EDITOR'S EYE

The World of Software Development.

December 2006

I'd like to wish each and every one of you a safe, profitable, and happy new year. And thank you for being part of the Dr. Dobb's community.

I look forward to hearing from more of you over the coming year, and hopefully meeting you personally at events around the world--which is a likelihood, considering the boss wants me out of the office even more in '07.

If we don't meet face-to-face, then let's plan on it via email. Drop me a note and let me hear what you think the year will bring, technology wise. And if you have an article idea you'd like to see in print or online, I really want to hear from you.

Best wishes to you all,
Jon

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:57 AM  Permalink |

From what I can tell, just about every pre-teen on my street and every other Baby Boomer between where I work and where I drink my espresso has an iPod. Which is no surprise, considering that Apple has sold more than 67 million of the buggers. And that's not counting accessories ranging from car chargers and docking stations, to iTunes debit cards and camera connectors.

So with adolescent experts on every street corner, not to mention the legions of usability engineers Apple employed to design ease-of-use into the device, you'd think the last thing we need is third-party help in how to listen to songs like the Trailer Park Troubadours' classic "It Ain't Home ('Til You Take the Wheels Off)". But help we have, and I don't necessarily mean books like O'Reilly and Associates' iPod: The Missing Manual, or iPod and iTunes for Dummies.

Instead, the latest is online training for how to use an iPod. That's right. Makau Corporation has created an entry-level video-based training course to teach people how to use their iPods. In partnership with the Grapevine Talk Radio Network, the Makau iPod training is facilitated by talk-radio personality Geoff Power course modules cover how to install iTunes, music, photos, and video clips to your iPod and how to customize your iPod's settings for maximum satisfaction. The courses also cover more in-depth topics such as how to use the iTunes store to purchase media, the extra features of iPod, and more.

The real good news is that Makau's iPod training is offered free of cost as a means of introducing people to the e-learning company's upcoming offerings of Desktop Training titles for purchase and playback via the iPod with Video. If I were a betting fool, I might wager that the instructors are all under 16-years old, and the students all over 50-years of age. But I'd probably lose that bet, along with most others.

So if you're frustrated with your iPod and would like to shove it somewhere else other than Steve Job's ear, check out Makau's class which commences on January 12, 2007.

Which reminds me. I'll probably be in iPod overload right about that time, as I leave for India the next day to participate in Dr. Dobb's SD Best Practices India. Chicago, to Frankfurt, to Hyderabad. Yes, iPod and the Trailer Park Troubadours will certainly get a workout on that trip.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 03:53 PM  Permalink |

So I do get mail and I do appreciate hearing from you.

I received a couple of notes regarding language support for decimal datatypes. Here's one of my favorite letters, mainly because Jonathan calls me "Sir" and that is so infrequent around the office:

Dear Sir, The IBM 1620 computer had floating-point decimal in hardware.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP1620.html

I used to do linear programming on it in Tel Aviv in the 1960s.
Best regards,
Jonathan Rosenne

Thanks Jonathan.

I particularly appreciated Jim Keohane's letter, not because it had to do with COBOL, but because he called me "Mr. Erickson." That's almost as rare as being called "Sir".

Mr. Erickson, COBOL's only advantage is that it allows upper management to *THINK* they know how to program! Sprinkle some English-looking verbiage and use terms like sentence, paragraph then observe how truly frightening management can be. {smile} Cheers, - Jim p.s. The generally accepted COBOL programming productivity rate of 12-to-20 LOCs (lines of code) per day is what I term COBOL's ESCAPE VERBOSITY!

Thanks Jim, I'll be sure to point out to the boss the part about management.

On the processor-support side of things, William Boyle nicely filled in some gaps:

I believe that the 8087 chip family (including the Pentium and other derivatives that support the '87 instruction and register set) support BCD math in hardware. So, that being the case, the Power6 chip isn't the first to do so. Also, the '87 family will perform those computations in 80 bit extended precision. The problem is that there is little language support, as you have so rightfully pointed out. Some 3rd party BCD packages for C and C++ will support the native '87 code, but most just do it in software, which is not particularly quick. Unfortunately, I do not know off-hand for your readers which ones do support the 8087 BCD instructions. I considered doing this myself once-upon-a-time, but never got a round tuit. :-) Sincerely, William Boyle

While you and I don't know which onces support the 8087 BCD instructions, maybe someone else does. Please let us know. Also, you might look at the Dr. Dobb's interview with William Kahan who played a major role in the design of the 8087.

