I assure you, I understand supercomputing well enough and that your comments on supercomputing don't counter what I was saying. Your description of the action of their software:
Most of the work is done on a super computer, then a tiny UI layer is thrown on top
doesn't accurately describe model reduction algorithms. Another commenter pointed out that 'first order approximation' is a better term. The phone doesn't 'finish the last bit' of processing but makes a low-order approximation of the entire process.
As Entropius also noted, educated guesses (first order approximations) are VERY common in science, medical research and many other areas. They quite often work great. I do say 'educated guess' as if it's a good (enough) thing for a computer to do. In TFA, they state that the results are returned with error bars for the estimation, making the results quite potentially useful.
Again, I'm not 'scammed' because I realize that their claim is overwrought, but still this is a potentially useful method. They're not the first to apply the idea but it's still interesting and more than just a UI.
This isn't just a UI, it's a reduction of the algorithm provided by a supercomputer. However, I believe that this first set of lines is misleading, inaccurate, and likely an example of the writer not knowing what they're talking about:
What if you could perform supercomputing calculations in real-time, on your smartphone... Researchers... have created an application that does just that.
It doesn't do supercomputing because it isn't a supercomputer, it just makes an educated guess based on sitting at the supercomputer's knee and playing "monkey see, monkey do". Not a bad trick but the claim's overwrought.
What to these all have in common? If you write good, smart code with the right tools you'll not have to do as much of them. Others here have mentioned automated testing and I think that's great. I am no big expert, but improving the way I write code and the tools I write it with reduces the onerous parts mentioned above. I don't do all my projects with automated testing (I probably should) but it helps when you have it.
So, as far as it works for me, I would look first at the way that you program (big bites vs tiny bites, languages, structure) before I would look at the way you test. Testing always sucks. Then again, I'm an idiot.....
While I don't buy much of the multitouch hype out there, the number of devices supporting multitouch is increasing and Ubuntu/Debian/Linux/etc. can grow best in a growing market. From a business and user attraction perspective, market growth IS the map battle lines are drawn upon.
I was initially skeptical about the Lenovo S10-3t that we got for my wife and it's touch interface but I've learned to like it. Perhaps we're so down on multitouch because it's still underdeveloped in Winblows 7 etc. Like mentioned in other comments, nothing will replace the rapid input available from the good ol' keyboard, but a new form of input has proven useful in my experience. There were critics of the mouse, originally, for much the same reasons that others are arguing here. This new dynamic of input can be more direct than a mouse and more intuitive and available than a keyboard. This is good especially for novice computer users.
The size of the iCrap App world and alternative input methods (Wii and other accelerometer technology) demonstrates that this IS an exploding area. The argument that this wont catch on in the desktop world doesn't hold either: the netbook flavor of Ubuntu exists for a narrow purpose and I expect this feature will exist in a similar narrow, non-core niche. I don't think that this is too much of 'jumping on the bandwagon' and I'm excited by the idea of chained commands to make multitouch more meaningful. Then again, I'm an idiot.....
Hypersensitive and allergic reactions have been understood in medicine in varying degrees since ancient times but as a medical student I can tell you that we still know very little. What we do know? Few if any true allergies are truly genetic. Rather, some genes predispose to gathering many allergies and most allergies are gained well after birth. Any honest researcher in the field will share your wonderment about allergies, because we still have much to learn.
Actually, stomach cancer is MORE common in less urban/developed habitats. Affluence and American diets decrease stomach cancer. No research has explained this but the data is unambiguous: something about eating while not poor means LESS stomach cancer. I know, usually you hear about how bad the western diet is (and it's true, high fat + low fiber => colon cancer). Ulcers and heartburn have likely plagued people since before civilization as we know it.
Facts are stubborn things. The recent move away from talking about climate change standards at the G20 summit and polling in the US/UK don't agree with your conclusion, but I'm not sure you're interested in that, but perhaps meant to say that the CRU email leak hasn't damaged your trust
There's been a lot of talk about consensus, but this consensus is mostly limited to those in politics and those whose careers and livelihoods are invested in only one conclusion. This is disturbing and debate and research continue. What's reasonable is thinking for yourself enough to see where people's motives lie.
In general, scientists are happy to share their data (after they've finished analyzing it and have published) with other scientists who they believe might have some competence in understanding it.
