Thritical Cinking

So. I haven't been able to avoid a few Glen Beck stories in the online media recently. It made me think.

Memes and attitudes are often forced on us, by parents, friends or the things we read. Once we get into a certain point of view, we like and remember things that agree with that point of view - the memes* become self-reinforcing. (Humans like identifying patterns. I'd even go so far as to say it's the main component of intelligence.)

So our point of view often depends on which part of society we come from. Who, then, makes up points of view in the first place? Leaders. Leaders are often strongly biased one way or another by existing points of view and can make (very) bad judgements, or judgements that are good for them in the short term but ultimately very bad for {[many] other people|those around them|themselves|society}. **

All this leads to ideas that are more trouble than they're worth becoming widespread.

The best defence is critical thinking. Analyse ideas yourself, carefully. Check them as much as you can. There doesn't seem to be enough of that going around these days. Internet culture (tl;dr) doesn't encourage it.

Censorship is the antithesis of encouraging critical thinking, and is *very bad*.

* I apologize for using this word repeatedly, but I couldn't think of a better way of putting it.

** The reason for the bad decisions is often extending a previously recognised pattern into a domain where it doesn't apply.

Picnic Food

So,

I want more picnics. I'm writing things down now so next time I don't have to think up a list of food.

strawberries/other berries/nuts + chocolate dip / yoghurt / hot nutella
dry biscuits / bread + soft cheese / hard cheese / dips
sliced ham / twiggy sticks / cabana sausage
watermelon / sliced apple / sweet oranges
small double-layer sandwiches - mayonnaise egg tuna ham gherkins beetroot
hot chicken / potato salad / sausage rolls

Reminder: agent-based simulation.

Geant4 and SRIM

So I've spent a while trying to get Geant4 to do ion implantations similar to SRIM. Turns out Example TestEm7 models a particle (can be an ion -- see the included C12 macro) impacting a block of material, and even includes some extra physics to make the "low-energy" ion calculation more accurate (screened nuclear stopping, custom-defined physics list standardNR, by Mendenhall and Weller). It calculates the predicted range of such ions.

Using Geant4.9.3.b01 and the standardNR physics list, my quick accuracy test gave an ion range for P-31 at 10keV (very low energy in Geant4 terms) into NIST-parameterized Si of 15nm versus SRIM-2008's 17nm (monolayer mode). Both give rms values of about 5-6nm.

To get energies and positions of transmitted particles requires some editing of the C++ code.

Why am I doing this? SRIM only does layers of material, I'm trying to model a more complicated geometry.

X Sharing Screens

Found this in my archive, I dunno where from..

When I pop up with my laptop to discuss with a colleague, after a while I might do on their computer:

xhost +mylaptopname

and on my laptop I do:

x2x thecomputername:0 -west

Then suddenly my mouse can go over the two computers, my keyboard works on both as well, and I can even copy-paste between the two computers. It looks like the two computers got united. In a flash, newbies get a new idea of what means unix and X ;-

but I thought it was worth reposting.

Actually those commands don't quite work. On your laptop, run

sudo apt-get install x2x xhost +desktop-ip

And on the desktop,

ssh laptop-ip -XC x2x -west -to :0.0

Your desktop now controls both screens.

Ubuntu Jaunty seems to have just updated its wireless network and broke my settings. Had to change the mode from Infrastructure to Ad-Hoc in the connection settings.

Techdirt

This is a bit of an e-vote for TechDirt. I don't agree with everything those guys say, but lately they've had several in-depth articles and they research their stuff well and are honest when they're wrong.

However, I was a bit annoyed at them dissing CSIRO's wifi patent. I mean, fine, the patent system is heavily abused, but the suggestion that CSIRO should have become a wifi device manufacturer instead of licensing out the technology is a bit ridiculous. And they did license it -- the companies involved just tried to weasel out of paying up once they'd learned everything they needed.

Edit: revoked. No longer a fan.

Last Piece Puzzle

So I was away on holiday and I found a puzzle called the Last Piece Puzzle. Basically trying to arrange tetris-like pieces to fill a square with no gaps.

I wrote a program to solve it, which was going to take about thirty years to try every combination. The second attempt found all possible solutions in about 2 minutes.

