National Center of Music in Wroclaw 2015

 The city of Wroclaw is a proud, splendid, cosmopolitan and rich in history, culture microcosm in Central Europe, where I was prioviledged to study at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. Where my extended family still lives there and I try to vitit each year as my duties would me allow.  If you would like to learn more I address you to: Norman Davis/Roger Moorhouse and their 2002 book Microcosm Portrait of a Central European City

Soon after Poland has joined European Union, the city has been strongly supported with EU funding, for education, culture and infrastructure, etc. One of such project was the costruction of National Center of Music in Wroclaw, superseeding the Old Filhalmonia, funded in 70' by Warsaw on the ruins, with capacity and quality suitable for small town.

The new hall, is partially sunk into the ground with 5 floors underground, this in line with traditional city surroundings of buildings height of no more than 6 foors above ground.

Thus, in 2002 the city created a consortium consiting of Architecs, Building, Music Experts, Financing and Business, and sent scouting teams onto the world to find best, most advanced and most successfull Music Theathers. One of such centers was the Lucern Culture and Congress Centre in Luzern, Switzerland.  Vision there concepted by Jean Nouvel, with its ultimate accustic hall covered with an adjustable Sound Reflector by Russel Johnson of Manhattan School of Music based in NYC.

Organizers decided to visit Luzern Culture and Congress Center and meet there with the Centre Operators and Architects, with Russel Johnson with his accoustic Experts from the United States, representatives from the City of Wroclaw, and the EU funders, to discuss issues and topics starting from musicians, Construction, Structural, Physics, Accustics, HVAC and even backroom installations including an exclusive  Le Piaf restaurant.

All of these participants were called to Luzern early May 2005 with 5 full days filled program. conference rooms were reserved in the Congress center, however all of particpants would speak in 2 or 3 languages, but we had in the room English, French, German and Polish at the same time, and questions required knowledge of not general languages but specific business, management, physic, Art and engineering, all symultaneusly translated, which required the translating person to interpret all those issues from technical knowledge as well as with the linguistic one. 

The whole organizational duties of this "conference" in Switzerland was placed on the Polish Embassy officials in that country. Thus the diplomatic corps was spread to serch for suitable translator, who would be capable to overcome the challenges and ironed them out with certain authority.

At the time, I was running my company out of my office in Zug. The company was registered as a member of the Swiss-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, thus our name had an international character. On the other hand, myself was elected as a member of the Board to the  Polish National Museum in Rapperswil and again I was known to the diplomatic Corp at the embassy.

Polish Ambassador in Bern, called me with requirement if I could accomodate my schedules and dedicate a whole business week for the benefit of all concerned. My agreement sealed  the fate of negotiations which closed all open questions, in the end. Resulting that Architects, Sound Reflector (called by many "moving ceiling" adjusting the concert hall accustics to small or to large audience) was to be incorporated into the polish architectural plans. Recommendation of Russell Johnston was soon announced as a great success and a first qualitative advantage first not only in Poland but also a first in other countries.

Manhattan School of Music 2002 Sound Reflector in Luzern moving up when the audience is "full", moving down when the audience is more "cameral".

Please note that the Concert Hall in Luzern is much smaller than the Concert Hall in Wroclaw, which stems from the size of its audience, while Wroclaw has a million residents while Luzern is a small University City of about 50 k residents.

Smart lenses should help with blindnes - Repost from Com! Magazin (link below) in German originally-use browser to translate

 https://www.com-magazin.de/news/forschung/intelligente-linse-erblindung-verhindern-2904563.html

Enterprise 2000 Symposium, June 23-24, 1994 – IBM International Éducation Centre, La Hulpe, Brussels (Belgium) a page of my Logbook

 

_{Enterprise 2000 Symposium, June 23-24, 1994 – IBM International Éducation Centre, LaHulpe, Brussels (Belgium)}

_{Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was a great promoter of Hi-Tec companies, providing means of financing, education, marketing German products and companies world-wide.} 

 

We did get plenty of support and promotion, and as a top German Startup in IT (Real Time systems) 1991 for military, industrial, aerospace, he sent us to China. Introduced us to Chinese Space, Telecom, and manufacturers, to build strong backed relationships to increase business for both sides during the 3 weeks long Business Exploration. This was in 1991, and this is reported in another page of my Logbook inside this very Blogger. Continuation of Government (both Federal and Bavarian) support was receiving an invitation to attend the Symposium s below:

_{“Strategic Analysis of European and Global Management and Technology for Future Business Leadership” by Helmut Schmidt, Former Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany}

 _{Symposium consisted of two full days and lectures by th Chancellleur Helmut Schmidt, spaced by question periods and lunches at the IBM HQ. Intensive schedule added to a top content and presentation by Helmut Schmidt and IBM VP Benelux. On the evening of June 23 a gala dinner was called and I was lucky to be invited to the table with Helmut Schmidt. A colegue of mine took a picture with me, my colleague Norber Hauser, the Chancellor and IBM VP Benelux. The picture is signed by H. Schmidt.}

Helmut Schmidt became FRD first Defence Minister at the time of East German uprising in 1953. Later he was a very succesfull Finance minister, during the so called German Economic Miracle years (see Ludwig Erhard).

