It's called Giant Magneto-Resistance, and it's why hard-drives all the suddenly got so huge. Besides, it's past the limit of need at this point; who needs more than 20GB for personal use? Hence, no market, and lower prices! It's a different story with CPUs. Kind of a lame article, isn't it? Get with it,/.!
Rogers (or is it Shaw these days??) has offered this service for some time now (1/2 year or so?). They call it "LiteSpeed" and charge about 50% that of their "HiSpeed Cable" ($20 vs $40 per month).
Their HiSpeed is supposed to run at a MINIMUM of 2.5MB/s. I'm in the situation of actually having BOTH CABLE (HiSpeed) AND ADSL right now, and my non-rigorous testing shows that ADSL is faster than CABLE by a factor of about 2.5 for downloading from Linux to OSX. With ADSL operating about 1.7MB/s, cable isn't half of what it claimed in the advertisement.
As far as lightspeed is concerned; well, if it really WAS 5 times the speed of a 56K modem, then I can't see why I would need anything faster. The stuff I do at home doesn't demand bandwidth, just the AVAILABILITY of the internet at a "decent" download speed, so that I can read news, etc.
PS - Although atoms get a lot of press, I think the most interesting uses of AFM are in biology and hard drive research. These certainly produce the more spectacular looking images
Well perhaps, but that's because it's on a bigger scale, with more complex structures. Imaging a crystal surface or individual atoms (eh, need an STM or a TEM here) won't be quite as "interesting" to you in an "artistic" or "cool" sense, but is of equal scientific "beauty" and importance.
The AFM yields atomic resolution in the z-direction (the height), so you're not completely correct here. In the lateral direction, however, you'll be imaging the shape of the tip for anything less than lateral features of less than ~50nm (tip-radius*2) due to tip-convolution effects.
The AFM is fantastic in that it addresses a range of length scales that are quite useful in today's technology applications/devices (~50nm to several microns); it works every time and gives much better resolution than the SEM.
I guess everybody's entitled to their own point of view, and mine is certainly not the same as yours.
"Schools are throwing out their apples..."
"...new computer users seldomly even think of Apples anymore;..."
"...the only new people moving to Apples nowadays are geeks..."... etc., etc., etc...
These statements are unsubstantiated to say the least. Where do you get your numbers? (2%, 10%, etc.)
Apple is in fact becoming more and more of a performance competitor for the PCs, they're getting cheaper (actually, pretty comparable in price to PC-clones considering what you get for your money in laptops: battery-life, design, weight, screens, well-functioning software, connectivity to external devices, etc., etc.); and with OS X and X11/fink/OroborOSX, it also has access to a vast amount of open source software (M$ doesn't).
That's really cute, you know. I thought everybody around here was all in favour of making your own fortune, not considering the fact that one man's gain is another man's loss.
I think your point is excellent! It's the very same thing that leads to the bancrupty of NHL teams (too high salaries, tickets too expensive, etc.): the league is getting out of touch with the market. Who can afford 4*$100 tickets + parking and burgers to bring the family to a hockey-game? This might seem off-topic, but my point is this: a "rock-star lifestyle" is ridiculous any way you look at it. Also, why on EARTH do the Friends "actors" make ~$1M per episode?? This is what I'm talking about: overpay. Get real and be happy with a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. That's many times more than what most of us make.
A place to share code and algorithmic knowledge???
on
What Math do You Use?
·
· Score: 1
A request to "applied" computer scientists out there: could you please share your mad optimization and algorithm skillz with the hard science types who lack your fine touch? We've been using C/FORTRAN like a sledgehammer because we don't know how to use a chisel.
I already answered to this/. question, but here I go again: The suggestion of the fellow above is a good one. It would be nice if there was a website that would post, store, distribute, collect code, algorithms, mathematical tricks, hints on what approach to take to a given problem. Example: about a year ago I wanted to solve a set of coupled, nonlinear, stiff algebraic differential equations. I found LSODA and other excellent code from Lawrence Livermore Labs, written in Fortran, but after fiddling with the code and entering my problem, the original code didn't seem to want to solve the system for more than ~10 coupled equations, and I needed to solve it for ~1000. I happened to find out about Matlab's implementation of DAE solving, which incidentally uses LSODA, but the implementation was optimized such that it solved my 1000 equation computational problem in a matter of seconds, compared to minutes for the 10 equation problem with the original Fortran code.
Long story, but my point is this: it would be great if I could go to "www.applied-math-and-cs.com" (that's the name of the site that we should make!) and find out about this instead of spending weeks on the wrong solution and then finding the better way to do it by fluke! I asked many physics and cs-people along the way, but noone could give me this simple advice of using Matlab's interpretation of LSODA.
