10.5.7 is here

Apple have just released the 10.5.7 update to Leopard. I can’t grab it right away because I’m finishing off some scheduled tasks in my Boot camp partition. Cruel world.

I’m quite excited to find out if the development of Snow Leopard has had any affect on this update.

Super slow motion reveals complexity and beauty in simple things

I am still in awe of the things I’ve just seen in super slow motion. I used to think that action replays in cricket and football games were impressive. But at 4000 frames per second (and more!), I’m completely blown away.

I’m still trying to investigate the price tag on such a camera. Here’s a collection of what YouTube has to offer at incredibly high FPS.

Water Balloon Pops in slow motion

Golf swing in slow motion

Lightning in slow motion

There’s lots of other interesting videos on youtube, especially by a user called UltraSlo. Search for things such as “3000 fps”, “3500 fps” and “4000 fps” and you’ll find lots of videos that will take your breath away!

What science has to say about cousin-marriage

Anyone who follows British Politics might have noted that in February 2008, British environment minister Phil Woolas sparked a major row when he attributed the high rate of birth defects in the Pakistani community to the practice of marriages between cousins.

“If you have a child with your cousin, the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem,” he told the Sunday Times. Although a Muslim activist group demanded that Woolas be fired, he was instead promoted in October to the racially sensitive post of immigration minister.

In the US, there are 31 state laws that either bar cousin marriage or permit it only where the couple obtains genetic counseling or is beyond reproductive age or if one partner is sterile. Clearly, the western world sees cousin marriage as both socially unacceptable and scientifically wrong.

Figure: Map of the United States showing states with laws forbidding first-cousin marriage. Different colors reflect differences in the timing of passage of the laws. Colorado is shaded because its law was repealed. White states never had such bans.

Let Science Speak

Scientists have heavily criticized both the negative social stigma’s associated with cousin marriage and the incorrect perception of risk involved with child birth.

“Such legislation reflects outmoded prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor and relies on oversimplified views of heredity. There is no scientific grounding for it,” says Professor Hamish Spencer, a Research Associate at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. “Neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind such legislation stand up to close scrutiny.”

The risk factor according to NSGC

The US National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) report estimated the average risk as 1.7 – 2 per cent higher than the background population risk of congenital defects and 4.4 per cent higher than general risk for dying in childhood.

“Women over the age of 40 have a similar risk of having children with birth defects and no one is suggesting they should be prevented from reproducing. People with Huntington’s Disease or other autosomal dominant disorders have a 50 per cent risk of transmitting the underlying genes to offspring and they are not barred either,” Professor Spencer says.

So here’s a question.. will Phil Woolas admit he was wrong?

What the Internet has achieved for Barack Obama

When Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Nomination on August 29, his chances against McCain seemed grim. The Republican machine was growing stronger and the Democrats seemed to be divided over their party’s candidate. The Senator was facing an even steeper challenge back in 2007 when he declared that he would run for President. His supporters were steady but optimism about his success was a rare commodity. Not many people fancied the chances of a black man from Illinois securing the nomination, let alone making it to the White House.

Now, just a few days before the decisive votes are to be cast, I’m sitting back and trying to reflect upon the present state of the campaign and wondering how it came to be. Obama is leading in almost every poll and McCain seems to be slowly fading out of the picture as ripples of division grow within his party.

“We know the battle ahead will be long,” declared a victorious Obama in New Hampshire after winning key primaries for the Democratic nomination. “But always remember that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.” And its no secret that many of those voices were to be found on a new frontier of global politics: the Internet. When the Democratic debates were broadcast on YouTube for the first time in July, the Internet signaled that it would play a significant role in the upcoming elections.

America might be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but the demographics of the online world are vastly different. The Obama campaign has so far trumped its rival on all the major Internet battlegrounds. The Internet has not only helped Barack Obama raise record-breaking funds; it has also helped him mobilize support and fight Republican “smears”.

The YouTube electorate

On YouTube, Obama’s channel has released more than 1,710 videos which are now beamed immediately to over 108,682 subscribers. The campaign has received nearly 18 million channel views and their videos have been watched and promoted by many more. In comparison, McCain’s channel has posted only 315 videos with less than 30,000 subscribers and 2 million channel views. In the time it took McCain’s subscribers to grow from 27332 to 27335, Obama’s number had jumped from 108,662 to 108,682.

Videos posted by users also show a significant pro-Obama trend. While McCain’s and Palin’s ‘gaffes’ are closely scrutinized by the YouTube Electorate, Obama’s speeches and advertisements are often glorified. A YouTube search for “Obama speech” pulls up videos which are mostly pro-Obama. But type in “McCain speech” and you’ll notice that more than half the resulting videos do not reflect favorably upon John McCain.

