For Whom Should I Vote?

It seems a national election is on the horizon for us Canadians. As usual, I'm at a loss for whom to cast my vote. The Liberals are making promises they can't keep to buy my vote; the NDP wants to increase my taxes so they can spend more on a plethora of government services I'll never use; and the Conservatives are wasting my time and tax dollars by calling an election, simply because it looks like they might have a chance of winning.

The more attention I pay to Canadian nation politics, the more inclined I am toward voting for Zaphod. Thanks, David.

TSMC Focusing on Low-Power

EETimes is reporting that the first product from TSMC's 65nm process is going to be a low-power "platform or technology".

I find it interesting that low-power is rising in importance with chip designers these days. On the downside, it could be a sign of more competition for AMI Semiconductor, my employer. On the up, it could also indicate that the market in which we have established ourselves is about to grow.

Anyways, I wonder what the application is, and who TSMC is making it for.

Evolution Shrugs Off Atlas

Larry worries that our country is being overrun by worthless altruistic looters, the likes of which inhabited Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged, which glorifies self-interest and portrays altruism as the one of the most self-destructive ideas known to man. His mention of the novel reminded me of a recent New Scientist article, entitled Charity begins at Homo sapiens that I've been meaning to blog about.

The article summarizes some current research into strong reciprocity, a phenomenon where people help others to their own detriment, from an evolutionary perspective. Some of the findings may be startling to Randians:

Further support for the idea that strong reciprocity is an adaptation in its own right comes from the theoretical studies of economist Herbert Gintis of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, anthropologist Robert Boyd of the University of California at Los Angeles, and others. They set up a computer model in which groups of individuals interacted, and watched how their behaviour evolved. Individuals were set up in the model to behave initially either as cheats or as cooperators, and in personal interactions the former came off best. When groups competed with one another, however, cooperation came into its own: groups with more cooperators were likely to flourish.

But that was only the start. The individuals, whether initially cooperators or cheats, were also programmed to copy successful behaviour. In simulations with groups ranging from 4 to 256 individuals, the team found that altruism could evolve. The benefits that cooperation conferred on a group outweighed its costs to individuals - but only in groups of less than about 10. Ancestral human hunter-gatherer bands are thought to have numbered 30 or more individuals, so how could cooperative behaviour have evolved and spread in these groups?

The answer lies in the fact that strong reciprocity is not simply a matter of cooperation; it also requires punishment of those who fail to toe the line. When the team added punishment to their models, they found it made a huge difference. In a second round of simulations, they included a new kind of individual: the "punishers". These punishers were not only willing to cooperate with others but also to punish cheats. By making cheats pay for their antisocial actions, they tipped the balance towards cooperation. This time, competition between groups led to the emergence of cooperation in groups of up to 50 individuals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 100, p 3531).

So it would seem entirely possible that self-interest and altruism are not as incompatible as Rand made them out to be. In fact, it could be that altruism is the most selfish of all moral codes. How's that for a paradox? Not one that many Randians would find easy to swallow. Coming to think of it, neither would many altruists.

Update: Larry thinks I'm disagreeing with him. I'm not! I find it absolutely terrifying that union bosses are directly manipulating nation budgets.

It was Larry's reference to Rand that reminded me of the New Scientist article, which I found interesting because it cast some doubt on some of Rand's ideas about altruism, as well as supplying some new information on which one might develop an improved philosophy of altruism and self-interest.

My apologies for not separating the two trains of thought more clearly.

Yummyaki: Excellent Sushi, Reasonable Prices

Last night, Mandy and I made our second visit to Yummyaki, a Japanese food restaurant at the corner of Northfield and Davenport in Waterloo. I really like it. The quality of the food is excellent, though the decor is rather sparse; pedestal tables separated by chest-high partitions. The service is prompt and friendly.

The menu is perhaps not as extensive as some other local sushi joints. Neither is it as expensive. Prices are about half of what you'd pay at some other local sushi joints.

Yummyaki: an excellent choice for casual Japanese eats. I recommend it.

Scientists Discover Sleep Gene

According to this New Scientist story, scientists have found a mutation in one gene of the common fruit fly that let's it get by with 30% less sleep.

