Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Time	Event
12:25a	status So, about 2-3 months ago I dropped off the IM networks and as I'm sure someone is wondering where I went and what happened, I'm ready to announce: 1 - Everyone lived and recovered and is feeling just fine now, thank you. 2 - Things will be a little different now. Priorities have changed. But that will be all, since this is a very public place and the things which went wrong were of a friends-only nature. (Comment on this)
4:14p	And I owe it all to Windows Vista! Let's upset some applecarts, yeah? What do we need that we don't yet have? * Tricorder - tomographic spectrometer + noninvasive blood analyser * Weakly godlike software - for now better sorting algorithms, something that can separate spectographic patterns * Good cheap optics (rep-rap) * Automatic cheap astronomy (seems unrelated but really isn't) * Metal reprap, Replicating Mill (lost wax method?) * Cheap CCD chips (no idea how to pull that off, but with luck someone else will do it) * no seriously - lost wax method. carve the darn thing and cast * autodoc - dispenser of organics, think... the BarMonkey of Harvey Mudd. Towers of powers, remember? in the 1960's we put these algorithms away for good because their computational complexity was a joke. they wrote a seed, a seed that could never unspool into what it was intended to be because the systems of the day couldn't handle it. Four decades of Moore's Law later, we've built systems that can handle /Vista/... it is time to dust off some history books. (Comment on this)
4:59p	the first thing we need... ... is a turing-complete bytecode. I somehow /still/ fail to grasp any of the hundreds out there already, so I'll just make my own. Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, based on Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became the favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, object-oriented programming, and the self-hosting compiler. (I mean, really - I am constitutionally incapable of doing anything this cool in anything but a LISP.) So does Arc have a bytecode? (Again, I'm being terribly predictable.) Seriously, though, how much do I need to implement a small, basic LISP in bytecode? 7 functions. This won't be Arc... it'll be a simple subset of Arc. Also - help! Does anyone know the average computational complexity of the best sorting algorithms? I've spent over an hour on Google and cannot find it. (2 Comments | Comment on this)
6:39p	Boycott of Reed-Elsevier You may have heard of Reed-Elsevier? They own academic journals, many. It's worst in biology and medicine. It's SOP in the publishing industry to exploit artists and fans, yes, but these guys are targeting libraries. Not to mention their rather shady past... "The defence industry is necessary for upholding national security, for the preservation of democratic values and supporting the ever widening role played by the armed forces." -- Reed-Elsevier http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html -- What We Can Do About Science Journals http://members.cox.net/banffprotocol/ -- We agree neither to submit to, referee for, nor participate in the operation of any journal that... http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf -- When this letter arrived at the JoA, the entire editor board resigned and founded a new journal. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php?colour=green -- List of journals that don't play copyright games In conclusion, if you are a scientist, if you publish academic papers, please consider this boycott. nb: Reed Elsevier sold their arms trade division. You may no longer hold it against them. I do. Or, as John Baez puts it: "Yay! Now we can just focus on Elsevier’s monopolistic journal practices, instead of their role in selling cluster bombs and torture apparatus." (Comment on this)
9:55p	Is this true? "Most people think that most of those who file bankruptcy did so because they got way over their heads in credit card debt; however, research shows the truth is much more surprising. For the years 2003 and 2004, just over 50 percent of all personal bankruptcies were the result of medical debt by those with health insurance. A significant percentage of those listing medical debt as the reason for their bankruptcy are 65 and older. Other groups disproportionately bankrupted by medical debt include single women raising children on low wages or who have been abandoned by their husbands who refuse to pay child support." -- http://www.bcsalliance.com/y_debt_medical.html I do not know or trust this source... but it sounds right. (1 Comment | Comment on this)

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