Digg, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace

Obama has also had a clean sweep on Digg.com, a social network that lets users submit and ‘Digg’ their favorite stories in order to determine their importance and popularity. With 25,594 fans (compared to McCain’s 3,545), the Obama campaign has had a significant influence over the stories that made headlines on Digg. The campaign was also more pro-active, making 99 submissions in contrast to the 14 by their Republican counterparts.

On Twitter, Obama has been continuously updating 108,268 ‘followers’ about his campaign. He has made a total of 248 updates. John McCain has only managed to gain 4,289 followers and make 25 updates. On Facebook, Barack has 2.3 million supporters compared with McCains 600,000. Finally, Obama has also outplayed McCain on MySpace, gaining four times as many supporters as him (794,720 to 205,070).

International opinion matters

Most of these networks operate on principles of democracy under which the videos, news or blogs rated highest make it to the frontpages. Obama’s army of Digg fans and YouTube subscribers ensure that his posts are well promoted and thus more readily available to undecided audiences.

Barack Obama is highly favored over his opponent by people in Europe and many other parts of the world. Many of them have taken part in the online campaign by supporting Barack on these social networks. Although this has given him a rather unfair advantage, his success can be mainly attributed to the incredible effort made by his campaign to engage young voters on the Internet.

Note: The data provided in this article is accurate as of 0330 GMT on October 29, 2007.

 

Statistics

 

Attack of the Ebook readers

Following an interesting conversation at dinner last night, I’m interested to find out if and when Ebook readers will replace old fashioned paper. It will be difficult as books have been at the heart of learning and leisure for centuries. Motivating people to consider an alternative will be challenging.

A fellow guest at the dinner holds the opinion that people will never accept electronics as replacement for books. The current situation seems to confirm this opinion. But we are missing a trend-setting device in the Ebook playground. Mp3 players had been out and about for years before Apple finally sealed the deal with its revolutionary iPod. Until then, it was impossible to discount CD’s as the primary mode of distributing music. Similarly, all we might need for Ebooks to enter the mainstream is a product marketed well enough and in the right places.

 

A few devices have been out and about for quite some time now. Amazon’s Kindle created a lot of buzz which died down quickly mainly due to its steep price.

With the launch of Kindle, e-paper (designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper) was thrust into the spotlight. But its inability to display colors turned out to be a downside that customers were not ready to overlook. But it would be safe to assume that many people will have their eyes set on a future version of the Kindle that does a bit more than connect to the web only to display in black and white.

Other companies have been cautious with making advances in the field. Sony and Waterstones have collaborated on their own reader which, so far, hasn’t fared much better than the Kindle.

A few days ago, the Kindle was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. Amazon is hoping that this will finally carry it to the limelight. But will customers think it a worthy investment?

University and high school students will surely be delighted at the prospect of carrying a single, lightweight reader instead of half a dozens textbooks. Purchasing e-books will also be simpler than scanning the bookstore shelves for hard copies. But at $400, the Kindle will struggle to fully convince this demographic. 

Many issues need to be addressed if Ebooks want to carve a niche in Education. Will most course books have readily available electronic versions? The Kindle doesn’t let you purchase books outside of Amazon.com. Will this lead to a format war? It’d be a pity if cash-deprived students were forced to carry 3 different readers because a single one was unable to support all required course books.

Some additional features that might enhance the appeal of an Ebook reader:

• highlighting and bookmarking
• note-taking software 
• touch-based drawing
• sharing and collaboration with others

Social networks may alter your self-identity

Many social networking sites ask you to describe yourself in a brief ‘about me’ section on your profile page. The varieties of formats in which people post this information are truly diverse. Some scribble precise details about their current life while others take up more space to attempt a description of their personalities. Some like to keep it short and simple while others use poetry and quotes as tools to make themselves look more complicated and deep.

Most friends now visit each other’s profiles more often than they visit each other. Others stay in touch solely through the Internet. A profile page can have a great impact on how people perceive you. In fact, it can have a great impact on how you perceive yourself. Sci-fi junkies often predict that future technology will let us choose who we want to be. In a way, those predictions might be coming true. We might be close to the day when the central point of a person’s consciousness is found near the photo frame of their Facebook profile.

People comb through their own profiles very often. As such, a girl who plays cynical in her own ‘about me’ section might end up believing that cynicism is actually part of her personality. Also, for the sake of coherence, she may incorporate those traits into real life. Whether or not this effort is conscious at first, it may eventually become part of how she identifies herself. In the complex maze of perception and self-identity, some people might learn to view their profiles as mere non-physical extensions of the self.

