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"Techsci" Archives
This blog attempts to provide intelligent commentary on current events at all levels -- from local to global. However, be prepared for other stuff too.
August 10, 2005
Too male or not too male
I am not closely related to anyone with Autism, but I know several people who are linked to those affected by the disorder. I am, however, connected to other disorders and therefore find interest in scientific progress or hypotheses regarding certain disorders.There was an Op-Ed article today in the NY Times offering an opinion on a possible cause of Austism, that I found rather interesting and surprisingly simple. The scientist, Simon Baron-Cohen, suggests that an above-normal production of testosterone by the fetus can often cause behavior in the child that renders them both less social and more systematic, two characteristics of Austism. He also prints results of tests that show this increased production of testosterone often happens when both parents exhibit male-leaning cerebral behavior. In otherwords, autistic children are basically overly-male.I can't defend one side or the other on this, but there seems to be sense in this approach. What do you think?
Posted by Cameron at 02:50 PM
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March 22, 2005
Endless war
I don't see an end to this war and I don't have many solutions. I'm not talking about Iraq either. I'm talking about spam. Specifically, blog spam in comments and trackback pings. It seems to get worse and worse and I'm loathe (read lazy) to change my blog. However, I hit the break point in the past week and took some measures. You should now see a CAPTCHA when editing comments. This is courtesy of the SCode plugin via James Seng's site. I've also enabled a stricter blacklist to work with Jay Allens MT-Blacklist, and made some improvements on some regex expressions on the list.Short of disabling comments, I still don't have a failsafe way to block everything, especially trackback pings, but I feel like I've made an advancement in the battle and may continue to evolve.
Posted by Cameron at 02:06 PM
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February 20, 2005
MS Omniscience
I always joke about how Microsoft thinks they know better than you what you want. This is often evident in some annoying automations that drives users (especially the more advanced ones) crazy. But I'm not sure it's a joke. Apparently they know more than you think if you follow this Op-Ed in the NY Times. The MS all-knowing cerebrum knows when it's appropriate to interrupt you. It probably knows when you've been naughty or nice too. Be careful.
Posted by Cameron at 12:03 AM
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January 28, 2005
Fidgeting fitness
I've been saying this for years. I myself am an endless fidgeter.
Posted by Cameron at 01:03 PM
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November 09, 2004
Seeing too far
I know a lot of people are freaked out by terrorism and what may happen in the air. I'm not one of them. I've grumbled many times about the restrictions placed upon travelers, as it directly affects me constantly and I think a good portion of it is worthless. So when I first saw this CNN article, I was surprised and a bit worried. When I saw this poll, I was actually shocked and upset at how easily so many would be willing to allow so much. I would be very much opposed to letting people see under my clothes whether their male or female. I think it certainly does not merit the invasion of privacy.
Posted by Cameron at 10:09 PM
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October 06, 2004
Computing for life
As many of you know, I work with supercomputing. One of our largest customers is the Department of Defense (DOD). I've spent much of today with the Chief of the Army's High Performance Computing (HPC) Division, Charlie Nietubicz, and have found out some interesting things, but more importantly he related a story that impacted all of us in the room.The media often portrays the DOD or the Federal Government as a giant money pit. However, from my experiences, they are often very strapped for money and fight to allocate it to the right places. Anyway, a while back, the comptroller for the Army approached Charlie and basically told him the soldiers in Bosnia didn't have enough food, and asked him which he thought was more important: a bigger computer or feeding soldiers. Well, Charlie replied by asking which the comptroller thought was more important: to have the technology to save hundreds or thousands of soldiers, or to make soldiers go hungry for a little bit. That was the end of the discussion.To underscore that, Charlie's office recently received a letter from a sergeant serving in Iraq. Let me take a step back first. Many of you remember that Humvees were (and still are) a target of insurgent attacks. The attacks frequently cause injuries and fatalities due to a lack of armor. The fact is, the Humvees were not built for front line combat. In a rush to protect the soldiers, the army quickly set to work designing and simulating armor kits for the Humvees, work only made possible through powerful supercomputers. Due to the computers, they were sending out kits to Iraq within some 30 days. That's a phenomenal conception to shipment time period. So back to the sergeant. His letter was addressed "To whom it may concern..." and made its way to Charlie's office. It basically said that he didn't know who to address, but to thank whomever was responsible for the kits. They just saved his life.