The difference between the two algorithms is what gets me - it's so subtle. The first algorithm picked a piece and then tried every position on the board for that piece, then once it found a position, it moved on to the next piece. The problem here is that there were often holes left behind that no piece would fit into, so it spent a lot of time trying to solve a board that obviously couldn't be solved.

The second algorithm was only slightly different - instead of trying the pieces in order, try to fill the squares in order. This way there were almost no holes (or the holes were found without too much extra effort) and the algorithm turned out to be hugely faster.

There was a contest to solve it in lisp - the fastest solution there was 0.3 seconds. My second attempt copied the winning algorithm there.

My solution is also floating around.

In total, there are five possible solutions:

Atom printing

Just went to the sweetest talk about 0.2A (1A lateral) resolution atomic tomography. Basically kick atoms off a (needle) surface with an electrical pulse or laser and then accelerate them into a position sensing detector. The time-of-flight gives you the mass-to-charge ratio so you can tell element and isotope. As the electric field spreads out almost radially away from the needle you get a lot of magnification and can tell the originating position quite accurately.

Of course, this imaging method destroys the sample.. but wouldn't it be cool if you could do it in reverse to place individual atoms into an object? It would be difficult to say the least, but the result would be awesome. Not only that, but it could be a quite automatic process.

You could have different print heads for different elements. Perhaps even the same thing in reverse, a laser that kicks atoms off the "print head" and then the freed ion travels along the electric field line and hits the "needle". Of course, you would have to ensure that the ion got kicked off with a small velocity or you would have quite bad lateral resolution. This low velocity thing would probably result in the ion just reattaching to the material. So this is probably hard to do, because the whole point of using a needle is presumably so as to get strong electric fields (and thus high acceleration) when the ion is first ionised. Perhaps this is why this technique won't work.

But what if you had two needles? Boot the atoms off one, and attach them to the other. Ensure that only certain atoms land by having a (macro scale) aperture between them and detect when atoms land.

Jaunty

Things to fix for Ubuntu Jaunty install on an M1330 (so far):

Set Source in synaptic to whatever ISP I'm currently using (avoid quota usage)

System->Administration->Hardware Drivers, enable latest

Install packages:
texmaker texlive-math-extra
blender inkscape
idle
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compizconfig-settings-manager

Audio (crackles instead of proper sound):
change /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf
add line
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack
as my laptop has three audio ports
(ref: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting )

CD/DVD (disks don't mount properly):
add line to /etc/fstab:
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0 iso9660,udf user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
and make sure the other lines match the order of is09660,udf.
(ref: http://osdir.com/ml/ubuntu-users/2009-05/msg00352.html)

HDD power management (hd spins up/down constantly):
add
/dev/sda {
apm = 255
}
to /etc/hdparm.conf
and change /etc/acpi/resume.d/*hdparm* and /etc/acpi/start.d/*hdparm* :
change all three-digit numbers (128, 254) to 255.
(ref http://www.gatzet.com/fixing-ubuntu-harddisk-power-management-bug.html)

Closing the lid of the laptop should make it sleep:
System->Preferences->Power Management
On AC Power, When Laptop Lid is Closed, Suspend.

Firefox extensions:
flashblock chatzilla

Configure Inkscape to use SVG properly.

Victoria Electricity Generation Water Usage (part 2)

Just the Hazelwood plant this time:

In 2005 the mine used 1.31 MegaLitres of water for every GigaWatt hour of power generated.

The plant generates a peak of 1.6GigaWatts. There are 8760 hours in a year. If the plant was running at peak capacity this would equate to (1.31ML / GWh) * 8760h = 11475 ML per year. At an average of half capacity this is still 5 GigaLitres per year.

The Thomson dam has a capacity of about 1000 GigaLitres.

Evolve an AI

How to evolve an AI: basic principles

Intelligence is basically a pattern recognition and extension
Evolution: must make copies
Make copies of good AIs, destroy bad ones

(AIs evolve to become best at making copies of themselves - must ensure this can only happen in a good way. This may be impossible to fully overcome, and is the danger.)

As long as the ways of copying an AI are controlled, no problem. Or, selection of which AIs to copy/promote.

Goal of AI: reproduce. Method: Help humans, humans will reproduce it. Just like farming - most useful plants get produced the most.

