Posts by Philius

time wasters

I hate it when someone wastes my time, whether deliberately, by accident or because they found themselves in a situation where wasting my time was a consequence.

When it comes to technology, wasting competitors time is good, wasting their time means your product stays on the shelf longer, and you make more money.

That's why "security through obscurity" is so popular. Closed source profiteers depend on it.

Here are the steps:

1. think your chosen field into existence

2. set up a governing body that you elect amongst yourselves

3. introduce bureaucracy to generate red tape

4. profit

If we lived too long then we'd have the patience to get over these hurdles and establishment types would go the way of the dodo.

Title change

I've been ranting about this for ages - it's not a memristor, it's a FLUX CAPACITOR!

One point thirty two gigawatts?

iPad bashing

As fond of iPad bashing as I am due to their lack of openness, some of the comments point out how software (even open source software) present themselves as homogeneous blobs, written in inscrutable C++/Java/whatever incantations.

It can be argued that such is the state of the art - we've moved on from punched cards, at least.

But neither hardware nor software particularly lends itself to education, it's all about getting it done, protecting your interests (complexity brings obfuscation, a form of encryption) and waiting for fashion to move along so you can do it again in another language/paradigm/form-factor.

To really make a difference in education, fashion would need to make an unexpected turn - favoring the users, which won't happen as long as they're consumers, in whatever form.

Two things would make this happen

1. Tin of beans guarantee - it contains what it says on the tin

So an iPad would have "consumer appliance" on it, which is what it is, not for IT education

A Raspberry Pi would have "IT kit" on it

2. Be amenable to tweaking/tinkering/reprogramming/developing-software-on

Ordinary PCs go some of the way, the Raspberry Pi goes further, and with OpenCL it would go all the way.

Ultimately only open software on open hardware can seriously claim to earn the badge "an IT educators must-have".

I wrote a blog about the "big bang" - http://philipashmore.blogspot.ie/2012/08/the-condensing-universe.html

I don't know why they're still calling it a "bang".

If we're still receiving emissions from the birth of the universe then it must mean that the bang took as long as we've been able to measure the radiation - more than 50 years isn't a bang, not even a thud.

At the "start" of the universe I'm in a room the size of an atom where the walls are covered in lights and I have to race away fast enough so that the room's big enough and the light from the walls is only reaching me now.

No, no, men in white coats - I'm a physicist! A physicist!

Additional references

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July12/TeraHertzRing.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/05/terahertz_receiver/

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-waves-tear-apart-dna/

http://www.siliconradar.com/

Could it teach us, or make better ones?

Just because your conciousness runs on a super-computer doesn't make you smarter.

It might turn out like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Gumble (Barney Gumble) and ask for a beer.

Modules?

Hmm...