This is the second day of a 5 day C programming course at my company. There are 3 levels of programming starting from the very introductory level, intermediate and advanced level. Supposedly at this level, by the end of the program we are supposed to write our own fprint program.
This is day 2 and about 11 hours into the program... I have programmed for all of about 30 minutes on a microprocessor connected to a little robot that runs around a track painted on a board. I did this kind of stuff in second year university... almost 5 years ago. I am ridiculously annoyed with this course. A complete, utter, waste of time.
The other things is that some how the teacher for this course has gotten into the guts of assembly language without a good primer into the subject. I am quite certain that most of the other students in the course have no idea what is going on when it comes to the inner workings of assembly or how a microprocessor works. This is terrible!
The people that are teaching these courses, internally at the company are former employees that have started their own education company to teach the new recruits some basic skills. They charge about $600/week/person. There are about 20 people in the class. Doing the math, that yields, $12,000 per week or $48,000 per month! And I only paid $250 for a microcontroller course at UBC which is sufficient to dance circles around this class.
Hell, I have learned way more about programming on my own compared to what these people teach. I've found ways of interfacing programs directly into the Windows memory system, written automation programs, data analysis, a 2D differential equation solver and a monte-carlo robot position tracking system (a real simple one, albeit) over the past few years and I am some how in a class which is reviewing how to use *pointers.* And we have been doing this for the entire morning. If this were UBC, we'd probably have covered the topic in about 1.5 hours with far better depth.
In a sense, I am really happy to have gone to UBC, especially graduating out of the Engineering Physics program. I honestly have to say that surviving Eng Phys was a miracle. Even for me, I took more than the average course load and some how managed to graduate on time. There were tons of stuff I was learning at the time that I really never understood, until I started seeing their applications in research while in grad school. Simulation techniques that was in my head from a Electro-statics course was perfect for me to model electric fields for my research project as a grad student. The 2D differential equation calculus was rather useful for application to a multi-variable robotics course... where people were using complicated math packages to simulate an equation, where I did some really simple calculations in excel and was done in half the time it took everyone else... and yes, I even did find a use for my quantum mechanics (which I did rather poorly the first time around when I took the course) for an electron beam emission project.
I see application to the knowledge I learned everywhere and think the mathematics and physics I've learned is incredibly applicable, especially from the project experience I've had. I honestly have to say that there is nothing I have seen in Japan so far that comes remotely close to the educational experience I've had in Canada. Though I would no go far as to say that I learned nothing while in Japan, most of my learning came from the self-study I've done while working on research and project opportunities while over here.
I will have to remind myself that taking courses are not a real good use of time. The only problem is that I wonder if they wouldn't mind me taking a week out of work time to do some self-study to find new/better techniques of getting the job done.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The problem with people pushing their religon around
For the most part, I don't mind it if people are religious, if they believe in things like a God or have certain customs passed down because of their beliefs. Sometime is it the psyche of a people. I still remember the time I was in Thailand, where I made a wonderful friend that showed me around Bangkok.
She showed me all the beautiful temples and taught me all about the lives of the Buddhist monks. She invited me into a temple, where I had the chance to sit in prayer with the ordinary Thai people. I asked her what she would usually pray for, and she told me that she would pray for good health for her family and good luck for her friends. I was all good natured and I had a lot of respect for the kindness I found in the Thai culture. They never told me that their beliefs were the right way to life or anything but they were quite happy with their way of life nor were they threatened by the beliefs of others. It was incredibly pleasant learning about the culture of the Thai people.
Months later since I came back to Japan, I've lived a peaceful life, doing my own thing, minding my own business. But if there is something that annoys me, it would always be some western missionary in the street. "Free English lessons" they'd say, or they'd be even be more direct and tell me that "God loves you" and that I should come to their Church. The part that bothers me the most about all this beneath the surface, they are trying to push their beliefs on to other people, whether they want it or not. I think that's deceitful. Wasn't there a commandment in the bible that said "thou shalt not lie?" Well, I guess, the technicality is that they're not lying, par se, but they aren't really honest.
But the burning question that I have to ask, is what right do these people have to come in and try and change the beliefs of a culture and what right do they have to get offended when other people have beliefs different from them? I really do get quite agitated when people, especially Evangelicals, come out on to the streets to profess that believing in their religion will send you to a place of eternal happiness after death, where as otherwise, you are sent to a place of eternal hell. A friendly bunch of people, wouldn't you say?