The finding is important because it suggests the amount of sleep needed may be largely controlled by one gene, which may shed light on human sleep needs, says Chiara Cirelli at the University of Wisconsin, US. “This isn’t some obscure fly gene - there’s a homologue in mammals and humans.”

If they can transfer this to humans, we could get 30% more wakeful hours in our lifetimes. Bonus! Not quite:

There is a snag, though, since the lifespan of [the flies with the mutation] was about 30% shorter than normal.

Donald Norman in Defense of Powerpoint

Design guru, Donald Norman, has written a response to Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, in which Tufte claimed that PowerPoint, among other things, caused the Challenger disaster. Norman writes:

Everyone agrees, I hope, on the undesirability of the long, boring talk in which the speaker reads things to us that we are perfectly capable of reading to ourselves. Bullet point slides often lead to poor talks, but the problem is with the talk, not with the tool. We have had poor talks long before PowerPoint. We have even had bullet points long before PowerPoint—long before computers. In the old days, people typed, stenciled or hand-lettered their slides onto transparencies which were shown with the aid of overhead projectors or wall charts, or photographed them on to glass-plated photographic slides and then, later, 35 mm. slides. These talks were also dull and tedious.

This essay was tucked away, unfinished, in a drawer for more than a year. I'm glad Donald got around to finish it.

More SICP solutions

It seems I'm not the only one working through SICP. r2q2 is posting his solutions on the Community-Scheme-Wiki.

Naming the Red Couch

Shel and Robert, at The Red Couch are looking for a title for the book they're writing on business blogging. Their working title up to this point, "Blog or Die!", has come under scrutiny for various reasons, not the least of which is that in some parts of the world the choice to blog is truly life or death.

After throwing some ideas around, Johnnie Moore and John Moore both suggested "The Red Couch" as the main title. As John commented:

Don’t get roped into a generic and homogenized title. After all, a good blog is not generic, nor is it homogenized -- your book title shouldn’t be either. (Dig?)

THE RED COUCH title is different enough, intriguing enough, and compelling enough to one’s capture attention. Keep in mind … at some point soon the term 'blog' will become fatigued. (Double dig?)

"THE RED COUCH: Why Conversational Marketing and Blogging is Essential to Business"

Jim Minatel, the editor, would rather play it safe with a more literal title, such as "Just Blog It!", "The Human Corporation: How Blogs Improve Everything In Your Business", and "Let Your People Blog: Why Conversational Marketing is essential to Business", for some classic reasons:

I'm the one who so far doesn't buy the "Purple Cow" style titles for this book, even though I love it for Seth's book... What works for previously established authors like Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell might not be the best recipe for first time authors.

And what works for the blog-enlightened crowd that's reading the Red Couch blog today, might not be the best title to sell to a broader audience that hasn't yet bought into the value of blogs 8 months from now. We hope everyone here is going to end up liking the book enough to buy or recommend it regardless of the title. But none of you need to be sold on blogging, you are already the leading 1% (or a fraction of 1%) of the bigger business audience. If Shel and Robert are going to help spread the blog vision to business people who haven't got it yet, the first step in that has to be either them picking the book up on their own from the business section, which I don't think "The Red Couch" will get them to do, or from your recommendation.

There are two assumptions in Jim's reasoning that I feel need to be challenged. The first is the assumption that Robert and Shel are first-time authors. It may be true that neither has ever published a book before, but they have already built a large and influential readership. Regardless of the title of this book, it is going to sell well; which brings me to the second idea assumption I'd like to challenge: that the Clueless Joe in the bookstore is the market that matters.

The way people find books has changed dramatically with the rise of the internet. It has for me, anyway. Nearly all of the books I buy these days are recommended to me somehow: by a friend, Amazon reviews, bloggers, or comments on various forums. In the past five years, I can think of one book that I've purchased at a bookstore base solely on the cover material. My usual approach when I find a book that seems promising at a bookstore is to make a mental note of it, put it back on the shelf, and check the Amazon reviews when I get home. I don't trust cover material any more than I trust used car salesmen. I could be an anomoly, but I don't think I'm alone. What sells me on a book is independent reviews; word of mouth, as they call it.

The uninformed guy in the bookstore is irrelevant. Some of the most influential people in the world are already raving about The Red Couch. Somehow their recommendations are going to reach him and he will buy it, regardless of how silly the title may sound.

