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UIUC Unveils the Worlds Most Advanced Building
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Apr 29, 2004 06:23 PM
from the soon-to-be-an-ocp-offering dept.
from the soon-to-be-an-ocp-offering dept.
Eagle5596 writes "The University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign, one of the top Computer
Science programs in the world has just officially opened their new $80
million Siebel
Center. The department head describes the building as a
single computing entity, meant to be programmed and to interact with those
in the building via RFID tags in their ID cards.
This is probably one of
the biggest and most expensive projects in ubiquitous computing ever
launched, touching on all the important issues in this field, from privacy to the ultimate question about the usefulness of such a system. Several papers are covering this including the Chicago Sun Times, and the Chicago
Business"
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UIUC Unveils the Worlds Most Advanced Building
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Damnit HAL, LET ME IN!!! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 20 2004, @05:23AM)
Re:Damnit HAL, LET ME IN!!! (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday July 29 2002, @08:12PM)
In interaction means... (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday December 30 2003, @07:21PM)
Only mountain dew on this campus... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://google.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 23 2001, @03:00PM)
I'm not sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Siebel Center? (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday October 22, @04:01PM)
Re:Siebel Center? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:+2 Informative???? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://kagazburj.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 27 2006, @05:27AM)
Building is a single computing entity... (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry
"Modern" buildings tend to not age well (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @04:34PM)
The UIUC bldg sounds extremely cool, but in 5 yrs folks will be smiling politely at the "hokey-ness" of the place.
Re:"Modern" buildings tend to not age well (Score:5, Insightful)
It was built in the late 50's and looks good today. Of course, Frank Lloyd Wright is considered by many to be one of the great architects of all time and the Siebel Center isn't really of the same class.
Re:"Modern" buildings tend to not age well (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't believe all the hype if I were you. Just like everything else, including the project I'm supposed to present at this Siebel Center Open House, it's a lot of buzzwords and catch phrases...it doesn't really do what I say it does... But a man can dream can't he?
But on another note, the elevator shafts provided a lovely rappelling trip... to bad they had to install elevators in them. (Which I mananged to crash and get stuck on the 3rd floor...like software-wise not bloody death crash)
But I'm stuck here until I graduate... what fun it will be to break the rest of it. It is however nicer than our old building... Thank you Mr. Siebel for giving us a lot of money before your company started to fail, and thanks for not asking for it back.
Re:"Modern" buildings tend to not age well (Score:4, Funny)
And also Masai. The lions don't impress me as being terribly crazy about that arrangement. There's just no pleasing some people.
Coincidentally I happen to be dressed as a Masai right now, right down to the traditional trapazoidal sandals (but when I track down a good bad tire I'll do up a pair of Ho Chi Maas). Very simple, but elegant mode of dress. One might well describe it as "Classic, but slightly dated." In fact, it's basically Classical Greek. I don't know why most northern writers refer to it as "Roman." Classical Greek dress doesn't look anything like Roman and is the very antithesis of the toga, which now just looks old. Old and stupid.
I'm not at all sure how a Masai would react to a white American dressed like a Masai, but it seems that here in upstate NY people either look at you funny or pretend they're not looking at all. In NYC, of course, nobody looks at anything anymore.
I'll match my walking ability with any man, anywhere, including Masai, but admit I can't jump for shit.
KFG
Re:"Modern" buildings tend to not age well (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @04:34PM)
Microsoft "Buildy" (Score:5, Funny)
Now, when you go down the hall, the "Buildy" mascot asks things like. "You appear to be walking to the bathroom. Would you like some help?"
Some of us already have advanced buildings (Score:4, Funny)
security issues? (Score:4, Interesting)
Regression (Score:5, Funny)
Dangerous? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.pierceive.com/)
Re:Dangerous? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.crfh.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 14 2006, @02:47PM)
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gotta wonder what kind of security they've got on her. If I had my face scanned everytime I entered a room, and had some stupid voice asking me questions when I just wanted to finish my assignment back when I was in school, the system would have been modified drastically during finals week.....
Not that I would condone such now, of course. Probably get you labeled a terrorist and thrown under the jail.
The Real Privacy Question (Score:5, Funny)
Johnny wanted to find Professor X to ask a question about his research paper, approaching the wall he intoned, "Computer, please locate Professor X."
In a booming voice the wall responded, "Professor X is currently in Stall 5 of the Bathroom on the second floor, logging in."
And the best part is... (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.osirisani.com/)
Oh... and sure, the building's nice, too.
--
"It's better to have an attention span and not need it, than to need whatever it is we were just talking about."
- Mayor {Powerpuff Girls}
Interface (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday April 30 2003, @05:27PM)
Sup with the site? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday June 29 2005, @09:39PM)
Apostrophize much? (Score:1, Troll)
Irony, indeed (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:1)
(http://seaburn.org/)
How much their next upgrade is gonna cost??
BFG Competition? (Score:2, Interesting)
1000 Words (Score:2, Interesting)
in a side note... (Score:2, Funny)
This will be fun to watch... (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens? Does the system fail to "everything is locked"?
This sounds like a RISKS article waiting to happen.
Re:This will be fun to watch... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Monday May 09 2005, @04:20PM)
Re:This will be fun to watch... (Score:5, Funny)
As long as it isn't running Windows (Score:2, Funny)
Re:As long as it isn't running Windows (Score:5, Funny)
crash with "Segmentation fault: floor dumped".
Even cooler than their last building? (Score:2)
(http://www.gerbilmechs.com/)
Finally, a chance to get back... (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet revenge!
