rahul's blog

Talent Level Asian

2012-01-30T05:08:00.000-08:00

And I'm back. Just for a while..

2012-01-30T05:07:00.001-08:00

The Advanced City Explorer

2011-02-21T00:31:00.001-08:00

youtube video test

2010-06-18T02:10:00.001-07:00

here i want to put a video

Break down and analyse popular media to a level never known before

2009-07-20T01:27:00.000-07:00

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

Damn you Obama!

2009-06-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

Wainy days. Very cool videos

2008-11-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

damn whales

2008-11-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

chek this shit out.
Woman swims with fatass whale and kid whale

Now this will shut those tree hugger up!

2008-10-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

SSC is coming out with a new hybrid supercar (lol toyota) that features a breakthrough drive train that will- get this - require charging only every couple of years. You might literally forget where the refilling station is.

Now you can easily pass this off as fluff, especially because this manufacturer is not known in the mainstream, but they make good supercars from 1337 engineering skillz.
Whether they come out with a car that actually does exactly what they say it would, doesn't concern me too much.
The fact that a company that has been so stubbornly private-owned, has opened itself up to very selective exterior capital funding just so that it could come up with this drivetrain and put itself on the line just for this car makes it all that much more probable.

Really, if they fail at making this drive train, or just don't attempt to make it, they're going to disappear either way

Time to rewatch Aliens 2 and The terminator series

2008-09-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

The sensitivity to strength switch is just stunning.
Scalability, upgradeability is stunning.

Remember T9? that was so pre-touchscreen

2008-09-19T05:51:00.000-07:00

Inventor of T9 comes up with new text input method. - The main itch in smaller devices.
Here is a feature list.

here is IBM's research on the same

Expanding:

The following factors make shape writing particularly powerful.

Efficiency: Rather than articulating one letter at a time (longhand), shape writing allows the user to write word level sokgraphs a form of shorthand.

Human sensitivity to geometric patterns: A person’s ability to recognize, memorize and draw patterns is remarkable. Shape writing capitalizes on this remarkable human capability. Drawing patterns with a stylus is fluid, dexterous and fun.

Intelligent pattern recognition: ShapeWriter is "intelligent". The number of legitimate words (ranging from thousands to tens of thousands in a lexicon) is only a fraction of the number of all letter permutations (tens of millions). ShapeWriter takes advantage of the regularities of words formation and recognizes user's ink trace on keyboard with maximum flexibility and error tolerance. An intended word can still be recognized although irrelevant letters between intended letters are crossed or even if some of the letters in a word are missed in the stylus trace.

Ease of learning: Shape writing bridges initial ease of use with eventual high performance by embedding learning in use. In psychology terms, for initial ease of use, the user interface needs to be recognition-based – action by visual guidance. To reach high performance, however, the user interface should support recall-based skills. In shape writing, these two modes are gradually connected. One shifts from recognition to recall over time. The graphical keyboard serves as a visual map and a training wheel from careful visual tracing towards a fluid form of shorthand writing.

Ease of error correction: Underneath each word in ShapeWriter's text stream editor is a list of probable alternative words that can be selected with one additional pen stroke. One can also delete or insert words anywhere in the text stream editor.

Work put into f1

2008-09-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

better with videos i say:

When onboard video technology was still in its infancy: Senna at monaco. Makes for a more immersive view of speed.

Introduction to F1 development

GearBox: Bar Honda!

Materials:

Overview:

Driver Controller:

Braking:

Accelaration w/o traction control: lame but thought i'd put it anyway

Aerodynamics: Bmw's supercomputer

Just because its cool: Static engine test.

Automatic Transmission in F1

Telemarketers!

2008-08-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

Its hard to come up with ways to deal with telemarketers. It takes a lot more creative dedication to make fun of this sorry lot. But one man, has taken it upon himself to mess with these genetic retards!
I've seen many prank calls on telemarketers, i've seen many pranksters fail. But Tom Mabe manages to pull it off. Very well indeed.
Tom Mabe is awesome
Tom Mabe is super Awesomer
Tom Mabe - Another stinker

Indy Jonesy and The crystal balls.