Many computational problems are common in the physical sciences. People get introduced to Monte Carlo simulations through the simple explanations of their grad-school professors ("you calculate the probability of the next move based on an Arrhenius behaviour, and move your atom if a random number is less than this probability..."). Sounds easy, but of course you're wasting many many loops when this condition isn't met. Then, you learn about kinetic Monte Carlo which uses every loop... etc.
It would be nice to have a "resource center" for this kind of problems. Anybody interested in starting this? Or perhaps it already exists? I know about "MUG" (the Maple User Group, out of U. of Waterloo, I think), and this group is good, but too Maple-centric and heavy on the pure Mathematics, but so focused on the applied side.
This is indeed an excellent question, and I will answer it from my perspective: as a computing phycisist.
The phycist's approach has changed over the last few decades with the improvements of the personal computer. While there used to be "the theorists" and "the experimentalists", there is now a new group: "the computationalists".
Phycisists are usually well trained in applied mathematics, calculus, applied PDE's, group theory, linear algebra... you name it, but that's not OUR main problem: we suffer from not being great coders. As a computationalist, I can tell you that many a phycisist will apply brute force and rely on the power of computers to get them the answer by the end of the week, rather than writing elegant, efficient code that might give you the answer in an hour! I suppose this is a little off-topic, but keep on focusing on execution time and algorithms, and spread the good word of computer science to other branches of science. Physics, Chemistry and many of the physical sciences rely on computation, and make huge Beowulf clusters and MPI to do their calculations for them. Perhaps they could save a buck or two, OR get results faster by learning a healthy dose of solid computer science.
Secondly, I just heard a quote from an unknown source:
"There's the right answer and the wrong answer. In modelling, there's the third option: the irrelevant answer". Focus on teaching people what is relevant, and what should be solved by other means than sitting behind a computer.
Well, of course the computer is guilty of brute force calculation: it's only a machine! Of course, it could be argued that we're simply "brute-force" thinkers, as well, if you include emotions as being results of some sort of optimization of expected outcome.
However, Kasparov said himself that the computer's sacrifice of the black bishop on h2 to White's King (Kasparov) in game 5 was a shocker, totally unexpected and very human-like and creative. As far as I understand, Kasparov saw this move as a sign of something more in the computer than just "brute-force".
It is also a fairly accepted view among chess players that Deep Junior is a master at taking chances: "it walks on the edge of the cliff quite often, but seldomly falls off".
The games between Kasparov and Deep Junior were very interesting, perhaps with the expection of the ending of the 6th game. Check them out at www.worldchessrating.com!
I'm a long time trekkie and fan of all things space and I certainly believe in little green men, but we have remember one thing: space is vast. Space is so vast, indeed, that the old "needle-in-the-haystack" analogy won't even come close to express the probability of finding another lifeform out there, even if we raised the haystack to it's own power. Plz excuse the geekery.
"Space exploration" as we know it is done by astronomers and astro-phycisists who look up into the night sky and analyze composition of star-systems and their ages and distances and so forth. Sending 7 guys up in orbit in a tin-can is not gonna get us any closer to actually being able to go there, wherever "there" might be. It's too darn far away, it'll take too long.
I haven't read Barabasi's latest book (well, it's just out), but I've studied his previous book "Fractal Concepts in Surface Growth" (with H.E.Stanley) in some detail. This book made an enourmous contribution to the field of statistical physics, at least to it's popularity. I am approached by colleagues quite regularily that want to borrow the book, etc., although they are in completely different fields of physics. It is good for both undergraduate students and grads alike, and serves as a very good introduction to the field.
Barabasi and co-author Albert are literarily inventing a new field of physics/math; I'm not even quite sure of what to call it. However, they are very much in touch with current research in the field, and their work is very timely (who else could tell you that the "degree of separation" on the web is 19 and not 6?)
As for Wolfram, however, I cannot say the same. I've seen Wolfram present his book in a special seminar (but haven't read it), and my impression is this: he is an exceptionally bright guy, but not in touch with current research. Wolfram is able to explain a wide variety of fields within physics and mathematics with great confidence, and I would be the last to call him un-educated (no two-week crash course in particle physics on his behalf! Actually, I think he was the only grad-student that Richard Feynman supervised!). I realize that when you "invent paradigm-changing science", you will necessarily meet some opposition from other researchers, but Wolfram's problem is this: he had a good idea some 20 years ago (cellular automata), secluded himself in a room since then developing his idea (as well as various sales-pitches for Mathematica), and forgot to consult with the rest of the scientific community. I understand very well why he's being critizied by his peers.
