Re:Close To the Machine! by ellen ullman, programm
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 1
She has a new novel out now, "The Bug", which is more of the same. See http://www.salon.com/books/int/2003/05/16/ullman/i ndex.html
for an interesting interview from 5/16/03.
Re:Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 1
GEB is an ambitious book, by an ambitious guy with interesting creds. Doug Hofstader was on the team at, I think, U. of Illinois that did the computer proof of the 4-color theorem; arguably the first "computer proof" of a classic mathematical conjecture, approached by the simple strategy of massive computational assault on all cases of the proof. Hofstader was also editor of Scientific American's Amateur Scientist column for a while. 1979 Pulitizer Prize winner. Worth some time, if now somewhat dated.
GEB is not a novel, not a textbook, not a memoir, not a meme. It's long, and very fun in spots, weaving together some disparate and even opposing ideas. Puli
I second this recommendation. It's a great look into the formation and psychology of technical teams, and it's really well written. And don't forget Kidder's subsequent "House" which is a somewhat more general, approachable parallel for the non-geek; generally, the story of an architect designed house getting built in Massachusetts in the 1980's. Like "Soul..." tries to deal with the project from the perspective of all parties involved from the architect, to the owners, to the carpenters putting the thing up.
Perhaps you missed Nathanial Branden's 1999 "My Years with Ayn Rand". The fact that he waited until after her death to publish this memoir may do him little credit, but he addresses this subject, and many elements of his life with Rand are already matters of record. Her endorsement of him in their time together was utterly unqualified and adoring, and her subsequent rejection of him total. She even went so far as to remove her dedication of "Atlas Shrugged" to him in subsequent paperback editions.
Having lived his life, and explained his ongoing philosophic and professional evolution, he has a right to his say, and it is an interesting view, not to say a reasoned, and human, incrimination of Objectivism as a working life philosophy, from the one person on earth who Rand once annointed as it's champion. To his credit, Branden is not less than honest about himself in this memoir, but he does limit his comments about his later life somewhat, referencing the interested reader to some of his earlier books, published after his break with Rand. Accordingly, this book is not, in my reading, the anti-Rand polemic that some current Objectivists would have you believe. For those fans of Rand who seek a greater understanding of her, and her work, this is essential reading.
Density would be lousy, for one thing. Heads need a certian amount of isolation to work, and besides, current technology depends on the movenment of the magnetic domains in the media on the spinning disk, past the essentially stationary head, to create the variable electric current in the head. Nothing moves = nothing is read or written.
While they are at it, why not put 4 arms in a multi-arm unit, each at 90 degrees from the next (4 corners model)? Arms and positioning logic are comparitively cheap, and wouldn't add much to a unit's operating power budget. Seek parallelism on a 2 arm system probably isn't an absolute cure for spin latency, since opposite arms at 180 degrees probably couldn't react quickly enough to get 99.999+% (or at least, a very high percentage) of all random seeks done sequentially. But working in parallel, 2 teams of two arms, with each team composed of 180 degree opposed arms, stands a much better chance, I think.
But this is such an obvious development path, there must be really sound practical arguments against it. I'd like to know what they are...
Amen. Smith has intelligence, a good sense of physicality, and a strong desire to do good work. If he gets a decent script, the right direction, and decent production design (like the darkly futuristic Blade Runner), this could be a good movie. Much better premises than the tear jerker AI by Spielberg, who seems to like sci-fi, but can't help tossing in toys, gimmicks, and too damn much money to make such movies.
For once, just to prove he can visualize and direct, rather than hire people to do it for him, I'd like to see Speilberg put a film in the can for under $5 million. This could be his chance.
Bo Jackson, and many other middle aged people, including myself, lose their hip joints to AVN (avascular necrosis) or accident. At 42, I had crippling pain in both legs, so intense that a ten step walk down the hall to the bathroom was eventually an impossible journey.
AVN is a result of the human body's Architect and Prime Contractor making the entire blood supply for the head of the femur a single, badly oriented blood vessel. If the vessel becomes blocked or narrowed, the top of the femur loses its circulation and dies, and the cartilage necessary to keep the natural joint working can't be repaired. Within a short time, dead bone is grinding against living cartilage in the pelvic socket, which wears out quickly and painfully, or the head of the femur breaks, and dead, can't heal. This happens every year to a single digit percentage of the population, about evenly distributed between men and women. Smoking and some other personal health issues, including race and heredity, have been statistically linked to AVN, but no studies of which I'm aware have firmly established a causal relationship between health behaviors, environtmental factors, heredity and AVN. Accidental breakage is a another reason hip replacement surgery is performed, especially if the femoral head is severly damaged, and is unlikely to be able to heal.