2008-05-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

Pictures:
1. Thats the amazingly evil bad person.
2. What amazing stunts. really.
3.You see those two guys with AUTOMATIC rifles (actually three in jeep)? Thats about a couple of feet away from his balls. Three guns and they miss, not just Indiana jones, but nobody gets shot. beauty

When i saw the trailer for the new movie, i naively had hope, that maybe Spielberg and Lucas, with all that time and money on their hands, along with the massive investments they've made on their new graphics studios will come up with something current, something that shares traits with the originals while still being progressive.

The movie turns out to be a ridiculous excuse for an adventure movie, with some very soft russian soldiers, who can empty a whole cartridge at point blank range and yet somehow manage to miss a very slow moving 80 year old fart.
They had riddles in the fucking movie! clues! and not of 'da vinci code' caliber even - think blue's clues. How can you get enough of the elaborately setup moving doors and traps deep in the middle of ruins, cheaply ornamented and eventually and always destroyed with these idiots sadly getting out just in the nick of time ?

How about a five minute long sword fighting scene on a fucking car when they have a gun holstered safely in the back? Does that lick your fancy? Then you will enjoy the pause in each fight scene long enough for the old man to catch his breath and throw out an awesome smart ass comment, before he ends that kindly soldiers life.
A few other things:
How can someone survive a nuclear blast in a fucking fridge?
How can anyone survive a car landing on their head?
How can you fall off THREE massive waterfalls in a car and not break something or get sucked in the torrent?
I guess waterfalls are gentle wonders of nature that gently carry you to the surface and to the bank.
More importantly, how can someone swing across banyan tree branches when the branches are hanging VERTICALLY?! Think about the physics of that.
Oh and the end of the movie! a fucking alien forms together and the entire city becomes a space ship and flies away. Next scene: Jonesy breaks the plot down for the audience in one sentence. And then the end. Not even fucking kidding.

How hard can it be to make a classic movie series cool and current? Watch batman begins and compare it to the old movies you'll see what i mean. If they can do it, i'm sure stevie and georgie can manage it. Or maybe they're getting too old. Dicks.

Stephen colbert, and insight.

2008-05-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/18/sv_stephencolbert.xml

If you have a penis, watch this movie, if you don't watch it anyway

2008-05-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

This is the manliest man movie ever man-made.

The plot sets up this movie to be a one and a half hour fun ride like no other.

Hell's Yeah! This shit might just be back!

2008-05-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Oh Hi!

Oh snap!

2007-07-31T02:37:00.000-07:00

Fact: An ipod is an MP3 player. period.
What makes it the best selling piece of gadgetry ever?
Total Integration.

"Willums's is not just selling an electric car; he's upending a century-old automotive paradigm, aiming to change the way cars are made, sold, owned, and driven"

now check this Environmentally friendly intelligent platform independant piece of automotive genius out:
There are so many good things about this i don't even know where to start, so I won't.

A Paris Hilton type Dilemma

2007-02-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

Currently still excelling at being a dumb blonde stuck between two of her cars. A ferrari and a mclaren merc SLR..... which she had acquired after she crashed her bentley.

Sheesh. Somebody just shoot her already.

Boost is the secret of my energy!... our...

2006-05-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

All those crazy star wars movies had atleast something right. Come to think of it, even in the matrix, the core of the plot was the harvesting of energy. In the future we are going to have enough energy. A source/sources of boundless energy, enough for a heated massage chair for every rabbit on the planet.
Right now we have the shittest forms of energy possible. And this requires you to take this in on a larger scale, probably the perspective of an idiot living on mars and gazing up at the earth.

1. Coal - co2, particulate pollution
2. Fossil Fuels - ferraris, but more co2 and heat.
3. Current Nuclear Technology - 2 weiners
4. Ashish Jain - Lots of masala dosa related H2S and methane emissions, endangers a forms of life in a 10 foot radius ... and the ozone.

Granted there are more sources involved but this makes up 85% (sue me if I am off by 10%) of energy created for human well being. I'll also give your intelligence the benefit of the doubt and as concisely as humanly possible by the will of the holy spirit up high in the sky close to what we know as the milky way which is also a chocolate by the way, say that the sole cause for all that pollution, global warming etc. is energy production and consumption. And I think we're on track to clean limitless energy.

