Category: Computers, Science & Technology

A lot of you may not know this, but I wasn’t always just a computer geek. I actually started out in technology as a photographer. I shot high school newspaper and yearbook photographs as a “staff” photographer for the school that I attended, Central Davidson Senior High. So, it made sense that I would go to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting, Printmaking, and Photography. After I got out of college I opened my own photography business called Bailey Photographic Arts. As you might expect, I had my own fully equipped darkroom, and I had a series of Nikon professional cameras. And, I thoroughly enjoyed photography. However, I discovered that while photography was a great hobby, it really wasn’t what I wanted to do in terms of a career. So, over time I ended up getting into computers, at a time when personal computers were in their infancy, the late 70’s and early 80’s, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Why tell you all this? Well, I read many articles recently online that are predicting the death of the DSLR that is, the Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. Now you might say, “But wait, Dr. Bill, DSLR’s are fairly recent technologies!” That’s true, but this article from NBC News says it pretty well; dedicated cameras seem to be on their way out! Why? Because so many people are using their smartphones as cameras! As you know, there are a lot of photographs being posted to Facebook, Twitter, and lots of other web sites! It’s certainly not that photography is dead! It’s a matter of convenience. And the fact that smartphones have gotten better and better at taking pictures, resolutions are higher, tools are easier to use, and they’re getting better all the time! For instance. The Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone has the ability, within the phone, to shoot pictures and eliminate elements within the image, like the commercial that they have showing someone graduating from school and some knucklehead stepping in front of the people in the photo that the parents are taking, and then allowing you to eliminate that person from the shot! That’s pretty cool for camera in a smartphone, you have to admit!

So what does this mean for the future of Nikon and Canon the two best-known, high end, camera makers? As this NBC News article reports the president of Nikon, Makoto Kimura, said in an interview with Bloomberg recently that the company might have to “change the concept of cameras” in order to survive! That could be very interesting!

Here’s a link to the NBC News article: We’re taking more pictures than ever … so why are cameras dying off?

And, speaking of Apple, they are apparently guilty, at least according to a judge, of conspiring to “fix” e-book prices!

Judge: Apple conspired to raise e-book prices

USA Today reported: “SAN FRANCISCO — Apple conspired with five major publishers to illegally raise consumer prices for electronic books in 2010 and will next face a trial to decide how much it owes in damages, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

The decision was a blow to Apple, which had refused to settle the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit even after all five publishers negotiated settlements with the government and state attorneys general.

The company said it would appeal the decision. While states are seeking money damages from Apple, the Justice Department wants the court to bar Apple for two years from entering into any similar agreements that let publishers rather than retailers set prices or discriminating against competing e-reader apps.

‘This result is a victory for millions of consumers who choose to read books electronically,’ Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer said in a statement.

Apple shares fell $1.62 to $420.73 in regular trading Wednesday.

The Justice Department claimed Apple forged agreements with the publishers that permitted higher pricing on best sellers and new releases, effectively nudging e-books and best sellers to $12.99 and $14.99, respectively. That helped publishers who were unhappy with Amazon selling e-books for $9.99, a price they thought was too low.

Apple conspired to create an environment that enabled the company and publishers to eliminate all retail price competition for their e-books, Cote said.

Apple denied any wrongdoing.

‘Apple did not conspire to fix e-book pricing, and we will continue to fight against these false accusations,’ Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a statement. ‘When we introduced the iBookstore in 2010, we gave customers more choice, injecting much-needed innovation and competition into the market, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. We’ve done nothing wrong, and we will appeal the judge’s decision.’

Cote’s ruling followed a three-week trial that ended June 20. Witnesses included executives from Amazon, the publishers and Apple, including Eddy Cue, a longtime digital-rights dealmaker and a lieutenant of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.

Apple backed what’s known as an agency model. That positioned publishers, rather than retailers, to set prices when Apple entered the e-books market in 2010 with its iPad and iBookstore. The deal allowed Apple to grab its 30% commission on books and the publishers had to match lower prices of any other retailers, such as Amazon.

Legal experts remained mixed on whether Apple’s actions were defensible or ran afoul of antitrust concerns.

‘The most explosive thing that may come out of this is the court’s imposing … restrictions on the way Apple operates its e-book and App Store platform. Apple may be forced to open up access,’ says Bob Kohn, a technology and media attorney.

