technolgix..: March 2008

Friday, March 28, 2008

Analyzing 3 months of Vista reliability data

A Windows Vista feature which I make use of regularly is the Reliability Monitor. While being far from an ideal metric for measuring reliability, it does offer users a simple way to tell if their system is behaving or misbehaving. The other day I looked at the data I have collected for my main quad-core system and realized that I had just over three months of data collected since I wiped the system and upgraded to 64-bit Vista Ultimate. With that much data I thought that it would be interesting to take a closer look at this data and see what kind of issues my system has experienced over the past three months.
In case you’ve not come across the Reliability Monitor, here’s how you get to it:
The quick way:Click Start and type Perfmon into the Start Search box, and click the Perfmon shortcut when it appears. then click on Reliability Monitor.
The long way:Click Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Performance Rating and Tools > Advanced Tools > Open Reliability and Performance Monitor > Reliability Monitor.
The Reliability Monitor gives you access to a lot of varied and useful information.
A System Stability Chart which shows you a stability rating between 10 and 0 (the higher the number the better).
The chart also shows if any of the following occurred on a particular day:- Software (Un)Install- Application Failures- Hardware Failures- Windows Failures- Miscellaneous Failures
There is also a system stability report for each day which gives a breakdown of each of the above categori 60f es for each day.

Because it’s difficult to extract the data from the Reliability Monitor I have extracted the data manually so that I can present it here.
Here’s the data:

Here’s a breakdown of the failures that I encountered over the 133 days (note that multiple failures can occur during a single day):
Application failures: 22 days (16.5%)
Hardware failures: 0 days (0%)
Windows Failures: 5 days (3.7%)
Misc failures: 14 days (10.5%)
Total failure days: 37 days (27.8%)
Let’s now take a look at each of the categories in detail.
Application failures:- Internet Explorer 7 (iexplore.exe): 25- Crysis (crysis64.exe): 10- Foxit Reader (foxit reader.exe): 4- Explorer (explorer.exe): 3- SnagIt (SnagIt32.exe): 2- ATi Catalyst 8.1 (MMLoadDrv.exe): 2- Microsoft management Console (mmc.exe): 1- Windows Host Process (rundll32.exe): 1- RivaTuner (RivaTuner.exe): 1
Windows failures:- OS stopped working: 5
Miscellaneous failures:- Disruptive shutdown: 14
Here is an updated chart containing system upgrade details and information on some of the crashes.

From examining this data you can see that the two applications most prone to misbehaving are Crysis and Internet Explorer 7. Crysis reliability has improved dramatically with the application of the game patches, and with each update to the Catalyst drivers (I play other games on the system regularly - Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes, Silent Hunter IV, Orange Box games, Battlefield 2142 - but these behave themselves well). I’m a firm believer in updating the graphics card drivers regularly as I’m certain this has a knock-on reliability benefit. As for Internet Explorer, a number of these crashes I’ve traced back to a faulty Flash player, and updating the plug in seemed to return IE7 back to the sort of reliability which I expect.
As for the Windows failures, I’m confident that these were down to system crashes resulting from graphics cards driver. Up until lately my system was experiencing a fair number of TDR - Timeout Detection and Recovery - warning, and while most of these were caught by Windows and a crash avoided, some ended up in the system crashing. I traced this issue down to having dual monitors running at different resolutions and as soon as I put two identical monitors on the system the problem solved itself (gone from at least one a day to none in over a month).
I don’t put too much weight to the actual reliability ind 3d6 ex of my systems but I do keep an eye on the chart, because even though a couple of crashes in a day can drop the rating down significantly, I do then like to see a period of recovery, which shows that I’ve dealt with the issue. What I’m aiming for as drivers become more robust and Vista SP1 settles down is to see the chart settle down a bit so there are fewer dips. Well see

Rockstar Unveils Web Extensions For GTA IV

Rockstar has announced that the launch of its highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV will also include the opening of the Rockstar Social Club, a new website that will extensively track both multi- and single-player experiences for players of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title.Registration for the site is due to launch on April 15th, and will be directly linked to a player's Xbox Live Gamertag or PlayStation Network ID. In addition to multiplayer leaderboards, the site will included a police blotter, which will map and track all criminal activity from all aggregated single player games, showing "the most dangerous areas of town, most commonly used weapons and more."The site will also rank players of the single-player mode, showing total time played, to speed-run data on who has completed the storyline the fastest. Directly linked to that will be a "100% Club," rewarding the first 10 players to complete the game with a special "ultra-rare commemorative 'key to the city.'"Finally, the site will have a "Liberty City Marathon" section, ranking "the amount of miles walked, driven, or swam... the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped" and more, with Rockstar promising marathon-based competitions for the future, and more features yet to be revealed.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Echo Bot