I don't care what you believe in, as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others
There are states in the US that explicitly require people to be a practicing Christian to get into an elected office. I ask, then, what about the others whom follow a different faith? What right do these people have to tell others that they cannot hold an elected office unless they be a Christian? There are other parts in the US where Christians are battling against the Education system to have scientific theories like Evolution thrown out of the curriculum, or at least have it watered down and have "intelligent design" taught with the same level of footing that evolution has. If that was the case, I would think it would be equally fair to have the Muslim and Buddhist ideas of life taught in the same classroom. But to do so, would entice outrage and anger. Since when did religious tolerance get redefined to "You must tolerate our religion and we have the right to reject yours?" Somebody is trying to have their cake and eat it too.
But it goes further than this. Personally, I don't really mind what you believe in, so long as you don't infringe in the lives of other people (so long as they don't do likewise to you). I draw the line when people believe they have the the right to deny people of different faith into an elected position, or people of the same gender to get married or the decision use birth-control should they choose to. That, frankly, is none of their business.
The results of science are independent of religion
There are people out there who chose to not realize that the experimental results and conclusions that come out of the field of science has nothing to do with religion. The most important part of science is that the experiments are repeatable no matter who conducts them. Thus it shouldn't matter if a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddist or a wiccan decides to conduct the same scientific experiment-- they should all get the same result.
But the problem is, that for some religions, the results that come out of the scientific process is that it may contradict what they believe in and for that sin, those ideas are to be quashed. A man by the name of Galileo one thought that the Earth revolved around the sun. For that idea, he was held in house arrest by the church until his death. So I ask, is that right? Is that fair? For those think that was right, don't complain if others decide that it is fair to persecute others in the same manner for having different ideas. And yet still, the laws which govern the motion of the planets remain unchallenged. For those that do disagree, I suggest you throw out your satellite TV dishes and GPS systems and walk the walk.
The concept of the scientific method is to eliminate human bias to come down to objective conclusions.
Let's Be fair
I don't come down on other people about if their beliefs are different than mine. If my friends are Muslim, Buddhist or Christian and they don't get in the way of other people minding their own business or cause general unpleasantness then I completely don't mind. But cross that line, then don't start complaining when other people take issue.
She showed me all the beautiful temples and taught me all about the lives of the Buddhist monks. She invited me into a temple, where I had the chance to sit in prayer with the ordinary Thai people. I asked her what she would usually pray for, and she told me that she would pray for good health for her family and good luck for her friends. I was all good natured and I had a lot of respect for the kindness I found in the Thai culture. They never told me that their beliefs were the right way to life or anything but they were quite happy with their way of life nor were they threatened by the beliefs of others. It was incredibly pleasant learning about the culture of the Thai people.
Months later since I came back to Japan, I've lived a peaceful life, doing my own thing, minding my own business. But if there is something that annoys me, it would always be some western missionary in the street. "Free English lessons" they'd say, or they'd be even be more direct and tell me that "God loves you" and that I should come to their Church. The part that bothers me the most about all this beneath the surface, they are trying to push their beliefs on to other people, whether they want it or not. I think that's deceitful. Wasn't there a commandment in the bible that said "thou shalt not lie?" Well, I guess, the technicality is that they're not lying, par se, but they aren't really honest.
But the burning question that I have to ask, is what right do these people have to come in and try and change the beliefs of a culture and what right do they have to get offended when other people have beliefs different from them? I really do get quite agitated when people, especially Evangelicals, come out on to the streets to profess that believing in their religion will send you to a place of eternal happiness after death, where as otherwise, you are sent to a place of eternal hell. A friendly bunch of people, wouldn't you say?
I don't care what you believe in, as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others
There are states in the US that explicitly require people to be a practicing Christian to get into an elected office. I ask, then, what about the others whom follow a different faith? What right do these people have to tell others that they cannot hold an elected office unless they be a Christian? There are other parts in the US where Christians are battling against the Education system to have scientific theories like Evolution thrown out of the curriculum, or at least have it watered down and have "intelligent design" taught with the same level of footing that evolution has. If that was the case, I would think it would be equally fair to have the Muslim and Buddhist ideas of life taught in the same classroom. But to do so, would entice outrage and anger. Since when did religious tolerance get redefined to "You must tolerate our religion and we have the right to reject yours?" Somebody is trying to have their cake and eat it too.
