Archive for the ‘Technology News’ Category
Gresso has come out with limited edition USB drives enclosed in 200-year old Royal Mahogany Wood, further more it is engraved with the image of the bull and the hieroglyph associated with the year 2009.
There are many types of energy, light, kinetic (movement), heat, sound, gravitational, chemical, strain and electrical. Everything we do is using a type of energy. When we sit still on a chair we use gravitational energy. Sometimes we never realise we are using energy, but we are still using it. We never tend to use light but we can make it happen. We can switch on a light or start a fire which creates energy. Whenever we move we use kinetic movement, even if you just move slightly. We are always giving off heat, when we speak or sometimes when we move we make a sound. We are made out of chemicals so anything we do is using chemical energy.
Here are some energy facts:
Renewable and Non-renewable energy
Energy resources can be described as renewable and non-renewable. Renewable energy sources are those which are continually being replaced such as energy from the sun (solar) and wind. If an energy resource is being used faster than it can be replaced (for example, coal takes millions of years to form) then it will eventually run out. This is called a non-renewable energy source.
These are the main types of renewable energy:
Solar energy is light and heat energy from the sun. Solar cells convert sunlight into electrical energy. Moving air turns the blades of large windmills or generators to make electricity, or to pump water out of the ground. A high wind speed is needed to power the wind generators effectively. While wind generators dont produce any greenhouse gas emissions they may cause vibrations, noise and visual pollution. They do not cause air pollution and are environmentally friendly. If a dam or barrage is built across a river mouth or inlet, electricity can be obtained by the flow of water through turbines in the dam as the tide rises and falls. The movement of waves can also drive air turbines to make electricity. Although tidal and wave energy dont produce pollution, they can cause other environmental problems. Biomass is plant and animal material that can be used for energy. It uses waste materials that is usually dumped and can generate that waste into electricity, light, heat, motion and fuel. Fast- flowing water released from dams in mountainous areas can turn water turbines to produce Hydroelectric electricity. It does not cause pollution however there are many other environmental impacts. Geothermal energy uses heat energy from beneath the surface of the earth. Some of this heat finds its way to the surface in the form of hot springs or geysers. Other schemes tap the heat energy by pumping water through hot dry rocks several kilometres beneath the earths surface. Geothermal energy is used for the generation of electricity and for space and water heating in a small number of countries.
Non-renewable energy
Coal is a fossil fuel formed over millions of years from decomposing plants. Petroleum, or crude oil is formed in a similar way to coal. But instead of becoming a rock, it became a liquid trpped between layers of rock. Gas is made in the same way as pertroleum and its also trapped between layers of rock. Natural gas is tapped, compressed and piped into homes to be used in stoves and hot water systems. Nucelar Energy is a supply source that gives us electricity in our homes. It powers TV, computers, kettles and lots more. However it is very bad for the environment and anyone who comes into contact with it. If any accidents happen it could cause alot of damage.
Todays cameras will let you do more than adjust the flash; theyll let you adjust reality. Photo-adjusting features that once required a PC and special know-how are now allowing consumers to alter a photo as soon as its snapped.
Some new Hewlett-Packard cameras include a feature that makes subjects look thinner, while another mode makes facial lines and pores virtually disappear. A “skin tone” feature on some Olympus models can give consumers a leisure-class tan. Other manufacturers offer modes to make the colors of the world richer as you capture them. Using these new in-camera tools, consumers can even crop out ex-boyfriends, or put a virtual frame around a new one.
Most digital cameras to date have had tools that remove red-eye from photos or lighten darkened images because of a poor flash. But that editing corrects a deficiency in the photographers skills, or the camera itself, not the subject.
With new tools, average people can create their own “pictures that lie” at the moment of capture, without any trace of the real image that was seen with the naked eye.
“People in the legal world are now concerned about whether photos can be accepted as evidence anymore, especially when you can alter the scene as you click the shutter,” said Peter Southwick, associate professor and director of the photojournalism program at Boston University. “And in the old days, there was an original, now there is no original. Photography as a tool for providing evidence, or as proof, may not exist anymore.”
The late media and culture critic Neil Postman had famous criteria for all technology, noted Anthony Spina, an adjunct professor of sociology at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey who specializes in technologys impact on society.
“(Postman) would ask: What problem does this new technology answer? What problem is this solving? Whats the point? The problem is, obviously, that people want to look thinner,” Spina said.
Spina is referring to HPs recently released in-camera editing feature that makes a person appear more svelte. The tool, called “Slimming Mode,” is part of HPs Design Gallery software, which is included on some of its Photosmart M and R series cameras. It compresses the center of a photo and stretches the edges to fix the aspect ratio, said Linda Kennedy, a product manager for digital photography at HP.
The slimming tool doesnt target people specifically; it will elongate any object centered in the photo, with three degrees of slimness. Like most digital cameras with editing tools, the changed photo is saved as a copy, and the original image remains on the camera intact.
Kennedy, one of the proponents of the feature while it was in development, said the idea came from the many people HP surveyed who said they hated having their picture taken. Kennedy also pointed to another use.
“We had a personal trainer wanting to use the camera as a motivational tactic for her clients,” she said. “Putting a good photo of the person on their refrigerator so they can say, I do want to look like this, as opposed to the fat picture in a bathing suit,” can be inspiring.
