Random Fate

Times change

I knew this day would come.

Slide rules rule in Stanford exhibit

Stanford University is hosting an exhibit on the 350 year history of that hoary tool of the engineering world: the slide rule.

The slide rule was the most convenient calculator available to builders and scientists until the development of electronic calculators a few years ago. They also made great looking tie clips.

Scottish theologian John Napier laid the foundation for the invention of the slide rule in 1614 with the invention of logarithms. In 1622, the mathematician William Oughtred set two straight edges marked with logarithmic scales side by side and created the first rectilinear slide rule.

About 15 years ago I saw a slide rule on sale somewhere, I have no idea where it was.

I immediately bought it.

I haven't seen one on sale since.

I brought that slide rule to France with me, and I've shown it to many of my French colleagues, who didn't even know they ever existed.

Be careful of being too prideful in what you know how to do. I once knew how to perform calculations on a slide rule fairly quickly. Now, hardly anyone born after men landed on the moon even know they were used to design the ships of Apollo lunar landing program.

Sigh...

How odd...

The headline:

ABC revives 'Kolchak,' axes '8 Rules'

The only mention of Kolchak in the story itself, however:

September's schedule will also include "Hot Properties," a comedy about four women who work in a Manhattan real estate office, and a remake of the short-lived 1970s occult series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker."

I loved watching The Night Stalker as a child. I recently bought the DVD of the two movies for television they made. I haven't seen any DVDs for the series itself.

How the heck are they going to remake it? The story centered on the ability of Darren McGavin to pull off the character of a crusty old-school reporter, a character that if they exist any more are retired, as McGavin so effectively portrayed in episodes of The X Files in an homage to the Kolchak character he so effectively created.

Even though it pales in comparison to the special effects of even television shows today, The Night Stalker (both the movies and the short-lived series) had something special about them that still captures my imagination.

Of course, I'm not really sure what that says about my imagination, but those who anticipate my fiction can get an idea of how twisted it can be.

The remake of the series made the headline but only half a sentence in the story itself?

How odd.

You've got to read this one just for the headline...

...which reads:

Astronomers spot fun-sized solar system

Yes, we did land on the moon

Panorama images from the lunar landing missions.

Geek cool...

'nuff said.

For anyone who has ever had to deal with their company computer "support"...

...here is satire, at it's best.

Enjoy.

A fitting memorial

Doug Mc. at The Reality Stick has informed me of a tribute that is so fitting words cannot describe it to someone not already "in the know."

Douglas Adams has had an asteroid named after him, a celestial body chosen for very particular reasons.

Doug Mc. also includes in his post one of my favorite quotes of all time:

In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

   -Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Some days, to me that says enough...

Photos from another world

Titan appears to have some kind of liquid present on the surface. This is very important, because it is hypothesized that it is much easier for life of any type, not just that we are familiar with, to form in the presence of liquids.

The image archive for the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and the moon Titan is here.

Here is the first color image from the surface:

A composite panorama made up of images taken during the descent can be found here.

It's not technology related...

...but it's still "geek cool".

A true example of diversity, and how not all is grim and serious.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy!

Gung Haggis Fat Choy Dinner 2005 Info

WHEN: 6PM January 30 2005, Sunday

WHAT: Gung Haggis Fat Choy: Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner

FOOD: A quirky fusion/mix/buffet of Scottish Canadian and Chinese Canadian culture 12 course Chinese banguet dinner including haggis served with plum or sweet and sour sauces. For 2004, we presented the debut of Gung Haggis Wun-Tun - Watch for more surprises in 2005!

CULTURE: Featuring musical performers Brave Waves and Silk Road Ensemble + more!

Makes me wish I was in Vancouver so I could go!!!

This really is "geek cool"...

...strange new worlds:

The Huygens probe will plunge through the orange clouds of Saturn's moon Titan Friday, offering scientists their first glimpse of the mysterious moon.

"It's going to be the most exotic place we've ever seen," said Candice Hansen, a scientist for the Cassini-Huygens mission. "We've never landed on the surface of an icy satellite. We know from our pictures that there are very different kinds of geological processes."

If all goes well, the saucer-shaped Huygens will enter the thick atmosphere of Titan Friday at about 5:13 a.m. (ET). The data should start trickling in about five hours later.

