Robots Now On The Rise
By Akeena Wares, 10/12/2011

While building robots that could perform like humans was always used as a reference to the future, we’re starting to realize that the future is now. James Law, a professor in the Computer Science Department at Aberyswyth University in Wales, has nominated his three foot tall iCub robot to take part in the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay in London. In doing this, Law wanted to make a tribute to Alan Turing, the WWII code breaker and father of computer science.

The iCub was acquired by the D.R.G. (Developmental Robotics Group) as a part of the “IMCLeVeR” (Intrinsically Motivated Cumulative Learning Versatile Robots) program at Aberystwyth and is designed to learn from its environment just as a toddler would. Some of its features include its two VGA cameras on its head, two microphones, accelerometers and gyros. It also has visual, auditory, haptic, vestibular, proprioceptive and torque sensors to furthermore enhance its abilities.

The Research center at Aberystwyth is aimed at identifying children’s development of learning and translating it into easy strategies for learning in robotics. Ten partner institutions throughout Europe are involved in the IMCLeVeR project, working in the fields of robotics, developmental psychology, neuroscience and machine.

Though the iCub has been nominated to be a part of the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay, sponsored by Lloyds TSB, it doesn’t meet the basic requirements. To be included in this historic event, the nominee must be over eleven years old and live in the United Kingdom. Though it isn’t really alive nor is it older than eleven, the iCub is a resident of the UK, and they might decide to bend the rules for this contender.

iPad 2
By Joel Ewing, 4/20/2011

iPad lovers get ready to be blown away with the new iPad 2. It has many new improvements that outshine the first iPad. Being 33% thinner and 15% lighter it is clearly better than the original iPad. The iPad 2 comes with the new duel-core A5 chip, nine times the graphics of the first iPad, 10-hour battery life, and two cameras (one for FaceTime and one for taking pictures).

The New iPad smart cover allows you to prop it up to watch movies or play games without adding size to the iPad, an LED display for amazing graphics, Multi-Touch technology for surfing the web or playing games, IOS 4 operating system, and instant on (iPad turns on as soon as you press the home button). Wi-Fi and 3G, the Gyro and accelerometer and compass work together to know which direction your heading or which way your turning the screen and they adjust to your movements, AirPlay that lets you stream pictures and videos straight to your HDTV, and video mirroring which allows you to plug in your iPad to your TV an show your screen on the TV.

Finally there is the AirPrint, it lets you print to your printer wirelessly. So get to the stores on its release date of March 11th and get the new iPad.

AT&T vs Verizon
By Jason Yontef, 2/15/2011

If you are thinking about buying the new iPhone 4 and can’t decide on the network, here is how the phone compares on both Verizon and AT&T.

CNET’s conducted tests in 4 different locations, looking for signal strength and download and upload speeds. Of the 12 tests, AT&T won 2, leaving Verizon the clear victor. AT&T has major problems with signal strength, translating to poor speeds downloading a webpage, as well as deficiencies with upload speeds, tested with the Facebook mobile photo uploader.

While AT&T will always fall short to Verizon’s impeccable network strength, it does have the ability to use the data network while on a phone call, which Verizon does not. This may sound impressive, but it is no reason to choose AT&T’s weak network over Verizon’s.

What’s better? iPhone or Android?
By Nicholas Lucas, Special to Tornado Times

So the “iPhone vs. Android” debate has been going on since about a month after the release of Android, for all practical purposes, and it's about time the issue has been resolved. To properly reason this debate, I'm going to have to shed some light on the fact that to compare the iPhone (a product/phone) to Android (a Cellular operating system) is as ignorant as comparing fruits to broccoli.
The proper comparison, if we are going to try and be as practical as possible, would be iOS to Android.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) operating systems are easy to compare; there are three characteristics (without getting into the gruesome technicalities that most of you are afraid of learning): functionality, customization and development. In other words, “Does it do what it needs to do efficiently?”, “Can you make it personal or just pretty?” and “How easy is it to develop for?”

Functionality is an easy aspect to compare because, since the release of iOS5, they’re similar (when you don’t take the apps into account); they both have notification centers, lock-screens, passwords, home-screens, multiple pages of apps, etc. (why go through the countless similarities that smart phones are generally expected to have). They only differ in home-screen widgets, native to Android, and whether it lacks the possibility to need any form of process management (iOS).

