I haven't personally seen one of these (although I'd like to...drool) but from what I've heard the refresh isn't all that good. Like >1 second and so forth. They're working on it. Does anyone know the stats for sure? Have you ever read _The Diamond Age_ by Neal Stephenson? This is the perferred means of displays in the book; imagine carrying around a folded piece of paper that is your web browser/desktop/computer. You can write on it and it remembers, transfer information between pieces of e-paper... I get aroused just thinking about it. It's a good book too.:)
Are there any female Slashdot readers out there who care to comment on this article? I believe a lot of the comments people have posted are very interesting, but (I think) there are all by male readers. I am very curious to find out what geek girls feel about their place on the Net. Are these articles accurate or is there another part to the story?
We have a pair of these in our lab hooked up to one of our SGIs. Pretty nifty toys, actually did a bit of programming for them (nothing too fancy). The API is fairly easy to mess with. There's nothing like flipping someone off and watching a real-time rendered hand do it on your monitor....:) You can even get them with little vibrators on the tip of each finger and on the palm to give a sort of tactile feedback. You can program these to react any way you like. The most useful way is to increase the intensity of the vibration the harder you grip or press against a virtual object. Don't get any sick ideas...:)
We have a couple of these in our lab. I haven't actually worked with them but the Intern who did said they were "pieces". He hated wearing them. They just aren't comforable. The keyboard that straps to your arm is useless, the harddrive/cpu runs too hot to wear comforably on your waist, the HMD is crap, extremely uncomfortable. The arm-mounted touchscreen is unreadable in sunny weather. To quote him: "Once you add together the CPU, battery, port expander, headphones, microphone, networking card, and GPS car with antenna, this unit wears on you much more then you wear it." It was a good idea, but IMO wearables should be much less invasive then that. Give me my Palm Pilot any day.:)
For some commentary on the Xybernaut from Steve Mann's Cyborg crew up in the University of Toronto, look here.
I think this is fair if a consumer has the right to see everything in the database under his name and delete it if he so wishes.
Lord knows I would.
Imagine life in the future where there is a single huge repository of all marketing information on every single person in the entire world. Imagine what a different life experience people would have if they opted out of that particular database compared to those who choose to stay in? The person in the database would have every single piece of advertising directed specifically to him (remember this is the future) whereas the person who opted out would get the very basic stuff, maybe nothing if such a thing was a rarity (one can dream). Imagine the social implications! Would people in the "advertising club" look down apon those who are not because they are not part of "society"? Weird thoughts I just had.
I think the worse thing would be if people were not given the opportunity to opt-out of databases such as these. I don't like people being able to find out what type of ice cream I like or the last time I bought a newspaper. I have an inherent distrust of all marketing people and car salesmen.
But five of them are squarely in what astronomers call the habitable zone, which could allow the existence of liquid water -- a prerequisite for life. This makes them different from most of the extrasolar planets found before this.
What about hyper-intellegent shades of the colour blue? They don't need water!
New features include a doubling of the maximum HotSync speed...
Now I can install Solitare faster then ever before!:)
But seriously...I love my Palm, I use it much more often then I ever used my Franklin Planner. And I can play games with it! Wait...that sounded vaguely dirty... :)
I agree. I mostly listen to a variety of techno. Anything with words and I start singing along and not concentrating on what I'm doing. Although sometimes I like a bit of Ska to lighten up the day.:)
BTW I just felt a earthquake out here in LA...it's a roller-coster baby!
As long as the Cavalier doesn't just carry around a magic shield and whine a lot, I'll be a happy camper.:) Why couldn't he just pick up a sword? Jesus Man!
Douglas Adams did the last keynote speech for the 99 JavaOne connference and he talked about this project. He is also a reallly funny guy. Not only is this a going to be a sort of "electronic guide book" using spatial coords to look up information, users can also submit entries to to guide. Say you're traveling and when you come to a restraunt the guide recommends but it has gone out of business, you can update that information to the guide. You can write your own reviews for other people to read when they come to that place. Imagine coupling this system with a Augmented Reality system. Virtual Graffiti drawn in 3d space! I'm going to have to pick one of these bad boys up.:)
Why didn't they control the tanks directly from the PalmPilot infra-red ports?