100 years ago, and even today in medically underserved areas, hip joint failures, and the resulting loss of locomotion, resultant infections, and stress cause(d) high rates of subsequent mortality, within a few months, as other posters have mentioned. The various forms of hip prostheses are thus literally life saving devices, not just ways for little old ladies to enjoy a few more Arthur Murray dance lessons. It is hard for healthy people to appreciate just how debilitating and life threatening the loss of mobility is, but I assure you, it is a very, very real threat to life, within weeks, from many mortality paths.
The literature quotes the common "life span" of THR (total hip replacement) type prostheses at an average of 10 to 12 years. I have one that was originally installed in 1994, and the other which was a revision done in 1999, due to involvement in a tripping type accident. The joint replaced in 1994 appears sound in follow up X-rays, which look to predict failure by picking up very small particles in the extra cellular fluid, or in the joint parts themselves, near the joint movement surfaces, indicating that significant spalling wear is present. But the far more usual cause of failure is actually failure of the cement or bone that hold the joint parts in place. The usual indication of such failure is pain, caused by small fractures and infection of the bone surrounding the implants, or excessive movement of the implant parts in the bone cavities of the pelvis and femur made during surgery. In my case, and that of thousands of other THR patients of recent years, the former practice of cementing the replacement parts to living bone has changed to having the surfaces of the parts present a rough surface, to which living bone, which is accurately "machined" during surgery using jigs and a reaming toolset provided by the joint manufacturer, to achieve very close tolerance fit of the artifical hip parts to the living bone remaining. Under such close tolerances, and with immediate physical therapy, new bone will actually grow into the the implant surfaces, and be superior in overall life to the cemented versions. This remains an on-going investigation where ceramic surfaces show real promise.
Many designs of hip prostheses are easily damaged by torque moments and shock loads presented to the joint during common situations such as minor stumbles, or kicking or pushing small but dense objects. Learning to respect the hardware, and being very careful about shoes, walking surfaces, and instantaneous loads is all part of having the mobility the artifical joints provide. With care, most activities can be managed, and don't "wear out" the joints, but activities that put deformative shock loads into the plastic or metal "cup" parts surrounding the "ball" surface of the femur replacement portion of a THR are really, really bad ideas, and can result in premature or even instaneouses failures. This is more often due to crush and fracture failures of the supporting bone tissues, but in my case, I actually sheared a 3/8 inch diameter stainless steel "rod" forming the offset for the "head" of the femoral replacement part. There may have been some prior contributing damage to the joint part from surgical insertion damage, or in vitro degradation, but it is hard to know since the removed parts are hard to analyse, may suffer additional damage in extraction, and are often changed by years of immersion in the fluids of the living body.
If I live to a normal age for a man of my background, I'll face the surgeon another 4 to 6 times for revisions, so I'd like to see a "permanent" THR developed, as would thousands of others. Advanced materials leading to a substantially stronger, longer lived joint, are the most desirable course, and probably, the most likely. I applaud the folks involved in this, and I am grateful to the American taxpayers, and to NASA for time and space aboard shuttle missions, to do the early science that might lead to such materials.
For large people, chairs and work surfaces get to be really important issues.
After a lot of comparison shopping, I recently got a BodyBilt chair. The range of adjustability is great, the memory foam is terrific, but the large, shaped pommel of the seat, the waterfall seat edge, the large padded swivel arms, and the "relaxed/alert" natural seating position make this the most comfortable long term seating I've ever had. About 50% more than an Aeron, but a really terrific chair. http://www.bodybilt.com
Couple of points from a geezer that used to sell industrial sewing equipment, before he became a technocog in the "new economy"...
At the turn of the century, the sewing machine was a close analog of the PC, in its potential to "free the nation's populace from the drudgery of manual labour." Like the PC, the sewing machine was a universally adopted device in both rural and urban homes, and considerable fortunes were made supplying ever improved and cheaper models to a large domestic and industrial market. Within 40 years of the patenting of the practical mechanical lockstitch mechanism, most American homes had at least one sewing machine, and virtually all commercial textile product manufacturers were fully mechanized. (Anybody see any real close analogy here?)
A price war in clothing developed, that continues to this day. In America and Europe, commercial manufacturers sought to capitalize on the large potential workforce of women who stayed at home, by supplying them with foot powered machines, and by setting up delivery and pickup services to bring them work, and take back completed bundles of clothing. Piecework pay systems were developed to reward those who would work longer or harder, or who could enlist the help of underage children, many of whom began to be held home from school, to increase the family income.
