Young Scientist ot Year - ya wha ?

ozt9vdujny3srf

Personally, i am sceptical, but this years winner of the young scientist awards has made software that he claims wil increase connection speeds by 400 % on any connection.

I have seen this type of software on the net and dismissed it but this one apparnetly works.

Is the software a new development? Is it wat 56k useres have been looking for?

224 k connection speeds would be heaven on a pstn line, or, 512 on dual channel isdn.

Is it possible?

sunbeam

Hmm, I wonder would it do anything for those of us on 16.8k?

crazyasafox

Just watching Pay kenny and some guy was on who won the young science competition in the RDS for creating software that will make a normal 56k modem download 3-4 times faster on a normal pstn line,anyone know anymore.

cherrio

I only say the end of hte interview, but would be a little sceptical.

Any software would have to be server side as well, wonder how long it would take Eircom to comp on even if it did work.

At a wild guess, I would say its compression or something (which has been done before).

But who knows... live in hope! Wonder what it would do for an adsl connection;)

nahdoic

Some Irish guy won the 2003 Esat BT Young Scientist for making a web browser that speeds up your browser 4 - 5 times. It supposedly works. It had to pass 12 judges - and they were all satisfied.

It was just on Pat Kenny.

Anyone know anything about this?

If it's just a client side solution I don't see how it can speed up downloading files, by 4 -5 times over a normal 56k modem. but that's what they said it does.

Woden

no but i want to

Maj. TightAss

There's a theoretical maximum transfer limit of around 8kB/s on 56k, which in practice isn't possible because of line conditions.
I don't see how any protocol could make transfer rates any higher than this, using an ordinary 56k modem.

Meh

Originally posted by cherrio
I only say the end of hte interview, but would be a little sceptical.

I would be more than a little sceptical. Most web servers already use mod_gzip to compress the html they serve up. On top of that, there's the compression that your modem does. If this guy's invention manages to compress all that pre-compressed data by 400%, then he's probably in line for a Nobel Prize.

Anyone got more detailed information on what he claims to have done?

spooky donkey

Did he say that it would make web pages download faster and file downloads be faster?
Or is it just faster web page viewing.

Sounds a bit hard to believe.

theciscokid

i just heard that now too off a mate, i missed the late late show

lets kidnap this guy, (15 was he?)

thats it - boards should recruit him and get him to spill the beans

David C

According to RTÉ news: http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0110/youngscientist.html
it's a browser...

Therefore, I am assuming it does not allow for faster file transfers, just faster page loading... I would guess by leaving out or ignoring certain parts of the HTML.
Won't get too excited until I see exactly what it does..

Rags

Well i'm afraid it wont turn your 56k connection into 224k. Thats impossible. What he has developed is a internet browser which he claims will speeds up browsing by 400% and it has email client and a dvd browser window. (my guess is that it multithreads and blocks ads etc.)

Maj. TightAss

He actually said that all files download 4 times faster (which is BS). But of course it could be Pat Kenny putting words into his mouth.

John2002

400% increase in speed according to RTE website

http://wwa.rte.ie/news/2003/0110/youngscientist.html

nahdoic

A Leaving Cert student from Mullingar has won the 39th Esat BT Young Scientist of the Year Award. Sixteen-year-old Adnan Osmani's project was the first ever technology project to win the award. The project, "The graphical technological and user-friendly advancement of the internet browser: XWEBS", concerned the construction of a net browser that incorporated a language translator as well as a human speech facility, to read the contents of web pages. A student at St Finian's College, Mullingar, Adnan received a cheque for EUR3,000, a Waterford Crystal trophy and the opportunity to represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists taking place in Budapest, Hungary in September 2003.

http://www.unison.ie/breakingnews/index.php3?ca=9&si=29038&breakingnews=1

pfft. i guess an increase in 400% is supposed to be how much faster you can work with this browser. what a joke. pat kenny asked this guy if it will download files 4 - 5 times faster, so people should reconsider getting ISDN, and he replied "yes". i guess it's nerves.

daveirl

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nahdoic

he said he got it patented yesterday. i wonder what exactly he was able to patent though.

sceptre

It's entirely possible that such a solution could exist, though I'm somewhat sceptical that this chap has done it. There's always been a tendency for tech solutions to start with very expensive hardware, eventually replaced with less expensive software. Sometimes later again this is replaced with inexpensive dedicated or shared hardware.

