So for reasons outside of my control, I was unable to post any blogs this summer. I don’t want to get into specifics, but trust me, my reason is a good reason.
My last year of my undergraduate studies has begun, and so far it is going okay. This again goes back to the reason I wasn’t able to post anything this summer, but I don’t want to get into that.
In terms of Philosophy, I am taking Philosophical Inquiry, and Philosophy of Mind. Both are awesome.
In terms of Computer Science, I am taking Theory of Computation. I knew going in it was going to be a hard class, but I am actually really interested in the material. Granted, its still hard, but at least it isn’t boring and hard. I have my first exam for this course this week.
I also found out last week, that three papers I worked on were accepted for publication! I worked very hard on these projects, and it feels very rewarding.
Anyway, I hope that I will find the time and motivation to post more. There is a lot of cool tech news floating around, so I am sure there will be more to come.
I am officially done with my third year of college. It is amazing to think this next year is my last year as an undergraduate. Seriously, where did three years of my life go?
This is going to be a very weird summer for me. It is the first summer since college started that I am not participating in an internship, so I have an insane amount of free time. I plan on working on a few mobile applications this summer, as well as a few other things. I am really excited about developing some cool software this summer.
I also plan on finally being able to read a novel again. The first two or three weeks of my Freshman year of college, I started reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, but never finished it because I got swamped with work. I hope to finish this book, as well as a few by Thomas Merton this summer (Thomas Merton has been on my “things to read” list for about 4 years).
I am also looking forward to reading some good philosophy this summer. I have a paper written by one of my professors to read, as well as a paper defending Presentism (which I can never pronounce correctly).
I also got invited to be a contributor to Open SUNY, a website dedicated to promoting the use of open source software at SUNY Fredonia. THere is a lot of good material up there already.
Hopefully I will be able to update this more frequently now that I have more free time. Stay tuned for more frequent updates.
The following is an e-mail I sent to CNBC after watching the video above:
Dear CNBC,
I am a computer scientist, and was appalled when I heard the claims made by your “tech analyst” Jim Goldman.
When it comes to Windows vs. Mac, I take neither side because I use Linux. (Hey, how about you do a story on how Linux and other open source software is free, and can save people hundreds of dollars?)
The information that Jim Goldman provided was incredibly false. Here are a few things:
Claims:
1.) PC’s need a $50/yr Norton Anti-virus subscription. This is simply not true. Colleges have been promoting FREE alternatives such as AVG and Avast. You do not need to pay for an anti-virus software.
2.) Jim Goldman claims that Mac’s come with Photoshop. This is simply not true, and incredibly misleading.
3.) Multimedia Software – $80-$104???? Why? What software? Windows comes with Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and you can get iTunes for free. In terms of pictures, Windows Picture Album works fine, and there are also free alternatives to use.
4.) Video Editing – What about Windows Movie Maker? Does that not count? It comes FREE with Windows.
5.) Music Software – $100? I am sorry, but this is beyond ridiculous. Windows comes with Windows Media Player. Also, iTunes is FREE. Mac’s use iTunes. There are also many free, and popular alternatives such as VLC, RealPlayer, etc. If you are taking about recording music, yes you can get a version of ProTools, or other recording software for $100 for PC. However, this software is MUCH better than garage band which comes with a Mac.
6.) Geek Squad Visit – $129? You can get a local computer shop to fix a PC for much cheaper.
7.) Mac Battery life 4x better – This is just completely false. If you want battery life, get a netbook which runs for 9 hours on a single charge. Also, my Lenovo laptop gets 3.15 hours on my battery, while my friends MacBook gets 4-5 hours. That is not 4x better.
8.) Faster Chip – This is absolutely terrible. Mac’s use the SAME PROCESSOR AS WINDOWS MACHINES. The Intel processors that Mac’s use are also available on PC. Oh, and guess what, Mac’s do not use the latest Intel processors. When Intel releases a new CPU, it is immediately available for PC users, but it takes awhile for Mac to offer them in their products.
I cannot believe that Jim Goldman is your “senior tech analyst”. This is some of the absolute worst journalism I have ever seen. These claims NEED to be clarified and the truth needs to get out to the people who are shopping for PC’s. If you want to help people save money and get quality software, why don’t you do a story on Ubuntu and Open Source software?
How dare you try to convince people, especially in a struggling economy, that they need to spend more money based on completely false evidence.
Earlier today, I realized that the Provider for Google Calendar add-on that I use with Mozilla Lightning does not add events in my Google Calendar with the “SMS” notification option. In fact, no matter what settings you have in your Google Calendar, Lightning will always add an event with the “pop-up” notification.
