Valve's Virtual Reality Headset

Valve's virtual reality headset is the one that I found to be one of the more interesting ones. Even though they were very mysterious with the information they were willing to share they still gave out some good information about their device, plus with there companies background we can get a good guess on how this will turn out, not to mention what we hope for in the future from valve with the virtual reality headsets.

Valve's virtual reality headsets seems to be similar to oculus' with the 7 inch LCD dual lens display. Of course with the dual lens display it will be creating a 3D perspective for the viewer. Now although the product is still deep within the development stage there is still hope for what is to come with the invention of the virtual reality headsets.

Since were talking about Valve here, its safe to assume this will be working with their cloud gaming universe, Steam. With all of the games that are on the market today and sold in steam I'm sure valve will be trying to make deals with game developers to incorporate virtual reality into their games. Such as in my presentation when I talked about the Dota 2 demo.

When Valve created Dota 2, they decided to make it a MOBA, or better defined as a multiplayer online battle arena. It was a huge game and very popular running against other MOBA games such as League of Legends and Heros of Newerth. With this valve had a demo put up of it to work with their virtual reality headset which let you have your own personal world with the game being within a map on a computer generated table. With this you could walk up to the map and control more of what your surroundings are instead of just a flat image that shows only the game itself. Now some may say that that is all you need and the extra stuff is just....well extra. I think its interesting they are

trying go in a direction that is constantly pushing the boundaries. Valve has many other game titles

such as Left 4 dead one and two, Half-Life, Portal, and Team fortress that could all benefit from a product such as this. Also with all of the other products on steam and with the PS4 and Oculus I think gaming and virtual reality will definitely have a spot in the gaming world and even if it might be hard for people to accept at first I think it will grow on people and become the new generation of gaming.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/3/5775220/valve-vr-headset-pictures-concept-features

A Coding Curriculum

For ages, english, math, history, and science have been required in grammar schools and in the secondary education curriculum across the United States.  Recently, the city of Chicago has modified its public school curriculum to include code writing. According to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in three years "you can't graduate from high school if you didn't take code writing and computer science."  This is a massive change to the default curriculums of most public schools.  This is all apart of Rahm Emanuel's five-year plan to improve computer science education in Chicago schools.  Unfortunately, many school do not offer a comprehensive coding or computer science curriculum.

The importance of a quality computer science curriculum cannot be understated due to globalized economies and the increasing reliance on computer system to control nearly every aspect of our lives. Computer science is a top paying college degree and one that will become only increasingly valued.

Rahm Emanuel is far from the only person advocating for an increased focus on computer science education.  Numerous high profile members of the tech community such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg support Code.org which is dedicated to teaching young students how to code.  This is a part of the Hour of Code which is a global movement to teach one hour of coding education to as many people across the globe as possible.

It will be interesting to see how much the curriculum in schools will focus on computer science in the future.  Will every student be able to code?  This is certainly a desirable goal for tech companies like Google and Microsoft.  Not matter what, computing will become only more important in the future and candidates with computer experience will stand far better in the job market than those who lack such skills.  This is why it is vital that more schools teach coding and focus more attention on computer science education.  And if that is not convincing enough, the late Steve Jobs once said, "Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think." This is advice the American education system should not dismiss.

Window's Tablet Malfunction

Earlier in class we learned what malware was, but incase you forgot or you missed it, I'll give you a reminder. Malware is malicious code, which is software that is intended to damage or disable computers or computer systems.

You're probably wondering where I'm going with all of this. Well earlier today CNN had reported that Russians have been using Windows tablets to spy on Ukrainian government and a scholar who was living in the United States due to a Microsoft Windows bug. Apparently they have been using a bug that exists in Microsoft Vista, 7, 8, and the newest 8.1.  

Its said that Dallas' intelligence firm (ISight) first saw the hackers attacking back in mid August. They were sending emails with malware in the forms of PowerPoint attachments to spy on Ukrainian government officials by using a technique called phishing.

     Phishing: is a way to acquire sensitive information by pretending/acting as a trustworthy      software/program.

The fact that this happened is pretty amazing especially with a company such as Microsoft would allow something such as this to happen. Then again bugs are a part of computer programing and technology, so I can definitely see how this is a possibility. The reason this caught my interest though was because of how much interest I had in the surface pro 3. Although I doubt I would have any problem with this, seeing that I wouldn't be the one getting targeted. However it's still interesting to see that things like this happen even with reliable companies, such as Microsoft. Who's to say it won't happen to another reliable technology company.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/14/technology/security/russia-hackers/index.html

Sign Language Translation

Language barriers are terrible, especially between those who can speak and those who cannot.  Students at Asia University have developed these Sign Language Ring Translators.  These are a set of six rings that are worn on three fingers per hand.  The rings follow the movement of the fingers of the wearer and translate them through a bracelet.  The bracelet translates the movements of the rings into spoken words so another person, who does not know sign language, can understand what the non-speaking person is saying.  The bracelet can also understand spoken word and display that speech in text so a non-hearing person may understand those who do not speak sign language.

I just think this product is so amazing, and can be put to many helpful uses.  They make me really excited for technological advancements and really wanted to share this concept.

Project Delorean

Picture of the Delorean from the Back to the Future Trilogy

                             
     With the advent of the internet, the world is ever more reliant on the power of the cloud. Quickly everything that was once process locally on a computer is now being processed in the cloud. The cloud is internet-based computing in which large groups of remote servers are networked to allow the centralized data storage, and online access to computer services or resources.  
              

Cloud Servers.  Not an accurate representation.

      However, there have been many barriers to taking advantage of this emerging technology.  One of the main culprits that is holding cloud computing back is latency.  Latency is the time between an end users input and the result from a server to return to the end user.  Application that are time sensitive and require immediate feedback have been difficult to offload to the cloud. One such example is cloud gaming. This is clearly the future of gaming evident by the Xbox One's focus on the cloud and the new Playstation Now cloud gaming service. Unfortunately, latency is preventing modern games from being processed in the cloud without lag. This is especially a problem for those who live far away from a server farm or have low bandwidth. When the time delay between a player and what appears on the screen is too long, the game is unplayable.
     Recently, Microsoft's research team has developed a new technology to deal with latency in cloud gaming.  It is called Project Delorean.  This system predicts what a player is going to do.  This can cover up to 250ms of latency. It does this by processing multiple actions a player may choose before the player make a choice.  It then sends all of the possible options to the player's console early.  Then when a player chooses an action, the console would choose the correct option out of the multiple options that were processed.

Advertisement for the Cloud Powered AI in Forza Motorsport 5.

                      

   This invention indicates that we are very close to the age of cloud gaming.  Certainly, this new technology will make its way into Microsoft's PC and Xbox video games.  However, this technology might even translate into other programs and applications that are cloud based. Any application can benefit from the same system.  Even non-time sensitive applications can benefit by completely eliminating latency.   The benefits of the cloud will only continue to grow as similar systems to Project Delorean are implemented.  The potential uses are limitless.  With the power of the cloud, the sky is the limit.