Because they needed a place to put the Jini Look-Up Service. Mindstorms don't have a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) on them and the Palm Pilot only has the KJVM on it which only has socket support, and not RMI (Remote Method Invocation) which Jini Requires. They were using Jini so that a single Palm could connect to a singe tank with no problems and no hassle; no worries that two people are trying to use the same tank at the same time.
Were these PalmPilots the ones w/o infra-red ports, or did the infra-red ports not have enough range for the tanks to pick up?
They were just regular Palm Vs (I think). The range on the Palm Pilots IR *is* really pitiful (something under 2 feet) but that wasn't the point of the demonstration.
Actually, what was the point of having the Palmpilots in there in the first place, if the workstations were there anyway?
This was the JavaOne conference! They wanted to show of as much cool tech as they could. The KJVM was the BIG this this year, after all, they were selling Palm Vs for $199 with the KJVM already on it for people to play with. Jini was also a hot item and a really good idea for this particular problem. I believe people used their own Palm Vs to control the Tanks. WAY TOO COOL...:) I get giddy every time I think about it.
I agree, the experiment seemed rather contrived. I would think that some other form of experiment would need to be done to give more insight into this process. Say, you see the same picture of blocks but you have to select which block is "red" for instance (a random red block). I would imagine (I'm not a cognitive scientist by any means) that that sort of information would be processed in parallel. When looking for a particular color, I wouldn't think a person look at each block individually. I seem to remember something about the way the brain processess color, especially the color red...hmm... In any case, more experiments should be done before making statements such as the article is making. IMHO anyways...:)
After clicking the "parent" link on a particular comment to see what it is refering to, when I hit the back button on my browser all of the comments for evaluation are different! It seems to grab new comments EVERY time the page is loaded. Besides these "beta" problems, I think this is a good idea, although it might get annoying after a while to "police the police" so to speak.
They had a talk at the JavaOne conference about this very thing. The talk was extremely interesting, especially since I'd been going to a lot of differnet Jini talks throughout the week...it's a cool technology.
And before I go on, it's Jini, not JINI.
Three guys gave the talk; Dennis Reedy from Sun, Dr. David Usechak from the US Army, and Leo Yeung from IBM. The talk was titled Using Jini Technology as the Integrating Architecture for Next Generation Battlefield Systems. Basically this is for mobile command units, four trucks (I'm trying to remember) that fit together some how with workstations on the inside as well as routers and so forth. Basically, this command unit has to move about every 2+ hours. One problem is that once they move they need over an hour to set back up again; feed the twisted pair about, and get all the software connected. What a pain in the ass huh? So they said Jini was perfect for them. Any device or application can find each other if they need to. If they set it up right everything will work how it really should. For instance, when you plug in a phone to a phone jack, you expect to hear the dialtone when you lift it off the hook right? That's how computers should work on the network. Also, keep in mind, that the Jini Lookup Service isn't/just/ for devices. Any Java OBJECT can be put in the lookup service. That can be ANYTHING! It makes me giddy anytime I think about it.:) The presenters gave a very well thought out speech and do know what they're talking about. I have faith that this project will be successful.
It doesn't mean it's unstable, it just means Sun is not responsible for life and death situations. Nor should they be.
That's true to a point but I think that one of the main reasons is that both aircrafts and nuclear power facilities are very time-critical applications. You wouldn't want the Garbage Collector to start up when trying to open emergency venting on your soon-to-be smoking hole in the ground...:) Ribo
Slashdot Mirror
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I haven't personally seen one of these (although I'd like to...drool) but from what I've heard the refresh isn't all that good. Like >1 second and so forth. They're working on it. Does anyone know the stats for sure? :)
Have you ever read _The Diamond Age_ by Neal Stephenson? This is the perferred means of displays in the book; imagine carrying around a folded piece of paper that is your web browser/desktop/computer. You can write on it and it remembers, transfer information between pieces of e-paper... I get aroused just thinking about it.
