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LeopoldS

Why Can't PCs Work More Like iPhones? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - 1 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...ant-pcs-work-more-like-iphones

computing

shared by LeopoldS on 27 Feb 10 - Cached
  • LeopoldS on 27 Feb 10
     
    bye bye Francesco to your beloved command line ....
  • Francesco Biscani on 27 Feb 10
     
    I would love to see people working on touchscreens all day, orthopedics would have a field day :) Anyway, the answer to the original question is: because the JesusPhone is an appliance, a PC is not.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 01 Mar 10
     
    Luckily there is open source, so neither Steve Jobs nor NY Times decide for us what sort of OS we have to like! I'll join the "Jihad for the command line" troop!!
Francesco Biscani

Why Google makes it easy to leave Google - 2 views

arstechnica.com/...es-it-easy-to-leave-google.ars

inf

shared by Francesco Biscani on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Mar 10
     
    Dunno how effective this is, but hey, at least they are doing _something_ for interoperability.
Francesco Biscani

What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why? | January 2010 | Communications of the ACM - 3 views

cacm.acm.org/...fulltext

inf

shared by Francesco Biscani on 15 Jan 10 - Cached
Dario Izzo liked it
  • Industry wants to rely on tried-and-true tools and techniques, but is also addicted to dreams of "silver bullets," "transformative breakthroughs," "killer apps," and so forth.
  • This leads to immense conservatism in the choice of basic tools (such as programming languages and operating systems) and a desire for monocultures (to minimize training and deployment costs).
  • The idea of software development as an assembly line manned by semi-skilled interchangeable workers is fundamentally flawed and wasteful.
  • Francesco Biscani on 15 Jan 10
     
    Nice opinion piece by the creator of C++ Bjarne Stroustrup. Substitute "industry" with "science" and many considerations still apply :)
  • Juxi Leitner on 18 Jan 10
     
    "for many, "programming" has become a strange combination of unprincipled hacking and invoking other people's libraries (with only the vaguest idea of what's going on). The notions of "maintenance" and "code quality" are typically forgotten or poorly understood. " ... seen so many of those students :( and ad "My suggestion is to define a structure of CS education based on a core plus specializations and application areas", I am not saying the austrian university system is good, but e.g. the CS degrees in Vienna are done like this, there is a core which is the same for everybody 4-5 semester, and then you specialise in e.g. software engineering or computational mgmt and so forth, and then after 2 semester you specialize again into one of I think 7 or 8 master degrees ... It does not make it easy for industry to hire people, as I have noticed, they sometimes really have no clue what the difference between Software Engineering is compared to Computational Intelligence, at least in HR :/
nikolas smyrlakis

mentored by the Advanced Concepts Team for Google Summer of Code 2010 - 4 views

socghop.appspot.com/...advancedconceptsteam

pagmo google summerofcode

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 19 Mar 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 19 Mar 10
     
    you propably already know,I post it for the twitter account and for your comments
  • ...4 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 20 Mar 10
     
    once again one of these initiatives that came up from a situation and that would never have been possible with a top-down approach .... fantastic! and as Dario said: we are apparently where NASA still has to go with this :-)
  • Joris _ on 20 Mar 10
     
    Actually, NASA Ames did that already within the NASA Open Source Agreement in 2008 for a V&V software!
  • Joris _ on 20 Mar 10
  • LeopoldS on 20 Mar 10
     
    indeed ... you are right .... interesting project btw - they started in 1999, were in 2005 the first NASA project on Sourceforge and won several awards .... then this entry why they did not participate last year: "05/01/09: Skipping this years Google Summer-of-Code - many of you have asked why we are not participating in this years Summer of Code. The answer is that both John and Peter were too busy with other assignments to set this up in time. We will be back in 2010. At least we were able to compensate with a limited number of NASA internships to continue some of last years projects." .... but I could not find them in this years selected list - any clue?
  • LeopoldS on 20 Mar 10
     
    but in any case, according to the apple guru, Java is a dying technology, so their project might as well ...
  • Joris _ on 21 Mar 10
     
    They participate under the name "The Java Pathfinder Team" (http://babelfish.arc.nasa.gov/trac/jpf/wiki/events/soc2010). It is actually a very useful project for both education and industry (Airbus created a consortium on model checking soft, and there is a lot of research on it) As far as I know, TAS had some plans of using Java onboard spacecrafts, 2 years ago. Not sure the industry is really sensible about Jobs' opinions ;) particularly if there is no better alternative!
Joris _

