Pharyngula: “Playing God”

Pharyngula: “Playing God”:

"Playing God" is where you do absolutely nothing, take credit for other entities' work, and don't even exist — scientists don't aspire to such a useless status.

and

"Please, please stop quoting the pope. No one should care what the cranky, irrelevant figurehead for an obsolete superstitious dogma says about science—he's no more a knowledgeable authority on this matter than RuPaul, and it doesn't matter which of them has the more fabulous wardrobe. Seriously, he's nothing but a sour old man yelling at those damn kids to get off his lawn"

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense: Scientific American

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense: Scientific American: "5 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
By John Rennie"

IBM alliance will take the fight with Intel down to 32nm

IBM alliance will take the fight with Intel down to 32nm: "So IBM, Chartered, Samsung, Infineon, and Freescale will all be working together on the next-generation 32nm process, with IBM partner AMD also reaping the benefits through an existing deal. (Recall that 32nm is when IBM will introduce its 'airgap' technology.)"

Secretly Monopolizing the CPU Without Superuser Privileges

Note here: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~dants/papers/Cheat07Security.pdf the use nanosleep, which doesn't work out of box on windows. See next blog post..

Quantifying The Accuracy Of Sleep - The Code Project - System

Quantifying The Accuracy Of Sleep - The Code Project - System: "First, while Sleep(0) performed mostly as expected, there were two notable exceptions (described below). For the most part, Sleep(0) indeed relinquished the remainder of the thread's time slice to another thread. Where there were no other threads, Sleep(0) returned after an extremely short time interval, typically 10-15 microSeconds. Where there were other threads, Sleep(0) didn't return for a much longer period, typically around 100-150 milliseconds, reflecting the fact that Windows didn't give the thread a new time slice for a while. "

Biometrics researchers report on facial recognition technology

Biometrics researchers report on facial recognition technology: "In the recently released NIST report, Bowyer, Flynn and other researchers report that face recognition technology has improved dramatically. False recognition rates produced by the best systems have dropped 90 percent over the last four years. They found that facial recognition technology can be better than human identification of faces, with accuracy rates near 99 percent.
"

Genes take charge, and diets fall by the wayside - International Herald Tribune

Genes take charge, and diets fall by the wayside - International Herald Tribune: "The implications were clear. There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body's metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed"

Windows Server Division WebLog

Link: Platform: resource management has always been part of operating systems, be it mainframe, UNIX and more recently x86-based operating systems. Today, vendors such as Sun, Novell and Red Hat incorporate virtualization into their x86 operating systems. Even a few weeks back we saw KVM added to the Linux kernel. Our desire is to bring hypervisor-based virtualization to Windows Server – and a wider range of customers - with Windows Server "Longhorn." We’re adding some innovative functions to Windows Server virtualization (aka, Viridian), like live migration, support for up to eight virtual processors, and hot add of resources such as disk, networking, memory and CPU, so customers have more flexible and dynamic deployment options for all their workloads.

Management: we want to make Windows the most manageable virtualization platform by enabling customers to manage both physical and virtual environments using the same tools, knowledge and skills. No other virtualization platform provider is delivering this. Today customers can use MOM and the management pack for Virtual Server. We’re extending the virtual infrastructure management capabilities with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which will allow customers to increase physical server utilization, centralize management of virtual machine infrastructure and quickly provision new virtual machines. And it’s fully integrated with the System Center product family so customers can leverage existing skill sets.

Craig Van Hoy's Go Trek Team Of International Climbing Guides

Craig Van Hoy's Go Trek Team Of International Climbing Guides: "Kent Wagner
Kent grew up in New Hampshire and his love for the outdoors began early in life while hiking, climbing, skiing and running rivers in the northeast. After studying music in college he moved west in 1987 to pursue outdoor activities and photography. Kent is presently a senior guide for Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI) in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and also guides for International Mountain Guides in Mexico and South America. He has guided more than 50 river trips through the Grand Canyon and leads backcountry skiers in the wilderness areas of Colorado, Utah and Arizona. His work in photography has been featured in numerous outdoor magazines and catalogs. He lives in Boulder, Colorado."

Miles from Nowhere

link: In the contiguous United States, the point that's furthest from any road is in coastal Louisiana, where swamps deter the construction of any type of road, even narrow dirt roads. The most remote landlocked spot is in the southeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park, 20 miles from the nearest road. "That shocks a lot of people," Watts says. "If they don't know the western part of the U.S. very well, they imagine that there are these vast areas where you can ride your horse for days."