I google’d for a bit, and found this blog post, which described editing a java script file in the Provider for Google Calendar add-on so that events added to Lightning would set up a SMS notification on Google Calendar. However, the problem with this is that it will only set the notifications for SMS. Some people might want E-mail, SMS, and a pop-up notification.
After looking at the Google Calendar API, I realized that there is an “all” reminder setting, which will cause an event to have all of the default notifications you have setup on your “Notification” settings in Google Calendar. This does not mean that you will receive pop-up, e-mail, and SMS notifications, but rather, you will receive all of the notifications you have set under “default notifications” on your google calendar (for example, I have it so it is pop-up and SMS notifications only).
Getting Set Up:
(Note: If you want to manually do this, open the Provider for Google Calendar .xpi using an archive program, go into the folder “js”, and edit the file “calGoogleUtils.js”. Goto line 508 and change “alert” to “all”)
If you currently have Provider for Google Calendar installed, you do not need to uninstall it. Installing my modified version will simply replace the version that is already installed. I have tested this several times, and have not experienced any issues.
To set up which notifications you wish to receive on all events, go to your settings page in Google Calendar, and add all reminders you wish to have.
Note: The only downside to my modification is that EVERY event you add in Mozilla Lightning with an alarm will have all of the default notifications set for its reminder (if there is no alarm, no notifications will be set). This should not be an issue if you want every event sent via your default notification methods. I personally want all events sent via SMS + pop-up, so this is not a big deal for me, but I realize this might be a concern for others.
If MIT wasn’t already a totally awesome school (which it is), then it definitely is now. Faculty at MIT have now voted that any publications that they receive should and will be open access.
If there were any doubt that open access publishing was setting off a bit of a power struggle, a decision made last week by the MIT faculty should put it to rest. Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication (several foundations have similar requirements). Since then, some publishers started fighting the trend, and a few members of Congress are reconsidering the mandate. Now, in a move that will undoubtedly redraw the battle lines, the faculty of MIT have unanimously voted to make any publications they produce open access.
It is no secret that I am a huge supporter of open source software. Furthermore, I am also a huge supporter of open access publications.
I have argued in the past, that I believe that there is no reason why research publications, which are the key to scientific progress, should be withheld from anyone (the “anyone” being the people that cannot afford to purchase memberships to various journals etc.). One argument against the Open Access policy is that the cost for publishers to maintain a website, host articles, paper costs, etc., would somehow need to be covered.
I think to a certain extent, this is true. Clearly, it will cost publishers money to do all of the things mentioned above. However, with all of the money the government spends on research, it at least seems plausible that they could give a grant to an organization that could host PDF versions of the papers, and offer them for free. Maybe we could even create some new jobs in this process. Maybe publishers could be given a certain amount of government funding for the more “open” that they are. Publishers could still charge whatever they want for physical copies of the paper, and even for the PDF’s if they so choose, but everyone would have access to this free site. (Note: I realize that a potential counter argument is that there could still be people out there that would not have access to the free PDF’s [people that cannot afford computers]. However, I think in this day and age, this argument becomes weaker and weaker now that more libraries offer free internet access. Further more, this counter argument seems like it would also go against proprietary publications.)
I think the biggest problem with my above argument is that it requires only the U.S. government to do something. Everyone should be accountable for providing free access to publications, not just the U.S. All nations should work together to provide open access for the sciences.
I really like puzzles. Although I do enjoy board game puzzles, my favorite type of puzzles are ones that require extensive thinking and a clever and elegant solution. This is what really drew me to Computer Science. Applying data structures, algorithms, architecture, etc., and coming up with a high performing, elegant solution to a problem is challenging and exciting to me. Puzzles are also a reason I really like Philosophy.
On my algorithms midterm exam before Spring break, there was a question that I think represents why I truly enjoy studying Computer Science. Never in my life have I read a question on an exam and said to myself, “This question is awesome.” I am going to post a modified version of the question, and strongly encourage anyone to post their solution as a comment. I will post one possible solution on Friday.
A firm wants to determine the highest floor on its n-story building from which a device can fall with no impact on the device’s functionality. The firm has two identical gadgets that you can experiment with (each costs $1,000,000). You are allowed to break both gadgets, but no extra gadgets will be provided. Design a brute force algorithm in the best efficiency class to solve this problem.
This is a very technical question, so in order to simplify it, do not worry about what “brute force” or “efficiency class” means if you have never taken an algorithms course. These are important concepts for solving this problem in a real life situation, but I do not want these topics to discourage discussion amongst non-CS readers. If you wish to leave a comment, simply write what you would do to solve this problem.
Example solution:
Drop gadget on first floor
If it breaks, gadget cannot be dropped from hight=current floor
If it does not break, go to next floor and Repeat.