With regard to downloading faster over a regular phone line, the expensive hardware could be replaced with a software solution using the same technique as DSL technology - the higher frequencies unused by PSTN technology could be used to provide greater bandwidth to users. Unfortunately though (at least from our point of view) it's fairly likely that the same software would need to be deployed at the ISP/telco end of the line - assuming that there's also a bottleneck at their end (if there isn't it wouldn't need to be a problem).

Look at it from the point of view of this analogy:
The user (me) has a narrow laneway leading back to the ISP. At the ISP this laneway becomes part of a much larger road network - indeed a much larger road. Because of the technology deployed by the ISP, I'm still restricted to using that width of laneway the whole way to my destination. (If there isn't a bottleneck at the ISP end, my road gets as wide as I like)

I'm not saying the idea is rubbish yet at all - but I'd like to see the patent application before making a judgement on it - particularly if it's just a browser. DSL technology made sense to me as a possibility as soon as I read the technical specs. This however doesn't, at least not yet - deploying software just at one end of the line seems a little too much to swallow without hearing quite a bit more about it.

It could just be some kind of page prefetching software (and they've been unsuccessful in the marketplace for a few years now)

(edit: turns out "sceptical" has a c in it (this is of course Mike Megan's fault))

Guinness xtra

I'd say he just got the idea from the net. Downloaded all the necessary jargon. Manipulated it to suit himself. Then he made it sound so complex and ultra hip that the judges were confused. Then it was just a case of the Emperors new clothes. None of them wanted to look stupid so they gave him the prize. I mean come on, 16 years old. Don't think so. Arn't all the worlds telecoms engineers and programmers not searching for ways to increase bandwidth speed all the time. And if they cant get it faster than 8kb/s then it's hardly likely he can make it 16-20kb/s.
I think he'll have to read the patent laws.

daveirl

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daveirl

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Guinness xtra

I'l move my message to this thread me thinks

I'd say he just got the idea from the net. Downloaded all the necessary jargon. Manipulated it to suit himself. Then he made it sound so complex and ultra hip that the judges were confused. Then it was just a case of the Emperors new clothes. None of them wanted to look stupid so they gave him the prize. I mean come on, 16 years old. Don't think so. Arn't all the worlds telecoms engineers and programmers not searching for ways to increase bandwidth speed all the time. And if they cant get it faster than 8kb/s then it's hardly likely he can make it 16-20kb/s.
I think he'll have to read the patent laws.

nahdoic

his project was called "The graphical technological and user-friendly advancement of the internet browser: XWEBS"

so it has nothing to do with faster downloading.

it has to do with having lots of applications integrated into a single browser, that's all it seems

daveirl

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Guinness xtra

it was supposed to go into the young scientist thread but i clicked the wrong button

daveirl

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davros

Originally posted by sceptre
With regard to downloading faster over a regular phone line, the expensive hardware could be replaced with a software solution using the same technique as DSL technology - the higher frequencies unused by PSTN technology could be used to provide greater bandwidth to users. Unfortunately though (at least from our point of view) it's fairly likely that the same software would need to be deployed at the ISP/telco end of the line

It's more than fairly likely - it's certain. And a hardware change is needed too. There is a filter on your telephone line at the exchange end that chops off all frequencies above 4kHz. This filter makes it an absolute mathematical impossibility that you can transmit at more than 64kb/s on a standard phone line.

It would have been so easy for (engineer!) Pat Kenny to ask what was meant by a 400% increase. But he didn't ask the obvious question or ask for any technical explanation.

[edit: I'm adding a qualification to what I wrote above. The 4kHz filter (and implied 8kHz sample rate) *plus* the 256-level (8-bit) quantizer on the line interface at the switch limits the max data transmission rate to 64kb/s. It would have been simpler if I had just said that the switch hardware digitizes the voice signal at 64kb/s so you can never transmit data faster than that without a hardware change on the switch side :rolleyes: ]

elexes

if its just browsing it could be possible to make the code go faster but i dont see how dvd quality could come throught ... like a webpage is totaly different

how old was the kid that made decass

longword

Originally posted by John2002
400% increase in speed according to RTE website

http://wwa.rte.ie/news/2003/0110/youngscientist.html

Read it carefully. It claims to speed up internet usage by 400%. That's just a fluffy marketroid type claim which is not in any way related to bitrate. I didn't catch the Late Late myself but I can say with near 100% certainty that you won't be able to download the latest Windows patch four times faster without replacing your modem.

sceptre

Originally posted by daveirl
someone will fix it in the morning. Don't worry

Done (we never sleep)

Originally posted by davros
It's more than fairly likely - it's certain. And a hardware change is needed too. There is a filter on your telephone line at the exchange end that chops off all frequencies above 4kHz. This filter makes it an absolute mathematical impossibility that you can transmit at more than 64kb/s on a standard phone line.

