time stops now

Why The Tech Patent Wars Exist [INFOGRAPHIC]

2011-03-23T22:09:00.001+11:00

Why The Tech Patent Wars Exist [INFOGRAPHIC]: "

I’ve really had enough with this whole tech patent hoopla. It seems that since computers were invented, tech companies throw billions of dollars at lawyers whose job is to file for every patent humanly possible and remotely achievable, understanding the Patent & Trademark Office must be run by geezers who think everything that crosses their desk is groundbreaking world wide intertubes glory.

After seeing this patent application filed by Google in 2000 I’m convinced that every major tech company has an entire business division dedicated to the following strategy:

This is based DIRECTLY from the application filed by Google that attempts to patent ‘Systems and methods for enticing users to access a web site‘:

Click this… uhoh would that be patent infringement?

I propose someone submit a patent for submitting stupid patent requests. The above infographic could be submitted as the ‘invention’. Then, anyone who submits a dumb patent would be sued for infringing upon my genius patent, thereby preventing others from filing dumb patents because it wouldn’t be as lucrative unless they actually had an original/innovative/patentable idea.

Sorry… all these patent lawsuits on flimsy or baseless patents are extremely annoying. Am I alone?

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Scientists create 10 billion qubits in silicon, get us closer than ever to quantum computing

2011-01-22T11:43:00.001+11:00

Scientists create 10 billion qubits in silicon, get us closer than ever to quantum computing: "

We are totally ready for a quantum computer. Browse the dusty Engadget archives and you'll find many posts about the things, each charting another step along the way to our supposed quantum future. Here's another step, one that we think is a pretty big one. An international team of scientists has managed to generate 10 billion quantum entangled bits, the basic building block of a quantum computer, and embed them all in silicon which is, of course, the basic building block of a boring computer. It sounds like there's still some work to be done to enable the team to actually modify and read the states of those qubits, and probably a decade's worth of thumb-twiddling before they let any of us try to run Crysis on it, but yet another step has been made.

[Image credit: Smite-Meister]

Scientists create 10 billion qubits in silicon, get us closer than ever to quantum computing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | MSNBC | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Strait Power turbine is water-powered, shark-inspired (video)

2011-01-15T19:11:00.001+11:00

Strait Power turbine is water-powered, shark-inspired (video): "

The basking shark, with its five foot jaw, is one of the most ferocious looking critters that ever swam the sea. However, it's pretty much harmless, just filtering out tiny bits and leaving idle dippers and their water wings alone. This is what served as the inspiration for Anthony Reale, who turned that gaping maw into Strait Power. It's effectively a double-nozzle that fits around a hydro turbine or two, turning the flow of water into electrical power, boosting the efficiency of the turbine by creating areas of high pressure ahead and low pressure behind, as visualized above. The result was a 40 percent boost in efficiency -- and some soggy jeans, as you can see in the videos below. The first gives a quick overview, the second an uber-detailed discussion of the development from start to finish. Choose your path.

Continue reading Strait Power turbine is water-powered, shark-inspired (video)

Strait Power turbine is water-powered, shark-inspired (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Michigan Engineering LabLog | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Kinect hack turns you into a punching, waving MIDI controller (video)

2011-01-04T23:14:00.001+11:00

Kinect hack turns you into a punching, waving MIDI controller (video): "

If you're looking for an awesome, impractical way to make music with your computer (and who isn't?) please direct your attention to the following Kinect hack. Shinect, the brainchild of a YouTube user named Shinyless, uses motion detection to turn you into a MIDI controller! The current implementation gives the operator two virtual pads that can be activated by the old Jersey Shore fist pump -- and if that ain't enough, the sounds can be pitchshifted by raising / lowering the other arm. Pretty sweet, huh? This thing uses OpenNI, and while he's demonstrating it using FruityLoops it should work with any MIDI device. Things are pretty rough'n ready at the moment, although he promises big things in the future. In the meantime, check out the proof-of-concept in the video after the break.

Continue reading Kinect hack turns you into a punching, waving MIDI controller (video)

Kinect hack turns you into a punching, waving MIDI controller (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Kinect Hacks | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

The AI Revolution Is On

2011-01-04T22:53:00.001+11:00

19.01

The AI Revolution Is On

By Steven Levy
December 27, 2010 |
12:00 pm |
Wired January 2011

Today’s A.I. bears little resemblance to its initial conception. The field’s trailblazers believed success lay in mimicking the logic-based reasoning that human brains were thought to use.
Photo: Dwight Eschliman; Illustration: Zee Rogér

Diapers.com warehouses are a bit of a jumble. Boxes of pacifiers sit above crates of onesies, which rest next to cartons of baby food. In a seeming abdication of logic, similar items are placed across the room from one another. A person trying to figure out how the products were shelved could well conclude that no form of intelligence—except maybe a random number generator—had a hand in determining what went where.

But the warehouses aren’t meant to be understood by humans; they were built for bots. Every day, hundreds of robots course nimbly through the aisles, instantly identifying items and delivering them to flesh-and-blood packers on the periphery. Instead of organizing the warehouse as a human might—by placing like products next to one another, for instance—Diapers.com’s robots stick the items in various aisles throughout the facility. Then, to fill an order, the first available robot simply finds the closest requested item. The storeroom is an ever-shifting mass that adjusts to constantly changing data, like the size and popularity of merchandise, the geography of the warehouse, and the location of each robot. Set up by Kiva Systems, which has outfitted similar facilities for Gap, Staples, and Office Depot, the system can deliver items to packers at the rate of one every six seconds.

The computers are in control. We just live in their world.

The Kiva bots may not seem very smart. They don’t possess anything like human intelligence and certainly couldn’t pass a Turing test. But they represent a new forefront in the field of artificial intelligence. Today’s AI doesn’t try to re-create the brain. Instead, it uses machine learning, massive data sets, sophisticated sensors, and clever algorithms to master discrete tasks. Examples can be found everywhere: The Google global machine uses AI to interpret cryptic human queries. Credit card companies use it to track fraud. Netflix uses it to recommend movies to subscribers. And the financial system uses it to handle billions of trades (with only the occasional meltdown).

This explosion is the ironic payoff of the seemingly fruitless decades-long quest to emulate human intelligence. That goal proved so elusive that some scientists lost heart and many others lost funding. People talked of an AI winter—a barren season in which no vision or project could take root or grow. But even as the traditional dream of AI was freezing over, a new one was being born: machines built to accomplish specific tasks in ways that people never could. At first, there were just a few green shoots pushing up through the frosty ground. But now we’re in full bloom. Welcome to AI summer.

TRANSPORTATION

All aboard the algorithm.

Model trains are easy to keep track of. But building a model to run real trains is a complex undertaking. So about two years ago, when Norfolk Southern Railway decided to install a smarter system to handle its sprawling operation, it brought in a team of algorithm geeks from Princeton University.

What they got was the Princeton Locomotive and Shop Management System, or Plasma, which used an algorithmic strategy to analyze Norfolk Southern’s operations. Plasma tracks thousands of variables, predicting the impact of changes in fleet size, maintenance policies, transit time, and other factors on real-world operations. The key breakthrough was making the model mimic the complex behavior of the company’s dispatch center in Atlanta. “Think of the dispatch center as one big, collective brain. How do you get a computer to behave like that?” asks Warren Powell, a professor at Princeton’s Operations Research and Financial Engineering department.

The model that Powell and his team came up with was, in effect, a kind of AI hive mind. Plasma uses a technology known as approximate dynamic programming to examine mountains of historical data. The system then uses its findings to model the dispatch center’s collective human decisionmaking and even suggest improvements.

For now, Plasma is serving just as a tool to help Norfolk Southern decide what its fleet size should be—humans are still in control of dispatching the trains. At least we’re still good for something.
—Jon Stokes.

Today’s AI bears little resemblance to its initial conception. The field’s trailblazers in the 1950s and ’60s believed success lay in mimicking the logic-based reasoning that human brains were thought to use. In 1957, the AI crowd confidently predicted that machines would soon be able to replicate all kinds of human mental achievements. But that turned out to be wildly unachievable, in part because we still don’t really understand how the brain works, much less how to re-create it.

So during the ’80s, graduate students began to focus on the kinds of skills for which computers were well-suited and found they could build something like intelligence from groups of systems that operated according to their own kind of reasoning. “The big surprise is that intelligence isn’t a unitary thing,” says Danny Hillis, who cofounded Thinking Machines, a company that made massively parallel supercomputers. “What we’ve learned is that it’s all kinds of different behaviors.”

AI researchers began to devise a raft of new techniques that were decidedly not modeled on human intelligence. By using probability-based algorithms to derive meaning from huge amounts of data, researchers discovered that they didn’t need to teach a computer how to accomplish a task; they could just show it what people did and let the machine figure out how to emulate that behavior under similar circumstances. They used genetic algorithms, which comb through randomly generated chunks of code, skim the highest-performing ones, and splice them together to spawn new code. As the process is repeated, the evolved programs become amazingly effective, often comparable to the output of the most experienced coders.

MIT’s Rodney Brooks also took a biologically inspired approach to robotics. His lab programmed six-legged buglike creatures by breaking down insect behavior into a series of simple commands—for instance, “If you run into an obstacle, lift your legs higher.” When the programmers got the rules right, the gizmos could figure out for themselves how to navigate even complicated terrain. (It’s no coincidence that iRobot, the company Brooks cofounded with his MIT students, produced the Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaner, which doesn’t initially know the location of all the objects in a room or the best way to traverse it but knows how to keep itself moving.)

The fruits of the AI revolution are now all around us. Once researchers were freed from the burden of building a whole mind, they could construct a rich bestiary of digital fauna, which few would dispute possess something approaching intelligence. “If you told somebody in 1978, ‘You’re going to have this machine, and you’ll be able to type a few words and instantly get all of the world’s knowledge on that topic,’ they would probably consider that to be AI,” Google cofounder Larry Page says. “That seems routine now, but it’s a really big deal.”

Even formerly mechanical processes like driving a car have become collaborations with AI systems. “At first it was the automatic braking system,” Brooks says. “The person’s foot was saying, I want to brake this much, and the intelligent system in the middle figured when to actually apply the brakes to make that work. Now you’re starting to get automatic parking and lane-changing.” Indeed, Google has been developing and testing cars that drive themselves with only minimal human involvement; by October, they had already covered 140,000 miles of pavement.

In short, we are engaged in a permanent dance with machines, locked in an increasingly dependent embrace. And yet, because the bots’ behavior isn’t based on human thought processes, we are often powerless to explain their actions. Wolfram Alpha, the website created by scientist Stephen Wolfram, can solve many mathematical problems. It also seems to display how those answers are derived. But the logical steps that humans see are completely different from the website’s actual calculations. “It doesn’t do any of that reasoning,” Wolfram says. “Those steps are pure fake. We thought, how can we explain this to one of those humans out there?”

The lesson is that our computers sometimes have to humor us, or they will freak us out. Eric Horvitz—now a top Microsoft researcher and a former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence—helped build an AI system in the 1980s to aid pathologists in their studies, analyzing each result and suggesting the next test to perform. There was just one problem—it provided the answers too quickly. “We found that people trusted it more if we added a delay loop with a flashing light, as though it were huffing and puffing to come up with an answer,” Horvitz says.

But we must learn to adapt. AI is so crucial to some systems—like the financial infrastructure—that getting rid of it would be a lot harder than simply disconnecting HAL 9000’s modules. “In some sense, you can argue that the science fiction scenario is already starting to happen,” Thinking Machines’ Hillis says. “The computers are in control, and we just live in their world.” Wolfram says this conundrum will intensify as AI takes on new tasks, spinning further out of human comprehension. “Do you regulate an underlying algorithm?” he asks. “That’s crazy, because you can’t foresee in most cases what consequences that algorithm will have.”

In its earlier days, artificial intelligence was weighted with controversy and grave doubt, as humanists feared the ramifications of thinking machines. Now the machines are embedded in our lives, and those fears seem irrelevant. “I used to have fights about it,” Brooks says. “I’ve stopped having fights. I’m just trying to win.”

Senior writer Steven Levy (steven_levy@wired.com) wrote about the rise of hacker culture in issue 18.05.

Alex Halderman and India’s assault on academic freedom

2010-12-18T12:02:00.001+11:00

Alex Halderman and India’s assault on academic freedom: "

Five years ago, not long after the founding of Shtetl-Optimized, I blogged about Alex Halderman: my best friend since seventh grade at Newtown Junior High School, now a famous security researcher and a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, and someone whose exploits seem to be worrying at least one government as much as Julian Assange’s.

In the past, Alex has demonstrated the futility of copy-protection schemes for music CDs, helped force the state of California to change its standards for electronic voting machines, and led a spectacular attack against an Internet voting pilot in Washington DC. But Alex’s latest project is probably his most important and politically-riskiest yet. Alex, Hari Prasad of India, and Rop Gonggrijp of the Netherlands demonstrated massive security problems with electronic voting machines in India (which are used by about 400 million people in each election, making them the most widely-used voting system on earth). As a result of this work, Hari was arrested in his home and jailed by the Indian authorities, who threatened not to release him until he revealed the source of the voting machine that he, Alex, and Rop had analyzed. After finally being released by a sympathetic judge, Hari flew to the United States, where he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 2010 Pioneer Award. I had the honor of meeting Hari at MIT during his and Alex’s subsequent US lecture tour.

But the story continues. Earlier this week, after flying into India to give a talk at the International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS’2010) in Gandhinagar, Alex and Rop were detained at the New Delhi airport and threatened with deportation from India. No explanation was given, even though the story became front-page news in India. Finally, after refusing to board planes out of New Delhi without being given a reason in writing for their deportation, Alex and Rop were allowed to enter India, but only on the condition that they did so as ‘tourists.’ In particular, they were banned from presenting their research on electronic voting machines, and the relevant conference session was cancelled.

To those in the Indian government responsible for the harassment of Alex Halderman and Rop Gonggrijp and (more seriously) the imprisonment of Hari Prasad: shame on you! And to Alex, Hari, and Rop: let the well-wishes of this blog be like a small, nerdy wind beneath your wings.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end

2010-12-16T21:58:00.001+11:00

Jul 29, Physics/General Physics

(PhysOrg.com) -- By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.

Shu, an associate professor at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, explains in a study posted at arXiv.org that the new models emerge from a new perspective of some of the most basic entities: time, space, mass, and length. In his proposal, time and space can be converted into one another, with a varying speed of light as the conversion factor. Mass and length are also interchangeable, with the conversion factor depending on both a varying gravitational “constant” and a varying speed of light (G/c²). Basically, as the universe expands, time is converted into space, and mass is converted into length. As the universe contracts, the opposite occurs.

“We view the speed of light as simply a conversion factor between time and space in spacetime,” Shu writes. “It is simply one of the properties of the spacetime geometry. Since the universe is expanding, we speculate that the conversion factor somehow varies in accordance with the evolution of the universe, hence the speed of light varies with cosmic time.”

As Shu writes in his paper, the newly proposed models have four distinguishing features:

• The speed of light and the gravitational “constant” are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe.
• Time has no beginning and no end; i.e., there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch singularity.
• The spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere [a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere], ruling out the possibility of a flat or hyperboloid geometry.
• The universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration.

He tested one of the models against current cosmological observations of Type Ia supernovae that have revealed that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. He found that, because acceleration is an inherent part of his model, it fits the redshift data of the observed supernovae quite well. In contrast, the currently accepted big bang model does not fit the data, which has caused scientists to search for other explanations such as dark energy that theoretically makes up 75% of the mass-energy of the universe.

Shu’s models may also account for other problems faced by the standard big bang model. For instance, the flatness problem arises in the big bang model from the observation that a seemingly flat universe such as ours requires finely tuned initial conditions. But because the universe is a 3-sphere in Shu’s models, the flatness problem “disappears automatically.” Similarly, the horizon problem occurs in standard cosmology because it should not be possible for distant places in the universe to share the same physical properties (as they do), since it should require communication faster than the speed of light due to their great distances. However, Shu’s models solve this problem due to their lack of big bang origin and intrinsic acceleration.

“Essentially, this work is a novel theory about how the magnitudes of the three basic physical dimensions, mass, time, and length, are converted into each other, or equivalently, a novel theory about how the geometry of spacetime and the distribution of mass-energy interact,” Shu writes. “The theory resolves problems in cosmology, such as those of the big bang, dark energy, and flatness, in one fell stroke.”

More information: Wun-Yi Shu. "Cosmological Models with No Big Bang." arXiv:1007.1750v1
via: The Physics ArXiv Blog

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Google AI Challenge: Languages Used by the Best Programmers | (R news & tutorials)

2010-12-04T11:11:00.001+11:00

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Caltech research could lead to quantum hard drives, networks, parallel universes

2010-11-28T11:03:00.001+11:00

Caltech research could lead to quantum hard drives, networks, parallel universes: "Quantum anything has typically fallen into our oft-used category of 'awesome things that'll never happen,' but if a crew of researchers at the California Institute of Technology have anything to say about it, they'll soon be changing the fortunes of that segment. The team has recently demonstrated quantum entanglement for a quantum state stored in four spatially distinct atomic memories, and while that probably just blew your mind a little bit, the breakdown is fairly interesting. Essentially, they've uncovered a quantum interface between the atomic memories, which is said to 'represent something akin to a computer hard drive for entanglement.' If extended, it could pave the way toward quantum networks, and in turn, massive webs of quantum computers. We're obviously decades out from understanding what this all means for the common computer user, but just remember this: 'for an entangled quantum system, there exists no objective physical reality for the system's properties.' And you thought The Matrix was deep.

Caltech research could lead to quantum hard drives, networks, parallel universes originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkElectronista | Caltech | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Dark excitons could light up your quantum computer, life

2010-11-19T09:09:00.001+11:00

Dark excitons could light up your quantum computer, life: "Yeah, we're still hanging around playing Q*bert and waiting on folks to get those qubits a spinning. Meanwhile, researchers have found a new path to follow on the way to quantum enlightenment. A new, darker path, which entails the use of so-called dark excitons as quantum bits. While doubling as a great name for future robo-gigolos, a dark exciton is an electron-hole pair with parallel spins. The parallel spin, which makes this quasiparticle 'dark,' also enables it to be long-lasting and, critically, to be excited with an electrical charge to set its state, a state that can then be read by looking for an emitted photon. Fascinating? Absolutely. Coming to a desktop near you? Not likely -- not unless your desktop is kept at a temperature of 4.2K, anyway.

[Image credit: Smite-Meister]

Dark excitons could light up your quantum computer, life originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalinkars technica | Nature Physics | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders

2010-11-17T21:24:00.001+11:00

[Phoronix] The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders:

"The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders

Published on November 16, 2010 Written by Michael Larabel Page 1 of 2 Discuss This Article In recent weeks and months there has been quite a bit of work towards improving the responsiveness of the Linux desktop with some very significant milestones building up recently and new patches continuing to come. This work is greatly improving the experience of the Linux desktop when the computer is withstanding a great deal of CPU load and memory strain. Fortunately, the exciting improvements are far from over. There is a new patch that has not yet been merged but has undergone a few revisions over the past several weeks and it is quite small -- just over 200 lines of code -- but it does wonders for the Linux desktop.

The patch being talked about is designed to automatically create task groups per TTY in an effort to improve the desktop interactivity under system strain. Mike Galbraith wrote the patch, which is currently in its third version in recent weeks, after Linus Torvalds inspired this idea. In its third form (patch), this patch only adds 224 lines of code to the kernel's scheduler while stripping away nine lines of code, thus only 233 lines of code are in play.

