I'm in a club at UC Berkeley called Berkeley Innovation. For one of our projects, we attempted to come up with a solution that would reduce the number of switched-on phones entering a lecture hall (to reduce disturbance).
At first we tried to build our own like these kids, until we ran across the cell phone pen. It's sitting right here on my desk, and it works. We even purchased a tried and true cell phone detector that is is very similar to the one they describe (same 30m range), and it even can emit a tone (not just lights). Not trying to put down these students for their efforts (or for the judges, who might rethink their definition of originality), but a little google action would have yielded these devices. Or for that matter, the suckers would bought some of the first prototypes for $1,000! We bought ours for $20. Hmm, maybe I could fund the trip to New Zealand I've always wanted to take by bringing a few of these little gems with me to sell for a 50x profit...
Indeed, you're right, UNIX mainframes were before my time. My first computer was a pizzabox LC from Apple - and I've never touched a terminal (except perhaps at the library).
But I still hold to my position - as the world becomes more networked (and this mesh becomes easier to manage), it will only make sense to reduce the amount of duplicate hardware in our setups.
From a resource pespective, it makes a lot more sense to have a bunch of users share on piece of hardware and software than spread it out across a network. I guess what it then comes down to is convincing people of the benefit - like carpooling, some people will keep buying their Dell SUVs no matter the price of gas.
This "news" about this being ported to linux is indeed news, because it signals the move from mainframe to mainstream.
Imagine a short time from now when a computer is so fast it can easily handle the needs of a workgroup. It would make much more sense resource-wise to share one system (with one huge pool of resources) than waste it all on the duplications found in multiple machines.
I propose the term for this new form of computing to be: compupooling.:-)
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I'm in a club at UC Berkeley called Berkeley Innovation. For one of our projects, we attempted to come up with a solution that would reduce the number of switched-on phones entering a lecture hall (to reduce disturbance).
At first we tried to build our own like these kids, until we ran across the cell phone pen. It's sitting right here on my desk, and it works. We even purchased a tried and true cell phone detector that is is very similar to the one they describe (same 30m range), and it even can emit a tone (not just lights). Not trying to put down these students for their efforts (or for the judges, who might rethink their definition of originality), but a little google action would have yielded these devices. Or for that matter, the suckers would bought some of the first prototypes for $1,000! We bought ours for $20. Hmm, maybe I could fund the trip to New Zealand I've always wanted to take by bringing a few of these little gems with me to sell for a 50x profit...
Indeed, you're right, UNIX mainframes were before my time. My first computer was a pizzabox LC from Apple - and I've never touched a terminal (except perhaps at the library). But I still hold to my position - as the world becomes more networked (and this mesh becomes easier to manage), it will only make sense to reduce the amount of duplicate hardware in our setups. From a resource pespective, it makes a lot more sense to have a bunch of users share on piece of hardware and software than spread it out across a network. I guess what it then comes down to is convincing people of the benefit - like carpooling, some people will keep buying their Dell SUVs no matter the price of gas. This "news" about this being ported to linux is indeed news, because it signals the move from mainframe to mainstream.
Imagine a short time from now when a computer is so fast it can easily handle the needs of a workgroup. It would make much more sense resource-wise to share one system (with one huge pool of resources) than waste it all on the duplications found in multiple machines. I propose the term for this new form of computing to be: compupooling. :-)