That's that probably settled then - thanks for reminding me of that "thou shall not transmit at frequencies higher than 4KHz" rule -I'm sure it was on page one of the last DSL book I read but I've a memory like a sieve at times

(is this summat to do with Ohm's law?)

/struggles to remember secondary school physics

I'll say this much as fact: if, for the sake of argument, he's managed to do this, we'll all be hearing about this on every tech-related site within days. Not weeks, days. The possibility of DSL was hot news before it even hit the lab. If we don't hear about it, well, you get the picture.

Any hardware changes necessary basically make it a rehashing of DSL technology - which is hardly a new development.

sceptre

Originally posted by elexes
how old was the kid that made decass

Regardless of how many times that poor kid said that he didn't actually write DeCSS, the media pretty much refused to recognise what he was saying.

He was a member of the group (MoRE) that cracked it. He didn't write any of the code - two German members did. As a member of the group he got the code and then put it up on his website. He was prosecuted for putting it up on the webpage, not writing it.

15 btw.

zynaps

People (and big, dirty corporations) seem to do a lot of research on techniques of encoding data across different media more efficiently.
If they can come up with differential quadrature phase shift keying and make it work across power lines, which have random interference and so forth, hopefully someone will find some way of improving the throughput on pstn lines.
I just wouldn't expect it at the young scientist thing....

jd

I suppose the browser could follow links and download content before the link is clicked, but this has been done before..
It would be interesting to know who the judges are though

daveirl

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naitkris

if you ask me, the guy won the young scientist more because he created something people don't expect of someone his age rather than that he created something revolutionary or new. modem tweakers (BeFaster, MaxMTU...), browser enhancers, faster browsers (Opera...) and download managers (DAP, GetRight...) have been around for the last decade as far as I can remember - this guy has just packaged a product with lots of goodies that already exist in one form or another and got the attention of judges who aren't as aware of what was already available.

in other words, what he has created isn't anything revolutionary to us 56K dial-up users. heck, any decent programmer can create a simple browser tweaker to edit registry settings or request multiple sources/connections for the download to improve speed slightly.

i am not saying he doesn't deserve the award, he does, based on his age, but not so much on what he created. i would like to see his program in action though, to backup my point, but i have failed to find a webpage for his program anywhere despite searching google and other places relentlessly.

Gavin

As someone stated over in the nets/comms thread. I think it was longword. It offers a 400% increase in internet _usage_

It is a browser that I believe simply has 4 panes, so that one can look at four pages at a time... He also appears to have embedded a video playback component into the browser, which accounts for the claim that 'it can stream dvd quality film over the internet'.

This of course means.. provided you have the bandwidth in the first place. There is no way, no way at all, that software can increase the bandwidth on a pstn line by 400%, above current 56k speeds.

Gav

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Verb
As someone stated over in the nets/comms thread. I think it was longword. It offers a 400% increase in internet _usage_

It is a browser that I believe simply has 4 panes, so that one can look at four pages at a time... He also appears to have embedded a video playback component into the browser, which accounts for the claim that 'it can stream dvd quality film over the internet'.

An Irish Times article today mentions that the browser contains a DVD player so you can watch your DVDs while you browse. It also contains 50 search engines, according to the article, and some sort of speech synthesis that reads out what you are browsing.

The article also mentions that the judges took the browser over to the computer centre in UCD and verified that it was between 2 to 5 times faster than normal. The article did not say how this was done or give any other technical details.

I presume that in order to win he would have had to explain how the thing worked otherwise it would not be a 'science' competition, but it is a shame that the media does not go into any details on this.

One way to speed up the apparent speed of browsing is to use proxy software somewhere on the internet to further compress images. You connect to this proxy rather than directly to the Internet. I believe AOL used some technique like this, but there was also companies offering these services. Image quality would suffer but some people might prefer this on a narrow band connection.