HP isnt the only manufacturer to offer this type of alteration feature. With the digital camera market maturing, manufacturers are using new features to entice customers to upgrade their current digicams. Canon, Kodak, HP, Nikon and Olympus all offer features that increase saturation, bumping up the richness of color “seen” by the camera. The photographer clicks and a sunset forever becomes more brilliant than it appeared in real life. Homegrown vegetables become more luscious.
“The consumer products and all these changes in photography, to me, are going to cause an undermining of peoples ability to believe a photograph, which is the foundation of photojournalism,” Southwick said. “Now that it is at the consumer level and people are going to see this, I am not sure on a fundamental level that they are ever going to believe a photo when they see it.”
C++ is a type of computer programming language. Created in 1983 by Bjarne Stroustrup, C++ was designed to serve as an enhanced version of the C programming language. C++ is object oriented and is considered a high level language. However, it features low level facilities. C++ is one of the most commonly used programming languages.
The development of C++ actually began four years before its release, in 1979. It did not start out with the name C++; its first name was C with Classes. In the late part of 1983, C with Classes was first used for AT&T’s internal programming needs. Its name was changed to C++ later in the same year. C++ was not released commercially until the late part of 1985.
Developed at Bell Labs, C++ enhanced the C programming language in a variety of ways. Among the features of C++ are classes, virtual functions, templates, and operator overloading. The C++ language also counts multiple inheritance and exception handling among its many features. C++ introduced the use of declarations as statements and includes more type checking than is available with the C programming language.
Considered a superset of the C programming language, C++ maintains a variety of features that are included within its predecessor. As such, C programs are generally able to run successfully in C++ compilers. However, there are some issues that may cause C code to perform differently in C++ compilers. In fact, it is possible for some C code to be incompatible in C++.
The C++ computer programming language was created for UNIX, providing programmers with the advantage of being able to modify code without actually changing it; C++ code is reusable. Also, library creation is cleaner in C++. The C++ programming language is considered portable and does not require the use of a specific piece of hardware or just one operating system.
Another important feature of C++ is the use of classes. Classes help programmers with the organization of their code. They can also be beneficial in helping programmers to avoid mistakes. However, there are times when mistakes do slip through. When this happens, classes can be instrumental in finding bugs and correcting them.
The original C++ compiler, called Cfront, was written in the C++ programming language. C++ compilation is considered efficient and fast. Its speed can be attributed to it high-level features in conjunction with its low-level components. When compared to other computer programming languages, C++ can be viewed as quite short. This is due to the fact that C++ leans towards the use of special characters instead of keywords.
The EM1000W combines an EM1000 serial-to Ethernet module with an WA1000 wireless Wi-Fi Module that is mounted piggy-back on top.
The EM1000W module is available with program memory configurations of 512KBytes or 1024KBytes. You can select the desired memory size from the drop down menu below.
The EM1000W module features a real-time clock (RTC), which can be backed up with a Supercapacitor mounted on the EM1000W module. If you wish to get the module with Supercapacitor mounted, please select the appropriate option from the crop-down menu below.
Intel and other companies have formed a group to promote the USB 3.0, which should deliver more than ten times the speed of the existing USB 2.0 standard.
The third-generation Universal Serial Bus interconnect will transfer data at speeds up to 4.8Gbit/s, ten times faster than USB 2.0s 480MBit/s. It will be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0, which is backwards-compatible with the first USB 1.1 definition.
Intel stated that the USB 3.0 specification would be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. The USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed with both copper and optical cable capabilities, meaning even higher speeds will be possible in the future.
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) will act as the trade association for the USB 3.0 specification.
There is also a Wireless USB (WUSB) transfer format and this operates at 480Mbit/s, the same as USB 2.0, in its 1.0 incarnation. Intel also revealed a WUSB 1.1 interconnect format, operating at a speed of up to 1Gbit/s.
Jeff Ravencraft, Intels technology strategist, said: “The digital era requires high-speed performance and reliable connectivity to move the enormous amounts of digital content now present in everyday life. USB 3.0 will meet this challenge while maintaining (USB 2.0s) ease-of-use experience.”
I can see the new trend now – flash drives stuck into Foreman grills, Karate trophies and old Pintos. The future is a beautiful place. While attaching this device to laptops and PCs within cramped confines probably isnt desirable, it should definitely keep that precious data out of the washing machine, but we doubt this bad boy lands a strike anytime soon with such an extrusion[Source 1 - 2]
Combining the digital security of encryption with the decidedly analogue security of a bike lock, the 007 keeps your data doubly safe. If they somehow figure out that the code is your birthday, once they plug it into your computer theyll need yet another password to access the data[Source]
“Bling,” as I understand it, is a slang term for flashy jewelry with diamonds and other such valuables on it. I dont know for sure, as Im not “from the streets” or “down” with the “kids.” Perhaps if I drop some “duckets” on this fancy USB drive I will become more hip and with it[Source]
…its not hardly voluminous enough to give that warez mule operation of yours a shot in the arm but it might be just big enough for Flat Top to shoot Coca-Cola[Source 1 - 2]
[Source]The 1GB model costs $197 and the 2GB runs $247, which is less expensive when you consider its a (semi) handmade product that is limited to 100 units produced
Intel, the worlds biggest PC chip maker, has launched the next-generation of its Centrino wireless chips for use in laptop computers and other non-PC devices.