So my advice for Jim: Do something remarkable. You don't have anything to lose.

SICP, Dijkstra, and Plato! Oh my!

As somebody reading and working through the exercises in SICP, I enjoyed the paper Jim Brown posted about it entitled What's in the box?: Abstraction and Regimes of Truth in Computer Programming. While the focus of the article is on what it means to treat procedures a black boxes, the part I found most interesting is where he likens the differences between the bottom-up approach of SICP and the top-down approach of Dijkstra to the differences between Aristotle's and Plato's epistemologies:

For Plato, we must understand truth prior to entering into dispute or argument, otherwise we will find ourselves lured by faulty "resemblances". This is Dijkstra's point when he warns of the dangers of testing programs before they are properly finished. One should know their program perfectly before testing it. Trial and error was a flawed technique for these programmers. Abelson and Sussman, on the other hand, are more interested in the negotiation and collaboration that happens in the programming community. In this sense, their method seems more akin to Aristotle's description of rhetoric. In Book I of the Rhetoric, he differs from Plato's view of rhetoric as mere persuasion: "[Rhetoric's] function is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow (1328). Rhetoric is then useful because it gets us as close to truth as possible, and this should remind us of Abelson and Sussman's assertion that, "we become convinced of program truth through argument."

Solution to SICP Exercise 1.14

Solution to Exercise 1.14:


Click to enlarge.

The count-change is Θ(n) in space. Like the fib procedure, the space required is equal to the maximum depth of the tree, which occurs on the combination that is all pennies.

I believe, though I could very well be wrong, that the process is Θ(n²) in time as the calls to cc tend to double with increments to n.

I couldn't get conclusive timing numbers out of DrScheme to confirm this belief. Here's the code I was using to test

(require (lib "19.ss" "srfi"))
(map (lambda (amount)
       (let ((start-time (current-time time-process)) 
              (change (count-change amount))
              (end-time (current-time time-process)))
         (let ((diff (time-difference end-time start-time)))
           (list (time-second diff) (time-nanosecond diff)))))
     (list 100 200 300 400))

The output was ((0 160000) (0 2810000) (0 1560000) (1 6560000)). I don't understand why the third time was consistently less than the second. Anybody care to enlighten me?

Index of Solutions to SICP Exercises

As I work through Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, I've been posting my answers to my blog. I'll use this post to index them as they're finished.

Section 1 Solutions

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

Solution to SICP Exercise 1.13

Finally, I have a solution to Exercise 1.13:

http://www.kendyck.com/math/sicp/ex1-13.xml

More on Web Apps

Michael has commented on my comment to his comments on my earlier post about Evan Williams' post on web applications (Good god! Let's just say we're having a conversation).

He considers the fact that web app hosters have root access to your data a point against web applications, as a hosting insider could do any number of undesirable things with the data.

It could be argued that the same applies to internal IT staff. Your IT guy could be selling company email addresses to spammers on the side, for example. I agree, though, that when a hosting company does it, they are probably better organized and can do more damage.

Michael also points out the dearth of APIs for web applications, which I agree is regrettable. On the other hand, there's no technical reason that a web application can't have a decent API for manipulating its data. We've come to expect API's for local applications, why not for web-based ones?

feedmap Rocks!

I just discovered feedmap, a website that tracks RSS (and Atom) feeds by geographical location. Very cool! (via Scobleizer)

Prolific Waterloo Blogger, Larry Borsato

Larry Borsato is a prolific blogger, averaging a Scoblian 6-7 posts per day by my count, writing on a wide variety of topics ranging from the Kyoto accord to note-taking; but, from what I gather, mainly Canadian politics, marketing, and technology. Judging by his resume, he also has god-like powers when it comes to marketing technology. He reads gapingvoid and Paul Graham. What's more, he lives in Waterloo!

Blog on, Waterloo!

Electronicstalk Covers BelaSigna-Powered Device

It's nice to see AMI Semiconductor's DSPs getting some press. Electronicstalk has a story about Phonak's SmartLink SX:

Through built-in microphones, audio inputs, and a Bluetooth link, the highly compact SmartLink receives and processes audio signals and transmits them to the user's hearing aid using Phonak's industry-leading MicroLink technology.

