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Technology
What's New?
Guru's Corner
Tech-Know-Babble
SGI Enters WindowsNT Race
Going faster than the speed of light,
possible?
Roadside Attractions
Next Week
What's New?
The Microsoft cordless PC-Phone System. The new MS phone is a phone like
no other. It not only includes the important features of a state of the
art cordless phone, such as 900MHz operation, hands free listening and
a recharging cradle, but you'll have caller ID or call waiting. It gives
total control over your voice communication. Using MS call manager, you
can create private greetings for different callers, assign priorities
to incoming calls, or even have the PC announce who dares disturb your
domestic bliss. The MS phone retails for $160, call waiting and a phone
line is not included. For more info visit http://www.microsoft.com/phone/
Consortium wants MP3 Replacement. Major record labels and top technology
companies have announced plans to create a new music format that is copyright-friendly
for the Internet age. The Secure Digital Music Initiative would placate
record labels that fear losses to piracy and give tech companies clear
sailing to make Internet music products without harassment.
Intel Ups Celeron Sped, Cache. Intel's much-maligned Celeron processor
has received a much needed makeover to the tune of two new clock speeds,
366MHz and 400MHz for both sockets and slots. The long awaited socketed
Celeron interface is called "Plastic Pin Grid Array (PPGA)" and is supported
by a new core-logic chipset, the Intel 440ZX. For more info visit http://www.intel.com
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Guru's Corner
Q. I was just wondering how much
experience you've had with technology and what kind of
computer you have. –Jennifer (CSE Junior ) &
Steven (Sophomore)
A. I have worked with computers for
almost eight years on my own, and professionally for five
years. I have worked with various CAD, programming, Web
Authoring, graphics and networking software.
Additionally, I have experience with operating systems
such as UNIX, LINUX, OS/2, Windows3.X, Windows95/98,
WindowsNT, CPM and MacOS. I currently have a Intergraph Dual
processor Pentium II 300Mhz, with 128Mgs RAM, 3.4Gig Hard
Drive, 36X CD-ROM, 17-inch monitor, Zip100 drive, 7gig
Tape backup, 10/100 Ethernet, V.90 modem, TV tuner card
with a VCR and 128-channel cable ready port. I have a
basic sound card with 4 speakers, microphone and a
Kenwood portable CD player plugged in. I am dual booting
WindowsNT with Windows95.
Q. How do I get an e-mail account at Oakland?
Do I have to pay for it? D.A. freshman
A. To set up your e-mail account, you must go
to the first floor of Kresge Library, room KL129. There
is a computer terminal with on-screen instructions to
walk you through the process. The e-mail account is a
free service at O.U. as long as you are an active
student. It is run through MichNet, which provides
students k-12, as well as collegiate levels with e-mail
addresses and dial up numbers for local access to the
Internet. More information on dial-up numbers and e-mail
is available at room KL129 in the paper stands next to
the e-mail terminal.
To have your questions answered, email jmsilles@oakland.edu
with technology as the subject. Questions will be
answered as quickly as possible.
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Tech-Know-Babble
(tek-no-bab'el):
Geeky - Used to describe the fickle
tastes of individuals who spend much of their social lives in front of
a computer and sprinkle their conversations with more acronyms then adjectives.
DVD - Digital Versatile Disc. It's the
next generation CD-ROM, storing more data per disc, and
also a possible replacement for videotapes, especially in
the rental business. By using multiple layers and both
sides of a disc, DVD can store 4.7GB (Giga-Bytes) to 17GB
of data, while CDs are limited to a maximum of 682MB
(Mega-Bytes).
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SGI Enters WindowsNT Race
Former workstation
giant betting on "better late then never"
strategy
Its systems are employed in the
hottest special effects and game-development houses in
the world. They're used extensively with CAD
applications, and you'll find them commanding most
high-traffic web servers.
So why is SGI
launching a new line of NT workstations?
In a word: money. Unix sales flat-lined
in recent months, and most major Unix developers, who
noticed the shift in the market long ago, quietly began
developing for NT.
Unfortunately, the shift caught SGI
completely off-guard and with no alternative products in
the channel and Sun Microsystems taking large chunks out
of its Unix-server business, SGI quickly went into a
financial tailspin.
Hundreds of employees were laid off,
the campus was closed for days and SGI's stock, which had
at one point hit a high of over $45, sank below $8 per
share.