Posted by Cameron at 11:01 AM
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August 17, 2004
The Bourne bewilderment
Recently, when I travel, I've started buying a book or two in the airport bookstore before I hop on the plane. The result has been quite satisfactory, as it gives me an opportunity to read a nice fiction novel and not burn too many brain cells. The most recent book I bought was The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlam. This is a longer book than usual, so I wasn't able to finish it after my last flight. I was reading through it last night when I became bewildered at what I encountered. I then sort of laughed and just said out loud, "Unbelievable!" What is it? Take a look at some of these pictures I took and see if you can figure out:What I first saw
Seeing the extent of my misfortune
More proofCan you see it? I got to page 520, and then the book started back at page 457. Hoping they just added some extra pages in, I looked to see where the redundancy ended and was horrified to find that it proceeded all the way back to page 520 again, and then jumped to page 585. I had lost all those pages between. I felt wronged. I felt violated. I was shocked and shocked again (though I admit I laughed). Yet my distressed mind set itself in action figuring out how to remedy the situation. I first looked up the publisher's website, but I couldn't find any form of customer support. I thought of just spending an afternoon at a bookstore, reading up on the lost pages, but that would take up time I didn't have. I then realized how great technology was. I remembered Amazon.com had a feature they recently added where they've scanned in every page of every book they sell, and they are also searchable. It's incredible! I had never used it before but soon found out you are only allowed to view up to two pages in any direction from where you started. I was bummed since I needed some 54 pages, but I quickly realized you can get around that limitation. On an interesting note, after several pages, I became suspicious that I was being tracked and fought against. I started getting screens that said the service was unavailable. I'd reload and get pages asking me to log in. There followed a number of permutations of hoops to jump through, but given the fact I had already bought the book, I felt justified in getting through those hoops to get my missing pages. It took a lot of mouse clicks, but I finally, and happily, got to page 585.
Posted by Cameron at 12:29 AM
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August 05, 2004
Escape a date
My response to this little editorial was "Unbelievable!". I've probably had a few times where this would have come in handy, but it just seems so un-gentlemanly.
Posted by Cameron at 08:40 AM
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August 04, 2004
Economic Politics
As anybody knows who has been able to read or hear in the past year, the Democrats generally claim Bush has destroyed the economy and caused the loss of some 3 million jobs. I've mentioned before that a President doesn't really have a huge impact on the economy. Their trite fact of 3 million lost jobs is also a bit of an exaggeration -- economists now put the real number at about 2.6m jobs lost. I've also questioned their claims since the latest downfall started during Clinton's reign. Here's a brief article with an accompanying chart (link on the left) that shows this.
Posted by Cameron at 01:10 PM
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February 16, 2004
Together Forever
The LDS church believes in a couple being together forever through an eternal marriage. Here's a whole new way to be together forever, courtesy of the Deseret Morning News.
Posted by Cameron at 10:29 AM
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January 22, 2004
Google Bombing
I'd never heard this term before, but apparently it is the phenomenon of arranging lots of links bearing a certain phrase to point to a particular target, in order to have that target show up first in a search on the phrase. That description sounds confusing, so here's an article from the NY Times that covers the issue as it relates to some modern politics. Type "miserable failure" into Google, and look at the results. It's not a coincidence.
Posted by Cameron at 05:26 PM
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December 22, 2003
I see you
There's an article here from the NY Times about the extended and more common use of GPS technology. From cell phones, to bracelets, to cars. One thing I wasn't aware of is that all phones will need to be locatable by 2005 by 911 emergency services. This basically implies GPS, meaning it will only become more common.There are a lot of ethical issues but also many valuable uses for the technology. I don't like the whole Big Brother idea of having the government know where you are, so I think some control is needed there. For instance, you should be able to disable the tracking features yourself, but have laws allowing emergency services to override that control in certain instances.I laughed at what one kid said though:
"Cellphones would lose their appeal if they became tracking devices," said Nate Bingham, 16, of Seattle. "I think if your parents really care that much they should just put a leash on you."
I think he may have a point, but then again, kids seem to be getting into a lot of trouble these days.
