Beginning Lego Mindstroms EV3

The LEGO MINDSTORMS collection, first introduced in 1998, is one of LEGO’s top best-selling sets/series. The reason for its success is the same as the reason for LEGO’s success before its release: the chance to kick your creativity up a notch.

If you are like most avid LEGO enthusiasts, you don’t just purchase a LEGO set, build what is on the instructions, and consider yourself done. If anything, you see the set as something to add to your collection. I’m not talking about a room with shelves full of completed LEGO sets/models; I am talking about several boxes of LEGO pieces, with a creator who is waiting for a brand new idea.

LEGO used to advertise in its catalog that just one set was capable of building all kinds of toys. Merging sets creates infinite possibilities of creations. LEGO began offering special types of bricks so that creators could make their creations automated, but even the later types of automated bricks (such as the Technic Power Functions) were still rather limited with what you could do. 

The problem is that LEGO Power Functions are all stop or go. For example, you can make a LEGO car that could ride across the floor, but it could only go at one speed and then stop. You could even take control of it and make it steer, but this also has limitations. Depending on what method of steering you use, you sometimes have to deliberately jam the motors in order to make it work.

LEGO MINDSTORMS takes automation a step further by making these programmable parts. With MINDSTORMS, you can make a model car go at different speeds, stop where you want it to, and turn where you want, all with a simple program. In short, the MINDSTORMS series turned what was once a mere electronic toy for amusement and turned them into programmable machines.

In this book, you will learn how to make many machines. As someone who has written two books about LEGO Technic, Practical LEGO Technics and LEGO Technic Robotics, I can teach you how to build vehicles like cars as well as other robotic machines. I will also teach you how to program these creations.

Beginning Lego Mindstroms EV3
Mark Rollins
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Towards an Inclusive Future - Impact and Wider Potential of Information

Technological innovation has brought immense benefits to our society and economy.Information and communication technologies (ICT) now play a key role in all our daily lives, in our work, education, use of public services and in our homes. New possibilities emerge of products and services that are flexible, quick, adaptable to our preferences, reliable and robust. Yet these same technological advances can present significant barriers to some of the very people able to benefit most from these services and, without the right support,can even add to the exclusion many people suffer. Key decisions made when designing and developing technological products and services will dictate whether some groups, like people with disabilities,will be able to use them or not.

About 15% of Europeans report difficulties performing daily life activities due to some form of disability.With the demographic change towards an ageing population,this figure will significantly increase in the coming years. Older people are often confronted with multiple minor disabilities which can prevent them from enjoying the benefits that technology offers.As a result, people with disabilities are one of the largest groups at risk of exclusion within the Information Society in Europe.

It is estimated that only 10% of persons over 65 years of age use internet compared with 65% of people aged between 16-24. This restricts their possibilities of buying cheaper products, booking trips on line or having access to relevant information, including social and health services. Furthermore, accessibility barriers in products and devices prevents older people and people with disabilities from fully enjoying digital TV, using mobile phones and accessing remote services having a direct impact in the quality of their daily lives. 

Moreover,the employment rate of people with disabilities is 20% lower than the average population.Accessible technologies can play a key role in improving this situation,making the difference for individuals with disabilities between being unemployed and enjoying full employment between being a tax payer or recipient of social benefits.

The recent United Nations convention on the rights of people with disabilities clearly states that accessibility is a matter of human rights. In the 21st century, it will be increasingly difficult to conceive of achieving rights of access to education, employment health care and equal opportunities without ensuring accessible technology.

Technology penetrates ever more in our daily lives. It is crucial that we create solutions that are usable and accessible for everyone, regardless of their abilities. This is not just about meeting the needs of a small part of the population. In fact, evidence suggests that facilitating access to the information society for people with disabilities benefits many more people in the general population, for example as it drives innovation towards easier to use products and websites.

Last year, all Member States agreed on a declaration in Riga committing themselves to take concrete steps to build an Inclusive Information Society and setting clear targets forii Towards an inclusive future the coming years.To achieve these objectives, it is important to make everyone aware that eAccessibility is a positive factor for the competitiveness of our industries. Technology is pointless unless it ultimately meets the needs of society.This must be fully reflected in the European policies for building the Information Society. eAccessibility is thus essential to achieving an inclusive society and key for the success of the i2010 initiative,A European Information Society for Growth and Employment.

European funding on research and development for accessible technologies and services is not the only precondition to building an information society for all. To ensure that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from these impressive technological advances, it is also essential to create a legal and economic environment in which these European socio-economic objectives can be achieved. The various factors that can contribute to the risk of exclusion are indeed often interrelated, like poverty, low level of education, unemployment, disability and old age. These need to be addressed in a consistent and coherent policy framework.