‘Apple has good arguments to raise on appeal. But the new problem Apple faces is that the judge’s massive opinion relies so heavily on facts and inferences that an appellate court is unlikely to have room to modify the decision substantially,’ says Keith Hylton, a professor at Boston University School of Law.

Last year, Apple settled with the European Commission on an antitrust case over e-book pricing without admitting wrongdoing.”

Yes, yesterday (July 12th) was the 5th anniversary of the Apple App Store. We now use the term “app” among the general populace, and (for the most part) they know what we geeks are talking about! Pretty neat actually! We now have the “Google Play” App Store for Android, and even business oriented products like Citrix XenApp, and VMware Horizon Suite have “App Store”-like paradigm’s to relate to those of us that expect to find applications in an “app store.” Pretty decent adoption of a concept in five short years!

We expect it by 2015! I totally want one!

Open Source Back To The Future II – Like Hoverboard in the Making for… 2015

“We’re pretty sure that nobody could argue against the cool factor of ‘hoverboards,’ the magically powered skateboards from the future, which have been blessed with a self-explanatory name, requiring no additional clarification. The idea stems from the 1989 movie ‘Back to the Future II,’ which has main character Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, go back and forth in time, from 2015 to the year 1955.

The former year brings us neatly to a very optimistic project from the realm of crowd-funding, because waiting stacked among the many ideas of varying feasibility on Indiegogo, is a page created for a planned hoverboard project, which incidentally is also due in 2015.

The company behind it, Haltek Industries, promises a working, fully usable board, which will transport its user in complete security, in a Health&Safety-inspected package you will be able to place under the Christmas tree for your kids to jump on straight away, as well as control using a mobile app.

Haltek Industries says they are going to give the boards the very latest batteries (either lithium-air tech, or paper dipped ‘into ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires,’ which turns each sheet into a supercapacitor). The juice will go on to power two fans, which in turn will create lift. No Area 51 anti-gravity business going on here (yet), it seems, as we are greeted by familiar, old fashioned engineering, when we look at some of the more stripped out rendered representations, which show the actual moving parts.

They are asking for a cool $1 million (€0.8 million) to begin with, because quote ‘What did you think that was going to cost?’ and they say the money is going into setting up an online development center first, then they ‘need to come up with a few designs that are cost-feasible,’ before finally starting construction of prototypes. All of this while developing the necessary technology along the way, incorporating the very latest of technical innovations deemed relevant.

It sounds like a plan, which we hope will work out in the end. However, there are a few inconsistencies that cannot be overlooked, even once you’ve grown accustomed to and accepted the idea that such a thing can be done by 2015. Furthermore, they say the project is ‘open-sourced,’ but I thought that meant the source was open, whereas here it sounds like they are funneling in ideas, sending people a nice ‘thank you!’ email and then using the ideas to found a hoverboard-building industrial empire.

They need to keep things out in the open, if they are going down this road, and there will be benefits to that, and even a possible community movement may take shape. The tradeoff is that, if they do accidentally stumble upon cheap anti-gravity or anything relevant in the way of ‘future tech’, rest assured it won’t be Haltek Industries that will be making the boards in the end, as they will have been gobbled up by an already established industrial empire.

Finally, regarding contributions, you can give them up to ten thousand of your dollars, and be one of the first 100 people to be flown to the launch party, planned for the summer of 2015. Once there, you will be presented with a unique board, as well as gain access to restricted development information and probably a more behind the scenes experience of the whole deal.

In addition, after you’ve given Haltek Industries your money, do make sure to also pick up an original pair of Nike shoes, exactly like the ones worn in the movie that started it all. They’re not cheap though, and will also cost you a few more thousands of dollars…or you can wait for Nike to come out with the second run of Air Mag shoes for the masses, at around the same time, in 2015.”

“I can’t open the jar,” she said.
“Install JDK and try again,” he said.

There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.

Why do engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because OCT 31 = DEC25.

Entropy isn’t what it used to be.

Two scientists walk into a bar. The first one says, “I’ll have some H2O.” The second says, “I’ll have some H2O too.” The second scientist dies.

Did you hear about the man that got cooled to absolute zero? He’s 0K now.

Can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plummer? Ask them each to pronounce “unionized.”

So Schrodinger and Heisenberg were driving in a car. Eventually, a cop pulled them over and ask Heisenberg, “Sir, do you know how fast you were going?” Heisenberg replied, “No, but I can tell you exactly where I was.” Thinking this was a weird response, the cop decided to check the vehicle. He come back up to Schrodinger and asks, “Sir, did you know you had a dead cat in your trunk?” Schrodinger replied, “I do now.”