‘About me’ is all that many people know of you and they’re reminded every time they visit your profile. Shouldn’t the composition of such information require some amount of self-reflection? Yet, it seems that some people are content with swiftly painting a picture that satisfies some part of their ego. Some are clearly making a play while others seem too sure of themselves. Some are lacking and make you wonder while others go on and on.

No matter how outlandish your profile maybe, it describes some part of your persona. In an ideal world, your friends would know you well enough to look at your profile from the point of reference of your personality. But the opposite maybe true and they may find themselves viewing the real you from the perspective they’ve gained from your profile. It’s hard to tell.

So if you were to describe yourself in a few lines for the world to read, how would you go about it? What part of you would you include and what would you consider not important enough to be worthy of the headlines?

Since everyone gets an empty canvas to start with, a mutual understanding seems to exist subconsciously which guarantees that people take the information that you provide them at face value. Questioning the accuracy of someone’s profile could mean risking the perceived integrity of your own.

Your visitors are a diverse mix, especially if you have an open profile. Some (the most pleasant kind in my opinion) are just trying to keep in touch. Others (friends and stalkers) are browsing to see how you’re doing. Still others (employers and secret crushes) might be sizing you up. As such, presentation can be as important as dressing up for that all-important interview or first date while too much information can buy you some quality hassle. For whom do you tailor the ‘About me’?

Breaking News: LHC creates small black holes in Switzerland

GENEVE (1ED) – At 0600 hrs yesterday, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider announced that their worst fears were  realized when the collission of sub-atomic particles just shy of the speed of light resulted in the creation of several blackholes at different scales. Following a plea by scientists, major news corporations and newspapers have decided to not publish the news so as to not create havoc amongst the concerned masses.

“We do not know how many black holes have formed,” says a scientist at the LHC on the condition of anonymity, “but we believe there to be more than one”. Top sources at the LHC claim that the scale of the black holes poses no credible threat. But as the energy of the colliding particles increases, the size of the possible black holes will increase exponentially, threatening the safety of the entire world.

The chances of this happening were reported to be one in 5 million before the experiments began. But the odds had been going up ever since the Collidor began operation. “We realized early on that our calculations on how the apparatus should behave were off,” says the scientist, “and we had to revise the estimates almost every hour due to the unpredictable manner in which the LHC was operating”. When asked why the potentially dangerous experiment was allowed to continue, a spokesman for the LHC said that the huge sum of money invested into the idea could not be forsaken “at the slightest dab of concern”.

Conception and construction of the LHC cost approximately £3.5 billion over nearly a decade. Scientists are hoping to find the ellusive Higgs Boson particle by colliding sub-atomic particles at very high speeds. The Higgs Boson is the particle which physicists believe to be responsible for the mass of things. It has never been observed although the framework of modern physics rests upon its shoulders. Conditions were set-up at the LHC that replicate the state of the universe when the big-bang had just occured. The LHC was cooled down for weeks to transform it into one of the coldest places in the universe and subatomic particles raced along its 27 km circumference, accelerating towards the speed of light.

“When the experiment first began,” says the scientist, “the odds of finding the Higgs Boson were considerably higher than those of creating a black hole. But the revised odds after only a day of operation made the creation of black holes more likely. Many mathematicians expressed their concern and wanted the LHC to be shut down until the calculations were reviewed”. Despite the concern, the LHC was allowed to operate further due to two major reasons.

“If we were to stop operations, the hysteria would make it unlikely for the LHC to resume atleast in the near future. Also, there was no contingency plan to halt the operations. Thats the one thing that we didn’t plan”.

Frankie Boyle, a regular contributor to BBC’s Channel 2 recently said, “These black holes are the worst possible kind of black holes. Everybody is going to slowly move towards Switzerland”. To make his point in a debate about the importance of new discoveries promised by the LHC, Mr. Boyle said, “I’m sure they’ll find some interesting things about protons. But I may add, I don’t give a shit”.

Our newsteam has promised to pass on any comments to our scientist at the Large Hadron Collider.  Please keep your messages short. Also, this is (obvious) satire against the prepostorous “end of the world” drama. Stop if you’re sweating and hope you enjoyed the read.

A Chrome in every home

Has your Firefox lost its fiery wonder? Maybe you have yet to say goodbye to Internet Explorer? Opera isn’t music to your ears and you never liked Apple much to go on its Safari? Well, now Google wants to have a shot and fill your world with Chrome.