However, in efforts to refocus the
company and steer it back to profitability, SGI launched
its new line of NT workstations in February, which are
said to be the fastest PCs on the planet. And while SGI
promises its new NT-based workstations will deliver fast
3D performance and expandability, SGI is pricing these
new machines under $7,000, a far cry from the $50,000 to
$250,000 its proprietary, multiprocessor systems
currently command.
However, SGI must now compete with
workstation stalwarts such as Intergraph, Dell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, which won't
be easy.
This move is late. SGI will have to
jump into an already mature market, ripe with
ever-changing pricing pressures, business/distribution
models, margins and fulfillment channels.
It's not as simple as building a
product and they will come. The workstation market is not
a babbling brook it's a raging river. I think SGI will
either swim or drown. However, I am fairly confident that
SGI will make the switch successfully.
This new product has been designed from
the ground up. By using SGI's own intellectual property
in graphics and media, the Visual PC group has created
new silicon that includes a core chipset packet with 10
million transistors, providing a graphics pipeline more
than the cards in current NT workstations.
SGI is specifically positioning its new
workstations to CAD animators,
digital-content/special-effects creators and desktop
publishers. If the name "Designer" appears in
your tittle, you're going to want one of these machines.
John Carmack of id software, whose
company uses a 16-processor SGI Origin system for its
back end processing was quoted as saying, "I suspect
they (SGI) have underestimated the level of competition
in the PC space. I bet they aren't going to be better
then Intergraph, but they are certainly welcome to
surprise me."
Competitors are however, a little
nervous that SGI has found a way to build a better PC, as
oppose to clone makers who just add components.
Many things could go wrong for SGI.
They are doing the right thing, but there are a
significant number of hurdles. They are entering a
crowded market and SGI needs the distribution deals that
many of their competitors have nurtured over the last
several years. Undoubtedly, it's going to be a bumpy
ride.
Justin Silles is a MIS junior and the Technology
Editor for THE OAKLAND POST ONLINE
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Going faster than the speed of light,
possible?
Yes, but there's a catch
So you want to travel faster than the speed of light?
Well, according to one of the most fundamental principals of physics,
you can't.
In a vacuum, the speed of light is 186,282 miles per
sec. In thick air or water it is slightly slower.
Scientists have now found that with the right equipment,
light can be slowed down to 38 miles per hour. They believe that it can
be slowed down even more, around a top speed of two hundredths of a mile
per hour.
The global implications of such a success are intangible.
The idea of this being a possibility doesn't seem rational or realistic.
Although applications involving this process are years
down the road, right now the idea and success of this project are astounding.
The project has been led by Lene Vestergard Hau of
the Rowland Institute for science in Cambridge, Mass. He used a tiny amount
of super cooled sodium, activated with a laser at a specific wavelength.
A second laser can then be aimed through the same sodium, but not much
faster then a racehorse can.
The experiment was reported in a February issue of
the journal Nature explaining how process worked. The experiment takes
advantage of a property called electromangnetically-induced transparency.
Simply, every element has a certain color of light with which it interacts
most strongly. Light at that exact wavelength would normally be totally
absorbed.
For the sodium used in this experiment, it's the yellow
of common streetlights. But a laser at a slightly different wavelength
can alter the quantum properties of the atoms so they no longer absorb
that wavelength. The atoms move and the light from the laser then passes
through.
By changing the way a medium absorbs light also changes
the way light moves through it. All transparent substances slow down light
as it passes through. This is seen when light passes from air to water
and it appears to bend, which is called refraction.
Light takes seven microseconds to cross a sample only
eight thousandths of an inch long. In the vacuum of space, light would
go more then a mile in the same time.
The quantum curiosity that follows the slowing of light
in sodium is called a Bose-Einstein condensate. It's created when atoms
are cooled until they stop moving almost entirely. The atoms then merge
and the wave functions that define them become one.
Eric Cornell, a physicist at the University of Colorado
-Boulder and one of the makers of the first Bose-Einstein condensate says,
"You need a very pure gas, very cold, and the atoms in it can't be colliding
with each other." Chilled to just billionths of a degree above zero, individual
sodium atoms become a single, dense glob.
Superslow light will stay a lab curiosity for a long
time to come. If they can just slow it down a little more, scientists
will be able to photograph light as it passes by. In theory, it might
be possible to stop light. However, it's hard to think what you would
do then.
Now, only if they could get light to go faster -- that
would be interesting.
Justin Silles is a geeky junior
MIS major and the Technology Editor for THE OAKLAND
POST ONLINE.
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Next Week
Editor article: Computers, where are they now?
More Guru's Corner
Two Weeks: Guest article from an OU Professor on technology changes
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