The chips combine Wi-Fi capability with a newer wireless technology called WiMax, which allows for high-speed data transmission over much bigger distances, such as across entire cities. The WiMax-enabled version of the chips should be available later this year.
The launch of the Centrino 2 chip, previously code named Montevina, came after a delay of several months and was decidedly lower key than the launch of the first Centrino chips in 2003.
The Centrino 2 launch is part of this broader strategy to develop a wider suite of wireless products for use in non-PC devices, such as cellphones, as data transmission speeds improve with new mobile technologies.
Such technologies allow for a much wider range of applications, such as streaming video and video downloads, that would have been impossible using older technology.
“Because this chip has new capabilities, we hope it will change the way people think of mobile computing,” said Stanley Huang, director of advanced technical sales and services for Intel Asia Pacific, at a launch event in Taipei.
But analysts say the launch represents a relatively modest step forward. Bryan Ma, an industry analyst from the data-tracking company IDC based in Singapore, says the new chips represent a more incremental development for the industry, compared with the first Centrino that marked Intels entry to the wireless space.
“My big question is whether this is revolutionary or evolutionary; I suspect it may be more of the latter,” Ma says. “Even if its just evolutionary, however, it is still a good fuel to help the industry along.”
WiMax could replace conventional Wi-Fi networks because users can remain connected at speeds of up to 75 megabits per second over distances up to 10 kilometres. By contrast, conventional Wi-Fi operates over distances of only a few tens of metres.
Because of this ability to blanket entire cities, WiMax is also touted as a potential rival to 3G cellphone networks. However, critics point out that users would have to share the WiMax connection and this could dramatically reduce download speeds to around 512 kilobits per second, about the same as is possible with 3G.
WiMax services are already available in parts of Germany, France and Spain, while Taiwan is currently in the process of constructing six WiMax wireless networks.
Predicting the Future of Cell Phone Technology and Design
Over the years, the Blackberry has set the standard for business cell phones and now the iPhone has set the standard for media enriched cell phones for higher class consumers. The question that remains to be answered is, “Will these ambitious super-gadgets go mainstream?” To Apple enthusiasts and Silicon Valley nerds, the answer is obvious. Over a million iPhones sold within months after release, are you kidding? It’ll absolutely be mainstream in a few years!
Consider design, consumption and use
I might have given the answer above without hesitation last fall, but then it occurred to me that these phones are highly targeted pieces of equipment. Take the Blackberry for example, it serves a purpose that is unparalleled in the business world. Like the Rolodex, it has created for greater efficiency and increased productivity and that’s just taking push e-mail and personal management features into account.
The iPhone, Apple’s prized gadget, takes a kitchen sink approach and meshes it all well using Apple’s trademark simplicity approach. At a price of $600-$800 retail, not including the price of a contract and data plan, this phone — although profitable — has limited revenue potential.
Next Generation Cellular Phones – Evolution through Devolution?
Depending on how you characterize advancement, you might fall in love (as I have) with the concept of turning back the clock on cellular design and offering a Googlesque approach to design.
Googlesque, what the heck does that even mean?
Lets face it, part of how Google took over the world is it simplified search, it killed the garbage “home page portal” ambition (see MSN, Yahoo, AOL) and provided you with a Google search box. Well, what if we could implement the same concept with mobile phones? Think about the possibilities of a simple, flashy design that would be affordable and available for mass consumption? Someone already has, here’s a fresh new look at cellular designs for next generation simplicity.
First Look at the Mimique Cell Phone Design
I’ve got the scoop on the new design, it comes on good authority from a member of the RKS team.
The “Mimique” Concept
This new cellular design looks to take a different approach from the newer generation of feature-heavy cell phones. The team was aiming for a playful, engaging and simple “old-school” design using next generation style and technology.
I’d have to agree with that description, let’s take a closer look.
Mimique Cell Phone Profile
According to the RKS, the Mimique will make use of “new open-source, cell phone software” — hmm, Android anyone? It includes downloadable “skins” that allow changing of the graphical interface to match the consumer’s mood or personal style. The mimique design promises to provide a phone for everybody, especially typical consumers that don’t require the extra baggage that comes with newer and more expensive business and entertainment cell phones. I think I’ve adequately explained why the idea of simplicity and usability is so appealing given the direction of current cellular technologies and unintuitive designs.
Of course, being the inquisitive person that I am, I had to probe for more information and received some literature from the design team:
Where the Mimique really sets itself apart is that it is designed to take advantage of the new, open-source cell phone technologies being developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. This barrier-breaking technology would allow users to customize their phones to work and look exactly the way they want. […] Best of all, it means that you’ll no longer be forced to pay for features you don’t want. You get to pick and choose exactly the features you want to create your own perfect phone.
So why change direction in design, are there other benefits besides reclaiming the phone for consumers through intuitive new-age design?
The combination of open source software and touch-screen technology will make the Mimique easily upgradable. Today, if someone comes out with new cell phone features, you have to buy a new cell phone to get that feature. But with the Mimique, you’ll just download the new feature to your phone and you’re good to go. This will greatly extend the lifespan of the phone itself, because the features are never locked into the design. With the Mimique, you’ll always have the newest, coolest phone on the block, because it’s the one phone designed to be everything you want and nothing you don’t.