“Yes, its a Trojan,” says Stephen Moseley, senior web designer and former aerospace engineer at NASA. “Google are trying to get Google Gears into more homes and on more desktops. Chrome is a Google OS that will allow you to run some web-applications. All the tabs are sandboxed, so Chrome behaves more like an OS. If an app collapses, the whole browser will not fail. Say hello to a Cloud-OS.”

A chrome in every home.

This seems to be a fluent explanation as to why Google have decided to enter the browser wars. But many people have differing theories. “Google introduced Chrome for reasons similar to Apple’s introduction of Safari,” says Emery Jeffreys, Internet wizard at Bright House Networks. “Google Android phones will require a browser.”

I don’t doubt that Chrome will be the browser of choice for the Android, but I’m not sure if this is the primary motive behind the conception of Chrome. Surely, it’d easier for Google to build a mobile-only version of the browser.

“Why let MS or even Mozilla stand between you and your customer?” asks Cole Parker, Director of Product Development at Building Engines. “Ultimately Google needs to push the envelope of what can be done on the web. It isn’t enough to let JavaScript, Flash and HTML define what can be done. If they can get the Chrome on everyone’s computer, they can push better applications to it.”

 

Microsoft Windows Flight Edition

This is a possibility that has been questioned on numerous blogs and has sparked mostly comical responses about the stability of various operating systems. I wanted to gather the opinions of some “experts” in the industry. So I posed a question to them.

“For $10,00,000, would you board a test-flight on an airplane running a flight-version of Microsoft Windows? If not, would you consider the offer if the plane was running on either Mac OS X or Ubuntu?”

• Colin King
  Kerner engineer at Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu)
  Aircraft normally triple redundancy, so Microsoft would probably cobble together Vista, Windows 98SE and XP.

• Jessica Gray
  Software engineer at Google.
  None of those systems is designed for that sort of operation and I know Mac and MS specifically list several things their software should be used for. IE and Safari don’t need to have the fail safes a flight control systems needs and would be prohibitively expense if they did.

• Benjamin Myers
  Software Design Engineer at Microsoft.
  Yes, even back when I hated Microsoft, my stuff worked at first and died later after I abused it.Mac, no. I’ve never worked on any Mac anything that didn’t need a lot of hand holding when asked to really grind. It’d give you a pretty death and then email your friends and relatives a catchy funeral march that Apple would own the rights to.  

  Ashamed to say I’ve never heard of Ubuntu. I would trust Unix and Sun (at least the ones I worked on in late 1980s/early 1990s), but not Linux.

• Gary Clarke
  Senior Manager at Amazon Kindle.
  Are you kidding me? Someone would connect their seat-belt and cause a device-driver conflict. Flush the toilet and the flaps will extend in mid-flight.

• Chris Gamble
  President of CRG Media. Former System Administrator at JPMorgan and Chase.
  Windows: As long as its XP, and not an OEM install.
  Mac: I’m sure it would be a nice ride, but you would spend all of the money you earn on in-flight upgrades.
  Linux: I know I would get there safely, but all the money would be spent on Chiropractor bills.

• Abhinav Mishra
  Programmer at Infosys (India’s largest software company).
  If I have a Unix based parachute, I won’t mind.

• Robert Lindsley
  Executive Producer at Atari
  No, yes and no.

• Craig Muth
  Former Sr. Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin.
  Not if its the initial release! If it is SP2 or later,Yes!

• Joe Wlad
  Former Staff Engineer at United Airlines.Yes. As one who has worked in both aircraft flight testing and software certification to meet FAA requirements, all systems and software approved for airborne use must go through a rigorous development, testing and verification process.So the question is what systems would Windows be demonstrated on? If it’s passenger entertainment, the level of rigor involved to verify the software is more focused on quality (from a user point of view) than safety. If the OS supports flight-critical functions, then the level of rigor (and cost to certify) is much higher.If one just wanted to demonstrate the feasibility of using MS Windows on a display system during a flight test, you’d have to ensure that the secondary systems were using previously-certified software so that in case of any failure or malfunction the flight-test crew could shut down the Windows-based system and rely on the certified system to get back home.  

  As an aside, certification of software to meet safety-critical requirements for commercial aviation is rather expensive. Experience has shown that it costs about $50 per line to certify software to the highest level of safety. For this reason, the operating systems used in these systems are usually small in size when compared to Windows.

• John Gilman
  Former Business & Technology Consultant at Microsoft.
  Of course, I would prefer Windows embedded over any OS for stability…I just to make sure the hardware drivers and other applications are written up to snuff.

