etc. Not to mention several student groups working on similar topics (check out Univ. of Virginia Solar Airship, Surrey, and Univ of Japan)
The final closing of military use of airship, the Snowbird in the 60's I believe, was heavily influenced by more political factors that technical or monetary.
Well, for shooting down, you're talking about a vehicle about 60-70,000 feet altitude. This would be incredibly difficult to hit based on size.
Open speech in Firefox. -A -C Open Word processor -V Click "little-r" (for ebook reader) Conversion to eBook & sync'd to iPaq. Now I can read why eBooks didn't make it on my handheld, like I have for all of his books, as well as about 3 dozen others.
Dreams jobs *sound* great, but they are typically always glamorous from the outside. When I look down that list of IEEE dream jobs I think "The Hawaiian Elec guy has to sit inside, in Hawaii, all the time". "Gage, Science chief of Sun, has to spend countless hours on planes, never gets to rest or spend time at the same place" etc. Jobs like these sound great, because you only here the good things. You don't hear the beauracracy, duldrum, tedium of much of the job as well. I would say I have my dream job, or close enough. I develop and integrate virtual reality simulations for vehicles (like cars, etc.) I get to buy and play with the newest and greatest of commercial hardware (we just got in 6 Radeon 9800XT's), I have lunch every day with the President who I can also call my friend. All this and I am still just out of school. But I still have to write documentation, commute to work, have stupid meetings with clients, and deal with other mundane tasks. So, I enjoy my job, but also realize that a job can be whatever you make of it.
Something I heard awhile ago, but haven't seen any discussion of is the importance of the *number* of charge/discharge cycles. Li-Ion batteries are limited to about 1000 charge/discharge cycles. A cycle is defined as a switch between charging up and then discharging or vice-versa. Therefore, when you plug in your device to charge, -1 cycle. If you "use up" your cycles in 2 months by continually plugging & unplugging, so be it. Or over 3 years, same number of cycles. This may explain the "left in charger" syndrome if a charge deactivates charging when it's topped off, but then restarts when the battery dips below 100%. This is like a bouncing affect and burns away your charge/discharge cycles. Therefore, for my devices I attempt to limit the times I plug & unplug them. With laptops I go so far as to remove the battery before plugging it into the wall just to ensure that it isn't used if I know I'm going to be working at one place for awhile. It may just be another myth, but I have 2 laptops, 1 that is 3.5 yrs old and another that is 1.5 yrs old and both are holding their charges fine! (iPod going on 1.5 years too)
or even better.... "Sir, the rocket crashed..." "Well dammit, reboot and run it again!"
So is it possible to get slash-phoned? I imagine that's what's happening to the foundation right about now...