The HoloLens device that Microsoft announced in January will be supported by Windows 10, but that doesn't mean it will go on sale when Windows 10 ships at the end of the month. Because NASA and Microsoft worked together to develop the technology, NASA is finding ways to use the HoloLens devices now. The future is virtual.
NASA bases its Sidekick devices on the Microsoft HoloLens to provide virtual aid to astronauts working in the International Space Station. A pair of the devices was included in the SpaceX commercial resupply mission to the station that failed last Sunday. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket broke apart a few minutes after launch. The Dragon capsule, with more than 4000 pounds of supplies, was destroyed and astronauts aboard the ISS will have to wait a bit longer.
Sam Scimemi, director of the ISS program, characterizes the HoloLens and other virtual and mixed-reality devices as cutting edge technologies that could help drive future exploration and provide new capabilities to astronauts, noting that the new technology "could also help future explorers who will require greater autonomy on the journey to Mars."
The goal of Sidekick is to provide station crews with assistance when and where they need it, possibly in a way that would reduce crew training requirements and increase astronauts' efficiency in space. Microsoft's Alex Kipman says the HoloLens is intended to transform the ways we create, connect, and explore. "Sidekick is a prime example of an application for which we envisioned HoloLens being used," says Kipman, because it unlocks new potential for astronauts.
NASA and Microsoft engineers tested Project Sidekick and the Microsoft HoloLens aboard NASA's Weightless Wonder C9 jet to ensure they function as expected in free-fall in advance of their delivery to the microgravity environment of the space station as you'll see in this video.
Video of the HoloLens being tested on NASA's Weightless Wonder C9 jet that uses free-fall to provide brief experiences with weightlessness.
Sidekick has two modes of operation. The first, Remote Expert Mode, uses Skype to allow a ground operator to see what a crew member sees, provide real-time guidance, and draw annotations into the crew member's environment. This mode is used to guide an astronaut through a complex task. Until now, crew members have relied on written and voice instructions when performing these kinds of repair tasks and experiments.
The second operating mode is referred to as Procedure Mode. It augments standalone procedures with animated holographic illustrations that are displayed on top of the objects the crew member is working with. This capability could lessen the amount of training that future crews will require and could be an important resource for distant missions where communication delays would complicate difficult operations.
Because of the SpaceX mission failure this week, delivery of the Sidekick devices will be delayed at least until the next resupply mission is ready to go. In the meantime, Sidekick will be evaluated during the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 20 expedition set to begin July 21. This is an on-Earth experiment in which a group of astronauts and engineers live in the world's only undersea research station, Aquarius, for two weeks. The Aquarius habitat and its surroundings provide a convincing model for space exploration.
When the first set of HoloLens devices eventually reach the space station, crew members will test and verify the software and hardware functionality in a standalone mode. Then, a second set of devices will be delivered on a future mission so that Sidekick functionality can be tested with network connectivity.
The Sidekick project is part of a larger partnership formed by NASA and Microsoft to explore applications of holographic computing in space exploration. Earlier this year, NASA and Microsoft announced a collaboration to develop software called OnSight, a new technology that will enable scientists to work virtually on Mars using the same HoloLens technology. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena led the development of Sidekick and OnSight. NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston led testing and certification of Sidekick for use on-board the space station.
The International Space Station has been continuously occupied since November 2000 and, since then, has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains NASA's springboard to future space exploration, including possible missions to an asteroid and to Mars.
No matter how carefully you name files or how carefully you organize them, you'll probably still be unable to find a file that you know is on your computer ... somewhere. Wouldn't it be great if somebody wrote an application that could search an entire disk quickly, look inside files, and help you find the file you're looking for? Well, somebody did. Fifteen years ago!
Agent Ransack is the free-ware version of FileLocator. It omits some of the paid application's features, but its the fastest and easiest way to find files that you can't find anywhere else. The application can be pointed at any number of disk drives and directories and armed with regular expressions to ensure that it finds what you want. Besides being fast, Agent Ransack provides a view of what's in the files that it finds.