Tests done by Mike show the maximum latency dropping by over ten times and the average latency of the desktop by about 60 times. Linus Torvalds has already heavily praised (in an email) this miracle patch.

Yeah. And I have to say that I'm (very happily) surprised by just how small that patch really ends up being, and how it's not intrusive or ugly either.

I'm also very happy with just what it does to interactive performance. Admittedly, my 'testcase' is really trivial (reading email in a web-browser, scrolling around a bit, while doing a 'make -j64' on the kernel at the same time), but it's a test-case that is very relevant for me. And it is a _huge_ improvement.

It's an improvement for things like smooth scrolling around, but what I found more interesting was how it seems to really make web pages load a lot faster. Maybe it shouldn't have been surprising, but I always associated that with network performance. But there's clearly enough of a CPU load when loading a new web page that if you have a load average of 50+ at the same time, you _will_ be starved for CPU in the loading process, and probably won't get all the http requests out quickly enough.

So I think this is firmly one of those 'real improvement' patches. Good job. Group scheduling goes from 'useful for some specific server loads' to 'that's a killer feature'.

Linus Initially a Phoronix reader tipped us off this morning of this latest patch. 'Please check this out, my desktop will never be the same again, it makes a *lot* of difference for desktop usage (all things smooth, scrolling etc.)...It feels as good as Con Kolivas's patches.'

Not only is this patch producing great results for Linus, Andre Goddard (the Phoronix reader reporting the latest version), and other early testers, but we are finding this patch to be a miracle too. While in the midst of some major OpenBenchmarking.org 'Iveland' development work, I took a few minutes to record two videos that demonstrate the benefits solely of the 'sched: automated per tty task groups' patch. The results are very dramatic. UPDATE: There's also now a lot more positive feedback pouring in on this patch within our forums with more users now trying it out.

This patch has been working out extremely great on all of the test systems I tried it out on so far from quad-core AMD Phenom CPUs systems to Intel Atom netbooks. For the two videos I recorded them off a system running Ubuntu 10.10 (x86_64) with an Intel Core i7 970 'Gulftown' processor that boasts six physical cores plus Hyper Threading to provide the Linux operating system with twelve total threads.

The Linux kernel was built from source using the Linus 2.6 Git tree as of 15 November, which is nearing a Linux 2.6.37-rc2 state. The only change made from the latest Linux kernel Git code was applying Mike Galbraith's scheduler patch. This patch allows the automated per TTY task grouping to be done dynamically on the kernel in real-time by writing either 0 or 1 to /proc/sys/kernel/sched_autogroup_enabled or passing 'noautogroup' as a parameter when booting the kernel. Changing the sched_autogroup_enabled value was the only system difference between the two video recordings.

Both videos show the Core i7 970 system running the GNOME desktop while playing back the Ogg 1080p version of the open Big Buck Bunny movie, glxgears, two Mozilla Firefox browser windows open to Phoronix and the Phoronix Test Suite web-sites, two terminal windows open, the GNOME System Monitor, and the Nautilus file manager. These videos just show how these different applications respond under the load exhibited by compiling the latest Linux kernel using make -j64 so that there are 64 parallel make jobs that are completely utilizing the Intel processor.

So let's watch these videos!"

Large Hadron Collider wants to make mini Big Bangs, Sheldon and Leonard disapprove

2010-11-09T21:13:00.001+11:00

Large Hadron Collider wants to make mini Big Bangs, Sheldon and Leonard disapprove: "

The Large Hadron Collider has been busily colliding protons since it opened last year, but a new set of experiments starting later this month could tell us more about the beginnings of the universe than we've ever known before. At CERN, where the LHC is housed in Geneva, scientists will attempt to create mini Big Bangs (the full-sized one is generally accepted as having created the actual universe about 13.7 billion years ago). The process will involve shooting lead ions through the 17-mile long collider, and accelerating them to relativistic speeds before colliding them head-on with protons. According to popular wisdom this should cause an explosion resulting in the creation of brand spanking new particles. Although similar experiments have been conducted on a much smaller scale at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, this will be the first time scientists have attempted to accurately recreate conditions exactly like the Big Bang. Hit the source link for the full story.

Large Hadron Collider wants to make mini Big Bangs, Sheldon and Leonard disapprove originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkExtreme Tech | Discovery | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

How Facebook is Pulling an Android… and Why

2010-11-05T02:01:00.001+11:00

How Facebook is Pulling an Android… and Why: "

If you think Facebook’s announcements of Single Sign-On, Places API and Deals Platform were a disappointment, you and I disagree, and I’ll tell you why. Grab a few Red Bulls, blast some Ronald Jenkees, and turn off your phone – I can’t be interrupted and I have some explaining to do.

Three years ago, Google held a mobile press conference in which everyone hoped they would announce the gPhone. They didn’t… they announced a mobile operating system. Today, Facebook held a mobile conference in which everyone hoped they would announce the Facebook phone. They didn’t… they announced/extended their ‘Facebook Mobile Platform’.

Just as the implications of Android were much bigger than a potential gPhone, Facebook’s mobile platform strategy is bigger than any Facebook phone could be. Not to mention, the announcement’s similarities to Android’s own announcement draw some striking similarities:

Announcing Software vs. Hardware (and why it wins)
Consumer Disappointment (and why it’s wrong)
Empowering 3rd Parties (and creating leverage)
Becoming A Threat (but overwhelmed by opportunity)
Creating Momentum (and an Insurmountable Competitive Advantage)

Half of you already closed this article – too long. Half of the remaining half will close this article now – too wordy. But now that we’re saturated with the intellects and strategic thinkers in the crowd, I think it’s safe to continue (’meh’ to those who read the headline and jump right to the comments). Let’s dive in:

Announcing Software vs. Hardware (And Why It Wins)
While Google and Facebook are very different companies, they aren’t that different. They’re software companies that empower their users with services. They’ve got a different set of services, but the bottom line is they are software companies that offer innovative, mass-market software solutions.Why would Facebook manufacturer a Facebook Phone? It’s outside of not only their core competency but also outside their mission.

Mark Zuckerberg addressed this in his opening statement today by saying [paraphrased], ‘Facebook is not going to build a phone. We want to empower social applications across all platforms. We don’t want to build applications, but instead platform components for people to build on top of moving forward.’

Can you read between the lines?

I heard that as, ‘We don’t want to sell one little phone. We want Facebook to dominate everything social in the universe and one phone won’t do that. So instead, we’re giving developers a social toolkit so they can make Facebook stuff and become our salesmen.’

Sound a bit like Android?

Google always professed that, ‘Android has no monetization strategy.’ The goal was that by empowering people with smart and revolutionary mobile solutions, they would use the web more and that would be good for Google. If they could accelerate mobile innovation and smartphone adoption, they could expose more people to Google services, Google ads, and ultimately build new services that would take advantage of their current dominance. And inherently drive revenue (come on, they knew that).

Facebook doesn’t want to become the next MySpace. Building a phone does nothing to create a barrier to entry and it does nothing to further the social landscape which fruits they would then be able to enjoy. Let’s take a look at exactly what Facebook announced:

Single Sign-On: Open an application and automatically enjoy the experience with access and perhaps pre-installed knowledge about you and your friends. Sounds a bit like signing into your Android phone with your G-Mail account and having your contacts, calendar, apps, etc… already at your fingertips and syncing up!
Location APIs: If we know where you are and where you’ve been AND we know where your friends are and where they’ve been, there are some very interesting things Facebook can do from a social standpoint. Google tried some of them with Buzz and Latitude but weren’t that successful, but then again, Facebook is a company whose #1 strength is Social so perhaps they can do what Google did not. But oh yeah, they don’t have to… because app developers will do that for them… and then they enjoy the value added.
Deals Platform: merchandising and couponing is an industry where big bucks reside. In reality, it’s a form of advertising. Both Google (with Adwords/Adsense) and Facebook (with Facebook Ads) know this is a fact. Google embeds ads in maps, apps and games but has the social significance of ‘deals’ reached any type of nirvana let alone effectivness? Not reall. But Facebook is now using their vast social reach and location knowledge to create a marketplace where it can work. Or where 3rd parties can make it work and then they’ll enjoy the value added. Ms. Cleo Moment: think Facebook will eventually allow developers to embed location aware ‘deal ads’ into their apps and games for a cut of the profit?

Their 3 announcements were big announcements, and they were big announcements because they were software driven rather than hardware driven. Which leads us to our next two points.

Consumer Disappointment
In the technically challenged PhanCast 25, Dave Demarest made this point blatantly obvious by asking, ‘How many people do you think closed the live stream right when they said there was no Facebook phone?’

Unfortunately, software isn’t as sexy as hardware. Having that high powered, sleek looking handset with outrageous specs is what gets the bulk of people excited. When Android was first announced, it was applauded by only a few. The majority seemed to think it was uninteresting and hopeless. Thankfully these aren’t the people tasked with creating innovative tech companies.

For the first year after Android was announced, nothing too exciting happened beyond the Android Developers Challenge. There were weeks that went by without a morsel of Android news. When Android was announced the fanfare was few and far between but it inevitably had a humongous impact. This Facebook announcement is the same. While you might not appreciate it now being the consumer driven bloke you are, a year down the road you’ll look back and think, ‘wow they are smart.’

Trust me on that one.

Consumers often can’t appreciate the long-term strategy and business leverage of such initiatives. Consumers want something and they want it now. That’s the crazy thing about the type of innovation that has made Facebook and Google so successful: they’re building the things you want before you know you want them. And once you have them, they’ll be things you don’t want to live without.

Empowering 3rd Parties (and Creating Leverage)

Some people might ask, why doesn’t Facebook just create their own home brewed solutions and apps and reap all the benefits themselves? There are two reasons for that:

Facebook can’t be everywhere at all times, pursuing every opportunity they uncover
Facebook isn’t ignorant enough to think they will always have the ideas that unlock social mobile awesomeness – the world DOES have some pretty smart people beyond their own employees

Now, instead of Facebook going it alone to create the perfect solutions, they’ve got a world of developers all ‘working for them’ – for free - to make Facebook’s social and mobile platform infinitely successful. Android is no different. Every time another app or game lands on Android Market, Google has provided consumers with value. All they did was create the initial tools, and now thousands and thousands of people are out there building value for their product.

When MySpace was on top of the world you had to think, ‘How will anyone compete with them? Everyone has MySpace. Why would someone sign up with a social site that their friends aren’t on?’ But people did, and now MySpace is more like UsedToBeMySpaceButIDeletedIt. New sites like Twitter and FourSquare proved that at any given time a new idea, opportunity, concept or hype can grab ahold of the world and reach that pivotal tipping point.

Facebook doesn’t want to become the next MySpace, so rather than enjoy complacency, they’re engineering layers of socially competitive advantage that will shield them from competition.

Think about Android. When Android phones first started launching, the odds were stacked against it with iOS, BlackBerry, WebOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and others. Now they’ve got a level of growth that is unmatched and a competitive advantage that seems like nobody can or will take them down. Regardless of what else is announced.

Facebook is a juggernaut but I would argue they still haven’t created a competitive advantage that makes them untouchable. The three announcements today are the catalyst which will propel them into that untouchable realm and for the same reason that Android was able to gain traction and dominance so early.

Opportunity. Google built an amazing mobile platform and let everyone in the world benefit from it:

Hey manufacturers and carriers, want an amazing mobile OS with thousands of apps? Here ya go. On the house. And feel free to do whatever you want with it. Not to mention we’ll keep it updated and new apps/games will keep pouring in daily.
Hey developer, want to create an amazing mobile application or game with the ability to reach millions of people and make loads of money? Here, have these awesomely open tools, go create it, and get rich.

Not everyone gets rich. We know that. But Android provided an equal opportunity for every developer on the planet to build an innovative app/game, offer it to the world, and enjoy limitless success. As Zuckerberg said today:

‘Social is as big as mobile. Combine the two and you’ve got some huge opportunities for businesses to be created and industries to be disrupted’

The interesting thing is that mobile is inherently social; afterall, before all these apps it was used to talk to people with your voice. And social is inherently mobile too: you don’t only want to be connected to people while you’re at your desk at work, you want to talk to them when you’re out in the world, doing the things you love, and have something to say or something to share.

Facebook’s commitment to mobile is what will solidify their social dominance.

Becoming A Threat (but overwhelmed by opportunity)
Facebook’s Mobile Platform intends to empower developers to create the next generation of mobile applications, games and integrations. They’re empowering 3rd parties to build this next generation by leveraging Facebook, and so Facebook has wedged themselves into a position where the revolution depends on Facebook itself. That’s not smart… that’s genius.

But therein lies the dilemma: in the same sentence, Zuckerberg mentioned ‘opportunities for businesses’ and ‘industry disruption’. Both of those phrases can apply to a singular company. Unfortunately, some won’t view this announcement as Facebook empowering them with opportunity, but instead imposing them with a no-option threat that levels the playing field and opens the door to competition.

I overheard one of Facebook’s mobile partners today when they were asked how they felt about the announcement, ‘Well it will definitely open doors… but to a lot of other people too. This is also a big threat to us. We’ve got to rethink our business.’

And it comes full-circle with Android.

Before any Android phone launched, many thought Google had no chance to break ground in the mobile market. It was dominated by industry legacies that wouldn’t budge to Google’s idealistic bullying. You can’t just come into a mature market, re-imagine it’s existence, and rearrange everything how you would like. Unless of course you’re as big as Google and have the perfect idea to go along with it.

I knew it all along… if even ONE of those carriers or manufacturers budged, the ball would have been rolled and as momentum gained, the rest would have no choice but to follow. And that’s exactly what happened. T-Mobile and HTC were the industry underdogs and immediately embraced Android to develop a competitive advantage. The others could either have their shot at Android or standby and watch T-Mobile and HTC eat up their market share. Once Verizon came around, Motorola pulled a 180, and AT&T jumped on board, there was no stopping Android. There was no turning back.

Right now Facebook’s Mobile Platform is at the ‘Big deal everything is practically the same’ phase. But it won’t be that way for long. Existing companies and aspiring individuals will fully embrace Facebook’s APIs to create awesome applications that become household names. A large part of their success will come from the deep integration with Facebook. At some point, others will have no choice but to incorporate Facebook or enjoy limited limelight.

At least that’s what would happen in Facebook’s ideal world. I think that’s a little excessive in this particular scenario, but the concept still stands.

In the best case scenario, Facebook could notice how great your application is, buy out your company and swallow it up as part of Facebook’s core services. That’s a great exit strategy. But in the worst case scenario, Facebook could see what you’re doing, realize what a great idea it is, and build their own version of your app. Ouch.

It’s a threat and it’s an opportunity, but if others are leveraging Facebook’s APIs and tools, many won’t have a choice but to embrace the movement. And recognize the cost in allowing Facebook to be a middle man in your app experience – they’ll be collecting invaluable data about the apps user’s and the app’s users friends that help them continually build a better product, better algo, better service, etc…

Creating Momentum (and an Insurmountable Competitive Advantage)
At this point there isn’t a lot to say that hasn’t been said. If the above pieces all fall into place, the proverbial snowball will have been pushed down the hill. Facebook will have wedged themselves permanently into the social fabric of everything mobile and prevented themselves from becoming the next MySpace.

Think back a few years. At one point, Google was just a search company. Do you think they didn’t know that? While their algorithm was of tremendous value, it isn’t like they were untouchable. Hopefuls like Cuil entered the scene and Microsoft and Yahoo talked merger. While it wasn’t likely, it isn’t impossible to think that some enterprising person or company could come along with a really innovative and smart approach at search, capture the attention of the masses, and compete if not overtake Google on their home ground.

In a lot of ways, timing is everything. As Zuckerberg pointed out, mobile and social go hand in hand. Google had the perfect timing with Android and now it seems like their dominance in tech has reached the untouchable level. In many ways, Google’s success with mobile has paved the way for Facebook to combine the two and become untouchables themselves.

Both will have accomplished this with software rather than hardware. Both will have accomplished this with little fanfare upon announcement, but eventual momentum, wedging them into the fabric of mobile. Both will have accomplished this by building a foundation, leveraging their reach, empowering 3rd parties, and riding the wave created by the fruits of their labor.

Some may say both Google and Facebook have been untouchable for some time, but every great empire eventually falls. In fact, Google and Yahoo had so supplant what some may call untouchables in order to gain favor int he first place. In my mind, today was another step to ensuring Facebook won’t be falling, or faltering, any time soon.

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Northrop Grumman's CaMEL 'bot features one .50 caliber gun, loads of class

2010-10-29T17:51:00.001+11:00

Northrop Grumman's CaMEL 'bot features one .50 caliber gun, loads of class: "

When the dream factory that is Northrop Grumman needed to up the 'wow factor' at its Association of the U.S. Army's Washington conference booth, it did what plenty of CES exhibitors wished they could do: it weaponized. Hence, the deadliest CaMEL yet. The acronym stands for Carry-all Mechanized Equipment Landrover -- think of the BigDog robot, but with treads instead of legs. The motorized platform will hump up to 1,200 pounds of gear at seven miles per hour, and as Spencer Ackerman at Wired points out, over sixty of them have been sold to the Israeli military. But the above pictured CaMEL is the only one floating around with armaments: in this case, a .50-caliber M2 machine gun. The gun is fired remotely, via touchscreen controls, and the platform itself could support any number of weapons including the M249, the MK19 grenade launcher, or 30mm cannon. Which kind of proves a pet theory of ours: if you build it, eventually someone will mount a gun on it.

Northrop Grumman's CaMEL 'bot features one .50 caliber gun, loads of class originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

Lockheed Martin begins laboratory testing of HULC robotic exoskeleton

2010-10-29T17:50:00.001+11:00

Lockheed Martin begins laboratory testing of HULC robotic exoskeleton: "

We already knew that it was ready for testing, and Lockheed Martin has now announced that it has finally begun laboratory tests of its HULC robotic exoskeleton. The testing follows a number of improvements made to the exoskeleton that increased its reliability and performance, including some new environmental sealing that provides additional protection from natural elements and battlefield hazards, and some refinements to the HULC's form and fit that promise to let its wearer adapt to it in less time. While complete details on the testing itself is obviously a bit light, Lockheed Martin says that it will 'validate the ruggedized system's capabilities and reliability in a variety of simulated battlefield conditions' -- think Laser Tag with robot legs (at least we will). Head past the break for the full press release, and look for the next milestone to happen sometime next year, when it's expected to see some actual use in the field.

Continue reading Lockheed Martin begins laboratory testing of HULC robotic exoskeleton

Lockheed Martin begins laboratory testing of HULC robotic exoskeleton originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

Is Android Open?

2010-10-26T21:46:00.001+11:00

Is Android Open? | Epicenter | Wired.com: " PREVIOUS POST NEXT POST Is Android Open? By Scott Gilbertson, Webmonkey October 22, 2010 | 6:10 pm | Categories: TelecommunicationsGoogle is famous in programming circles for redefining words to suit its ideas.

Take ‘beta,’ for example. Most of us take it to mean buggy, pre-release software that’s ‘mostly working, but still under test.’ But Google uses the word to refer to a product that’s ready for general use but is subject to ‘regular updates and constant feature refinement.’

Now it’s happening again over the term ‘open.’

Andy Rubin, Google’s Senior Director of Mobile Platforms who oversees Android, gave a similar semantic shuffling to the word ‘open’ in response to a slam by Steve Jobs. The Apple CEO stirred up a hornet’s nest of angry Android developers this week when he suggested, in a lengthy diatribe during an Apple press event, that Google’s mobile operating system was not really ‘open.’

