Category Archives: Technology

Nanotechnology Investment as Strategic National Economic Policy

We have quite a few posts on the intersection of science, research, economic, investment… such as: Diplomacy and Science Research, Science and Engineering in Global Economics and Engineering the Future Economy. Here is another example, from the Wired Science BlogBeating the United States in the Race for Nanotechnology:

When the United States began the National Nanotechnology Initiative, it became clear to a number of small countries including Singapore, Taiwan, and Israel that it was time to invest heavily in similar frontier areas of science. With a level of decisiveness and determination comparable to the efforts of the United States after the launch of Sputnik, Singapore quickly became a global niche player in nanotechnology.

It’s fascinating to hear a high ranking government official who is so incredibly technology savvy and focused on economic development through investment in science. It makes the current climate in the U.S. look really bad, but on the other hand the other countries followed our lead. Since then, they have sort of outdone us at our own game.

Singapore is doing the right things to invest in a science and engineering economy. 10 minute webcast of Foreign Minister George Yeo at the 3rd International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology:

Great Speech by Marissa Mayer on Innovation at Google

Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minute speech, 26 minutes of question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Excellent speech. Highly recommended. Google top 9 ideas:

(inside these are Marissa’s thoughts) [inside these are my comments]

Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google acquires)
Share everything you can (very open culture)
Your Brilliant We’re Hiring [Google Hiring]
A license to pursue dreams (Google 20% time)
Innovation not instant perfection (iteration – experiment quickly and often)
Data is apolitical [Data Based Decision Making – common errors in interpreting data – read the related links too]
Creativity loves Constraints [process improvement and innovation]
Users not money (Google focuses on providing users what they want and believe it will work out)
Don’t kill projects morph them

So far every time I hear one of Google’s leaders speak I am happier that I own a bit of stock – this is another instance of that.

Harvard Course: Understanding Computers and the Internet

Harvard Extension School – Computer Science E-1: Understanding Computers and the Internet

This course is all about understanding: understanding what’s going on inside your computer when you flip on the switch, why tech support has you constantly rebooting your computer, how everything you do on the Internet can be watched by others, and how your computer can become infected with a worm just by turning it on. In this course we demystify computers and the Internet, along with their jargon, so that students understand not only what they can do with each but also how it all works and why. Students leave this course armed with a new vocabulary and equipped for further exploration of computers and the Internet. Topics include hardware, software, the Internet, multimedia, security, website development, programming, and dotcoms. This course is designed both for those with little, if any, computer experience and for those who use a computer every day.

Nice job. via: Learn How The Darn Thing Works … from Harvard

Fun for People – Hard for Computers

Arimaa is a highly competitive strategy game. It was designed to be:

* Difficult for computers.
* Playable with a standard chess set.
* Fun and interesting for humans.

Arimaa Tutorial. It looks interesting.

Google: Patent System in Crisis

Google’s patents chief believes the US patent system is “in crisis” and I agree, see related posts below. Google: Kill all the patent trolls

There are too many businesses, she added, who do little more than use patents as a means of making money. Such businesses, often referred to as trolls in patent law, have proved to be a serious minefield for tech companies over the last few years. Lee highlighted the tribulations of Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry handheld, which settled a patent lawsuit for $612m last May.

Speaking alongside Lee, Apple’s chief patent counsel, Chip Lutton, wouldn’t go quite so far as his Google counterpart. He said the US patent system was “not broken” and that it was “not in crisis,” calling it “the best in the world”. But he acknowledged that there was a “huge bubble” of patent assertions that needs to be scaled back. “The question with this bubble market, as with any bubble market, is ‘Can we solve it without a crisis arising?'” he said.

Lutton believes that the key to fixing the country’s patent problems lies with the courts, not the patent office. “Most patents issued are never litigated and never licensed,” he said. “We need to focus on fixing the litigation system. That’s most relevant.”

YouTube Architecture

This very interesting post by Todd Hoff gives an overview of the YouTube Architecture and thus some interesting ideas on large scale web application architecture.

Each video hosted by a mini-cluster. Each video is served by more than one machine.
* Using a a cluster means:
– More disks serving content which means more speed.
– Headroom. If a machine goes down others can take over.
– There are online backups.
* Servers use the lighttpd web server for video:
– Apache had too much overhead.
– Uses epoll to wait on multiple fds.
– Switched from single process to multiple process configuration to handle more connections.
* Most popular content is moved to a CDN (content delivery network):
– CDNs replicate content in multiple places. There’s a better chance of content being closer to the user, with fewer hops, and content will run over a more friendly network.
– CDN machines mostly serve out of memory because the content is so popular there’s little thrashing of content into and out of memory.
* Less popular content (1-20 views per day) uses YouTube servers in various colo sites.
– There’s a long tail effect. A video may have a few plays, but lots of videos are being played.