Posted by Cameron at 10:43 AM
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December 08, 2003
Mind readers
Unfortunately, many of you won't Thanks to a sponsor, you can read this article in The Economist, a pay-subscription site, which is too cool to ignore. Basically, it talks about some breakthrough brainwave work being done in Berlin. Try this experiment (taken from the article), "LIFT your left hand. Did you know that your brain was preparing for that movement a full half-second before it actually took place? Even more spookily, your mind knew which hand it was going to lift before you made the conscious decision to lift it...Volunteers at FIRST are already playing Pac-Man, racing games and [playing] video tennis without touching a keyboard or joystick. Instead, they are fitted with an electroencephalograph (EEG) and, simply by thinking about it, they are able to move objects around a computer screen." Trippy, huh? It's also cool that this research is being done at the Fraunhofer institute, with which my company has a relationship with. These brainwaves can be read with just surface electrodes, but some current problems are that you also need some gel for proper wave detection, and the whole setup takes about 45 minutes. If they could cut that down with some powerful and sensitive signal amplifiers, they could eventually throw the whole thing in a baseball cap. You could type your report just by thinking about it -- something great for the disabled. Or, something they mention in the paper, you could have cars understand the waves and brake before your foot even moves, saving valuable time and lives. Maybe this is how Neo can act so fast in The Matrix. It makes for some interesting thought.
Posted by Cameron at 12:17 PM
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November 07, 2003
Geek meets Dentist
I finally went to the dentist a couple weeks ago, after something like a 2-yr hiatus. Since moving, I had informally been looking for one, but when a new dentist opened by Thanksgiving Point, which happens to be quite close to home, I decided to settle down. I went and they were very friendly and serviceable. They gave me a checkup and took some nifty panoramic x-rays of my mouth, and guess what? I'm missing 5 teeth! I had no idea. And, two of those missing teeth are kinda towards the front, and since they never came in, I still have two baby teeth in their place. I was quite surprised.I went back the next day, for cleanings, and they had a cool new laser tool to check enamel depth of teeth, providing a more accurate way of looking for cavities. Now, I've been pretty proud of my mouth, having no metal, except for a pin in a rebuilt front tooth (Even the dentist complemented my teeth a number of times). I attribute that to being raised on floridated water in Seattle (For some reason, a lot of Utahns think floridated water is a conspiracy theory or something, and won't allow it). However, this laser thingy found several potential cavities, and the dentist recommended 5 fillings (the porcelain, not metal type). I thought perhaps the laser was creating opportunities to make more money for the dentist and that I didn't really need to worry about the teeth yet. But the laser was so cool, and I could kinda understand the science behind it, so I went ahead and had them all done at once the following week. The dentist was actually surprised at how well it went -- only taking about 90 minutes for 5 fillings -- which he attributed to my good behavior (which I attribute to them having a dvd and satellite tv monitor in the ceiling). The dentist also called me that evening to see how my teeth felt -- specifically the bite and also sensitivity to hot or cold foods; I haven't had any problems. I was impressed by the service, and it made me think I made the right choice, notwithstanding my internal geek's fascination with the laser.
Posted by Cameron at 09:48 AM
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May 29, 2003
Blasting for brains
I read a cool article in The New York Times today about shoot-em-up video games being good. The research was done by Dr. Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester and found that players of the first-person shooter games have increased visual acuity by 30% to 50%. That's a very significant numberI've been known to blow things up on the screen from time to time, though I don't spend much time doing it; nor am I very good. However, according to the research, "as little as 10 hours of play substantially increased visual skills among novice players."Among things that improved were the ability to "identify objects in their peripheral vision, perceiving numerous objects without having to count them, switch attention rapidly and track many items at once." Sounds to me like we need to get most of Utah's drivers playing these games.
Posted by Cameron at 08:03 AM
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May 20, 2003
Einstein On-line
Here is an article from the NY Times about a new site full of Einstein's stuff. You might find it interesting, though you may need to understand German to read the documents.
Posted by Cameron at 12:29 PM
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April 22, 2003
Finally...The Opteron
Just a note for fellow geeks, the AMD Opteron, the much anticipated, and very late, 32/64-bit cpu has finally been released. Here are some benchmarks. The Itanium still wins by a good margin in floating point performance, but with Int and Memory tests, the Opteron shines.
Posted by Cameron at 10:20 AM
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