Example in pseudocode:
DidItBreak(n)
//where n is the number of floors
for currentFloor<-1 to n do
if result of device drop = broken
return currentFloor-1
else
currentFloor <- currentFloor + 1
return -1
I just got back from watching your movie, and I am totally dumbfounded about what just happened.
The movie started off great. Actually, I was really surprised. Nicholas Cage played an Astrophysicist (I think?) professor at MIT, which is awesome. MIT is an incredible school, and the campus looks really cool. The topic Nicholas Cage was talking to his students about was the debate between Determinism and Randomness. Both MIT, and this debate are interesting to me, so needless to say, I was excited.
The majority of the movie was not bad. It was not great, but it was not bad. I did think Nicholas Cage figured out the pattern to the numbers a little too quickly, but after all, if he is playing a professor at MIT, you never know.
My biggest complaint is about the ending of the movie. It made NO sense! Why were there aliens in an icicle shaped space ship? Forget the spaceship, WHY were there aliens? The movie would have been much better if everyone had just died (or Nicholas Cage saved the day).
What I am really confused about is whether or not this movie is supposed to portray a Christian message. There were many Christian references: Nicholas Cage talking about heaven to his kid, the picture of Ezekiel, the Adam and Eve reference at the very end. However, what doesn’t make sense, again, is the aliens. If you were trying to send a Christian message, how do the aliens fit into the story? If anything, it shows that four aliens could be possible for our existence (if for some reason a solar flare was going to kill us all and we were picked up by an icicle shaped space ship and dropped on this planet).
If the point of this movie was supposed to answer the question about Determinism vs. Randomness, in favor of determinism, I think the entire alien part voids whatever message you were trying to get across. It was simply crazy.
I think you took a very interesting an idea, added some Christian symbolism, and then ruined the entire thing by adding aliens. I actually started laughing when I saw the spaceship. I said to myself, “This seriously cannot be happening.”
$22 dollars later (tickets for my girlfriend and I + pop corn + pop), I am disappointed, confused, and most importantly, curious as to why you would add aliens to this film.
For the past few months, I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail client. Configuring, maintaining, and using Thunderbird has been a very easy and painless experience, and I am currently using it to keep track of my three e-mail addresses.
Since the start of the Spring ‘09 semester, I have been wanting to use a calendar application to help me stay organized and keep track of things I need to do. So today I downloaded Mozilla Lightning, a calendar extension that works with Thunderbird. The best part is, it also allows you to sync with Google Calendar! This is a great feature because it allows you to sync your calendar across multiple computers or mobile devices.
Linux Users (Pre-Installation):
Note: Linux users ONLY, before installing Lightning you need the libstdc++5 library. If you are running Ubuntu, run the following code:
Follow Steps 2-3 from previous example, but in Step 3, make sure you select the new extension that you just downloaded.
Restart Thunderbird.
Get Calendar XML:
Login to your Google Calendar, and select “Calendar Settings” for the calendar you wish to use.
Go to where it says Private Address and click XML. (Note: you can use the public address if you have a public calendar, but since mine is private (and I want it to remain private), I am using private).
A prompt will come up displaying the URL for your private calendar. Copy this. YOU WILL NEED THIS FOR THE NEXT PART.
Sync Google Calendar with Lighting:
In Thunderbird, click the Calendar icon (on my theme, it is located underneath all my e-mail addresses). A “Calendar” tab should appear in the tool bar, select that and click “New Calendar”.
At the prompt, select “On the Network”.
At the next screen, select “Google Calendar”.
In the “Location” text box, paste in the Google XML code, copied from step 3 in the previous instructions.
DONE!
Now any changes you make on your web based Google Calendar will appear on your Lightning Calendar. Likewise, any changes you make in Lightning will also appear on your web based Google Calendar.
One common argument against the use of Linux is that is usually requires the user to have to edit some file manually to get something to work. I never liked this argument because although this might be true (it very well may not be, depending on the user), the steps required to get programs to work are usually very well defined, and can be found on the Ubuntu Forums.
However, in terms of the desktop environment, it seems like Linux has many features that every day users find appealing:
For those that are not familiar with Linux, the above video shows people’s reactions to KDE 4, one of the various Desktop Environments available for Linux users. The users are unaware that they are seeing KDE 4 or Linux and believe it is the new version of Windows, Windows 7.
If you don’t like the looks or features of Windows 7 or KDE 4, Linux users have a variety of desktop environments. My favorite, and the one I currently use, is GNOME.
The Department of Defense has created their own version of SourceForge.net, which hosts code for military projects. According to David Mihelcic, the chief technology officer for the Defense Information Systems Agency, Forge.mil is modeled off of SourceForge.net but with much greater security. Obviously, it is not open to everyone, and is only available to DoD personel, but this is a big step for the open source movement. If anything, it shows how valuable a tool open source development can be, even in mission critical situations.