De Rebel

why doesn't someone dublin based hop on a bus and get their arse into the rds and chat with him while he is packing up and stop speculating.

naitkris

SkepticOne - a proxy used to compress images is nothing new, in Ireland neither esat nor eircom have their proxies compression enabled, however were i used to live (bahrain, middle east) it was. i doubt however that this kid is going to provide a proxy server for everyone to use - the best way is to search google for a compression enabled proxy server and just enter it into your browser settings, typically web page surfing only (as downloading leads to very little compression as most files on the net are already compressed so much) gives the best compression and i have found you can get compression as high as 50% which in turn would mean double your speed while downloading web pages. trust me this is true and makes perfect, simple sense. why esat or eircom don't have their proxies compression enabled is beyond me. maybe IrelandOffline should bring that up as another gripe as it is a very valid one in my view.

back to this "new, amazing software"
what irritates me is that Irish Times say such and such, the kid says so and so, however not only is his software not available on the internet for download (according to good old reliable google, altavista and alltheweb.com) but there isn't even a single web page with both his name and his software "XWEBS" (tried also just "xweb") on the internet, despite him having worked on it for 2 years - to me this is very very strange! surely after 2 years of working on a piece of software with so much to do with the internet and him being called a "web wizard" by the reliable Irish Times he would have his own website about his "invention".

sure, testing it at the computer centre in UCD, great, though college internet access speeds (i'm at UCC) are somehing between 10 to 20 times faster than a 56k dial-up. i know a friend of mine on 2MB/s DSL in Sweden who optimised his connection with BeFaster and noticed a significant difference as it changed his registry settings to make the most use of high speed access, however Windows XP by default is optimized for 56K and network access by default, as is Windows 98, so optimising these systems to 56K is almost useless. so of course his software worked at UCD, but for us 56Kers - dream on!

if anyone finds his software or a web page to it, please post it here so everyone can waste time downloading it just to realise it does nothing for 56K users.

as for all the brilliant extras he has included, they are either all pulled from Windows Media Player and consequently embeded or he has used opensource plugins as those available for IrfanView. Either way, who cares, there are so many good DVD player and speech software already that having it in an all-in-one product actually is more of nuisance than a benefit to web surfers who prefer, well, just to surf the web.

naitkris

Originally posted by Guinness xtra
I'd say he just got the idea from the net. Downloaded all the necessary jargon. Manipulated it to suit himself. Then he made it sound so complex and ultra hip that the judges were confused. Then it was just a case of the Emperors new clothes. None of them wanted to look stupid so they gave him the prize. I mean come on, 16 years old. Don't think so. Arn't all the worlds telecoms engineers and programmers not searching for ways to increase bandwidth speed all the time. And if they cant get it faster than 8kb/s then it's hardly likely he can make it 16-20kb/s.
I think he'll have to read the patent laws.

can't agree more with you more, Guinness xtra. there's a good discussion going on at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=706674 and you can read my 2 posts to further back up this arguement.

Hannibal_12

Originally posted by naitkris
if you ask me, the guy won the young scientist more because he created something people don't expect of someone his age rather than that he created something revolutionary or new. modem tweakers (BeFaster, MaxMTU...), browser enhancers, faster browsers (Opera...) and download managers (DAP, GetRight...) have been around for the last decade as far as I can remember - this guy has just packaged a product with lots of goodies that already exist in one form or another and got the attention of judges who aren't as aware of what was already available.

in other words, what he has created isn't anything revolutionary to us 56K dial-up users. heck, any decent programmer can create a simple browser tweaker to edit registry settings or request multiple sources/connections for the download to improve speed slightly.

i am not saying he doesn't deserve the award, he does, based on his age, but not so much on what he created. i would like to see his program in action though, to backup my point, but i have failed to find a webpage for his program anywhere despite searching google and other places relentlessly.

Agreed. It’s admirable that he has the capability at a young age and for that I commend him but this is no revolutionary new product. I never pay much attention to the event at all. I think the era of Watson and Crick type discoveries is gone; i.e. one or two men/ women stumbling upon something ground breaking. There are too many people in constant communication via the net (Pay attention Eircon) and large institutions working on the same goals for any one person to achieve something unique, it’s always team based now.
There may be exceptions of course, such as the Raelians lol :rolleyes:

GUI

lads,
mark my credability on this kid is bull****..

from i gather its a browser probably written in c++ with multimedia player tied in

is anyone reminded of realone player here?

oh ..
did i mention real one player went completely open source 2 months back

interesting the time frame considering when his was released. ;-)

sure they reckon opera speeds up internet browsing 300%..

i think he bull****ted the judges with technical terms
and its all software..

believe me if the smartest physicists cant get more data down the wire,
im sure this kid cannot !

seamus

Lads, the program itself runs faster, that's all. There is no way to install software on its own that increases the physical speed of a line.

If anyone's used Opera, you'll get what's meant by 'speed'. Opera (ime) switches between functions much faster than IE or Netscape. Using mouse gestures, for example, going back is instantaneous, whereas with IE or Netscape, there's a slight delay before it switches.

