Yesterday’s supercomputer; today’s junk?

Posted on 2010-11-17 by M. Eric Carr

While on one of my walks home through various parts of Philadelphia, I came across an old tower PC that had been put out on the curb for collection.  The logo on the front identified it as an Intel VIIV-class computer, from sometime in the early 2000s. Like so many other PCs, it had probably become too old and slow for its owner to justify keeping it. (The modem card in the lowest slot confirms its identity as a technological dinosaur.)  It’s clearly too old and slow to be of use.

 

An obsolete supercomputer...

Wait a minute, though. Looking up the specs for a VIIV-class computer, it’s amazing just what we are willing to throw out these days. This “old, obsolete” PC:

  • …has a 64-bit, dual-core processor;
  • …runs at a speed of at least 2.66GHz (I.E. 2.66 billion clock cycles per second);
  • …may run at only 1/4 to 1/8 the speed of my current workstation’s CPU (a Core i7/920), but:
  • …is about a hundred times faster than the 80486-33 that I built in 1991 (costing about $3000US at the time), and
  • …is at least ten thousand times faster at floating-point calculations than the original IBM PC from the early 1980s.

Compared to the room-sized institutional computers of the late 1940s and early 1950s, this “obsolete” PC is so much faster that a straight comparison becomes difficult. It’s easily several million times faster at the few tasks that both machines would be capable of doing in similar fashion.

If this computer were somehow sent back to the early 90s, it would be not only greatly appreciated — it would probably be confiscated by the DoD, and certainly subject to export restrictions (there were restrictions on exporting 486-class computers, back in the day, due to fears they would be used for nuclear weapons modeling.) If it were sent back much farther than that, the best explanation would be witchcraft.

Where’s a DeLorean when you need one?

Posted in Digital, Digital Citizenship, Nostalgia | Leave a comment

Indistinguishable from magic?

Posted on 2010-10-22 by M. Eric Carr

At work today, I emailed in a request for maintenance to check the thermostat. A short while later, a maintenance guy walked in, pointed a small box at one of our filing cabinets, pressed a button, and the box produced a small red dot on the filing cabinet. The maintenance guy looked at the device, nodded, and walked off.

I didn’t think much of it (we use infrared thermometers all the time, and a metal filing cabinet would be a good indicator of the ambient room temperature) — until I realized just how bizarre that scene, unexplained, would have seemed to someone from only twenty or thirty years ago. What was that man doing? What was the box? Why did he point a light — maybe a laser? — at our filing cabinet?

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
–Arthur C. Clarke

Posted in Drexel, Toys | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Who ya gonna call?

Posted on 2010-10-21 by M. Eric Carr

Augmented Reality just keeps getting cooler. Recently, I downloaded an Android game called SpecTrek; it’s impressively well done. Since most Android phones (including my Epic 4G) have an accelerometer, compass, GPS, and camera, they have all the information they need to know not only where they are, but in which direction they are pointed. This allows CG objects to be inserted into the camera view window in real time — and suddenly, you’re surrounded by ghosts.

Spooky!

 

From there, the idea is both simple and awesome: move around, hunting down the ghosts. Point the phone at them to “scan” them (to determine what type they are), then move within 50m or so (this varies with game settings and level) to get close enough to capture them. If a ghost is in an inaccessible area (like inside a building or floating over an interstate highway), there’s a “ghost horn” to shoo away nearby ghosts into another area where they can be captured.

The game has a few GPS issues right now (which the developer emailed me back right away about, and is working on) — but even with a few glitches, it’s one of those rare games that make you think about gaming in new ways. I definitely recommend it to anyone with an Android phone with accelerometer/compass/camera/GPS. Search the Android Market for “SpecTrek” and try out the Lite version. The full version is only about US$3 — a bargain. The best part is that it’s fun enough that you don’t realize you’re getting exercise. (Just watch out for that tree; the ghosts can float through them, but you can’t!)

Posted in Android, Digital, Games, GPS, Toys | Leave a comment

Virtual Actual Reality

Posted on 2010-09-25 by M. Eric Carr

Most people have heard of “Virtual Reality” by now — and most probably associate it with demonstrations they’ve seen, where the user can move through a computer-generated 3D world — much like being inside a video game.

Increasingly, though, computer technology is being used to enhance reality — not just replace it. The field of “augmented reality” — where the view is mostly natural with a few CG enhancements — is becoming more and more prevalent. When it’s done right, as the NFL has done with on-field graphics, it can be hard to tell just what is real and what is CG…

Augmented Reality Shock? ("Bound and Gagged", 2010-09-25)

The man (father?) in this cartoon appears annoyed that the boy didn’t understand that the first-down line is a figment of the NFL computers’ imagination. Given a little thought, this makes sense — there is no realistic way to erase and repaint the line on the field so quickly, so it must be CG. But for a small child who had only seen football games on TV (and given his age, always with the CG additions), it’s a relatively easy mistake to make. If the graphics had been a bit more subtle (perhaps a corporate logo digitally painted onto the field?), it could well be mistaken for real field coloration.

The lines between reality, augmented reality, and VR get harder to distinguish each year. How long before they disappear altogether?

Posted in Current Events, Digital, Digital Citizenship, Internet | Leave a comment