Eventually, organized labor unions (the first being the famous Ladies Garment Workers Association, headed by Samuel Gompers) brought political pressure to bear, to pass stringent "home work" and "child labor" laws that effectively ended the practice of employers setting up individuals to work at home. The enlightened thinking of the day held that only in commercial workspaces that could be inspected by government and union officials could adequate health and safety regulations be effectively enforced, and workers be compensated without the abuses of child labor, so prevalent in the home situation. Many of these laws are still on the books, and are probably applicable to employer/employee home work situations today...
But today, we call it "telecommuting" and we think that somehow the natural economic forces which mandate people getting other people to produce the most work for the least money may not apply. Perhaps "knowledge workers" are somehow immune from economic exploitation in a large, fast virtual services market? Perhaps, but how many people in the financial markets now "start" at 3:00 a.m. from home, via PC, when London opens, and don't "quit" until the wee hours, when the Far East markets start again?
I dunno. Perhaps a more perfect flow of information does, somehow, materially change relationships that once required law and enforcement to keep in equilibrium. Even in the early years of the 20th century, the end of abuses in "home work" and "child labor" didn't end abuse in the workplace, as the New York garment workers fire of, I think, 1907, demonstrated. In that case, a multi-story building full of sweatshops burned, with considerable loss of life, because the doors to fire escape routes had been chained shut to prevent employees from going into stairwells and out on fire escapes during working hours.
In our company's case, we have a couple of women who were formerly full time office employees, who left to have have children, that we've supplied with machines and software to work from home, at their request. They do special projects, mostly database maintenance and "key punch" work, not the jobs that they used to do in our office. Our sales people have laptops, and we've bought cell phones, Notes servers and bandwidth primarily to let them file reports and do paperwork anywhere, anytime (except for the limitations the FAA makes on use of these devices on airplanes). A few of us have voluntarily installed AS/400 and network access software on some of our own machines at home, and use it to do projects on weekends that would otherwise require us to come in. So far, it's all employee driven, and it's genuinely being done to enable people to better balance work and home life.
But as the IT manager, I frequently get proposals from companies offering cheaper and faster IT services using "virtual development teams", generally meaning that they have a bunch of people in India or somewhere else that are willing to work all hours for less than I'd pay for local talent. I haven't used them yet, but I know companies that have, and it's a growing business.
I do know that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forbearers...
Slashdot Mirror
She has a new novel out now, "The Bug", which is more of the same. See http://www.salon.com/books/int/2003/05/16/ullman/i ndex.html
for an interesting interview from 5/16/03.
GEB is an ambitious book, by an ambitious guy with interesting creds. Doug Hofstader was on the team at, I think, U. of Illinois that did the computer proof of the 4-color theorem; arguably the first "computer proof" of a classic mathematical conjecture, approached by the simple strategy of massive computational assault on all cases of the proof. Hofstader was also editor of Scientific American's Amateur Scientist column for a while. 1979 Pulitizer Prize winner. Worth some time, if now somewhat dated.
GEB is not a novel, not a textbook, not a memoir, not a meme. It's long, and very fun in spots, weaving together some disparate and even opposing ideas. Puli
I second this recommendation. It's a great look into the formation and psychology of technical teams, and it's really well written. And don't forget Kidder's subsequent "House" which is a somewhat more general, approachable parallel for the non-geek; generally, the story of an architect designed house getting built in Massachusetts in the 1980's. Like "Soul..." tries to deal with the project from the perspective of all parties involved from the architect, to the owners, to the carpenters putting the thing up.
Perhaps you missed Nathanial Branden's 1999 "My Years with Ayn Rand". The fact that he waited until after her death to publish this memoir may do him little credit, but he addresses this subject, and many elements of his life with Rand are already matters of record. Her endorsement of him in their time together was utterly unqualified and adoring, and her subsequent rejection of him total. She even went so far as to remove her dedication of "Atlas Shrugged" to him in subsequent paperback editions.
Having lived his life, and explained his ongoing philosophic and professional evolution, he has a right to his say, and it is an interesting view, not to say a reasoned, and human, incrimination of Objectivism as a working life philosophy, from the one person on earth who Rand once annointed as it's champion. To his credit, Branden is not less than honest about himself in this memoir, but he does limit his comments about his later life somewhat, referencing the interested reader to some of his earlier books, published after his break with Rand. Accordingly, this book is not, in my reading, the anti-Rand polemic that some current Objectivists would have you believe. For those fans of Rand who seek a greater understanding of her, and her work, this is essential reading.