A truly inclusive Information Society must be socially and economically sustainable. For many years, accessibility efforts have been concentrated on removing existing barriers. But this is not enough. COST 219 activities have been pioneers in preventing eAccessibility problems by promoting a Design for All approach for telecommunication products and services.

This book addresses the accessibility of next generation ICT networks and services running on them. Some of the specific issues in this context are: how to ensure accessibility to new IP based communication solutions? What features do we need to build in next generation networks to ensure real time multimodal conversations? How to ensure the accessibility of emergency numbers? Next generation networks offer immense opportunities for having, besides voice, good quality real time video communication using sign language and text, including for example display in real time virtual Braille.This would open up new communication opportunities in particular for deaf-blind persons.

The time is ripe for addressing these issues, asking questions such as the ones above.This book will certainly contribute to the debate and stimulate the implementation of accessible solutions in next generation networks. I welcome this important contribution to the telecommunications field and to the construction of an Inclusive Information Society in Europe.

Towards an Inclusive Future - Impact and Wider Potential of Information
Patrick R.W. Roe
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The Second Internet - Reinventing Computer Networking with IPv6

The Chips are Down! However Knowledge is Sadly Missing! 

The word “Internet” has become a household name in every language without any translation. Even the French have kept the same name while normally they tend to create a French version for any English name to make it sound like it’s invented in France. Now when you ask normal users how the Internet really functions, be prepared to be surprised by the sparse response and accept their kind apology that they had no time to delve into this complex world, understandably. 

When you ask Internet experts on the current Internet Protocol (IPv4), you will be enriched by their prolific and visionary thoughts of what you can do with the Internet and most probably that it can even solve world hunger. However when you ask these same experts about the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), you will find only a few that can answer with high precision how the new Internet based on IPv6 functions, how it will be installed or how it will enhance the current Internet. I guess most Internet experts have by now understood that the visible difference between IPv4 and IPv6 is the size of the address space moving from a limited to virtually unlimited resource (from 4.3 Billion addresses to 340 Billion Billion Billion Billion addresses). 

While basic IPv6 was designed and standardized between 1994-1998 and deployment has been happening at a slow pace for the last 10 years, it is astonishing to see the same historical deployment patterns of the current Internet Protocol (IPv4). That was designed between 1972-1980 with first deployment in 1981. It had to wait for ten years until 1991 for the Internet to be opened for public use per US Congress agreement. The number of IPv4 experts was quite small and not surprisingly it’s the same level of IPv6 experts that we have now.  

The Internet community is asking for killer apps to facilitate justifiable deployment of IPv6. Now, without educated engineers at developers level and ISP levels, it is unreasonable to expect creation of such apps that would benefit from the new built-in features in IPv6. The principal feature of IPv6 is the restoration of the end-to-end model on the back of which the Internet was built on in the first place. The e2e model restores e2e connectivity, e2e security, e2e QoS, node reachability, remote access for maintenance and network management purposes. Essential features have been tightly redesigned like mobility, Multicast, auto-configuration, to take the Internet where it has not gone before. IPv6 will take the Internet into commodity services adding networking value to services like RF-ID and sensors. IPv6 will open new paradigms for Internet of Things, Smart Grids, Cloud Computing, Smart Cities, 4G/LTE services, etc. 

To realise this we need to have engineers professionally trained with IPv6 eyes and not with IPv4 eyes. A recent survey on IPv6 training and studies at universities has demonstrated that IPv6 training and courses are way too embryonic to have any critical impact. Patching IPv6 with IPv4 thinking would be just extending the IPv6 address space to the Internet and not fully exploiting the rich set of new features still invisible to the normal engineer. Deploying IPv6 without upfront integration of IPv6 security and privacy is re-doing the same mistake done in the deployment of IPv4. This is even defeating the prime purpose of fixing thing like security in the Internet. It is estimated that some 20 million engineers are working on the current Internet worldwide at ISPs, corporate and all other public and private 9 organisations and they will need training on IPv6. This is a gigantic task since it’s the first upgrade of the Internet and most probably the last one for decades to come. 

There are also tools that address IPv6 issues that have been designed by the author that will play key roles in the deployment of IPv6 such as DHCPv6, DNSSECv6, IDN, etc. The author brings practical and hands-on experience to take enthusiast engineers to the next level with astonishing intricate knowledge pretty rare to find in this diffuse Internet world not knowing who holds the truth. 

I encourage everyone to read this book as you will enjoy it like I did as the author is pretty crystal clear, 

precise, authoritative and written directly from his heart. 

The Second Internet - Reinventing Computer Networking with IPv6
Lawrence E. Hughes

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