The U.S. Army has a new tactical system in the test phase that combines an X-Box controller, an iRobot, and five million lines of code to provide remote sensing, communication and collaboration to ground units. Next up: getting Beowulf to run on the Army Grunt platform.

eWeek is running an article on Sun's SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) that looks to be the start of something good, at least from the perspective of every geek that wished they had the tools to develop "the next big thing (TM)" in their basement.

On Sun's product site, the about Sun SPOT page has a few crunchy bits worth chewing on, such as:

We've created a platform that greatly simplifies development and experimentation with small wireless devices, and we've opened it up to the development community...

Open is almost always good. The one that really got me was:

And the jaw-droppingly cool "migratable application" functionality enables applications (with their complete state information) to be dragged from one Sun SPOT device to another while they're still running. So you could, for example, move software off a SPOT device with low battery power onto another device with more battery life, avoiding loss of state information.

I'm not sure how I feel about software being able to statefully leap from one computing device to another. Worms come to mind. I hope there's protection in the devices themselves, since the JRE seems to be the OS.

The initial price of the development kit (US$550) isn't cheap, but it's not out of the reach of the average hobbyist, either. If this platform takes off the way Sun hopes it does, basic components will be available to grow the "implementation space" of SPOT technology. If Sun opens the hardware to the point that manufacturers can produce their own devices to a standard, this new technology may be the enabler of many of the things we've been promised for years.

Holy crap, will wonders never cease? If this thing really works, we're definitely on the short path to witnessing some amazing surgical recoveries. Clogged arteries? No problem. My only question is whether it can get caught in a blood cell in the brain and cause a stroke.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/19/1341247

Forget the iPhone. I, for one, am waiting for the iSlate. It's Apple's forthcoming ultra-cool personal computer. In essence, it's an iPhone with a larger screen (8.5" diagonal) and no cellular component. The base model has 8 gigs of flash on board, two memory card expansion slots and a USB port for iPod connectivity. Bluetooth allows you to use a keyboard, but Apple's MultiTouch technology makes it mostly unnecessary.

From its release at MacWorld '08, couch surfing will never be the same. The entire family can sit in one room or many, streaming content off of their AppleTV, surfing the web, doing homework or playing games. But the real killer app is in the corporate world. It's the ultimate day planner. WiFi, penetrating nearly every meeting room, connects to corporate e-mail and CRM apps. Large-footprint applications can be comfortably run through a remote-desktop client, but basic Office-like productivity apps run locally (including Office). Suddently, meetings are a place where work actually gets done. Decisions can be made and acted upon all at once. Corporate productivity is up, making it easy to justify the $899 price tag. Laptops have become "old school."

So, c'mon Apple, get with me. Bring my dream to reality as only you can. There's nothing to stop you, and the market is ripe.

In a very strange move, the company Axiotron is planning to unveil at MacWorld tomorrow a tablet-style Mac "notebook" computer named the ModBook. Astute readers will note that Axiotron != Apple. Given Apple's secrecy on to-be-released products, combined with long-standing rumors of a Mac tablet, how can a company hope to survive with a product that's doomed to failure the minute that Apple releases a self-branded tablet? Of course, if Apple doesn't release a tablet soon, this re-packager might grab a share of the market from those desperate for this type of technology.

Wired is carrying a story on the certification of the Active Denial System (ADS) for use in Iraq. The ADS is a millimeter wave weapon that uses a reportedly non-lethal energy beam to inflict short term pain on its targets, encouraging them to leave an area, what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect." Some crunchy bits from the article:

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.

...while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, "some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters," ...

There has been no independent checking of the military's claims.

I can see using this in a wartime situation, but how long before we see these things mounted to the top of S.W.A.T. vans for domestic crowd control? And, is that a bad idea? I can't really tell from where I sit.

Reported this morning in Gizmag, the Trimersion head-mounted display looks to be a step in the right direction toward full-immersion VR. From the article:

The wireless Trimersion head tracking HMD and tracking gun replace the mouse/keyboard or gamepad controllers with a realistic and natural interface (for killing things).

The Trimersion is now in full production and a vast improvement from the initial prototype shown at the E3 2005 show. The new units have been completely redesigned from scratch. The new features are a double rocker trigger for main fire and alternate fire. The gun also has all of the controls of a standard Xbox or Playstaion game pad. The tracking device has been simplified and miniturized to a fraction of it's former self. This means better performance, less cost and less weight. The most significant improvement is the freedom of movement. Once you put the Trimersion on, you can move and turn around freely without worrying about wires or connections. The headset and gun are powered by a standard 9v battery. The wireless connection goes back to a base station that has a video and VGA input.