Now when was the last time you read anything about the Atari 800? I have to admit it has been a while, which makes me appreciate even more this letter from Paul Dubois:

I'm pretty sure the Atari 800 had decimal arithmetic in hardware. The reason I'm pretty sure is that it bit me. I was trying to learn to write a vertical-blank interrupt routine that recomputed the display and it seemed to work but every once in a while the screen would go nuts. I eventually tracked it down to having caught the interrupt some times with the FPU in decimal mode instead of binary, so all my calculations went nuts. If I saved the mode, put it into binary, and restored the mode before returning, all was well. I would be ashamed to admit how long it took me to discover this.

I had two disk drives, my own tape unit (!), and a modem that was probably no faster than smoke signals. I had cartidges with compilers for Basic and assembler. When the day came to throw it away, I had to ask my wife to do it; I just couldn't.
Paul Dubois
Contributing Editor
Computing in Science and Engineering

Paul went to provide a spec sheet on the from Oldcomputers.net that detailed the Atari 800.

Jonathan Wood's note deserves mention not for his first name, but because he rightly noticed my penchant for programming languages -- and he mentions once I hadn't run across:

I took a look at your site and noticed that you mention a lot about different types of programming languages. I would like to invite you to take a look at Aurora, which is a OOP style language. The Web URL is http://www.ionicwind.com. Paul, the creator of the language, has also released EBasic, which is a BASIC-style language. I was wondering if you would write up a review on either Aurora or EBasic or even both. Both development languages are alternatives to Microsoft's programming platform, and can run without any framework that Microsoft requires for there applications. Best regards, Jonathan Wood

Thanks Jonathan. I'm looking forward to playing around with both.

Then there was the note from Paul Clarke.

Hi Jon,
For all I know this could be the 6502nd comment you've received about your essay "Ada: Let's Hear for the Tried and Trusted," in which you report that the CPU used in a pacemaker is "the vertiable 6502." Before concluding that you had committed a simultaneous typo and malapropism I tried to learn whether "vertiable" is in fact a word. Every Google reference for "vertiable" that I examined looks like a typo for "veritable." I believe the intended word was "venerable," because lots of folks regard the 6502 as an elderly device worthy of love and respect.

Please forgive this trivial observation, but consider the possibility that for many people the 6502 is indeed venerable.
Best Regards,
Paul Clarke

Where's a good copy editor when I need one? But you're absolutely right Paul -- I meant "venerable" as in "the venerable editor goofs again." Consider me among the many people who find the 6502 venerable. (By the way, I did fix it.)

And as if that weren't enough, Jay Ballinger picked up on yet another of my goofs:

Hi Jon,
The title of your Pattern Language entry reads, "ISAS Revamps Web Site," but the association, which you reference correctly in your opening sentence, is titled, "IASA." Maybe we need a link to an international QA association? ;)
+jay

No Jay, what we need is a vacation. Thanks for pointing it out the error. It too has been fixed.

Thanks to you all, and keep those letters coming.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 03:51 PM  Permalink |

As was pointed out to me a long time ago, it doesn't take much to open a worm can -- particularly when it involves programming languages.

So if you recall my comments a while back regarding COBOL and the suggestion -- okay, I actually said it -- that "COBOL's main claim to fame is its distinction of possessing the only programming language whose standard defines handling of decimal currency".

It didn't take long to hear from people who actually knew what they were talking about. For instance, Mike Cowlishaw pointed out that PL/I and Rexx are ANSI Standards and both have decimal datatypes. Likewise, C# and VB.NET have standard decimal types.

More recently, Dennis Ludwig pointed out that Ada also has types that can be used for currency. And I don't think he's even seen -- and therefore had a chance to correct -- my recent posting on Ada.

What with all this, you'd think I'd have enough sense to keep my mouth shut. Ha! Then you don't know me that well.