Currently, the biggest harm this planet faces is from this wonderful invention(and I intend no sarcasm) the automobile. Fuck the references, I read it somewhere sometime. So fossil fuels is the focus. And we're running out of it quick (yay!). What are the solutions?
Electricity and Hydrogen are the best of what's out there and possible in the next 30 years. The problem with electricity almost all of it around the world is generated from coal(value addition from the other sources pale in comparison) which generously donates CO2 to the atmosphere.
Hydrogen as per current tests only outputs water as the waste product.

Hydrogen: The major issues right now are setting up of infrastructure anew for producing, distributing and consuming. A newly developing country like ours has a better chance for change than some of the fully developed ones. We're still in the process of setting up new supply lines and distribution centers. Cars using hydrogen already exist from almost every major manufacturer since the 90's. They're set. But production? For the lack of space in this already long winded and boring article, I cannot get into the specifics of how to generate hydrogen, but lets just leave it at being more economical and less polluting.

Electricity: The major problem with electricity is the inefficiencies. The biggest one - storage. We still use these ancient 'chemicals in a tin' boxes that we so fondly call batteries that decay over time and discharge over time. There are a couple of solutions popping up to fix this. A123 is this new outfit company, the 'google' if you will of batteries that has just invented a new kind of Li Ion battery using advanced nanoscale manufacturing that increases efficiency by 60%, drops weight and reduces recharging time by half and at the same time, can make them for cheaper. Imagine faster, more efficient electric cars that can now subsist longer using regenerative braking since the batteries charge faster. Or we just gotta wait till capacitors get cheap enough to use as batteries - they never leak, never lose power and are fool proof.

The Chinese have an ace up their sleeve right now. This is by far one of the most impressive and powerful inventions of this century. They plan to solve their two of their energy problems in one go. They have invented the pebble bed reactor:

How it works:
1. Hot Rocks: Thousands of billiard ball-sized fuel pebbles power the reactor. The balls are coated with impermeable silicon carbide and packed with 15,000 tiny uranium dioxide flecks, each of which is encased in its own silicon carbide shell.
2. Recycling Center: The fuel pebbles cycle through the reactor vessel from top to bottom, heating helium. Pebbles that are still potent return to the top; spent and damaged ones collect at the bottom.
3. Spin Zone: The hot gas flows into the water-cooled conversion unit and pushes the turbine, generating electricity. It then cycles back to the reactor vessel to be reheated.

Why this is so fucking cool:
1. The current stigma associated with nuclear based power is based on the old school reactors which were these huge nuclear rods dipped in not so tasty boiling liquid and enclosed in 4 layers of lead walls which were in place in case the place did.... you guessed it ..... explode. This is impossible to do with a pebble-bed reactor. They are explosion proof!
2. They are tiny and modular. Lets say you wanted to power a city with a traditional nuclear reactor. You'd have to read into the economy and growth levels of the city and plan out the potential energy requirement down the road and then come up with this reactor that must last the city for lets say 100 years. With the pebble bed reactor, just build one for now. When the city grows, build another one beside it, and so on. They're cheap and more importantly very modular.
3. This is the best part: The waste product - HYDROGEN! pure, clean and lots of it!

Boris Artzybasheff another sneaky fucking russian

2006-05-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

This guy was born in the 1890's, lived in russia and escaped to the united states. He was an artist known for his surreal and imaginative depictions of modern technology.

His art has appeared on the covers of Time, life and Fortune.
This guy could have used some photoshop to really let his imagination fly.

Take a look at the hydraulic press and the finger face.

"Plentiful ad work for Xerox, Shell Oil, Pan Am, Casco Power Tools, Alcoa Steamship lines, Parke Davis, Avco Manufacturing, Scotch Tape, Wickwire Spencer Steele, Vultee Aircraft, World Airways, and Parker Pens. Mechanics Illustrated profiled him with a cover story in 1954, "When Machines Come to Life."

*Scroll down the page on the link above for some very interesting pictures.

Biomimetics: where mocking at nature is sometimes good

2006-04-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

For the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China is getting a bit fancy with the swimming center, using an innovative method of construction for the external surface.
You'd have to be an architect or very bored to find this of any interest. But I see this as an influence of biotechnology and more specifically 'biomimetics' where scientists realised that most of natures shapes are the most functional in their environments and have begun to 'mimic' them for their designs.
Thin films of soapy water automatically take the shape of a round bubble(as opposed to a square shaped bubble) because that is the most stable shape possible for intermolecular forces. I guess this could also be the same for crystal lattices.