Wi-Fi, which stands for wireless fidelity, in a play on the older term Hi-Fi, is a wireless networking technology used across the globe. Wi-Fi refers to any system that uses the 802.11 standard, which was developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and released in 1997. The term Wi-Fi, which is alternatively spelled WiFi, Wi-fi, Wifi, or wifi, was pushed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a trade group that pioneered commercialization of the technology.
In a Wi-Fi network, computers with wifi network cards connect wirelessly to a wireless router. The router is connected to the Internet by means of a modem, typically a cable or DSL modem. Any user within 200 feet or so (about 61 meters) of the access point can then connect to the Internet, though for good transfer rates, distances of 100 feet (30.5 meters) or less are more common. Retailers also sell wireless signal boosters that extend the range of a wireless network.
Wifi networks can either be “open”, such that anyone can use them, or “closed”, in which case a password is needed. An area blanketed in wireless access is often called a wireless hotspot. There are efforts underway to turn entire cities, such as San Francisco, Portland, and Philadelphia, into big wireless hotspots. Many of these plans will offer free, ad-supported service or ad-free service for a small fee. San Francisco recently chose Google to supply it with a wireless network.
Wifi technology uses radio for communication, typically operating at a frequency of 2.4GHz. Electronics that are “WiFi Certified” are guaranteed to interoperate with each other regardless of brand. Wifi is technology designed to cater to the lightweight computing systems of the future, which are mobile and designed to consume minimal power. PDAs, laptops, and various accessories are designed to be wifi-compatible. There are even phones under development that would switch seamlessly from cellular networks to wifi networks without dropping a call.
Introduction
This AVR ISP is a USB In System Programmer (ISP). With this ISP programmer AVR microcontrollers can be programmed without removing it from existing hardware. Both Slow and Fast programming modes are supported which allows a variety of devices to be programmed.
Specifications
Supported AVR Microcontrollers
|
AT90CAN128 | AT90PWM2 | AT90PWM3 | AT90S1200 | AT90S2313 | AT90S2343(*) |
AT90S2333 | AT90S4414 | AT90S4433 | AT90S4434 | AT90S8515 |
AT90S8535 |
ATmega103 | ATmega163 | ATmega1280 | ATmega128 | ATmega8 |
ATmega16 |
ATmega64 | ATmega169 | ATmega161 | ATmega162 |
ATmega163 | ATmega164 |
ATmega2560(**) | ATmega2561(**) | ATmega32 | ATmega324 |
ATmega329 | ATmega3290 |
Animals have a uniform, closed architecture. The human brain is an open platform; people get by using a wide variety of techniques called “professions”. The flexibility has its drawbacks. We aren’t tuned for any particular profession, and apparently that’s why everybody develops some sort of profession-related problems. Proctologists reportedly turn rude as time goes by. Rock stars live fast, but die young. Hunters in the African deserts get to chase antelopes for a couple of days. Antelopes run much faster, so you would never try to chase one; but the hunter knows better – compared to him, the animal lacks stamina, and will get tired, and then he can kill it. But sometimes the hunter has the misfortune of chasing a particularly strong antelope, in which case he still won’t be able to get close enough at the end of the second day. But having wasted all that energy, he now certainly has to refuel, so he settles for a nearby half-rotten corpse. The effect of that sort of meal on his digestive system is one problem that comes with his profession.
Programmers develop their own problems. Today, we’ll talk about AI problems some of us are having. As you probably already know, but my trademark thoroughness still obliges me to say, AI stands for “Artificial Intelligence” and comes in two flavors, “deterministic” (like minmax) and “statistical” (like SVM). The combined efforts of various researches lead to an important breakthrough in this field, known to meteorologists as “the AI winter“. This is the season when you can’t get any VC money if you mention AI anywhere in your business plan. During this season, an alternate term was invented for AI, “Machine Learning”. I think that the money/no money distinction between “ML” and “AI” isn’t the only one, and that in other contexts, AI=deterministic and ML=statistical, but I don’t care. In real systems, you do both. Lots of things labeled as “AI” work and are useful in practical contexts. Others are crap. It’s always like that, but this isn’t what I came to talk about today. By “AI problems”, I didn’t mean the problems that people face which require the application of methods associated with the term “AI”. I meant “problems” in the psychiatric sense.
A certain kind of reader will wonder whether I have the necessary qualifications to deal with a psychiatric issue so advanced. My credentials are humble, but I do work on hairy computer vision applications. The general problem computer vision deals with (identify, classify and track “objects” in real-world scenes) is considered “AI complete” by some, and I tend to agree. I don’t actually work on the AI bits – the algorithms are born a level and a half above me; I’m working on the hardware & software that’s supposed to run them fast. I did get to see how fairly successful AI stacks up, with different people approaching it differently. Some readers of the credential-sensitive kind will conclude that I still have no right to tackle the deep philosophical bullshit underlying Artificial Intelligence, and others will decide otherwise. Anyway, off we go.