Name: Echobot
Price: 4.95 pounds (without tax)
9.95 pounds (with tax)
Height: 20 cm
Colors: Orange and Pink
Batteries: 2 x AG 13 batteries
Voice Recording: Upto 10 seconds
Suitability: For children above 8 years

The new-age alarm is here - Echobot! Whether you get aliens landing in your backyard or robbers trying to climb your roof, there is no need to worry. Echo Bot is here to alert you about all the undesirable intruders as well as scare them away. It is a voice recorder, with one huge eye that has a sensor in it and three tripod-type legs! You can record any message in it, which is upto 10 seconds long. The moment anyone comes within its sensor range of one meter, it starts shouting this message at a very loud voice.

The Real Deal!
Presenting Mel and Belle - the two sexy and suave three-legged alarm toys that are here to warn you of any unwelcome company. Available in two colors, pink and orange, these Echobots have a mic in the rear, through which you can record your own voice or some film dialogue or the lines of some song. Now, all you have to do is sit back and let the alarm do its wonder. The huge eye of the Echobot will sense any movement within one meter range and the moment someone comes close, it will start playing your message.

Features
Its legs are made with a bendable wire, which has been embedded within their plastic casing. It means that you can twist, bend, wind and curl them into any position you like. The fact that further adds to the fun is that each leg of the Echo Bot has suction cup foot, meaning that you can set it up almost anywhere that is hard and flat - on your door, along the wall, on the ceiling, and so on. The voice quality of the alarm is so good that you will be hear it clearly even in the chaotic office environment. Use it for safety or use it for fun - the choice is totally yours!

Main Features
Echobot has a voice recorder that can record messages that are upto 10 seconds long.
The sensing distance of the tripod is around 1 meter.
Legs are bendable and have suction cup feet.
It requires 2 batteries, of AG 13.
The price is 4.95 pounds, without tax and 9.95 pounds, with tax.
Echobot is recommended for children of 8 years and above.

IBM launches Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2 for Mobile Phones

IBM has taken a step ahead with Lotus, and has decided to bring it on the mobile platform. A new version of IBM’s Lotus Expeditor software will be available for developers using Sprint’s Titan platform.
With the combination of IBM Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2 and its Web 2.0 capabilities, Sprint and IBM have opened doors for developers to create applications for individuals visiting social networking sites likeFacebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.
The main aim of the Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2 is to offer developers the ability to port web-based applications to handsets with the help of mashups.
Also, the Lotus Expeditor will allow users to receive software updates to their mobile phones without disruption. For example, users can receive an update to a business application while continuing instant messaging.
Alistair Rennie, vice president, Development, IBM Lotus Software said, “People want to be productive anywhere, anytime.” Adding, “IBM Lotus Expeditor enables faster delivery of a new generation of Web 2.0 applications to mobile phones. Already supporting Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime, Expeditor has a proven track record as a platform for innovative applications”
“Titan is another step in Sprint’s evolution toward truly open mobile development. We are intentionally blurring the lines between desktop and mobile development and allowing developers to easily move their applications to the mobile environment” said Tom Moore, director of Mobile Business Solutions, Sprint.
The demonstration of the Lotus Expeditor on Titan platform can be found here http://developer.sprint.com/site/global/develop/technologies/sprint_titan/p_sprint_titan.jsp

Sunday, March 23, 2008

How It Works: The Flying Laser Cannon

Boeing's new laser cannon can melt a hole in a tank from five miles away and 10,000 feet up—and it’s ready to fly this year

Creating a laser that can melt a soda can in a lab is a finicky enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we’re not talking aluminum cans. Boeing’s new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations—the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession.

Last December, Boeing, under contract from the Department of Defense, installed a $200-million prototype of the laser into a C-130 at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico in preparation for test flights this year. From there it will go to the Air Force for more testing, and it could be in battle within five years.

Precise control over the beam’s aim allows it to hit a moving target a few inches wide and confine the damage to that space. The Pentagon hopes such precision will translate into less collateral damage than even today’s most accurate missiles. Future versions using different types of lasers could be mounted on smaller vehicles, such as fighter jets, helicopters and trucks.