Sadly, we need to be aware that often "competence in understanding" can actually mean "shares the same conclusion", "agrees", or "is working to prove the same thing as me" to some scientists. I certainly agree that we scientists are human beings and this opens up the big problem of confirmation bias and selection bias. Peer review can even serve to reinforce these problems, rather than fix them.
The problem relative to the CRU was that the conclusions that pushed for sweeping legislation were coming out, but the eventual sharing of data with publication was not happening. Some was deleted, others were not made available. The deleting of emails (this report didn't ask about), the plans to blacklist opposing views (wasn't well covered in this report), and the ad hoc analysis of data is certainly not 'idealized' science, and it's also not science that can reach a rational conclusion with dependable regularity. If my lab ran that way, we would have problems very quickly.
Yes, science in practice is not 'ideal', but the problem here isn't idealism, it's a clearly broken system that this report fails to remonstrate.
Others have suggested that you work on open source projects. You also indicated interest in EEG. This site has a number of open source projects that are doing good and involve serious research and development. I would look in the medical area for the most serious projects.
If I had more time and a little more electronics engineering skill I would be participating in the EKG project. Working well, it would save lives in many countries where cost of portable equipment is a major factor.
Most reasonable people oppose animal cruelty and torture.
This is true, and the claim from the article that PETA is the largest, a claim that PETA makes often, is at best exaggerated and more likely a Napoleonic complex writ large.
The ASPCA has been around longer, accomplishes more, and is far more respected and influential than PETA. The insanity of PETA hinders reasonable people much in the same way that ecology obsessed people hinder the efforts of conservationists.
Leaving the definition of English words aside, I would like to comment on your response while adding that I ignored no part of your post.
I find it shocking that you would attack that religious freedom of expression so openly by saying that our country should abandon the religious for which rights.....
I never said any such things.... I never said anything about curtailing religious freedom of expression....., and it's also clear that you ignored the second link in my post.
Having said that, I do object to religious organizations behaving politically.....
I realize that you see the support by the Mormon church and its followers as a bad thing, but you're letting that cloud your judgment: you follow a statement about not curtailing religious freedom with a statement that you would like to do so. Political behavior, such as announcing ones' own beliefs is legal and should be ENCOURAGED on both sides. Claiming that a groups opinion is invalid BECAUSE they are enthusiastic is wrong.
You seem to have argued that the leadership of the church was unilateral in their attack. I assure you from personal experience that the body of the church was active to the point that the church leadership was seeking to keep up with their desire to defend the traditional definition for marriage. $10 or $20 million dollars in donations, the people of California have decided twice what they want, following the path of many states before them.
Finally in defense of religious freedom (my accusation that you attack it is not withdrawn) we should remember that it was the religious persecution of many countries in Europe that led exodus to America and that our founding fathers sought to maintain that liberty here. Asking now that we imitate Europe isn't wrong simply for that history, but it is certainly disconcerting.
I think where you said 'explicit' you meant to say 'implicit' since you're saying that those who stay in a religion are IMPLYING, not directly stating, that they are in support of the religions stances. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and I assure you that the church's stance on Homosexuality has always been clearly and openly defined. Fair-weather members who don't understand the churches positions have left, and while that is sad it's good that we live in a country and that my church is a church that allows such free religious expression.
I find it shocking that you would attack that religious freedom of expression so openly by saying that our country should abandon the religious for which rights the founders of the colonies and then this nation (speaking of the USA) were willing to risk life, limb and prosperity for. All religions can and SHOULD express their views on issues (while avoiding supporting any candidate or party) or religious expression, including leaving a church because of disagreements, will die.
As a biochemist I'm surprised with the 'almost alive' statement in the article: they're still a long way to go. However, the work they are doing is interesting and is proof-of-concept for many elements of the RNA-world theory.
I, like others, am surprised by the 'questions about creationism'. This show improper bias where this article doesn't approach creationism, but rather supports the validity of the evolutionary origin theory. The author has assumed that origin is a zero-sum game, and this is flawed and biased logic.
The batteries being used now are not an environmental concern (Cadmium containing batteries were a problem due to the heavy metal Cadmium) and rest assured that many environmentally concerned people often don't know more than you on these specifics.
