RPI Creates Intelligent Avatar

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have created a virtual character with the reasoning abilities of a 4 year old child.

"...At a recent conference on artificial intelligence, the researchers unveiled the “embodiment” of their success to date: “Eddie,” a 4-year-old child in Second Life who can reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age."

“Current avatars in massively multiplayer online worlds — such as Second Life — are directly tethered to a user’s keystrokes and only give the illusion of mentality,” said Selmer Bringsjord, head of Rensselaer’s Cognitive Science Department and leader of the research project. “Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things.”

"Such characters can only be engineered by coupling logic-based artificial intelligence and computational cognitive modeling techniques with the processing power of a supercomputer, according to Bringsjord..."

Alternatives to Windows Vista

Worried about having to upgrade to Windows Vista on every PC?

Concerned that your PCs can't meet Microsoft's requirements for powerful memory and graphics capabilities?

You're not alone.

Estimates are that 50% of the average business PCs in the US do not meet the minimum Vista requirements, and 94% do not meet the Vista Premium requirements.

If you're considering deploying Vista, then you're probably going to need to replace your desktop PCs.

And if you're going to replace your desktops, why not consider Symbio diskless thin clients instead?

If you want to move to Vista enterprise-wide, you could upgrade the server to Vista and switch the desktops to Symbio thin clients, instead of upgrading the server to Vista and replacing all the desktops with Vista-capable PCs. Symbio thin clients are far less expensive than Vista-capable PCs, far more secure, reliable, and longer lasting.

Boot, command and control your 6" tall, diskless thin clients with The Symbiont Boot Appliance.

Now you only have to touch one machine to update everyone instantly.

Don't just upgrade your network. Improve it!

Make this upgrade your last upgrade with The Symbiont Solution

Smaller than a paperback book and weighing just 2 pounds, our SYM1112 has the perfect footprint for every working environment.

• no moving parts
• nothing to break
• no embedded software
• nothing that can be corrupted

And offers the maximum in data security.

ITB, Inc is a Symbio Authorized Reseller.

New Product - GorrilaPod

if you need a tripod for your lightweight digital camera? You will want to try Gorillapod

Gorrillapod firmly secures your camera to just about anything — anywhere and everywhere! Unlike traditional tripods, the Gorillapod has flexible, gripping legs which can wrap around almost any surface. It is now available in three sizes!

Available from $21.95US

ANN: Thin Clients with Altiris admin capabilities

Announcement:

Computer Lab International (CLI), announces support for the world-renowned third party management software, Symantec Altiris® Deployment Solution™.

Placentia , CA (PRWEB) January 7, 2008 -- Computer Lab International (CLI), one of the leading thin client manufacturers, announces support for the world-renowned third party management software, Symantec Altiris® Deployment Solution™. Altiris® management solutions enjoy broad customer acceptance and broad support for managing PCs and thin clients alike.

Altiris® Deployment Solution™ software allows customers to distribute a preconfigured image to MT3500 series XP Embedded Thin Clients within their network. This imaging capability is in addition to the robust imaging support of the CLI Thin Client Management Console - SNMPAdm. Altiris® brings best of breed, enterprise class device management while SNMPAdm allows ease of installation and use with essential management capabilities.

Altiris® support on CLI thin clients proactively meets customer demands for those already leveraging the Altiris® for deployments solutions in their networks. Preconfigured images can be deployed to one or thousands of CLI thin clients using Altiris® Deployment Solution™, which can be load balanced to meet the requirements in Enterprise class deployments.

Altiris® Deployment Solution™ software by Symantec®, reduces the cost for the management of Thin Clients, desktops, notebooks and servers. Using the Altiris® solution, IT managers are able to automate the installation of software components, operation system images, the migration of user data and profiles, as well as patch distribution.

A preconfigured, "Altiris®-ready" image is now available for download upon request from Computer Lab International. This image is preconfigured with the latest Altiris® agent and expedites initial image configuration with complete support from both CLI and Altiris® technical services groups.

ITB is a CLI value added reseller. for more information or a demo unit contact us today.

Handling .NET Toolstrip merge and unmerge in C#

The Tool strip control that ships with VS2005 allows you to create a Windows™ style tool bar for your MDI Applications. This control works well with one exception: automatic unmerging.

The win forms tool strip control has no provision for automatic unmerging of child form tool strip controls from the MDI Parent form tool strip; If anybody knows why the folks in Redmond did this please let me know. Anyway, to work around this you need to use the ToolStripManagers RevertMerge method. Sounds simple, right?

Well... yes and no.

The answer lies in using OnMdiChildActivate method this fires the MdiChildActivate Event. If you try using MdiChildActivate by itself nothing happens by the way. so you need this method to fire it.

First you will need a MDI parent form with a tool strip and a MDI Child form with a tool strip. Name the tool strips tsParent and tsChild. Set the tsChilds visible property to false. Add controls to the tool strips as needed.

Next add an Interface to you solution and call it IChildForm. For our purposes this interface will have only one property called ChildToolStrip


namespace foo
{

interface IChildForm
{
ToolStrip ChildToolStrip { get;set;}
}
}

Next you need to implement this interface in the Child Form(s).

public ToolStrip ChildToolStrip
{
get
{
return tsChild;
}
set
{
tsChild = value;
}
}


Next...You will need to override OnMdiChildAcivate in the parent form. Also don't forget to call the base implementation
of OnMdiChidActivate().

protected override void OnMdiChildActivate(EventArgs e)
{

base.OnMdiChildActivate(e); //REQUIRED
HandleChildMerge(); //Handle merging

}

Next you will need to call the base implementation of OnMdiChildActivate. Next add the following code for the HandleChildMerge method.

private void HandleChildMerge()
{
ToolStripManager.RevertMerge(tsParent);
IChildForm ChildForm = ActiveMdiChild as IChildForm;
if (ChildForm != null)
{
ToolStripManager.Merge(ChildForm.ChildToolStrip, tsParent);
}
}

Now your toolstrips should unmerge automatically...

10 minute E-Mail

Ever wanted to have a temporary, throwaway e-mail address? One you could use when you are filling out a web form and they require you to provide an e-mail address. 10 Minute mail is a free service that allows you to create a free e-mail address that lasts for 10 minutes.

Sender Policy Framewoks, Helps Fight Spam

Have you ever received an e-mail that supposedly came from you but was not sent by you or your company? For example; you have an e-mail account called Sales@MyCompany.com and one day you receive an e-mail from Sales@MyCompany.com. You didn't send this e-mail, it's spam, it could be an ad for herbal medicine or a get-rich quick scheme.

No big deal, just delete it right?

Well not really, actually it is a big deal. Think about it, that spammer is sending his electronic trash, (with your companies name on it) to potentially thousands of other e-mail addresses!

This can damage your companies reputation.

Fortunately, there is a solution.

SPF = Sender Policy Framework

"SPF fights return-path address forgery and makes it easier to identify spoofs.
Domain owners identify sending mail servers in DNS. SMTP receivers verify the envelope sender address against this information, and can distinguish authentic messages from forgeries before any message data is transmitted."

Setting up SPF is free. If you don't have one set up one today Read More