But it goes further than this. Personally, I don't really mind what you believe in, so long as you don't infringe in the lives of other people (so long as they don't do likewise to you). I draw the line when people believe they have the the right to deny people of different faith into an elected position, or people of the same gender to get married or the decision use birth-control should they choose to. That, frankly, is none of their business.
The results of science are independent of religion
There are people out there who chose to not realize that the experimental results and conclusions that come out of the field of science has nothing to do with religion. The most important part of science is that the experiments are repeatable no matter who conducts them. Thus it shouldn't matter if a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddist or a wiccan decides to conduct the same scientific experiment-- they should all get the same result.
But the problem is, that for some religions, the results that come out of the scientific process is that it may contradict what they believe in and for that sin, those ideas are to be quashed. A man by the name of Galileo one thought that the Earth revolved around the sun. For that idea, he was held in house arrest by the church until his death. So I ask, is that right? Is that fair? For those think that was right, don't complain if others decide that it is fair to persecute others in the same manner for having different ideas. And yet still, the laws which govern the motion of the planets remain unchallenged. For those that do disagree, I suggest you throw out your satellite TV dishes and GPS systems and walk the walk.
The concept of the scientific method is to eliminate human bias to come down to objective conclusions.
Let's Be fair
I don't come down on other people about if their beliefs are different than mine. If my friends are Muslim, Buddhist or Christian and they don't get in the way of other people minding their own business or cause general unpleasantness then I completely don't mind. But cross that line, then don't start complaining when other people take issue.
Accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology
2 years of study and experimentation was first written into an 80 page document which became my graduation thesis. I would make my first research conference debut at the 2007 Micro and Nano Engineering conference held in Denmark coveting an oral presentation slot where my research was presented to an international audience of professors and students.
Now finally, after 6 months of review and editing, my research paper has been accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology; 2 years of work summarized into 6 pages. As of current, the last device I fabricated as a grad student has the lowest turn on voltage for an electron emission device (5V) in the world. I wasn't aiming for such a result, but as luck would have it, it's what I ended up with.
Not many masters students are able to have a research paper accepted into a research publication as the principle author, but I am quite happy to say that I did manage to get out of my masters degree with some tangible result.
Now finally, after 6 months of review and editing, my research paper has been accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology; 2 years of work summarized into 6 pages. As of current, the last device I fabricated as a grad student has the lowest turn on voltage for an electron emission device (5V) in the world. I wasn't aiming for such a result, but as luck would have it, it's what I ended up with.
Not many masters students are able to have a research paper accepted into a research publication as the principle author, but I am quite happy to say that I did manage to get out of my masters degree with some tangible result.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Got money and want to leave the US? Prepare to Pay!
There is no doubt right now that the US is having serious debt problem. According to the US national debt clock as of July 5th 2008, the US stands to be in $9.45 trillion in debt. With an estimated population of about 300 million people, that's $31,000 per person. In other words, a family of4 carries a debt of $120,000. Imagine trying to pay off that kind of debt? For the average American I think that would be close to impossible.
There are many people in the US whom are dismayed with the current state of affairs, particularly with the currently rising debt and deteriorating economy (not to mention the low support with the current administration having an approval rate of about 27%). Suffice to say, the US as it stands right now is incredibly screwed and even if the general public didn't support the actions of the administration, the US government's debt and the economic catastrophe they cause is still the responsible of the average American citizen.
The question to ask is if this is fair for the average person to pick up the tab for the debt they didn't want or responsible for in the first place. The answer for most people is a resounding 'No.' So even if the current Bush administration draws to a cataclysmic end, the legacy of it's debt will continue for atleast a generation or few. For those that don't want anything more to do with this debt, there is a way out and that way is through renouncing their US citizenship.
The most common method of renouncing a US citizenship is simply by leaving the country and writing out the appropriate forms at an US embassy abroad. But for the most average US citizen, most people do not have any experience living abroad nor are most people readily in a position to take up a foreign citizenship. The people most likely able to do this are the most affluent, who do a lot of traveling or working abroad (this assumes that they are skilled to be in demand in an international market).
The US government is realizing through their poor management is that rich people want to leave, taking their money to greener pastures. So, just recently, the US has instigated a special tax (called HEART) to hit people emigrating out of the US (for both foreigners and US citizens) taking bringing out more than $600,000 in wealth (while the first $600k being tax free, the rest being taxed). If you lived debt free, sold your house and all your belongings (total assets more than $600k), be prepared to pay this new "exit fee" out of the US.
