So what is this GPS technology and how does it work?
The GPS (Global Positioning System) is a group of 24 well-spaced satellites that orbit the Earth and make it possible for people with ground receivers to pinpoint their geographic location. The location accuracy is anywhere from 100 to 10 meters for most equipment. Accuracy can be pinpointed to within one (1) meter with special military-approved equipment. GPS equipment is widely used in science and has now become sufficiently low-cost so that almost anyone can own a GPS receiver.
l The GPS is owned and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense but is available for general use around the world. Briefly, here's how it works:
l 21 GPS satellites and three spare satellites are in orbit at 10,600 miles above the Earth. The satellites are spaced so that from any point on Earth, four satellites will be above the horizon.
l Each satellite contains a computer, an atomic clock, and a radio. With an understanding of its own orbit and the clock, it continually broadcasts its changing position and time. (Once a day, each satellite checks its own sense of time and position with a ground station and makes any minor correction.)
l On the ground, any GPS receiver contains a computer that "triangulates" its own position by getting bearings from three of the four satellites. The result is provided in the form of a geographic position - longitude and latitude - to, for most receivers, within 100 meters. The more satellites that are used the higher the accuracy.
l If the receiver is also equipped with a display screen that shows a map, the position can be shown on the map using software.
l If a fourth satellite can be received, the receiver/computer can figure out the altitude as well as the geographic position.
lIf you are moving, your receiver may also be able to calculate your speed and direction of travel.
The GPS is being used in science to provide data that has never been available before in the quantity and degree of accuracy that the GPS makes possible. Scientists are using the GPS to measure the movement of the arctic ice sheets, the Earth's tectonic plates, and volcanic activity.
Not a bad technology at all.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Thursday, May 3, 2007
#62 - Big Brother in the Sky
Ah the power of the GPS! Since the technology of Global Positioning System (GPS) have shrunk to one chip, those chips have been ending up everywhere. We first saw them in General Motors Cars - The famous OnStar system uses GPS to locate where your car is. GPS chips are also in some cellular telephones and even watches that you can give your kids. Many companies are giving their employees cell phones that feed back to a company web site where the employees are.Now the city of New York is proposing to put GPS in all 13,000 city taxicabs. Of course the cabbies aren't real impressed. A manager could see where they take their breaks, when they take their breaks and the paths they use to deliver a client to his destination. The New York Fire Department is working with the Department of the Navy to develop a super GPS chip that can be placed on each of their fireman and in every fire department vehicle. The 9/11 tragedies of lost firemen have led to that effort.
We love our Garmin GPS that we use in the car. It is a one way GPS in that it can only receive signals not send them. So I can run around the Alleghany Highlands without being tracked. However I'm not sure whether my cell phone has a GPS so that may not be true. Police who use a cell phone's GPS to track a 911 caller can attest to its positive attributes. I haven't seen a criminal case where a perpetrator is tracked by his cell phone or car. But you know it will happen. To my knowledge there aren't any laws on the books yet regulating GPS usage.
So how soon will it be before we are all trackable? And will we allow the tracking to be legal? You can get an awful lot of personal information by knowing where a person is all the time. Big Brother is already watching some of the time.
Tomorrow we'll look at the technology behind GPS.
We love our Garmin GPS that we use in the car. It is a one way GPS in that it can only receive signals not send them. So I can run around the Alleghany Highlands without being tracked. However I'm not sure whether my cell phone has a GPS so that may not be true. Police who use a cell phone's GPS to track a 911 caller can attest to its positive attributes. I haven't seen a criminal case where a perpetrator is tracked by his cell phone or car. But you know it will happen. To my knowledge there aren't any laws on the books yet regulating GPS usage.
So how soon will it be before we are all trackable? And will we allow the tracking to be legal? You can get an awful lot of personal information by knowing where a person is all the time. Big Brother is already watching some of the time.
Tomorrow we'll look at the technology behind GPS.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
#61 - Is that really you?
On July 3, 1977, an event took place that would forever alter the landscape of modern medicine. This event was the first MRI exam ever performed on a human being. The first MRI took 5 hours to complete. Magnetic Resonance Imaging is one of the great technology advances of the 20th century.