Density would be lousy, for one thing. Heads need a certian amount of isolation to work, and besides, current technology depends on the movenment of the magnetic domains in the media on the spinning disk, past the essentially stationary head, to create the variable electric current in the head. Nothing moves = nothing is read or written.
While they are at it, why not put 4 arms in a multi-arm unit, each at 90 degrees from the next (4 corners model)? Arms and positioning logic are comparitively cheap, and wouldn't add much to a unit's operating power budget. Seek parallelism on a 2 arm system probably isn't an absolute cure for spin latency, since opposite arms at 180 degrees probably couldn't react quickly enough to get 99.999+% (or at least, a very high percentage) of all random seeks done sequentially.
But working in parallel, 2 teams of two arms, with each team composed of 180 degree opposed arms, stands a much better chance, I think.
But this is such an obvious development path, there must be really sound practical arguments against it. I'd like to know what they are...
Amen. Smith has intelligence, a good sense of physicality, and a strong desire to do good work. If he gets a decent script, the right direction, and decent production design (like the darkly futuristic Blade Runner), this could be a good movie. Much better premises than the tear jerker AI by Spielberg, who seems to like sci-fi, but can't help tossing in toys, gimmicks, and too damn much money to make such movies.
For once, just to prove he can visualize and direct, rather than hire people to do it for him, I'd like to see Speilberg put a film in the can for under $5 million. This could be his chance.
Bo Jackson, and many other middle aged people, including myself, lose their hip joints to AVN (avascular necrosis) or accident. At 42, I had crippling pain in both legs, so intense that a ten step walk down the hall to the bathroom was eventually an impossible journey.
AVN is a result of the human body's Architect and Prime Contractor making the entire blood supply for the head of the femur a single, badly oriented blood vessel. If the vessel becomes blocked or narrowed, the top of the femur loses its circulation and dies, and the cartilage necessary to keep the natural joint working can't be repaired. Within a short time, dead bone is grinding against living cartilage in the pelvic socket, which wears out quickly and painfully, or the head of the femur breaks, and dead, can't heal. This happens every year to a single digit percentage of the population, about evenly distributed between men and women. Smoking and some other personal health issues, including race and heredity, have been statistically linked to AVN, but no studies of which I'm aware have firmly established a causal relationship between health behaviors, environtmental factors, heredity and AVN. Accidental breakage is a another reason hip replacement surgery is performed, especially if the femoral head is severly damaged, and is unlikely to be able to heal.
100 years ago, and even today in medically underserved areas, hip joint failures, and the resulting loss of locomotion, resultant infections, and stress cause(d) high rates of subsequent mortality, within a few months, as other posters have mentioned. The various forms of hip prostheses are thus literally life saving devices, not just ways for little old ladies to enjoy a few more Arthur Murray dance lessons. It is hard for healthy people to appreciate just how debilitating and life threatening the loss of mobility is, but I assure you, it is a very, very real threat to life, within weeks, from many mortality paths.
The literature quotes the common "life span" of THR (total hip replacement) type prostheses at an average of 10 to 12 years. I have one that was originally installed in 1994, and the other which was a revision done in 1999, due to involvement in a tripping type accident. The joint replaced in 1994 appears sound in follow up X-rays, which look to predict failure by picking up very small particles in the extra cellular fluid, or in the joint parts themselves, near the joint movement surfaces, indicating that significant spalling wear is present. But the far more usual cause of failure is actually failure of the cement or bone that hold the joint parts in place. The usual indication of such failure is pain, caused by small fractures and infection of the bone surrounding the implants, or excessive movement of the implant parts in the bone cavities of the pelvis and femur made during surgery. In my case, and that of thousands of other THR patients of recent years, the former practice of cementing the replacement parts to living bone has changed to having the surfaces of the parts present a rough surface, to which living bone, which is accurately "machined" during surgery using jigs and a reaming toolset provided by the joint manufacturer, to achieve very close tolerance fit of the artifical hip parts to the living bone remaining. Under such close tolerances, and with immediate physical therapy, new bone will actually grow into the the implant surfaces, and be superior in overall life to the cemented versions. This remains an on-going investigation where ceramic surfaces show real promise.
Many designs of hip prostheses are easily damaged by torque moments and shock loads presented to the joint during common situations such as minor stumbles, or kicking or pushing small but dense objects. Learning to respect the hardware, and being very careful about shoes, walking surfaces, and instantaneous loads is all part of having the mobility the artifical joints provide. With care, most activities can be managed, and don't "wear out" the joints, but activities that put deformative shock loads into the plastic or metal "cup" parts surrounding the "ball" surface of the femur replacement portion of a THR are really, really bad ideas, and can result in premature or even instaneouses failures. This is more often due to crush and fracture failures of the supporting bone tissues, but in my case, I actually sheared a 3/8 inch diameter stainless steel "rod" forming the offset for the "head" of the femoral replacement part. There may have been some prior contributing damage to the joint part from surgical insertion damage, or in vitro degradation, but it is hard to know since the removed parts are hard to analyse, may suffer additional damage in extraction, and are often changed by years of immersion in the fluids of the living body.