The skin itself is made from a transparent mutant of teflon which is the same substance used to protect important people from bullets and your omlette from getting too jiggy with your frying pan.

"Using steel and a fluorocarbon-based polymer instead of soap. When it's finished, in time for the 2008 Olympics, the 337,000-square-foot Watercube (as the locals call it) will have an airy, almost transparent frame, and it'll use less raw material than if it were built with a traditional skeleton. The look, more foam than dome, is the result of innovative construction: four edges, three faces, and three intersecting nodes repeated 40,000 times."

For architects and people just bored, check out the article and more cool pics here.

Some other sweet examples of biomimetics are:

1) The mercedes benz high fuel efficiency concept vehicle:
This fish is supposed to have the most aerodynamic shape on the planet.
Based on the body shape of a boxfish, a common cube-shaped fish found in tropical marine habitats. The bionic car will offer 20 percent lower fuel consumption and up to 80 percent lower nitrogen oxide emissions according to a release from DaimlerChrysler.

2)Velcro resulted in 1948 from a Swiss engineer, George de Mestral, noticing how the hooks of the plant burrs stuck in the fur of his dog.

3) Scientists at the University of Leeds in Great Britain are studying the "jet-based defese mechanism" of the bombardier beetle to see if the insect can help them learn how to re-ignite a gas-turbine aircraft engine in mid-flight. The bombardier beetle is capable of spraying would-be predators with a high-pressure stream of boiling liquid.

4)A research team at Bell Labs has found that tropical deep-sea sponge, Euplectella or Venus's Flower Basket, builds remarkably strong structures from extremely fragile materials, according to a press release from Lucent Technologies. This discovery led to unique insights in the production of commercial fiber optic strands. The same team also looked to the visual systems of brittlestars -- sea creatures related to starfish and sea urchins -- for inspiration to improve lens design.

"Nature works for maximum achievement at minimum effort". Reminds me of my preparation for exams.

Here's something new! cellphones might call cancer!

2006-04-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

Recent research has once again brought up the ever flipflopping vote on whether cell phone use causes cancer.
This brings up a very important point.

Let's take a hypothetical situation:

We now learn that cell phone use definitely causes cancer:

Would you stop using cell phones, now that they have become such an integral part of your life? Can you imagine going back to those days where you're waiting by the door like a heroine in a very bad hindi movie from the 70's wondering why your loved one is two hours late?

If you have been using cell phones for a while now and you just found out that your past years of heavy cell phone usage has given you cancer, who would take responsibility for what has happened to you?

New technology, like new drugs find a way to bone people in ways manufacturers could not even dream of. Examples: Coca Cola contained proper cocaine till 1929. Cigarettes weren't found to be bad for health till the recent past.

If you do decide to continue using cellphones, would you be any different from people who smoke? If you do smoke and use the cellphone, would you blame the cigarette companies or the cell phone manufacturers first?

P.S. this situation is leaving out all the other possibilities of finding a better/safer way of near instant communication in the following years, which should be on the way soon anyways.

Germany represent! The new Audi R10 Lemans Intro

2006-03-11T12:49:00.000-08:00

For the first time the history of the interworld, a race car is going to be powered by a Diesel engine. An engine technology that is seen as noisy, backward, smelly and slow is being repackaged as the next big thing by the company that first invented TDi technology. Hell yeah. There's been a couple of reasons behind this.
1) Diesel tech has improved as fast as international communication has since the 1900's.
2) Audi is the leader in diesel engines having invented the TDi engine as mentioned earlier
3)Because ALMS rules, mirroring those at Le Mans, made the R8 obsolete last year, so regardless of power plant, Audi had to build a new car. As for the diesel, Le Mans rules for 2006 and beyond favor the engine.
4) Diesels are significantly more economical that petrol engines requiring lower rpm to reach full power, and this plays a big role in the lemans marathon race.
5) Tyre smoking, gearbox shredding, buckeloads of torque.

As one journalist who experienced the monster said, "Like a poorly dubbed Japanese monster movie, the sound just doesn't sync with what you're seeing. The brand-new Audi R10 racecar streaks by, and instead of the urgent exhaust note of the now retired R8, the R10 just sounds…odd. A low, but authoritative, rumble, not unpleasant at all. And certainly not what we were expecting. No smoke, no smell."