How to Melt a Tank in Three Seconds Or Less
1. Find Your Target
When the C-130 flies within targeting range (up to five miles away), the gunner aims using a rotating video camera mounted beneath the fuselage. The computer locks onto the object to continually track it. A second crew member precisely adjusts the laser beam’s strength—higher power to disable vehicles, lower power to knock out, say, a small power generator. The gunner hits “fire,” and the computer takes over from there.

2. Heat Up the Laser
In a fraction of a second, chlorine gas mixes with hydrogen peroxide. The resulting chemical reaction creates highly energetic oxygen molecules. Pressurized nitrogen pushes the oxygen through a fine mist of iodine, transferring the oxygen’s energy to iodine molecules, which shed it in the form of intense light.

3. Amplify the Beam
The optical resonator bounces this light between mirrors, forcing more iodine molecules to cough up their photons, further increasing the laser beam’s intensity. From there, the light travels through a sealed pipe above the weapon’s crew station and into a chamber called the optical bench. There, sensors determine the beam’s quality, while mechanically controlled mirrors compensate for movement of the airplane, vibration and atmospheric conditions. Precise airflow regulates the chamber’s temperature and humidity, which helps keep the beam strong.

4. Stand Clear
A kind of reverse telescope called the beam expander inside a retractable, swiveling pod called the turret widens the beam to 20 inches and aims it. The laser’s computer determines the distance to the target and adjusts the beam so it condenses into a focused point at just the right spot. Tracking computers help make microscopic adjustments to compensate for both the airplane’s and the target’s movement. A burst of a few seconds’ duration will burn a several-inch-wide hole in whatever it hits.

FAQ
How hot is the beam? The laser itself isn’t hot, but it can heat its target to thousands of degrees.
Does the laser sear everything in its path? Yes. If a bird flew into the firing laser’s line of sight—
well, no more bird. Fortunately, the weapon will fire for only a few seconds at a time, minimizing the risk.
Does it melt its target or just set it aflame? That depends on what it hits. It will melt metal, but if
the target is combustible, it will burn.