Are Web Apps Risky? (And Why Company Data May Not Be That Valuable)

Michael is leery of using web applications for business, writing

I don't know if I'd want to take the risk of having my corporate data spread over several vendor's applications and servers, but there is some appeal in handing over the technical, administrative and security tasks to someone else willing to take on that pain.

I've heard similar concerns about the risk of using web applications before. I suspect they are greatly exaggerated.

The arguments usually goes something like this. If my company's data is kept on web application, there is a chance that the web application will be cracked and my valuable data will find its way into the hands of my competitors or other unscrupulous agents eager to apply it to some nefarious endeavor sure to harm me. If I spread my data across several applications the risk is multiplied because it increases the odds that one of the applications will be cracked. On the other hand, if I keep that data centralized within the company, protected by my IT people, it is safe from outside crackers because I control it.

I find some things fishy about this argument.

First, why should I expect that my IT people will be any better at securing my data than a web application sysadmin? It would stand to reason that a web applications would be more secure. As Paul Graham argues:

The argument against this approach usually hinges on security: if access is easier for employees, it will be for bad guys too. Some larger merchants were reluctant to use Viaweb because they thought customers' credit card information would be safer on their own servers. It was not easy to make this point diplomatically, but in fact the data was almost certainly safer in our hands than theirs. Who can hire better people to manage security, a technology startup whose whole business is running servers, or a clothing retailer? Not only did we have better people worrying about security, we worried more about it. If someone broke into the clothing retailer's servers, it would affect at most one merchant, could probably be hushed up, and in the worst case might get one person fired. If someone broke into ours, it could affect thousands of merchants, would probably end up as news on CNet, and could put us out of business.

Second, does keeping all the data centralized really reduce the risk? If a cracker gets into a central database, he's hit the jackpot. He's only got to crack one system. If the data is distributed across many web applications, he needs to crack into every one to do the same amount of damage.

Third, what is the danger of having the data publicized? Is the data really as valuable as you think? Consider this thought experiment: imagine that somebody cracked into Intel and managed to steal the source code for the design their latest processor, arguably their most valuable data, and posted it on the web for all to see. End of the world for Intel? I don't think so. For the vast majority of people the code would be worthless. Unless you have access to a multi-billion dollar fabrication facility, it would be impossible to manufacture cheap knock-offs. Those that do have access to such a fab would have to invest considerable effort in learning how to build the chip, as manufacturing chips is not a straightforward process.

So for the sake of argument, let's say along with the source code, the cracker also managed to publicize all of the process documentation, too. Then they could make the chip without a huge investment, right? I don't think so. Though it might reduce the effort to manufacture the chip, it wouldn't eliminate it. Somebody would still have to read all the documentation and understand it. There would be gaps in the documentation, too; information that resides in the heads of Intel employees that was never written down. Somebody would have to figure all that out, too?

But couldn't somebody use the source code as the basis for an enhanced chip; something even better than what Intel is producing? Possibly, but Intel will be doing the same thing. Who do you think will come up with the better enhancement, the Intel engineers who developed and are intimately familiar with the code or somebody who has never seen the code before? My bet is on the Intel team.

Would it be a different story if we imagined that source code was for Microsoft Windows or the Google Internet Search routines. I don't think so. Anybody considering competing with the creator would still have the same issues of understanding what they have stolen and building the product for themselves.

So there you have it: three reasons web applications are not as risky as you might think. They're probably full of holes. Poke away.

Health and Happiness

In Happiness helps people stay healthy, New Scientist reports:

People who are happier in their daily lives have healthier levels of key body chemicals than those who muster few positive feelings, a new study suggests. This means happier people may have healthier hearts and cardiovascular systems, possibly cutting their risk of diseases like diabetes.

These kinds of stories annoy me. Reporters are so eager to get people to read their stories that they extrapolate a causal relationship from a mere correlation.

Scientist have discovered that happy people are healthier than unhappy people. Are people healthier because they are happy? Are people happier because they are healthy? Is there something other unidentified cause that results in people being both happy and healthy. However it turns out, I'm glad folks are investigating.

37 days

Johnnie Moore points toward Patricia Digh's wonderful blog, 37 Days:

In October of 2003, my stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later.