_{With his great expertise, competence in politics, finances, he created the first InterCouncil with 7 western leaders, which later morphed into a prototype G7 according to him. As an organizer of the Helsinki Accords in 1974 his take on taking in new members from the former Central-Eastern countries while EU placed stringent enrtry cryteria much more rigid and the earlier group 7 years before. When I questioned him "why the entrance hurdles are much higher for ie Hungary that a few years before ie Spain" which was much less industrialized. His response haas us all astonished:"because in 1987 we had our cofferss full of money, and now they are empty, and we could not afford now to pay for upgrade the economy.". Please not that in the bunch accepted was Greece. A wonderfull coutry, but country located 1 hour (GMT minus 2) behind Budapest. Geographically speaking.} 

 

 

German Ebner Media Group publishes new Open Source Virtualbox for PC

 

 

PC-Virtualisierung

VirtualBox

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Version	7.0.14
Sprache	deutsch
System	Windows 8 Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP Windows 10
Hersteller	Oracle
Lizenz	Open Source
Preis	Kostenlos
Dateigröße	106 MByte
Kategorie	System-Tools

VirtualBox stellt Ihnen virtuelle PCs zur Verfügung, auf denen Sie beliebige Betriebssysteme und Anwendungen installieren und ausführen können.

https://www.com-me/downloads/virtualbox-218096.html

1993 Jan 17-20 - Pacific Telecom Council Conference - page from my Logbook

 

Page from my Logbook

1993 Jan 17-20 - Pacific Telecom Council Conference

Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, Honolulu, Hawaii

Part of business development strategy was to expand contact base in the Western Pacific region, so I started visiting my business partner Mr. Min-Woo Nam, an expert in Real Time Computing/Ready Systems from Mr. Jim Ready, a personal friend since 1992. Continuing East to Tokyo, met my Rep there, I did continue further from Narita to Honolulu to attend the PTC conference there. Flying Eastward is saving you one day from your trip, when you cross the Timeline somewhere over the Pacific. Accountants are flabbergasted when you show your travel bills from two places for the “same” day. It happens as i.e. you start from Sydney flying to San Francisco. You pay for your hotel room in the morning and in San Francisco you check in on the same day.

Additional goal was to go, and fly over the Islands and to obtain a helicopter flying licence from Mr. Ohara, the master instructor there. Most of my adult life there we books, which had made me stop and ponder on of such a books was "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, 

The conference was attended by over a thousand telecom experts from over 45 countries most of interest was South America, Australia, Indonesia, India, China, Korea and Japan. Great networking opportunities, noting various perspectives on the role of standard services plus some very uniquely suited and often already implemented services especially in South American countries with certain leanings like Cuba and or Venezuela. Some became opportunities to participate in projects there like distance education, health sciences etc.

The Second leg to my trip to Hawaii were to get to know a bit the archipelago itself which I was lucky to merge with the third “leg” which was the conclusion to my helicopter pilot licenses, for which theory I did read a priori to my actual visit. With actual flying tests resulted in practically “Island Hopping”, where I would see site for natives, observe various rituals, watch dances and listen to their music. During the flying hours we were able to see i.e. Pearl Harbour from up the Bell-1 helicopter, you see also oil bubbles floating to the sea surface from time to time. In reality seeing the oil bubbles coming out from the depth of the sunken “Arizona” is much more efficient from the Memorial than from hovering above it.  

Interesting to me personally was that despite my Sheraton hotel room location 10 floors from ground, local pigeons were readily entering into my room from open door balcony. I have many pictures from this place.

News on certain AI products from Germany January 15 2024 reposting

 

Künstliche Intelligenz  KI kapituliert bei Grammatikfehlern GPT3 und GP3.5 wurden wissenschaftlich auf ihr Grammatikverständnis getestet. Das Ergebnis: vorläufig stechen Menschen die Sprachmodelle noch aus.  > weiterlesen

AUTOBAHN processor press Conference in Tokyo 1996 meets Cryptocurrency - a page from my Logbook

1996 PEP Press Conference in Tokyo- Presenting our new chip processor “Autobahn” the fastest at the time serial communication, following our press Release in Las Vegas.