• Kurt Brust
  Sr Linux Platform Engineer at Wachovia. Former Sr Linux Consultant at IBM.
  Maybe if it was running in a virtual session under Linux!

• Tadd Moor
  Director, IS&T Infrastructure at Rooney Holdings Inc.
  No, I wouldn’t. Partly because I’m burned out on air travel an – even free travel; and partly because you didn’t mention from who Microsoft “liberated” the technology.

• Geoff Beckman
  Owner of Beckman & Associates.
  No for two reasons:
  1. I can’t wait 18 months for it to launch.
  2. I bought my flight bag in 1998, and the luggage compartment doesn’t support it anymore.2. Ubuntu isn’t scheduled to add stairs to the plane in the next release (right now you have to climb hand over hand using a rope), and I’m tired of being called a “newbie” or MS-100Z3R when I request that someone look into adding seats and restrooms.  

  No to the others as well:
  1. Mac OS X will fly me to San Francisco, Monte Carlo, or Rio, but will not support a return trip, because Steve Jobs doesn’t think it’s a cool experience to fly to Ohi

• John Swanagon
  Senior Systems Architect Manager at Avaya. Former Principal Consultant at Lucent technologies.
• Absolutely. Let me qualify that by saying that I would as long as the plane, which includes the software, was cleared and certified by the FAA (or in the process of certification). There are varying opinions out there as to Windows’ stability, but I believe that it is a stable product. I would trust it to run the software on a plane.The other thing to remember too is the backup systems. If all else fails, the pilots could land the plane without the software. If the plane was so dependent on the software that a “manual” landing was impossible, then I would say absolutely not.

• Sanjay Vyas
  Sr. Vice President at Aptech & Owner of Synergetics India.
  Yes… if its version 3.0!

• Jason King
  Senior Developer at Optus SingTel Pty Ltd. & Technical Director at Handle IT
  Fee for boarding test flight: $10,000,000
  Parachute: $2000
  Standby recovery team: $10,000
  MS Windows plane never getting close to even pushing back from the gate: Priceless!

• Hosun Lee
  Former Technical Sales Specialist at IBM
  Sure I would.
  1) Microsoft makes quality software.
  2) The publicity associated with a plane crashing when Windows crashing would be catastrophic enough for Microsoft to want to make sure it works.
  3) Microsoft already powers my car, and I have a much greater chance of dying in a car accident than in a plane crash (knock on wood).

• John Ruxlow
  Works for Thomson Reuters.
  I would be willing to get on it, but I would want the money to go to my family if I didn’t make it. From what I am seeing on the news Microsoft couldn’t screw it up any worse than the FAA and plane maintenance groups already have it.

• Alan Crawford
  Former Senior Systems Engineer at Trident Systems Inc.
  Board it, yes. However, I’d be sure to get off and take cover before they started the engines, let alone attempted to get airborne.
  For the other two – no. I don’t fly on planes running general purpose operating systems. While wild horses wouldn’t get me airborne on even Windows for Airliners (formerly Windows for Warships, previously Windows for Washing Machines, originally Bob), there are already plenty of planes airborne with subsystems that make use of specialized versions of the Linux kernel. Probably a fair number of systems using Window CE based systems too.

• Ray Miller
  Former Project Team Leader at GE Aircraft Engines.
  Windows: NO (especially Vista). Mac: Yes. Ubuntu: Yes

• Adrian Bugaian
  Software Test Engineer at Endava.
  Why not? It will be very very scary, but you will have something to tell you grand children.
  Regarding the other 2: Mac is just good looking and thats all. Ubuntu… no… for such purpuses open software is really not suitable.

• Adam Dionne
  QA Technician at CAPCOM Interactive Canada.
  I would do it for free without hesitation.

Keep your secrets off the plane

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that computers are like luggage and subject to searches at national borders and airports. Its only a matter of time before this reasoning is applied to electronic devices such as your Blackberry.

Its time to put an end to the practice of carrying Corporate secrets on board. If you must finish that Powerpoint presentation outlining your company’s brilliant new idea, do invest in some reasonable encryption. Also, you may want to consider grabbing a utility that securely deletes your recycle bin contents by overwriting it multiple times.

If you run Mac OS X, Disk Utility (included in the OS) does all this for you.

The Erase Free Space option overwrites deleted data up to 35 times. This makes it nearly impossible for sinners to recover your corporate secrets.

You can also encrypt folders by  creating a new disk image from folder and choosing the 128-bit AES Encryption format. (Remember to uncheck the option that automatically saves your password in keychain)