If you have ever seen an MRI machine, you know that the basic design used in most is a giant cube. The cube in a typical system might be 7 feet tall by 7 feet wide by 10 feet long, although new models are rapidly shrinking. The tall section contains the magnet. There is a horizontal tube running through the magnet from front to back. This tube is known as the bore of the magnet. The patient, lying on his or her back, slides into the bore on a special table. Whether or not the patient goes in head first or feet first, as well as how far in the magnet they will go, is determined by the type of exam to be performed. MRI scanners vary in size and shape, and newer models have some degree of openness around the sides, but the basic design is the same. Once the body part to be scanned is in the exact center or isocenter of the magnetic field, the scan can begin.
In conjunction with radio wave pulses of energy, the MRI scanner can pick out a very small point inside the patient's body and ask it, essentially, "What type of tissue are you?" The point might be a cube that is half a millimeter on each side. The MRI system goes through the patient's body point by point, building up a 2-D or 3-D map of tissue types. It then integrates all of this information together to create 2-D images or 3-D models.
The MRI provides an unparalleled view inside the human body. The level of detail we can see is extraordinary. MRI is the method of choice for the diagnosis of many types of injuries and conditions because of the incredible ability to tailor the exam to the particular medical question being asked. By changing exam parameters, the MRI system can cause tissues in the body to take on different appearances. This is very helpful to the radiologist in determining if something seen is normal or not. We know that when we do "A," normal tissue will look like "B" - if it doesn't, there might be an abnormality. MRI systems can also image flowing blood in virtually any part of the body. This allows us to perform studies that show the arterial system in the body, but not the tissue around it.
Supporting the MRI technology is the PC that is integrated into the system. Processing images and handling all the data is a PC at the MRI's core. Without the PC the MRI data would be too complex to give any meaning.
If you have ever seen an MRI machine, you know that the basic design used in most is a giant cube. The cube in a typical system might be 7 feet tall by 7 feet wide by 10 feet long, although new models are rapidly shrinking. The tall section contains the magnet. There is a horizontal tube running through the magnet from front to back. This tube is known as the bore of the magnet. The patient, lying on his or her back, slides into the bore on a special table. Whether or not the patient goes in head first or feet first, as well as how far in the magnet they will go, is determined by the type of exam to be performed. MRI scanners vary in size and shape, and newer models have some degree of openness around the sides, but the basic design is the same. Once the body part to be scanned is in the exact center or isocenter of the magnetic field, the scan can begin.
In conjunction with radio wave pulses of energy, the MRI scanner can pick out a very small point inside the patient's body and ask it, essentially, "What type of tissue are you?" The point might be a cube that is half a millimeter on each side. The MRI system goes through the patient's body point by point, building up a 2-D or 3-D map of tissue types. It then integrates all of this information together to create 2-D images or 3-D models.
The MRI provides an unparalleled view inside the human body. The level of detail we can see is extraordinary. MRI is the method of choice for the diagnosis of many types of injuries and conditions because of the incredible ability to tailor the exam to the particular medical question being asked. By changing exam parameters, the MRI system can cause tissues in the body to take on different appearances. This is very helpful to the radiologist in determining if something seen is normal or not. We know that when we do "A," normal tissue will look like "B" - if it doesn't, there might be an abnormality. MRI systems can also image flowing blood in virtually any part of the body. This allows us to perform studies that show the arterial system in the body, but not the tissue around it.
Supporting the MRI technology is the PC that is integrated into the system. Processing images and handling all the data is a PC at the MRI's core. Without the PC the MRI data would be too complex to give any meaning.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
#60 - May Day
May 1st is May day. Its the day all the world (except the US, of course) celebrates labor day. May poles are feted in Europe. Everyone has the day off in Central America. Its also Principal appreciation day, so that makes it real important to me. Now what does this have to do with technology? Well, technology is supposed to make our jobs easier. Has it?
I have mentioned in a previous blog that PCs essentially were invented to support spreadsheet software. So certainly every accountant worth their salt will tell you that PCs have helped them to be more efficient. The Internet has brought so much information into our homes and offices. Searches that really couldn't have been done with out tremendous effort now take a few keystrokes and a click. I heard that a friends brother-in-law had passed away recently out of town. It only took 2 minutes and I had the obituary with funeral home and pertinent information up on my PC. I can't imagine how many phone calls it would have taken pre Internet.
The GPS system in my car certainly makes it easier to find new customers. That saves time and gasoline. Many of us would not even be reading this if it weren't for medical technology. The average life span has increased almost 7 years over the past 40 years. Most of the advances have to do with technology improvements to medications and diagnostic tools. We'll be sure to do several blogs on medical technology in the future.