Friday, March 21, 2008

The 10 Video Formats HD DVD Will Meet in Heaven: Buzzword

This year is shaping up to be a year of technology battles-Microsoft vs. Google, iPhone vs. Android-but just last month, we saw the end to a momentous tech showdown. On Feb. 19, the high-definition disc format war was finally over. And when the dust settled, Toshiba's HD DVD technology lay beaten on the ground-left for dead by its former friends (Warner Brothers, Amazon, Best Buy) in favor of Sony's Blu-ray format.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/hardware/Top_10_Video_Formats_HD_DVD_Will_Meet_in_Heaven';
HD DVD, someone had to go. Sure, your picture quality was every bit as stunning as Blu-ray's, your price point was mildly more tolerable and your multimedia functionality probably would have been pretty good if it had ever really had a chance to develop. Nevertheless, members of the buying public weren't going to go out and buy two machines, so the world had to pick one-and it just wasn't you. But take heart. When you reach the sweet hereafter, you'll be in remarkable company, hanging with some of the most promising nonstarters in the history of video technology. Every one of these formats was a brilliantly engineered technological flop—and maybe Toshiba can reap some consolation from the fact that rival Sony's name shows up more than once, proving that for every sip of marketplace success, a company must swallow an ocean of consumer rejection.
10. DIVX DVD (1998, from Digital Video Express and Circuit City)Not to be confused with the video codec DivX, DIVX was an alternative to standard DVDs promoted by electronics chain Circuit City and the entertainment law firm Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca and Fischer. DIVX presented the consumer with a complex rent-to-own proposition where owners of a DIVX machine would buy a disc at Circuit City-of course-for $4 (since I'm adjusting everything for inflation, that's $5.19 today), then have 48 hours to watch it. After that, the disc would be useless. If said movie-lover wanted to keep the disc, however, he could pony up another couple of bucks to own the movie for good. The main benefit of DIVX was that you didn't need to return your rental disc to the store when you were done-it just stopped working. Unfortunately, its drawbacks were much, much worse: You needed to hook it up to your phone line to make the discs work, the discs were only sold at a limited number of stores and the players were more expensive than regular DVD players. The funny thing is that DIVX players could also play conventional DVDs, so when Circuit City abandoned the format in 1999 and unloaded the remaining DIVX players at steep discounts, the machines unintentionally ushered in the era of bargain DVD machines.
9. Capacitance Electronic Discs (aka CED, aka SelectaVision; 1981, from RCA)RCA's low-tech alternative to LaserDiscs, vinyl CEDs looked like records encased in plastic cartridges. And they sort of worked like records, too-SelectaVision players read the video information off of the grooved CED discs using a stylus. The players cost $500 at launch ($1164 today) but floundered in the marketplace trying to compete against the hugely successful VCR. By 1984, SelectaVisions were selling at $149. After that, they weren't selling at all.
8. LaserDisc (1978, from MCA and Philips)While VHS and Beta fought over who had the best recordable videocassette, MCA and Philips came out with a laser-read optical videodisc technology that is the basis for every subsequent optical disc format. The first consumer LaserDisc player, the Magnavox Model 8000, cost $749 (the equivalent of $2432 today). With 425 lines of resolution, LaserDisc had better video quality than either Betamax or VHS, but lacked the other formats' recording capability, so it never gained major market share outside of the video enthusiast realm. Plus, the discs were huge, at 11.81 in., and easily scratchable. When smaller, higher resolution DVDs were developed, analog LaserDiscs didn't have a chance.
7. Betamax (1975, from Sony) The most famous format war of all time, the contest between Sony's Betamax technology and JVC's VHS was a long, drawn-out affair that continued into the late 1980s. Sony's first Betamax players were introduced at $2495 ($9817 today), and Betamax was pitched as the quality video recording choice, with 250 lines of resolution to VHS's 240. Nevertheless, VHS players were cheaper, and VHS tapes had double the recording time of Betamax. Improvements were made to both technologies over the years, but in the end, even mighty Sony had to admit defeat. It started producing VHS players in 1988.
6. TeD (Television Electronic Disc; 1975, from Telefunken and Teldec)How do you say "unnecessarily complex" in German? Apparently, the word for that is TeD, the moniker for a spinning, flexible foil disc that recorded video information in grooves, which were then read by the machine using a pressure pickup, which then translated the information from the grooves into an electrical signal via a piezoelectric crystal. Instead of a turntable, the 8-in. discs floated on a cushion of air as they spun around at 1500 rpm-all this engineering for 10 minutes of playing time per disc. The TeD sounded revolutionary when first announced in 1970, but, by the time it made it to market in 1975, it looked like a novelty compared to the videocassettes that were beginning to establish market dominance.

5. VCord and VCord II (1974, from Sanyo-sold by Toshiba in Canada)One of the forgotten alternatives to VHS and Betamax during the videotape format wars, Sanyo's VCord was introduced prior to Betamax, and was, by all accounts, popular at first. The VCord was advertised as "exceptionally compact and lightweight" at 30 pounds, and was the first recorder to offer two recording speeds, along with freeze frame and slow motion. The great videocassette battle of the 70s and 80s didn't really have room for a third contestant, however. Today, the VCord and its successor, the VCord II, are often confused with old Betamax machines.
4. Avco Cartrivision (1972, from Cartridge Television Inc.)Television guru Mark Schubin turned me on to this gem of video history. The Cartrivision was an American-made videocassette recorder that debuted a full three years before Sony's Betamax, and was integrated into television sets sold in stores such as Sears. It cost an astounding $1600 ($8103 adjusted for inflation), and worked with rental tapes that could only be played once before they had to be sent back. Not surprisingly, the manufacturer of this expensive and unwieldy electronic device was out of business by 1974.
3. U Matic (1971, from Sony)These 0.75-in. videotape recorders used one of the first enclosed cartridge formats on the market. Debuting at $1395 ($7292 in 2008 dollars), the machines could record 60 minutes of color television at 250 lines of resolution with full stereo sound. Nevertheless, the price was too steep for mom-and-pop TV watchers, so U matic never really caught on with consumers. It did, however, catch on with professionals, and serves as a workhorse format in television production to this day.
2. EVR (Electronic Video Recording; 1968, developed by CBS Labs, manufactured by Motorola)Despite the name, EVR devices didn't record. First demonstrated in the late 1960s, they played reels of film through an optical transducer that output video for standard televisions. The first demonstration models were black-and-white, but by the early 70s CBS had developed a color version. Unfortunately, the machines proved too expensive to mass produce, and CBS pulled out of the effort by 1971, having lost millions on the project.
1. CV-2000 (1965, from Sony)For a mere $695 ($4670 in today's bucks), Sony sold one of the first consumer videotape recorders. This compact (46 pounds!) machine recorded TV shows in black and white on reel-to-reel tapes. Each spool of tape cost $40 (that's almost $270 to you and me) and could hold 1 hour of video at 200 stunning lines of resolution. Intended for the home market, most CV-2000s were bought up by schools and businesses. And before the CV-2000 had much of a chance to gain acceptance, color and cassette options were starting to appear.