 

Ever since I started with VME 3U technology my company was facing serious technologic disadvantage from boards VME 6U of the Big guys like Motorola, Force and others. Their access to motherboard was over 2 (not as in mine one) 98 pin DIN connectors. This need to access other resources connected to Motherboard, gave them double advantage in performance on the Signal level, while our compact, boards were better handling temperatures/heating, and especially shock and vibration resistance thus keeping up the competition away from our fine and uniquely closed market. But after couple of years chewing on the problem, we came with a simple solution: on to motherboard, 2 pins (21 and 23) on the J2 connector were assigned but not used. We decided to use them for signal processing at extremely high clock speed of 3GHz. To avoid creating the crosstalk effect the signal voltage was restricted to 0,5 V.                   

Prototypes we built, tests were hopeful on a prototype level, Sample chips were produced using old Moto production facility were old VME boards were tested in Munich. Patent was registered with the Munich patent registry in 1995. Small foundry was used in Munich to produce sample batch. Initially Motorola Semiconductors was willing to produce full scale production line. The rules in this business require however that for a production series a Second Source was to be secured, in case short of supplies, for our part PEP was not in the chip business, thus a guy from Munich Stefan Krause was now CEO of our new subsidiary. Every time a new chip design appears on the market a suitable foundry has to be located and contracted to supply the markets, and since the break and or retooling happens a second foundry can take up the production immediately. The preferred foundry was to be Motorola Semiconductors with its CEO, Eric M. Thus, the need to make another pitch to Toshiba in Tokyo. The delegation was assembled with me and Josef Kreidl, a commercial rep from our bank in Munich and one from Zug, Switzerland, plus VITA  (VME International Trade Association) CEO Ray Alderman from Phoenix, AZ.  

The negotiations with executives at Toshiba were scheduled to take 3 working days excluding one Sunday, which was very nice for a May stroll into the old town and a park, full of prancing school children enjoying their ice cream cones. Oddity to me was that while standing at the ice cream counter it was obvious that the most popular flavour was green tea sorbet, I hated green tee myself. Eric Mass was thirsty, and we stopped at one of those refrigerators like in cantinas where you could get something cold and another dispenser with hot coffee or tea to drink. Eric reached his pocket, pulled out his credit card and ordered a can of "ice tea", guessing the menu completely in Japanese. In a moment we’ve heard the rumble of drink can making its way from the storage and into the chute and finally landed into the pickup tray. Eric reached for the can, picked it up -and dropped in on the gravel in front of the dispenser. To our eyes asking “why” he replied: the can was piping hot! 

After reviewing this event, I am still surprised that our market segmentation in the so called West (funny how this applies to Japan), we still use separate dispensers for hot and for cold drinks 25+ years after the event. In the West they stay bulky and would make sore eyes if placed when and where they are needed. The Japanese dispensers are extremely compact (no more than 1cubic meter), being easy on the eyes of passers by.

The presentation for the press conference attracted a good overview of journalists and developers and business personalities, each posing good number of questions highly advanced knowledge of possible use of our Autobahn chip. One of the most challenging questions came from a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, who asked us challenging questions for over half an hour, before he left, leaving no business card saying he was who apparently has created Bitcoin, the crypto currency and block chain code & applications.  Now almost 20 years later the Bitcoin (with its units called satoshi even today) was scrubbed, tested as a legal tender in San Salvador and Iran (payments for child and medical supplies from US), is a scheme promising high returns, no tax jurisdiction for now, etc. Wiki tells us a story of another world’s entity appearing in 2006 (~), who brought Bitcoin to the earthlings. All these may be rumors and require verification.

 

We have never met again. His email was run on the Dark Internet as per CERN (Switzerland) and my inquiry led me to believe that his invention was removed from the net and rebuilt in elsewhere, for several years, and tested later as mentioned in a paragraph above. This may be a rumor as well.

The Autobahn processor was accepted by developers immediately and requests for specifications arrived at PEP  daily. Celebrations at PEP Modular Computers took long time, and we had chance to gather new designs, analyses of responses from coopetitors were no coming as expected.

This is in my view a response from competitors and not coopetitors, who continue using this strategies wo win business. Yet this was long not the end of Autobahn.  It gave new and better life for video on powerful processors, often multiprocessors in video, which used to be closely attached to video camera processors. In harsh environment Autobahn enabled placing video camera near the observed event while computer processing that video, was placed at length, enabling observation easy to record and process it back where the computers were protected leaving full processing power at its highest performance. The life of Autobahn processor as the Top speed performer continued after I moved to different fields. Recently I was invited to meet several partners at Expo Doha 2023 in Qatar where AUTOBAHN startups were presented again by new players.