There are 10 kinds of people who get the above jokes; those who do and those that don’t.

Watch the video below. What do think?

A “Google Watch” and a “Google Game” system? We live in an odd world. What does the game system mean for the Ouya?

Google And Apple May Bring Us A Console War We Didn’t See Coming

Forbes: “Last night, the Wall Street Journal brought us news that Google GOOG -0.18% has now set its sights on making its own Android-based video game console. The kicker? This is supposed to be in response to Apple AAPL -0.67% doing the very same thing.

Google and Apple video game consoles? Are the Xbox One and PS4 dead already? No. Though this would change the game to some degree, it’s more like Google and Apple are creating an entirely new league for themselves.

Consoles theoretically released by Google and Apple would likely not be the kinds we see in our living rooms now. They’d be specifically designed to play all those massively popular Android or iOS handheld games on a big screen, rather than running the likes of Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and the endless array of triple A titles available on traditional game consoles like the Xbox and Playstation.

Rather for now, this is competing with the little guy. Though ‘destroying’ might be a better descriptor than competing. I’m talking about the Ouya, of course, the Kickstarted, hack friendly Android based console that may have been the inspiration for both Google and Apple’s console dreams.

Once the Ouya racked up $8.5M in Kickstarted donations, blowing away their expectations, that told Google and Apple that people were indeed interested in a cheap console that plays phone games on their TV. There’s no way to know if the Ouya was the actual spark behind this movement, but the relative success of the console, at least conceptually, was probably enough to make both brands seriously consider the possibility.

The chief complaint with the Ouya, which was just released this week, is that despite there being a good selection of games, the whole package can feel a bit cheap and hacked together, like it was built on a budget (because it was). It’s hard to imagine Google and Apple not delivering a product with ten thousand percent more refinement, so it may be the case the Ouya won’t be long for this world.

This would be the initial phase of a new console war that few saw coming, except our own Erik Kain of course, months ago:

‘And Ouya? Well, it was a nice thought. It could have been disruptive. The problem is, aiming to disrupt the console business misses the point. Your real competitors are the big players in mobile, not in video games.’

Is this instant death for the Ouya? It seems clear cut when going up against giants like Apple and Google, but it could have one thing going for it. Intentional or not, the Ouya is a piracy goldmine, allowing even users with a fractional amount of tech knowledge to get access to emulator roms of nearly every old video game in existence. You can bet that’s a service Google and Apple won’t offer. And the general hackability of the box is something the larger companies will shy away from too.

But let’s say the Google and Apple boxes kill the Ouya. Then they face off against each other alone, and people have to decide whether they’d rather play iOS or Android games, nearly all of which would likely be available across both platforms. This is where the two boxes would have to differentiate themselves from one another. Is one cheaper? Does one have bonus app capability like Netflix NFLX +0.02% or Skype? Does the other have such a great design that people buy it as a decoration for their coffee table?

If Apple and Google slug it out in this ‘lower’ tier of console wars, it’s unclear what direct impact that would have on the likes of Sony , Microsoft and Nintendo, currently about to begin waging their next great console melee. I don’t believe an Apple or Google box would at all be a replacement for a traditional video game console. A console that plays phone games on a TV and one that plays actual games are not in the same league. They may share a customer base to some degree, but someone shelling out $99 for an Android console that doesn’t play major releases is still going to buy an Xbox One or a PS4.

It is worth wondering what would happen if things continued to evolve from there, however. What if Google or Apple did set their sights on the larger prize, an actual video game console, just as powerful as its top of the line competitors?

It may sound ridiculous, and in truth, I’m not sure how terribly likely it is, but it shouldn’t be ruled out. Once upon a time the idea that Microsoft would debut a video game console was laughable.

This would make the field exceptionally crowded, and some would say that’s the case already with three major consoles and the Oculus Rift on the horizon. If there were ever five true video game consoles competing in the same sphere, there would be causalities. They would struggle to differentiate themselves from one another, and someone would have to bit the dust. It could be the newcomers, as Google and Apple wouldn’t be trusted as console manufacturers. Or it could be a veteran like Nintendo, their struggling Wii U crushed by even more competition. The Xbox One and PS4 wouldn’t necessarily be safe either. In short, such a development would result in a complete upheaval of the entire industry.