Of course, when you design a proprietary operating system (an operating system designed to only work as it was made, and not be modified in any way, for those of you who don’t know how to look it up on google) for a specific product, it should be expected to run smoothly. They’re pretty similar nonetheless.

Their similarity fades, however, on the customization front. Apple has a bit of a “one size fits all” feel to it. In order to customize iOS beyond the background, icon order and password, you’d need to jailbreak it. What is “jailbreaking”? It’s usually just running a program... but that program finds an exploit in the security so that you can assume a higher level of functionality (one of those functions being a higher level of customization). Getting into the technicality of tethered and untethered and the other various forms of this noun/verb (jailbreak) would take way too long, but I’ll leave it at the fact that these exploits are patched by Apple, as soon as the companies sees that they exist. Apple does not support “jailbreaking” in anyway, and when you jailbreak, you run the slight possibility of bricking your iPhone/iPod.

The android equivalent to “jailbreaking” is “rooting,” which has a little more of a self-explained name. When you “root” an Android phone, you’re assuming root privileges (kind of like being a super-administrator), and Google actually encourages it, for the sake of customization. However, with an Android you don’t need to root in order to customize your phone.

By default, you can add widgets and icons to your home-screen, change those icons, change the amount of pages you have, choose which screen is your “home-screen” (the one you jump to when you hit home), and that is just default, or without using the “Android market” (it’s like the app store, but with more than just apps). With the market, you can change the lock-screen, change your home-screen and lock-screen skins, you can add more functionality to your overlay, you can do virtually anything you’d like to your Android, and I’ll explain more when I get to development. On the customization front, Android wins hands down.

Android also has my vote in development, but it’s not because Android does anything spectacular. You’re open to download and submit whatever you want to the Android market, so long as it doesn’t have a virus. If you don’t feel like going through the virtually painless process of submitting to the Android market (I use no quotes to signify the Google-hosted market, and not the app), you can just host the installer on a website, and have people browse to it, then they can just run the installer.

Everything is pretty much open source; they provide material on how to build an app, and they don’t require a $100 yearly fee, so developing an app for it is quite easy. You can even program to use the hardware of the phone, such as having a widget on your “home-screen” shaped like a flashlight switch that you can hit to turn on your camera flash as a flashlight. Every aspect of developing an Android app is completely open. I could start developing one now, if I decided to, and Google would give me no roadblocks on the way.

Now quite a few would ask, “But doesn’t that mean that bad men can make bad programs for Android phones?” The answer is yes.

Some people say, “Oh, just get virus protection,” but Apple had a whole different solution. Apple said, “Why not screen everyone who ever wants to submit an app, and whenever the app isn’t completely separate from the iOS interface, then just deny it. We could also lock up anyone who has an IQ over 30 (side-note, an IQ of just 30, is a REALLY LOW IQ; even you have a higher IQ than that) because of their potential to do bad things to society, but we don’t do that either, do we?

Apple has a very elaborate screening process to see what makes it on to the app store, makes it so that you can only install app-store apps on any “iDevice” and makes it cost $100 to be an “iDevice” app developer to get all of those resources that Google provides for free. While this ensures that Apple’s special little consumers wont get any malicious software, it also limits them completely to only have what Apple feels they are allowed to have.

So iOS, as I said before, is kind of a “one size fits all” or a “my first smart phone” smart-phone operating system and Android is more like Ikea (it looks and work as nice as you make it). If you don’t spend a lot of time on your phone, and you want all possible customization and set-up to be done in 15 minutes, then get an iPhone. The iPhone isn’t “bad”, and nor is iOS, but they lack any form of out-of-the-box customization, and it’s so limited that it barely holds a candle to the possibilities that you’d have with an Android. Most of Android, however, can be confusing to your average user, and it’s understandable why the iPhone still exists today. It just doesn’t make sense that it’s because of teenagers who consider themselves “tech savvy.”

Senior Nicholas Lucas, along with senior Chris Portela, was named a finalist in the Polytechnic Institute of New York University's annual Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) challenges.