Why space shuttle exhaust races to the poles - space - 30 March 2010 - New Scientist - 6 views

www.newscientist.com/...xhaust-races-to-the-poles.html

weather nasa

shared by Joris _ on 31 Mar 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 31 Mar 10
     
    the new scientist article does not say much but maybe the paper could be of interest to our models - Nina and Friederike, please have a look at it - hope that you can get hold of it ...
duncan barker

Video - The Great Global Warming Swindle - 2 views

video.google.com/videoplay

shared by duncan barker on 06 Jan 11 - Cached
  • LeopoldS on 07 Jan 11
     
    joke posting??
  • ...1 more comment...
  • duncan barker on 07 Jan 11
     
    No. People SHOULD look at alternative views to be more informed. Criticism of areas of science is a GOOD thing, it helps science to grow. Unfortunately, when it comes to this issue, people, including ACT members have a closed mind and do not want to listen to alternative view points. But I am sure many people in the group have seen it before. Have you?
  • duncan barker on 07 Jan 11
     
    This is why i always post crazy stuff .... its disruptive. ..... although sometimes its a joke ;)
  • LeopoldS on 07 Jan 11
     
    why not this one then? http://www.venganza.org/
Francesco Biscani

Why I don't care very much about tablets anymore - 5 views

arstechnica.com/...re-very-much-about-tablets.ars

inf

shared by Francesco Biscani on 22 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Francesco Biscani on 22 Feb 11
     
    There it goes :)
  • Ma Ru on 22 Feb 11
     
    "So a new tablet will never be exciting the way that a new, luxury gel ink pen will be exciting" Man, I immediately felt like ordering some new luxury gel ink pens!
  • LeopoldS on 22 Feb 11
     
    like also this one: "Some of the really savvy new media efforts like Flipboard are exciting, but after the initial "wow" factor wears off, these apps mainly serve to remind me that there's already too much good stuff to read out there, and that my life is slipping away from me in an infinite stream of interesting bits about smart animals, dumb criminals, outrageous celebs, shiny objects, funny memes, scientific discoveries, economic developments, etc.. I invariably end up closing the app in a fit of guilt, and picking up one of the truly fantastic dead tree or Kindle books that I'm working my way through at the moment, so that I can actually exercise my brain (as opposed to simply wearing it out)."
Luís F. Simões

Why Randomly-Selected Politicians Would Improve Democracy - Technology Review - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...26488

CMS politics Ig Nobel

shared by Luís F. Simões on 10 Mar 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • If Pluchino sounds familiar, it's because we've talked about him and his pals before in relation to the Peter Principle that incompetence always spreads through big organisations. Back in 2009, he and his buddies created a model that showed how promoting people at random always improves the efficiency of the organisation. These guys went on to win a well-deserved IgNobel prize for this work.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.1224: Accidental Politicians: How Randomly Selected Legislators Can Improve Parliament Efficiency
  • Luzi Bergamin on 10 Mar 11
     
    I think I start to understand why Italian politics does so horribly bad...
  • LeopoldS on 10 Mar 11
     
    ... because they don't follow this rule!
  • Dario Izzo on 11 Mar 11
     
    According to the authors we have four types of people in the parlement: 1) intelligent people whose actions produce a gain for both themselves and for other people. 2) helpless/naive people in the top left quadrant whose actions produce a loss for themselves but a gain for others; 3) bandits whose actions produce a gain for themselves but a loss for other people. 4) stupid people in the bottom left quadrant produce a loss for themselves and also for other people. According to the above definition it is clear that their model does not apply to the italian parlament where we only have stupid people and bandits.
nikolas smyrlakis

Why We Love to Hate Awards - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/...why-we-love-to-hate-awards

nytimes freakonomics CMS obama wine

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 20 Oct 09 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 20 Oct 09
     
    [spam] Obama expressed his disappointment recently when rapper Kanye West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to protest singer Taylor Swift's win of the "Best Female Video" trophy. Soon after, Obama himself was Swifted by critics who felt he was undeserving of his Nobel Prize win. It is obviously connected to the study of the Journal of Wine Economics that wine gold awards are given randomly http://www.wine-economics.org/journal/content/Volume4/number1/Full%20Texts/1_wine%20economics_vol%204_1_Robert%20Hodgson.pdf which also raised some controversy
Joris _