The timeframe of 37 days made an impression on me. We act as if we have all the time in the world - that's not a new understanding. But the definite-ness of 37 days struck me. So short a time, as if all the regrets of a life would barely have time to register before time was up.

And so, as always when awful things happen, I tried to figure out how to reconcile in my mind the fact that it was happening and the fact that the only thing I could do was try to make some good out of it. What emerged was a renewed commitment to ask myself this question every morning: 'what would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?'

It's a hard question some days.

A Startup Blog: alarm:clock

Among the many helpful links in Y Combinator's startup resource page is alarm:clock, a blog about tech startups:

alarm:clock covers the business of technology startups. Each weekday, we add a new profile of a privately-held technology venture. We analyze the business model and tell you how the company fits in to the technology landscape. You'll also find ongoing news and updates about the companies we cover and about the technology industry at large.

Running a Business on Web Apps

Evan Williams, former CEO of Pyra (creators of Blogger; bought out by Google), writes about running a business on web apps:

One interesting thing about starting a company today versus a few years ago: Lots of cool web apps are now available that you can more or less run you company on.

He goes on to list some of the web applications they are using at Odeo, then writes,

The improved efficiency of having these apps available, and not having to install and maintain servers for them is huge.

The Red Couch Tells a Hughtrain Story

The Red Couch tells the story of how ad man Hugh MacLeod and PR guy David Parmet helped world-class Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon from relative obscurity to international renown through blogging:

MacLeod says he started filling Mahon’s "head with Cluetrain and blogging stuff," and slowly Mahon got interested. "We started thinking that if Mahon could talk about tailoring on a blog about the same way that Seth Godin talks about marketing, then the people who care will see it. Mahon wouldn’t try to sell suits on the blog. Instead, he would show his knowledge and love of the craft. He would explain the labor, and materials involved and why the cost of each suit was justified." The idea was that the people who cared either about suits or how a master craftsmen creates them would find their way to the site.

I want to believe that any world-class craftsman could reach the same success merely by keeping a blog on his work. I want to believe that, but I can't. Too much of Thomas's success is tied up with Hugh's immense popularity. Thomas brought a great story, but Hugh brought the audience to hear it.

Design a DSP Chip in MATLAB

AccelChip has a family of products that allows you to synthesize a DSP from a MATLAB algorithm:

AccelChip DSP Synthesis allows algorithm developers to take designs created in MATLAB and automatically synthesize a high-quality silicon implementation. A synthesis and verification environment, the product automatically converts MATLAB design from floating-point to fixed-point, then generates synthesizable VHDL or Verilog models, providing designers the ability to verify the algorithm and its implementation sooner.

Definitely a neat idea, if it works. When I see "automatically synthesize a high-quality silicon implementation" it brings out my inner skeptic. When going from a very high-level description to a low-level one, a synthesis tool needs to make intelligent guesses about the designer's intentions. Does it optimize for speed or power consumption or die size? Does it try to balance the competing needs? The danger is that the compiler synthesizes a correct implementation that is perfectly useless because it fails to meet some other important criteria. Lisp solves this by allowing programmers to give the compiler hints about performance. I wonder if AccelChip DSP Synthesis has a similar facility.

Field Guide to Moscow

If you happen to find yourself in Moscow and need some tips on how to get along, look no further than eXile's entertaining Field Guide to Moscow:

Humbertus Humbertus spends most of its time in office buildings within the Boulevard Ring attempting to add a veneer of European propriety to the Russian oil conglomerate it works for. This species only leaves the office at night, when it prowls the bars of Moscow in search of its prey after purchasing Viagra (the one Russian word it knows) at an underground kiosk. Although the Horny Expatriate prefers to win its sexual conquests by charm and false promises of marriage, it often finds itself hailing a cab to Oh La La at 3 a.m., its instinctual urges having overcome its stinginess.

Basement Renovation: Framing the Walls

There's been some noticeable progress on the basement reno. Over the past two weekends, nearly all of the walls are now framed.

On the first weekend, I laid out and installed the plates. I used a Remington 476 Powder Actuated Hammer to attach the bottom plates to the concrete floor. When loaded with a .22 caliber charge, a wack to the handle with a hammer causes the charge to explode, driving a nail into virtually anything. Having never used one of these before, I wasn't sure what to expect from using one, but what a blast! Literally! After the first shot, I was gun-shy for the rest of the day.