The average office worker should be more productive with new office technology. The copiers are faster, the software more powerful, the printers now have great color graphics. I could go on and on about how the Internet helps most office workers. We certainly are becoming more of a service economy (versus manufacturing) due to technology advances (and our atrocious foreign trade policies).
So celebrate May day by hugging your PC. I think I'll hug my Principal...
I have mentioned in a previous blog that PCs essentially were invented to support spreadsheet software. So certainly every accountant worth their salt will tell you that PCs have helped them to be more efficient. The Internet has brought so much information into our homes and offices. Searches that really couldn't have been done with out tremendous effort now take a few keystrokes and a click. I heard that a friends brother-in-law had passed away recently out of town. It only took 2 minutes and I had the obituary with funeral home and pertinent information up on my PC. I can't imagine how many phone calls it would have taken pre Internet.
The GPS system in my car certainly makes it easier to find new customers. That saves time and gasoline. Many of us would not even be reading this if it weren't for medical technology. The average life span has increased almost 7 years over the past 40 years. Most of the advances have to do with technology improvements to medications and diagnostic tools. We'll be sure to do several blogs on medical technology in the future.
The average office worker should be more productive with new office technology. The copiers are faster, the software more powerful, the printers now have great color graphics. I could go on and on about how the Internet helps most office workers. We certainly are becoming more of a service economy (versus manufacturing) due to technology advances (and our atrocious foreign trade policies).
So celebrate May day by hugging your PC. I think I'll hug my Principal...
Sunday, April 29, 2007
#59 - Paperless Books
I was discussing college costs with an aggrieved parent the other day. After the usual, "Wow isn't college expensive", discussion we moved on to "Why do text books cost so much". I asked the question, 'Why aren't all text books on line?" Plenty of storage on the Internet to hold these books that have very little value other then in taking a class. Very few text books are worth being long term reference books. You would either pay a fee associated with the course or buy access rights to the book online. All the information would be online and if you really needed a hard copy of a couple pages, that is what a printer is for. Its not like you couldn't take the book to a copier now so I don't see the difference in copyright protection.
In our discussion, the point came up of security. The fear of the book publisher is that students would share names and passwords to save money. What really needs to happen with the Internet, is that there is no more anonymous access to the web. That's the big problem with spammers and pornographers. They can get on the web anonymously and cause all kinds of havoc. Using an identity method such as finger print or retinal scanning could be used to identify the individual.
I-books (my coin of phrase) would be less expensive and a boon to the environment. Less trees, bleaching and ink chemistry is good for the world. I think text books would be an ideal start to ridding us of another worthless college expense. What do you think? Just click the orange comment word below and let me know.
In our discussion, the point came up of security. The fear of the book publisher is that students would share names and passwords to save money. What really needs to happen with the Internet, is that there is no more anonymous access to the web. That's the big problem with spammers and pornographers. They can get on the web anonymously and cause all kinds of havoc. Using an identity method such as finger print or retinal scanning could be used to identify the individual.
I-books (my coin of phrase) would be less expensive and a boon to the environment. Less trees, bleaching and ink chemistry is good for the world. I think text books would be an ideal start to ridding us of another worthless college expense. What do you think? Just click the orange comment word below and let me know.
Friday, April 27, 2007
#58 - Rain and Travel
Just a quick update today. Raining on a Friday, what's new about that? I'm off to a meeting in Blacksburg, so no big blog today. Hope to take in the memorials and sense of the campus before finals begin. I'll be back with a blog on Sunday night!
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
#57 - Does anyone really program anymore?
I first saw a computer in the fall of 1972. It was an IBM 360/370 at Virginia Tech. It took up a room and only could be communicated with by using punch cards (IBM cards!). You had start the cards off by learning JCL (Job Control Language). Then you could actually program the beast to do something using Fortran (number cruncher)or Cobol(data cruncher) programming languages
Engineers learned Fortran (actually Fortran IV/Watfiv). Business types did Cobol. The original PCs from Apple and IBM had a language called BASIC that you could use to program them. Basic language was a subset of Fortran so wasn't too hard to pick up. I loved programing in Basic and wrote all kinds of game and database programs. I remember being asked to help our church at an auction. I whipped out a Basic program to keep track of what items we had to auction. Who won them and how much they owed. This was done on my Apple IIe that I dragged to the church with my Sony TV monitor. This would have been an early data base program, but customized to the auction.
