Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, March 28, 2003

Prime numbers not so random? -- Comment()
Jake's Radio 'Blog points to a Nature article titled Prime numbers not so random? "Kumar's team looked at the increments in the intervals between consecutive primes. For example, the intervals between the first few are 1, 2, 2, 4 and 2. The increments are the differences between these successive intervals: +1, 0, +2 and -2. [...] These increments are not random, the physicists conclude: they have a rough-and-ready predictability. 'Positive values are almost every time followed by corresponding negative values,' explains team member Plamen Ivanov." [Jake's Radio 'Blog]

-- Comment()
Shuttle loss and death by PowerPoint: "Here is a disastrous twist to the expression Death by PowerPoint. Edward Tufte: 'The 3 reports concerning the possible tile damage on the Columbia prepared by the Boeing engineers have become increasingly important as the investigation has developed. The reports provided the rationale for NASA officials to curtail further research (such as photographing the Columbia with spy cameras) on the tiles during the flight. Here is a close analysis of an important slide from a Boeing report. [...] On this single slide, in a PowerPoint festival of bureaucratic hyper-rationalism, fully 6 different levels of hierarchy are used to classify, prioritize, and display 11 simple sentence...'" [Signal vs Noise > Jinn of Quality and Risk]

Dear War Protesters -- Comment()
Richard Gayle writes:

Most of us want to see Saddam gone. We want peace in the Middle East. How we achieve causes the problems. I do not feel that a unilateral demonstration of our hegemony will be the best long-term approach. [...]
We have a diversity of thought about the best approach, both here and in the rest of the world. This is, as I explain below, is a good thing. What is rapidly happening now in much of the world is the total lack of respect for ANYONE who presents the opposite view. There is a lot of anger. Against Bush. Against France. Against the US. Against Muslims. Against Christians. Against anyone who disagrees. [...]
I believe the real enemy is not someone who disagrees with me. It is anyone who tries to hamper the path [...] that civilization is now traveling. Diversity of opinions and viewpoints. Open communication. Rapid transmission of information. Rapid creation of social networks. Adaptive communities. Bottom-up rather than top-down approaches to problem solving. These are tools that will hurry us along the path we are heading. I believe that just as these principles cut across political lines and economic principles, civilizations enemies will be found on both sides of the polical spectrum and in different economic strata. [...]
Just as I believed that capitalism would eventually sink communism, I believe that the cultures that embrace this new path will sink those that do not. Groups that can use information to create knowledge, that can be adaptable and make good decisions, that can alter their path when the circumstances change, will maintain a nimbleness that Industrial Age, or earlier, approaches can not.

-- Comment()
Software bug may cause Patriot missile errors: "U.S. military is investigating the possibility that a software problem in the Patriot Missile defense system may be responsible for targeting two friendly aircraft, but that other scenarios could just as likely be responsible for the mishaps." [InfoWorld: Top News]

This is interesting, but perhaps not true. In the Gulf war in 1991 there was a software problem with Patriots, which resulted in "friendly" casualties. I wrote about this in an essay titled What are the results computer errors? (The article is available in Finnish.)

Because of truncating the time counter to 24 bits, the missile lost all of its accuracy when kept online for a long time. Thus, Patriots missed the incoming targets. The solution was to boot the software in the missiles regularly.

The Patriot software problem is explained in detail in a GAO report.

-- Comment()
Joi Ito writes about Satire blogs: "A roundup of hilarious satire blogs. Blogs by GW Bush, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il."

-- Comment()
Bio-IT World: Xserve, iPod Simplify Cluster Setup: "This week's Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in Boston, Mass. gave Apple an opportunity to show off its recently introduced Xserve cluster configuration. What's more, one vendor showed off a new application designed specifically for scientists who would like to add Xserve-based clustering to their network quickly and easily." (MacCentral via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

-- Comment()
Doc Searls writes: "Sheila Lennon puts Al-Jazeera and its recent defacement into perspective. [...] She also points to The Onion's outstanding coverage of Operation Piss Off the Planet."

Reasons not to become a scientist -- Comment()
Seb's Open Research points to Don't Become a Scientist: "I became a scientist in order to have the freedom to work on problems which interest me. But you probably won't get that freedom. As a postdoc you will work on someone else's ideas, and may be treated as a technician rather than as an independent collaborator. Eventually, you will probably be squeezed out of science entirely. You can get a fine job as a computer programmer, but why not do this at 22, rather than putting up with a decade of misery in the scientific job market first? [...] It is proverbial that original ideas are the kiss of death for a proposal; because they have not yet been proved to work (after all, that is what you are proposing to do) they can be, and will be, rated poorly. Having achieved the promised land, you find that it is not what you wanted after all."

Fortunately Seb also points out the cheerful and illustrated Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists.

-- Comment()
More on scientific self-censorship: "The staff of The Why Files has written a balanced and detailed article, Perils of Publication, on the risks of censoring, and not censoring, scientific journal articles in an age of terrorism." (Thanks to LII.org.) [FOS News]

Fierce combatant -- Comment()
It seems that I have attracted a fierce combatant to this weblog. Here is my reply to the latest comment on USA, the politically correct killing machine.

If I'm agaist something, then I'm anti-tank. I did my service in the anti-tank division of the army, and got to know something about the war machinery.

Of course, it may happen that the US gambit pays off and there will be some kind of peace. But this is such a huge risk to take. I fear most for the civilians, and for those soldiers who are yet to die. Will this be another Vietnam? I sure hope not.