So if you became rich in the US, don't expect to get out with all of your wealth intact. If you don't have much money and don't want anything to do with the ballooning US debt, get out while you still can.
There are many people in the US whom are dismayed with the current state of affairs, particularly with the currently rising debt and deteriorating economy (not to mention the low support with the current administration having an approval rate of about 27%). Suffice to say, the US as it stands right now is incredibly screwed and even if the general public didn't support the actions of the administration, the US government's debt and the economic catastrophe they cause is still the responsible of the average American citizen.
The question to ask is if this is fair for the average person to pick up the tab for the debt they didn't want or responsible for in the first place. The answer for most people is a resounding 'No.' So even if the current Bush administration draws to a cataclysmic end, the legacy of it's debt will continue for atleast a generation or few. For those that don't want anything more to do with this debt, there is a way out and that way is through renouncing their US citizenship.
The most common method of renouncing a US citizenship is simply by leaving the country and writing out the appropriate forms at an US embassy abroad. But for the most average US citizen, most people do not have any experience living abroad nor are most people readily in a position to take up a foreign citizenship. The people most likely able to do this are the most affluent, who do a lot of traveling or working abroad (this assumes that they are skilled to be in demand in an international market).
The US government is realizing through their poor management is that rich people want to leave, taking their money to greener pastures. So, just recently, the US has instigated a special tax (called HEART) to hit people emigrating out of the US (for both foreigners and US citizens) taking bringing out more than $600,000 in wealth (while the first $600k being tax free, the rest being taxed). If you lived debt free, sold your house and all your belongings (total assets more than $600k), be prepared to pay this new "exit fee" out of the US.
So if you became rich in the US, don't expect to get out with all of your wealth intact. If you don't have much money and don't want anything to do with the ballooning US debt, get out while you still can.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Books vs the Internet
I am starting to find it quite hard to get a hold of quality information worth reading, recently through the internet. As I sift through a variety of social bookmarking sites, either I keep finding more and more garbage (which might be entertaining for the first little while but largely a waste of time) or news information which I highly doubt to be anything close to reliable.
If you want really unreliable information, go read the commentaries at yahoo finance, where by is it clearly impossible to have any idea about where the economy might really be going by reading most of the garbage put out by the pundits. Some people were going on for the past 3 months that the US economy is in perfect shape (minus the "little financial troubles" it was facing with the sub-prime loans and the faltering industrial base).
Reading the news is also another sore spot for me. There used to be a time where the news was about reporting important events or things that were genuinely relevant to the general public. Gone are those days to be replaced by 24 hour news channels that love to make a big deal about insignificant events. I could not give any less of a damn about Britney Spears checking into rehab or pundits on politically biased TV "News" shows having an axe to grind about some political or idealogical agenda, or etc. None of the information being broadcasted is nourishing information that provides to the well being of the general human being and therefore I find it largely useless.
So instead of the mainstream media, I look elsewhere where perhaps real or thoughtful information might be had. I look for essays or thought provoking ideas backed up with significant data or well constructed articles. Unfortunately, as of late, I am having trouble finding anything worth reading and I've broken down to buying a book to read... for the first time in a long time, which just arrived today.
There is something nice about reading a book. The ideas are far more complete compared to reading a 1-2 page article online. Short articles hardly provide for any depth of understanding. How am I supposed to understand anything about international relations in a 1 page article summarized by say "Saudi's promise to raise oil output to reduce oil prices." Surely the issues at hand are far more complicated then that and yet the general population is supposed to judge the actions of a nation based on a simple sliver of information. We have TV pundits and online pundits putting bits and pieces of these tid-bits of garbage to make one grand picture of garbage. As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." But I digress...
The book I am reading is "Out of our minds: How to be Creative" by Sir Ken Robinson. Admittedly, the title does sound a little cheesy ("How to be Creative!?"), but Ken Robinson (I highly recommend watching his TED talk which is quite fascinating) writes about the current shortage of "creative" workers to further propel us into the future. He has a very good understanding of the problems in the current education system and it is worth a read. I have so far gone through 50 pages of the book and have been quite satisfied with most of the ideas and the background information he presents. Nothing of the sort that you'd find easily on the internet.