You can watch it here: NASA Television

First the clamshell phone...

...was apparently inspired by the communicator design from the original Star Trek series.

Now, a device that works like the badge-communicators from Star Trek: The Next Generation is about to be released.

Even though in my work I make technology like this possible, it's still surprising and wonderful to me.

Meanwhile, on Mars...

...the two rovers named by schoolchildren Spirit and Opportunity are emerging from the Martian winter and getting power boosts.

It's been almost a year, and the rovers are still working, even though they had been designed to last only 90 days. Sometimes, NASA still gets things spectacularly right.

The path of the Opportunity rover:

Do you ever wonder...

...how we got to the technology you are using to read this right now?

Then read a brief history of microprocessors.

Meanwhile, near Saturn...

...the Cassini-Huygens mission continues it's exploration of strange new worlds.

Are you sure you want to know?

I've had more than one person ask me "What exactly is it that you do for a living, anyway?"

An article at CNET News describes the technology I work on. It is in the context of what Intel is planning, but the entire semiconductor industry is working on similar technology as Intel so it applies to my work as well. It's getting more and more difficult to make the devices that go into IC chips faster and more efficient, but it's my job all the same.

Supercomputing for the masses?

Even discounting the marketing hype and recognizing the multithreading being implemented by both AMD and Intel in their latest, highest performing microprocessors, a new architecture in development by IBM, Toshiba, and Sony may be the next wave in adding "thinking power" to everything. From EE Times:

The eagerly anticipated Cell processor from IBM, Toshiba and Sony leverages a multicore 64-bit Power architecture with an embedded streaming processor, high-speed I/O, SRAM and dynamic multiplier in an effort, the partners hope, to revolutionize distributed computing architectures.

Although the technical aspects of the design, which has been in the works for nearly four years, are tightly held, details are emerging in excerpts from papers to be released today for the 2005 International Solid-State Circuits Conference, as well as in patent filings.

The highly integrated Cell device has been billed as a beefy engine for Sony's Playstation 3, due to be demonstrated in May. But the architecture also addresses many other applications, including set-top boxes and mobile communications. Workstations fitted with the Cell architecture — a $2 billion endeavor — are already in the hands of game developers.

Five ISSCC papers from members of the 400-strong Cell processor team (see related story, "Best Development Teams," page 64) open peepholes onto a highly modular and hierarchical first-generation device implemented in 90-nanometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.

At root, the Cell architecture rests on two concepts: the "apulet," a bundle comprising a data object and the code necessary to perform an action upon it; and the "processing element," a hierarchical bundle of control and streaming processor resources that can execute any apulet at any time.

The apulets appear to be completely portable among the processing elements in a system, so that tasks can be doled out dynamically by assigning a waiting apulet to an available processing element. Scalability can be achieved by adding processing elements.

These ideas are not easily achieved. According to data from Paul Zimmons, a PhD graduate in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they require a highly intelligent way of dividing memory into protected regions called "bricks," careful attention to memory bandwidth and local storage, and massive bandwidth between processing elements — even those lying on separate chips.

At the top level, the architecture appears to be a pool of "cells," or clusters of perhaps four identical processing elements. All of the cells in a system — or for that matter, a network of systems — are apparently peers. According to one of the ISSCC papers on the Cell design, a single chip implements a single processing element. The initial chips are being built in 90nm SOI technology, with 65nm devices reportedly sampling.

There are more technical details in the rest of the article at EE Times, and both BBC News and CNNMoney have articles, but neither go into the same detail as the EE Times, and I believe the CNNMoney article gets some of the details wrong.

I'm not sure I see how this is significantly different from the standard parallel processing that has been the rage in supercomputing in the past few years, other than in this case the data to be processed and the code to process it appear to be grouped together into packets. Regardless, the parallel aspect of this architecture should allow even faster processing for higher resolution graphics and other processing intensive applications such as game-physics (Sony apparently plans this technology for use in their next generation PlayStation), control systems for car engines, active feedback applications (for example, using microphones to "hear" music and then compensate for inadequate speakers and room configuration to deliver perfect surround sound), more detailed medical imaging with instant analysis and comparison with historical data, and many other applications that do not immediately spring to my tired mind.