If you know what the grep command does on Unix systems, you'll immediately understand how Agent Ransack works. If not, you'll quickly understand the power of even the most basic regular expressions as applied to searching for files.
Why not the built-in Windows search utility? Although it has improved over the years, the built-in function isn't intended for the needle-in-a-haystack searching that Agent Ransack excels at. Agent Ransack's ability to fine-tune targeted searches is its real power. It doesn't require indexing all drives, which may lead you to think that Agent Ransack will be slow. It isn't.
The program's interface is basic and intuitive. When searching, you can specify file names (complete or partial); file extensions; text that will be found inside the files you're looking for; the size of the file; a date or range of dates during which the file was modified, created, or last accessed; and more.
Agent Ransack will almost immediately begin displaying files that meet the search criteria in one panel and selecting the file will display text from the file in another panel.
As of 2014, Agent Ransack is available in both 32- and 64-bit versions.
Let's say that I want to find all of the files in which I wrote the term "crash" between January 2013 and December 2014. Here's what I know:
After entering that information, I clicked Start. In less than 1 second, Agent Ransack provided a lit of files that fit the criteria.
Search Criteria
File name: *.htm?;*php;*.xhtml;*.shtml
Containing text: crash OR crashes OR crashed OR crashing
Look in: D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\;E:\WEBSITES_production\www\TechByter.com\
Date: Created: After 1/1/2013 - Before 12/31/2014
Search Statistics
Found: 26 items (1.12 MB)
Text: 52 hits
Searched: 2,470 items (31.72 MB)
Checked: 43,081 items (54.81 GB)
Status: Completed (< 1 sec)
Name Location Modified Size Type Hits
index2003.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 7/5/2009 9:09:02 AM 66 KB SHTML File 4
index2004.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 7/5/2009 9:09:02 AM 71 KB SHTML File 2
index2005.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 7/5/2009 9:08:57 AM 104 KB SHTML File 2
linux.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 7/8/2009 8:43:13 PM 32 KB SHTML File 2
index2006.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 8/17/2009 6:42:30 PM 113 KB SHTML File 2
insults.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 7/8/2009 8:42:45 PM 109 KB SHTML File 6
win2000.shtml D:\WEBSITES\TechByter.com\old_shtml\ 7/5/2009 9:08:11 AM 34 KB SHTML File 7
...
It's fast and it doesn't miss anything. Agent Ransack often finds files that the Windows search tool misses. Although it may seem that this is a complex program to use, Mythicsoft has provided an excellent help file so that anyone who's willing to read a bit can start using it like a pro.
If the name Agent Ransack makes your IT manager nervous, download FileLocator Lite instead. It's exactly the same application code with different icons. Some less than fully clueful managers consider the original name a bit intimidating, so Mythicsoft released the renamed version that seems a bit more friendly.
As powerful as Agent Ransack is, the $50 FileLocator application adds features that you may find useful or even essential. Search filtering is more powerful because it includes the ability to exclude files, memory management can be adjusted for extremely long searches, support is provided for searching inside compressed files, instead of showing just a single line of text, the pro version can display lines that surround the term you're looking for, and lots more.
The ideal solution when the file you're looking for won't come out and play.If you sometimes have to spend a lot of time to locate missing files, Agent Ransack will delight you. Fast and easy to use, the only search tool better
than Agent Ransack is its $50 big brother. You won't go wrong with either of them.
Additional details are available on the Mythicsoft website and you can download the free application from there.
In just a few weeks, Windows 10 will be rolled out to those who have signed up for the free upgrade to the new version. In most cases, the installation won't be much of an interruption. At least it shouldn't be. In my case, it was time for a system refresh to prepare the computer for the new version of the operating system. Maybe this is something you should consider, too. If so, it requires careful planning.