Last Saturday, Mandy's father, Paul, came by to help install the studs. This man has a lot of experience, to put it mildly. He built his own house. Needless to say, his advice was very welcome.

His hands were welcome too. By the end of the day we had nearly all the walls complete. Paul handled all the tricky tedious bits, while I plugged away at the straightforward stuff. I'm much further ahead of where I would have been had he not helped. Thanks a bunch, Paul!

Killer Flu Released

A virus that caused the death of two million people in 1957 has been accidentally shipped to 3700 labs as part of a flu testing kit. According to the New Scientist article:

A few of the CAP kits were sent to labs in Asia, the Middle East and South America, as well as Europe and North America. The kits originators had to know what they contained, in order to evaluate the test results. However, when Canada's National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg identified the strain on 26 March, it alerted the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Worryingly, it initially found the potentially deadly virus in a sample unrelated to the test kit - meaning it had already escaped within the lab.

Worryingly, indeed. Today, with the increased mobility of the world's population, I'd hate to think what havoc this bug could wreak today if it found its way out of the lab.

UW Innovate Holds Startup Boot Camp

UW Innovate is holding a 4-day camp aimed at anyone with definite plans to launch or participate in a new venture. It is being held at St. Jerome's University Conference Centre, April 25-28.

From the UW press release:

Professional speakers and discussion leaders lead the participants through the camp's focused, practical business start-up topics each day. The past camps, and the follow-on services coordinated by UW Innovate, have helped many previous participants to get their new ventures off the ground.

More details on the boot camp website.

Nautilus NT-CC1 Assembly Manual

Since writing a review of the Nautilus NT-CC1, some readers who, for whatever reason, did not receive the manuals when they purchased their workbench have asked where they can locate a copy. So without further ado, and until I receive a cease and desist letter from Costco, Nautilus, or my web hosting provider, here are scanned images of the assembly manual:

• Title Page
• Page 1: Important Precautions and Warnings
• Page 2: Bench Assembly
• Page 3: Bench Assembly (cont'd)
• Page 4: Smith Base Frame Assembly; Upright and Support Post Assembly
• Page 5: Upright and Support Post Assembly (cont'd)
• Page 6: Upper Pulley Frame and Cable Installation
• Page 7: Upper Pulley Frame and Cable Installation (cont'd)
• Page 8: Parts List
• Page 9: Parts List (cont'd)

The owner's manual will follow shortly.

If you've found this helpful, please consider sponsoring my wife, Mandy, in her walk to end breast cancer.

Nonmusicians Can't Detect Bitonality

Cognitive Daily explains Why we can't all be divas. Rita Wolpert of Caldwell College separately recorded a singer and her accompaniment, then later processed the accompaniment so that it played a tone higher and mixed it with the original vocal track. She then played the synthesized recording for 40 nonmusicians and 10 professional musicians.

Only 5 of the “nonmusicians” — which actually included 7 people with over 6 years of musical training — could conclusively tell that two of the arrangements were sung in a different key from the accompaniment. Meanwhile, the musicians uniformly reacted with disgust, easily identifying the problem with the flawed arrangements.

While 42 percent of the nonmusicians did mention the key as potentially a problem, the remainder didn’t mention it at all, and none of the nonmusicians indicated that the bitonal arrangements were at all unpleasant.

So an aspect of music which musicians find critically important and (often painfully) obvious is simply unnoticed by most listeners.

One of many reasons that musicians don't hang out at Karaoke bars.

UW Programming Team Places First in North America, Fourth Internationally

From the University of Waterloo press release:

A University of Waterloo student team placed fourth Wednesday (April 6) in the 29th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, hosted by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University -- which also fielded the winning team.

Members of the "Waterloo Black" Team were Ralph Furmaniak (second-year Pure Mathematics), Matei Zaharia (second-year Computer Science) and David Narum (second-year Mathematics exchange student from Norway). The coach of the team was Prof. Gord Cormack, School of Computer Science in the Faculty of Mathematics.

Bravo, Ralph, Matei, David, and coach Cormack! Ralph was also on the team that placed fourth in the recently announced Putnam Math Competition.