Incidentally, the research I do is directed towards the 45nm and beyond technology (for a company that is none of the those listed here), which is the follow-up to the 65nm technology mentioned above.

I like working in R&D

We may may soon have displays that can fold or roll up. Think about what this can do to the form-factors of PalmPilots and other handheld electronics that are limited by the compromise between small size for portability and the desire for a large display. From Silicon Strategies (a login might be required, I tried to find a link that would circumvent it):

As part of its $825,000 contract with L-3, Universal Display is developing a full-color, active-matrix FOLED (flexible organic light-emitting diode) display prototype on metal. The metal substrate can lead to a rugged, retractable display. Mahon, the firm's vice president of Technology Commercialization, said the industry growing around the technology has been struggling with different substrate approaches, including plastic, glass, and metal. All seem to be useful for different applications.

FOLED is based on the established OLED technology, which can be merged with flexible substrates. The result is a display that's thinner and lighter than today's liquid-crystal displays. The FOLED products consume less power than LEDs and eventually should be much cheaper. The underlying OLED technology is based on the development of small-molecule OLEDs being built on flexible substrates to form FOLEDs.

"FOLEDs are less breakable," said Mahon. "That's one reason we'll be seeing them in cell phones. And the displays will look better and be clearer."

She expects televisions using OLED technology to begin hitting commercial markets by 2006. The TV technology uses Universal Display's phosphorescent (PHOLED) approach, which has an additional advantage of using less power--a particular benefit for large TV screens, which have been gaining in popularity in recent years.

Further out, Mahon sees even broader applications: automobiles could be coated with FOLED active matrix technology; which would allow drivers to easily change the color of their cars, if they wish. The technology would have obvious camouflage benefits for military usage. For instance, in discussing the use of FOLED for the Air Force, Universal Display stated: "Integrated with a polysilicon, thin-film transistor backplane and thin-film encapsulation technologies, the active matrix FOLED display will be designed to offer high information content and video-rate performance.

The changing color of the car bit sounds like something out of a James Bond movie. You can't get much cooler than that!!!

Hold Off On Buying Your Ticket To Outer Space

PREFACE: Greetings! This is Joe Gandelman, aka The Moderate Voice. Jack's blog is one of my FAVORITES and even though I am running around (I was in about four states in the past 9 days) I told him I'd do a bit of Guest Blogging (I am also Guest Blogging on another blog this weekend). Anyway, since Random Fate is a truly independent blog, I said I'd do what I can...and hopefully won't send his readers running for barf bags.

DO YOU WANT TO TRAVEL IN OUTER SPACE? There has been a lot of publicity about a private company offering rides into outerspace. But if you're saving your money (the costs are a bit steep) you might want to wait...due to this...

New Medical Frontiers

'Tis I, Boudicca again... posting while Jack is still out and about in Paris.

The Cleveland Clinic has been approved to perform the first face transplant, should it present itself at the proper time. It was bandied about with 10 months of ethical, psychological issues and medical debate, finally being announced in Mid-October, when I first read of it. The CC said it may not happen in our life or it may happen sooner than anyone expects. This will not be an impulsive decision on anyone’s part, to embark on such a surgery.

I have been giving this great thought. If I were a burn victim or had suffered some horrible disfigurement I know I could not be the one to say, “Yes, please, I want this”. I am not being flippant. You see, I am not a risk taker. There are different types of people in this world and I need stability and assurance. I know this about me. I hated something as simple as dating; I like being in a stable relationship with a stable man. Dating was risky. When space travel was being explored, I would not have signed up. I don’t enjoy flying, let alone letting a team of scientists hurl me into space. So I know that I am not the type of person that would step up to the plate of a new surgery, something as truly invasive as the first face transplant.

At first blush it seems odd, does it not? I read that they intend to keep the muscle structure intact so as to keep the original face appearance of the patient...the patient will not look like the donor. But so much runs through my mind… There is only a 50% chance of success. What happens if the body ‘rejects’ the new face? What is underneath? Surely there is some contingency plan. Is the patient even more disfigured after a facial rejection? And how is the face prepared? It sounds as if all tissue is removed down to the muscle. For tissue to stay alive, does it not need blood flow? I can’t comprehend how they’ll get past that hurtle.