Rubin responded by sending his first ever tweet, posting the code necessary to download the Android source and compile it on your PC and calling it ‘the definition of open.’

But whether Android actually qualifies as ‘open’ in the purest sense is up for debate, since downloading and compiling code alone does not make a piece of software open. Bruce Perens, who coined the term ‘open source’ and has been working on its behalf ever since, is suspect of Rubin’s definition.

‘The fact that you can check something out and compile it doesn’t mean you have the right to use it,’ Perens tells Wired.

In the software world, ‘open’ can be defined around three core traits: a license that insures the code can be modified, reused and distributed; a community development approach; and, most importantly, assurance the user has total freedom over the device and software.

The Android OS is, in strictly legal terms, open source. Android is released under the Apache 2.0 software license, which allows anyone to use, modify and redistribute the code. But while it might meet the letter of the law, Android falls short on the other two points.

It’s the lack of community-based development that Android’s critics say makes it no more ‘open’ than Apple’s locked-down, decidedly not-open iOS model. As Perens says, ‘most open source projects [include] instant access to changes as they are made … and an open door for anyone to participate.’

Unlike major open source projects like Firefox or the Linux kernel, you can’t see what’s happening behind the scenes with Android, nor can small developers contribute to the project in any meaningful way. Google typically releases major updates to Android at press conferences, not unlike those Apple uses to show off new iPhone features.

Once the code is released, Android developers can download it and do what they want with it, but they have no way of seeing what’s happening behind the scenes every day. If you want to know how Firefox changed last night — however esoteric those changes may be — you can study the changes on the Mozilla site. The same is true of the Linux kernel, Open Office and nearly every other open source project with a website.

It’s not true of Android. While Android may have the legal licensing to qualify as open source, it utterly fails on the equally important issues of transparency and community.

Android basically gives you two options: Accept what Google gives you, or fork the entire codebase. Other than the ability to roll your own version of Android, it’s really no different than iOS, which works on a similar ‘take what Apple gives you’ model.

Facebook’s Joe Hewitt, the Firefox co-creator who is now rumored to be working on a Facebook-branded mobile OS based on Android, chimed in over Twitter. Hewitt says the lack of transparency in the Android development process makes it ‘no different than iOS to me,’ adding, ‘open source means sharing control with the community, not show and tell.’

The next day, Hewitt followed up with a blog post clarifying his remarks.

‘It kills me to hear the term ‘open’ watered down so much. It bothers me that so many people’s first exposure to the idea of open source is an occasional code drop, and not a vibrant community of collaborators like I discovered ten years ago with Mozilla.’

He also recommends people look at Google’s Chrome OS project, which is being run with a level of transparency and community involvement largely absent from Android, and which is a better representation, he says, of Google’s values.

Unfortunately, even if Google were to develop Android in the open, as the Mozilla foundation does with Firefox, it probably wouldn’t help Android be any more open.

While Google’s approach may be a disingenuous use of the word open — as Hewitt says, Google is doing ‘bare minimum to meet the definition of open’ — there is another problem: the phone carriers.

‘The problem is the wireless carriers first and Google second,’ says Perens, ‘because Google enables the carriers to close the Android platform from the user’s perspective.’ In other words, while you might be able to copy and paste the code from Rubins’ tweet and take a look at Android yourself, what arrives with actual phone is every bit as tightly controlled as iOS.

Just as there are jailbreaking hacks for the iPhone, there are root hacks for Android that attempt to give the end user some control back. That Android is less controlled by its Google parent in other ways — the Android Market, for instance, is not tightly regulated like Apple’s App Store counterpart — is a secondary benefit. Neither device is open in the sense that the end user can modify it as they see fit — customize it perhaps, but adding a new theme and downloading whatever apps you like are not the goals of open software.

The real goal of open software, as Perens and others have help define it over the years, is to ensure that you can do whatever you want with it. As anyone with an iPhone or and Android phone can tell you, that’s not the current state of affairs on either device. Nearly every smartphone on the market is tightly locked to its carrier’s specifications. There are a few exceptions, like the Nokia N900, which runs Maemo Linux.

The carriers argue that open phones would threaten the network. Steve Jobs argues that an open phone would threaten the user experience.

AT&T used to argue both of the same things during most of the 20th century, when it still maintained total control (what Jobs likes to call an ‘integrated’ system) over land lines — you rented phones from AT&T or you didn’t have one. Decades after several massive anti-trust lawsuits and the breakup of Ma Bell, we’ve ended up back in a similar jam.

Even if there were a truly open source OS for your phone, it’s unlikely it would ever truly be open by the time it arrived in your hand.

Neither Apple nor Google responded to requests for comments.

(Via .)

Stephen Hawking couldn't read until 8

2010-10-22T14:39:00.001+11:00

Stephen Hawking has told a public lecture he didn't learn to read until he was eight / AP

Hawking says his sister was smarter
But he was nicknamed "Einstein"
Tells of lazy days while at university

BRITAIN'S most eminent scientist Stephen Hawking said that he did not learn to read until he was eight years old and was academically idle until he was diagnosed with a form of motor neuron disease.

Hawking, who gave a rare public lecture yesterday at the Royal Albert Hall in London, said, "My sister Philippa could read by the age of four ... but then, she was definitely brighter than me."

He added that he was never more than about halfway up the class at school.

"My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers," he said.

"But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better."

Learning he was facing the possibility of an early death was the catalyst for his most prolific period as a scientist, which led to his discoveries on the big bang and black holes.

"When you are faced with the possibility of an early death, it makes you realise that life is worth living, and that there are lots of things you want to do," he said.

Although he gained a first-class degree at Oxford University, he said that he scraped that result and worked for an average of only an hour a day during his time there.

"You were supposed to be brilliant without effort or to accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. I’m not proud of this lack of work. I’m just describing my attitude at the time, which I shared with most of my fellow students: an attitude of complete boredom and feeling that nothing was worth making an effort for," he said.

However, being told at the age of 21 that he would not live for more than a few years galvanised him into intense productivity.

Stephen Hawking couldn't read until 8

Study shocker: babies think friendly robots are sentient

2010-10-17T13:36:00.001+11:00

Study shocker: babies think friendly robots are sentient: "

There's certainly been no shortage of studies involving humans' interaction with robots, but a team of researchers from the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences have now made one of the most shocking discoveries to date: babies can be tricked into believing robots are sentient. They made this finding by acting out a skit with a remote-controlled robot in which the robot behaves friendly with its human counterpart. Following the skit, they left the baby alone with the robot and found that in 13 out of 16 cases the baby followed the robot's gaze, which suggests the baby believed it was sentient. In contrast, babies only interacted with the robot in 3 of 16 cases when they were simply left alone with it without first seeing it interact with a human. What does it all mean? Well, it seems that a robot's human-like appearance is less important than its behavior when it comes to establishing trust -- or that all the robots need to do to take over is get us while we're young. One of the two.

Study shocker: babies think friendly robots are sentient originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Oct 2010 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

Android is number one OS among US phone buyers over the last six months

2010-10-06T11:40:00.001+11:00

Android is number one OS among US phone buyers over the last six months: "

BlackBerry OS? Dead! iOS? Dead! Symbian? Never stood a chance. Android's exponential growth has today been illustrated by Nielsen's statisticians who present us with the above chart of recent US smartphone purchases. It shows that over the six months leading up to August 2010, 32 percent of American new phone buyers had grabbed themselves a device with Google's OS on board, which is comfortably ahead of RIM at 26 percent and Apple at 25 percent. These results corroborate NPD's figures on the matter -- which peg Android at 33 percent of new US purchases -- and reiterate the idea that Android is headed to a place whose name starts with D and ends with omination. One more chart showing total market share can be found after the break (hint: BlackBerry still reigns supreme overall).

Continue reading Android is number one OS among US phone buyers over the last six months

Android is number one OS among US phone buyers over the last six months originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

Researchers develop means to reliably read an electron's spin, take us one step closer to the quantum zone

2010-10-01T19:22:00.001+10:00

Researchers develop means to reliably read an electron's spin, take us one step closer to the quantum zone: "

Another day, another step bringing us closer to the next big revolution in the world of computing: replacing your transistory bits with qubits. Researchers at Australia's Universities of New South Wales and of Melbourne, along with Finland's Aalto University, have achieved the impossibly tiny goal of reliably reading the spin of a single electron. That may not sound like much, but let's just see you do it quickly without affecting said spin. This particular implementation relies on single atoms of phosphorus embedded in silicon. Yes, silicon, meaning this type of qubit is rather more conventional than others we've read about. Of course, proper quantum computers depend on reading and writing the spin of individual electrons, so as of now we effectively have quantum ROM. When will that be quantum RAM? They're still working on that bit.

Researchers develop means to reliably read an electron's spin, take us one step closer to the quantum zone originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

SMU and DARPA develop fiber optics for the human nervous system

2010-09-19T12:43:00.001+10:00

SMU and DARPA develop fiber optics for the human nervous system: "

The Department of Defense and Southern Methodist University have teamed up to develop prosthetics that use two-way fiber optic communication between artificial limbs and peripheral nerves to essentially give these devices the ability to feel pressure or temperature. The technology is called neurophotonics, and it will someday allow hi-speed communication between the brain and artificial limbs. But that's just the beginning -- the work being done at SMU's Neurophotonics Research Center might someday lead to brain implants that control tremors, neuro-modulators for chronic pain management, implants for treating spinal cord injuries, and more. And since we can't have a post about DARPA-funded research without the following trope, Dean Orsak of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering points out that '[s]cience fiction writers have long imagined the day when the understanding and intuition of the human brain could be enhanced by the lightning speed of computing technologies. With this remarkable research initiative, we are truly beginning a journey into the future that will provide immeasurable benefits to humanity.' Truly.

SMU and DARPA develop fiber optics for the human nervous system originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

DARPA seeks out remote controls for soldiers' minds

2010-09-15T11:16:00.001+10:00

DARPA seeks out remote controls for soldiers' minds: "

DARPA is always on the lookout for the newest, zaniest gadgets but this time, we think it's gone too far. According to the Department of Defense's recent blog post, the military is interested in developing remote control techniques using ultrasound... for soldiers. Arizona State University neuroscientist William Tyler has been working on the project for several years, and now, DARPA is getting involved as well. Tyler and his team have developed a transcranial pulsed ultrasound capable of stimulating brain circuits from outside of the brain, and it can target deeper parts of the brain than past devices. The prototypes are small enough to be placed inside of a helmet, and the plan is to improve its spatial resolution with DARPA's new infusion of funding. We know they're probably looking to do cool stuff like make soldiers think they're nice and cool when they're actually frying in the sun, but we can't help but get the creeps from this one.

DARPA seeks out remote controls for soldiers' minds originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

How the internet makes us stupid

2010-09-10T21:32:00.001+10:00

How the internet makes us stupid

September 10, 2010

Nicholas Carr ... inspired to write the book after he realised that he was losing his own capacity for concentration and contemplation.

The stimulation of the digital age is changing the make-up of our brains, with potentially disastrous results, writes Nicholas Carr.

ALTHOUGH the worldwide web has been around for just 20 years, it is hard to imagine life without it. It has given us instant access to vast amounts of information, and we're able to stay in touch with friends and colleagues more or less continuously.

But our dependence on the internet has a dark side. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.

I've been studying this research for the past three years, in the course of writing my new book The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. But my interest in the subject is not just academic. It's personal. I was inspired to write the book after I realised that I was losing my own capacity for concentration and contemplation. Even when I was away from my computer, my mind seemed hungry for constant stimulation, for quick hits of information. I felt perpetually distracted.

Could my loss of focus be a result of all the time I've spent online? In search of an answer to that question, I began to dig into the many psychological, behavioural, and neurological studies that examine how the tools we use to think with - our information technologies - shape our habits of mind.

The picture that emerges is troubling, at least to anyone who values the subtlety, rather than just the speed, of human thought. People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read words printed on pages. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, updates and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are often less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time.

The common thread in these disabilities is the division of attention. The richness of our thoughts, our memories and even our personalities hinges on our ability to focus the mind and sustain concentration. Only when we pay close attention to a new piece of information are we able to associate it ''meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory'', writes the Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel. Such associations are essential to mastering complex concepts and thinking critically.

When we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be when looking at the screens of our computers and mobile phones, our brains can't forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give distinctiveness and depth to our thinking. Our thoughts become disjointed, our memories weak. The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best 2000 years ago: ''To be everywhere is to be nowhere.''

In an article in Science last year, Patricia Greenfield, a developmental psychologist who runs UCLA's Children's Digital Media Centre, reviewed dozens of studies on how different media technologies influence our cognitive abilities. Some of the studies indicated that certain computer tasks, such as playing video games, increase the speed at which people can shift their focus among icons and other images on screens. Other studies, however, found that such rapid shifts in focus, even if performed adeptly, result in less rigorous and ''more automatic'' thinking.

In one experiment at an American university, half a class of students was allowed to use internet-connected laptops during a lecture, while the other had to keep their computers shut. Those who browsed the web performed much worse on a subsequent test of how well they retained the lecture's content. Earlier experiments revealed that as the number of links in an online document goes up, reading comprehension falls, and as more types of information are placed on a screen, we remember less of what we see.

Greenfield concluded that ''every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others''. Our growing use of screen-based media, she said, has strengthened visual-spatial intelligence, which can strengthen the ability to do jobs that involve keeping track of lots of rapidly changing signals, such as piloting a plane or monitoring a patient during surgery. But that has been accompanied by ''new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes'', including ''abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination''. We're becoming, in a word, shallower.

Studies of our behaviour online support this conclusion. German researchers found that web browsers usually spend less than 10 seconds looking at a page. Even people doing academic research online tend to ''bounce'' rapidly between different documents, rarely reading more than a page or two, according to a University College London study. Such mental juggling takes a big toll. In a recent experiment at Stanford University, researchers gave various cognitive tests to 49 people who do a lot of media multitasking and 52 people who multitask much less frequently. The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on all the tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish important information from trivia.

The researchers were surprised by the results. They expected the intensive multitaskers to have gained some mental advantages. But that wasn't the case. In fact, the multitaskers weren't even good at multitasking. ''Everything distracts them,'' said Clifford Nass, one of the researchers.

It would be one thing if the ill-effects went away as soon as we turned off our computers and mobiles. But they don't. The cellular structure of the human brain, scientists have discovered, adapts readily to the tools we use to find, store and share information. By changing our habits of mind, each new technology strengthens certain neural pathways and weakens others. The alterations shape the way we think even when we're not using the technology.

The pioneering neuroscientist Michael Merzenich believes our brains are being ''massively remodelled'' by our ever-intensifying use of the web and related media.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Merzenich, now a professor emeritus at the University of California in San Francisco, conducted a famous series of experiments that revealed how extensively and quickly neural circuits change in response to experience. In a conversation late last year, he said that he was profoundly worried about the cognitive consequences of the constant distractions and interruptions the internet bombards us with. The long-term effect on the quality of our intellectual lives, he said, could be ''deadly''.

Not all distractions are bad. As most of us know, if we concentrate too intensively on a tough problem, we can get stuck in a mental rut. But if we let the problem sit unattended for a time, we often return to it with a fresh perspective and a burst of creativity.

Research by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis indicates that such breaks in our attention give our unconscious mind time to grapple with a problem, bringing to bear information and cognitive processes unavailable to conscious deliberation. We usually make better decisions, his experiments reveal, if we shift our attention away from a mental challenge for a time.

But Dijksterhuis's work also shows that our unconscious thought processes don't engage with a problem until we've clearly and consciously defined what the problem is. If we don't have a particular goal in mind, he writes, ''unconscious thought does not occur''.

The constant distractedness that the net encourages - the state of being, to borrow a phrase from T. S. Eliot, ''distracted from distraction by distraction'' - is very different from the kind of temporary, purposeful diversion of our mind that refreshes our thinking. The cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, shepherding information into consciousness and then back out again.

What we seem to be sacrificing in our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection. The web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state of perpetual mental locomotion.

The rise of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, which pump out streams of brief messages, has only exacerbated the problem.

THERE'S nothing wrong with absorbing information quickly and in bits and pieces. We've always skimmed newspapers more than we've read them, and we routinely run our eyes over books and magazines to get the gist of a piece of writing and decide whether it warrants more thorough reading.

The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively.

What's disturbing is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought.

Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it's becoming an end in itself - our preferred method of both learning and analysis.

Dazzled by the net's treasures, we have been blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture.

Daily Telegraph, London

All-optical quantum communication networks nearly realized, 'Answers to Life' airing at 9PM

2010-09-08T17:22:00.001+10:00

All-optical quantum communication networks nearly realized, 'Answers to Life' airing at 9PM: "Ready to get swept away into the wild, wild abyss known as quantum computing? If not, we're certain there's a less mentally taxing post above or below, but for those who answered the call, researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz have a doozie to share. A team of whiz kids at the institution have developed a minuscule optical device that's built into a silicon chip, and it's capable of reducing the speed of light by a factor of 1,200. If you're wondering why on Earth humans would be interested in doing such a thing, here's the long and short of it: the ability to control light pulses on an integrated chip-based platform 'is a major step toward the realization of all-optical quantum communication networks, with potentially vast improvements in ultra-low-power performance.' Today, data transmitted along optical fibers must still eventually be converted to electronic signals before they're finally understood, but the promise of an all-optical data processing system could obviously reduce inefficiencies and create communication networks that are far quicker and more robust. There's still no telling how far we are from this becoming a reality -- after all, we've been hearing similar since at least 2006 -- but at least these folks seem to be onto something good... even if it's all too familiar.

All-optical quantum communication networks nearly realized, 'Answers to Life' airing at 9PM originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkPhysorg | University of California Santa Cruz | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Teaching your students not to need a teacher

2010-08-28T15:37:00.001+10:00

Teaching your students not to need a teacher: "

Yesterday, after coming across my teaching statement, a reader named Arber Borici sent me the following questions:

In your opinion and based on your experience at various institutions, what would you recommend to me (a young, inexperienced scholar) regarding on how to best remove students’ attention from the mediocrity of grading to the eagerness for knowledge or, at least, high culture? … I would also appreciate it if you could provide me with one or two guidelines in approaching students to appreciate what they are being taught and to teach them on how to seek knowledge for themselves.

It seemed like good fodder for a blog entry, so with Arber’s kind permission, I’ve decided to post my response to him here (with only light editing).

Dear Arber,

Thanks for your thoughtful email! I’m always delighted to hear from people who share my views about the inherent problems in combining teaching with evaluation.

Alas, your question of how to get students to focus on intellectual exploration rather than on their midterm grade is an incredibly difficult one, since it depends not only on you but also on your academic context (for example, you’ll probably be required to give grades by department policy). I’ve been struggling with that question myself for the past three years, and still haven’t answered it to my satisfaction, but here are a few small tips I can offer.

(1) Some students didn’t come to college to learn, but for any number of other reasons: to party, get a high-paying job, satisfy their parents, etc. Or they’re only taking your course because it’s required for the major, while their real interests lie elsewhere. Treat these students fairly and with respect, but don’t kill yourself trying to awaken an intellectual curiosity that isn’t present. Instead, identify the students who are in your class to learn, memorize their names and faces, and make special efforts to reach out to them—for example, by sticking around after class to chat with them about the lecture and answer their questions. (In my experience, many intellectually curious students prefer sticking around after class to coming to office hours. In many cases, students who come to office hours are there because they want you to do their homework for them!)

