As a visualization guy, it always makes me happy to see such a good use of visualization. Thanks for providing some extra technical details here! A couple of questions, though:
1) What grid type does your simulation code use? If it's regular grid, have you considered switching to something more adaptive like AMR or unstructured grids?
2) Since I/O is your main bottleneck, have you considered further decimating your output and visualizing in situ to fill in the gap? I suspect your visual analysis is too complicated for current in situ techniques to cover everything you want to do, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.
She was most likely accentuating vocal fry throughout the clip for the purpose of demonstration.
It bothers me that you complain about the speech patterns of other peoples - particularly those you deem to be "lazy / hippies" - yet cannot find the effort to capitalize your I's and fully spell out "people."
You wouldn't be able to look at it in this situation because they have to put it in a completely isolated the sample to get it cold enough. The article does sort of imply that it's in two places at once, but it's really just in two states at once. Since this is a piezo-electric material, it'd be two different sizes at the same time. If you could somehow look at it, it would always appear to be a single size. Which size it appears to be would be be random with some probability.
I'm using Twinview on a standard Ubuntu 9.10 install. While it's one big desktop stretching across two screens, you can set up metamodes in xorg.conf that allows windows to comfortably use a whole monitor (i.e. maximizing makes a window take up one monitor, not stretch across). If you're using an Nvidia card, the nvidia-setttings utility will even set this up for you.
Both monitors are of course set to the same workspace, though. As far as I know, separate X servers are the only way to have each monitor on a different workspace.
I agree with the gist of your comment, but I have to nit-pick a little. Calories are a unit of measurement for energy. The use of the unit for food energy is ubiquitous nowadays, but the original definition had nothing to do with food.
Just a comment but from what I see on the TV renovation shows, every window in California is single-pane and insulation is a liberal myth. In Canada you'd freeze to death, in Cali apparently you just crank the AC a little higher and wonder why the power bill is so high.
I moved to California from Wisconsin not long ago, and I'm simply amazed at how thin the windows in my apartment are. If the windows had any insulation at all we almost could've gone the whole winter without turning on the heat. Same deal with watering; they over water the grass to the point that it doesn't even dry out until late afternoon.
Where do you get your information about "the universities where the wealthy kids go?" Is there something you can cite, or is it a personal assumption that you believe to be common knowledge? You're right that Berkeley the city is indeed very liberal. However, according to a friend who attended UCB for a bit, the campus itself is actually much more diverse in opinion. Sure, my evidence is second-hand and anecdotal, but it's more than you provide.
I found this talk when I was doing a research paper for a sociology class. Its well-written and very funny, and does an excellent job of pointing just how ridiculous and arbitrary marijuana prohibition is. Section V - C - 2 is especially memorable.
The problem is whatever Vista is using for page replacement, not virtual memory itself. Let's say you're using 2 GB of physical memory, and then start up some memory-intensive program that uses another 2 GB. You're done; if you run out of space now, the OS can do nothing about it, and is forced to do something drastic like start killing off processes.
The question then is why isn't Vista making fullest use out of virtual memory? It is probably trying to proactively move little used pages out of physical memory to make space for new pages. Its an attempt at optimization--after all, if you're not using that data, why let it take up valuable physical memory?
You can simplify everything down to a few repetitious tasks.
"Seriously - how many [FPSes] are just the same [game] over and over again with different graphics?...but by [the time you've killed something] you've pretty much seen all of the gameplay there is to see."
"Seriously - how many [versions of Solitaire] are just the same [game] over and over again with different graphics?...but by [the time you've put one card on top of another] you've pretty much seen all the gameplay there is to see."
"Seriously - how [much porn is] just the same [thing] over and over again with different graphics?...but by [the time you've seen one pair of boobs] you've pretty much seen all the gameplay there is to see."
Ultimately, you can simplify all of human experience down to repetition if you want. The definition of gameplay and fun differs by person. Even though WoW doesn't fit your narrow definition of fun, it seems to work for a lot of people. Look at the Penny Arcade comic you linked--sure, it pokes fun at the expansion, but I think Gabe is still pretty heavily involved in the game.
That's just stupid. All practical experience tells me that riding on the sidewalk makes you more likely to get hit by a car, for a few simple reasons. Firstly, it drastically reduces your visibility to cars; you're much easier to notice if you're on the road. Secondly, drivers are only looking for things that move at walking speed on the sidewalks. Most drivers don't think to look for objects moving at upwards of 15 mph on the sidewalks.