Chemicals like nickel hydride can be very easily reprocessed; almost never is anything put away in drums. As has already been posted, large car companies are being regulated and are expected to provide means for collection and reprocessing. While hybrid and electric cars are just now efficient enough to be an option, they are certainly not a threat to the environment because of their batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, must have hit a nerve. Where to start:
I assure you, I understand supercomputing well enough and that your comments on supercomputing don't counter what I was saying. Your description of the action of their software:
Most of the work is done on a super computer, then a tiny UI layer is thrown on top
doesn't accurately describe model reduction algorithms. Another commenter pointed out that 'first order approximation' is a better term. The phone doesn't 'finish the last bit' of processing but makes a low-order approximation of the entire process.
As Entropius also noted, educated guesses (first order approximations) are VERY common in science, medical research and many other areas. They quite often work great. I do say 'educated guess' as if it's a good (enough) thing for a computer to do. In TFA, they state that the results are returned with error bars for the estimation, making the results quite potentially useful.
Again, I'm not 'scammed' because I realize that their claim is overwrought, but still this is a potentially useful method. They're not the first to apply the idea but it's still interesting and more than just a UI.
That's an RTFA comment right there.
This isn't just a UI, it's a reduction of the algorithm provided by a supercomputer. However, I believe that this first set of lines is misleading, inaccurate, and likely an example of the writer not knowing what they're talking about:
What if you could perform supercomputing calculations in real-time, on your smartphone ... Researchers ... have created an application that does just that.
It doesn't do supercomputing because it isn't a supercomputer, it just makes an educated guess based on sitting at the supercomputer's knee and playing "monkey see, monkey do". Not a bad trick but the claim's overwrought.
I hate going over old, poorly commented code.
I hate testing code and looking for problems.
I hate debugging inexplicable errors.
What to these all have in common? If you write good, smart code with the right tools you'll not have to do as much of them. Others here have mentioned automated testing and I think that's great. I am no big expert, but improving the way I write code and the tools I write it with reduces the onerous parts mentioned above. I don't do all my projects with automated testing (I probably should) but it helps when you have it.
So, as far as it works for me, I would look first at the way that you program (big bites vs tiny bites, languages, structure) before I would look at the way you test. Testing always sucks. Then again, I'm an idiot.....
While I don't buy much of the multitouch hype out there, the number of devices supporting multitouch is increasing and Ubuntu/Debian/Linux/etc. can grow best in a growing market. From a business and user attraction perspective, market growth IS the map battle lines are drawn upon .
I was initially skeptical about the Lenovo S10-3t that we got for my wife and it's touch interface but I've learned to like it. Perhaps we're so down on multitouch because it's still underdeveloped in Winblows 7 etc. Like mentioned in other comments, nothing will replace the rapid input available from the good ol' keyboard, but a new form of input has proven useful in my experience. There were critics of the mouse, originally, for much the same reasons that others are arguing here. This new dynamic of input can be more direct than a mouse and more intuitive and available than a keyboard. This is good especially for novice computer users.
The size of the iCrap App world and alternative input methods (Wii and other accelerometer technology) demonstrates that this IS an exploding area. The argument that this wont catch on in the desktop world doesn't hold either: the netbook flavor of Ubuntu exists for a narrow purpose and I expect this feature will exist in a similar narrow, non-core niche. I don't think that this is too much of 'jumping on the bandwagon' and I'm excited by the idea of chained commands to make multitouch more meaningful. Then again, I'm an idiot.....
Hypersensitive and allergic reactions have been understood in medicine in varying degrees since ancient times but as a medical student I can tell you that we still know very little. What we do know? Few if any true allergies are truly genetic. Rather, some genes predispose to gathering many allergies and most allergies are gained well after birth. Any honest researcher in the field will share your wonderment about allergies, because we still have much to learn.
Actually, stomach cancer is MORE common in less urban/developed habitats. Affluence and American diets decrease stomach cancer. No research has explained this but the data is unambiguous: something about eating while not poor means LESS stomach cancer. I know, usually you hear about how bad the western diet is (and it's true, high fat + low fiber => colon cancer). Ulcers and heartburn have likely plagued people since before civilization as we know it.
there was no "loss of public trust"
Facts are stubborn things. The recent move away from talking about climate change standards at the G20 summit and polling in the US/UK don't agree with your conclusion, but I'm not sure you're interested in that, but perhaps meant to say that the CRU email leak hasn't damaged your trust
There's been a lot of talk about consensus, but this consensus is mostly limited to those in politics and those whose careers and livelihoods are invested in only one conclusion. This is disturbing and debate and research continue. What's reasonable is thinking for yourself enough to see where people's motives lie.