But let’s dial back. A Google or Apple phone game console could fail from the get-go. I’m still not convinced there’s that big of a market for such a device. The now-famous comment about the Ouya is that people were excited about an Android console that plays phone games on their TV, then were disappointed when it turned out to be just an Android console that played phone games on their TV.

And as for breaking into the next-tier market, facing off against Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? That would be an even bigger gamble, and one I’m not sure either Google or Apple would want to make. The market is crowded already. No one is floundering enough to even being close to dropping out of the game just yet, and as I said, it’s doubtful the industry could sustain four or five consoles. It remains to be seen if it can even support three in this next generation.

Still, it’s an exciting thought to hear that Google and Apple are thinking about getting into the console game, in whatever capacity. More competition and choice is a great thing for the industry. Not being particularly loyal to either brand, I’d love to see what Google and Apple’s vision of a video game console would even look like, from the controller to the box to the OS. It’s a rather fantastic notion, and I welcome hearing more news on this front.”

So, science is now saying warp drive space travel is real! How cool is that!?

Why Warp Drives Aren’t Just Science Fiction

Live Science – “Astrophysicist Eric Davis is one of the leaders in the field of faster-than-light (FTL) space travel. But for Davis, humanity’s potential to explore the vastness of space at warp speed is not science fiction.

Davis’ latest study, ‘Faster-Than-Light Space Warps, Status and Next Steps’ won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ (AIAA) 2013 Best Paper Award for Nuclear and Future Flight Propulsion.

TechNewsDaily recently caught up with Davis to discuss his new paper, which appeared in the March/April volume of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and will form the basis of his upcoming address at Icarus Interstellar’s 2013 Starship Congress in August.

‘The proof of principle for FTL space warp propulsion was published decades ago,’ said Davis, referring to a 1994 paper by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. ‘All conventional advanced propulsion physics technologies are limited to speeds below the speed of light … Using an FTL space warp will drastically reduce the time and distances of interstellar flight.’

Warp speed: a primer

Before delving into Davis’ study, here’s a quick review of faster-than-light space travel:

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. However, some scientists believe that a loophole in this theory will someday allow humans to travel light-years in a matter of days.

In current FTL theories, it’s not the ship that’s moving — space itself moves. It’s established that space is flexible; in fact, space has been steadily expanding since the Big Bang.

By distorting the space around the ship instead of accelerating the ship itself, these theoretical warp drives would never break Einstein’s special relativity rules. The ship itself is never going faster than light with respect to the space immediately around it.

Davis’s paper examines the two principle theories for how to achieve faster-than-light travel: warp drives and wormholes.

The difference between the two is the way in which space is manipulated. With a warp drive, space in front of the vessel is contracted while space behind it is expanded, creating a sort of wave that brings the vessel to its destination.

With a wormhole, the ship (or perhaps an exterior mechanism) would create a tunnel through spacetime, with a targeted entrance and exit. The ship would enter the wormhole at sublight speeds and reappear in a different location many light-years away.

In his paper, Davis describes a wormhole entrance as ‘a sphere that contained the mirror image of a whole other universe or remote region within our universe, incredibly shrunken and distorted.’

Sci-fi fans, for warp drives, think ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Futurama.’ For wormholes, think ‘Stargate.’

Mirror, mirror on the hull

The next question is: how to create these spacetime distortions that will allow vessels to travel faster than light? It’s believed — and certain preliminary experiments seem to confirm — that producing targeted amounts of what’s called ‘negative energy’ would achieve the desired effect.

Negative energy has been produced in a lab via what’s called the Casimir effect. This phenomenon revolves around the idea that vacuum, contrary to its portrayal in classical physics, isn’t empty. According to quantum theory, vacuum is full of electromagnetic fluctuations. Distorting these fluctuations can create negative energy.

According to Davis, one of the most promising methods for creating negative energy is called the Ford-Svaiter mirror. This is a theoretical device that would focus all the quantum vacuum fluctuations onto the mirror’s focal line.

‘When those fluctuations are confined there, they have a negative energy,’ said Davis. ‘You could have types of negative energy that could make a wormhole that you could put a person through and, if you make a bigger mirror, put a starship through. The [mirror] is scalable … that’s the beauty of it.’

Davis described a theoretical configuration of Ford-Svaiter mirrors that could enable FTL spaceflight: ‘For a traversable wormhole, it’ll have to be separate Ford-Svaiter mirrors [arranged] in an array to create the wormhole and then a ship with mirrors attached to it to extend the wormhole to the destination star.’