First Firefighting Robots Deployed, Could Spark Autonomous Dept.

Qinetiq's three-part robot system sends in the Talon (left) for reconnaissance, the Brokk 90 (middle) to clear a path, and finally the Black Max (right) to hose down an Acetylene-related fire.

When you have money to burn, robots are the best kind of first responders: the disposable kind. Bomb-squad bots are already a common tool for local law enforcement agencies and the military, but remote-controlled firefighters are just now making it into the field.

A team of robots built by London-based Qinetiq has recently started responding to a very specific threat: fires involving Acetylene gas. When (human) firefighters detect or even suspect the presence of these explosive cylinders in a blaze, they generally cordon off the area for up to 24 hours—then wait for the fireworks. But when the hazard zone covers a rail line, this can cause major train delays. So while it might not sound as heroic as plunging into a burning orphanage, a robotic solution could save money (thousands of dollars per hour, according to Qinetiq), and prevent human responders from walking into a potential bomb.

Over a test period of six months, Qinetiq has been commissioned to deploy a robo trio to Acetylene-related incidents. A Talon robot, like the ones used for Explosive Ordinance Disposal in Iraq, assesses the situation using thermal and video cameras. A much larger, construction-oriented bot, the 2160-pound Brokk 90 can then tear through walls or shove vehicles out the way. And if it looks like Acetylene cylinders are present, the ATV-size Black Max can use a high-pressure hose to douse the area. All of these robots are remote-operated, with no autonomous capabilities.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t the robotics world’s first shot at firefighting. Las Vegas-based InRob Tech has developed the 2070-pound FFR-1, a fire-resistant, remote-operated model that could respond to fires in confined spaces or hazardous environments, such as a chemical plant. However, InRob hasn’t announced any orders for the FFR-1, and at press time, the company had not responded to e-mails or phone calls.

The Roomba’s inventors over at iRobot have also explored this territory, claiming that its upcoming Warrior X700, which is due next year, could be used to fight fires. A computer-generated graphic on the Warrior’s brochure (pictured above) shows the robot spraying down a flaming car (presumably another explosive hazard). And while the Warrior is expected to have some degree of autonomy, such as the ability to follow GPS waypoints or reconfigure itself to climb stairs, the only fully autonomous firefighters—aside from humans—are the tiny, experimental models entered into university-held robotics challenges.

This is not as exciting as you might imagine. Generally, these contests involve a maze, a candle and smaller-than-Roomba-size bots. In one case, the intrepid robot snuffed the gently flickering candle by blowing it out with a very small fan. A German university is developing a larger—and more disturbing—model, the millipede-inspired OLE (pictured below). Dozens of these roughly human-size robot bugs, complete with mechanical feelers and the ability to curl into a ball when threatened, would patrol forests, and attempt to put out fires before they escalate. The OLE design hasn’t been field-tested, but considering its outright nightmarish qualities, perhaps it’s for the best that autonomous fire-bots are far from mature.

With just over four months left in Qinetiq’s field test, the company’s trio of Acetylene-hunting robots (all of which fit in one truck) could see more widespread deployment in the United Kingdom starting next year. The company hasn’t announced plans to test this multi-bot solution in the United States, but as long as there are situations that humans would rather avoid, someone will be bolting together fearless volunteers.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Snakebot latest invention

Move over C-3PO, here comes Snakebot

Robots that look like snakes could be used for search and rescue operations of the future.
12 February 2008
Daniel Barrett, a robotics engineering student from UNSW working at CSIRO this summer, is one of 72 vacation students participating in CSIRO's Big Day In this week.

Mr Barrett’s project, part of a CSIRO collaboration with Doshisha University in Japan, has taught him that C-3PO, Marvin the Paranoid Android and the robot from 'Lost in Space' wouldn't work well in real life.

"They were developed for TV and movies to cater for what people thought a robot should be like," he says.

"But Snakebot is modular, so it’s less likely than C-3PO to trip over rubble. And unlike Marvin, Snakebot can fix itself if it needs repairs.

“Snakebot is a currently only a computer simulation but, when fully tested, a prototype may follow.”