IP

The purpose of property is to better manage the allocation of scarce resources. Since the resource is limited and not everyone can have it, property rights and property law make complete sense for a civilized society, allowing those with rights to the property to buy, sell and exchange their property. This allows for resources to be efficiently allocated through commerce and the laws of supply and demand. It's a sensible system for the best allocation of scarce resources. However, when it comes to infinite resources, there's simply no need to worry about efficient allocation -- since anyone can have a copy. The purpose of copyright (and of patent law), then, wasn't the same as the purpose of property law. It has nothing to do with more efficient allocation of scarce resources. Instead, it's a government-granted incentive -- a subsidy -- to encourage the creation of new works. In other words, it was a case where the government believed there was a market failure. That is, they believed that without this incentive, certain intellectual works wouldn't be created -- and the tradeoff between locking up that idea and creating more content was one that was worthwhile.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070521/015928.shtml

The Traveler's Dilemma -- [ GAME THEORY ]: Scientific American

The Traveler's Dilemma -- [ GAME THEORY ]: Scientific American: "On the Nonexistence of a Rationality Definition for Extensive Games. Kaushik Basu in International Journal of Game Theory, Vol. 19, pages 33-44; 1990.

The Traveler's Dilemma: Paradoxes of Rationality in Game Theory. Kaushik Basu in American Economic Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, pages 391-395; May 1994.

Anomalous Behavior in a Traveler's Dilemma? C. Monica Capra et al. in American Economic Review, Vol. 89, No. 3, pages 678-690; June 1999.

The Logic of Backwards Inductions. G. Priest in Economics and Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 2, pages 267-285; 2000.

Experts Playing the Traveler's Dilemma. Tilman Becker et al. Working Paper 252, Institute for Economics, Hohenheim University, 2005."

Who to vote for in 2008?

MySpace Videos: Life After Death by PowerPoint by Don McMillan

MySpace Videos: Life After Death by PowerPoint by Don McMillan

Management Exam

Management Exam: "The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a professional manager."

Funny!

Lauren Weinstein's Blog

Lauren Weinstein's Blog: "May 11, 2007
Remote Monitoring Capabilities in New Intel Chipsets

Greetings. I haven't seen much discussion regarding Intel's new 'Active Management Technology' being deployed as part of at least some new Intel CPU chipsets. Touted as a grand tool for remote maintenance, repair and monitoring -- including 'compliance with government regulations' -- a key feature is that it apparently works even when the associated notebook is powered off (however 'powered off' is being defined).

While these new capabilities are initially usually disabled, the scope of the possible back channels created by this technology and the possible opportunities for sophisticated abuse, appear significant enough to be worth serious debate.

I'd be interested in the readership's opinions regarding this.

You can read details at Intel's AMT page and from this Intel PDF document.

--Lauren--"

Shamiqa knows P4

p4 think itself very smart. but p4 not so smart as shamiqa. p4 think branch go false false false true true true. but branch go false true false false true true. p4 make bad guess. p4 get confuse then p4 go very slow. shamiqa want to make p4 no more guess but wait until know for sure.

branch prediction very bad idea unless code very simple. shamiqa no write simple code! you tell shamiqa how to make p4 no more guess when run shamiqa code, yes?

speculative execution even more worse idea unless code very simple. shamiqa no write simple code!! you tell shamiqa how to make p4 no more guess when run shamiqa code, yes?

out-of-order execution most worst idea of all unless code very simple. shamiqa no write simple code!!! you tell shamiqa how to make p4 no more guess when run shamiqa code, yes?

Good SW optimization paper -- oldy on TPC-C from IBM

Sofware Optimization for OLTP Workloads
Steven Kunkel,
Bill Armstrong,
and Philip Vitale
IBM


Category Impact (%) Description
Software bottlenecks 30 Eliminating or reducing conflicts on software locks,
minimizing pathlength occurring while a critical lock
is held, and eliminating priority inversion situations
Task dispatches 25 Eliminating unnecessary task dispatches, reducing
dispatches by batching/deferring work, minimizing
dispatcher preemption, and optimizing handling of
lock conflicts
Snoop-hit-modifieds 25 Reducing snoop-hit-modifieds via processor-unique
fields, processor affinity support in the task
dispatcher, and optimal cache-line-based layout of
critical data structures
Pathlengths 10 Reducing the total number of instructions required to
perform critical paths in the operating system kernel
via code improvements and inlining techniques
Feedback-directed profiling 10 Compiler optimization that rearranges instructions in
a module to block the critical instructions together
into the minimum number of instruction cache lines
and converts branch direction to favor not-taken.8

The stone is cast | Salon.com

The stone is cast | Salon.com: "One never wants to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Jerry Falwell, how can one not? Falwell will always be remembered for his '700 Club' comment in the wake of Sept. 11: 'I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.''"

Pharyngula: Jerry Falwell struck dead; not yet found worthy of resurrection

Pharyngula: Jerry Falwell struck dead; not yet found worthy of resurrection: "Jerry Falwell struck dead; not yet found worthy of resurrection"