(2) Grade generously. I usually give at least a B- to anyone who makes a serious effort in the course. (In practice, that policy turns out to be compatible with giving a fair number of Cs, Ds, and even Fs.)

(3) Most importantly, if you don’t want the students to focus only on low-level boring stuff, don’t lecture only about low-level boring stuff! Tell stories about Alan Turing and his codebreaking work. Talk about the philosophy behind the Church-Turing Thesis, or the arguments for and against identifying ‘feasible’ with ‘polynomial time,’ or the implications for AI if it turned out that P=NP. If a student asks a really good question, don’t be afraid to take a 10-minute digression to answer the question. You’ll constantly feel pressure in the opposite direction—there’s so much ‘real material’ that needs to be ‘covered’! But think about what your students will remember from your course twenty years from now, long after the details of implementing red/black trees have been forgotten, and the right course of action will become clear to you.

I should point out that there’s a paradox at the heart of teaching, which your second question (which is actually a variation on your first question) makes clear:

I would also appreciate it if you could provide me with one or two guidelines in approaching students to appreciate what they are being taught and to teach them on how to seek knowledge for themselves.

To see the difficulty with what you ask, picture a classroom full of glazed-eyed students, dutifully taking notes on ‘how to seek knowledge for themselves,’ so they can repeat back your tips on intellectual initiative for the test!

In my experience, probably the best (only?) way to teach people how to seek knowledge for themselves is to illustrate by example. Let your students watch you in action doing all of the following:

happily admitting when you don’t know something.
looking something up and getting back to the asker during the next class meeting, rather than simply letting the matter drop.
thinking a difficult/novel question through on your feet.
eliciting help from the students in a ‘Socratic’ manner.

Seeing a positive example will embolden the students who have a spark of any of these tendencies in themselves.

Anyway, I hope that helps!

Best of luck,
Scott

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Bringing a sacrificial goat and n-bit string to the oracle

2010-08-24T00:15:00.001+10:00

Bringing a sacrificial goat and n-bit string to the oracle: "

I’ve been enjoying Athens and the coast of Greece for the past four days. I was going to take a day trip to Delphi, for the sole purpose of blogging about having ‘queried the Oracle’ there, but I ultimately decided to confine this trip to the unrelativized regions of Greece.

However, I do have something else related to oracles that I’d like to blog about today. Last week I put out a preprint on the ECCC (that’s the Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity for newbs), entitled ‘The Equivalence of Sampling and Searching.’ There, I use Kolmogorov complexity to prove the surprising (to me) fact that

FBPP=FBQP if and only if SampP=SampBQP.

In other words: classical computers can efficiently solve every search (i.e., ‘functional’ or ‘relational’) problem that quantum computers can solve, if and only if they can efficiently approximately sample the output distribution of every quantum circuit. (Note that, although this result involves the names of quantum complexity classes, it has almost nothing to do with quantum computing.) Anyway, when I gave a talk about this result at Hebrew University, Noam Nisan raised two excellent questions, neither of which I’d thought to ask and neither of which I knew the answers to:

Is there an oracle relative to which BPP=BQP but PromiseBPP≠PromiseBQP? (In other words: an oracle that makes classical and quantum computers equivalent for language decision problems, but different for promise problems?)
Is there an oracle relative to which PromiseBPP=PromiseBQP but FBPP≠FBQP? (In other words: an oracle that makes classical and quantum computers equivalent for promise problems, but different for search problems? Here FBPP and FBQP are the classes of search problems solvable in polynomial time by classical and quantum computers respectively—see my preprint for formal definitions of them.)

Affirmative answers to these questions would imply that any extension of my equivalence theorem to decision and promise problems would have to be non-relativizing. I’d be incredibly grateful for any thoughts about these questions, and will even offer a $5 reward for each one.

However, since I have a feeling that these oracle challenges won’t generate quite enough comments, let me now pour some gasoline on the fire. You may have noticed that what I did above, among other things, was to call attention to my own ECCC preprint. Up till today, I’ve had an informal policy of almost never using Shtetl-Optimized to blog about my own research, except indirectly (e.g., when I talk about open problems that arose out of my papers). I had three reasons for this policy: first, blogging about one’s own research always runs the severe risk of boring everyone. Second, after I’ve finished a paper, I’m usually bored with it; writing a blog entry that rehashes what’s already in the paper is usually the last thing I want to do. Third, and most importantly, I didn’t want to create the impression that I was using this blog to give my papers an ‘unfair advantage’ over everyone else’s.

However, recently a consensus seems to have formed, among the community of disgruntled anonymous commenters on computational complexity blogs, that I’m some sort of clown who bets $200,000 against alleged P≠NP proofs for the sole reason that he’s unable to do any actual research of his own. While I ought to have the Obamalike composure to remain unaffected by such gutter-sniping, I have to admit that it pissed me off. To be sure, I am a clown who bets $200,000 against alleged P≠NP proofs instead of doing actual research. However, this is not because I can’t do actual research; rather, it’s because I don’t feel like it. To help prove this, I’ve decided to abandon my previous no-tooting-my-own-research-horn policy. So, anonymous commenters: you wanna know about my actual research? Well then, blog entries about actual research are what you’re gonna get—so much that you’ll wish you never brought it up.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Implantable antenna designed using silk and gold

2010-08-20T00:30:00.001+10:00

Implantable antenna designed using silk and gold: "Silk: it's stronger than Kevlar, thinner than a human hair, it's biocompatible (it doesn't trigger human immune system response), and it's produced by insects (although some new-fangled metabolically engineered bacteria seem to be up to the task). Researchers at Tufts University have created a silk and gold biosensor that can be implanted in the body to keep tabs on proteins and chemicals. One possible use would be to keep track of diabetic's glucose levels, notifying the patient when things go wonky. At the present time, they've only tested the antenna itself -- it was found to resonate at specific frequencies, even when implanted in several layers of muscle tissue (from a pig, mind you). For their next trick, the team will outfit the device with proteins or other molecules to monitor in-vivo chemical reactions.

Implantable antenna designed using silk and gold originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Technology Review | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

P vs. NP for Dummies

2010-08-16T19:11:00.001+10:00

P vs. NP for Dummies: "

A reader named Darren commented on my last post:

I have this feeling that this whole P and NP thing is not only a profound problem that needs solving, but something that can be infinitely curious to try and wrap your mind around…
Thing is- there’s a whole world of great minded, genius hackers out here that can’t understand one iota of what anyone is talking about. We’re not your traditional code-savvy hackers; we’re your inventors, life hackers, researchers, scientists… and I think I can speak for most of us when I say: We would love to take the time to really dive into this thread, but we ask that someone (you) write a blog that breaks this whole thing down into a rest-of-the-world-friendly P/NP for dummies… or at least explain it to us like we’re stupid as hell… at this point I’m really okay with even that.

I’m of course the stupid one here, for forgetting the folks like Darren who were enticed by L’Affaire Deolalikar into entering our little P/NP tent, and who now want to know what it is we’re hawking.

The short answer is: the biggest unsolved problem of theoretical computer science, and one of the deepest questions ever asked by human beings! Here are four informal interpretations of the P vs. NP problem that people give, and which I can endorse as capturing the spirit of what’s being asked:

Are there situations where brute-force search—that is, trying an exponential number of possibilities one-by-one, until we find a solution that satisfies all the stated constraints—is essentially the best algorithm possible?
Is there a fast algorithm to solve the NP-complete problems—a huge class of combinatorial problems that includes scheduling airline flights, laying out microchips, optimally folding proteins, coloring maps, packing boxes as densely as possible, finding short proofs of theorems, and thousands of other things that people in fields ranging from AI to chemistry to economics to manufacturing would like to solve? (While it’s not obvious a priori, it’s known that these problems are all ‘re-encodings’ of each other. So in particular, a fast algorithm for any one of the problems would imply fast algorithms for the rest; conversely, if any one of them is hard then then they all are.)
Is it harder to solve a math problem yourself than to check a solution by someone else? [[This is where you insert a comment about the delicious irony, that P vs. NP itself is a perfect example of a monstrously-hard problem for which we could nevertheless recognize a solution if we saw one—and hence, part of the explanation for why it’s so hard to prove P≠NP is that P≠NP…]]
In the 1930s, Gödel and Turing taught us that not only are certain mathematical statements undecidable (within the standard axiom systems for set theory and even arithmetic), but there’s not even an algorithm to tell which statements have a proof or disproof and which don’t. Sure, you can try checking every possible proof, one by one—but if you haven’t yet found a proof, then there’s no general way to tell whether that’s because there is no proof, or whether you simply haven’t searched far enough. On the other hand, if you restrict your attention to, say, proofs consisting of 1,000,000 symbols or less, then enumerating every proof does become possible. However, it only becomes ‘possible’ in an extremely Platonic sense: if there are 2^1,000,000 proofs to check, then the sun will have gone cold and the universe degenerated into black holes and radiation long before your computer’s made a dent. So, the question arises of whether Gödel and Turing’s discoveries have a ‘finitary’ analogue: are there classes of mathematical statements that have short proofs, but for which the proofs can’t be found in any reasonable amount of time?

Basically, P vs. NP is the mathematical problem that you’re inevitably led to if you try to formalize any of the four questions above.

Admittedly, in order to state the problem formally, we need to make a choice: we interpret the phrase ‘fast algorithm’ to mean ‘deterministic Turing machine that uses a number of steps bounded by a polynomial in the size of the input, and which always outputs the correct answer (yes, there is a solution satisfying the stated constraints, or no, there isn’t one).’ There are other natural ways to interpret ‘fast algorithm’ (probabilistic algorithms? quantum algorithms? linear time? linear time with a small constant? subexponential time? algorithms that only work on most inputs?), and many are better depending on the application. A key point, however, is that whichever choices we made, we’d get a problem that’s staggeringly hard, and for essentially the same reasons as P vs. NP is hard! And therefore, out of a combination of mathematical convenience and tradition, computer scientists like to take P vs. NP as our ‘flagship example’ of a huge class of questions about what is and isn’t feasible for computers, none of which we know how to answer.

So, those of you who just wandered into the tent: care to know more? The good news is that lots of excellent resources already exist. I suggest starting with the Wikipedia article on P vs. NP, which is quite good. From there, you can move on to Avi Wigderson’s 2006 survey P, NP and mathematics - a computational complexity perspective, or Mike Sipser’s The History and Status of the P vs. NP Question (1992) for a more historical perspective (and a translation of a now-famous 1956 letter from Gödel to von Neumann, which first asked what we’d recognize today as the P vs. NP question).

After you’ve finished the above … well, the number of P vs. NP resources available to you increases exponentially with the length of the URL. For example, without even leaving the scottaaronson.com domain, you can find the following:

Ten Reasons to Believe P≠NP
Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science Lecture 9 (P and NP)
Quantum Computing Since Democritus Lecture 6 (P, NP, and Friends)
Has There Been Progress on the P vs. NP Question? (PowerPoint talk, from the Barriers workshop last year in Princeton)
Is P vs. NP Formally Independent? (2003 survey article)
Algebrization: A New Barrier in Complexity Theory (2009 paper by Avi Wigderson and myself)

Feel free to use the comments section to suggest other resources, or to ask and answer basic questions about the P vs. NP problem, why it’s hard, why it’s important, how it relates to other problems, why Deolalikar’s attempt apparently failed, etc. Me, I think I’ll be taking a break from this stuff.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong

2010-08-14T11:48:00.001+10:00

Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong: "

As of this writing, Vinay Deolalikar still hasn’t retracted his P≠NP claim, but a clear consensus has emerged that the proof, as it stands, is fatally flawed. The first reason is that we’re not going to separate k-SAT from much easier problems purely by looking at the structure of the solution space: see for example this comment by Ryan Williams. The second reason is that, independently of the solution-space issue, Neil Immerman has identified critical flaws in the finite model theory part of the paper.

The researchers who actually studied Deolalikar’s paper, thought hard about it, and figured out in a matter of days why it doesn’t work deserve our undying gratitude (they certainly have mine!). At the same time, if someday we have a P≠NP claim at this level several times per year—which I see as entirely possible—then it’s clear that the sort of heroic effort we saw over the last week isn’t going to scale. And thus, several commenters wanted to know how someone as lazy as I am could nevertheless be so confident in predicting what would happen:

Would you enlighten us as to what was the PROCESS behind your quick and correct judgment? … Your quick nondeterministic hunch about the wrongness of all the 100 pages was quickly verified as correct. But how did you do it, confidently risking your reputation like a smooth poker player?
Scott Aaronsohn [sic], like Nassim Nicholas Taleb, you predicted the crash before it happened! You knew some fundamental weaknesses intuitively that the other Myron-Scholes Nobel prize winning economists (computer scientists) fell for!

While it pains me to say so, these commenters give me way too much credit. The truth, as far as I can tell, is that many (most?) complexity theorists reached exactly the same conclusion as I did and just as quickly; it’s just that most (with some notable exceptions) were too cautious to say so in public. Among those who did comment publicly, the tendency was to bend over backwards to give Deolalikar the benefit of the doubt—an approach that I considered taking as well, until I imagined some well-meaning economist or physicist reading my generous words and coming away with the impression that P≠NP must be either licked or else hanging by a thread, and at any rate couldn’t have been nearly as hard as all those computer scientists made it out to be.

So, in the future, how can you decide whether a claimed P≠NP proof is worth reading? I’ll now let you in on my magic secrets (which turn out not to be magic or secret at all).

The thing not to do is to worry about the author’s credentials or background. I say that not only for ethical reasons, but because there are too many cases in the history of mathematics where doing so led to catastrophic mistakes. Fortunately, there’s something else you can do that’s almost as lazy: scan the manuscript, keeping a mental checklist for the eight warning signs below.

The author can’t immediately explain why the proof fails for 2SAT, XOR-SAT, or other slight variants of NP-complete problems that are known to be in P. Historically, this has probably been the single most important ‘sanity check’ for claimed proofs of P≠NP: in fact, I’m pretty sure that every attempt I’ve ever seen has been refuted by it.
The proof doesn’t ‘know about’ all known techniques for polynomial-time algorithms, including dynamic programming, linear and semidefinite programming, and holographic algorithms. This is related to sign 1, but is much more stringent. Mulmuley’s GCT program is the only approach to P vs. NP I’ve seen that even has serious aspirations to ‘know about’ lots of nontrivial techniques for solving problems in P (at the least, matching and linear programming). For me, that’s probably the single strongest argument in GCT’s favor.
The paper doesn’t prove any weaker results along the way: for example, P≠PSPACE, NEXP⊄P/poly, NP⊄TC⁰, permanent not equivalent to determinant by linear projections, SAT requires superlinear time … P vs. NP is a staggeringly hard problem, which one should think of as being dozens of steps beyond anything that we know how to prove today. So then the question arises: forget steps 30 and 40, what about steps 1, 2, and 3?
Related to the previous sign, the proof doesn’t encompass the known lower bound results as special cases. For example: where, inside this proof, are the known lower bounds against constant-depth circuits? Where’s Razborov’s lower bound against monotone circuits? Where’s Raz’s lower bound against multilinear formulas? All these things (at least the uniform versions of them) are implied by P≠NP, so any proof of P≠NP should imply them as well. Can we see more-or-less explicitly why it does so?
The paper lacks the traditional lemma-theorem-proof structure. This sign was pointed out (in the context of Deolalikar’s paper) by Impagliazzo. Say what you like about the lemma-theorem-proof structure, there are excellent reasons why it’s used—among them that, exactly like modular programming, it enormously speeds up the process of finding bugs.
The paper lacks a coherent overview, clearly explaining how and why it overcomes the barriers that foiled previous attempts. Unlike most P≠NP papers, Deolalikar’s does have an informal overview (and he recently released a separate synopsis). But reading the overview felt like reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: I’d reread the same paragraph over and over, because the words would evaporate before they could stick to my brain. Of course, maybe that just means I was just too dense to understand the argument, but the fact that I couldn’t form a mental image of how the proof was supposed to work wasn’t a promising sign.
The proof hinges on subtle issues in descriptive complexity. Before you reach for your axes: descriptive complexity is a beautiful part of TCS, full of juicy results and open problems, and I hope that someday it might even prove useful for attacking the great separation questions. Experience has shown, however, that descriptive complexity also a powerful tool for fooling yourself into thinking you’ve proven things that you haven’t. The reason for this seems to be that subtle differences in encoding schemes—for example, whether you do or don’t have an order relation—can correspond to huge differences in computational complexity. As soon as I saw how heavily Deolalikar’s proof relied on descriptive complexity, I guessed that he probably made a mistake in applying the results from that field that characterize complexity classes like P in terms of first-order logic. I’m almost embarrassed to relate this guess, given how little actual understanding went to it. (Intellectual honesty does, however, compel me to point out that it was right.)
Already in the first draft, the author waxes philosophical about the meaning of his accomplishment, profusely thanks those who made it possible, etc. He says things like, ‘confirmations have already started arriving.’ To me, this sort of overconfidence suggests a would-be P≠NP prover who hasn’t yet grasped the sheer number of mangled skeletons and severed heads that line his path.

You might wonder: if I had all these more-or-less articulable reasons for doubting Deolalikar’s proof, then why didn’t I just state my reasons in the first place, instead of placing a $200,000 wager?

Well, I probably should have stated the reasons. I apologize for that.

The best one can say about the lazy alternative I chose is that it led to a somewhat-interesting socio-mathematical experiment. By putting my life savings on the line, could I give the world a dramatic demonstration of just how high the stakes are with P vs. NP—that when computer scientists say this problem won’t be solved without a titanic advance in human knowledge, without overcoming obstacles like the ones mentioned in points 1-4 above, they’re not kidding? After such a demonstration, would more people get it? Would they refrain from leaping out of their chairs at the next P vs. NP announcement? Like Richard Dawkins staring unflinchingly at a steel pendulum swinging toward his face (which he knows has enough potential energy to almost hit him but not quite), would they remember that the only miracle in life is that there are no miracles, neither in mathematics nor in anything else?

I don’t know how well the experiment succeeded.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Oracle Files Lawsuit Against Google's use of Java in Android - Mac Rumors

2010-08-13T19:42:00.001+10:00

Oracle Files Lawsuit Against Google's use of Java in Android - Mac Rumors

Thursday August 12, 2010 09:41 PM EST; Category: iPhone
Written by Arnold Kim

Oracle announced tonight that it had filed suit against Google over the use of Java in their Android mobile phone operating system.

"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement," said Oracle spokesperson Karen Tillman.

CNet provides the full legal document surrounding the complaint. According to the document, Oracle claims:

Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and devices that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520.

The complaint also claims that Google has infringed on several Oracle copyrights surrounding Java's code, specifications and other materials.

Google's Android is seen as the biggest competition for Apple's iPhone and iOS platform.

The ethics of scientific betting

2010-08-12T21:08:00.001+10:00

The ethics of scientific betting: "

Throughout the day, Dick Lipton’s blog has hosted a phenomenal discussion of Vinay Deolalikar’s attempted proof of P≠NP (of which a new draft appeared as this blog entry was going to press). As of this writing, the discussion seems to have led to the following two conclusions:

Deolalikar deserves our gratitude; he did a wonderful thing by bringing the TCS community together, in ‘Stone Soup’ fashion, to talk about the P vs. NP problem, and also to stimulate public interest in this fascinating problem.
My $200,000 is safe.

