The Soccer World Cup

The Robot Soccer World Cup is divided into five divisions, starting with the Simulation league. This is for sophisticated computer games without the robot hardware, but with each team comprising eleven autonomous software programs called agents. The Small Robot league is five-aside on a 6.05 x 4.05m ‘field’, while the Middle Size Robot league plays teams of six on an 18 x 12m field. The Humanoid league caters for autonomous robots with a human-like body plan that e programmed with senses that duplicate those of real people. In this league, unlike the smaller ones above, the tasks of perception and world modeling are not simplified by programming. Then there’s the Standard Platform league, where all players have identical hardware and only the optimum computer programming can produce the winning advantage. These robots are fully autonomous on the field, having no external control. Despite the game format, Robot-cup 2010 is a serious business. Robotics teams from leading universities that include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Oxford University and Osaka University are showing what the latest robot football stars can do.

Easy Scholarships

Friends, recently while I approached a consultancy for the procedures regarding my higher studies, I came to know that obtaining scholarships is nevertheless an easy job. I read that the San Diego State Aztec football team had yet another miserable losing season. They haven't been to a bowl game in a decade, and haven't won a bowl game in a very long time. They don't have their own stadium, and they lose several million dollars a year. Student fees are being increased to subsidize the football program, and with state college budget cuts looming, such tactics will be difficult to sustain. So despite having a new coach, a columnist of the San Diego Union-Tribune figures its time to pull the plug on the football program.

There are some interesting points beside the obvious ones. The first is that San Diego State continues to claim that it's football program makes a profit, even though it must be subsidized. But the article points out that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on in that book-keeping, of the type which would make a Hollywood movie mogul proud. There are also a number of ways to get easy scholarships. In short, lots of expenses which primarily support the football program are shuffled off as "general expenses", and what should be general revenue is allocated as football revenue. The article hints that this is common among football colleges, which raises potential questions at a lot of programs.