Salary (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.public.iastate.edu/~crb002 | Last Journal: Wednesday October 13 2004, @12:29AM)
800 faculty years of almost anyone in the world, or one building. Good going UIUC.
Re:Salary (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't see how this comment was modded interesting.
First, faculty and students need buildings to work and learn in. You can hire all the people in the world, but if they don't have a place to run their labs, teach classes etc in, what's the point?
Second, having the best facilities in the world is a draw for leading researchers and students. You can't expect to attract the best with some beat up old building from 1970, can you? This is an investment in the staff and students as much as hiring more TA's or buying new lab equipment.
Third, do you know much UIUC spends overall on their budget for professors salaries? We don't know if this is a fraction of their budget or half of it.
Finally, $80 million is not a lot of money for a university building. It's about average.
The perfect excuse (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.unessa.net/en/hoyci/)
"Nooo. Can't go to school, they're running critical updates on our building today!"
The One (Score:2)
now what to do with DCL... (Score:1)
UIUC (Score:2)
Who? Can't say that I've ever heard of them. Where do they appear on the list of other top western universities like MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, etc? Is this some kind of in-place advertizing thing?
Re:UIUC (Score:4, Interesting)
I got into the PhD programs at Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, and UIUC--and UIUC compares very well with the rest of these schools. The only thing UIUC lacks is the publicity to go with the quality of research that happens here. On the other hand, this is a good thing since the students here can concentrate more on research instead of just working very hard at appearing smart like some other schools promote.
At UIUC, the professors are generally fairly young, which I view as a good thing. At the 'bigger' name schools you end up with a bunch of dinosaurs who may have contributed to the field in the past but are simply living off the legacy insteading doing new research. If you actually care about this, check out the UIUC research page at: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/research/areas.html [uiuc.edu]
I have personally found the AI, Databases, and Theory groups to be very impressive and have had experience working with them.
If you want an interesting comparison, check out MIT's new building.http://web.mit.edu/buildings/statacenter
UIUC has a much more honest and less flashy style, which I find rather refreshing.
I do agree that most of the ubiquitous computing features of the building seem a little silly, but why not make your new computer science building a functional experiment in computer science itself?
No spell-checker if that $80 mill? (Score:3, Funny)
Shame they didn't get a spell-checker with it. I believe the reference to "Accomodations" on the main page of their website should read "Accommodations".
Ho hum. Am I being too picky?
Espresso bar! (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 04 2007, @05:40AM)
If it's free, I'm going to college.
Hey, I used to live there! (Score:2, Funny)
kewl (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.planetquake.com/wvw/ | Last Journal: Monday January 19 2004, @02:13AM)
When I was in there Monday, all kinds of work was being done on the building--I would have never thought it'd be done so soon. I absolutely loved the architecture though, very very cool. And I can't count how many "50 inch plasma screens on wheels" I saw in the various rooms.
And just think, all that above deeply impressed me, and I didn't even have a clue that the building was going to be a giant computer/the first of its kind.
who cares about computers? (Score:1)
will we have Milla Jovovich fighting zombies on this one?
"Most advanced???" (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Monday May 05 2003, @06:46PM)
Seriously, where's the discussion about environmental controls? HVAC improvements? Energy efficiency? Chemical and electronic emissions?
Don't get me wrong--this isn't a bad idea, nor is it a bad building. It's cool but relatively straightforward to create a building with endless technological integration, on the level they're talking.
But HVAC is a very big, expensive, INCREDIBLY important, and not yet solved problem, which probably has more long-term relevance than anything they spent $80M on in this project.
photos of siebel center at night. (Score:2, Informative)
Sign of Impending Failure (Score:1)
(http://swansongrp.com/stuff.html | Last Journal: Friday September 23 2005, @05:47PM)
when an organization builds a fantastic,
expensive new building, the organization
itself is on the verge of failure, and you
can expect it to be out of business in
a very short time.
Been there - building is awesome, network sucks (Score:1)
RFID Tags and privacy... (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Sunday July 04 2004, @06:16PM)
Stanford's building problems (Score:2)
(http://www.animats.com)
First came the building for the IC designers. This has its very own wafer fab. Unfortunately, it's a 1980s wafer fab. Wafer fabs are too expensive to keep up to date unless they're heavily used. So it's obsolete. If you want something fabbed, you send it out.
Then came the Gates Computer Science building. This is where AI went to die. Visit the second floor "Knowledge Systems Lab", and see all the empty cubicles with obsolete computers. The layout is wierd; the basement and first floor are difficult to get to from each other, and are connected only via a seminar room. The corridors are devoted to a museum of old computer equipment, of mixed historical importance. ("Wow, an '80s DEC Ethernet hub! There's a Gandalf port selector box!")
Then there was the Lane Medical Library. Built with built-in stacks just as medical data was going online, it's used as office space. The immovable stacks remain, dividing up the space into long narrow office aisles.
Then came the New Engineering Quad. Finished at the height of the dot-com boom, it looks great. But it has all the wrong built-in stuff, like in-wall VCRs. More museum area. ("Wow, an original HP audio oscillator!") Good expresso bar, though.
The latest building is the Clarke Center for Biotech Engineering Stuff. Jim Clarke put up the money just before Netscape tanked. SGI contributed an obsolete supercomputer. Nobody seems quite sure what's going on there. The building has the overdesigned look of the free-spending dot-com era. There's steel and glass and balconies and atriums.
UIUC indeed. (Score:1)
(http://pakman.sytes.net/)
software architecture (Score:2)