If I live to a normal age for a man of my background, I'll face the surgeon another 4 to 6 times for revisions, so I'd like to see a "permanent" THR developed, as would thousands of others. Advanced materials leading to a substantially stronger, longer lived joint, are the most desirable course, and probably, the most likely. I applaud the folks involved in this, and I am grateful to the American taxpayers, and to NASA for time and space aboard shuttle missions, to do the early science that might lead to such materials.
For large people, chairs and work surfaces get to be really important issues.
After a lot of comparison shopping, I recently got a BodyBilt chair. The range of adjustability is great, the memory foam is terrific, but the large, shaped pommel of the seat, the waterfall seat edge, the large padded swivel arms, and the "relaxed/alert" natural seating position make this the most comfortable long term seating I've ever had. About 50% more than an Aeron, but a really terrific chair. http://www.bodybilt.com
When I die, I'm getting buried in this thing!
Couple of points from a geezer that used to sell industrial sewing equipment, before he became a technocog in the "new economy"...
At the turn of the century, the sewing machine was a close analog of the PC, in its potential to "free the nation's populace from the drudgery of manual labour." Like the PC, the sewing machine was a universally adopted device in both rural and urban homes, and considerable fortunes were made supplying ever improved and cheaper models to a large domestic and industrial market. Within 40 years of the patenting of the practical mechanical lockstitch mechanism, most American homes had at least one sewing machine, and virtually all commercial textile product manufacturers were fully mechanized. (Anybody see any real close analogy here?)
A price war in clothing developed, that continues to this day. In America and Europe, commercial manufacturers sought to capitalize on the large potential workforce of women who stayed at home, by supplying them with foot powered machines, and by setting up delivery and pickup services to bring them work, and take back completed bundles of clothing. Piecework pay systems were developed to reward those who would work longer or harder, or who could enlist the help of underage children, many of whom began to be held home from school, to increase the family income.
Eventually, organized labor unions (the first being the famous Ladies Garment Workers Association, headed by Samuel Gompers) brought political pressure to bear, to pass stringent "home work" and "child labor" laws that effectively ended the practice of employers setting up individuals to work at home. The enlightened thinking of the day held that only in commercial workspaces that could be inspected by government and union officials could adequate health and safety regulations be effectively enforced, and workers be compensated without the abuses of child labor, so prevalent in the home situation. Many of these laws are still on the books, and are probably applicable to employer/employee home work situations today...
But today, we call it "telecommuting" and we think that somehow the natural economic forces which mandate people getting other people to produce the most work for the least money may not apply. Perhaps "knowledge workers" are somehow immune from economic exploitation in a large, fast virtual services market? Perhaps, but how many people in the financial markets now "start" at 3:00 a.m. from home, via PC, when London opens, and don't "quit" until the wee hours, when the Far East markets start again?
I dunno. Perhaps a more perfect flow of information does, somehow, materially change relationships that once required law and enforcement to keep in equilibrium. Even in the early years of the 20th century, the end of abuses in "home work" and "child labor" didn't end abuse in the workplace, as the New York garment workers fire of, I think, 1907, demonstrated. In that case, a multi-story building full of sweatshops burned, with considerable loss of life, because the doors to fire escape routes had been chained shut to prevent employees from going into stairwells and out on fire escapes during working hours.
In our company's case, we have a couple of women who were formerly full time office employees, who left to have have children, that we've supplied with machines and software to work from home, at their request. They do special projects, mostly database maintenance and "key punch" work, not the jobs that they used to do in our office. Our sales people have laptops, and we've bought cell phones, Notes servers and bandwidth primarily to let them file reports and do paperwork anywhere, anytime (except for the limitations the FAA makes on use of these devices on airplanes). A few of us have voluntarily installed AS/400 and network access software on some of our own machines at home, and use it to do projects on weekends that would otherwise require us to come in. So far, it's all employee driven, and it's genuinely being done to enable people to better balance work and home life.
But as the IT manager, I frequently get proposals from companies offering cheaper and faster IT services using "virtual development teams", generally meaning that they have a bunch of people in India or somewhere else that are willing to work all hours for less than I'd pay for local talent. I haven't used them yet, but I know companies that have, and it's a growing business.
I do know that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forbearers...