It's a good book too.
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Are there any female Slashdot readers out there who care to comment on this article?
:)
I believe a lot of the comments people have posted are very interesting, but (I think) there are all by male readers. I am very curious to find out what geek girls feel about their place on the Net. Are these articles accurate or is there another part to the story?
*Are* there any female Slashdot readers?
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No, I'd say the waste of time is you actually commenting that you've already read the story...
:)
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We have a pair of these in our lab hooked up to one of our SGIs. Pretty nifty toys, actually did a bit of programming for them (nothing too fancy). The API is fairly easy to mess with. :) :)
There's nothing like flipping someone off and watching a real-time rendered hand do it on your monitor....
You can even get them with little vibrators on the tip of each finger and on the palm to give a sort of tactile feedback. You can program these to react any way you like. The most useful way is to increase the intensity of the vibration the harder you grip or press against a virtual object.
Don't get any sick ideas...
Can't sleep...Clown will eat me...
It was a good idea, but IMO wearables should be much less invasive then that. Give me my Palm Pilot any day.
For some commentary on the Xybernaut from Steve Mann's Cyborg crew up in the University of Toronto, look here.
I didn't realize that cats were that aerodynamic!
Remind me to start up a Feline Badminton League.
Um, I think you need to explain a bit more here.
What does sending e-mail to this address accomplish? Opt out of what?
I think this is fair if a consumer has the right to see everything in the database under his name and delete it if he so wishes.
Lord knows I would.
Imagine life in the future where there is a single huge repository of all marketing information on every single person in the entire world. Imagine what a different life experience people would have if they opted out of that particular database compared to those who choose to stay in? The person in the database would have every single piece of advertising directed specifically to him (remember this is the future) whereas the person who opted out would get the very basic stuff, maybe nothing if such a thing was a rarity (one can dream). Imagine the social implications! Would people in the "advertising club" look down apon those who are not because they are not part of "society"? Weird thoughts I just had.
I think the worse thing would be if people were not given the opportunity to opt-out of databases such as these. I don't like people being able to find out what type of ice cream I like or the last time I bought a newspaper. I have an inherent distrust of all marketing people and car salesmen.
What about hyper-intellegent shades of the colour blue? They don't need water!
New features include a doubling of the maximum HotSync speed...
:)
Now I can install Solitare faster then ever before!
But seriously...I love my Palm, I use it much more often then I ever used my Franklin Planner. And I can play games with it! Wait...that sounded vaguely dirty...
:)
Here at Amazon.com, we like to think of cryptography as a good, wholesome activity,
providing hours of fun for the whole family.
I almost blew milk out of my nose!
Come on Ma! Lets go crack some codes!
Is it just me our did this phrase strike anyone else as funny?
I agree. I mostly listen to a variety of techno. :)
Anything with words and I start singing along and not concentrating on what I'm doing.
Although sometimes I like a bit of Ska to lighten up the day.
BTW I just felt a earthquake out here in LA...it's a roller-coster baby!
Magnesium is found in plant chlorophyll and is necessary in the diet of animals and humans.
:)
But if you get stranded out in the middle of nowhere you can eat your laptop and survive!
Anyone out there remember when MTV actually showed videos? Videos on Music Television, who would have thought.
As long as the Cavalier doesn't just carry around a magic shield and whine a lot, I'll be a happy camper. :)
Why couldn't he just pick up a sword? Jesus Man!
Douglas Adams did the last keynote speech for the 99 JavaOne connference and he talked about this project. He is also a reallly funny guy. :)
Not only is this a going to be a sort of "electronic guide book" using spatial coords to look up information, users can also submit entries to to guide. Say you're traveling and when you come to a restraunt the guide recommends but it has gone out of business, you can update that information to the guide. You can write your own reviews for other people to read when they come to that place.