“They were developed for TV and movies to cater for what people thought a robot should be like,"
he says.The Big Day In, held in Sydney on 14 and 15 February, is the culmination of 2 to 3 months' work by top students on real research projects with CSIRO experts in maths and stats, IT, materials science, manufacturing and physics. During the two days, students from CSIRO and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute will present their findings and hear about science careers.

Some of the other students involved are:

Simon Powys, a science/engineering student from Monash University, who will talk about his quest to help develop a biodegradable coffee cup, to stop us getting buried under a mountain of polystyrene. Polystyrene foam cups, like many plastic products, can last forever in nature because micro-organisms can’t break them down.
Erika Davies, a science student from the University of NSW, who’s been using an inkjet printer that prints gold nanoparticles to make sensors that ‘taste’ chemicals in water. These new sensors can detect very low levels of environmentally important organic chemicals like octane or toluene leaking from ships, for example.
Nic Warren, an arts/science student from the University of Melbourne, who will explain how maths-based risk management technologies can help banks protect themselves against fraud.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

the great wall of china

The Great Wall started as earth works thrown up for protection by different States. The individual sections weren't connected until the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.). Qin Shihuangdi, First Emperor of Qin began conscripting peasants, enemies, and anyone else who wasn't tied to the land to go to work on the wall. He garrisoned armies at the Wall to stand guard over the workers as well as to defend the northern boundaries. The tradition lasted for centuries. Each dynasty added to the height, breadth, length, and elaborated the design mostly through forced labor. It was during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) that the Wall took on its present form. The brick and granite work was enlarged and sophisticated designs were added. The watch towers were redesigned and modern canon were mounted in strategic areas. The Portuguese had found a ready market for guns and canon in China, one of the few items of trade that China didn't already have in abundance. The Ming Emperors, having overthrown the Hun dominance and expelled their Mongol rulers of the North devoted large portions of available material and manpower to making sure that they didn't return. Throughout the centuries, armies were garrisoned along the length of the Wall to provide early warning of invasion and a first line of defense. Great piles of straw and dung used to build signal fires have been found during excavations. There must have been small garrison towns spotted along the length. There weren't many farms or trade towns to provide ease, relaxation and food. The supply trails were over mountains along narrow paths. To bring supplies to the top, ropes were slung over posts set in the Chinese side of the wall and baskets were hauled up hand over hand. Supplies must have always been short and chancy, particularly in the winter. The Wall served well. Only when a dynasty had weakened from within were invaders from the north able to advance and conquer. Both the Mongols (Yuan Dynasty, 1271-1368) and the Manchurians (Qing Dynasty,1644-1911) were able take power, not because of weakness in the Wall but because of weakness in the government and the poverty of the people. They took advantage of rebellion from within and stepped into the void of power without extended wars. Over the past few centuries, the Great Wall has served as a source of building materials for local farms and villages. Aerial photos show that in sections, only the top battlements show — the center of the wall has filled with sand and silt. The same brutal isolated conditions which made the Great Wall a triumph of engineering and determined planning make restoration problematic and slow. Design of the fortifications The Great Wall had three major components: passes, signal towers (beacons), and walls. Passes: were major strongholds along the wall, usually located at such key positions as intersections with trade routes. The ramparts of many passes were faced with huge bricks and stones, with dirt and crushed stones as filler. The bastions measured some 30 feet (10 metres) high and 13 to 16 feet (4 to 5 metres) wide at the top. Within each pass were access ramps for horses and ladders for soldiers. The outside parapet was crenellated, and the inside parapet, or yü-ch'iang (nu-ch'iang), was a low wall about 3 feet (1 metre) high that prevented people and horses from falling off the top. was often topped by a tower used to watch those beyond the wall and to direct troop movements in battles waged there. Around the gate entrance there was often a moat that was formed in the process of digging earth to build the fortifications. Signal towers: were also called beacons, beacon terraces, smoke mounds, mounds, or kiosks. They were used to send military communications by beacon (fires or lanterns) during the night or by smoke signals in the daytime; other methods such as raising banners, beating clappers, or firing guns were also used. Signal towers, often built on hilltops for maximum visibility, were self-contained high platforms, or towers. The lower levels contained rooms for soldiers, as well as stables, sheepfolds, and storage areas. Walls: the body of the wall was the key part of the defensive system. It usually stood 21.3 feet (6.5 metres) wide at the base and 19 feet (5.8 metres) at the top, with an average height of 23 to 26 feet (7 to 8 metres), or a bit lower on steep hills. The structure of the wall varied from place to place, depending on the availability of building materials. Walls were made of tamped earth sandwiched between wooden boards, adobe bricks, a brick and stone mixture, rocks, or pilings and planks. Some sections made use of existing river dikes; others used rugged mountain terrain such as cliffs and gorges to take the place of man-made walls.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Whatever happened to the Blended wing of Boeing?

