Sunday, March 21, 2004

Episode #1: One night in the Secret Museum of Cybernetics Breakthroughs in the mathematics of information encoding are not too frequent. Lately – meaning over the last ten years – turbo code schemes have gained attention. As described in the current issue of IEEE Spectrum, Frenchmen Claude Berrou and Alain Glavieux have described an iterative approach that would seem to provide error free communication at data rates with incredible transmitting-power efficiencies.   Think of it as another step forward in the alchemists’ quest for unquenchable fire. Maxwell’s demon machine that scoffs at physics.   The inventor of modern communication theory, Claude Shannon, had shown in 1948 that the entirety of a communication channel could be used, if the error correction codes were up to snuff. As time transpired, this has remained true in theory but not in practice. The French coders’ turbo means promise to close this gap, and improve computer and cell phone technology, the latter of which seems to have maxed out and turned into as much of a nuisance as a savior in consumer hands.   Ah but what of the most likely unlikely encoder, Hedy Lamar? She - in the buff - of the breakthrough ‘30s art film Extase? Together with avant-garde composer George Antheil Hedy, remarkably, conceived a secure encoding scheme in wartime Hollywood. The method’s purpose was to foil radio jamming, and to enable radio-directed torpedoes [not too different conceptually from Smart laser-guided bombs of today]. Femme fatal Hedy had it in for the bloody Nazis. But, because she and Antheil fashioned a mechanical method - based on the then-familiar concept of piano rolls  - or, because they were Hollywood artistes, their idea did not get much of a hearing at the time. More like this. 9:12:02 PM    comment []

TECH/SCI Moving to XML -- Does it mean throwing out your RDB queries? Bringing relational data into XML formats is a major task for many developers these days. XML has clear benefits as a lingua franca for integration, but it must co-exist with a well-established body of relational DB know-how. - On ADTmag, Mar 16, 2004 Darpa desert race bests robots -New Scientist - Mar 15, 2004 The most formidable race for robot vehicles yet staged ended limply, with not one of the 15 entrants coming close to finishing the 142-mile (230-kilometre) Californian course. Falling bubbles in the beer - EurkAlert.org, Mar. 15, 2004 TROPE FOR ZOE The hunt for antihydrogen - cnw.ca, Mar 11, 2004 Nanograss -NYT, Mar 16, 2004 Sunnyland refs in Deep Blues - on Amazon Passings Nobelist Pople, mathematician who modeled molecules, at 78 -NYT, Mar. 16, 2004 Cid Corman, 79, Poet of Roxbury and Kyoto -NYT, Mar. 16, 2004 8:32:33 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jack Vaughan.