They answered seven problems out of ten. Considering the problem set, I'd say that's pretty damn amazing!

Review of Starfrit MightiCan Can Opener

We've been using the Starfrit Mightican for a while now. Mandy loves it. I don't. Let me tell you why.

The MightiCan is a redesigned and less expensive version of the Magican. You've probably seen the ads on TV. The sales pitch usually goes something like this:

Safe and sanitary. Thanks to its side-cutting action, MagiCan leaves a lid with no sharp edges and no metal shavings. Since the lid is the same diameter as the opening, it can't fall in. As the lid comes off, it is clamped firmly between the cutting blade and the can-turning mechanism, so it can be easily released into the trash can. You never have to touch it! MagiCan is precision--built from the highest quality metal and plastic for easy cleaning and maximum durability, so it will provide you with many years of safe and effective use.

All true, as far as I can tell. So what's my beef?

For starters, though the MightiCan leaves no sharp edges on the lid, it leaves one around the top of the can. Mandy doesn't care much about that. She dumps the contents of the can into whatever she's cooking, rinses it out, and leaves it on the counter for me to take out the recycling bin.

Though I should be ashamed to admit it, I'm not the most diligent guy when it comes to taking out the recycling. I usually let the cans accumulate on the counter throughout the week and transfer them to the recycling bin on garbage day by grocery bag. Usually there are enough to fill a bag but last week there were only a few. To conserve bags, I threw them in a bag with some paper recyclables to transport them.

I'll let you guess what happened to my finger when I reached into the bag to extract the can to put it in the blue box. It was only a minor cut. It didn't even need a bandage, but it annoyed me tremendously. Products that are advertised as safe should not make you bleed!

Had the can been opened with a traditional top-cutting can opener, the I'd have stored the sharp lid safely in the can, out of harm's way. The design of the MightiCan ensures that the sharp edge is always exposed.

And because the lid doesn't fit in the can, you are forced to handle twice as many pieces when transferring them to a recycling station. This, combined with the exposed sharp edges makes for a danger surpassing anything you might achieve with a traditional can opener.

Gah! Starfrit MightiCan, I bite my thumb at you!

Update: My sister, Sandra writes:

Aside from the random sharp edges, which by the way, put a nasty little splinter in my left index finger a few weeks ago. I am annoyed by the way this can opener removes the top lid of the can along with the edge. This may sound trivial until you try to open and drain a can of tuna. In the old fashioned procedure, the can opener would allow you to squeeze the lid into the tuna to push the water out. But with this new can opener, it becomes quite awkward because the lid no longer fits in the can. Instead, it fits on top and I just can't seem to get all the water out without making a mess and spilling tuna into the sink.

Have you realized this as well?

Definitely! Don't bother even trying to open a can of tuna with one of these. It's absolutely hopeless.

Flatlined

Fred Wilson writes of globalization:

I don't believe in walls. I don't believe in protectionism. I don't believe in keeping others down. I believe in letting everyone play. And let the best man or woman win.

I couldn't say it better myself. (via gapingvoid)

UW Math Team Places Fourth in Putnam Competition

A team of three students from the University of Waterloo scored fourth in the 65th annual William Lowell Putnam Math Competition held in December:

Waterloo was represented by students Olena Bormashenko, Ralph Furmaniak and Michael Lipnowski. "All three team members had outstanding results," said VanderBurgh. Bormashenko was ranked 13th among all the 3,733 students who wrote across North America.

Furmaniak and Lipnowski earned Honourable Mentions, both with ranks in the top 60. Several other Waterloo students, who were not on the team also did well. Xiannan Li was ranked 23rd. Also scoring well was Cory Fletcher, who earned an Honourable Mention.

Congratulations, Olena, Ralph, and Michael!

Dabblers and Blowhards

Idle Words criticizes Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters in Dabblers and Blowhards:

It is true that both painters and programmers make things, just like a pastry chef makes a wedding cake, or a chicken makes an egg. But nothing about what they make, the purposes it serves, or how they go about doing it is in any way similar.

It's an entertaining, though somewhat brutal, attack on Hackers and Painters. He points out several factual errors in the essay and, in effect, tells Graham to stick to the subjects that he knows, such as Lisp.