In fact the diesel is quieter by a factor of two than the petrol engine it replaces.

Just imagining a diesel engine revving up to race car rpm speeds is mindblowing but Audi went all out and made a 733t video featuring the builiding and designing of the car and also featuring the mighty engine with 12 butterflies firing on full throttle!

This is one of the most well made videos i have seen. There is a sense of natural progression of design, testing and building. The soundtrack beautifully synchronizes to the video with one of the best soundtracks i have heard in a while, a fucking 650hp diesel V12 revving up and you can hear the sweet turbo whine kicking in as the turbos spool up. The video goes through the complete assemby of the engine. The white stallion on the treadmill reminiscent of the origin of the term horsepower, with the graphs of the engine on the dyno, the valves kicking in and out to the sound of the music, the gear box and clutches being put together, you can actually see a quick scene with four valves of a cylinder injecting fuel at more than 1600 bar being ignited! Carbon ceramic brakes and exhaust manifold heating up to near melting temperature. The extremely complex car finally gets put together, fueled up and leaves the pit garage. Hottest video of the year. period.
If you can find the sound track to this video, i want it.

"The engine’s power and the high torque are available to the driver practically from idling speed – a speciality of diesel technology, to which the Audi drivers must now become accustomed. The usable power band lies between 3000 and 5000 revs per minute."
Thats right, no more revving up to high rpms to get your power fix in those oh so outdated petrol engines. Instant 1100 Newton meters of torque on tap. Diesel is where its at.

watch the damn video

Another simpsons freak

2006-03-05T21:49:00.000-08:00

This is taking love for the simpsons to new heights. The makers of the show i.e. the man himself Matt Groening as a celebration of the commencement of the show's seventeenth(!!) year on air, filmed the intro that we all have come to know and love with real people and real places! Its quite interesting how close they came to the actual show.

watch it here

thanks slashy

Phd Funnies

2006-02-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

www.phdcomics.com. For all you grad students out there. Hilarious

And you thought philosophy was confusing

2006-02-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

Here's quantum computing at its finest. If you guys haven't heard of schrodinger's cat , its about this guy schrodinger who came up with this experiment in which a cat is put in the box and stuff is done to it and you don't know if it is alive or dead until you open the box. So till that point in time when you open the box, the cat may be alive and dead at any point before that. Its really hard to simplify that cat shit.
well, anyways, thats essentially what quantum computing is about. Playing with uncertainess. Computers so far had transistors that worked as a specific 1 or a 0. Well not any more!

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18925405.700.html

From the article: "With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works."

This is an awesome beginner's read to understand this shite. Read : a lazy layman's guide to quantum physics

The Prancing Horse: crusher of the Raging bull

2006-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Ferrari's hoof wheelying black stallion in the yellow italian sunset wasn't just made up as a company gimmick. Enzo Ferrari himself decided to use the emblem on the first of these thoroughbreds.
Where'd he come up with it?

I quote Enzo Ferrari himself,"The horse was painted on the fuselage of the fighter plane flown by Francesco Baracca, a heroic Italian pilot who died on Mount Montello: the Italian ace of aces of the First World War. In 1923 ... I met Count Enrico Baracca, the pilot's father, and subsequently his mother, Countess Paolina. One day she said to me, "Ferrari, why don't you put my son's prancing horse on your cars; it would bring you luck." ... The horse was black and has remained so; I added the canary yellow background because it is the colour of Modena."

Now you know.

P.S. The name Scudiera Ferrari was given to the racing division of Ferrari. This covers all forms of racing right from stradale to the wicked F1. Scudiera Ferrari means the 'Ferrari Stable' . A perfect name for a garage full of scarlet red prancing horses. Sweeeeet

Beemers - german engineering

2006-01-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

I was looking up stats on the BMW for the previous post when I came across this specifications sheet for the current 7 series. To put this in perspective, this is the 'medium spec' version of the car. And BMW isn't even the leader when it comes to technology in cars. That crown goes to mercedes benz.
Below is a list of "STANDARD"(!!!!) features.
Still talking about getting bluetooth for the cellphone? this car has it!