So the programming language of the day today is a new release of Modula-2 -- make that Modula-3. (Come on now, when was the last time you read anything about Modula-whatever?) In any event, Elego Software Solutions has released its Critical Mass Modula-3 5.4.0. Modula-3 is a systems programming language that descends from Mesa, Modula-2, Cedar, and Modula-2+. The goal of Modula-3 is to be as simple and safe as it can be while meeting the needs of modern systems programmers. Modula-3 retains one of Modula-2's most successful features -- the provision for explicit interfaces between modules. It adds objects and classes, exception handling, garbage collection, lightweight processes (or threads), and the isolation of unsafe features.

And Modula-3 is open source and freely distributable.

This particular CM3 5.4.0 release contains several enhancements over previous versions:

• Updated code generator based on gcc 3.4.5
• use of generational/incremental garbage collection by default via compiler support
• System call wrappers not needed anymore for garbage collection support
• Support of system-level threading
• Updated m3gdb debugger

And the platforms that CM3 5.4.0 supports include: FreeBSD4, LINUXLIBC6, SOLgnu, PPC_DARWIN, and NetBSD2_i386.

Okay, it's your turn. The line forms back here.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 02:33 PM  Permalink |

Years ago, I was talking with engineers at a company that had just come out with a new pacemaker for hearts and I asked them what CPU they were using. The answer, of course, was a "duh" moment for me.

It turns out that the processor was the venerable 6502, used in Apple II era PCs and more recently embedded systems. With all the new technology available, why the 6502? The answer was as obvious as my "duh" -- because, they said, there are no surprises with the 6502. Everything that needs to be known about it is known, included the bugs. Would you really want a new, hot-shot CPU with unknown bugs making decisions for your pacemaker?

You could say the same about airplanes. Do you really want to fly on the first commercial airlines that operates under Windows Vista with code written in C#? Okay, that's a stretch, but you get the idea.

Which is why, of course, software for the first flight of the the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) aircraft was based on Ada and operating system on WindRivers RTOS. Both are known quantities.

The C-130's new avionics system features digital displays and the 737 commercial airliner's proven flight management system, which provide navigation, safety, and communication improvements to meet Communication Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) requirements. The U.S. Air Force initiated the C-130 AMP program to reduce the number of C-130 configurations in the fleet, including highly specialized versions in service with the Air Force Special Operations Command.

The C-130 AMP’s Mission Processor (MP) provides primary computing capability for the cockpit display generation, and extensive video processing, which supports the manipulation and distribution of new and legacy video sources to all aircraft displays. The U.S. Air Force initiated the C-130 AMP to standardize configurations, lower the cost of ownership, and increase survivability of its aging C-130 aircraft.

The MP’s infrastructure software is a combination of Wind River’s Platform for Safety Critical ARINC-653 real-time commercial operating system and development tools, AdaCore’s GNAT Pro Ada 95 compiler and development environment for PSC ARINC-653 (including GPS), and Smiths Aerospace’s infrastructure software. The Software Common Operating Environment (SCOE) delivery provides the C-130 AMP team with an ARINC-653 software partitioned operating system, as well as a full set of "partitioning aware" tools to support software development and debug for the PowerPC.

As part of the Smiths Aerospace contract, AdaCore ported the compiler, tools and run-time libraries to work with PSC ARINC-653. AdaCore also provided an Ada binding to the ARINC-653 APEX facilities for partitioned operating systems, as provided in PSC ARINC-653. New debugging modes were supported as well. The company developed an Ada run-time library certifiable to avionics safety standard DO-178B Level A, and worked with Verocel to develop certification evidence for it.

"The MP project is a perfect illustration of how mission-critical aerospace systems should be architected," said Robert Dewar, CEO of AdaCore. "Turnkey avionics configurations, like the SCOE, facilitate the integration of future upgrades and minimize the impact of obsolescence."

Yes, but what are the on-flight meals like? And is this what I'll be flying in on my upcoming trip to India?

Posted by Jon Erickson at 06:07 PM  Permalink |

Okay, I have my plane tickets for Dr. Dobb's SD Expo India. Let's see, first stop Chicago, then Frankfurt, and then on to Hyderabad.

Once there, the plans are to hook up with our speakers -- Scott Meyers, Hugh Thompson, Andrew Stellman, and Ken Pugh -- in Hyderabad for the first session on January 16.