I, for one, enjoy Paul's essays and hope he continues writing on whatever subjects catch his interest. His essays are always well-written and thought-provoking, whatever you might say about their factual accuracy. (via Zach Beane)

Treatment breakthrough for ‘smoker’s lung’

Good news for smokers according to this New Scientist article:

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a condition describing a range of severe inflammatory diseases of the lungs including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. More than 90% of cases are caused by cigarette smoking, and even when a smoker quits the habit, the disease continues, becoming progressively worse – often until the patient dies from respiratory failure.

COPD currently kills more than 30,000 people in the UK every year and is predicted to kill over six million worldwide by 2020, becoming the world’s third biggest killer.

To date, it has only been possible to ease the symptoms of COPD. Researchers have failed to understand why steroids – an effective treatment for asthma-related lung inflammation – have proved ineffective in treating COPD. Now, scientists at Imperial College London, UK, have taken the first step towards a cure for the fatal disease by discovering why it is resistant to steroid treatment.

Peter Barnes, professor of thoracic medicine, and colleagues examined the role of an enzyme in the lung cells called HDAC2, which “switches off” the genes responsible for causing inflammation. Usually, steroidal drugs are able to facilitate this process by providing a molecular pathway between HDAC2 and the appropriate genes. But Barnes discovered that levels of HDAC2 were very low in COPD patients, which was why steroids had little effect.

This is the kind of news that makes me wonder why I bother to take care of myself.

Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas

In Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas, Paul Graham writes about some of the mistakes he and Robert Morris made in their first venture:

Viaweb wasn't the first startup Robert Morris and I started. In January 1995, we and a couple friends started a company called Artix. The plan was to put art galleries on the Web. In retrospect, I wonder how we could have wasted our time on anything so stupid.

He goes on to identify three main reasons Artix was a bad idea:

We did the first thing we thought of; we were ambivalent about being in business at all; and we deliberately chose an impoverished market to avoid competition.

It's worth a read.

The Dos and Don'ts of Giving a Demo

VentureBlog has some advice on giving demos in The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting at DEMO:

• It is all about the demo.
• Leave room for spontaneity (or at least appear like you have)
• Have fun
• Have a backup plan
• Don't praise your own product
• Don't use a tag line
• Don't say what you're looking for out of your DEMO
• Don't list your partners unless they are great (and probably even not then)
• Don't try to be funny if you aren't funny
• Don't sing

The article is directed to those who are presenting at the DEMO conference, but most of the advice seems generally useful for anybody who is demonstrating a technical product, be it to VCs or otherwise. (via Scobleizer)

Head First Scheme

Announcing Head First Scheme (via Lemonodor):

Once again, Tim O'Reilly has proved his savvy (and bravery) in allowing us to do the book we wanted — market size be damned.

An O'Reilly book on Scheme? I suppose that means that Scheme has moved into the mainstream. Time to switch to Mozart-Oz.

WaterlooTechJobs.ca

Speaking of Michael, he tipped me off to WaterlooTechJobs.ca in Looking for work in the Waterloo region?, writing:

Just came across the site WaterlooTechJobs.ca. They provide a list of hiring companies and a list of openings. There's a link for logging in, so I'm guessing they're offering notification for jobs that might appear (since I'm not looking, I'm not going to bother trying that out though). Looks like the site was helped out by Communitech and they have a few sponsors. Happy job hunting!

Bits of Life

When I saw Michael Hiemstra's comment on my Dinner at Bhima's post I felt a strange mix of glee and dread: glee that somebody from Waterloo was actually reading my blog and dread for, well, the same reason. Anyway, Michael has an excellent blog going over at Bits of Life: nicely designed, articles on topics local and global, and writing so relaxed and conversational that you'll just hate him. Highly recommended!

Free trade may have finished off Neanderthals

I shudder to think what extraoplations businessmen and politicians are going to make from this New Scientist article:

Modern humans may have driven Neanderthals to extinction 30,000 years ago because Homo sapiens unlocked the secrets of free trade, say a group of US and Dutch economists. The theory could shed new light on the mysterious and sudden demise of the Neanderthals after over 260,000 years of healthy survival.

I shouldn't rule out the possibility of an April Fool's prank, I suppose.