I don't know much about these new database file system schemas. I was just curious how a file's uniqueness is determined? Since a flat file space means that "foo.txt" can (and will) occur several times in the same physical page, the system obviously can't use a traditional naming schema as the primary key in the database.
Perhaps the system uses something like an MD5 checksum to determine uniqueness, and just stores the filename as metadata?
If so, it would be cool if the hashing algorithm was standardized, as that would do wonders for P2P file system searching and data mining.
I was aware of graduate programs that allowed you to study in a similar interdisciplinary field, but I wasn't aware that it had been standardized, or that any form of undergraduate program was available. That's pretty cool! Thanks for letting me know.
I still think alot of colleges do not distinguish significantly between the (for lack of better words) "engineering" and "mathematical" aspects of a typical computer science program. At the university I attended, CS was in the LAS college. This made sense to me... The core of the program seemed to have more in common with math than with engineering. But alot of people wanted to move it to the engineering college.
They argued that CS was more of an engineering discipline. I always thought that was what computer engineering was for. So I dunno.
Let me start by stating that I feel that "CS" should stand for "Computational Science," not "Computer Science." This is because I see CS as a study of the abstract principle of "computation" and not the study of a particular tool used to achieve that computation.
Note that the "S" in CS stands for science. Science is distinguished from engineering in that it strives to study abstract ideas rather than focusing on particular tools or objects that manifest attributes of those ideas.
In my opinion, most sciences are a tangible subset of mathematics. Math provides the mindset needed to move science beyond the realm of tangible reality into an abstract space where ideas become seperated from a physical medium.
One might call this place "memespace."
It is in this memespace that the notion of a computation resides. To me, computational science is the study of the behavioral mechanics of mathematics. In the past, we've been able to study certain limiting cases of the behaviour of mathematical ideas. (ie, when the behaviour is linear or is easily approximated by such primitives). This really is due to the computational constrains of the human mind.
But due to the glorious age of the computer, we have been liberated from our own weaknesses in this realm. Suddenly, the study of computation has blossomed. We're now able to visualize mathematical behaviour in ways our ancestors could only have dreamed about.
To the modern computational scientist, all the world is aglow with complex behaviour ripe for study. And its no surprise that we are re-visting even the simplest of mathematical primitives, only to discover their behaviour isn't as simple as once thought!
In a sense, CS is a new way to think about mathematics. For everything CS borrows from mathematics, mathematics borrows something from CS. They are really one in the same!
A mindset that thinks CS is just about programming is missing the core of one of the most unifying disciplines in existance today.
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I don't know much about these new database file system schemas. I was just curious how a file's uniqueness is determined? Since a flat file space means that "foo.txt" can (and will) occur several times in the same physical page, the system obviously can't use a traditional naming schema as the primary key in the database. Perhaps the system uses something like an MD5 checksum to determine uniqueness, and just stores the filename as metadata? If so, it would be cool if the hashing algorithm was standardized, as that would do wonders for P2P file system searching and data mining.
I was aware of graduate programs that allowed you to study in a similar interdisciplinary field, but I wasn't aware that it had been standardized, or that any form of undergraduate program was available. That's pretty cool! Thanks for letting me know.
I still think alot of colleges do not distinguish significantly between the (for lack of better words) "engineering" and "mathematical" aspects of a typical computer science program. At the university I attended, CS was in the LAS college. This made sense to me... The core of the program seemed to have more in common with math than with engineering. But alot of people wanted to move it to the engineering college.
They argued that CS was more of an engineering discipline. I always thought that was what computer engineering was for. So I dunno.
Let me start by stating that I feel that "CS" should stand for "Computational Science," not "Computer Science." This is because I see CS as a study of the abstract principle of "computation" and not the study of a particular tool used to achieve that computation.
;-)
Note that the "S" in CS stands for science. Science is distinguished from engineering in that it strives to study abstract ideas rather than focusing on particular tools or objects that manifest attributes of those ideas.
In my opinion, most sciences are a tangible subset of mathematics. Math provides the mindset needed to move science beyond the realm of tangible reality into an abstract space where ideas become seperated from a physical medium.
One might call this place "memespace."
It is in this memespace that the notion of a computation resides. To me, computational science is the study of the behavioral mechanics of mathematics. In the past, we've been able to study certain limiting cases of the behaviour of mathematical ideas. (ie, when the behaviour is linear or is easily approximated by such primitives). This really is due to the computational constrains of the human mind.
But due to the glorious age of the computer, we have been liberated from our own weaknesses in this realm. Suddenly, the study of computation has blossomed. We're now able to visualize mathematical behaviour in ways our ancestors could only have dreamed about.
To the modern computational scientist, all the world is aglow with complex behaviour ripe for study. And its no surprise that we are re-visting even the simplest of mathematical primitives, only to discover their behaviour isn't as simple as once thought!
In a sense, CS is a new way to think about mathematics. For everything CS borrows from mathematics, mathematics borrows something from CS. They are really one in the same!
A mindset that thinks CS is just about programming is missing the core of one of the most unifying disciplines in existance today.
At least that's my opinion!