The AI problems make a vast area; we’ll only talk about a few major ones. First of all, we’ll deal with my favorite issue, which is of course The Psychophysical Problem. There are folks out there who actually think they believe that their mind is software, and that consciousness can be defined as a certain structural property of information processing machines. They don’t really believe it, as the ground-breaking yosefk’s Mind Expansion Experiment can easily demonstrate. I’ll introduce that simple yet powerful experiment in a moment, but first, I want to pay a tribute to the best movie of the previous century, which, among other notable achievements, provided the most comprehensive treatment of the psychophysical problem in the popular culture. That motion picture is of course The Terminator, part I and, to an extent, part II. World-class drama. Remarkable acting (especially in part I – there are a couple of facial expressions conveying aggressive, hopeless, cowardly and impatient stupidity previously unheard of). Loads of fun.
Back to our topic, the movie features a digital computer with an impressive set of peripheral devices, capable of passing the Turing test. The system is based on Atari hardware, as this guy has figured out from the assembly listings cleverly edited into the sequences depicting the black-and-red “perspective” of the machine. According to the mind-is-software AI weenies, the device from the movie has Real Consciousness. The fascinating question whether this is in fact the case is extensively discussed in the witty dialogs throughout the film. “I sense injuries”, says the Atari-powered gadget. “This information could be called pain”. Pain. The key to our elusive subject. I’m telling you, these people know their stuff.
The mind-is-software approach is based on two assumptions: the Church-Turing thesis and the feelings-are-information axiom. In my trademark orderly fashion, I’ll treat the first assumption second and the second assumption first. To show the invalidity of the feelings-are-information assumption, we’ll use yosefk’s Mind Expansion Experiment. It has two versions: the right-handed and the left-handed, and it goes like this. If you’re right-handed, put a needle in your right hand and start pushing it into your left arm. If you’re left-handed, put a needle in your left hand and start pushing it into your right arm. While you’re engaged in this entertaining activity, consider the question: “Is this information? How many bits would it take to represent?” Most people will reach enlightenment long before they’ll cause themselves irreversible damage. Critics have pointed out that the method can cause die-hard AI weenies to actually injure themselves; the question whether this is a bug or a feature is still a subject of a hot debate in the scientific community. Anyway, we do process something that isn’t exactly information, because it fucking hurts; I hope we’re done with this issue now.
Some people don’t believe the first of the two above-mentioned assumptions, namely, the Church-Turing thesis. Most of these people aren’t programmers; they simply lack the experience needed to equate “thinking” and “doing”. But once you actually try to implement decision-making as opposed to making the decision yourself, your perspective changes. You usually come to think that in order to decide, you need to move stuff around according to some procedure, which isn’t very different from the method of people doing manual labor at low-tech construction sites. Thinking is working; that’s why “computational power” is called “power”. I’ve only heard one programmer go “…but maybe there’s a different way of thinking from the one based on logic”. I couldn’t think of any, except from the way based on psychoactive chemicals, maybe. “A different way of thinking”. To me, it’s like arguing that you can eat without food or kick ass without an ass, and I bet you feel the same way, so let’s not waste time on that.
Next problem: some people actually think that a machine will pass the Turing test sooner or later. I wouldn’t count on that one. Physicists claim that a bullet can fly out of one’s body with the wound closing and healing in the process, because observations indicate that you can get shot and wounded, and if a process is physically possible, that same process reversed in time is also physically possible. It’s just that the probability of the reverse process is low. Very low. Not messing with the kind of people who can shoot you is a safer bet than counting on this reversibility business. Similarly, the Church-Turing claims that if a person can do it, a universal computing device can emulate it. It’s just the feasibility of this simulation that’s the problem. One good way to go about it would be to simulate a human brain in a chip hooked to enough peripherals to walk and talk and then let it develop in the normal human environment (breastfeeding, playing with other kids, love & marriage, that kind of thing). The brain simulation should of course be precise enough, and the other kids should be good kids and not behave as dirty racists when our Turing machine drives into their sand pit. If the experiment is conducted in this clean and unbiased way, we have a good chance to have our pet machine pass the Turing test by the time the other kids will be struggling with their IQ tests and other human-oriented benchmarks.
Seriously, the human language is so damn human that it hardly means anything to you if you are a Turing-complete alien. To truly understand even the simplest concepts, such as “eat shit” or “fuck off and die”, you need to have first-hand experience of operating a human body with all of its elaborate hardware. This doesn’t invalidate the Church-Turing thesis in the slightest, but it does mean that automatic translation between languages will always look like automatic translation. Because the human that can interpret the original that way clearly lives inside a box with flashing lights, a reset button and a ventilator. For similar reasons, a translation by a poorly educated person will always look like a translation by a poorly educated person. I know all about it, because in Israel, there’s a million ex-Russians, so they hire people to put Russian subtitles into movies on some channels. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have any prerequisites for the job, which means that I get to read a lot of Russian translations by morons. Loads of fun. These people equipped with their natural intelligence barely pass the Turing test, if you ask me, so I keep my hopes low on Turing-test-passing AI.
Moving on to our next problem, we meet the people who think that we actually need AI. We don’t. Not if it means “a system that is supposed to scale so that it could pass the Turing test”. And this is the only thing AI means as far as I’m concerned here. We already have “artificial intelligence” that isn’t at all like our natural intelligence, but still beats our best representatives in chess, finds web pages, navigates by GPS and maps and so on. Computers already work. So the only thing we don’t have is artificial intelligence that simulates our own. And this is as tremendously useless as it is infeasible. Natural intelligence as we know it is a property of a person. Who needs an artificial person? If you want to have a relationship, there’s 6G of featherless two-leg Turing machines to pick from. If you want a kid to raise, you can make one in a fairly reliable and well-known way. We don’t build machines in order to raise them and love them; we build them to get work done.