Imagine coupling this system with a Augmented Reality system. Virtual Graffiti drawn in 3d space!
I'm going to have to pick one of these bad boys up.
Ribo
Is it just me or did they get that backwards? :)
Well, at least they actually used the proper term some of the time...
Ribo
Because they needed a place to put the Jini Look-Up Service. Mindstorms don't have a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) on them and the Palm Pilot only has the KJVM on it which only has socket support, and not RMI (Remote Method Invocation) which Jini Requires. They were using Jini so that a single Palm could connect to a singe tank with no problems and no hassle; no worries that two people are trying to use the same tank at the same time.
Were these PalmPilots the ones w/o infra-red ports, or did the infra-red ports not have enough range for the tanks to pick up?
They were just regular Palm Vs (I think). The range on the Palm Pilots IR *is* really pitiful (something under 2 feet) but that wasn't the point of the demonstration.
Actually, what was the point of having the Palmpilots in there in the first place, if the workstations were there anyway?
This was the JavaOne conference! They wanted to show of as much cool tech as they could. The KJVM was the BIG this this year, after all, they were selling Palm Vs for $199 with the KJVM already on it for people to play with. Jini was also a hot item and a really good idea for this particular problem. I believe people used their own Palm Vs to control the Tanks. WAY TOO COOL... :) I get giddy every time I think about it.
I agree, the experiment seemed rather contrived. I would think that some other form of experiment would need to be done to give more insight into this process. Say, you see the same picture of blocks but you have to select which block is "red" for instance (a random red block). I would imagine (I'm not a cognitive scientist by any means) that that sort of information would be processed in parallel. When looking for a particular color, I wouldn't think a person look at each block individually. I seem to remember something about the way the brain processess color, especially the color red...hmm... :)
In any case, more experiments should be done before making statements such as the article is making. IMHO anyways...
Ribo
Yes, but that is a work-around...no one should *have* to open a new window.
After clicking the "parent" link on a particular comment to see what it is refering to, when I hit the back button on my browser all of the comments for evaluation are different! It seems to grab new comments EVERY time the page is loaded.
Besides these "beta" problems, I think this is a good idea, although it might get annoying after a while to "police the police" so to speak.
Keep up the good work!
Ribo
SmegHead.
:)
They had a talk at the JavaOne conference about this very thing. The talk was extremely interesting, especially since I'd been going to a lot of differnet Jini talks throughout the week...it's a cool technology.
/just/ for devices. Any Java OBJECT can be put in the lookup service. That can be ANYTHING! :)
And before I go on, it's Jini, not JINI.
Three guys gave the talk; Dennis Reedy from Sun, Dr. David Usechak from the US Army, and Leo Yeung from IBM. The talk was titled Using Jini Technology as the Integrating Architecture for Next Generation Battlefield Systems.
Basically this is for mobile command units, four trucks (I'm trying to remember) that fit together some how with workstations on the inside as well as routers and so forth. Basically, this command unit has to move about every 2+ hours. One problem is that once they move they need over an hour to set back up again; feed the twisted pair about, and get all the software connected. What a pain in the ass huh? So they said Jini was perfect for them. Any device or application can find each other if they need to. If they set it up right everything will work how it really should. For instance, when you plug in a phone to a phone jack, you expect to hear the dialtone when you lift it off the hook right? That's how computers should work on the network. Also, keep in mind, that the Jini Lookup Service isn't
It makes me giddy anytime I think about it.
The presenters gave a very well thought out speech and do know what they're talking about. I have faith that this project will be successful.
Ribo
That's true to a point but I think that one of the main reasons is that both aircrafts and nuclear power facilities are very time-critical applications. You wouldn't want the Garbage Collector to start up when trying to open emergency venting on your soon-to-be smoking hole in the ground... :) Ribo