Click here to see the list of features

Performance and Efficiency
6.0-liter DOHC(4-cam)48-valve V-12 engine with direct fuel injection and Valvetronic

Double-VANOS steplessly variable valve timing

Aluminum block and cylinder heads

Electronically controlled engine cooling

Digital Motor Electronics engine-management system with adaptive knock control

6-speed STEPTRONIC automatic transmission with Adaptive Transmission Control

Electronic gear selector

Liquid-cooled alternator

Handling, ride and braking
Aluminum double-pivot strut-type front suspension

Aluminum 4-link integral rear suspension

Aluminum front and rear subframes

Active Roll Stabilization (ARS)

Twin-tube gas-pressure shock absorbers

Self-leveling rear suspension with air springs

Electronic Damping Control - includes "Sport" setting

Vehicle-speed-sensitive variable-assist, variable-ratio rack-and-pinion power steering

4-wheel ventilated disc brakes with electronic brake proportioning

Electromechanical parking brake

Automatic Parking Brake

Dynamic Stability Control (DSC)

Anti-lock Braking System (ABS)

Dynamic Traction Control (DTC)

Dynamic Brake Control (DBC)

Exterior and Aerodynamics
19 x 9.0 front/19 x 10.0 rear Star Spoke (Styling 89) cast alloy wheels with 245/45R-19 front / 275/40R-19rear performance tires1

Body-color bumpers with hydraulic energy absorbers and (front only) compressible elements

Aluminum hood and front fenders

Xenon Adaptive Headlights with dynamic auto-leveling

Halogen ellipsoid front foglights

Windshield wiping sweep regulated for optimum coverage2

Variable parking position to reduce wiper blade wear

Articulated passenger-side wiper arm

Single-wipe control

Washer jets in wiper arms, heated fluid supply

Heated wiper parking area

High-pressure headlight cleaning system

Choice of standard or metallic paints

Smooth underbody

Audio / visual
Logic7 audio system with 13 speakers, Digital Sound Processing and 6-disc in-dash CD changer with MP3 playback capability; includes 2 subwoofers and all features of standard audio system

Instrumentation and controls
Electronic analog speedometer and tachometer

LCD main and trip odometers

Condition-based Service display3

Expanded Check Control vehicle monitor system

iDrive concept

Start/stop button

Electronic control stalks

LCD displays and warning indicators in dial faces

Leather power tilt/telescopic multi-function steering wheel with audio and phone controls, one programmable control; auto tilt-away for entry and exit

Programmable cruise control

On-board computer

Navigation system

Voice Activation system

Bluetooth® wireless technology4 for hands-free calling

Brake Wear Display

Flat tire warning

Interior seating and trim

Nasca leather upholstery5

Extended leather trim on instrument panel and rear sides of front-seat backrests

Memory system for driver’s seat, steering wheel, and outside mirrors (2 positions)

16-way power front Comfort seats with 4-way lumbar support; includes articulated upper backrest, adjustable backrest width, adjustable thigh support, passenger’s-seat memory, active head restraints with adjustable side support

10-way power rear Comfort seats with 4-way lumbar support; includes articulated upper backrest, automatic head-restraint height adjustment, automatic pretensioners, and rear seat ventilation

Active front driver's seats with gentle massage action

Ventilated front seats

Heated front seats with fast heating and balance control

Heated rear seats

Climate-controlled front console compartment with coinholder, trunk-release lockout, and illumination

Alcantara headliner and sun visors

Safety and Security
Intelligent Safety and Information System (ISIS) for deployment of safety systems

Dual front-impact airbag Supplementary Restraint System (SRS) with dual-threshold deployment, 2-stage Smart Airbags

Front safety belts with automatic pretensioners and force limiters

Automatic pretensioners in safety belts at rear outboard seating positions

Automatic-locking retractors (ALR) on all passenger safety belts (for installation of child restraint seats)

Front-seat Head Protection System (HPS)

Front-seat side-impact airbags

Active Knee Protection

Rear-seat Head Protection System (HPS)