I think that is the new problem that the internet will face in the future. With access to countless billions (trillions??) of webpages, it will become harder and harder to find information worth reading now that anyone and their dog can post to the cloud that is the internet. Social bookmarking, which I thought were the wave of the future for democratically aggregating pieces of information worthy of reading, had now been replaced by the frivolity of the masses with continual up voting of trivial matters. I once used to love these sites as the density of well educated people that used to frequent them led to a higher density of good quality articles being posted. Perhaps it is time for me to look for smaller and better communities to find reading material from.
If you want really unreliable information, go read the commentaries at yahoo finance, where by is it clearly impossible to have any idea about where the economy might really be going by reading most of the garbage put out by the pundits. Some people were going on for the past 3 months that the US economy is in perfect shape (minus the "little financial troubles" it was facing with the sub-prime loans and the faltering industrial base).
Reading the news is also another sore spot for me. There used to be a time where the news was about reporting important events or things that were genuinely relevant to the general public. Gone are those days to be replaced by 24 hour news channels that love to make a big deal about insignificant events. I could not give any less of a damn about Britney Spears checking into rehab or pundits on politically biased TV "News" shows having an axe to grind about some political or idealogical agenda, or etc. None of the information being broadcasted is nourishing information that provides to the well being of the general human being and therefore I find it largely useless.
So instead of the mainstream media, I look elsewhere where perhaps real or thoughtful information might be had. I look for essays or thought provoking ideas backed up with significant data or well constructed articles. Unfortunately, as of late, I am having trouble finding anything worth reading and I've broken down to buying a book to read... for the first time in a long time, which just arrived today.
There is something nice about reading a book. The ideas are far more complete compared to reading a 1-2 page article online. Short articles hardly provide for any depth of understanding. How am I supposed to understand anything about international relations in a 1 page article summarized by say "Saudi's promise to raise oil output to reduce oil prices." Surely the issues at hand are far more complicated then that and yet the general population is supposed to judge the actions of a nation based on a simple sliver of information. We have TV pundits and online pundits putting bits and pieces of these tid-bits of garbage to make one grand picture of garbage. As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." But I digress...
The book I am reading is "Out of our minds: How to be Creative" by Sir Ken Robinson. Admittedly, the title does sound a little cheesy ("How to be Creative!?"), but Ken Robinson (I highly recommend watching his TED talk which is quite fascinating) writes about the current shortage of "creative" workers to further propel us into the future. He has a very good understanding of the problems in the current education system and it is worth a read. I have so far gone through 50 pages of the book and have been quite satisfied with most of the ideas and the background information he presents. Nothing of the sort that you'd find easily on the internet.
I think that is the new problem that the internet will face in the future. With access to countless billions (trillions??) of webpages, it will become harder and harder to find information worth reading now that anyone and their dog can post to the cloud that is the internet. Social bookmarking, which I thought were the wave of the future for democratically aggregating pieces of information worthy of reading, had now been replaced by the frivolity of the masses with continual up voting of trivial matters. I once used to love these sites as the density of well educated people that used to frequent them led to a higher density of good quality articles being posted. Perhaps it is time for me to look for smaller and better communities to find reading material from.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Dealing with uncertainty
For the last 3 days, starting on Wednesday, I was on an orientation retreat; the HR team at Sony wanted to imbue the new employees with a sense of "character" of what Sony is. If there was one thing that I took away from the orientation was that the company was "unconventional," which might be a good thing for a Japanese company.
Sony does face some serious challenges right now. My opinion is that the company is stagnating and the current environment doesn't really breed creativity, nor does it seem like it gives opportunities for new ideas (from what I've seen so far), though the upper management people keep telling this is exactly what they want, but I some what digress from the title of this article.
Many of the new grads coming into the company, after this retreat seemed to have a lot of anxiety about their jobs. From one of the promotional videos we saw describing the company as having a long history of innovation, the new grads seemed to feel like they had big shoes to fill. I wouldn't blame them, especially coming out of the Japanese educational system, where encouraging creativity not is one of it's strong points.
For the majority of these new grads, working at Sony will be their first job and most of them are quite worried if the jobs they are given is something suited for them. I for one had a very crappy first job doing incredibly boring work, cutting clouds out of satellite images (I studied how long for a boring job like this!?) after my undergrad in Canada. On top of this, most of them aren't really sure about the kinds of jobs they would be really be suited to since they don't really have any working experience.