See in particular this magisterial summary by Terry Tao.For those of you who just arrived from Mars, I’d recommend starting with a BBC News piece by Victoria Gill, which by the standards of articles about P vs. NP in major news outlets, bears an amazingly close relation to reality. Indeed, the only thing about the article that I disagreed with was the headline: ‘Million dollar maths puzzle sparks row.’ It’s not a row, a spat, or even a squabble: at most it’s a friendly scientific disagreement among friends.

As many others have already said, and as the BBC News piece hints at, the clearest reason for skepticism is (basically) that Deolalikar hasn’t convincingly explained why his approach doesn’t also prove problems are hard that are already known to be easy. This is the simplest sanity check for any attempted proof of P≠NP: if you’re showing that an NP-complete problem like 3SAT is not in P, then your proof had better fail for related problems like 2SAT and XOR-SAT, which are known to be in P. Everyone agrees that, if Deolalikar can’t answer this objection, the proof is toast.

Unfortunately, Deolalikar has responded to pointed questions about this issue with vague promises to address it in a later draft (together with worries that the manuscript is already too long!). This doesn’t inspire confidence: if one had really proved P≠NP, one should be able to explain immediately why the proof fails for XOR-SAT.

This is far from the only problem with the writeup, but it’s a good example of the sort of basic question that Deolalikar needs to answer and hasn’t.

I feel incredible gratitude that Terry Tao, Timothy Gowers, Russell Impagliazzo, Avi Wigderson, Dick Lipton, Cris Moore, Ryan Williams, and other heavy-hitters of the math and CS worlds are hot on the case, and will quickly converge on what (if anything) is interesting and worthy of further study in Deolalikar’s writeup. What that means is that those of us trying to enjoy our ‘summer vacations’ are free to debate other issues raised in the past few days—issues that don’t involve quite so much, y’know, actual thinking.

And thus I’d like to propose a blog-roundtable about the following question:

Under what circumstances, if any, is it desirable to bet publicly on scientific questions?

The responses to my $200,000 offer made it obvious that people I like and respect have wildly different views on the above question.

On one side, Bayesians and economic rationalists of all stripes seemed ecstatic. The economist James Miller wrote:

I talk about prizes in the introductory microeconomics class I teach. I will definitely include what you have just done the next time I teach the course. If more scientists were willing to bet their beliefs we would know a lot more about the world than we currently do.

Several complexity theorists also wrote in privately to express their gratitude:

dear scott, have you heard? there is a P≠NP proof! what do you think of it? please let me know! just kidding. actually, this email is to thank you. my emailbox has been flooded with emails like the above lines, and thanks to your blog, i can now reply by mentioning your blog posting (the ‘I’ve literally bet my house on it’ one—which nonetheless may be most remembered for being the only correct use of ‘literally’ on the internet in the past 5-10 years).

On the other side, one distinguished colleague warned that my bet might hurt the image of theoretical computer science, by focusing attention on superficial snap-judgments rather than the technical evaluation of proofs. On this view, it’s my professional duty to make only scientific arguments in public: I should keep any personal guesses about a proof’s ‘probability of correctness’ to myself. Sure, if I can pinpoint the fatal flaw in Deolalikar’s paper, I should say so. But if I can’t, I should just grin and bear it, even if journalists brush aside the experts’ boring, hard-to-explain technical reservations, and write article after cringe-inducing article exclaiming that ‘P≠NP HAS (APPARENTLY) BEEN PROVED!!!’

A different criticism—one that I confess took me by surprise—was that my $200,000 offer was ‘nasty’ and ‘elitist,’ something that eats disabled orphans for breakfast. On reflection, though, I think I understand where this was coming from. I felt like I was offering Deolalikar a damn sweet deal: he gets 200 grand if he’s right, and pays zilch if he’s wrong. However, the act of offering those odds might be interpreted as a perpetual ‘vote of no confidence’ in Deolalikar’s personal ability to prove P≠NP.

By analogy, it would be reprehensible if I offered $200,000 to any member of a particular race or gender who proved P≠NP, with the implication being that I didn’t think that race or gender was up to the challenge. (And it would remain reprehensible, regardless of whether I eventually had to pay.) Of course, it’s relevant that that’s nothing like what I did: instead, spurred on by a barrage of emails, I spent a sleepless night with Deolalikar’s manuscript, weighed what I understood of his arguments on one hand and what I knew of the titanic obstacles to proving P≠NP on the other, and (may Merlin help me) cast a prediction accordingly.

Nevertheless, to deal with the ‘nastiness’ issue, I’ve decided that my $200,000 offer will expire on January 1, 2019. That gives Deolalikar a couple more years to finish his proof (plus more years for the journal refereeing and Clay prize processes), but it also makes clear that my bet is against a specific claim to have proved P≠NP, not against a person for all eternity.

(To answer the other question people kept asking me: no, my offer doesn’t extend to any potential P≠NP prover, much less to the other Clay Problems! I’m hopeful that, within my lifetime, theoretical computer science will advance to the point where statements like P≠NP can be proved, and I’ll of course be elated, but not so catatonic as to make giving up my house seem completely immaterial by comparison.)

So: is it the duty of a scientist to express, in public and as a scientist, only what he or she can articulate reasons for? Or is it sometimes appropriate or even desirable for scientists to go beyond what they can verbalize, using such mechanisms as bets? Now it’s your turn to weigh in! I’ll be following the discussion by iPhone during a road trip through northern Israel, to the enormous annoyance of my traveling companions.

Update (8/12): I was hoping for some enlightening discussion about the ethics of scientific betting in general, not more comments on the real or imagined motives behind my bet. However, the actual comments I woke up to have convinced me that the critics of my bet were right. In principle, the bet seemed like a good way to answer the flood of queries about Deolalikar’s paper, and then get back to enjoying my trip. In practice, however, the way people respond to the bet depends entirely on what they think about my motives. If you don’t care about my motives, or consider them benign, then the bet probably provided a useful piece of information or (if you already knew the information) a useful corrective to hype. If, on the other hand, you think I’m arrogant, a media whore, etc., then the bet served no purpose except to confirm your beliefs. Since people (at least taking the commenters on this blog as a representative sample, admittedly a questionable assumption!) generally wish to ascribe the worst motives to me, it follows that the bet was counterproductive.

PS. Arrogant I can see, but media whore? Really? Is it relevant that curious, well-meaning folks were pestering me to react to this announcement, that they clearly wouldn’t stop until I did, and that I was just trying to answer them while otherwise getting as little involved as I reasonably could?

PPS. I’ve said this before, but let me say it again: I am unbelievably grateful to the ‘rapid response team’ of mathematicians and computer scientists who dropped whatever else they were doing to delve into Deolalikar’s paper, and to report what they found on Lipton’s blog and elsewhere. Precisely because of their excellent work, there seemed to me to be little point in canceling my travel plans in order to try and duplicate their efforts.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

University of Calgary succeeds in building a neurochip out of silicon, human brain cells

2010-08-11T18:35:00.001+10:00

University of Calgary succeeds in building a neurochip out of silicon, human brain cells: "

Scientists at the University of Calgary have teamed up with the National Research Council Canada to put a network of human brain cells on a microchip -- in effect creating a (tiny) brain on a chip. Until now, when scientists wanted to monitor brain cells, they could only monitor one or two simultaneously, but with this new neurochip, large groups of cells can be placed on the chip and observed in detail, as they go about their business 'networking and performing automatic, large-scale drug screening for various brain dysfunctions,' according to PhysOrg. But that's just the beginning! This sort of advance could someday lead to neurochip implants for driving artificial limbs, treatments for strokes and brain trauma, and more. The Globe and Mail even mentions the possibility that living neurons could be combined with silicon circuits to create an 'organic computer.' From that point it's only a matter of time before you're jacking into cyberspace with your Dixie Flatline ROM.

University of Calgary succeeds in building a neurochip out of silicon, human brain cells originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | PhysOrg | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Putting my money where my mouth isn’t

2010-08-09T19:28:00.001+10:00

Putting my money where my mouth isn’t: "

A few days ago, Vinay Deolalikar of HP Labs started circulating a claimed proof of P≠NP. As anyone could predict, the alleged proof has already been Slashdotted (see also Lipton’s blog and Bacon’s blog), and my own inbox has been filling up faster than the Gulf of Mexico.

Alas, a simple ‘top kill’ seems unlikely to work here. What’s obvious from even a superficial reading is that Deolalikar’s manuscript is well-written, and that it discusses the history, background, and difficulties of the P vs. NP question in a competent way. More importantly (and in contrast to 98% of claimed P≠NP proofs), even if this attempt fails, it seems to introduce some thought-provoking new ideas, particularly a connection between statistical physics and the first-order logic characterization of NP. I’ll leave it to the commenters to debate whether Deolalikar’s paper exhibits one or more of the Ten Signs A Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough Is Wrong.

‘But enough question-dodging!’ you exclaim. ‘Is the proof right or isn’t it? C’mon, it’s been like three hours since you first saw it—what’s taking you so long?’ Well, somehow, I haven’t yet found the opportunity to study this 103-page manuscript in detail. Furthermore, I don’t plan to interrupt my vacation time in Israel and Greece to do so, unless experts who have studied the paper in detail start telling me that I should.

Unfortunately, I can already foresee that the above response will fail to staunch the flow of emails. As a blogger, I’m apparently expected to

(1) render an instantaneous opinion on any claimed mathematical breakthrough,

(2) be consistently right, and

(3) do the above without looking like I’m being unfair or rushing to judgment.

While requirements (1) and (2) are not so hard to satisfy simultaneously, (3) makes my job an extremely difficult one. In fact, I could think of only one mechanism to communicate my hunch about Deolalikar’s paper in a way that everyone would agree is (more than) fair to him, without having to invest the hard work to back my hunch up. And thus I hereby announce the following offer:

If Vinay Deolalikar is awarded the $1,000,000 Clay Millennium Prize for his proof of P≠NP, then I, Scott Aaronson, will personally supplement his prize by the amount of $200,000.

I’m dead serious—and I can afford it about as well as you’d think I can.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Token multitouch screen shows us the future of DJing, today (video)

2010-08-07T03:01:00.001+10:00

Token multitouch screen shows us the future of DJing, today (video): "

Think you know multitouch surfaces? Think again. We've just come across a video demo of the Token multitouch, erm, pedestal, which seems to have come straight from the future. A clear sheet of glass that beams out video from your computer and accepts touch inputs in return, the Token concept has been designed by a chap named Rodrigo hailing out of Chile. We know it uses a rear projector for its video, but other construction details are scarce at this point; what's really special here, however, is the way he combines it with a Traktor Pro controller titled Emulator, turning a few intelligent finger swipes into a kickass light-and-sound show. See it on video after the break.

Continue reading Token multitouch screen shows us the future of DJing, today (video)

Token multitouch screen shows us the future of DJing, today (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkPabloMartin.com | yoyen munchausen (Vimeo) | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Strained graphene leads to pseudo-magnetic fields, bends physics even further

2010-08-03T12:09:00.001+10:00

Strained graphene leads to pseudo-magnetic fields, bends physics even further: "Man, if only this had been discovered before Ariadne was tasked with building impossible dreams. A team of scientists caught high-fiving over at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have a new and riveting announcement to share, and it revolves around our old and trusted friend, graphene. This go 'round, the self-proclaimed 'extraordinary form of carbon' is being stressed to its max, but not without good reason. Thanks to inquisitive minds and a 'stroke of serendipity,' a research team was able to create magnetic fields in excess of 300 tesla by simply straining graphene in a certain way. For physicists, the discovery is a dream come true, particularly when you realize that magnetic fields in excess of 85 tesla were practically impossible to come across in a laboratory setting. The benefits here? It's honestly too early to tell, but gurus in the field are already suggesting that the 'opportunities for basic science with strain engineering [are] huge.' Something tells us Magneto would concur.

Strained graphene leads to pseudo-magnetic fields, bends physics even further originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkPopSci | Berkeley Lab | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Hitachi shows off new gesture-based interface, touts grand plans

2010-07-30T16:47:00.001+10:00

Hitachi shows off new gesture-based interface, touts grand plans: "

Hitachi's already dipped its toes (or hands, as it were) into the gesture-based waters before, but it looks to have refined things quite a bit for its latest Minority Report-esque demo, which the company is showing off as part of its 100th anniversary celebration. While complete details are a bit light, the system does seem to be reasonably responsive, and appears to rely on a projection-based system and a single camera to track movements. Perhaps what's most interesting, however, is that Hitachi eventually sees systems like this being used in everything from digital signage to medical applications -- and, yes, even TVs and desktop computers (though not before mid-2011 at the earliest). Head on past the break to check it out in action.

Continue reading Hitachi shows off new gesture-based interface, touts grand plans

Hitachi shows off new gesture-based interface, touts grand plans originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkTechnabob | Akihabara News | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Invisibility cloak upgraded to bend infrared light, not to mention our minds

2010-07-27T22:21:00.001+10:00

Invisibility cloak upgraded to bend infrared light, not to mention our minds: "The fabled cloak of invincibility was once considered impossible for modern science, chilling out with perpetual motion up in the clouds, but these days scientists are tilting at blurry windmills with a modicum of success several times a year. The latest advance in theory comes to us from Michigan Tech, which says it can now cloak objects in the infrared spectrum. Previous attempts using metallic metamaterials could only bend microwave radiation, the study claims, but using tiny resonators made of chalcogenide glass arranged in spokes around the object (see diagram at left) researcher Elena Semouchkina and colleagues successfully hid a simulated metal cylinder from 3.5 terahertz waves. While it's hard to say when we might see similar solutions for visible light, even a practical application of infrared cloaking could put your night vision goggles to shame, or perhaps block covert objects from being detected by those newfangled terahertz x-rays.

Invisibility cloak upgraded to bend infrared light, not to mention our minds originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkSlashdot | Michigan Tech | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Zephyr solar powered UAV lands after a fortnight in the air (whatever that means)

2010-07-24T12:03:00.003+10:00

Zephyr solar powered UAV lands after a fortnight in the air (whatever that means): "

With all the excitement surrounding the solar powered UAV's record-breaking flights, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that QinetiQ's Zephyr has finally landed in an airfield in Arizona, 14 days and 24 minutes after take-off. This quadruples the previous unofficial world record for unmanned flight (which it set itself in 2008). This is a dramatic proof-of-concept, having flown longer without refueling than any other airplane. We'd like to imagine that this technology would be used primarily for delivering toys to children in developing nations, but something tells us that will have to wait until the military gets its hands on it. PR after the break.

Continue reading Zephyr solar powered UAV lands after a fortnight in the air (whatever that means)

Zephyr solar powered UAV lands after a fortnight in the air (whatever that means) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video)

2010-07-24T12:03:00.001+10:00

Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video): "

You might not have expected the future to look like your granddad's groovy camper van, but take a closer look here and you'll find that this is indeed nothing like your forefather's people carrier. The VisLab team from the University of Parma have taken a fleet of Piaggio Porter Electric vehicles, strapped them with an array of cameras, lasers and other sensors, and topped them off with solar panels to keep the electronics powered. Oh, and lest we forgot to mention: the vans are (mostly) autonomous. VIAC (or VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge) is the grand name given to their big demonstration: an 8,000-mile, 3-month tour that will ultimately find them arriving in Shanghai, China, having set off from Milan this Tuesday. You can follow the day-by-day development on the blog below, though we're still being told that practical driverless road cars are a measure of decades, not years, away.

Continue reading Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video)

Driverless vans set off on intercontinental trek from Italy to China (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkCNET | VisLab | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Luke Palmer: Programming for a culture approaching singularity

2010-07-22T22:12:00.001+10:00

Luke Palmer: Programming for a culture approaching singularity: "

In 2001, Ray Kurzweil published his inspiring, controversial essay The Law of Accelerating Returns. I acknowledge that the essay sometimes seems far-fetched, and perhaps some details are overly (or underly) idealistic, but in essence I find it very convincing. I will take it as an assumption for this article, and I also assume my readers are familiar with the gist of the essay.

I read Kurzweil’s essay about six weeks ago, and it has set off a chain reaction in my consciousness, causing me to reconsider my perceptions of technology. At first, it seemed to murder my denotational idealism, destroy my hopes of Dana (my purely functional operating system). It filled me with an excited fear, as if I were being carried down the rapids of a great river, trying not to hit the next rock.

Now the ideas have settled and my idealism is born again with a new perspective. The spirit of Dana still has a place, and I will describe what I think that is.

We are at a unique inflection point in the process of technological acceleration. In the last 50-100 years, orders of magnitude of progress began to occur in a single human lifetime. Technology is folding upon itself, each new invention making use of more and more recent knowledge and tools.

Dana was originally envisaged to facilitate this growth by observing that the vast majority of software out there is not compositional, thus we are re-inventing many wheels. Dana’s goal was to provide a framework in which everything must be compositional. But my early execution of the idea was misguided. It may have had a noble goal, but I was pretending that I was at the beginning of an acceleration of software, not the middle. Dana’s implementation did not make use of modern technology, and thus its development was an order of magnitude or two slower than the rate of modern software’s development. Further, its despotic purism would never catch on: it was trying to change the direction of an avalanche by throwing a snowball.

A truly modern compositional environment must embrace the flow of knowledge. Those who try to reverse the paradigm will end up reinventing all the technology that the mainstream is already using, and by the time they are finished the mainstream will be lightyears ahead. The state of the art may be ugly, but it exists, which is more than the purists can say. One person — one team — cannot develop software anymore; to do something new, we must employ the labor of the entire world.

Currently, the most constraining property of software is that for it to be reusable, it must be designed for reuse. It is hard to reuse libraries in a way for which they were not intended. And in fact most of the coding that goes on is not in libraries at all — people aren’t intending their code to be reused by anyone. They just want to get their product out the door and get some cash flowing in. Below is a reified mental picture of this.

The bulb on the bottom is the software designed for reuse. It grows slowly and uniformly, mostly occurring in the open-source world, created by people who like to write good software. The rays at the top are individual, result-oriented projects. This code is not typically designed to be reused. These projects grow quickly in a single direction, but if someone else wants to go in a similar direction, they have to start at the bottom. This is an economic phenomenon, and the economic goals of developers are not likely to change.

To accelerate progress, we must find a way to re-use those chutes, the goal being to transform the picture into something more like this:

In this picture, each results-oriented chute carries with it a net of all the support code that was written for it, upon which anyone can build. Of course only with the consent of the creator (people will find a way to protect their information), but if it is useful, then people will buy it.

I have thus become a supporter of Donald Knuth’s mantra:

I also must confess to a strong bias against the fashion for reusable code. To me, ‘re-editable code’ is much, much better than an untouchable black box or toolkit.

Forking a project in order to use one of its features in another project is no simple task. Depending on the complexity of the feature, you might gain some time by doing things this way, but many competent software engineers prefer to simply rewrite from scratch. One reason is in order to understand the code, but another is simply economics. Saying that I rewrite features because it is fun is missing half of the equation. I rewrite features because it is more fun then spending a week fighting integration issues (very much not fun). I claim that to support this new picture, our primary goal should be to vastly reduce integration issues.

Here is where my purist ideals kick back in, having found a new purpose. Pure functions have no integration issues, at least semantically speaking (performance is always a bit more subtle). A pure function makes explicit all of its inputs and outputs, so to use it, you can just rip it out of its context, provide the inputs, and transform the outputs. While depending on the situation that may be a lot of work, compare it to finding all the places a singleton was modified in order to recreate its state at some point in the execution of the program. What if the singleton returned a reference to an object that was stored away and modified by an obscure corner of the program, upon which your feature later depended. This sounds like a terribly inflexible design, but most software is terribly designed, and we still want to reuse it.