If the thing is even remotely close to “intelligent”, you can no longer issue commands; you must explain yourself and ask for something and then it will misunderstand you. Normal for a person, pretty shitty for a machine. Humans have the sacred right to make mistakes. Machines should be working as designed. And animals are free to mark their territory using their old-fashioned defecation-oriented methodology. That’s the way I want my world to look like. Maybe you think that we’ll be able to give precise commands to intelligent machines. Your typical AI weenie will disagree; I’ll mention just one high-profile AI weenie, Douglas Hofstadter of Gödel, Escher, Bach. Real-life attempts at “smart” systems also indicate that with intelligence, commands aren’t. The reported atrocities of the DWIM rival those of such precise a command as “rm .* -rf”, which is supposed to remove the dot files in the current directory, but really removes more than that.
Finally, many people think that AIish work is Scientific and Glamorous. They feel that working on AI will get them closer to The Essence of The Mind. I think that 40 years ago, parsing had that vibe. Regular, Context-Free, automatic parser generation, neat stuff, look, we actually know how language works! Yeah, right.
You can build a beautiful AI app, and take your experience with you to the next AI app, but you won’t build a Mind that you can then run on the new problem and have it solved. If you succeed, you will have built a software system solving your particular problem. Software is always like that. A customers database front-end isn’t a geographical database front-end. Similarly, face recognition software isn’t vehicle detection software. Some people feel that mere mortal programmers are biting bits, some obscure boring bits on their way to obsolescence, while AI hackers are hacking the Universe itself. The truth is that AI work is specialized to the obscure constraints of each project to a greater extent than work in most other areas of programming. If you won’t take my word for it, listen to David Chapman from the MIT AI Lab. “Unlike most other programmers, AI programmers rarely can borrow code from each other.” By the way, he mentions my example, machine vision, as an exception, but most likely, he refers to lower-level code. And why can’t we borrow code? “This is partly because AI programs rarely really work.” The page is a great read; I recommend to point and click.
As I’ve promised, this wasn’t about AI; it was about AI-related bullshit. And as I’ve already mentioned, lots of working stuff is spelled with “AI” in it. I’ve been even thinking about reading an AI book lately to refresh some things and learn some new ones. And then lots of AI-related work is in Lisp. They have taste, you can’t take that away.
Branches of AI
Q. What are the branches of AI?
A. Heres a list, but some branches are surely missing, because no-one has identified them yet. Some of these may be regarded as concepts or topics rather than full branches.
HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is a connection standard that was first developed by Hitachi, Panasonic, RCA, Silicon Image, Sony, and Toshiba in 2002.
The Seagate FreeAgent Go is a new breed of portable hard drive: one with a prodigious capacity—500GB is larger than many internal desktop drives—as well as a convenient ability to dock the drive to a PC like you might with an iPod. The Go has a wealth of features that make it easier to back up your data than other drives do, which is one reason why Im giving it the Editors Choice for portable hard drives.
Too many people dont back up their important files (pictures of the grandparents with the kids, that rare CD they ripped and then lost, 15 years worth of résumé updates). All of this data is irreplaceable but is also a hassle to back up using traditional CDs or DVDs. A 500GB drive has enough space to keep multiple copies of each file. Thanks to the optional dock, which is a must-have, and the software, backing it all up is a breeze
The Go comes with a dual-headed cable, which gives the drive additional power when you use it with a laptop. (Some laptops have trouble powering certain power-hungry drives through the USB ports; the dual-headed cables ensure against that.) The newer, larger-capacity portable drives tend to need more power than they can get through just a single USB port. Nonetheless, I was able to power the Go from a single USB port on both my test beds, an Apple MacBook Pro and Dell desktop.
The drive is a speedy one: Dragging and dropping our 1.2GB test folder took only 56 seconds, and the Seagate backup utility was right behind at 1 minute. PCMark05 returned a hard drive score of 2,779 points, which is par for a portable 2.5-inch hard drive. You shouldnt have any trouble waiting for the drive to complete your backups; youll likely just leave it in its dock so its always ready.
The Go is a little more businesslike in its design than competing drives, such as the SimpleTech Signature Mini Black Cherry. (We reviewed the 320GB model, but SimpleTech now also offers the 500GB capacity.) The SimpleTech comes with a free online storage subscription, but its only 2GB. The Western Digital My Passport Elite is also stylish, has a built-in port protector, a capacity indicator, and comes in several colors, but with its dock ability, the Gos trumps the other two. The WD and Seagate have long-life five-year warranties, but the SimpleTech is shorter at only three years.
The Seagate FreeAgent Go (500GB) is the portable hard drive to beat. Its innovative dock, stylish design, generous five-year warranty, and included software give you just about all you need from a portable external drive. Half a terabyte is more than enough to back up a computer or two for most average users. The dock and software make the backup process easy—and the easier it is, the more likely youll use this often ignored but very important safeguard of your digital life.