Personally, there's been a lot of uncertainty in my life. I would never have imaged that I would come to Japan to study nanotech, then getting hired off by Sony after graduating after considering that I started off with a really pathetic first job. In the future, I really have no idea what kind of work I will be doing and where I'll be working. But I think the most important thing is developing the skills to deal with whatever comes up. Say if you got fired tomorrow and knew that you could just setup your own little company or just hop ship to do other things, I think that most people would have very little worries.
Sony does face some serious challenges right now. My opinion is that the company is stagnating and the current environment doesn't really breed creativity, nor does it seem like it gives opportunities for new ideas (from what I've seen so far), though the upper management people keep telling this is exactly what they want, but I some what digress from the title of this article.
Many of the new grads coming into the company, after this retreat seemed to have a lot of anxiety about their jobs. From one of the promotional videos we saw describing the company as having a long history of innovation, the new grads seemed to feel like they had big shoes to fill. I wouldn't blame them, especially coming out of the Japanese educational system, where encouraging creativity not is one of it's strong points.
For the majority of these new grads, working at Sony will be their first job and most of them are quite worried if the jobs they are given is something suited for them. I for one had a very crappy first job doing incredibly boring work, cutting clouds out of satellite images (I studied how long for a boring job like this!?) after my undergrad in Canada. On top of this, most of them aren't really sure about the kinds of jobs they would be really be suited to since they don't really have any working experience.
Personally, there's been a lot of uncertainty in my life. I would never have imaged that I would come to Japan to study nanotech, then getting hired off by Sony after graduating after considering that I started off with a really pathetic first job. In the future, I really have no idea what kind of work I will be doing and where I'll be working. But I think the most important thing is developing the skills to deal with whatever comes up. Say if you got fired tomorrow and knew that you could just setup your own little company or just hop ship to do other things, I think that most people would have very little worries.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Will rent prices go down?
Given the current foreclosures in the US housing market and the state of the US economy, more and more people are looking toward renting as an alternative to owning a home. it would be interesting to see if rent prices in the US will go down, which is something that I've never really seen happen before.
Logically speaking, with falling housing prices, it becomes cheaper to buy a house and if one was a landowner, then it would be possible to rent a home for less money to encourage people to move in. Given this line of thinking, I would think that rent prices in the future to go down, which would be a good thing for most renters out there, though I would expect that it would require a move out of your current residence or a negotiation with your current land lord to get a reduction in rent prices.
Logically speaking, with falling housing prices, it becomes cheaper to buy a house and if one was a landowner, then it would be possible to rent a home for less money to encourage people to move in. Given this line of thinking, I would think that rent prices in the future to go down, which would be a good thing for most renters out there, though I would expect that it would require a move out of your current residence or a negotiation with your current land lord to get a reduction in rent prices.
I do better when I don't pay attention in class
I am in a microprocessor class right now; a course setup for the new employees that got into Sony to learn a little about microprocessor programming. The class level is more introductory than I was expecting so I am ending up having a lot of free time. As a result, I've brought a spare laptop and currently surfing the web and doing some misc reading while the teacher blabbers on about the fundamentals of electronics and microprocessor programming.
The interesting thing about this experience is that I fare better than the rest of the student that pay attention. I'm really just half listening to the teacher, just catching the main points about what he's talking about and then when it comes to doing an assignment, I just look at what needs to be done and go about doing it on my own. The good thing about not paying attention to everything is that it forces me to think on my own to solve the assignment instead of following some contrived program the teacher has setup to solve the problem. The fun part about thinking on my own is that I'm usually thinking a few steps ahead of the class and finding some bugs in the example code (which I've caught the teacher on).
The other good thing about thinking on my own in class is that I tend to be more creative than just listening to what the teacher has to say. I've been plugging the outputs of the microprocessor to a LED light display while making the lights dance around instead of just at the data through an oscilloscope. Apparently, I've gained some notoriety for not paying attention and going my own way at doing my own things.
On an interesting side note, I do believe that people become more creative when they do more thinking on their own instead of being told what to do, as that shuts down the creative process and hence I think the idea of managers telling employees to be "more creative" to be somewhat paradoxical in this sense. My 2 cents. I'd elaborate on it more but the lecturer just gave us a new circuit to build and I'm off to go build it.