Active front head restraints6

BMW Assist

Adaptive Brake Lights

Battery Safety Terminal

Automatic fuel-pump shutoff upon severe accident impact

Central locking system with double-lock anti-theft feature, selective unlocking7

Coded Driveaway Protection

Pathway Lighting feature7

Alarm system with operation from remote, interior motion detector

Comfort and convenience
Vehicle & Key Memory

Keyless entry with multi-function remote control

Remote trunk release

Power soft-close automatic doors and trunklid

Continuously variable stepless door brakes

Power windows with key-off operation, “one-touch” open/close and anti-trapping feature

Automatic front climate control with full separate left/right controls, solar sensor, automatic recirculation, heat-at-rest feature, left/right temperature-controlled rear outlets, auto ventilation

Activated-charcoal micro-filter ventilation

Power 2-way moonroof with key-off and “one-touch” operation, conceal panel and wind deflector

Window and moonroof opening possible from remote control

Dual power/heated automatic-dimming outside mirrors

BMW Universal Transceiver (garage-door opener) integrated into rear-view mirror housing

Automatic tilt-down of right outside mirror for visibility of curb when backing up

Enhanced interior lighting system including front and rear left/right reading lights

Footwell lighting front and rear

Exit/entry lighting on interior door panels

BMW Ambiance Lighting front, rear and door panels

Illuminated visor vanity mirrors front and rear

LED “atmosphere” lights in C-pillars

Illuminated front console compartment

Glove compartment with rechargeable take-out flashlight

Illuminated exterior door handles and ground illumination

Rain-sensing windshield wipers with electronically controlled, reversible wiper motor

Park Distance Control with graphic display

Heated steering wheel

Power outlet in passenger’s-side footwell area

Dual cupholders front and rear (total of 4-cup capacity)

Rear center armrest with storage compartment

Power rear-window and rear-side-window sunshades with driver and rear-passenger controls

Ski bag

Fully finished trunk with inside trunk release

Automatic trunk opening and closing

BMW Maintenance Program

My name is James Bond.... James.... Bond

2006-01-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

It was not just the men in suits, the women in barely anything and the villans who were always upto something that endeared the series to many. Twas ze gadgets.

Jetpack (Thunderball, 1965)
Helps Mr Bond fly out of sticky situations.

Blue X-Ray Glasses (The World Is Not Enough, 1999)
Used to spot concealed weapons.

Q's Pet (A View To A Kill, 1985)
Robotic remote control being that was used for surveillance.

Imitation Fingerprints (Diamonds Are Forever, 1971)
They're finger prints and they are imitated.

Underwater Breather (Thunderball, 1965)
Allows the man to breathe underwater or in other very gooey situations for 4 mintues.

BMW had showcased a robotic 5 series that had bullet proof windows, a dent resistant exterior, self deflating and re- inflating tires, eight missiles in the sunroof, a wire cutter, automated caltrops(sharp triangular thingies) dispenser, forward machine guns and a english speaking computer that could be controlled with a nokia cellphone. (Bmw made sure all these features actually worked on the car and were not just props for the scene!)

However, interest in the movies is definitely down. Maybe people watching these movies are getting bored of the predictable plots, the classy and infallible womanizing British/Irish heroes and the unrealistically rich screwball villans with overambitious plans.
Or maybe the audience is getting smarter. Most have become more gadget friendly and Internet savvy.
Maybe mechanical engineering marvels that might have garnered oohs and aahs before are now yawnful.
The cliched 'Computer age' has probably made such gadgets seem wasteful. Most of them can be easily done with graphics making even the real seem unreal. Every other movie can have all these fancy deelies with some coffee inhaling programmers at their disposal.

Gadgets were the life blood for these movies and the plots had to incorporate them into their story. And this has begun to limit the movies to crappy plots with an outdated method of gadget exhibition. We don't need silly little mechanical marvels dangling in every scene. Their plots need to have more tech-depth to them. The plots themselves need to be the gadget. Most of us understand distributed computing, remote robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Maybe the Matrix was the best James bond movie till date.

Risk this

2005-11-10T06:49:00.000-08:00

Ah the wonderful game of Risk has been converted to computeron form and also been modded with the now oh so popular google satellite maps API to give a sense of real reality to conquering the world.
http://www.ashotoforangejuice.com/gmrisk.html
p.s. lazy me.

20 questions!

2005-11-06T20:11:00.000-08:00

This kinda fits what i think AI should be all about. Learning systems and what not. The more times this game is played, the smarter it gets and probably makes you dumber by sucking your already scarce mind juice.