Light a candle and bake a cake, then pop down to the shop to pick up a hilarious card – your CPU has just turned 30! While its best years arent behind it quite yet, it could do with cheering up.
In 1978, Intel released its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086. Although it was the cheaper, cut down 8-bit version – the 8088 – that made it into the IBM PC and quite literally changed the world as we know it, todays Core 2 and Phenom chips are designed to run code based on whats still called the x86 instruction set. In fact, they still share some important common core characteristics with the venerable 8086.
Quite why it should have been the x86 family is a different story for another time. Intels chips were far from the most advanced, cleverest or cheapest available at the end of the 1970s, and had some fairly serious design bugs, which had to be replaced by IBM free of charge some years later. In the annals of our times, though, that will be deemed irrelevant: this was the general purpose processor that drove the desktop revolution.
Curiously, one of its competitors – the Zilog Z80 which powered Sinclairs home computer of (almost) the same name – is actually still manufactured and used today. The 8086, however, has been consigned to history.
Why do we bring these curious factoids up? Because later this month also sees the launch of Intels seventh generation of x86 CPUs, the Core i7 (Nehalem). Intel is touting it as the biggest architectural change in the companys history; and for once were actually prepared to believe it.
Core i7: Your essential guide to Intels new processor
The success of x86 is, of course, backwards compatibility. Somewhere in the Core i7s infinitely more complex design are the same 116 instructions that the 8086 could execute, albeit substantially enhanced with later additions, and the same is true of the AMD Phenom. These are the basic arithmetic and logic commands – like ADD, MUL, OR and XOR – along with a few more specific instructions for which bit of data belongs in which block of memory or system register.
In reality, of course, the things couldnt be more different today if they tried. The 8086 ran at 4MHz, had a total transistor count of less than 30,000 and was packaged in a 40-pin dual in-line chip: physically, it was one of those long black things with the legs sticking out from the sides like an evil metal spider. The Core i7, by contrast, is a two-, four- or eight-core beast, with up to 1.4 billion transistors in its largest variety.
At launch, it will be clocked at well over the 3GHz mark. It has 1567 pin outs, and comes in the flat FCLGA (flip chip land grid array) packaging that will be familiar from the Core 2 line. That means that balls of solder meet the circuit board head on, and end in simple pads which are then laid on to of pins in the motherboard socket.
Weve come a long way, clearly. The CPUs of the seventies look like single-celled organisms in primordial processor sludge by comparison to the staggering complexity of todays chips. It takes teams of hundreds of people several years to design a new CPU, and its unlikely that any individual could completely navigate the finished silicon topography by hand.
Inside the shell
We can, however, do our bit to improve general understanding by looking at certain core principles of CPU design. Technically speaking, a CPU is any processor that can execute programmable code, but for the purposes of our sanity, well stick to a discussion of modern day x86 chips here.
In the same way that graphics technology has moved to unified shading in order to make more efficient use of the processing power available, todays design goals are to keep all the various parts of the CPU working on useful information. Note the inclusion of the word useful there.
Fetch, decode, etc.
The simplest form of CPU takes one piece of data, works out what to do with it, does it and then outputs the result. The inherent problem is that it can only work on one piece of data at a time, and while thats being passed through to the part of the execution engine thats designed to perform the requested operation, the rest of the CPU is sitting idle.
The solution to this is to introduce some form of parallelism to the pipeline. To start with, this might have been simply to have the fetch part of the CPU grabbing a new piece of data while the decode bit is working on another. Thats been developed somewhat, mind you, and the last iteration of Pentium 4 had a whopping 31 stages to its pipeline.
The problem with long pipelines, however, is that they arent always terribly efficient because theyre not always full of useful information. On its journey through the pipeline, a piece of data may return an error or will become reliant on other information being drawn from the registers – if it isnt there, the result will have to be written out while the new piece of data is fetched and the rest of the pipeline will stand idle.
The key workaround for this in todays CPUs is to build logical areas that are dedicated to branch prediction – in other words, guessing what bits of data are going to be needed next and getting them ready for insertion into the pipe. Of course, branch predictors arent infallible, and if the wrong information is called then youre back to having large amounts of wasted die area. A large part of processor design is finding a happy balance between length of pipeline and CPU cycles lost to such stalling.
That might mean looking ahead in the currently running thread and pulling out commands that arent dependent on the current operation – known as out of order processing – or, in the case of a processor core capable of working on more than one thread at once, starting to work through an entirely different instruction loop that just happens not to need the same parts of the pipeline as the currently running one. To speed things up further, Core i7 can execute up to four instructions per cycle.
Incidentally, its also interesting to note that a CPUs instruction set – the programming language into which all commands are eventually decoded and compiled – isnt completely hard-wired into the design. Theres a software layer that handles most of the interpretation known as the microcode – a form of non-upgradable firmware stored in an on-board ROM, which works as a mini- operating system.
Its a useful tool for chip builders: because the microcode isnt finalised until the chip goes into production – and can be rewritten for a new manufacturing run – any problems or improvements that are discovered after the silicon has been laid out can be changed in the software stack. This is, of course, easier than going back to the drawing board and laying out another million or two transistors.