The interesting thing about this experience is that I fare better than the rest of the student that pay attention. I'm really just half listening to the teacher, just catching the main points about what he's talking about and then when it comes to doing an assignment, I just look at what needs to be done and go about doing it on my own. The good thing about not paying attention to everything is that it forces me to think on my own to solve the assignment instead of following some contrived program the teacher has setup to solve the problem. The fun part about thinking on my own is that I'm usually thinking a few steps ahead of the class and finding some bugs in the example code (which I've caught the teacher on).
The other good thing about thinking on my own in class is that I tend to be more creative than just listening to what the teacher has to say. I've been plugging the outputs of the microprocessor to a LED light display while making the lights dance around instead of just at the data through an oscilloscope. Apparently, I've gained some notoriety for not paying attention and going my own way at doing my own things.
On an interesting side note, I do believe that people become more creative when they do more thinking on their own instead of being told what to do, as that shuts down the creative process and hence I think the idea of managers telling employees to be "more creative" to be somewhat paradoxical in this sense. My 2 cents. I'd elaborate on it more but the lecturer just gave us a new circuit to build and I'm off to go build it.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
A short hiatus from writing
I've been quite busy recently with work, participating in activities, exercising, reading and resting that I haven't had much time or energy left over to do much to keep this blog up-to-date. I will return to posting more frequently later on.
As of current, I have been somewhat tired and have not been in much of a mood for human interaction. As a result, I haven't been logging into any of the social network sites I used to frequent or any of my internet messengers as of late. Actually, I've started to find more solace in reading than I used to find in chatting online for some strange reason.
I attribute this to the many interesting and well thought out articles I've been reading online, offering compelling and well thought out ideas. I am starting to find normal conversation to be somewhat boring now that I can't seem to find conversations that "go anywhere." Perhaps my character is taking a somewhat of a shift towards "less talking and more action" but this requires some more exploration.
Anyways, I will probably have more to say (well, I have plenty) after I have some time to kick back and relax. But for the time being, posting might be a little bit sparse.
As of current, I have been somewhat tired and have not been in much of a mood for human interaction. As a result, I haven't been logging into any of the social network sites I used to frequent or any of my internet messengers as of late. Actually, I've started to find more solace in reading than I used to find in chatting online for some strange reason.
I attribute this to the many interesting and well thought out articles I've been reading online, offering compelling and well thought out ideas. I am starting to find normal conversation to be somewhat boring now that I can't seem to find conversations that "go anywhere." Perhaps my character is taking a somewhat of a shift towards "less talking and more action" but this requires some more exploration.
Anyways, I will probably have more to say (well, I have plenty) after I have some time to kick back and relax. But for the time being, posting might be a little bit sparse.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Knowing how to capitalize on a down market
The US economy is going into a recession. It's been pretty evident that things have been on the down turn for the last 6 months. First with the sub-prime loans, then the soaring gas prices and food prices (much as a result of the US inflating their money supply). What I should have been thinking about since the beginning of all of this is "what sectors are going to be hit in a recession?" and the answers would have been obvious. Anything and every industry that is has anything to do with "disposable income."
Starbucks is tanking, so is the auto industry. Airline stocks are falling and the tourism industry is taking a hit. I think upper end restaurant chains are going to tank, jewelry sales are going to plummet, consumer electronics sales are probably going to go down and more. If you know what you are doing, then shorting these stocks is the right move. Things aren't going to get better until the bad loans are cleared and banks have the confidence to lend money again. You should know that you're playing in a down market and the way to make money is by being a few steps ahead of the market.
Starbucks is tanking, so is the auto industry. Airline stocks are falling and the tourism industry is taking a hit. I think upper end restaurant chains are going to tank, jewelry sales are going to plummet, consumer electronics sales are probably going to go down and more. If you know what you are doing, then shorting these stocks is the right move. Things aren't going to get better until the bad loans are cleared and banks have the confidence to lend money again. You should know that you're playing in a down market and the way to make money is by being a few steps ahead of the market.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
Like Poker, Investing is about *Not Losing*
On and off, I go through my bookmarks of the web to see how some notable people are doing after their moment of fame. One stock market trader that posts at High Probability Trading blog became exceptionally famous after a tirade of cursing after losing over $30k on a bad trade when the stock market tanked.
I have a mild-interest in watching people day trade, simply to see if there are people out there that are able read into the tea-leaves of the daily market to make a few quick bucks here and there with the ebbing tides of the stock market. It seems that the man at this blog can't seem to eek out consistent gains, though he consistently mentions that he has a "solid plan" to make money on the market and that some trades on the open market are "easy" to make money on.