Now where are the productivity studies showing how office workers get so much more done when their displays are replaced with one of these rigs?

I find myself in a position to influence, if not define our corporate deployment of development tools on our Unix servers, a mixture of Solaris and AIX environments, and asking Slashdot seemed to be a prudent stop on my research trail.

Our environment is like this: Most of the development is in Perl and KShell with a little CShell, Ruby and Python for flavor. Development teams are expected to maintain their own libraries of Perl modules and whatnot, so access to bulid tools for .pm files is required. Access to systems is done through SSH, typically using PuTTY or some similar commercial SSH client, with file access done through SFTP or SCP. Most of our users edit with vi; vim would add syntax highlighting if we deployed it. What other features should I be looking for? What tool suggestions do you have?

Reported in Gizmag today, Panoptic is proposing a new security system that is composed of deep integration of existing technologies to provide a security system that gives an operator Superman-like X-ray vision. From the article:

...security-critical events and alerts are adapted into one system then correlated against each other based upon defined security policy and rules. This automated, root cause analysis enables disparate real-time security data to be combined into "an integrated panoptic security command centre (over)view."

It evidently uses new data compression technology called IHC:

[Panoptic] describes IHC as "an object oriented wavelet-based compression system for security and surveillance applications" and a "programmable compression hardware and software solution.". IHC enables object selection and extraction and features high-resolution viewing while conserving bandwidth, meaning high quality images can be selected and viewed with higher data rates and higher frame rates than the significantly reduced background.

It will be interesting to see if they can bring this thing to fruition. The deep integration of technologies is always a good thing. The rule writing for alarms would be the hardest to manage, for instance figuring out the difference between someone wearing a balaclava and someone just bundled up for winter.

Images of the proposed system include pics of one of the 360-degree cameras.

In the wake of today's news from Apple's WWDC, and considering that Redmond has killed the development of a Universal Binary for VirtualPC, I started to wonder what happened to Microsoft's promised cordless keyboard and mouse for the Mac. A quick trip to Microsoft's web site, and I wasn't disappointed. Big box stores have it for around $80, according to Microsoft's site. I, for one, am looking forward to purchasing one and getting away from the generally uncomfortable stock Apple keyboard that came with my iMac. If the scroll wheel turns out better than the little BB on my Apple mouse, so much the better.

[Update 8/30] I purchased one of the aforementioned keyboards only to discover that it included a USB-based radio adapter and was not Bluetooth compatible. I took it back. It may seem silly, but I spent a lot of money on a computer that is sleek and nearly cable-free (you should see the underside of my desk at work with all the WIntel box cables dangling down). The last thing I want is to start cluttering it up with unnecessary cables. And how difficult would it be for MS to build the keyboard and mouse as Bluetooth and include an adapter instead of their proprietary radio thing? I'm displeased.

Any suggestions for good multi-function keyboards on a Mac?

IBM and Marnlen RFiD are collaborating on an RFID tag format called a "Clipped Tag." From the article,

"Clipped Tag technology allows consumers to tear off a section of the tag which in turn reduces the tag's read range to just a few inches, protecting consumer privacy while maintaining the benefits of the technology, such as product authentication or recalls.

I wonder why they don't just break the loop of the antenna. If someone needs to read the tag at a later date, a couple of contacts, left bare, could reconnect the loop and make the tag readable again.

Students from the Ashland School of Environmental Technology in Oregon have come up with a method for creating building materials from straw and other harvest waste by weaving it into cables and binding them together in various fashions. This technology shows promise for developing countries that have more agricultural waste than timber. Developers are planning hand-fed machines for areas where grain is harvested manually, as well as modifications to full-sized combine tractors that will harvest grain and weave cables all at once.

This story covers research into increasing cognitive function by passing small currents through the frontal cortex. It won't be long before everyone is wearing little battery-operated headbands to work every day. Maybe the'll be the next great fashion statement in singles bars, where increased cognition would be a welcome change.

I read today that John Kerry could "de-fang" the DMCA. That got me thinking about content and media, and how music and movies have come to be treated more like traditional software than ever before. I had some thoughts on digital content licensing, and put them down in my blog. Yes, this is a shameless plug for the content I just created, but hey, it's a free download with a Personal Use license attached to it, so what the heck, right?

The cube farm is all a twitter right now, as Mt. St. Helens is spewing out a steam plume, and you can see if from our building. The cam for the volcano seems to be down, but we just saw a news helicopter from KATU, one of our local news stations, headed that direction. They should have some content up shortly.

Posted as a story!