Summary of what’s new and happening on the arXivs according to voters on SciRate.
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When Two Zeros Are Not Zero: The Strange Lives of Quantum Cell Phones
A result of much quantum coolness out today: arXiv:0807.4935 (scirate): “Quantum Communication With Zero-Capacity Channels” by Graeme Smith and Jon Yard. Strange things they are going on when we try to use our quantum cell phones, it seems. Quantum cell phones, what the hell? Read on…
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Hacking Vision?
An interesting idea from Mark Changizi from RPI: can one design pictures which, when interpreted by your vision, perform a computation? Press release here (note to RPI public relations department: you should probably make it so that the webpage address of your press releases can be copied from the browser address bar. Somewhere a web designer should be shot.) and paper in Perception published here.
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We Beat the Reaper by Living Well
Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, passed away early today. If you haven’t watched Pausch’s last lecture, you should:
This lecture, when I first saw it, reminded me how important humor is for teaching. In other words, my students from last term can blame all my silly jokes on Randy.
Computer Science "Futures"
Ed Lazowska has penned an article over at the CCC blog about the state of computer science enrollments which is well worth reading.
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Chess, Backgammon, and the Algorithmic Lens
An interesting interview with Christos Papadimitriou (recent winner of the Katayanagi Prize for Research Excellence) on Dr. Dobb’s Journal. On chess and backgammon:
In chess, when you play like an idiot, you always lose, so you learn. In backgammon, you can play 10 games, not play well, and win. So you think you are great but you have made a great number of mistakes. Tragically, life is closer to backgammon, because you can play a perfect game and lose!
Which made me wonder which game is the closest game to “real life?” (Okay I’ll dispense with the obvious answer which is the board game “Life.” Bzzt! Disqualified for using little pegs that are always getting lost for people. I mean those damn blue and pink pegs get in more car accidents in a typical game of “Life” than most people get into in their real life.)
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Occupational Arrows of Time
One of the subjects of great debate in physics goes under the moniker of “the arrow of time.” The basic debate here is (very) roughly to try to understand why time goes it’s merry way seemingly in one direction, especially given that the many of the laws of physics appear to behave the same going backwards as forwards in time. But aren’t we forgetting our most basic science when we debate at great philosophical lengths about the arrow of time? Aren’t we forgetting about…experiment? Here, for your pleasure, then, are some of my personal observations about the direction of time which I’ve observed over my short life. Real observation about the direction of time should lead us to the real direction of time, no?
(With apologies to Alan Lightman
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New CACM
The first edition of the newly revamped Communications of the ACM is out. And I must say, so far I’m greatly impressed. First of all it seems that they’ve gotten rid of the absolutely horrible front pages for all articles that were (a) ugly (I’m not a font nazi, but sheesh that font choice was horrible!), and (b) a waste of space. This issue includes a blurb about quantum computing, an interview with the Donald Knuth, and a paper by David Shaw (yeah, THAT David Shaw) and coworkers on custom hardware for molecular dynamics simulations. Good stuff, I hope they can keep it up!
Amateur Bioengineering?
Bill Gates thinks that robots are at the equivalent stage that computers were when he and Paul Allen and a ton of hobbyists helped fuel the PC revolution. But is he right? Here is a radical proposal: might not bioengineering be the next field where amateurs have a huge impact? Such is the hypothesis of DIYbio which had its first meeting in Cambridge, MA on May 1st:
In the packed back-room of Asgard’s Irish Pub in Cambridge, a diverse crowd of 25+ enthusiasts gathered to discuss the next big thing in biology: amateurs. Mackenzie (Mac) Cowell led-off the night with an overview of recent history in biological engineering, and asked the question: Can molecular biology or biotechnology be a hobby? Will advancements in synthetic biology be the tipping point that enables DIYers and garagistas to make meaningful contributions to the biological sciences, outside of traditional institutions? Can DIYbio.org be the Homebrew Computer Club of biology?
The Weight of Software
A story, from Jeff Silverman:
Whenever you build an airplane, you have to make sure that each part weighs no more than allocated by the designers, and you have to control where the weight it located to keep the center of gravity with limits. So there is an organization called weights which tracks that.
For the 747-100, one of the configuration items was the software for the navigation computer. In those days (mid-1960s), the concept of software was not widely understood. The weight of the software was 0. The weights people didn’t understand this so they sent a guy to the software group to understand this. The software people tried mightily to explain that the software was weightless, and the weights guy eventually went away, dubious.
The weights guy comes back a few days later with a box of punch cards (if you don’t know what a punch card is, e-mail me and I will explain). The box weighed about 15 pounds. The weights guy said “This box contains software”. The software guys inspected the cards and it was, in fact, a computer program. “See?”, the wights guy said, “This box weighs about 15 pounds”. “You don’t understand”, the software guys responded, “The software is in the holes”.