With the advents of Windows, programming languages were developed to handle the graphic nature of the new operating systems. Visual Basic and C++ were developed to support graphic operating systems and became standards of the computer industry. Neither is very intuitive or easy to pick up. You have to have a computer bent to pursue either. The languages of the Internet are Java and HTML. Java was developed by Sun Microsystems to move TV type applications to the PC via a network. HTML is the graphic language that sits behind every web page.
So in 2007 the only people programming are those trained to program. I've heard of people teaching themselves C++, but JAVA is something completely different. Out of the blue the other day, I decided I wanted to write a program for the first time in a decade. What I first discovered was that there was no programming language on my PC. So I go to the Internet and find a free language Fortran95. Its the successor to the Fortran I grew up with, but has lots of hooks for Graphics so that the program can look good in Windows or on a MAC.
I'll let you know how my experiment goes.
Engineers learned Fortran (actually Fortran IV/Watfiv). Business types did Cobol. The original PCs from Apple and IBM had a language called BASIC that you could use to program them. Basic language was a subset of Fortran so wasn't too hard to pick up. I loved programing in Basic and wrote all kinds of game and database programs. I remember being asked to help our church at an auction. I whipped out a Basic program to keep track of what items we had to auction. Who won them and how much they owed. This was done on my Apple IIe that I dragged to the church with my Sony TV monitor. This would have been an early data base program, but customized to the auction.
With the advents of Windows, programming languages were developed to handle the graphic nature of the new operating systems. Visual Basic and C++ were developed to support graphic operating systems and became standards of the computer industry. Neither is very intuitive or easy to pick up. You have to have a computer bent to pursue either. The languages of the Internet are Java and HTML. Java was developed by Sun Microsystems to move TV type applications to the PC via a network. HTML is the graphic language that sits behind every web page.
So in 2007 the only people programming are those trained to program. I've heard of people teaching themselves C++, but JAVA is something completely different. Out of the blue the other day, I decided I wanted to write a program for the first time in a decade. What I first discovered was that there was no programming language on my PC. So I go to the Internet and find a free language Fortran95. Its the successor to the Fortran I grew up with, but has lots of hooks for Graphics so that the program can look good in Windows or on a MAC.
I'll let you know how my experiment goes.
Monday, April 23, 2007
#56 - Security Technology
Making the world a more secure place has become more of a priority for many administrators and business owners. There are bad people out there and technology can help you protect what you value.
One of the biggest improvements in security is IP cameras. IP cameras take their images and record them on hard disks in a PC. Running security camera feeds through computers allows for unlimited options of problem identification. There are programs that can zoom in on a persons face and match it with a large data base of criminals. Also you can store longer amounts of data to review days after an incident. Security cameras are one of crime fighters best tools.
There are several methods of personal identification that can be used to access equipment or be used for building access control. Finger print identification is the one fatherest along. I have a finger print reader on my new Lenovo laptop. Just pull your finger over the sensor and you are in. No passwords required. The technology certainly has come a long way, but its still not quite there. It usually takes me an average of 2 swipes before the computer gets it right. Another technology that is still cost prohibitive is retinal imaging. A scanner reads the unique image of your retina and matching it with a data base. I've seen it in person twice and it seemed to work pretty good. I'm just fussy about my eyes. Access security needs to be quick and hard to penetrate. I'm sure one of these technologies will meet that bill soon.
One of the biggest improvements in security is IP cameras. IP cameras take their images and record them on hard disks in a PC. Running security camera feeds through computers allows for unlimited options of problem identification. There are programs that can zoom in on a persons face and match it with a large data base of criminals. Also you can store longer amounts of data to review days after an incident. Security cameras are one of crime fighters best tools.
There are several methods of personal identification that can be used to access equipment or be used for building access control. Finger print identification is the one fatherest along. I have a finger print reader on my new Lenovo laptop. Just pull your finger over the sensor and you are in. No passwords required. The technology certainly has come a long way, but its still not quite there. It usually takes me an average of 2 swipes before the computer gets it right. Another technology that is still cost prohibitive is retinal imaging. A scanner reads the unique image of your retina and matching it with a data base. I've seen it in person twice and it seemed to work pretty good. I'm just fussy about my eyes. Access security needs to be quick and hard to penetrate. I'm sure one of these technologies will meet that bill soon.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
#55 - Another reason to dislike Microsoft
Today I had at least 5 different customers with Internet Explorer problems. The problem was they all used msn.com as their home page. msn.com added a new Microsoft ad on their site that requires Adobe Flash Player 9 add in program. If you don't have the version of the add in program the site freezes and gives an error. So many couldn't go anywhere on the Internet. The stupid Microsoft ad was for Office 2007. Now that made me laugh.