I have noticed a large increase in significant delays (taking 10-20 seconds to start playing) with YouTube in the last few months.

Evolutionary Design

Evolutionary algorithms now surpass human designers by Paul Marks:

Evolutionary Algorithms take two parent designs – for a boat hull, say – and blend components of each, perhaps taking the surface area of one and the curvature of another, to produce multiple hull offspring that combine the features of the parents in different ways. Then the algorithm selects those offspring it considers are worth re-breeding – in this case those with the right combination of parameters to make a better hull. The EA then repeats the process. Although many offspring will be discarded, after thousands of generations or more, useful features accumulate in the same design, and get combined in ways that likely would not have occurred to a human designer. This is because a human does not have the time to combine all the possibilities for each feature and evaluate them, but an EA does.

Evolving new designs is very cool. One point I would like to make (I am biased since my father did a great deal of work in this area) is the power of design of experiments to allow experimenting on multiple factors at once. This is a methodology that is still used far too little. Regardless, evolutionary design is very cool. The Human-Competitive awards highlight some examples.

National Science and Technology Medals

photo of White House Technology Medal Ceremony - July 2007

The 2005 and 2006 National Medals for Science and Technology were awarded at a White House Ceremony this week. The National Science and Technology Medals Foundation web site has photos of each award winner receiving their medals this year and a list of all winners. The National Medal of Science was established by Congress in 1959 as a Presidential award, has recognized 441 of America’s leading scientists and engineers. The evaluation criteria is based on the total impact an individual’s work has had on the present state of physical, chemical, biological, mathematical, engineering, behavioral or social sciences.

The National Medal of Technology was established by Congress in 1980 as a Presidential award, has recognized 146 individuals and 26 companies whose accomplishments have generated jobs and created a better standard of living. Their accomplishments best embody technological innovation and support the advancement of global U.S. competitiveness.

List of all winners from the White House press release: Continue reading →

Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership

One of the topics I keep coming back to is the future economic impact of science, engineering, technology and the supporting structures in countries for the same. I believe a significant part of the benefit we enjoy today and will enjoy in the future is tied to how well those areas are integrated with economic factors (raising capital, open financial markets, infrastructure…). Some past posts include: The Future is Engineering, U.S. Slipping on Science, Diplomacy and Science Research, Shrinking Science Gap and Engineering the Future Economy. Fortune discusses the issue in – The United States of Technology?:

As we celebrated the nation’s birthday, I asked myself a patriotic question: Does the United States still lead in tech? As an American myself, my lens is inevitably distorted. Even so, the answer is hardly an unqualified yes.

I agree. While I still think the USA leads the question is debatable in various fields and as I have said before the future looks to be moving in the other direction. This is more due to the rest of the World improving than the USA failing. The continued reduction in advanced science and engineering degrees awarded to USA citizens compared to the rest of the world is a leading indicator I believe. Along with my belief that we will attract fewer leaders to the USA than we have in the past.

No other country can duplicate the American environment of tech creativity, which arises from a unique stew of entrepreneurs, academics, engineers, imaginative marketers and savvy financiers packed together in an atmosphere of risk-taking and plentiful capital. There is nowhere outside the United States remotely like the three places where this formula is most clearly at work – Silicon Valley of course, plus Austin and Boston.

True but the precursors for doing so are being created, the question is whether countries can pull all of it together. If only one country had a shot, I would guess that they would fail, because it is a difficult thing to do. But given how many places have a chance (including: China, Japan, UK, Singapore, France, India, Germany, Korea, Canada, Finland…) it seems very possible other centers of such excellence will appear. I must admit I would not put Austin in such a class, but maybe I am uninformed…

Learn Physics with Free Space Flight Simulator

The free, Orbiter Space Flight Simulator, is not a typical computer game.

The emphasis is firmly on realism, and the learning curve can be steep. Be prepared to invest some time and effort to brush up on your orbital mechanics background. Good starting points are JPL’s Basics of Space Flight, and R. Braeunig’s Rocket & Space Technology.
…
Improved physics: Gravity-gradient torque effects are now implemented. Vessels in low orbit will now experience torques as a result of their mass distribution. Orbiter’s model of angular motion has also been extensively overhauled.

via: Space Simulator Related: So You Want to be a Computer Game Programmer – Physics Concepts in 60 Seconds – PhysicsQuest – Non-Newtonian Fluid Demo