The exciting news is that we'll also be joined by Jason Beres who will discuss agile approaches and enhanced user experiences, S.S. Ramakant who will discuss Distributed System Deployment under VS 2005 Team System, Naveen Gupta who will talk about SOA adoption, Abishek Mathur who'll cover the process of moving from merely tracking to actively managing projects in VSTS 2005.

From Hyderabad it is on to Chennai on January 17, and then to Bangalore for the January 19th session. While David Katch, who is organizing the whole shebang, has plans that involve me working (jeez, halfway around the world and I still can't get away from the boss), I have other ideas -- like getting a chance to meet some of you who I've communicated with over the years. I also hope to get a chance to ride scooters (yes, I'm a motorscooter/moped freak) around to see some of the cities. (I can charge that to my expense account, right boss?)

If you have any questions, let me know -- and I look forward to seeing you there.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:06 AM  Permalink |

So if you've been scratching your head over what to get that mathematician in your life for the holidays, well, your lucky number just came up. Look no further than "The Great Pi/e Debate", a 40-minute DVD produced by those cut-ups at the Mathematical Association of America.

In the debate, Williams College mathematicians Thomas Garrity and Colin Adams verbally duke it out over the issue of transcendence between the two transcendental numbers -- Euler's number "e," and "pi". (I'm laughing already.) In the process, they try to answer the question of which one of these is the better number. And when it comes to mathematicians, all's fair in addition and subtraction. (Look out Jerry and George.)

According to Adams, who received a B.S. from MIT and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "in teaching people about math it is important for them to feel it's exciting and alive." This is what Adams had in mind when he penned those scholarly tomes "The Knot Book: An Elementary Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots", "Why Knot"" and "How to Ace Calculus: A Streetwise Guide."

Likewise, Garrity, who received a B.A. and B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin and Ph.D. from Brown University, is the chair of the mathematics and statistics department at Williams, and author of "All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School."

The Great Pi/e Debate" can be ordered directly from the Mathematical Association's bookstore.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:43 AM  Permalink |

I admire really smart people who can explain complicated stuff in terms that I can understand. (Which includes, of course, everyone who writes articles for Dr. Dobb's Journal.)

Take Glenn Allen, for instance. Glenn is a research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space -- and if that doesn't qualify you as being a smart guy, I don't know what does. Glenn is also a team member of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched by the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999, and which is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. Chandra is designed to observe X-rays from high-energy regions of the universe, such as the remnants of exploded stars.

One of the recent accomplishments of astronomers, thanks to Chandra, was to map the rate of acceleration of cosmic ray electrons in a supernova remnant. The new map shows that the electrons are being accelerated at close to the theoretically maximum rate. This discovery provides evidence that supernova remnants are key sites for energizing charged particles. The map was created from an image of Cassiopeia A, a 325-year-old remnant produced by the explosive death of a massive star. The blue, wispy arcs in the image trace the expanding outer shock wave where the acceleration takes place. The other colors in the image show debris from the explosion that has been heated to millions of degrees.

Okay, I admit that I didn't understand that at all -- at least until Glenn explained it. "The electrons pick up speed each time they bounce across the shock front, like they're in a relativistic pinball machine," Glenn explained. "The magnetic fields are like the bumpers, and the shock is like a flipper."

Ah, pinball I can understand. Thanks Glenn. Bumpers, flippers, and loud bada-bings are what I grew up with. And I'd be somewhere down the line, Glenn tilted a machine a time or two as well.

Here's a bit of trivia about Chandra: It's operating system is written in C++, and its architecture was built around C++ There are numerous papers that discuss software elements in Chandra, such as those at the Chandra X-Ray Center. The paper Elements of The Chandra Data Analysis System, by M. S. Noble of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics, provides some details on Chandra innards, and the C++ parts make more sense to me than the astrophysics stuff.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:16 PM  Permalink |

How come mathematicians have all the fun? It just doesn't add up. Maybe serious mathematicians are more focused than the rest of us. After all, I have to divide my time between work and work, and occasionally work and play. Still, you'd think it would equal out from time to time.

Take Dmitry Vaintrob of Eugene, Oregon, for instance. Although only a senior in high school, think of the fun Dmitry can have with the $100,000 he got for winning the 2006-07 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for his work in string topology. His project, entitled "The string topology BV algebra, Hochschild cohomology and the Goldman bracket on surfaces" focuses on mathematical shapes.

