For all of their awesome applications — from portable navigation devices, to self-driving cars, to cruise missile targeting — the American Global Positioning System and its Russian cohort GLONASS have two fundamental flaws: They don’t work indoors, and they only really operate in two dimensions.
Now, these limitations are fair enough; we’re talking about an extremely weak signal that has traveled 20,200km (12,600mi), after all. Passing through concrete and other solid obstacles is hard enough for a strong, short-range cellular signal — you can’t seriously expect a 50-watt signal traveling 12,000 miles to do the same. Detecting a GPS signal on Earth is comparable to detecting the light from a 25-watt bulb from 10,000 miles.
The situation is a little more complex when it comes to detecting a change in altitude; GPS and GLONASS can measure altitude, but generally the data is inaccurate and too low-resolution (on the order of 10-25 meters) for everyday use. Even with these limitations, though, space-based satellite navigation systems have changed almost every aspect of society, from hardware hacking to farming to cartography to finding a girlfriend.
What if we had a navigation system that worked indoors, though? What if we had an Indoor Positioning System (IPS)? Believe it or not, we’re very nearly already there.
Last year, Google Maps for Android began introducing floor plans of shopping malls, airports, and other large commercial areas. Nokia, too, is working on an indoor positioning system, but using actual 3D models, rather than 2D floor plans. Just last week, Broadcom released a new chip (BCM4752) that supports indoor positioning systems, and which will soon find its way into smartphones.
Unlike GPS and GLONASS, there isn’t a standard way of building an indoor positioning system. Google’s approach tracks you via WiFi — it knows where the WiFi hotspots are in a given building, and through signal strength triangulation it can roughly work out where you are. Nokia’s solution is similar, but it uses Bluetooth instead of WiFi, making it higher resolution (but it would require the installation of lots of Bluetooth “beacons”). Other methods being mooted involve infrared, and even acoustic analysis. None of these approaches are accurate or reliable enough on their own, though — in spaces that are packed with different materials, and roving groups of attenuating meatbags, these signals are simply too noisy.
The Broadcom chip supports IPS through WiFi, Bluetooth, and even NFC. More importantly, though, the chip also ties in with other sensors, such as a phone’s gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer, and altimeter. Acting like a glorified pedometer, this Broadcom chip could almost track your movements without wireless network triangulation. It simply has to take note of your entry point (via GPS), and then count your steps (accelerometer), direction (gyroscope), and altitude (altimeter).
In short, indoor positioning systems are coming — first to built-up and heavily-touristed areas (in the next year or two), and then, as smartphone saturation reaches 100%, everywhere else.
Source: Think GPS is cool? IPS will blow your mind | ExtremeTech
How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the thinking style that produced “Mona Lisa,” as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Einsteins, Edisons, daVincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos, Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them?
For years, scholars and researchers have tried to study genius by giving its vital statistics, as if piles of data somehow illuminated genius. Academics also tried to measure the links between intelligence and genius. But intelligence is not enough. Marilyn vos Savant, whose IQ of 228 is the highest ever recorded, has not exactly contributed much to science or art. She is, instead, a question-and-answer columnist for Parade magazine. Run-of-the-mill physicists have IQs much higher than Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, who many acknowledge to be the last great American genius (his IQ was a merely respectable 122).
Genius is not about scoring 1600 on the SATs, mastering fourteen languages at the age of seven, finishing Mensa exercises in record time, having an extraordinarily high I.Q., or even about being smart. After considerable debate initiated by J. P. Guilford, a leading psychologist who called for a scientific focus on creativity in the sixties, psychologists reached the conclusion that creativity is not the same as intelligence. An individual can be far more creative than he or she is intelligent, or far more intelligent than creative.
Productive Versus Reproductive Thinking
Most people of average intelligence, given data or some problem, can figure out the expected conventional response. For example, when asked, “What is one-half of 13?” most of us immediately answer six and one-half. You probably reached the answer in a few seconds and then turned your attention back to the text.
Typically, we think reproductively, that is on the basis of similar problems encountered in the past. When confronted with problems, we fixate on something in our past that has worked before. We ask, “What have I been taught in life, education or work on how to solve the problem?” Then we analytically select the most promising approach based on past experiences, excluding all other approaches, and work within a clearly defined direction towards the solution of the problem. Because of the soundness of the steps based on past experiences, we become arrogantly certain of the correctness of our conclusion.
In contrast, geniuses think productively, not reproductively. When confronted with a problem, they ask “How many different ways can I look at it?”, “How can I rethink the way I see it?”, and “How many different ways can I solve it?” instead of “What have I been taught by someone else on how to solve this?” They tend to come up with many different responses, some of which are unconventional and possibly unique. A productive thinker would say that there are many different ways to express “thirteen” and many different ways to halve something. Following are some examples.
6.5
13 = 1 and 3
THIR TEEN = 4
XIII = 11 and 2
XIII = 8
(Note: As you can see, in addition to six and one half, by expressing 13 in different ways and halving it in different ways, one could say one-half of thirteen is 6.5, or 1 and 3, or 4, or 11 and 2, or 8, and so on.)With productive thinking, one generates as many alternative approaches as one can. You consider the least obvious as well as the most likely approaches. It is the willingness to explore all approaches that is important, even after one has found a promising one. Einstein was once asked what the difference was between him and the average person. He said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in the haystack, the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all the possible needles.)