How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides?
I'm sure that the People's Army is quite capable of writing their own cheap firewalls.
Also, Microsoft's ability to remotely shut down computers running XP sounds *scary* to say the least. I had never heard of this, but it sounds like crap. Then again, XP is crap to start with.
...pick your truth, this is the corporate option. Don't lie, just limit what you tell the truth about.
I used to think that propaganda was limited to totalitarian regimes and not applied *here*, but this is not the case. The recent events in North Korea have have started a propaganda machine here in North America that is ridiculous: we see marching military parades, weapons, rockets fired (presumably able to carry nuclear warheads), people chanting for their leader with closed fists in a Hitler-style "heil". I am sure that these shots are not fake, yet they don't tell the whole story, and hence lead to *misinformation* due to it's sneaky censorship.
Remember how South Korea was portrayed during the World Cup in Soccer last summer? Culture, food, dance... Quite different from the current stream of one-sided information. The Koreans (both South and North) still consider themselves one people, although they are politically split, and I can understand very well why they're pissed at the US propaganda of recent weeks.
You know WAY too much about the ways of Slashdot not to be a geek yourself; besides, how do you have time to read/., as busy as you must be saving the world?
I think that discourse about "the rights online" is quite closely related to the whole terrorist-situation: can we monitor people freely in the name of anti-terrorism?, etc. Civil liberties, you know; what they supposedly don't have in other parts of the world.
Lighten up.
PS. Where's this holy war against Islam? Btw, the States have been involved in ~200 armed confrontations/wars since WWII; this is nothing new. DS.
"You need non standard versions of Linux for people who don't want it for Desktops. Period. Trouble is, those people are the ones driving its development, so we won't see a standard Linux anytime in the next decade.
You're touching on two essential points here:
1) Linux doesn't do everything that Windows does in the same, transparent, yet less secure way: surfing the web with IE is unfortunately still the easiest way to manouvre the web, rather than using Mozilla for one thing, Galeon for another, Opera for something else, etc. How do you expect people to deal with this? And, may I remind you, an un-firewalled Linux box is just as insecure as a Windows box.
2) I don't think we WANT world domination by Linux: it's a self-contradictory reality: as soon as Linux takes over, it'll be the next "Bill Gates", and all the/.'ers will find a new OS and continue to fight then evil "empire of Linux" as underdogs, 'cause that's what we like to be: underdogs.
I love Linux and I love tinkering with it, making devices work, writing scripts, multiple desktops, multi-tasking, mosix, ltsp, options with window managers (blackbox rules!), but I don't think it's for everyone. I think the fact that 9*% of all computer users choose Windows is at least partially due to people's laziness and level of skills with the computer; it's easy! Yes, it's full of security holes and dumb solutions, costs money and all that, but I don't think people care. And, to be honest, I'm kind of happy about that. As long as my bank uses a secure Linux system;)
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that this was an old mathematical puzzle? I'm sure that I've seen this before... Hmm. Maybe that's why they call it REsearch?
It's called Giant Magneto-Resistance, and it's why hard-drives all the suddenly got so huge. Besides, it's past the limit of need at this point; who needs more than 20GB for personal use? Hence, no market, and lower prices! It's a different story with CPUs. Kind of a lame article, isn't it? Get with it, /.!
fuck, you're gross!
Their HiSpeed is supposed to run at a MINIMUM of 2.5MB/s. I'm in the situation of actually having BOTH CABLE (HiSpeed) AND ADSL right now, and my non-rigorous testing shows that ADSL is faster than CABLE by a factor of about 2.5 for downloading from Linux to OSX. With ADSL operating about 1.7MB/s, cable isn't half of what it claimed in the advertisement.
As far as lightspeed is concerned; well, if it really WAS 5 times the speed of a 56K modem, then I can't see why I would need anything faster. The stuff I do at home doesn't demand bandwidth, just the AVAILABILITY of the internet at a "decent" download speed, so that I can read news, etc.
Well perhaps, but that's because it's on a bigger scale, with more complex structures. Imaging a crystal surface or individual atoms (eh, need an STM or a TEM here) won't be quite as "interesting" to you in an "artistic" or "cool" sense, but is of equal scientific "beauty" and importance.
The AFM yields atomic resolution in the z-direction (the height), so you're not completely correct here. In the lateral direction, however, you'll be imaging the shape of the tip for anything less than lateral features of less than ~50nm (tip-radius*2) due to tip-convolution effects.