In general, scientists are happy to share their data (after they've finished analyzing it and have published) with other scientists who they believe might have some competence in understanding it.
Sadly, we need to be aware that often "competence in understanding" can actually mean "shares the same conclusion", "agrees", or "is working to prove the same thing as me" to some scientists. I certainly agree that we scientists are human beings and this opens up the big problem of confirmation bias and selection bias. Peer review can even serve to reinforce these problems, rather than fix them.
The problem relative to the CRU was that the conclusions that pushed for sweeping legislation were coming out, but the eventual sharing of data with publication was not happening. Some was deleted, others were not made available. The deleting of emails (this report didn't ask about), the plans to blacklist opposing views (wasn't well covered in this report), and the ad hoc analysis of data is certainly not 'idealized' science, and it's also not science that can reach a rational conclusion with dependable regularity. If my lab ran that way, we would have problems very quickly.
Yes, science in practice is not 'ideal', but the problem here isn't idealism, it's a clearly broken system that this report fails to remonstrate.
Others have suggested that you work on open source projects. You also indicated interest in EEG. This site has a number of open source projects that are doing good and involve serious research and development. I would look in the medical area for the most serious projects.
If I had more time and a little more electronics engineering skill I would be participating in the EKG project. Working well, it would save lives in many countries where cost of portable equipment is a major factor.
Just a thought.
Most reasonable people oppose animal cruelty and torture.
This is true, and the claim from the article that PETA is the largest, a claim that PETA makes often, is at best exaggerated and more likely a Napoleonic complex writ large. The ASPCA has been around longer, accomplishes more, and is far more respected and influential than PETA. The insanity of PETA hinders reasonable people much in the same way that ecology obsessed people hinder the efforts of conservationists.
I never said any such things.... I never said anything about curtailing religious freedom of expression....., and it's also clear that you ignored the second link in my post.
Having said that, I do object to religious organizations behaving politically.....
I realize that you see the support by the Mormon church and its followers as a bad thing, but you're letting that cloud your judgment: you follow a statement about not curtailing religious freedom with a statement that you would like to do so. Political behavior, such as announcing ones' own beliefs is legal and should be ENCOURAGED on both sides. Claiming that a groups opinion is invalid BECAUSE they are enthusiastic is wrong.
You seem to have argued that the leadership of the church was unilateral in their attack. I assure you from personal experience that the body of the church was active to the point that the church leadership was seeking to keep up with their desire to defend the traditional definition for marriage. $10 or $20 million dollars in donations, the people of California have decided twice what they want, following the path of many states before them.
Finally in defense of religious freedom (my accusation that you attack it is not withdrawn) we should remember that it was the religious persecution of many countries in Europe that led exodus to America and that our founding fathers sought to maintain that liberty here. Asking now that we imitate Europe isn't wrong simply for that history, but it is certainly disconcerting.
I think where you said 'explicit' you meant to say 'implicit' since you're saying that those who stay in a religion are IMPLYING, not directly stating, that they are in support of the religions stances. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and I assure you that the church's stance on Homosexuality has always been clearly and openly defined. Fair-weather members who don't understand the churches positions have left, and while that is sad it's good that we live in a country and that my church is a church that allows such free religious expression. I find it shocking that you would attack that religious freedom of expression so openly by saying that our country should abandon the religious for which rights the founders of the colonies and then this nation (speaking of the USA) were willing to risk life, limb and prosperity for. All religions can and SHOULD express their views on issues (while avoiding supporting any candidate or party) or religious expression, including leaving a church because of disagreements, will die.
As a biochemist I'm surprised with the 'almost alive' statement in the article: they're still a long way to go. However, the work they are doing is interesting and is proof-of-concept for many elements of the RNA-world theory. I, like others, am surprised by the 'questions about creationism'. This show improper bias where this article doesn't approach creationism, but rather supports the validity of the evolutionary origin theory. The author has assumed that origin is a zero-sum game, and this is flawed and biased logic.
The batteries being used now are not an environmental concern (Cadmium containing batteries were a problem due to the heavy metal Cadmium) and rest assured that many environmentally concerned people often don't know more than you on these specifics. Chemicals like nickel hydride can be very easily reprocessed; almost never is anything put away in drums. As has already been posted, large car companies are being regulated and are expected to provide means for collection and reprocessing. While hybrid and electric cars are just now efficient enough to be an option, they are certainly not a threat to the environment because of their batteries.