PDA

View Full Version : Not much to do with NDSU...



tony
10-24-2005, 01:38 PM
... but I think it's cool. Anyway, NDSU is a research institution and it is always interesting to hear about the cool stuff that is going on in other universities.

I love the story about the accidental discovery of how to get white light from quantum dots... Vandy story (http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_quantumdot_led.htm)

And the much better results of the DARPA challenge this year DARPA challenge (http://www.extremecyborg.com/print_article/Stanford+Team+Wins+DARPA+Challenge/162105.aspx) - I like this story because it gives the Tulane students involved some credit (all the other stories say "students from Metairie, LA".

And this page I ran across by accident (and, no, I wasn't doing a search on gerbils)... heck, I wish I could remember which search term got me to their site... anyway, the site hosts a comic strip about gerbils and is run by some computer science guys who just went to a computer programming contest at the U of Illinois where they wrote program to control one "player" to fight another computer-controlled player in a game of MechWarrior - and that just about shows everything I like about computer science... once you have even an average machine, you can do just about anything anybody else can - your only limit is your intelligence and stubborness and willingness to stay up very, very late. A lot of contests in other fields are won by the team with the best funding (heck, just look at HS science fair projects - the winners too often have access to equipment that normal HS kids have never even heard of), anyway, in programming contests, it's just skill versus skill. Eventually it dawned on me after a that this site is run by some NDSU students who probably have plenty to rightfully complain about - especially if they are in the Math department (although they have it pretty damn easy compared to when I was climbing up fire escapes to get into computer labs for the privilege of programming on a TRS-80) :). Gerbilmech powers activate! (http://www.gerbilmechs.com/) Even if they don't fawn over every little thing done at NDSU like YT, I sure hope they keep doing interesting stuff.