The AFM is fantastic in that it addresses a range of length scales that are quite useful in today's technology applications/devices (~50nm to several microns); it works every time and gives much better resolution than the SEM.
"Schools are throwing out their apples..."
"...new computer users seldomly even think of Apples anymore;..."
"...the only new people moving to Apples nowadays are geeks..."... etc., etc., etc...
These statements are unsubstantiated to say the least. Where do you get your numbers? (2%, 10%, etc.)
Apple is in fact becoming more and more of a performance competitor for the PCs, they're getting cheaper (actually, pretty comparable in price to PC-clones considering what you get for your money in laptops: battery-life, design, weight, screens, well-functioning software, connectivity to external devices, etc., etc.); and with OS X and X11/fink/OroborOSX, it also has access to a vast amount of open source software (M$ doesn't).
I think your point is excellent! It's the very same thing that leads to the bancrupty of NHL teams (too high salaries, tickets too expensive, etc.): the league is getting out of touch with the market. Who can afford 4*$100 tickets + parking and burgers to bring the family to a hockey-game? This might seem off-topic, but my point is this: a "rock-star lifestyle" is ridiculous any way you look at it. Also, why on EARTH do the Friends "actors" make ~$1M per episode?? This is what I'm talking about: overpay. Get real and be happy with a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. That's many times more than what most of us make.
I already answered to this /. question, but here I go again: The suggestion of the fellow above is a good one. It would be nice if there was a website that would post, store, distribute, collect code, algorithms, mathematical tricks, hints on what approach to take to a given problem. Example: about a year ago I wanted to solve a set of coupled, nonlinear, stiff algebraic differential equations. I found LSODA and other excellent code from Lawrence Livermore Labs, written in Fortran, but after fiddling with the code and entering my problem, the original code didn't seem to want to solve the system for more than ~10 coupled equations, and I needed to solve it for ~1000. I happened to find out about Matlab's implementation of DAE solving, which incidentally uses LSODA, but the implementation was optimized such that it solved my 1000 equation computational problem in a matter of seconds, compared to minutes for the 10 equation problem with the original Fortran code.
Long story, but my point is this: it would be great if I could go to "www.applied-math-and-cs.com" (that's the name of the site that we should make!) and find out about this instead of spending weeks on the wrong solution and then finding the better way to do it by fluke! I asked many physics and cs-people along the way, but noone could give me this simple advice of using Matlab's interpretation of LSODA.
Many computational problems are common in the physical sciences. People get introduced to Monte Carlo simulations through the simple explanations of their grad-school professors ("you calculate the probability of the next move based on an Arrhenius behaviour, and move your atom if a random number is less than this probability..."). Sounds easy, but of course you're wasting many many loops when this condition isn't met. Then, you learn about kinetic Monte Carlo which uses every loop... etc.
It would be nice to have a "resource center" for this kind of problems. Anybody interested in starting this? Or perhaps it already exists? I know about "MUG" (the Maple User Group, out of U. of Waterloo, I think), and this group is good, but too Maple-centric and heavy on the pure Mathematics, but so focused on the applied side.
The phycist's approach has changed over the last few decades with the improvements of the personal computer. While there used to be "the theorists" and "the experimentalists", there is now a new group: "the computationalists".
Phycisists are usually well trained in applied mathematics, calculus, applied PDE's, group theory, linear algebra... you name it, but that's not OUR main problem: we suffer from not being great coders. As a computationalist, I can tell you that many a phycisist will apply brute force and rely on the power of computers to get them the answer by the end of the week, rather than writing elegant, efficient code that might give you the answer in an hour! I suppose this is a little off-topic, but keep on focusing on execution time and algorithms, and spread the good word of computer science to other branches of science. Physics, Chemistry and many of the physical sciences rely on computation, and make huge Beowulf clusters and MPI to do their calculations for them. Perhaps they could save a buck or two, OR get results faster by learning a healthy dose of solid computer science.
Secondly, I just heard a quote from an unknown source: "There's the right answer and the wrong answer. In modelling, there's the third option: the irrelevant answer". Focus on teaching people what is relevant, and what should be solved by other means than sitting behind a computer.
However, Kasparov said himself that the computer's sacrifice of the black bishop on h2 to White's King (Kasparov) in game 5 was a shocker, totally unexpected and very human-like and creative. As far as I understand, Kasparov saw this move as a sign of something more in the computer than just "brute-force".
It is also a fairly accepted view among chess players that Deep Junior is a master at taking chances: "it walks on the edge of the cliff quite often, but seldomly falls off".