Photos by Boeing
Whatever Happened to the Blended Wing?
An innovative design would boost airplane fuel efficiency by some 23 percent. So why won't it be implemented?

Boeing's X-48B Blended Wing Project turns the aircraft into a giant wing.
The design would improve fuel efficiency by 23 percent.
Nevertheless, a blended-wing body is more likely to have military applications than commercial.
One major reason it's unlikely to be applied commercially is because of a lack of windows.
The blended-wing design doesn't allow for windows or for easy exit access.
Even though the blended-wing body is much more efficient than the typical cigar-and-stick design, no one wants to sit 50 feet from the nearest window.
In the near-future, eco-friendly design improvements will likely be less radical—planes may be retrofitted with lighter wing tips, for instance.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Transformers: The Best Special Effects Ever?

More than 750 parts stretching a half-mile long. Some 350 engineers working round-the-clock. Thousands of rusty, old mechanic photos — clutch plates, transmissions, brake discs — spilling across the table. All for one beat-up Camaro? Sure doesn't sound like your average auto manufacturer. "The idea is they're not fresh off the showroom floor," says Jeff White, the man charged with creating the yellow sports car and 13 others for a big new garage. He's right: They're supposed to look realer than that. And be from outer space. And turn into 30-ft. robots. And save the universe. That's all in a day's work for the motor magicians at George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), who for the last two years have been juggling the limits of the possible (turning a real car into a fake robot and figuring out what the heck to put inside) and the demands of reality (studio budgets, GM sponsorship, the wrath of fanboys worldwide) to build the most painstaking — and maybe most believable — effects achievement in movie history: Transformers. When it revs up at the box office this Fourth of July, Michael Bay's $150 million adaptation of the legendary 1980s cartoon and toy series will include nearly 50 so-called transformations. Hand-rendered metallic uncorkings of real-life cars, trucks and helicopters represented uncharted territory for the gooey-alien experts at ILM, each transformation taking six months to imagine and each re-engineering the way digital Hollywood does computer graphics imagery (CGI). "How are we gonna get this thing from a car into the robot and back in a believable way?" White, the film's digital production supervisor, asked the Transformers crew in 2005, when, after their back-and-forth with toymaker Hasbro, the F/X plan consisted of little more than robot sketches and shiny new Hummers — and not much in between. "Of course, Michael Bay wants a lot of energy, he wants ninja-fighting warriors that can punch and put their arms over their heads and do all this crazy stuff," White says. "So we had to design these really complicated systems — how do all these systems match together and fly over each other to keep it looking real? And that was a huge challenge." When it came to breathing life into characters such as Bumblebee, the protective Autobot, ILM needed to think backwards to fill in the blanks (and the junk in the drunk) between finished robot sketches and real-life GM cars.
Under-prepared, a New Road MapFrom Jar Jar Binks in the new Star Wars films to villains of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, the modern CGI pipeline has tended to work from the ground up: Pre-build a creature, film it with a stand-in on set, then animate it to react, to actors such as Samuel L. Jackson or Johnny Depp, in postproduction. But after realizing that the simple route, with one transformation per Autobot or Decepticon, might not look robotic enough, Bay and Co. pulled a 280-terabyte U-turn. ILM designed a backwards interface, moving the beginning of CGI production out of the hands of creature development and onto the desktops of the animators. By allowing animators to get the first crack at rigging control — the way a computer-generated character is built, the way it walks and rotates — ILM's IT team could develop software for custom transformations designed on the fly that might satisfy Bay's notorious flying camera angles. Click a button here, and a flatbed's brake light can pivot into an Optimus Prime punch. Set a control function there, and an alien jetfighter wing can cock into a Megatron claw for any of a half-dozen different scenes. For a character like Bumblebee, hiding untransformed inside that '74 Camaro as the shy protector of the movie's human hero, this tradeoff was crucial: the stand-up robot with feelings and the boy's beat-up car with rust were set in stone, so it was the hybrid halfway point that would represent the real character development. "We start with the end result first, then work backwards from there," says animation supervisor Scott Benza. "We'll start Bumblebee standing up in his pose in the composition of the shot, then collapse him down into something of a car shape, where we fold his arms in and hover him down close to the street. And then we deal with what we have to fill in the in-between." These finished renders of (from left) Autobots Bumblebee and Optimus Prime and Decepticon leader Megatron — filled with hundreds of real aftermarket auto parts — took tens of thousands of pivot points each, with some 10,000 separate pieces to put together Prime alone. (Click for high-resolution image.)
Under the Hood, the SuperunknownWhen that crucial "in-between" involves over 10,000 hand-modeled parts pulled out of actual autobody — as Optimus Prime did (his old-school toy had a mere 51 components) — there's a bit more filling in to do. "It's hugely complicated," says visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar. "It's no different than going out and machining these parts [in a real car]. Every one of those things has to be connected and travel in the right direction when an animation occurs." It started with ILM's creature development team (well versed in children's movie animals but not so much in carburetors) heading to the autobody shop in early 2006 and lifting up the hoods of real-life cars to develop as many real-looking car parts as possible. These formed the innards underneath the exoskeleton provided to the animators. But building a design system that allowed the animators to move all those pieces quickly — and to fit them into the finished robot, designed almost a year earlier, without banging parts into each other — was the real headache. The 30-year-old Camaro grille, then, may not have been the exact one that ended up on Bumblebee's chest, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Visual effects art director Alex Jaeger built frame-by-frame movements so an animator could take a thinly slatted grille and flip it into a three-slat grille like Venetian blinds. That way, at least, Bumblebee would become both muscular and recognizable (he takes seven different forms — used car, concept car and battered bot among them). Toying with the classic Camaro aside, this hero's transformation represented a massive CGI maneuver, with nearly 20,000 nodes in the movable rig: Jaeger had to break apart a fender close to the ground to unleash Bumbleebee's arm, then disassemble a brake disc attached to the arm before shifting out of the way that will eventually end up on his shoulder. And Jaeger couldn't screw up. Not while he was working for the guy who reignited Pearl Harbor, who told Bruce Willis how to nuke an asteroid from a space shuttle. No way. "Michael's a very, very particular person when it comes to..." Jaeger trails off. Better be careful with Boss Bay. "This is a man who's shot many a car commercial, so he's very particular on the finishes and the materials on the cars as well as the robots."