The concern there is how to target the wormhole’s exit.

‘We don’t know the answer to that question yet,’ said Davis. ‘Einstein’s theory of general relativity doesn’t answer it.’

That’s the difference between the fields of physics and engineering, Davis explained. According to our current understanding of physics, targeting the wormhole’s exit is possible, but engineers have yet to figure out how to achieve it.

‘On screen, Number One.’

Another issue addressed in Davis’ paper is how to navigate an FTL starship.

‘If you’re in a wormhole, you don’t go faster than light — you’re going at normal speeds, but your visualization and stellar navigations are all gone [because] … there are no stars to navigate by.’

The iconic image of stars streaking by a spaceship viewscreen popularized by franchises like ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ simply isn’t accurate, said Davis. ‘The light that goes through the wormhole gets distorted … you’re going to have a very weird visual display.’

This is because the negative energy necessary to create a wormhole or warp drive creates a repulsive gravity that distorts light around the ship.

So ships moving at faster-than-light speeds will not be able to observe their surroundings to calculate their location. Astronauts will have to rely on sophisticated computer programs to calculate their probable location. ‘You’ll need something on the order of a supercomputer equipped with parallel processing,’ said Davis. ‘[The computer is] going to have to do all the figuring out … [using] input data from the last position and estimating.’

This is more of a concern with warp drives, which are actively reshaping space as they travel, but not as much with traversable wormholes, whose entrances and exits will probably be preset before flight. ‘You can only go one way through the wormhole, so it’s not like you’re going to get lost,’ said Davis

It’s also important for the computer to be able to produce some kind of visual representation of its flight plan and spatial location. These images would then be rendered and displayed in the starship’s cockpit or bridge for the crew to see and study. ‘It’ll help the human psychological need for understanding, in real time, what the position changes of the stars are going to look like,’ said Davis.

Where no one has gone before

At the heart of Davis’ paper is the principle — supported by rigorous scientific theory — that faster-than-light travel is a real and even tangible possibility. The last section of the paper proposes nine ‘next steps’ that would push the field toward engineering prototypes and other practical tests of faster-than-light theories.

These steps include creating computer simulations to model the structure and effects of space warps. Davis also calls for more rigorous exploration of the Ford-Svaiter mirror, which is still a largely theoretical device. The mirror is just one possible way to generate negative energy; further study is needed to determine whether there are any other practical methods of achieving the same effect.

Davis describes the development and implementation of space-warp travel as ‘technically daunting’ in his paper, but in conversation, he said he has no doubt that faster-than-light travel will someday be not only possible, but necessary.

‘The Earth is subjected to natural and outer space and ecological disasters, so life is too fragile, while the planets in the solar system are not very hospitable to human life. So we need to explore extrasolar planets for alternative homes,’ Davis said.

‘This is all part of the growth and evolution of the human race.'”

This week’s GSotW is an Open Source Computer Aided Design (CAD) program that can be used like AutoCAD.

BRL-CAD – Cross-Platform Open Source CAD

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis.

For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems for vulnerability and lethality analyses. The solid modeling system is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and industrial applications including in the design and analysis of vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. The package has also been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system performance benchmark testing among other purposes.

BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces, Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry (NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry. All geometric objects may be combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations including union, intersection, and difference.

BRL-CAD has been under active development with a portability heritage that includes systems such as a DEC VAX-11/780 running 4.3 BSD; DECStations running ULTRIX; Silicon Graphics 3030, 4D ‘IRIS,’ O2, Onyx, and Origin systems running various versions of IRIX; Sun Microsystems Sun-3 and Sun-4 Sparcs running SunOS; the Cray 1, Cray X-MP, Cray Y-MP, and Cray 2 running UNICOS; DEC Alpha AXP running OSF/1; Apple Macintosh II running A/UX; iPSC/860 Hypercube running NX/2; the Alliant FX/8, FX/80, and FX/2800; Gould/Encore SEL PowerNode6000/9000 and NP1; NeXT workstations; IBM RS/6000; HPPA 9000/700 running HPUX; Ardent/Stardent; Encore Multi-Max; and much more.

BRL-CAD is a collection of more than 400 tools, utilities, and applications comprising more than a million lines of source code. The package is intentionally designed to be extensively cross-platform and is actively developed on and maintained for many common operating system environments including for BSD, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Windows among others. BRL-CAD is distributed in binary and source code form as free open source software (FOSS), provided under Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license terms.