I would suggest you read the play rules by first taking a look at the quick toooor . Remember, the better your answers are the faster it can guess what you are thinking.

Click here to play the game: http://www.20q.net/index.html

To go to the Un-L33T more crappy, cosmetic and unecessarily superficial version of the game click HERE.

Try to confound this thing with an object you're thinking of.

To Spoof the world

2005-11-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a tip : Don't Procrastinate. But if you do and you end up not electronically submitting that assignment in time, i think we found a way you can get that in your professors mailbox in time.

One of my team mates was asked to email a certain bambeck professor regarding a little something. He decided to use an email program called mulberry. Now, his CMOS clock wasn't working and it was set to something in 2002.
When he sent the email out, bambeck didn't see the mail, coz it was buried under three years of mail!
Most email programs send a time stamp out using some internet clock, but the genius of mulberry is it uses local computer clock time.

Now, if you have missed a submission date...

Summer

2005-10-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting summers i've had so far.
Summer in Athens 2005....
-chairball-resume impressions-noam tokman-in the pool at 2:30 am-phil of the future-kickball tournament champions-wild horse cafe -mothman statue-slurpees-steve commons-moonville-bottomless bowls of chili-chipotle

Thanks for keeping track - holko.

Qrio

2005-10-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

Its hard to really put in a paragraph what the qrio is about. So here's a quote: "...The head of it is the most sensitive component, as it contains the two camera that enable QRIO's all-important stereo vision. QRIO understands this and does everything it can to protect it. In the rare times that it does feel itself moving to a fall, it moves very quickly to shift its weight to correct it. If the needed correction is too large it will then move to fall on its arms, thus protecting its head.

Interestingly, when they're doing demonstrations, they have found that the AI in QRIO is so strong that if you haven't been friendly with it before hand, for examples, by not kicking back a football it kicks to you, it will refuse to do what you ask it in the demonstration. Effectively it is expressing its annoyance...."

speaking of demonstrations: here are some from sony's website: click here

It can see in 3d,walk, sing, recognize and remember people, and pretty much anything. it can also carry on conversations with you by keeping track of what you like and dislike. such AI already exists on the internet but combining so may features in such a little robot is just out of the world.

Check out the four major technologies involved with the qrio.

The qrio is a mobile robot and that means it has to be away from the charger which means it needs to be battery charged and a very high capacity one at that because of the immense amount of power required by its sensors, motors and processors. The maximum time it can get away with is an hour. So how does it charge itself? using magnetic induction through this chair! When it gets low on power, it sits on the chair to charge itself!

And to top it off: watch the qrio Get jiggy wit it!

Post comments!

Well well well

2005-09-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

Look who i find on ze internet.

Nihar my boy and akhil tickling the strings

We are the Web

2005-09-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

This article blew my mind more than matrix did the third time i watched it. Written by an accomplished and trust worthy source who's been in the midst of the internet revolution right from the beginning, the story timelnes through three decades starting 1995 and predict the next decade.
His prediction of the next decade (2015) is exactly what i was thinking but could not put down in so many words. Well done.

click here:We are the Web *warning Long article

The earth is upto something

2005-09-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

It really is. Am I the only one noticing this or are we having some really bad weather changes?
The tsunami, the mumbai flooding, the over the top Hurricane Katrina and now the Japanese hurricane, it snowed someplace where it never snowed before.

Something big is coming. And this time we are the ants under the shoe.

Hottest models as of now

2005-09-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

Have to start of with the bugatti veyron, one of the most exclusive cars out there. And they just started production! look out for the 1000+ horsepower engine and other candy.

The Suzuki Grand Vitara
This has to be one of the best improvements in Suv design in the last couple of years. The last two generations of the vitara have gone from bad to worse to pukaphyllic. Kudos suzuki for creating such a clean design.

This has got to be one of the meanest designs out there. The curved hood meets the equally mean looking lighs at the snarling combination of grille and lower air intake. I wonder what the rally version of this Mitsubishi might look like :p

Quite a few new cars are out that i am impressed with, but i've lost interest, simpsons is on. This is not over!

Oh snap! i have a post!

2005-09-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

Seem to have a lot on my mind. too lazy to spam everyone. linking to this site sounds like the thing to do.

fo shizzy

2005-03-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

test post