While this is certainly a neat result, calling it the "ultimate miniaturization" is silly press-release-talk. For sure, I know of quantum dots in GaAs approaches to quantum computing that store qubits in few or even single electrons. Though the current approach for GaAs can only store qubits for a few hundred microseconds at best, the storage time for Si/SiGe heterostructures could be as long as a few seconds (that hasn't yet been measured, as far as I know, so a few seconds is just a prediction). Beyond that I think that there are efforts to use photons for qubits, but I don't know much about them. An electron is certainly smaller than a nucleus, as much as it can be said to have size, and photons don't have mass, so it's hard to imagine what size they'd be.
No, its still only double. Instead of thinking of bits, just think of memory cells. Each cell can store two values under the original method. The new method allows for four values. So, with two values you get 0 or 1, => 1 bit. With four values you get 0, 1, 2, 3, => 00, 01, 10, 11 => 2 bits. So, two bits for every one bit previously is just a doubling.
I believe it is testable. All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine. This includes neural networks and at least some classes of quantum computer. (Heresy, I know. Terrible. Now go find a medium-rare steak to burn me on.) However, not all problems reduce to computable problems. If there is a non-computable system that exists in the real world, then it cannot be the product of a simulation, no matter how advanced the computer is.
Do such problems exist? Well, chaos theory is full of them. You cannot have a system that is truly chaotic and computable at the same time - the two are mutually exclusive. Both are deterministic, but only one is predictable.
I'm not sure why that would be heretical. All quantum computers are Turing reducible. It is unknown whether a quantum computer could solve an NP-Complete problem in polynomial time, but that is generally thought to not be the case. The only thing that could maybe get you burned on a steak is to say that a usable quantum computer (i.e. one with millions of qubits) is not possible.
As for non-computable problems, could you give some examples? Since the system is a simulation, there's no concern about computing the final state. Only the next state must be computed to continue the simulation. Given a finite set--the universe--and an initial state, I can't think of any physical phenomenon for which the next state could not be computed.
During the counterculture movement in the US, a lot of people gave up cars entirely, and decided to live simpler lives in self-sufficient rural communities. Ironically, the people who did that would be labeled hippies, a label which you so strenuously try to avoid.Anyway, if you dislike people overusing their cars, then you must also dislike people overusing electricity at their homes, so you try to minimize your own electricity use? If that's the case, then these policies shouldn't affect you very much.
The thing is, no matter how much you call everyone else whiny for not living closer to work or riding their bikes, its not likely to change their behavior. If we want to change our energy use, we have to do something as a society.
The central point of Huxley's "Brave New World" was making human development into an assembly line process. While we're not yet conditioning embryos, I don't think we need to force career paths on 9th graders. As others have mentioned here, this is the method used by China and India to pump out engineers and doctors. The trouble is, passion for the physical sciences can be an important factor of a good engineer, and while India and China certainly have some good engineers, they have to get them by making a lot of them and culling out the bad ones. I don't want to live in a society where 75% of the population is thrown into a career they hate just to put the nation on the fast track to scientific progress with as little educational investment as possible. Instead, why don't we use all of our wonderful science--extended life times and better agricultural processes--on lengthening the possible path of education, so that students have time to get a larger sampling of human knowledge before they are required to move on.
I thought it worth mentioning that I currently work in a Physics research lab, and many of the skills I use most often were learned working residential construction and low-level IT jobs in High School. Granted, I'm just an undergraduate so I'm doing more helpful lab work than actual research, but Grad students and even Professors occasionally have to fabricate their own lab equipment, too.
I admit I'm not too knowledgeable about how seizure proceedings, but whoever is allowed to determine what property should be seized should have some fun with it. If it were me, I'd start in the executive offices.
Executive swivel chair: $1500 Executive hand-crafted Mahogany desk, imported from Very Far Away: $2300 Executive face made when bailiffs haul off his kiddie pool full of money: priceless.
I see a lot of comments along the lines of "One wavelength cloaking will never be useful because of ____ and ____." Firstly, the vast majority of research is done incrementally, and this is a good first step. Secondly, funding is a necessary evil, and towards that end nothing beats a working demonstration that smells like fresh progress.
So, let's say you put forward a statement and claim it as fact, and I put forward a contradicting statement and claim it as fact. What then? Newton's law of gravitation was "fact" for quite a long time. The finding of fact is not as cut and dry as you would make it seem.