However, just saying ‘use pure functions, voila!’ is no solution. The trend of the world is gradually shifting toward more functional idioms, but asking everyday programmers (who we care about, because they are doing our work for us) to switch to purity is asking a lot. Retraining brains is too hard.

So that is my open research question. How do we introduce the immense advantage of purity from this perspective into programming pop culture? Perhaps it is a new virtual machine, that does dynamic dataflow analysis. Perhaps it is a static analysis tool. Perhaps it is a new language, which can interface with many popular existing languages. This would be slow to take off because it requires migration (thus risking never), but because of interop and the good reuse properties (with tool support) it might be faster to achieve critical mass. Clojure and Scala are doing kindof okay.

Once you have a way to track assumptions, the rest follows easily. It would be possible to assemble a database of every function ever written, with the ability to just drag and drop it into your program (ehem, Haskellers, why don’t we have this?). The natural version control system, another step in the direction of the DVCSes, tracks changes between individual objects, and how those changes induce changes in the objects that reference them (this is the part I have thought through the most, but I will forgo describing it for it is a small detail and this post is already very long).

A singularity-aware culture should keep its eye on a way to bring the next inevitable order of magnitude of progress. I believe the elimination of integration issues is one such way, and Haskell, for the most part, has already eliminated them. The first step is to bring this property to the popular languages in any way we can (this includes making a Haskell a popular language… LOL).

Did you enjoy reading this article? Let me know! :-)

(Via Planet Haskell.)

UK defense firm pumps data through solid submarine walls

2010-07-22T21:53:00.001+10:00

UK defense firm pumps data through solid submarine walls: "

Wireless power may still be on the drawing board, but wireless data is here today, and a UK defense contractor has figured out a way to pipe the latter through several inches of steel. Using a pair of piezoelectric transducers on either side of a watertight submarine compartment, BAE's 'Through Hull Data Link' sends and receives an acoustic wave capable of 15MHz data rates, enough to transmit video by essentially hammering ever-so-slightly on the walls. BAE impressed submarine commanders by streaming Das Boot right through their three-inch hulls, and while metadrama is obviously the killer app here, the company claims it will also save millions by replacing the worrisome wiring that's physically routed via holes in a submarine's frame. See the company's full US patent application at our more coverage link.

UK defense firm pumps data through solid submarine walls originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkBBC | BAE Systems | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Raytheon's pain gun finally gets deployed in Afghanistan

2010-07-19T09:44:00.001+10:00

Raytheon's pain gun finally gets deployed in Afghanistan: "

It's been six long years since we first got wind of the Pentagon's Active Denial System, and four since it was slated to control riots in Iraq, but though we've seen reporters zapped by the device once or twice, it seems the Air Force-approved pain gun is only now entering service in Afghanistan. The BBC reports the device -- which generates a targeted burning sensation in humans -- is now deployed with US troops, though a military spokesman is assuring publications that it 'has not been used operationally,' and that the armed forces have yet to decide whether to actually use it. Wired reports the unit was plagued by technical and safety issues for years, not to mention political concerns, but as to that last we have to imagine even a semi-damaging heat ray beats the pants off lead-based alternatives.

Raytheon's pain gun finally gets deployed in Afghanistan originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Jul 2010 08:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | BBC | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

In the Air for 7 days and counting!

2010-07-18T14:26:00.001+10:00

Zephyr solar UAV sets yet another flight record: 7 days and counting!: "

This certainly is an interesting time for solar powered flight. Solar Impulse just returned from a 26-hour manned test flight, and now QinetiQ's Zephyr, a drone who we last saw clocking over 83 hours in-flight is in the air again: this time, it's more like seven days and counting! The craft, which took off from the Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona last Friday, is being billed as an 'eternal aircraft,' one that can stay aloft for extremely long periods of time for use as recon and communications platforms. The previous world endurance record for a UAV was set by NASA's Global Hawk, which stayed aloft for 30 hours and 24 minutes.

Continue reading Zephyr solar UAV sets yet another flight record: 7 days and counting!

Zephyr solar UAV sets yet another flight record: 7 days and counting! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Ready for Extinction?

2010-07-15T08:45:00.001+10:00

The makers of 2012 were about 16 million years off the mark, if science is any sort of judge. Picture: Sony

Extinctions studied over 600 million years
Occur every 27 million years
Oort cloud of dust, ice responsible

FIRST the bad news - scientists are now 99 per cent certain mass extinction events on Earth are as regular as clockwork.

The good news? There's still 16 million years to go until the next one.

That's the finding from scientists from the University of Kansas and the Smithsonian Institute in the US, where they've mapped out all Earth's extinction events from the past 600 million years.

According to what they've seen, life on Earth is wiped out every 27 million years.

It's not going to be global warming that finishes us all off, either.

Unfortunately for our planet, it passes through a shower of comets every 27 million years, and it very rarely escapes unscathed.

Of the last 20 times we made a galactic run for our lives through the comet shower, Earth only escaped with most of its biological organisms intact six times.

The most widely publicised one was 65 million years ago, when a 15km wide asteroid hit the Earth in Mexico with the force of a billion atomic bombs and wiped out the dinosaurs.

There's also more bad news - the extinction scenario rate is not strictly accurate.

Sometimes the asteroids ambush all life on Earth up to 10 million years earlier than they should.

The good news is all on the side of our Sun's dark twin Nemesis, which until now received an unfairly large proportion of bad press, being considered responsible for the bombardment.

The theory used to be that Nemesis passed through a huge - even by universal standards - belt of dust and ice called the Oort cloud every 27 million years, sending the comets our way.

Now scientists say that because the extinction scenarios happen so regularly, Nemesis couldn't be responsible, as its orbit would have changed over such a long time.

Which isn't to say the Sun's evil twin - which lies about one light year away from it - is not still spraying Oort cloud comets all over our galaxy, just that they're hitting other planets these days.

Which still leaves the question as to why we've drawn the short straw and what we're going to do about it.

The last one occurred 11 million years ago, so at least Doomsday cult members can now set their clocks for the year 16,002,010, rather than the fashionably Hollywood mark of 2012.

Which gives us all a little breathing space - if you don't believe in global warming.

By Peter Farquhar, Technology Editor

From:news.com.au

July 14, 20108:50AM

MIT's piezoelectric fibers can act as speaker or microphone, don't mind auto-tune

2010-07-13T22:13:00.001+10:00

MIT's piezoelectric fibers can act as speaker or microphone, don't mind auto-tune: "

Piezoelectric materials work quite simply, in theory -- motion in, electricity out, or vice versa -- and since that's just how speakers and microphones transmit their sound, it's not much of a stretch to imagine someone would figure out audio on a micron scale. That someone is MIT's Yoel Fink, who's reportedly engineered a marvelous process for producing fibers that can detect and emit sound. Following up their famous work on flexible cameras, Fink's team discovered they could keep piezoelectric strands rigid enough to produce audible vibrations by inserting graphite, AKA pencil lead. Better yet, the lab process can apparently make the threads on a fairly large scale, 'yielding tens of metres of piezoelectric fibre' at a single draw. The potential for fabric made from such fibers is fantastic, of course -- especially combined with this particular scientist's previous research into camera cloth.

MIT's piezoelectric fibers can act as speaker or microphone, don't mind auto-tune originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | MIT News, Nature Materials | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Revenge of the quadrocopters: now they move in packs (video)

2010-07-13T20:03:00.005+10:00

Revenge of the quadrocopters: now they move in packs (video): "

In case you didn't find the original quadrocopter chilling enough, the GRASP Lab out of the University of Pennsylvania has gone and added a bit of cooperative logic to the recipe so that now multiple little drones can work together. Also upgraded with a 'claw-like' gripper that allows it to pick up and transport objects, the newer quadrocopter can team up on its prey payload with its buddies, all while maintaining its exquisite balance and agility. Skip past the break to see it on video.

Continue reading Revenge of the quadrocopters: now they move in packs (video)

Revenge of the quadrocopters: now they move in packs (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | TheDmel (YouTube) | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Lockheed Martin, Navy team up to deploy communications buoys for submarines

2010-07-13T20:03:00.003+10:00

Lockheed Martin, Navy team up to deploy communications buoys for submarines: "

Lockheed Martin has announced that it's completed a critical design review for a system that enables submarine communication while below periscope depth. Part of the US Navy's Communications at Speed and Depth Program, buoys are launched by the sub, which can then connect nearby to military networks or satellites. The 40-inch long buoys can either be launched from the sub itself, shuttling data back and forth via miles-long cables, or dropped from aircraft. If the latter, communications is established using an acoustic messaging system similar to SONAR. Now that the review is complete, the team will begin producing hardware with an eye toward delivering engineering design models early next year. PR after the break.

Continue reading Lockheed Martin, Navy team up to deploy communications buoys for submarines

Lockheed Martin, Navy team up to deploy communications buoys for submarines originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(Via Engadget.)

Britain's Ministry of Defence unveils unmanned Taranis combat aircraft

2010-07-13T20:03:00.001+10:00

Britain's Ministry of Defence unveils unmanned Taranis combat aircraft: "

Well, it looks like Boeing's unmanned Phantom Ray stealth aircraft just got a bit of company courtesy of Britain's Ministry of Defence. It's now unveiled the BAE-built Taranis, which is not just an unmanned aircraft, but an unmanned combat aircraft that promises to be capable of penetrating enemy territory -- as opposed to something like a Predator drone that's only suitable for use if the airspace is under control. As you might expect, complete details on the aircraft are still being kept under wraps, but the MoD says there's 'more than a million man hours' behind it, and that its first flight trials will begin early next year. And, no, 'unmanned' doesn't mean autonomous -- the MoD is quick to point out that, 'should such systems enter into service, they will at all times be under the control of highly trained military crews on the ground.'

[Thanks, Rob]

Britain's Ministry of Defence unveils unmanned Taranis combat aircraft originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkBBC News | Ministry of Defence, BAE | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Sunlight Operated Watch

2010-07-12T11:47:00.001+10:00

Pulsar clocks spin closer to reality: "Contrary to popular legend, Pulsar wristwatches don't use the light of dying stars to keep time. However, if researchers at the University of Manchester are correct, the strobe-like effect generated by a collapsed star's spin may indeed be the most accurate clock (sorry, atoms) available to mankind. While pulsars have long been studied for insight into the nature of time and gravity, their patterns weren't as regular as scientists would like, but the U of M team believe that's because the stars are actually swapping between two different states, each with their own rotation speed. By correcting for the difference when the hunk of burning gas puts on the brakes, they can make measurements far more precise -- meaning a greater understanding of the fabric of space-time for the brainiacs, and if we're lucky, reliable pulsar clocks within our lifetime.

Pulsar clocks spin closer to reality originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkSpace.com | Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Bendy Bikes

2010-07-12T11:45:00.001+10:00

Bendable bicycle wraps itself around a pole - by design: "

Parking your two-wheeler in a shady neighborhood, but left your secondary lock at home? No problem -- to protect your wheels, just bend your bike around a nearby post and thread your U-lock through the whole kit at once. Thats the idea behind UK designer Kevin Scotts folding bicycle, which is rigid enough to freely ride, but releases its flexible ratcheting mechanism when you push a lever on the side. The design won the 21-year-old student £500 at the New Designers exhibition in London this week. Hes presently looking for partners to help commercialize the concept, which looks more practical than some, so we expect it'll be only a few years before you'll see his creation zipping down the street. One question, though -- why not go the whole nine yards and give it a built-in lock, too?

Bendable bicycle wraps itself around a pole - by design originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkInhabitat | Daily Mail | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Android Market Will Hit 100,000 Apps This Month

2010-07-11T10:13:00.001+10:00

Android Market Will Hit 100,000 Apps This Month: "

Accumulated number of Application and Games in the Market

The graph speaks for itself. According to Android Market web interface AndroLib.com, the Android Market now offers users more than 90,000 apps, and is on pace to end the month in six figures. It will reach this milestone several months shy of its second birthday. A year ago, the number was under 10,000.

We'll keep an eye on the numbers and let you know when we get there. And while, of course, not every app is great, as the pie gets bigger, so does the slice that represents quality software.

Image: AndroLib.com

NOTE:Android Market Will Hit 100,000 Apps This Month originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

AndroidGuys is looking for summer interns! Check out bit.ly/AGinterns

Android 2.2’s Javascript Performance Smokes iOS4

2010-07-08T19:54:00.001+10:00

Vic Gundotra Wasn’t Lyin’: Android 2.2’s Javascript Performance Smokes iOS4: "

At Google I/O, we all laughed (some cried, depending on who you’re rooting for) and cheered when Vic Gundotra showed the Froyo-equipped Google Nexus One outshining Apple’s iPad in a browser javascript performance test between the two devices’ default browsers. Ars Technica took it upon themselves to give us more of a traditional look at how big of a leap Android 2.2 has over iOS4 in this department.

Running SunSpider benchmarks, Android nearly halved the amount of time it took to execute the tests over the iPhone 4 running iOS4. As far as V8 goes? Android 2.2 on the Nexus more than quadrupled the results the iPhone managed to produce. Tooting horns was never a huge pastime of mine, but I think it’s necessary to let out a big bowl of Vuvuzela for Android on this one.

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Doing my oracle duty

2010-07-06T15:35:00.001+10:00

Doing my oracle duty: "

I promised myself I’d stop blogging about controversial issues whose mere mention could instigate a flamewar and permanently get me in trouble. Well, today I’m going to violate that rule, by blogging about the difference relativized and unrelativized complexity classes.

Recently a colleague of mine, who works in the foundations of quantum mechanics, sent me a long list of questions about the seminal 1993 paper of Bernstein and Vazirani that introduced the complexity class BQP (Bounded-Error Quantum Polynomial-Time). It was clear to me that all of his questions boiled down to a single point: the distinction between the relativized and unrelativized worlds. This is an absolutely crucial distinction that trips up just about everyone when they’re first learning quantum computing.

So I fired off a response, which my colleague said he found extremely helpful. It then occurred to me that what one person found helpful, another might as well—and that which makes 30% of my readers’ eyes glaze over with its thoroughgoing duh-obviousness, might be very thing that another 30% of my readers most want to see. So without further ado, the two worlds of quantum complexity theory…

In the relativized world, we let our algorithms access potentially-powerful oracles, whose internal structure we don’t examine (think of Simon’s algorithm for concreteness). In that world, we can indeed prove unconditionally that BPP≠BQP—that is, quantum computers can solve certain problems exponentially faster than classical computers, when both computers are given access to the same oracle.

In general, almost every ‘natural’ complexity class has a relativized version associated with it, and the relativized versions tend to be much easier to separate than the unrelativized versions (it’s basically the difference between a masters or PhD thesis and a Fields Medal!) So for example, within the relativized world, we can separate not only BPP from BQP, but also P from NP, NP from PSPACE, NP from BQP, etc.

By contrast, in the unrelativized world (where there are no oracles), we can’t separate any complexity classes between P and PSPACE. Doing so is universally recognized as one of the biggest open problems in mathematics (in my opinion, it’s far-and-away the biggest problem).

Now, Bernstein and Vazirani proved that BQP is ‘sandwiched’ between P and PSPACE. For that reason, as they write in their paper, one can’t hope to prove P≠BQP in the unrelativized world without also proving P≠PSPACE.

Let’s move on to another major result from Bernstein and Vazirani’s paper, namely their oracle separation between BPP and BQP. You might wonder: what’s the point of proving such a thing? Well, the Bernstein-Vazirani oracle separation gave the first formal evidence that BQP ‘might’ be larger than BPP. For if BPP equaled BQP relative to every oracle, then in particular, they’d have to be equal relative to the empty oracle—that is, in the unrelativized world!

(The converse need not hold: it could be the case that BPP=BQP, despite the existence of an oracle that separates them. So, again, separating complexity classes relative to an oracle can be thought of as a ‘baby step’ toward separating them in the real world.)

But an even more important motivation for Bernstein and Vazirani’s oracle separation is that it led shortly afterward to a better oracle separation by Simon, and that, in turn, led to Shor’s factoring algorithm.

In a sense, what Shor did was to ‘remove the oracle’ from Simon’s problem. In other words, Shor found a concrete problem in the unrelativized world (namely factoring integers), which has a natural function associated with it (namely the modular exponentiation function, f(r) = x^r mod N) that one can usefully treat as an oracle. Treating f as an oracle, one can then use a quantum algorithm related to Simon’s algorithm to find the period of f, and that in turn lets you factor integers in polynomial time.

Of course, Shor’s algorithm became much more famous than Simon’s algorithm, since the implications for computer science, cryptography, etc. were so much more concrete and dramatic than with an abstract oracle separation. However, the downside is that the speedup of Shor’s algorithm is no longer unconditional: for all anyone knows today, there might also a fast classical algorithm to factor integers. By contrast, the speedup of Simon’s algorithm (and of Bernstein-Vazirani before it) is an unconditional one.

(Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Free Apps Favored on Android

2010-07-06T15:11:00.001+10:00

Free Apps Favored on Android: "

We can all admit to at least a few points that would end up in the Android Market’s ‘needs improvement’ column, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is fastly growing as a source for mobile software that could soon rival iOS in terms of number of apps available. With their latest figures mobile app store analytics firm Distimo is breaking down just how the pricing of the over 60,000 apps available breaks down, and compared to all others Android offers an overwhelming amount of free applications.

With 57 percent of apps found in the Android Market available at no charge, the number is not only the majority for Android but also of all mobile operating systems. Take the figure as you will, however, as a lack of moderation (for better or worse) by Google means the number of hobbyist developers who can release their software built up on the open source code of Android definitely contributes to the drastic difference compared to the iPhones 28 percent free apps.

Other data also shows that the average price of apps in the Android Market sits at $3.29, and $4.27 for apps ranked in the top 100. That still comes in cheaper than the Apple App Stores average prices of right around four dollars, though the top ranked apps come in at an average premium of just about two dollars less.

[via PhoneDog]

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

iOS has a bigger dev army than Android, but will cross-platform apps rule the day?

2010-07-05T21:01:00.001+10:00

iOS has a bigger dev army than Android, but will cross-platform apps rule the day?: "

We oftentimes hear raw numbers of apps bandied about in mobile OS comparisons, but we rarely get any idea of just how many developers are behind the scenes working for each platform. This is the void of knowledge filled by AppStore HQ today, who have gone to their dev directory -- claimed to be a complete listing of all 55,000+ coders whose work is currently available for consumption in the Apple App Store or Android Market -- and stacked them into neat piles of Apple, Google and Gapple programmers. It's immediately apparent that single-platform development is the norm (with Apple holding the predictable edge), but AppStore HQ also provides a list of some of the most well known (and well funded) apps doing the cross-platform dance, and suggests that a movement is afoot toward making software available for both sets of users. Then again, the BNET article below points out the difficulties faced by smaller outfits, who might struggle to find the resources required to port their content over and maintain the skills required to be multi-platform, resulting in them sticking to one environment, irrespective of what allures others might throw their way. Give them both a read, we say.

iOS has a bigger dev army than Android, but will cross-platform apps rule the day? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkVentureBeat | AppStore HQ | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Google Music to Launch Concurrently with Android 3.0 at End of Year

2010-07-03T09:59:00.003+10:00

Google Music to Launch Concurrently with Android 3.0 at End of Year: "

Many of the killer features that Google Music will offer (stream to device playback and push downloads come to mind) go hand-in-hand with the Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) features previewed at Google I/O. It only makes sense that the two would see a concurrent launch, and that’s just what Android product manager Gaurav Jain is saying. Dan Morrill squashed the recent Gingerbread rumors floating around, and part of that includes an October release. I suppose it’s still possible, but we agree that that timeframe might be a little soon. Expect to see both Google Music and Android 3.0 launched closer to the holiday season or early 2011.