DailyTech - NASA Releases iPhone App - 2 views

www.dailytech.com/...article16613.htm

shared by Joris _ on 26 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The U.S. space agency has worked more diligently the past few years to better interact with the public.
  • Joris _ on 26 Oct 09
     
    what about ESA?
  • ...3 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 26 Oct 09
     
    have already sent it as a suggestion to our com department ... btw: installed the app and its really well done!!
  • Francesco Biscani on 27 Oct 09
     
    God no, why give more taxpayers' money to the shittiest, greediest and most closed company out there??
  • LeopoldS on 27 Oct 09
     
    why "more" ... do they get any taxpayers money? answer to your question: because its the most efficient (and coolest) platform to convey your message to a larger audience with relatively little effort ... btw: just ordered a time capsule for home :-)
  • Francesco Biscani on 27 Oct 09
     
    I said "more" because we already gave them money in the form of Sophia and Atlas :) If we want to be consistent in promoting "open" efforts (open innovation, open source, open governance, etc.) we should avoid Apple like the plague. They are far far worse than Microsoft in terms of closedness, secrecy, shady market practices and vendor lock-in. Just google a bit and you will find lots of example of their behaviour.
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 28 Oct 09
     
    cant' really argue about the Apple practices, although I ve read some things. I think the NASA app is more like a news feed and nothing more. But that online crowdsourcing game we had in mind, now that would be cool in a mobile version - new mobiles also have accelerometers nowadays
Francesco Biscani

Why three buses come at once, and how to avoid it - physics-math - 29 October 2009 - New Scientist - 4 views

www.newscientist.com/...-once-and-how-to-avoid-it.html

shared by Francesco Biscani on 29 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Now systems complexity researchers Carlos Gershenson and Luis Pineda of the National Autonomous University of Mexico have devised a mathematical model that shows how the problem might be prevented
  • Francesco Biscani on 29 Oct 09
     
    This is from Carlos, the guy who gave a science coffee talk a couple of months ago.
LeopoldS

Urine turned into hydrogen fuel - 1 views

www.rsc.org/...02070902.asp

human spaceflight astronauts Mars Moon fuel cell hydrogen NRG

shared by LeopoldS on 08 Jul 09 - Cached
pacome delva liked it
  • LeopoldS on 08 Jul 09
     
    why don't we use this for long-term space travel :-) ?? anybody wants to have a closer look into this?
Francesco Biscani

Why is the Earth moving away from the sun? - space - 01 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...-moving-away-from-the-sun.html

celestial mechanics astronomy

shared by Francesco Biscani on 02 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Francesco Biscani on 02 Jun 09
     
    More fascinating Celestial Mechanics stuff...
Nicolas Weiss

Why your brain just can't remember that word - life - 08 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...t-cant-remember-that-word.html

bilinguism deja-vu tip of the tongue

shared by Nicolas Weiss on 11 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • Nicolas Weiss on 11 Jun 09
     
    they had seen the symbol b
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 11 Jun 09
     
    this is for me..
LeopoldS

Microsoft Offers Secure Windows … But Only to the Government | Threat Level - 0 views

www.wired.com/...air-force-windows

INF security defence Microsoft

shared by LeopoldS on 03 May 09 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 03 May 09
     
    why didn't they take linux as a basis?
nikolas smyrlakis

Why microbes are smarter than you thought - life - 30 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...-smarter-than-you-thought.html

microbes intelligent agents

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 30 Jun 09 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 30 Jun 09
     
    Single celled organisms may not be able to think, but they can act in remarkable ways
ESA ACT

Bent Flyvbjerg - 0 views

flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk/index.htm

Managment Organisation Galileo

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    why financial planning of big projects fail (http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/101614/0/0)
LeopoldS

Artificial Muscle makes touchy devices burlier - 0 views

www.engadget.com/...e-makes-touchy-devices-burlier

NAN INF BIO biomimetics

shared by LeopoldS on 01 May 09 - Cached
  • LeopoldS on 01 May 09
     
    reminds me of our small study a few years ago ... why didn't we come up with this idea?
ESA ACT

Book Review: Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel - 0 views

www.spinellis.gr/...review.html

StrategicPlanning

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    Reasons why Bell labs were successfull. Could be a help for the ACT to DC document.
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