"Mr. Vaintrob found a very beautiful formula for describing the way shapes combine in string theory," said competition judge Dr. Michael Hopkins, Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University. "His work is at the PhD level, publishable and already attracting the attention of researchers." Hopkins added that "It was an insanely difficult problem, which he solved within weeks and then came up with an important additional development."

Mathematics isn't the only fun thing that Dmitry does, however. He's the organizer of his school's math club, a pianist, and is fluent in Russian, French and English.

In the same competition, Scott Molony, Steven Arcangeli, and Scott Horton, seniors at Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, won the $100,000 prize in the team category, for their project "Linking Supercomputing and Systems Biology for Efficient Bioethanol Production."

"This team used supercomputers to analyze biological networks, looking at tens of thousands of genes and their biological pathways to discover clues for engineering direct biofuel production by microorganisms," said competition judge Dr. Gary Benson, Associate Professor at Boston University. "Through a real team effort and a sophisticated,
interdisciplinary approach, they developed a promising method that takes us a step closer to engineering biofuel."

In related mathematical news, Jerry McNerney, a Ph.D. mathematician from Pleasanton, California, won election to the U.S. Congress representing California's 11th district. Congressman-elect McNerney received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of New Mexico in 1981. With someone who can really add, subtract, multiple, and divide, maybe Congress can get around to balancing its budget. That will be fun.

Finally, according to the BBC, Dr. James Anderson, a member of the University of Reading's Computer Science Department, has come up with a theorem that solves an extremely important problem -- the problem of nothing. (Sounds a little like an episode out of "Seinfeld", right?.)

Anderson's theory of nullity proposes a new number -- "nullity" -- which sits outside the conventional number line.

"Imagine you're landing on an aeroplane and the automatic pilot's working," he suggests. "If it divides by zero and the computer stops working -- you're in big trouble. If your heart pacemaker divides by zero, you're dead."

In the meantime, you can imagine the fun I'm going to have explaining nullity to my bank when I explain to the teller why my account is overdrawn. It's not my fault that they don't know about nothing.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:19 AM  Permalink |

All of us here at Dr. Dobb's offer our heartfelt condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of James Kim, the CNET Senior Editor who lost his life in the mountains of southern Oregon this week.

James was an expert on MP3 players and other consumer devices and had built up a loyal following among CNET readers and TechTV viewers. While I didn't know James personally, I knew and respected his work. And I know that James will be missed by people who had never heard of him before this week. Those of us who live in this part of Oregon and watched the search efforts with rising concern, and then learned of James' heroic efforts to safeguard his family, will mourn his passing.

The family has requested that no flowers or donations be sent at present and that family members not be contacted. CNET will release details when the family has decided how they want James to be remembered.

-- Michael Swaine

Posted by Mike Swaine at 03:25 PM  Permalink |

Maybe I'm just not as ambitious as I used to be -- or, according to the boss, as I should be. After all, while I've been looking forward to a getting a Playstation 3, engineers at IBM and ASTRON (an astronomy research organization) will be researching the origins of the universe.

Working collaboratively, engineers will work in IBM's Burlington, Vermont, facility to design, engineer, and manufacture customized high-performance analog and mixed-signal processing chips. The high-performance, low-power chips will be used as part of ASTRON's project to build a prototype radio telescope called SKADS/EMBRACE, a precursor to the world’s largest radio astronomy telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope. This telescope will have millions of antennas collecting radio signals, forming the equivalent of a 1 sq Km collecting area, and spread 3000 Kms -- about the size of the continental United States. The goal of the SKA radio telescope is to peer deep into space and look at evolving galaxies, dark matter and perhaps even the very origins of the universe –- dating back more than 13 billion years.

The Netherlands, France, Italy, and Germany are involved in the design and development of SKADS/EMBRACE antenna tiles; additional countries which are or will be involved in the engineering and scientific testing of the SKADS/EMBRACE demonstrator.

"A large project such as SKA also requires a close collaboration with major industrial companies such as IBM and with their commitment to this project, they will contribute significantly to a successful outcome," said Dr. Marco de Vos, ASTRON Research and Development Director.