The games between Kasparov and Deep Junior were very interesting, perhaps with the expection of the ending of the 6th game. Check them out at www.worldchessrating.com!
"Space exploration" as we know it is done by astronomers and astro-phycisists who look up into the night sky and analyze composition of star-systems and their ages and distances and so forth. Sending 7 guys up in orbit in a tin-can is not gonna get us any closer to actually being able to go there, wherever "there" might be. It's too darn far away, it'll take too long.
Barabasi and co-author Albert are literarily inventing a new field of physics/math; I'm not even quite sure of what to call it. However, they are very much in touch with current research in the field, and their work is very timely (who else could tell you that the "degree of separation" on the web is 19 and not 6?)
As for Wolfram, however, I cannot say the same. I've seen Wolfram present his book in a special seminar (but haven't read it), and my impression is this: he is an exceptionally bright guy, but not in touch with current research. Wolfram is able to explain a wide variety of fields within physics and mathematics with great confidence, and I would be the last to call him un-educated (no two-week crash course in particle physics on his behalf! Actually, I think he was the only grad-student that Richard Feynman supervised!). I realize that when you "invent paradigm-changing science", you will necessarily meet some opposition from other researchers, but Wolfram's problem is this: he had a good idea some 20 years ago (cellular automata), secluded himself in a room since then developing his idea (as well as various sales-pitches for Mathematica), and forgot to consult with the rest of the scientific community. I understand very well why he's being critizied by his peers.
Nicaragua
...
Vietnam
I'm sure that the People's Army is quite capable of writing their own cheap firewalls.
Also, Microsoft's ability to remotely shut down computers running XP sounds *scary* to say the least. I had never heard of this, but it sounds like crap. Then again, XP is crap to start with.
I used to think that propaganda was limited to totalitarian regimes and not applied *here*, but this is not the case. The recent events in North Korea have have started a propaganda machine here in North America that is ridiculous: we see marching military parades, weapons, rockets fired (presumably able to carry nuclear warheads), people chanting for their leader with closed fists in a Hitler-style "heil". I am sure that these shots are not fake, yet they don't tell the whole story, and hence lead to *misinformation* due to it's sneaky censorship.
Remember how South Korea was portrayed during the World Cup in Soccer last summer? Culture, food, dance... Quite different from the current stream of one-sided information. The Koreans (both South and North) still consider themselves one people, although they are politically split, and I can understand very well why they're pissed at the US propaganda of recent weeks.
You know WAY too much about the ways of Slashdot not to be a geek yourself; besides, how do you have time to read /., as busy as you must be saving the world?
I think that discourse about "the rights online" is quite closely related to the whole terrorist-situation: can we monitor people freely in the name of anti-terrorism?, etc. Civil liberties, you know; what they supposedly don't have in other parts of the world.
Lighten up.
PS. Where's this holy war against Islam? Btw, the States have been involved in ~200 armed confrontations/wars since WWII; this is nothing new. DS.
Oh, you're losing out, my friend; "Spirited Away", especially, is a fine movie.
Have you been away for some, oh, 3-4 years? Deep in a coma? Lived on a desert island?
The States was once a great place, but is turning into a Soviet-like totalitarian regime; with the people's concent!
I'll bet my shorts that *Alan M Ralsky* will have FBI's database hacked within a week.
Another article on big-brotherness, *click*, and we're met with a big add for Microsoft's .NET.
It's not easy not being paranoid these days.
You're touching on two essential points here:
1) Linux doesn't do everything that Windows does in the same, transparent, yet less secure way: surfing the web with IE is unfortunately still the easiest way to manouvre the web, rather than using Mozilla for one thing, Galeon for another, Opera for something else, etc. How do you expect people to deal with this? And, may I remind you, an un-firewalled Linux box is just as insecure as a Windows box.
2) I don't think we WANT world domination by Linux: it's a self-contradictory reality: as soon as Linux takes over, it'll be the next "Bill Gates", and all the /.'ers will find a new OS and continue to fight then evil "empire of Linux" as underdogs, 'cause that's what we like to be: underdogs.
I love Linux and I love tinkering with it, making devices work, writing scripts, multiple desktops, multi-tasking, mosix, ltsp, options with window managers (blackbox rules!), but I don't think it's for everyone. I think the fact that 9*% of all computer users choose Windows is at least partially due to people's laziness and level of skills with the computer; it's easy! Yes, it's full of security holes and dumb solutions, costs money and all that, but I don't think people care. And, to be honest, I'm kind of happy about that. As long as my bank uses a secure Linux system ;)
your spelling sucks.