Will the new transplant be able to heal itself if scratched? Will it bruise? Will it age? I would think there would be no facial hair, no eyebrows and eyelashes and if for a man, no beard. I imagine plastic surgeons can make it the ‘right’ fit as plastic surgery has come such a long long way. But would that not be odd to have a 50 year old man with a 20 year old face? Or vice versa? Will the skin burn? Will it be more sensitive to the sun? And can it break out in rashes? Will it freckle?

And trust me, these are just a few of my questions. I find the entire possibility absolutely amazing and I am continually surprised and excited by the new paths I see medicine take, but I am the type that must be a bystander and I am in awe of those who can throw caution to the wind and be a great explorer of new frontiers.

Meanwhile on Mars...

The rovers have discovered more evidence of past presence of liquid water on the surface of Mars.

Why is this cool? Liquid water is key to life as it exists on Earth, so liquid water on Mars may have also resulted in life starting there as well. Even if all that life is dead now, the presence of life in the past would show that life can evolve elsewhere, which means that life likely exists in at least one other planetary system in the galaxy.

Isn't that cool? I think it is.

Cool, but ow!!!

Go here.

WARNING: Don't look too long, you might get a headache.

Talk about a lesson in illusions...

Link from Dean's World.

Meanwhile, on Mars...

The two rovers Spirit and Opportunity are still roving, despite some technical issues.


The path taken by the Spirit rover since landing:

No sightings of Dennis Kucinich or Alan Keyes yet...

Not "Geek Cool" but a sad passing...

In a sad counterpoint to the success of SpaceShipOne in winning the Ansari X Prize, Astronaut Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury 7, died on Monday at the age of 77. He was the astronaut played by Dennis Quaid in the movie The Right Stuff who said very memorably, "Who's the best pilot you ever saw?"

He went farther, faster, and higher than anyone ever had before...

And now for something completely out of this world

It appears that astronomers may have been able to take a photo of a planet in another solar system. Here is a false-color photo from the infrared part of the spectrum.

Image credit ESO/VLT, from Space.com

They are working to confirm that the apparent planet is really just a more distant star from the brown dwarf that is the bright star in the image. If you want the whole story, go to Space.com.

Meanwhile, in the real world...

Astronomers are making progress in finding planets that resemble Earth more than Jupiter. From CNN.com:

Our planet is not alone. It may not even be lonely.

Astronomers on Tuesday announced the discovery of a new -- and possibly abundant -- class of planets that has more in common with Earth than the uninhabitable gas giants previously discovered.

"We are closer to answering the question, 'Are we alone in the universe?'" said Anne Kinney, director of NASA's Universe Division, Science Mission Directorate. "We aim to answer that question by looking for planets, eventually imaging them and ultimately diagnosing the presence of life on those planets."

Astronomers found the two planets, among the smallest ever detected, orbit different stars less then 50 light years from Earth. One planet circles a red dwarf star, the most abundant in our Milky Way galaxy, igniting hope that the discoveries may just be the beginning.

Why is this important?

Well, I tend to think in the long term, the very, very, very long term.

To preserve our species we need to expand, just as the Old World expanded into the New World starting around half a millennium ago. Yes, interstellar travel is just a dream today, but so were so many other things that are now commonplace, including flying over oceans, computers that can be activated by voice command, even DVDs would be inconceivable to people alive merely a century ago.

We need the dreamers, for in the end it is they who will save us, both physically and spiritually.

More from the real world instead of politics

Astronomy, a hobby of mine, is one of the very few areas of science where amateurs and part-time enthusiasts can make significant contributions.

Here is an example:

With the help of a modified backyard telescope, astronomers have discovered a giant planet orbiting another star. It is the first extrasolar world found with such modest equipment.

Finding a planet orbiting another star from a small (4 inch) telescope. Tell me, how cool is that?

Life, the universe, and everything...

Here's a photo I took about 18 years ago:

WARNING: This thumbnail is linked to a big, resizable TIF file. Be prepared to wait...

Halley's Comet, not due to return until 2061.

Despite all the furor in the world the universe continues on its path, oblivious to our concerns and troubles.

Before there were computer simulators for training...

...we still managed to land on the moon.

