When Communications Senior Editor Andy Rosenbloom first pitched the special section featured in this issue, I must admit I rolled my eyes skeptically. Images that appear more real than real? I mean, come on. Was this sci-fi talk, or perhaps a touch of sci-in-the-sky? But Andy’s enthusiasm soon turned contagious as he described the various […]
August 1999 - Vol. 42 No. 8
Features
Just as computers around the world are coping with the Y2K bug, the sun will enter the most violent and disruptive phase of its 11-year cycle, say astronomers, causing disruptions in satellite transmissions and triggering blackouts. According to reports at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, researchers are forecasting the sun’s cycle to peak […]
Quality, consistency, and simplicity are critical attributes in high-tech products. But they are largely lacking in today’s software. Change is sorely needed. Software vendors, however, will not change voluntarily. They do not believe it is in their best interests to do so. But such change is usually brought about by pain, and vendors are not […]
Practical Programmer: Buzzwordism and the Epic $150 Million Software Debacle
"It was a classic example of two common human behaviors; a willingness to abdicate common sense when presented with a sure thing, and a failure to respond when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary." —Chris Craddock, in "The REAL Inside Story of Westpac's CS90," the Software Practitioner, March 1999.
Log on Education: Science in the Palms of Their Hands
In the beginning, there are children and the learning experiences we want them to have. Now, let’s bring in technology as the means for enabling those learning experiences. If we’re serious about having children use technology in K12 classrooms, then we need to convince the gatekeepers of those classrooms as to the worth of the […]
Toward an Image Indistinguishable from Reality
What will it take to make such images so accurate they can substitute for the physical things they simulate?
Artificial Life For Computer Graphics
Biological and evolutionary models give life to self-animating graphical characters with bodies, brains, behavior, perception, learning, and cognition.
A Framework For Realistic Image Synthesis
How to generate synthetic images with enough fidelity to be truly accurate representations of real-world scenes. not just amazingly appealing imagery.
Sampling, Synthesis, and Input Devices
Now input technology allows high-fidelity sampling of the physical world, dramatically changing the method and user interface for creating computer graphic imagery.
Animation Control For Real-Time Virtual Humans
Want to make virtual humans more human? Let their flesh-and-blood counterparts animate their actions and intentions through natural-language instructions.
Making Graphics Physically Tangible
Computer control of the forces exerted on users through haptic interfaces adds physically tangible sensations to 3d imagery.
Visually Exploring Gigabyte Data Sets in Real Time
How to get past the numbers and the code in large 3d data sets to produce visualizations that are in turn responsive to user curiosity.
Web Home Pages as Advertisements
Viewing an organization's home page as its most important online advertisement has profound implications for how home pages are designed, tested, and evaluated.
Realizing 3D Visualization U-sing Crossed-Beam Volumetric Displays
The ability to look into an electronic display from any direction, walk around it, and see real 3D information being displayed is a dream-come-true technology for those who work with volumetric data sets.
CEO and CIO Perspectives on Competitive Intelligence
Nothing is more likely to undermine IT strategic planning than poor knowledge of competitors' computing practices.
Growing Systems in Emergent Organizations
As the new economic realities pressure your organization to change from stable to emergent, new practices for IT support are required.
Thinking Objectively: Object-Oriented Abstractions For Distributed Programming
Going beyond wrapping existing built-in toolkits with OO-like dressing.
Inside Risks: The Uses and Abuses of Biometrics
Biometrics work well only if the verifier can verify two things.