Dedicated bits
The execution engine is also broken down further into dedicated areas for tasks like integer operations, float point calculation and SSE instructions. The latter is an acronym of an acronym – the Streaming SIMD Engine where SIMD stands for Single Instruction Multiple Data.
Its an on-board vector processor capable of performing the same transformation on several pieces of information at once. Its included on Intel and AMD chips for speeding up things like video processing, where the same command must be performed on, say, all the pixels on a screen simultaneously. Theres also, of course, the one important part of a CPU that we havent talked about yet: the memory.
Closest to the actual instruction pipeline are the registers: there are 32 of these on a 64-bit chip, and each can either store a general piece of information or has a specific task or overlapping tasks. In order to help out those prefetch engines we mentioned earlier, though, there are two levels of fast cache memory to store the data which might be needed for the current process, or that has been written out but may be called again.
The cache memory is much faster than system memory and prevents the whole system bottlenecking while the RAM is slowly scanned for instructions and data. For multi-core chips, where two or more processors are packaged onto the same die, theres often a third cache area that is structured to allow the different cores to swap information quickly.
At the moment, Intel leads the way with its 45nm process, which is made possible thanks to a hafnium-derived material used for the transistor gates. Intel states that the next generation of Core i7s will be produced on an even smaller 32nm process.
Moore to come
CPU design and manufacture isnt showing any signs of slowing. The infamous Moores Law – a prediction by Intel founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors that can be placed on a circuit will double every two years – may not be based on any scientific assessment of the manufacturing capabilities of the future, but it has remained peculiarly true for the last forty-three years.
Indeed, it could be that were on the cusp of a far bigger architectural change than even Core i7 augers. AMD and Intel are keen to move more functions onto the CPU, starting with a basic graphics processor, with the end goal of creating simple, power efficient system-on-a-chip that will, essentially, put a desktop PC on your fingernail.
NVIDIA and the ex-ATI part of AMD, meanwhile, seem to recognise that the next big jump in real-time graphics engines is a little further off than previously supposed, and their hugely parallel GPUs are capable of performing important tasks like medical imaging and financial reporting better than an entire farm of CPU servers.
Perhaps more likely to yield results faster, though, are the hardware hooks for virtualisation which are being built into CPU cores, allowing several operating systems to run at once without a performance penalty. Many speculate that cloud computing – starting an instanced desktop from a web-based grid server is the way forward, turning all our computing into one big Gmail-type application.
Quite where these developments – and the hundreds of others that are going on simultaneously – will lead, though, is anyones guess. But before gazing too far into the future, bear this in mind: theres another, even bigger and more significant birthday than the 8086 this year. In September 1958, Texas Instruments welcomed the very first microprocessor – just a single transistor on a germanium strip – off its production line and set the ball rolling for the information age.
Did anyone, fifty years ago, predict World of Warcraft or even Microsoft Word? Happy birthday, computers!
Applications of AI
Q. What are the applications of AI?
A. Here are some.
I found these on the Internet somewhere and I just had to post it! Here are 70 sexy gadgets that are not only appealing to the eye but could also be very useful. Take a look because in my opinion… Half of these might actually be real some day. BTW to see the full info about the gadgets just click on the links above them.
Rubber Mobile Phone
Optimus Tactus Keyboard – a tough surface keyboard similar to iPod Touch
Costume Samsung 2.5 inch HDD for Women
Curved iMac Concept
F1/Carbon GMT Concept Watch
Canvas by Kyle Cherry
E-Paper Slap Bracelet
Atlas Kinetic Cellphone
Eizo C T-One – Both a Mouse & Remote Control
Tiny USB Webcam
Cocoon – Taking Computing to a New Level
Cat’s Paw USB Flash Drive
Nokia BMW Video Phone
Bendiboards Flexible Keyboards
Alarm Clock Docking for iPhone
AMD (Analogue / Digital Mixer)
Real Crystal LED Watch
Pock-It
Musicians Getting High Tech
Toasty – Reto Toaster like a Cassette Deck
Glo Pillow – Stimulates Sunrise to Gently Wake you Up
Slideon MP3 Player
Nintendo Wii 2010 Style
Continue Plug
The Manvan
USB Digital Camera Fakes Analog
Newsware – Digital Toolkit for Journalists
Plastic Logic e-Newspaper
Domino-liked Flash Drives
The Brix Phone
High Tech Crosswalks
Live 22 – Phone of the Future
The Flower Nurse
S-Series Mobile Concept – Made of Bamboo & Black Acrylic
Volkswagen 2028
A Fountain Pen for the Modern
Collapsible Surfboard
Spherical Mobile Office
Flameless Rechargeable USB Lighter
Audi RSQ
Night Light / Alarm Clock
LG 17-inch Monitor Mod
Hand Held Digital Wallet
Peeping tom’s wild dream or awesome bird watching gear?
Well Carl Zeiss has broken some wicked ground with it’s latest release the PhotoScope 85 T* FL spotting scope. It’s not only pushing a bad ass 15-45x super zoom and focal length of 600-1800mm. But it’s also no ordinary spotting scope. coming with a flip out OLED display and IR remote for vibration free snapshots with it’s SEVEN Megapixel camera built in! Now it could be the ultimate golf balls spotter, or it could be the next peeping toms expensive toy. Then again I’m sure theirs some legitimate uses… like… catching Britney Spear’s next slipup first?