You're probably wondering why I wanted to format the hard drive and reinstall everything just a few weeks before the new operating system would be available. There were several reasons:
I could have just formatted the drive, reinstalled Windows, reinstalled all applications, and then spent a great deal of time configuring those applications. That wouldn't have been a disaster, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it because it would have required numerous calls or messages to software publishers to have installation counters reset. And trying to remember all of the configuration settings for every application would be no fun at all.
Some applications (Adobe, UltraEdit, and AlienSkin, for example) have installation counters and they need to be deactivated before the disk is formatted. Adobe, IDM, and AlienSkin are all willing to work with people who use their software to reset installation counters as needed, but the process takes time. Not a lot of time, but any time that can be saved is, well, time that's saved. So I made a list of applications that needed to be deactivated. I also listed applications that I thought might have an option to back up settings.
Prior to starting, I also checked with Avast and Malwarebytes to confirm that re-installation wouldn't be a problem. Applications such as FileZilla and Q-Dir make their settings available, FileZilla via an export option and Q-Dir by placing the settings in a directory. Microsoft applications don't allow settings to be backed up, so I grabbed a lot of screen shots. Some UltraEdit Studio settings can be backed up, but not all, so I grabbed some screen shots. My preferred e-mail program, TheBat, doesn't directly allow backup of settings but account settings are included with the account data, leaving only overall interface settings to be recorded via screen capture.
I backed up the AppData folder and MyDocuments; even though I don't store files in MyDocuments, some applications use it. The AppData folder often contains useful information, but it's a hidden folder. It should always be backed up before formatting the hard drive. You'll find AppData at C:\users\{your-user-name}\AppData ({your-user-name} is your Windows login name).
I also grabbed a screen shot of the Task Bar so that I could restore programs to the locations where muscle memory would expect them to be.
The final pre-installation steps involved confirming the installation drive (Drive 0, 447.13 GB) to avoid formatting the wrong drive; creating a bootable installation CD and a bootable USB drive thumb drive (just in case); and modifying the computer's BIOS to allow USB boot, enabling USB as a boot device, and testing bootable USB drive. As it turned out, I didn't need any of the USB options, but it's better to have them available if you need them.
Following the installation of Windows, I connected to my Windows account, scheduled the Windows 10 upgrade, installed 120 Windows updates, set disk assignments to match the previous arrangement, installed AVAST, installed Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, mapped the network-attached-storage drive, and then moved on to reinstalling the key applications.
Within a few hours, the critical applications were all working again, but I needed a full day to rework settings and, even a week later, I still encounter application settings that need to be modified. Still, it's a lot easier to return to normal if you have a plan.
A report posted by KitGuru this week is intriguing because it suggests that Microsoft might want to acquire chip maker AMD and return to making its own microprocessors for some functions, a market segment that Microsoft abandoned a decade ago. But with Microsoft's new ambitions in hardware (tablets and phones, for example), this makes sense.
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has always chased Intel even though it sometimes had more robust chips at lower prices. As Anton Shilov at KitGuru writes, "Microsoft Corp. has been selling game consoles for over ten years now and back in 2006 the firm even formed a division to design chips for its products, primarily game consoles. While this internal group has clearly developed some chips for Microsoft’s hardware, the company used chips designed by Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia Corp. for its Xbox One consoles and Zune players, respectively. As it appears, Microsoft’s own chip design team cannot really develop competitive solutions for the company’s devices."
AMD isn't currently profitable, but it has valuable intellectual property that would fit with several companies, not just Microsoft. Although AMD once had a value exceeding $20 billion, its current market value is now less than $2 billion. Microsoft could buy the company easily because it has $90 billion in available cash and a market value of $350 billion.
Microsoft pays AMD about $100 for every XBox it builds, so Microsoft could save money by acquiring AMD and payments for chips would simply be internal monetary transfers on paper.
Shilov notes that the battle for video game console space is very strong. "If Microsoft bought AMD, then Sony would be faced with a bad set of choices: put money in Microsoft’s pocket every time it sells a PlayStation, or try to create an entirely new platform by using technologies from Intel, Nvidia, ARM or Imagination Technologies."
The full story is here.