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As a visualization guy, it always makes me happy to see such a good use of visualization. Thanks for providing some extra technical details here! A couple of questions, though:
1) What grid type does your simulation code use? If it's regular grid, have you considered switching to something more adaptive like AMR or unstructured grids?
2) Since I/O is your main bottleneck, have you considered further decimating your output and visualizing in situ to fill in the gap? I suspect your visual analysis is too complicated for current in situ techniques to cover everything you want to do, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.
She was most likely accentuating vocal fry throughout the clip for the purpose of demonstration.
It bothers me that you complain about the speech patterns of other peoples - particularly those you deem to be "lazy / hippies" - yet cannot find the effort to capitalize your I's and fully spell out "people."
I thought for sure that you were going to segue into a joke about wooden knobs on audio equipment.
You wouldn't be able to look at it in this situation because they have to put it in a completely isolated the sample to get it cold enough. The article does sort of imply that it's in two places at once, but it's really just in two states at once. Since this is a piezo-electric material, it'd be two different sizes at the same time. If you could somehow look at it, it would always appear to be a single size. Which size it appears to be would be be random with some probability.
I'm using Twinview on a standard Ubuntu 9.10 install. While it's one big desktop stretching across two screens, you can set up metamodes in xorg.conf that allows windows to comfortably use a whole monitor (i.e. maximizing makes a window take up one monitor, not stretch across). If you're using an Nvidia card, the nvidia-setttings utility will even set this up for you. Both monitors are of course set to the same workspace, though. As far as I know, separate X servers are the only way to have each monitor on a different workspace.
I agree with the gist of your comment, but I have to nit-pick a little. Calories are a unit of measurement for energy. The use of the unit for food energy is ubiquitous nowadays, but the original definition had nothing to do with food.
How is that better? A caribou once bit my sister.
I moved to California from Wisconsin not long ago, and I'm simply amazed at how thin the windows in my apartment are. If the windows had any insulation at all we almost could've gone the whole winter without turning on the heat. Same deal with watering; they over water the grass to the point that it doesn't even dry out until late afternoon.
Where do you get your information about "the universities where the wealthy kids go?" Is there something you can cite, or is it a personal assumption that you believe to be common knowledge? You're right that Berkeley the city is indeed very liberal. However, according to a friend who attended UCB for a bit, the campus itself is actually much more diverse in opinion. Sure, my evidence is second-hand and anecdotal, but it's more than you provide.
I found this talk when I was doing a research paper for a sociology class. Its well-written and very funny, and does an excellent job of pointing just how ridiculous and arbitrary marijuana prohibition is. Section V - C - 2 is especially memorable.
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/vlr/vlrtoc.htm
The problem is whatever Vista is using for page replacement, not virtual memory itself. Let's say you're using 2 GB of physical memory, and then start up some memory-intensive program that uses another 2 GB. You're done; if you run out of space now, the OS can do nothing about it, and is forced to do something drastic like start killing off processes.
The question then is why isn't Vista making fullest use out of virtual memory? It is probably trying to proactively move little used pages out of physical memory to make space for new pages. Its an attempt at optimization--after all, if you're not using that data, why let it take up valuable physical memory?
"Seriously - how many [FPSes] are just the same [game] over and over again with different graphics? ...but by [the time you've killed something] you've pretty much seen all of the gameplay there is to see."
"Seriously - how many [versions of Solitaire] are just the same [game] over and over again with different graphics? ...but by [the time you've put one card on top of another] you've pretty much seen all the gameplay there is to see."
"Seriously - how [much porn is] just the same [thing] over and over again with different graphics? ...but by [the time you've seen one pair of boobs] you've pretty much seen all the gameplay there is to see."
Ultimately, you can simplify all of human experience down to repetition if you want. The definition of gameplay and fun differs by person. Even though WoW doesn't fit your narrow definition of fun, it seems to work for a lot of people. Look at the Penny Arcade comic you linked--sure, it pokes fun at the expansion, but I think Gabe is still pretty heavily involved in the game.
That's just stupid. All practical experience tells me that riding on the sidewalk makes you more likely to get hit by a car, for a few simple reasons. Firstly, it drastically reduces your visibility to cars; you're much easier to notice if you're on the road. Secondly, drivers are only looking for things that move at walking speed on the sidewalks. Most drivers don't think to look for objects moving at upwards of 15 mph on the sidewalks.