The customized chips will feature very low-power consumption, low-noise production based on IBM’s SiGe 8HP technology having an FT (typical peak frequency) of more than 200 GHz, and 0.13 micron design rules. The initial idea for the chip has been agreed upon. It will be a Silicon Germanium (SiGe) technology which combines analog radio frequency (RF) circuits onto the chip -- which can produce low-noise, low-power consumption and result in a lower cost per unit. The first chip design and prototypes delivery is targeted for the first half of 2007. The chips will be deployed in pilot antenna tiles to filter useful information from the radio signals. The SKADS/EMBRACE antenna tiles will be deployed in the North of The Netherlands at the site of the famous Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope (WSRT) and in France near Nançay, South of Paris.

Decisions on the final location for the SKA radio astronomy telescope are still to be finalized. Australia and South Africa are the two remaining location options, capable of installing the millions of antennas required for receiving the very weak signals from the universe.

And to think I was impressed by the Cell processor IBM helped develop for the Playstation 3.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:49 AM  Permalink |

In one of those "darn, I wish I'd thought of that" moments, I stumbled across Bytemobile. But as it turns out the Bytemobile isn't a mobile vehicle at all, but a company that provides optimized Internet protocol (IP) services for mobile data networks.

From what I can tell, the closest Bytemobile comes to having anything to do with vehicles is with its "Toll Gate" software, which in turn doesn't seem to have anything to do with toll gates on bridges or turnpikes. Rather Bytemobile's Toll Gate applications provide a means for charging for content in wireless IP networks. Founded by two professors of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bytemobile has four research and development centers -- at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois; Mountain View, California; Marlborough, Massachusetts; and Patras, Greece

Technology aside, I can't help but think that Bytemobile is missing a real marketing opportunity, what with its "Bytemobile" moniker. I can see it now -- a computer with wheels (a "portable computer"?). A steering wheel instead of a keyboard. A monitor instead of windshield. The computer equivalent of Oscar Meyer's "WienerMobile".

Of course, Dr. Dobb's isn't without its own official vehicle -- the DobbsMobile. Al Stevens is on the road piloting the DobbsMobile less now than he used to, but he still hits the road occasionally, with Dexter as his co-pilot.

To find out more about Al's DobbsMobile adventures, check out:

• I Almost Get a Linux Editor and Compiler
• You've Come a Long Way, Baby
• Road Rage = Editors + Drivers
• It's Good Work When You Can Find It

And other Al Stevens classics.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:06 AM  Permalink |

Thanks to an article in BusinessWeek, I now know more about LEGOs than I ever thought I would -- including that LEGOs beat out Barbie dolls for "toy of the century."

The attraction of LEGOs seems two-fold: They're simple and they instantly spark the imagination. Plus the colors. The colors of the bricks are very bright. Oh, and they're interchangable. LEGO bricks from, say, my childhood days work with my kid's LEGO bricks. Maybe I'll leave them to him in my will, although I suspect he has something else in mind. (So that's four-fold, but who's counting.)

Of course, what brought LEGOs to the forefront, at least from a technological perspective, was the introduction a few years ago of LEGOs MindStorm Robotic Kits. I was an early adopter of the kit, and built lots of little robots -- until I saw robots built by a 10-year old kid down the block that would chew up and spit out my 'bots. In the end, I sold my kit on eBay. (So does that make me a Web 2.0 kind of guy?)

If you want to get a feel for what I mean and happen to be in Pittsburg PA the weekend of December 2, 2006, drop by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Academy which is hosting the FIRST LEGO League NanoQuest Challenge. Designed for students between the ages of 9 and 14 (see, what did I tell you?), the event invovles LEGO robots, designed and built by 70 teams of young roboticists who will mix it up on a nano-themed game board. Each 10-member team has spent eight weeks performing research and programming its own LEGO MindStorms robot for the competition, which this year is exploring applications of nanotechnology. Teams are judged for: project presentation, robot performance, technical design, and robot programming. The winner of this competition will compete in the FIRST LEGO League World Festival April 12-14, 2007 in Atlanta.

The students are among 80,000 participating worldwide in the eighth annual competition, sponsored by the not-for-profit organization known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Founded by Segway-inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST inspires young people's interest and participation in science and technology. In Pittsburgh, the FIRST competition is hosted by the Robotics Academy, an educational component of CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:50 AM  Permalink |