This method will produce AIs we can't understand. There's not much we can do about this - we have no hope of intelligently designing something as smart or smarter than ourselves.

Initial development: have people choose which AIs best follow patterns of ANY sort. As AIs get more complex, they can handle more complicated patterns.

The Scientific "We"

I wonder if there is a scientific writing style: "Our model involves...", "we measure the length of...",

2nd person plural performing the actions, present tense.

It's almost as though the scientist and the reader are performing the experiment together.

Victorian Electricity Generation Water Usage

Conclusion: Victoria uses more than 5% of its total storage capacity each year on power generation. This is enough water for 3 million homes.

Calculation:
500MW = typical 8.3e9 litres/year, 250000 homes worth of water. (1)

Brown Coal plants:
Hazelwood 1600MW according to (2), uses 37.5ML / day
Loy Yang A 2200MW B 1050 MW
Yallourn 1450MW
Total 6300MW
(wikipedia)

-> 1e11 (100 billion) litres of water each year (6300/500 * 8.3e9). by (1)
-> 5e10 (50 billion) litres of water each year (37.5e6 * 365 * 6300/1600) by (2) (unverified)

Strangely it is ridiculously hard to find more accurate information about how much water each plant uses, where it comes from, whether it is recycled etc.

Victorian storage capacity 1,773,000 ML. (1.7e12 litres). (w:Melbourne Water)

1e11 / 1.7e12 = 5.8% of total storage used each year -> conclusion.
5e10 / 1.7e12 = 2.9% of total storage used each year -> 2 million homes.

Resulting question: why don't the power plants use recycled water? colder water will make the plants more efficient, so maybe the alpine water is important to them.

Sources:

1. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02b.html
2. wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victoria#Water

should I get

Independence

Figure 1: Independence.

Australian Internet Censorship

As an Australian and an internet user, I have serious concerns about the new mandatory "clean feed" filter initiative.

Given currently unstable economic climate, I am outraged at the proposal to waste untold millions of our tax dollars on the proposed filters. According to the Government's tests, they are inefficient at blocking ‘inappropriate’ and/or ‘illegal’ content (however loosely you define it), often mistakenly block websites that are neither, and can easily be bypassed by users with even a modicum of internet knowledge. Furthermore, given that your tests also determined that most of the filters slowed internet speeds by 22-87%, I cannot see how this is line with Government plans to update and modernise Australia’s internet capabilities.

I am also amazed at the response to the overwhelmingly negative public reaction to the proposal. Instead of consulting and discussing their plans, those behind it have become publicly silent but continue apace with their implementation. This is not how I think a democracy works.

Given the vast amount of Internet content available, and its extremely dynamic nature, I sincerely doubt the Government will ever be able to classify it all. It is an exercise in futility: a clear waste of taxpayer dollars. Additionally, Australian households are diverse, and many do not have young children, so mandating a one-size-fits-all approach does not serve the public interest. It is not the Government's role to decide what is or is not appropriate for me, for parents, for children - for Australians.

I strongly protest the proposed censorship of the Internet, and demand an end to this plan which will cost all of Australia time, money, liberty and stability.

No Australian Internet Censorship

gah. people say to me, "I'm glad 4chan will be censored".

Oscar Wilde once said, "I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I agree... why should other people decide what sort of things are appropriate for me to read? I can decide for myself! All those english teachers were trying to teach me critical thinking for a reason, and now I am thinking critically about censorship.

Don't Do It! I will fight you! And when I fight, it is not only to win now, but permanently. I have just read Ender's Game, and learnt that if you are going to fight, you must win so convincingly that you never have to fight again.

On a side note, the economy will not recover to 2007 levels until at least 2012.

Australian Internet Censorship coming in January

http://nocleanfeed.com/

Let's kill this so hard no-one considers trying it again for the next hundred years.

Problems with management

How do you recognize bad management?

I think the following signs indicate such:

• Managers scheduling meetings and then forgetting to turn up to them
• Everything with hard deadlines done at the absolute last minute, to a low standard
• Much work wasted on irrelevant activity
• Team morale dropping to unplumbed depths
• Attempting to blame supervisors for the team's state

In my opinion, one of the characteristics of a good leader is that they take responsibility for their team.