Here is one of the ways NASA overcame the difficulties presented by the last 300 feet to the moon.

One of my earliest memories is watching a fuzzy picture on the TV in the living room, a man in a bulky white space suit walking on the surface of the moon. It is one memory I hope I never lose.

It was thirty-five years ago:

On July 16, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins climbed into the Apollo. The unit's Saturn V rocket, equipped with the most powerful engines ever built, blasted them into space.

Their trajectory took them around Earth and toward the moon when a third-stage rocket fired. Two modules -- the Eagle, for landing, and the Columbia, a command and service center -- entered the moon's orbit July 19.

A day later, Armstrong navigated a course that included a potentially deadly crater and boulder field before successfully touching down in flat terrain.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here," he said. "The Eagle has landed."

Armstrong, soon joined by Aldrin, spent 21 hours on the lunar surface. The two sampled rocks, surveyed terrain, set up experiments and famously planted an American flag in the soil. A plaque they left read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind."

The pair then re-entered the Eagle, reuniting with Collins and the Columbia module before returning home by splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Within six months, the United States had landed a second team of astronauts on the moon. For the next three years, at six-month intervals, NASA sent more manned missions to the moon. The sixth and final one, Apollo 17, left the moon December 14, 1972 -- the last time humans set foot on another celestial body.

There is something that is often forgotten in the memories of that success:

Apollo 11, and the six subsequent lunar missions (except for Apollo 13, during which U.S. astronauts averted disaster but returned home without setting foot on the moon), marked a stunning climax after years of tribulations and smaller successes.

The U.S. space program, under the Pioneer and Ranger missions, made repeated attempts to hurl a satellite toward the moon starting in 1958. The first 10 U.S. robotic missions to the moon failed due to booster rocket misfires, faulty computers and other malfunctions.

On July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 finally succeeded. The craft beamed 4,316 images back to Earth before crashing on the lunar surface. More fly-bys and reconnaissance missions followed, paving the way for Apollo 11.

We are too easily deterred now. If the same risk-averse culture existed then as over-rides all now, we would never have landed on the moon during that wonderful July in 1969.

It's hard to surf if you have a bad board (surf the web, that is)

Due to the recent emergence of numerous Internet Explorer related security issues, many folks are beginning to use browsers other than IE. Dowingba in particular has been advocating using something other than IE for quite a while (his preference is Mozilla Firefox) along with discussing web surfing in general. I've been using Opera and Mozilla (the full install, not Firefox) for a while now. I like Mozilla because it looks and behaves the same on my PCs and on my Mac, and the extensions add features on BOTH platforms. I only use IE when I have to on sites that are non-compliant with web standards. Although no software is completely secure, migrating away from IE is definitely wise because it is tied in too closely with the Windows operating system and also because the hackers are targeting Microsoft products. If you do want to change browsers, Wired News has posted a round-up of alternative browsers that is worth checking out.

Unexpected macroscopic effects from microscopic life

Well, this is certainly not something I had ever thought of:

Phytoplankton may be small, but that doesn't mean they can't do big things -- like change the weather to suit their needs.

A recent study funded by NASA's Earth Science Department shows that the tiny sea plants release high quantities of cloud-forming compounds on days when the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays are especially strong. The compounds evaporate into the air through a series of chemical processes that result in especially reflective clouds. This, in turn, blocks the radiation from bothering the phytoplankton.

The findings not only confirm earlier theories that plankton are linked to the creation of clouds above the ocean but could also lead to a better understanding of how living things affect the Earth's climate.

"The take-home message is that all the processes that are going on in the ocean and the climate are very tightly connected," said David Siegel, co-author of the study and director of the Institute for Computational Earth System Science in Santa Barbara, California. "This is really the impetus for other researchers to look into the whole cycle of how biology and climate interact."

Siegel and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher Dierdre Toole announced the results of their study in the May issue of the Geophysical Research Letters, a scientific journal.

Hmmmm... Could you call the clouds created this way a "tool"? If so, then we primates (including the chimpanzees) are not the sole tool makers on this planet.

Meanwhile, on Mars

No one has noticed, but the rovers on Mars are still operating, and have moved farther than any vehicle on another world (including the Moon, where Astronauts were driving).

I hate it when we lose sight of stuff like this...