How do creative geniuses generate so many alternatives and conjectures? Why are so many of their ideas so rich and varied? How do they produce the “blind” variations that lead to the original and novel? A growing cadre of scholars are offering evidence that one can characterize the way geniuses think. By studying the notebooks, correspondence, conversations and ideas of the world’s greatest thinkers, they have teased out particular common thinking strategies and styles of thought that enabled geniuses to generate a prodigious variety of novel and original ideas.
Thinking Strategies
Following are thumbnail descriptions of strategies that are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art and industry throughout history.
- Geniuses look at problems in many different ways
- Geniuses make their thoughts visible
- Geniuses produce
- Geniuses make novel combinations
- Geniuses force relationships
- Geniuses think in opposites
- Geniuses think metaphorically
- Geniuses prepare themselves for chance
Summary
Recognizing the common thinking strategies of creative geniuses and applying them will make you more creative in your work and personal life. Creative geniuses are geniuses because they know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think. Sociologist Harriet Zuckerman published an interesting study of the Nobel Prize winners who were living in the United States in 1977. She discovered that six of Enrico Fermi’s students won the prize. Ernst Lawrence and Niels Bohr each had four. J. J. Thompson and Ernest Rutherford between them trained seventeen Nobel laureates. This was no accident. It is obvious that these Nobel laureates were not only creative in their own right, but were also able to teach others how to think creatively.
Source: How Geniuses Think | The Creativity Post
The extremely hot planet Wasp-12b has such a high carbon-to-oxygen ratio that scientists are saying that the planet’s surface might be littered with diamonds. The lead researcher specifies: “You might see land masses and mountains made up of diamonds.”
Astronomers are saying that it’s the first carbon-rich planet ever observed. Planets in our solar system typically have a 1 to 2 carbon to oxygen ratio, Wasp-12b, on the other hand, has more carbon than oxygen. Because of all that carbon (and that there’s no water on the planet), astronomers believe that Wasp-12b could have diamonds in its core (but current technology is limiting them from seeing the actual core).
Before you start building your DIY space shuttle though, you should know that the planet is 1,200 light years away. It means that what we see today is the image of the planet 1,200 years ago. It’s also ridiculously, ridiculously hot (like 2315 degrees Celsius hot). There was also murmurs that Wasp-12b was going to be eaten by its star. So maybe diamonds aren’t forever.
Source: Scientists Say There’s a Planet Lined With Diamonds
Exchanging bytes of data is part of the internet life. Anything that can be digitized can be uploaded to and downloaded from the web in a blink of an eye, from simple documents to movies, from magazines to games. Sending digital products to someone on the other side of the world is as easy as providing him/her with the download link. Physical products, however, still belong to the “real” world.
But soon, the game will change. Really change.
The Pirate Bay, has just announced a new, legitimate direction: It’s going to host physibles, downloadable models for constructing 3D objects. Continue reading »
Fill in your data below and click submit. You’ll automatically go to the test page.
!! Important !! DO NOT click “Show Result” before you finish the test, or you will not pass.
No more submissions accepted at this time.
There was a time when people traded their personal business card with their friends, colleagues, and/or family members. Personal business card was one of the best ways to identify one’s self, at least in the business world. But that small-rectangular thick piece of paper has stayed the same since its birth.
One company tried to change that by designing a new breed of personal business card. The company reduces the card size, make it square with rounded corners, and combined the card design with QR code technology, and called it App2Card. Continue reading »
Put a kid in front of TV and he/she will stuck there forever. Some parents use this method to “tame” their children, even though most parents know that too much TV is bad for their little angels. But how much is too much? The result from 2007 survey by the American Academy of Pediatrics found might give you a scary reading. Common Sense Media’s report builds on that work with comparable data.
The report, Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America, finds that two-thirds of children aged eight and under watch TV at least once a day, typically watching for an hour-and-three-quarters. By comparison, they spend just under half an hour reading or being read to.
One of the most important findings said that 66 percent of children under two have watched TV, and the amount of time they spend in front of the box has risen, from just over an hour to an hour and half.
And that’s bad because…
Adjectives are a part of speech that explains the noun. They are categorized into several groups based on their origin or based on what they do. For example, the descriptive adjectives describe the nouns that follow them. In the phrase “new car”, the word “new” is a descriptive adjective that explains the “car”. We can say the same thing with the phrase “lucky day” Continue reading »
Before understanding one another, we need to understand ourselves first. We have different personalities behind the actions that we do and behaviors that we choose. At times, personality differences are the reason for many misunderstandings and conflicts, but they can also be the source of opportunity for a productive collaboration. Let’s have a look at the basic personalities that we have.
There are four basic personalities described in Floren Litauer’s book “Personality Plus”. They are: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, and Phlegmatic. Each person has a unique tendency towards one or two of the personalities, even though they have attributes in each of them. This means you can be a choleric-sanguine type of person or just a melancholic, while still having some elements of the other personality types. Continue reading »
Computer Virus
Technology brings positive things to our lives, but it also gives birth to negative side effects. One of those negatives is computer virus.
The year of 2011 is the 40th anniversary of the first known computer virus, a laboratory experiment that didn’t cause damage but proved to be a harbinger of the risks to come: self-replicating dangerous programs that lurk among the bytes of codes, ready to wreak havoc on your digital life. They are everywhere and in various damaging levels: from computers to smart phones, from the harmless to the deadly.
The saga goes back to the pre-internet days in the beginning of 1970s. To commemorate the event, let’s look at three early milestones in the history of computer mischief. Please continue to read the rest of the article.