[via Gizmodo]

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Android 2.2 Get A Piece of the Pie, Platform Versions Chart Updated

2010-07-03T09:59:00.001+10:00

Android 2.2 Get A Piece of the Pie, Platform Versions Chart Updated: "

Google just updated their platform version distribution figures including a new graph showcasing historical trends. While we can all moan and complain as much as we want about how ‘slowly’ updates have been rolled out to older devices, the trending paints a picture of an OS version that has quickly grown (in the grand scheme of things) to hold the majority share at 53 percent. Also new to the data is the inclusion of Android 2.2 popping in at 1.8 percent. Older versions of Android (1.0 and 1.1) are now considered obsolete and take up a marginal fraction of the Android space. The figures should be changing more drastically in the coming month with a rumored Android 2.2 update for the Droid.

[via Google]

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

MIT's Android optometry app could help you stop squinting all the time (video)

2010-07-02T17:43:00.001+10:00

MIT's Android optometry app could help you stop squinting all the time (video): "

Remember Bokodes, MIT's tiny replacement for barcodes and the like? Their holographic nature enabled them to represent different information from different angles, and it's this property that allows the tech behind them to be used in a very different and even more useful way: figuring out just how busted your vision is. The Camera Culture team at MIT's Media Lab evolved that tech into a $2 box that refracts the image displayed on a smartphone screen. When combined with an app that displays a set of dots and lines, the user can manipulate the image until things look to be perfectly aligned. Once complete, the app spits out a prescription and you're just a quick trip to your local mall-based eyeglasses joint away from perfect vision. The goal is to make it easier for optometrists in developing countries to quickly and easily find glasses for people, but an app that could save a trip to the doctor's office is a wonderful thing regardless of where you are.

Continue reading MIT's Android optometry app could help you stop squinting all the time (video)

MIT's Android optometry app could help you stop squinting all the time (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkVizWorld.com | MIT Media Lab | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Finland the first country in the world to make broadband access a legal right

2010-07-02T10:21:00.001+10:00

Finland the first country in the world to make broadband access a legal right: "

We knew this was coming, but starting today, every citizen of Finland has the legal right to a 1Mbps broadband connection, meaning that providers are now required to make the connections available to everyone. The government of Finland has also promised to make good on its goal of getting every citizen with a 100Mbps connection by 2015, saying that they now consider internet access a basic requirement of daily life. We're with you on that one, we promise.

Finland the first country in the world to make broadband access a legal right originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | BBC News | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Swiss lab builds lightweight, tree-perching glider robot, swarms to follow

2010-07-01T20:27:00.001+10:00

Swiss lab builds lightweight, tree-perching glider robot, swarms to follow: "

Last we heard from Mirko Kovac of the Switzerland-based EPFL Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, he was setting a robot high-jump record with his grasshopper-inspired bot. Now he's back with what might be an even more impressive robot -- a 4.6 gram glider that can fly headfirst into any surface, perch itself, and then detach on command. The idea there being that the gliders could be outfitted with sensors and deployed en masse in difficult to reach areas -- Kovac gives the example of a swarm equipped with heat-sensors that could attach themselves to trees and monitor for forest fires. What's more, he says that the same perching mechanism could also be applied to other robots -- possibly even a hybrid of the glider and his grasshopper bot that could hop and fly around before finding a spot to perch itself. Head on past the break to see Kovac explain it himself on video.

Continue reading Swiss lab builds lightweight, tree-perching glider robot, swarms to follow

Swiss lab builds lightweight, tree-perching glider robot, swarms to follow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | EPFL | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Researchers create functioning human lung on a microchip

2010-06-29T10:15:00.001+10:00

Researchers create functioning human lung on a microchip: "

Researchers at Harvard University have successfully created a functioning, respirating human 'lung' on a chip in a lab. Made using human and blood vessel cells and a microchip, the translucent lung is far simpler in terms of observation than traditional, actual human lungs (for obvious reasons), in a small convenient package about the size of a pencil eraser. The researchers have demonstrated its effectiveness and are now moving toward showing its ability to replicate gas exchange between lung cells and the bloodstream. Down the road a bit more, the team hopes to produce other organs on chips, and hook them all up to the already operational heart on a chip. And somewhere in the world, Margaret Atwood and her pigoons are rejoicing, right? Here's to the future. Video description of the device is below.

Continue reading Researchers create functioning human lung on a microchip

Researchers create functioning human lung on a microchip originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

PermalinkGizmag, Switched | Harvard University | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Talking Quantum Algorithms with Peter Shor

2010-06-28T15:23:00.001+10:00

Talking Quantum Algorithms with Peter Shor

Jun 9, 2010

A year ago when Dr. Dobb's began publishing these essays on quantum computing, high-level quantum algorithms were the jumping off point. The series which followed diverged quickly towards quantum computing hardware implementations. Our return to the exploration of algorithms commences with Peter W. Shor, Henry Adams Morss and Henry Adams Morss, Jr. Professor of Applied Math of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the words¹ of Michele Mosca of the Institute for Quantum Computing, Prof. Shor "transformed the field of quantum computing" with the publication of a quantum factoring algorithm ["Shor's Algorithm"] in his 1994 paper Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Prime Factorization and Discrete Logarithms on a Quantum Computer.

Prof. Shor spoke from his office at MIT.

JW: May I ask you what you think of the current attempts to build quantum computers?

PS: I think they're all a long way from getting anywhere near a quantum computer. Most of them are cutting edge science, and we've come a lot farther than people imagined we would 15 years ago.

JW: How far are quantum algorithms progressing in default of hardware?

PS: There have been a couple of recent survey papers. While there's nothing really exciting, there is some interesting stuff. Harrow, Hassidim and Lloyd² and others showed that in some sense you can solve linear equations on a quantum computer, a very important problem, although this algorithm only speeds it up in certain special cases.

JW: What are you working on these days?

PS: My most interesting thing recently is on quantum money³, a cryptographic protocol in which a mint can produce a quantum state, no one else can copy the state, and anyone with a quantum computer can verify that the state came from the mint.

JW: I recently wrote that quantum algorithms on real quantum computers will immediately invalidate all currently used encryption algorithms. Is that really true?

PS: No.

JW: I kind of thought I was being hyperbolic there!

PS: Quantum computers invalidate public key, but not private key algorithms. There are proposals for public key systems which havenot been shown to be invalidated by quantum computers, but most of these are not in widespread use. All the ones in widespread use can be invalidated by quantum computers.

JW: Is the following something like a quantum algorithm?

Accordions are tuned with multiple reeds tuned a few hertz apart so that there is a beat between two frequencies, e.g., the two reeds for the note A will be tuned to 438 and 442 and produce a 4Hz beat. In the sound chamber of an accordion the wave form of multiple notes is combined. If two pairs of reeds were tuned for differing numbers of beats, and if you could pick out the interference of two beat rates, the accordion could compute, say, the difference 5 minus 4. At no time in that experiment could you experience the individual waves from the individual contributors to the resulting wave form without destroying the resultant wave form.

PS: It's something like one. If you think about the factoring algorithm [Shor's algorithm] reducing factoring to periodicity, and you get this periodicity by interference, the big difference is that in reading out this periodicity you do something you could never do on an analog computer because the period is exponentially long. In reading out this period you take advantage of the wave / particle duality that quantum mechanics deals with. So this frequency, which is analog, can be read out digitally as a sequence of ones and zeroes so that you get it in enough precision. You can put this 500-digit number through number theory calculations on a digital computer and it spits out the factors.

So interference is part of what makes a quantum computer, but it's not enough.

JW: When I look at sunset over the Rockies, the clouds form bars of darkness in the light, bands of interference that stretch out towards the eastern plains. Is that pattern the solution to some long polynomial equation, e.g., one describing somehow the precise location and density and meteorological characteristics of the clouds which formed it? And is that a quantum computer?

PS: In some sense it is, but in this case, you don't lose anything by thinking of light entirely as a wave, and you don't use this wave / particle duality, so I would say it is an analog, rather than a quantum computation.

My view of quantum computation is that it has to use the fact that quantum objects are both waves and particles.

JW: Why is that duality the nugget of what is quantum computation?

PS: In the early days of quantum computation people had all sorts of arguments for what you really need for quantum computation. People still have different opinions about what makes quantum computing behave so differently from classical computing. Some are going to say entanglement is the nugget, some are going to say it's the exponential size of the quantum state space. I think of duality as the nugget, but all these phenomena are closely related.

Why do I think it's the duality? Good question!

JW: It's been difficult to find a hard definition of quantum computing. Your algorithm yields a range in which the probability of finding factors is elevated. Then I look at other quantum computing communities and they are designing quantum logic gates like CNOT and iSwap. What is the taxonomy of that continuum?

PS: If you look at conventional computers, someone is going to describe a high-level algorithm which may involve steps such as sorting and blah-blah-blah. Then you talk to the people building the chips, and they are building NOT and AND and OR and NAND gates.

I'm describing the factoring algorithm in high-level terms, and the people who are building CNOT gates are trying to build the machine that executes that factoring algorithm.

JW: It seems like people would have been theorizing about building these CNOT and iSwap gates long before your high-level algorithm was published. There was interest in quantum computing before. Was it just that your paper demonstrated for the first time the polynomial time versus exponential time advantage in a recognizable context?

PS: Yes. It was the first problem folks were interested in, the first that wasn't a completely contrived problem which was sped up by quantum computing. Of course you can say that Richard Feynman and Yuri Manin were first because they had the idea of solving quantum mechanics using quantum computers, which, when you get down to it, is probably a more important application than factoring.

JW: What will quantum computing do and what will its use be to humanity?

PS: Nobody really knows. We can hope! There are some things which people spend huge amounts of computational time on now which, I think, are very likely to be helped by quantum computing.

Drug companies spend enormous amounts of computational resources on drug design because it's much easier to try to find out on a computer what a molecule will do than to build the molecules and experiment. It doesn't always work now, but I think quantum computing will help. I'm certain there are significant quantum effects in protein folding which are not being modeled by digital computers.

One of the most amazing things recently is the discovery that chloroplasts have a coherent quantum walk⁴. Chloroplasts use some of the same means we study in quantum algorithms to transfer energy, increasing their efficiency.

This electron transfer quantum walk is a quantum effect that we had studied and already understood, and then the biologists discovered it occurring in chloroplasts.

This says to me that there are quantum effects happening in biological molecules. There are probably many other significant quantum effects happening in biological molecules that we don't understand because we don't yet have a quantum computer to model them.

JW: I've seen quantum computer machine language simulators on the web. What would an implementation of Shor's Algorithm in a high-level quantum computing language look like?

PS: Good question. Certainly I can imagine a Fortran-style high-level language that would make Shor's Algorithm easier, but really, you'd want something more high-level than that.

JW: What are these high-level operators?

PS: Maybe things like a fourier transform operator that would expand into a large number of steps. As we understand more algorithms, we'll understand what higher-level operations we need to implement them.

If you look at the history of computing, the algorithmic stuff that was done before there were real computers around to experiment on is much more primitive than what came after there were real computers to experiment on.

Notes
1 Video of a panel discussion including Prof. Peter W. Shor on quantum computing at the Q2C (Quantum to Cosmos) Festival 2009.

2 Quantum algorithm for linear systems of equations, Aram W. Harrow, Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd

3 Quantum money from knots, Edward Farhi, David Gosset, Avinatan Hassidim, Andrew Lutomirski, Peter Shor (arXiv:1004.5127v1 [quant-ph])

4 Quantum-Coherent Electronic Energy Transfer: Did Nature Think of It First?, Gregory D. Scholes, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2010, 1 (1), pp 2–8 DOI: 10.1021/jz900062f

Quantum memory improves (vastly) | misc.ience

2010-06-28T15:22:00.001+10:00

Let’s hope I manage to explain this properly :)

Photons make up light.

Firstly, a shoutout to a local – a University of Otago researcher was actually involved in this. Hooray! It means I get, not only to geek out, but to have pride in doing so. Always a nice feeling.

So, on with the post. Well, in essence, quantum memory just got a lot better. If that’s all the news you needed, you may stop reading now.

If, on the other hand, you have a multitude of questions, perhaps including ‘what is quantum memory?, ‘how much better?’, the classic ”why do we care?’ and so forth, then read on.

The first thing to understand is, probably, the concept of quantum*. In this case, we’re talking about really, really small things. On the subatomic level. Smaller than atoms. Electrons. Photons. Quarks (beware the quantum duck, haha), etc.

The next thing to understand is the idea of quantum communication networks. We’re interested in these because, if we can implement them, they’re very secure. Very secure. The problem with current encryption is that no encryption algorithm as currently written is perfectly unbreakable. The top encryptions (well, many) use random numbers in the encryption process. The problem with this is that a piece of software had to generate those random numbers, meaning that they aren’t, truly, random.

The great thing about quantum communication networks is that true random number generation** is possible. Hence the security.

The thing with building quantum communication networks, though, is that there needs to be the ability to store this information. So that it can be coordinated, passed on, etc. And retrieval of the information, once stored, needs to be on-demand. One needs to be able to lift specific data out of the whole packet, for example. Or get it when one needs it.

The wrinkle here is that the medium used is photons. Little light bits. So the storage device/medium needs to be able to store the quantum information in a light field. Easy! Or not, in fact. The thing with photons is that they’re quantum. Which means that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle applies to them.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is brilliant. In essence, it states that on a quantum level, one can either know something’s position, or its velocity. One can’t know both (one can in the macro world we inhabit, happily). Why is this? Because in order to see something, we have to bounce photons off it. If you’re dealing with subatomic stuff, then even one photon is kinda big. As an example, observing quantum-thing-A by bouncing just a single photon off of it. changes its velocity in the same way that someone your size bumping into you while you’re walking does. So you can see where it was at the time of the incident, but you can’t know where it was going. Or at what speed.

What does this mean? Well,it means that the classic means of measuring and reconstructing this data don’t work. The storage device has to simply imprint the light field’s characteristics – we can’t measure them when they’re input, because that changes the information. Rendering the exercise moot.

People have been playing with ways to achieve this storage for a while now. I myself have read some great papers on the subject. The problem is that, much like my memory sometimes, the highest recall allowed by any of these methods was low: 17% at maximum. That’s not even nearly enough to make it practicable, particularly if one is pedantic enough to want practical transmission rates at the sorts of distances (>1,000km) over which quantum communication would occur. The minimum efficiency necessary, for various reasons, is 50%.

These previous, low-efficiency means have used atomic vapours. They’ve also only been able to use pretty weak quantum states, and an average photon number of around one. Not great.

Now, however, a breakthrough has been achieved! A team of international physics brains have done things rather differently. Firstly, the quantum memory they’ve developed is solid state***. Which is brilliant. As Jevon J Longdell (the Kiwi author) says:

We stored the light and then recalled from impurties in a crystal. When people are developing new technologies, ones that are based on solid systems tend to be easy to make, reliable and robust and easy to minaturise. So the fact that we use a solid rather than atoms trapped in a vacuum chamber, is something of a selling point.

Secondly, they’ve gotten the recall efficiency higher. A lot higher. Up to, apparently, about 69 %. And they reckon they could get it even higher too, given improved materials.

Thirdly, it works for the weak quantum states of one photon the other, ‘classical’ memory used, up to bright states containing 500 photons. And for states of, on average, 30 photons or less, it was able to surpass the ‘no-cloning’ limit: this basically means that more information was retrieved from the input than was left behind or destroyed, which is good for maintaining the security of the communique.

In short – we’re one step closer, peeps, to truly secure communications. The excitement of intelligence (and commercial) communities around the globe is palpable.

For those who give not a jot about secure communications, it could also have other applications, such as the optical detection of ultrasound – useful both in health and in engineering (although for different things, obviously).

For anyone who’d like to wallow in all the details, the reference for the paper is below.

UPDATE: Jevon’s comment can be seen above. More may be forthcoming…

'Quantum computer' a stage closer with silicon breakthrough

2010-06-28T12:22:00.001+10:00

June 23, 2010

Enlarge

The electron orbits a phosphorus atom embedded in the silicon lattice, shown in silver. The undisturbed electron density distribution, calculated from the quantum mechanical equations of motion is shown in yellow. A laser pulse can modify the electron’s state so that it has the density distribution shown in green. Our first laser pulse, arriving from the left, puts the electron into a superposition of both states, which we control with a second pulse, also from the left, to give a pulse which we detect, emerging to the right. The characteristics of this "echo" pulse tell us about the superposition we have made. Credit: UCL

The remarkable ability of an electron to exist in two places at once has been controlled in the most common electronic material - silicon - for the first time. The research findings - published in Nature by a UK-Dutch team from the University of Surrey, UCL (University College) London, Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics near Utrecht - marks a significant step towards the making of an affordable "quantum computer".

According to the research paper in Nature the scientists have created a simple version of Schrodinger's cat - which is paradoxically simultaneously both dead and alive - in the cheap and simple material out of which ordinarycomputer chips are made.

"This is a real breakthrough for modern electronics and has huge potential for the future," explained Professor Ben Murdin, Photonics Group Leader at the University of Surrey. "Lasers have had an ever increasing impact on technology, especially for the transmission of processed information between computers, and this development illustrates their potential power for processing information inside the computer itself. In our case we used a far-infrared, very short, high intensity pulse from the Dutch FELIX laser to put an electron orbiting within silicon into two states at once - a so-called quantum superposition state. We then demonstrated that the superposition state could be controlled so that the electrons emit a burst of light at a well-defined time after the superposition was created. The burst of light is called a photon echo; and its observation proved we have full control over the quantum stateof the atoms."

And the development of a silicon based "quantum computer" may be only just over the horizon. "Quantum computers can solve some problems much more efficiently than conventional computers - and they will be particularly useful for security because they can quickly crack existing codes and create un-crackable codes," Professor Murdin continued. "The next generation of devices must make use of these superpositions to do quantum computations. Crucially our work shows that some of the quantum engineering already demonstrated by atomic physicists in very sophisticated instruments called cold atom traps, can be implemented in the type of silicon chip used in making the much more common transistor."

Professor Gabriel Aeppli, Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology added that the findings were highly significant to academia and business alike. "Next to iron and ice, silicon is the most important inorganic crystalline solid because of our tremendous ability to control electrical conduction via chemical and electrical means," he explained. "Our work adds control of quantum superpositions to the silicon toolbox."

Provided by University College London (news : web)

Will the iPhone 4 blend? What do you think?

2010-06-26T12:26:00.001+10:00

Will the iPhone 4 blend? What do you think?: "

Filed under: iPhone

Oh come on. You knew it was coming, ever since the iPhone 4 was announced. And here it is. There's not much to say -- you know what's going to happen. Just watch and enjoy.

And kudos, BlendTec. It's even cornier (and more surreal) than usual, but pays off nicely. One question: who is that dude, really? Michael Dell?

TUAW Will the iPhone 4 blend? What do you think? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Why Android Developers Need a Business Model

2010-06-26T12:19:00.001+10:00

Why Android Developers Need a Business Model: "

(cross-posted from the CommonsBlog)

Android developers are quick to jump on the Android Market’s failings, from an insufficient range of countries supporting paid apps to the weak communication and promotion options within the Market itself. Inevitably, somebody points to the iPhone App Store as being the apex of financial success for developers. After all, there’s that $1 billion check they ‘wrote’ to app developers, right?