While this is certainly a neat result, calling it the "ultimate miniaturization" is silly press-release-talk. For sure, I know of quantum dots in GaAs approaches to quantum computing that store qubits in few or even single electrons. Though the current approach for GaAs can only store qubits for a few hundred microseconds at best, the storage time for Si/SiGe heterostructures could be as long as a few seconds (that hasn't yet been measured, as far as I know, so a few seconds is just a prediction). Beyond that I think that there are efforts to use photons for qubits, but I don't know much about them. An electron is certainly smaller than a nucleus, as much as it can be said to have size, and photons don't have mass, so it's hard to imagine what size they'd be.
Which would make it uniquely suited to search for black holes.
No, its still only double. Instead of thinking of bits, just think of memory cells. Each cell can store two values under the original method. The new method allows for four values. So, with two values you get 0 or 1, => 1 bit. With four values you get 0, 1, 2, 3, => 00, 01, 10, 11 => 2 bits. So, two bits for every one bit previously is just a doubling.
Do such problems exist? Well, chaos theory is full of them. You cannot have a system that is truly chaotic and computable at the same time - the two are mutually exclusive. Both are deterministic, but only one is predictable.
I'm not sure why that would be heretical. All quantum computers are Turing reducible. It is unknown whether a quantum computer could solve an NP-Complete problem in polynomial time, but that is generally thought to not be the case. The only thing that could maybe get you burned on a steak is to say that a usable quantum computer (i.e. one with millions of qubits) is not possible.
As for non-computable problems, could you give some examples? Since the system is a simulation, there's no concern about computing the final state. Only the next state must be computed to continue the simulation. Given a finite set--the universe--and an initial state, I can't think of any physical phenomenon for which the next state could not be computed.
During the counterculture movement in the US, a lot of people gave up cars entirely, and decided to live simpler lives in self-sufficient rural communities. Ironically, the people who did that would be labeled hippies, a label which you so strenuously try to avoid.Anyway, if you dislike people overusing their cars, then you must also dislike people overusing electricity at their homes, so you try to minimize your own electricity use? If that's the case, then these policies shouldn't affect you very much.
The thing is, no matter how much you call everyone else whiny for not living closer to work or riding their bikes, its not likely to change their behavior. If we want to change our energy use, we have to do something as a society.
That's if Verizon hasn't disabled the USB capabilities of your phone, like they have with the Motorola Razr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_razr#V3m
The central point of Huxley's "Brave New World" was making human development into an assembly line process. While we're not yet conditioning embryos, I don't think we need to force career paths on 9th graders. As others have mentioned here, this is the method used by China and India to pump out engineers and doctors. The trouble is, passion for the physical sciences can be an important factor of a good engineer, and while India and China certainly have some good engineers, they have to get them by making a lot of them and culling out the bad ones. I don't want to live in a society where 75% of the population is thrown into a career they hate just to put the nation on the fast track to scientific progress with as little educational investment as possible. Instead, why don't we use all of our wonderful science--extended life times and better agricultural processes--on lengthening the possible path of education, so that students have time to get a larger sampling of human knowledge before they are required to move on. I thought it worth mentioning that I currently work in a Physics research lab, and many of the skills I use most often were learned working residential construction and low-level IT jobs in High School. Granted, I'm just an undergraduate so I'm doing more helpful lab work than actual research, but Grad students and even Professors occasionally have to fabricate their own lab equipment, too.
I admit I'm not too knowledgeable about how seizure proceedings, but whoever is allowed to determine what property should be seized should have some fun with it. If it were me, I'd start in the executive offices.
Executive swivel chair: $1500
Executive hand-crafted Mahogany desk, imported from Very Far Away: $2300
Executive face made when bailiffs haul off his kiddie pool full of money: priceless.
The paper can be downloaded for free on arxiv.org: Optical Cloaking with Non-Magnetic Metamaterials
I see a lot of comments along the lines of "One wavelength cloaking will never be useful because of ____ and ____." Firstly, the vast majority of research is done incrementally, and this is a good first step. Secondly, funding is a necessary evil, and towards that end nothing beats a working demonstration that smells like fresh progress.
So, let's say you put forward a statement and claim it as fact, and I put forward a contradicting statement and claim it as fact. What then? Newton's law of gravitation was "fact" for quite a long time. The finding of fact is not as cut and dry as you would make it seem.
I'm going to start a religion based on protesting Scientology. Who's with me?
Ah, good, you managed to sneak a little Christmas Spirit in there at the end.