HDDs, Multi-Core and Robots, Oh My!
The December 2006 issue of IEEE Computer Magazine is a treasure-trove of follow-ups on topics recently covered by myself and my peers in our blogs. 'Working Today on Tomorrow's Storage Technology' (PDF) tackles the latest advancements in both magnetic and optical storage per Ron Wilson's IDEMA seminar post-mortem report. Beginning on page 26 is a multi-article series on unmanned vehicles which appends to my recent robotics coverage. You can add the article 'Speculative Parallelization' to the multi-core further reading list I offered last week. And, just as my three-day ago update on the AACS cracking controversy discussed the impact of electronic distribution (legal and illegal) on the movie industry, David Alan Grier's 'Songs of Comfort and Joy' takes a unique tack at explaining why the record labels ignored, at their peril, the inevitability of Internet-distributed music.
While I'm plugging IEEE publications, I should also mention the July-September 2006 issue of IEEE Multimedia. At the August, 2005 SIGGRAPH show, I test-drove some quite impressive haptic user interface demonstrations wherein not only my eyes and ears, but also my touch sense, were stimulated by virtual reality-rendered data….rowing a virtual 'boat', for example, with my 'oars' experiencing realistic-feeling resistance from the 'water' below. Smell and taste weren't included in the presentations, but my sixth sense (the brain) was certainly engaged! The above-referenced issue contains a series of articles on haptic user interfaces, led off by this introduction (PDF). Lawnmower Man, anyone?