Unfortunately, the numbers tell a different story.

According to Tomi Ahonen’s meta-analysis of published iPhone sales statistics, the mean revenue per year for an paid iPhone app is $3,050, and the median revenue per year is $682. Here, ‘median’ means that half of all paid iPhone apps will earn less than $682 per year. The difference illustrates the ‘long tail’ model that most content markets exhibit, where a bunch of ‘hits’ raise the mean.

I encourage you to read the entire post, so you can find the sources of the data. Unfortunately, the second half of the post devolves into chest-thumping for WAP (ignoring that many Android and iPhone apps simply can’t be done on WAP) and otherwise coming across like a 12-year-old (e.g., calling Hilton and Walgreens ‘idiots’ for daring to write an iPhone app).

We do not have as good of figures for the Android Market to work from, AFAIK. We do know that there are far more free apps on Android than on iPhone, and there are fewer Android devices (particularly when you factor in the limited roster of paid-app countries). I do not get any sense that Android per-app prices are significantly higher than those for iPhone apps. Hence, the Android Market is probably generating lower results. Larva Labs thinks the Android Market is generating perhaps 2% of the revenue to developers of the App Store, and while I think that is a bit low, I’m sure the numbers are not pretty.

Even if tomorrow Google would be able to turn on support for all countries (paid apps in Vanuatu, anyone?), the best-case scenario in the near term would be for the Android Market to match the results of the iPhone App Store, which isn’t exactly a money machine for most people, based on the above-cited figures.

What does this mean?

It means that if you are trying to make money on mobile, you #$#@(#) better have a business model more sophisticated than ‘gee, I’ll upload an app to the App Store/Market, and the cash will come rolling in’.

Of course, you have some options, such as:

You can have many apps, hoping that some will significantly exceed the median, to make up for the others that don’t. For example, this gentleman is pulling in six figures across double-digit Android apps.
You can out-hustle the competition through marketing, which, sadly, many developers seem to ignore.
You can focus less on making money off of individual app sales to individual users, focusing instead on other business models, like the 49 I wrote up previously. Swype, for example, has struck enough OEM deals to get on a projected 50 handsets by the end of the year. I’ll be rather surprised if they did that for free.
You can write Android apps for reasons other than pulling in money, such as for public service or just to scratch an itch.
You can switch horses to try to find another land rush, like the early months of the iPhone App Store where just about everything made serious money. A land rush occurs maybe once a decade. So, for example, while there should be more opportunities for apps on Meego now that Nokia will be using it for more devices, the conditions are not there for a land rush result, barring some incredible sales figures for these new Nokia phones. The iPhone land rush came about because ~10 million phones were out there before you could sell apps, conditions that are unlikely to be repeated any time soon.
You can just upload and pray your app becomes a hit, which seems to be the default approach developers take.

What is unlikely to help you much is spending lots of time fretting about the Market limitations — it’s not like iPhone apps are pulling down big bucks on average, either. You need reasons to publish the apps that do not count upon any given app making tons of revenue.

NOTE:Why Android Developers Need a Business Model originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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How HTML5 will change the Web | E-Mail & Internet | Creative Notes | Macworld

2010-06-25T17:08:00.001+10:00

How HTML5 will change the Web | E-Mail & Internet | Creative Notes | Macworld: "How HTML5 will change the Web by Peter Wayner, InfoWorld

Editor's Note: This article is reprinted from InfoWorld. For more IT news, subscribe to the InfoWorld Daily newsletter.

Many folks who are just tuning into the HTML5 saga because of the battle between Adobe and Apple are surprised to learn that the push to create a fifth official version of the HTML specification began six years ago. And that’s just the first half of the story because the latest implementations, while nice, are far from standards. The HTML5 demos from Apple, for instance, are impressive, but they only run well on Safari.

PEOPLE WHO READ THIS ALSO READ: iOS 4's hidden features Five things to do before leaving for vacation The best Gems of 2010...so far Hands on with iBooks Now Apple's really 'for the rest of us' First iPhone 4 reviews surface That’s how slowly committees can work. The browser creators and other stakeholders have a big collection of ideas for improving the browser and the Web, and these are gradually coalescing into a fifth generation for the standard. But agreement takes time. Many of the new tags and JavaScript functions exist already as experiments on some of the browsers, but interoperability and standardization are still to come. That’s why the Flash groupies joke about HTML5 being a time machine to take you back to 2000.

While the jokes may sting and waiting for more general adoption is tiresome, it would be a mistake to simply ignore HTML5. There are not only powerful companies behind it, but there’s also the standard process of technological development. The software—both browsers and tools—tends to absorb all of the orbiting extras, incorporating them into the main standard.

HTML5 will change many aspects of life on the Web. It will not displace Flash or Shockwave: One glance at the games on Miniclip.com, such as Jet Ski Racer, shows how much ground the HTML5 committee must cover. But HTML5 will still remake the Web and enable basic Websites to do much more—from tracking our location to storing more of our data in the cloud. HTML5 tags will displace plug-ins for simpler jobs, at least some of the time, and it will open up advanced capabilities to a larger audience. It might even make the Web more secure, more efficient, and more adaptable.

To see where this new standard may take us, I collected the opinions from a number of developers, programmers, and designers. Here is an unordered list of ways that the Web may change as HTML5 is gradually adopted and standardized.

HTML5 will reduce the importance of plug-ins Once upon a time the Web world liked the idea of a browser plug-in or add-on because it encouraged creativity and experimentation. Sounds, moving pictures, and other neat tricks appeared on the Web first through plug-ins built by Sun, Adobe, RealAudio, Microsoft, and many others. The plug-in interface was open to all, and everyone experimented with adding new features to the old, text-based world.

The battle over Flash may be the most famous skirmish, but the newer expanded powers of HTML5 also threaten other coding silos. JavaFX may be wonderful, but who wants to learn another syntax when JavaScript and the Canvas object will do the job? Who needs the Real ecosystem when the video tag will synchronize audio and video? Plug-ins like these are destined to be forgotten.

Will the idea of a plug-in disappear or fall into disfavor? Perhaps, but it depends on what you want to do. If drawing images is your goal, then the Canvas object may be powerful enough. But if you want to build specialized 3-D worlds like the ones found in the more sophisticated Flash and Shockwave games, you may be pining for the old days when a plug-in could get direct access to the video hardware or run a 3-D game world.

HTML5 will enable more interactive graphics The old Web loaded images by downloading a GIF or a JPG file. The new Web can build an image on the fly in a Canvas object. A number of good graphing libraries have appeared, and all of them make a Website’s graphics much more interactive.

Now the JavaScript layer can compute values and draw pictures with the data. Everything can become more alive and much less textual—if the developer has the time and talent to create the solutions. Adobe is just beginning to make it simpler to develop sophisticated graphics for HTML5. The emergence of such tools will unlock additional capabilities, and the sophistication of the graphics will only improve as the tools mature.

There is a legitimate danger that all of this sophistication will overwhelm the poor client-side processors. In the past, some developers deliberately disabled the Flash plug-in to avoid the headaches and overhead of rendering heavy Flash content. That won’t be an option in the future. Everyone who’s been complaining about Flash may learn that the troubles had little to do with the technology itself—the problems came from the designers battling for our attention.

HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage Web programmers have always been able to store a surprisingly large amount of information in cookies (300 cookies of up to 4,096 bytes in IE), but to do real work you need more room. The early versions from the Dojo toolkit used the Flash plug-in to commandeer a section of the hard disk, but now the tools can simply use HTML5.

This storage can be used for anything the programmer wants, including undermining the entire cloud paradigm by storing data locally on the hard disk. This makes it possible to deliver and install applications that behave just like classic applications. Applications load their JavaScript code from the HTML5 offline application cache and start right up whether or not the Web connection is working.

The technique does not need to undermine the hard work of cloud proponents, though, because the local databases can act like smart caches. Game programmers might store descriptions and artwork locally, saving the time of downloading the information again and again.

On the downside, these databases are buried deeply in the system folder, so making backups may not be the simplest step. Users who may want to move their local data from machine to machine will pull out their hair. Or perhaps we’ll just see a hybrid cloud/local approach appear where the local machine caches the data but the cloud maintains a definitive version that can be accessed from different machines.

HTML5 will simplify scraping with cyborg data Anyone who’s scraped data from Web pages knows that the structure offered by HTML does little except tell the browser where to place the information. There’s no insight into the data itself, something that would help a programmer make sense of the information. The so-called microformats in HTML5 provide a mechanism to introduce more sophisticated markup into the HTML that makes it easier to analyze the data.

No one can predict just how much change the microformats will bring to the Web, but it’s easy to see how they will empower programmers to whip together solutions. If there’s one nice, standard way to represent dates and times, for example, then programmers can knit together the time-related information from Websites without bothering to write sophisticated parsers that guess at the format one person chose. Calendars, timelines, and schedules drawn from multiple sources become much simpler to craft.

HTML5 will add location to the mix To the Web server, we were once just IP addresses, relatively anonymous numbers that had only a rough correspondence to the real world. The HTML5 standard now lets JavaScript ask the browser for the latitude and longitude of the user. It typically doesn’t work with a desktop system (GPS or Wi-Fi required), but it works quite well with handheld smartphones.

No one knows what clever programmers will create with this location information, but it’s bound to integrate cyberspace with meatspace in unpredictable and amazing ways.

HTML5 will smooth the way to Web video The HTML5 video tag makes it easier for Web developers to integrate video with the information on the rest of the page, opening up the bag of tricks to jQuery and PHP developers, not just Flash, Silverlight, or JavaFX magicians.

Despite this vision, there’s little coherence, as everyone wants to be the ones distributing the codecs for unpacking the moving images and the corresponding sound. The HTML5 standard is codec-neutral, which means that we’re replacing the old world where the add-on software was called a plug-in with a new world where the add-on is called a codec. So there’s a standard video tag, but the browser may or may not know how to interpret the data.

Erich Ocean, a HTML5 application development lecturer who teaches in Los Angeles, believes the codec wars are already won. ‘Computer programmers (and Mozilla) are fooling themselves if they think they can dictate video standards to video professionals,’ he said. ‘Google’s new format will see some usage, for example in YouTube, but will never reach anywhere close to the ubiquity of H.264.’

Despite the confusion and the lack of complete agreement, the new video tag will unlock more of the power of video and make HTML less and less of a textual jungle and more and more of a video playground. It’s too soon to stop teaching our kids to read, but maybe the handwriting — er, the Webcam video is projected on the wall.

HTML5 will produce chattier widgets The widgets that run in IFrames have enabled sites to embed information from other sites for years, but they’ve always been limited by the security boundaries that keep each widget in a separate sandbox.

HTML5 offers a standard mechanism for these widgets to talk with each other. They still won’t be able to reach into each other’s sandbox, but they’ll be able to send messages back and forth, coordinating their work and maybe even gossiping about the person typing at the keyboard.

Advertisers will drool at the chance to coordinate the behavior of disparate rectangles scattered across the page, and developers will surely find other practical uses. For instance, a tennis tournament might synchronize players on the left and the right of the page, an effect that may be so maddening that some will go running back to HTML 1.0.

However, this mechanism for sending messages is just a start. There’s still a need to set standards for the information that’s passed, so widgets stand a chance of speaking to each other even when they haven’t been developed with a specific conversation in mind. In other words, they need more of a standard vocabulary.

HTML5 will improve security (maybe) Each browser plug-in is a separate program built by a different team of programmers with different standards, different release schedules, and different models for security. Naturally, some plug-ins are more secure than others. And as plug-ins proliferate they increase the complexity of keeping track of the security faults. Was it the plug-in or the browser that had that nasty hole at the end of last year? Was it fixed by updating the browser but not the plug-in or vice versa? Who can remember?

Replacing many plug-ins with features baked into HTML5 removes the dangers that any of these groups will make a mistake, or worse, that someone will use a plug-in API to deliberately install malicious code. If the security team auditing Firefox, Chrome, or IE does the job — granted, that’s a big if — then the dangers will be fewer.

This claim of better security, though, is a bit of a wild guess. The devious minds may use their malice aforethought to take advantage of the nice integration, perhaps drawing PayPal logos with the Canvas object from scratch to impersonate the PayPal site. No one can predict what the dangerous minds will discover in the new capabilities of HTML5.

HTML5 will simplify Web development Bill Mill, a developer who works at Lookingglass Cyber Solutions, explains the change succinctly: ‘I mainly like HTML5 because it allows me to work in one unified environment, the browser plus JavaScript plus DOM, without having to switch back and forth between the Flash world and the HTML5 world. There is one language and one set of tools, not different ones for each plug-in.’

He adds, ‘I think this is noticeable to the user too, where Flash blobs seem to exist in their own world within a Web page.’

HTML5 offers one language (JavaScript), one data model (XML and DOM), and one set of layout rules (CSS) to bind text, audio, video, and graphics. The challenge of making something beautiful is still immense, but it’s simpler to work with a unified standard.

Now, if only HTML5 came with the nice collection of tools that Adobe makes for Flash."

Report: App Developers See More Long-Term Viability in Android, Not iOS

2010-06-25T16:52:00.001+10:00

Report: App Developers See More Long-Term Viability in Android, Not iOS: "

It seems that Android is making waves over at Bloomberg.com, and once again, it's over Apple and their coveted iPhone; however, this time, it is not in specs and phones, but the market and applications that Google is excelling. The article states that, 'More than half the 2,733 developers surveyed by Appcelerator, a mobile-software tools provider, see Android as having the most long-term potential among operating systems. About 40 percent of respondents said Apple’s iOS would have the best long-term outlook, according to the survey released today.'

Take that, along with an average of 100,000 new Android users daily and Google will eclipse iOS as the number one mobile operating system by 2012.

Read the whole article here

Source: Bloomberg

NOTE:Report: App Developers See More Long-Term Viability in Android, Not iOS originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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Google Can Remotely Remove Apps From Your Phone

2010-06-25T16:32:00.001+10:00

Google Can Remotely Remove Apps From Your Phone: "

Even if I’ve been following Android’s development since the earlier parts of 2008, I’d never known that Google has the functionality to remotely remove any application from your device that they deem necessary. There’s a reason we don’t hear about this: they don’t do it often, and when they do, it’s usually for a very good reason.

Recently, they had to remove an application from the market that was practically useless as the app was being misrepresented in order to get people to download it, but the app didn’t actually do anything. Most users uninstalled the application naturally, but Google decided to do a little clean sweep of their own and get the applications off of the small amount of devices that had yet to uninstall it.

It’s a bit scary, if you think about it. Even if Google’s only planning to use the feature in the case of an emergency or extreme security risks, it’s kind of unsettling to know that they have that kind of power. Still, we trust they won’t be messing up their reputation of being open and honest, so I’m sure no one has anything to worry about.

[via Android Developers]

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Intel Readying x86 Android 2.2 Port

2010-06-25T16:31:00.001+10:00

Intel Readying x86 Android 2.2 Port: "

Intel has been prepping a port of Android 2.2 for their x86 Atom architecture, and says they are aiming for a summer release. Their hope is that a quick release of an Atom-ready version of the raved about latest edition of Android OS will entice manufacturers of netbooks and tablets to use a combination of Intel hardware and Google’s operating system for their upcoming endeavors.

The new port hasn’t been a ‘tremendously difficult’ undertaking for the Intel team to accomplish, according to senior vice president of software and service Renee James, and the plan is to funnel their code right back into the source tree where it will be open to all comers.

[via APC]

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Self-assembling nanodevices could advance medicine one tiny leap at a time

2010-06-24T17:58:00.001+10:00

Self-assembling nanodevices could advance medicine one tiny leap at a time: "

Seems like Harvard wasn't content with making robotic bees, and has taken its quest for miniaturization right down to the nanoscale level. One nanometer-wide, single-stranded DNA molecules are the topic of the university's latest research, which sets out a way they can be used to create '3D prestressed tensegrity structures.' Should these theoretical scribblings ever pan out in the real world, we could see the resulting self-assembled nanodevices facilitating drug delivery targeted directly at the diseased cells, and even the reprogramming of human stem cells. Infusing a nanodevice with the relevant DNA data passes instructions on to your stem cells, which consequently turn into, for example, new bone tissue or neurons to augment your fleshy CPU. Yes, we're kinda freaked out, but what's cooler than being able to say you're going to the doctor for a shot of nanotransformers?

Self-assembling nanodevices could advance medicine one tiny leap at a time originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | PhysOrg | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Tokyo Institute of Technology announces SSD-packing, 2.39 petaflop supercomputer

2010-06-24T09:51:00.001+10:00

Tokyo Institute of Technology announces SSD-packing, 2.39 petaflop supercomputer: "

IBM has announced plans to start using SandForce SSDs in its enterprise machines, and now it looks like the Tokyo Institute of Technology is doing one better, working with NEC and HP to produce Tsubame 2.0. This next-gen supercomputer will reportedly operate at 2.39 petaflops (that's a lot of flops!) and uses a new multilevel storage architecture consisting of DRAM as well as SSDs. Not only will this bad boy have thirty times the computing capacity of Tsubame 1.0 (due in part to its some 2,816 Intel Westmere microprocessors and 4,224 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs), its power draw should be some 1/25th of its predecessors. If all goes according to plan, it should be in operation this fall, at a cost of ¥3.2 billion (approx $35.5 million).

[Thanks, Dylan]

Tokyo Institute of Technology announces SSD-packing, 2.39 petaflop supercomputer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Tech-On! | Email this | Comments"

(Via Engadget.)

Froyo Source Code Released to Developer Community

2010-06-24T09:39:00.001+10:00

Froyo Source Code Released to Developer Community: "

‘[Android 2.2] is being open-sourced today. Everyone can start hacking on it right now, and start making it even better.’ Those were the words of Google’s own Andy Rubin at today’s Droid X event hosted by Verizon and Motorola. Anyone who wants a piece of the Froyo action only needs to head on over to source.android.com and they can start tinkering with all the new features inherent in the latest version of Android. I’m sure the devs will have a field day with this one, let the games begin!

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Android Now at 160,000 Activations Per Day, 65,000 Market Apps

2010-06-24T09:38:00.001+10:00

Android Now at 160,000 Activations Per Day, 65,000 Market Apps: "

At last months Google I/O, it was revealed that new Android devices were activated at a rate of 100,000 per day. The number of apps in the Android Market was also pegged at 50,000. Just a few weeks later Andy Rubin has reported in with a set of updated figures showing Android’s rapid growth. At today’s Motorola Droid X event it was revealed that new phone activations are coming in at 160,000 per day. That’s over 100 new activations per minute.

The number of apps in the market also continues to grow, up 15,000 apps from the last reported figure. Sitting at 65,000, the past few months have brought a slew of tried and true mobile favorites to the Android platform as well as many new and exclusive apps.

In the face of the summer of iPhone 4, Google isn’t backing down at all, and handset partners like Motorola and HTC are making it hard to keep Android devices out of smartphones users’ hands.

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

Smile!, you're on TV

2010-06-17T10:27:00.001+10:00

What Is Google TV? [VIDEO]: "

If you watched the Google TV keynote at Google I/O or have been following any blogs like our very own Phandroid lately the following video may be old hat, but for the uninitaiated Google has put together a nice succinct overview of their new television/internet hybrid multimedia experience. The more I see of Google TV the more interested I get in trying it out. My most recent television set includes limited web apps such as YouTube and Pandora and they have already proven extremely useful, I wouldn’t want to use a TV without them again. A full fledged experience like Google TV can only take it to the next level. Check it out:

(Via Android Phone Fans.)

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