Under the Gun, the Finishing BrushesOptimus Prime has lips. Moving metal lips. The Autobot leader went to the grave in the original 1986 movie without ever having opened his voice box, but Bay hated the idea of action heroes wearing a mask. So he had ILM juice up each robot's jaws, eyes and metallic visage, from cartoony strobe light to winking, blinking, crackling Norelco blades. But the most important finishing touch? Grease. Lots of it. Sure, stagehands dusted off the real Pontiac Solstice GXP before the cameras rolled, but digital painters at ILM were shading the doors and really mucking up each car's gearbox guts before they rolled up into robots. "Here we've got a car but we don't have any robots, so that's what made this project way harder than Pearl Harbor, where we had real planes to look at," says Ron Woodall, admitting that he painted some cars to look twice as dirty as their exteriors. "We don't have a target, and it's up to everyone's imagination." Ultimately, that's the point of spending $150 million on car chases, explosions and millions of little CGI polygons: Drummed-up digital trickery is now at the level of turning the unreal into the real — as long as it doesn't seem too cheesy, and doesn't piss off too many fans. "Our goal is to please Michael Bay. He's got to answer to all the other folks," Benza says. "So top of the priority list? If it looks cool, that's where we start. That's the ultimate goal, then we can figure out ways to get the Chevy logo visible and the kind of signature things that the GM folks wanted in there. But I think ultimately even GM wanted Michael to have creative control over the coolness of the transformations." What ends up on the silver screen this week is something that for once actually looks silver, justifiably chrome. Bay even had to send back one of the few non-CGI scale models made for the film — a painted fiberglass Bumblebee made for a scene when the Autobot savior is tied to train tracks — because it didn't look real enough. "It's been a struggle for all of us in this business to get the computer graphics looking as good as they are now, and I really do believe Transformers is a new high-water mark for making materials look good," says Farrar, the visual-effects supervisor and Bay's right-hand computer geek. "It's surprisingly complicated in the world of computer graphics to make objects look like what everybody in the world sees every day."

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