From what I've read in the papers, he's just used some efficient code, and integrated a whole pile of multimedia apps into a browser. *yawn*

Fair play to him, it must've taken a sh1tload of time and effort, and at 16, he'll go far. I didn't have even close to that kind of skill at that age (I was still just using comps to play games )

Calman

I downloaded software last night from http://www.ascentive.com/, it's a 30 day free trial using your credit card and I already sent them a mail cancelling my subscription. It says it can speed up browsing and downloading of files by up to 375%, it seems to speed up browsing a little but defintely not downloading of files. It's a 30 day free trial using your credit card, so feel free to double check it. The software's called "ActiveSpeed"

naitkris

Originally posted by Calman
I downloaded software last night from http://www.ascentive.com/, it's a 30 day free trial using your credit card and I already sent them a mail cancelling my subscription. It says it can speed up browsing and downloading of files by up to 375%, it seems to speed up browsing a little but defintely not downloading of files. It's a 30 day free trial using your credit card, so feel free to double check it. The software's called "ActiveSpeed"

it justs edits your registry... you can even do this manually if you don't mind editing the registry, save you the money.

naitkris

having just read today's Irish Times article and being a programmer myself, I am really amazed that the guy managed to write 1.5 MILLION LINES OF CODE IN 2 YEARS BY HIMSELF! I mean he was 14 when he started and, if it's true that he wrote it all by himself then the guys simply a genius, no questions asked, though I HAVE MANY QUESTIONS, that's the problem!

I just think that it is a bit far-fetched this whole thing. Someone in the "Nets / Comms" forum mentioned that RealPlayer or some other software went open source a month or two ago and that it is almost identical to the kids software to a certain extent - which is interesting without a doubt I think you'll agree.

Just out of interest, could you place your vote out of one of the following as to what you really think of the kids software so that we can all come to a swift conclusion as to what we as a majority feel is going (if he only had a web page outlining the software or let us download it or even just explained how exactly it works to get the high speed improvements he claims, then there would be no need for this!):
a) genuine, 100% written by him, working and revolutionary to the way we now will be able to use the internet
b) genuine, 100% written by him, working but nothing new that doesn't already exist
c) genuine, 100% written by him, doesn't work properly
d) non genuine, taken from an open source product(s) and redesigned, repackaged in order to win 3000 Euro
e) other? please state.

I have tried to make the options as clear-cut to what others have said previously, though if you feel your answer is very different from a) thru d) then use e) to give a completely new opinion.

The results should be interesting... and should hopefully rap up this thread.

daveirl

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De Rebel

i'd vote that someone should move this speculative carryon into one of the technology boards, or somewhere else where its relevent. its nothing to do with IOFFL

woodentopz

the most annoying thing about the whole affair is the quality of the reporting. The irish times is just a joke -- is that really the best science report that can be written on the subject? Does the author not even notice that he has forgotten to, er, tell us what the hell the thing is...

Pat kenny is equally sad on the subject. Why have none of the reports even asked basic questions such as "what is it". While RTE news does not even bother trying.

The funniest bit is the picture caption on the IT front page, saying that the guy won his prize for a "browser" (their quotation marks). Makes you wonder what a journalists job really is. Simply to promote a promotional event? to make up pretty stories about genius kids.

really annoying. Can these people be trusted to tell us anything we might need to know....

phaxx

I was up there today. Never actually got to speak to him, constant crowd around it going "ooh!" (except for the clued in people)

After discussing it with a friend, we've decided that he's simply very good at selling it - he gives no technical details at all[1] and whenever he's asked a question, he directs people to the fluffy and vague documents pinned up, or his flashy powerpoint presentation.

It seems to me that he took components from various[2] applications and just glued them all together, forming a horribly bloated and ultimately annoying application.


[1] - the one detail given of how it makes things faster is that it makes two DNS requests where a normal browser would make one. How this speeds up web browsing, I have no idea.

[2] - IE's rendering engine, some DVD player, Windows Media Player, microsoft's text to speech engine, (I believe he drew his own little cutesy character to go with this) a quick and dirty mail sender (to, from, message) and quick searches for all the major search engines.

naitkris

Originally posted by De Rebel
i'd vote that someone should move this speculative carryon into one of the technology boards, or somewhere else where its relevent. its nothing to do with IOFFL

sorry, you are completely right De Rebel, i forgot completely that this was an IOFFL board, but then again I wasn't the one who started the thread. also, i am a newbie to boards.ie