Not a laughing matter is how to fix this issue. If you have the google toolbar on your IE you can type in Adobe Flash Player 9 Download. And then download and install the fix. If you don't want the fix you can change your home page to something less obnoxious like google.com or yahoo.com. Click Start, Control Panel then Internet Options. Type in google.com or yahoo.com into the Home Page block. Viola no more errors.
So all this to do over a stupid Microsoft ad on the msn home page. Makes you wonder if someone fell asleep at the Microsoft wheel. Sometimes the people at Microsoft make some crazy assumptions. Like everyone has the latest software and greatest hardware. Just like they do! I hate to tell them every time I work on a customer happy with Windows 98 and their Pentium II processor. Now there is a horror story...
Not a laughing matter is how to fix this issue. If you have the google toolbar on your IE you can type in Adobe Flash Player 9 Download. And then download and install the fix. If you don't want the fix you can change your home page to something less obnoxious like google.com or yahoo.com. Click Start, Control Panel then Internet Options. Type in google.com or yahoo.com into the Home Page block. Viola no more errors.
So all this to do over a stupid Microsoft ad on the msn home page. Makes you wonder if someone fell asleep at the Microsoft wheel. Sometimes the people at Microsoft make some crazy assumptions. Like everyone has the latest software and greatest hardware. Just like they do! I hate to tell them every time I work on a customer happy with Windows 98 and their Pentium II processor. Now there is a horror story...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
#54 - Internet of the future 2
When last we talked about technical issues the Internet and its future was the topic. Let's continue on that path today. One of the driving forces of changing the Internet as we know it is the situation that we are running out of Internet addresses. Known as the IP (Internet Protocol) address, this is the 4 digit number that uniquely identifies everyone on the Internet.
For example Google's IP address is 64.233.187.99. You can take those four number with periods and put them into a web browser and Viola you are at Google.com. Of course remembering www.google.com is alot easier! The Internet translates your www info to the correct IP address and you get to where you are going. The problem with our current IP address system (known as IPv4) is that it is limited to about 4 billion addresses. With the advent of cell phones and PDA's getting on the Internet and with everyone having a blog or web page or my space page, we are running out of addresses.
A new IP protocol (known as IPv6) has been developed and is being implemented as we speak. This address scheme will allow 3.4×10^38 unique addresses (that's alot of addresses). Unfortunately the change to the protocol requires just about everything that underpins the Internet to change. Suffice to say, Change isn't easy. IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits. For example; 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334 is a valid IPv6 address. That has to be understood by all the software and hardware running the Internet. So the gurus of the Internet are now implementing the changes that will move us down this path.
The US government has funded the change to take place in 2008 at its Internet backbone facilities. Tons of public funds (think $Billions) are going into this enterprise. Hopefully much of it will be done without us noticing. But with any change, you can plan on the unexpected.
On another front, the US is sponsoring a completely new Internet built from scratch that will parallel and then completely absorb the Internet as we know it. Research is going on at Stanford and several other universities to define how the "clean from scratch" Internet will look and feel. Your tax dollars at work!
For example Google's IP address is 64.233.187.99. You can take those four number with periods and put them into a web browser and Viola you are at Google.com. Of course remembering www.google.com is alot easier! The Internet translates your www info to the correct IP address and you get to where you are going. The problem with our current IP address system (known as IPv4) is that it is limited to about 4 billion addresses. With the advent of cell phones and PDA's getting on the Internet and with everyone having a blog or web page or my space page, we are running out of addresses.
A new IP protocol (known as IPv6) has been developed and is being implemented as we speak. This address scheme will allow 3.4×10^38 unique addresses (that's alot of addresses). Unfortunately the change to the protocol requires just about everything that underpins the Internet to change. Suffice to say, Change isn't easy. IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits. For example; 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334 is a valid IPv6 address. That has to be understood by all the software and hardware running the Internet. So the gurus of the Internet are now implementing the changes that will move us down this path.
The US government has funded the change to take place in 2008 at its Internet backbone facilities. Tons of public funds (think $Billions) are going into this enterprise. Hopefully much of it will be done without us noticing. But with any change, you can plan on the unexpected.
On another front, the US is sponsoring a completely new Internet built from scratch that will parallel and then completely absorb the Internet as we know it. Research is going on at Stanford and several other universities to define how the "clean from scratch" Internet will look and feel. Your tax dollars at work!
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