If that were the case, why not stick to the trades that you are almost certain to make money on?
TV and the movies are horrible places to learn about anything that is a combination of luck and skill. They have this strange idea that the path to success can be summarized into a series of short episodes or a 2 hour feature film. Sure, they make it look like the main character goes through a lot, works hard and in the end gets a few almost impossible lucky breaks and lives happily ever after, but the reality of the matter is that life doesn't work like that-- you just can't expect to take wild swings at things expecting to eventually make a hit (you'll throw your arms out eventually)... but I digress...
Every risk you take should be calculated
The idea that continually taking risks without weighing the costs, hoping to make a hit is not a bright idea; it's also a cardinal rule in poker which few understand. Every risk that you take should be calculated-- weigh what the risk costs to take the chance and the consequences of you losing vs the rewards and the probability of you winning.
There is something in the world of probability called the "expectation value," which basically means that if you had a 60% chance of winning $100, then the expectation value of the outcome is $60. If someone told you that it would cost you $50 for you to have a 60% chance of winning $100 would you take it? I would! Over and over again, simply because the expectation value is greater than the risk I would have to bare. In the long run, I will also win out on the game.
The interesting thing about the mechanics of making decisions depends on the reliability of your data. In the case of the day trading guy, he seems to be able to pick out a few "good trades." If I were him, I'd stick to those trades and take the easy money if that is the case. I would be far more happier to know that I'm consistent at making money instead of having a string of good runs, then getting hammered by a series of bad runs-- the emotional roller coaster isn't worth
it. I'd be far happier to make 8 wins out of 10 versus 40 out of 100. That is the name of the game, especially when you've got money on the line.
Don't get the wrong idea that it isn't worth taking the risk to learn something new; because I highly recommend taking a chance on something new whenever you can. Just make sure that you're not risking more than you can handle.
I have a mild-interest in watching people day trade, simply to see if there are people out there that are able read into the tea-leaves of the daily market to make a few quick bucks here and there with the ebbing tides of the stock market. It seems that the man at this blog can't seem to eek out consistent gains, though he consistently mentions that he has a "solid plan" to make money on the market and that some trades on the open market are "easy" to make money on.
If that were the case, why not stick to the trades that you are almost certain to make money on?
TV and the movies are horrible places to learn about anything that is a combination of luck and skill. They have this strange idea that the path to success can be summarized into a series of short episodes or a 2 hour feature film. Sure, they make it look like the main character goes through a lot, works hard and in the end gets a few almost impossible lucky breaks and lives happily ever after, but the reality of the matter is that life doesn't work like that-- you just can't expect to take wild swings at things expecting to eventually make a hit (you'll throw your arms out eventually)... but I digress...
Every risk you take should be calculated
The idea that continually taking risks without weighing the costs, hoping to make a hit is not a bright idea; it's also a cardinal rule in poker which few understand. Every risk that you take should be calculated-- weigh what the risk costs to take the chance and the consequences of you losing vs the rewards and the probability of you winning.
There is something in the world of probability called the "expectation value," which basically means that if you had a 60% chance of winning $100, then the expectation value of the outcome is $60. If someone told you that it would cost you $50 for you to have a 60% chance of winning $100 would you take it? I would! Over and over again, simply because the expectation value is greater than the risk I would have to bare. In the long run, I will also win out on the game.
The interesting thing about the mechanics of making decisions depends on the reliability of your data. In the case of the day trading guy, he seems to be able to pick out a few "good trades." If I were him, I'd stick to those trades and take the easy money if that is the case. I would be far more happier to know that I'm consistent at making money instead of having a string of good runs, then getting hammered by a series of bad runs-- the emotional roller coaster isn't worth
it. I'd be far happier to make 8 wins out of 10 versus 40 out of 100. That is the name of the game, especially when you've got money on the line.
Don't get the wrong idea that it isn't worth taking the risk to learn something new; because I highly recommend taking a chance on something new whenever you can. Just make sure that you're not risking more than you can handle.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Machine Learning, Information Filtering and People
There is a lot of information on the internet now; billions upon billions of webpages. Some of the information out there is trivial but there is plenty of useful information out there. All that one needs to do it have a topic of interest and go off searching the internet to summarize the important details of a topic they need to know.
Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of good websites that summarize things very well. I usually end up finding myself surfing from wepbage to webpage looking for details, trying to confirm what I've learned. Quite often this ends up to be a very time consuming task. What if we could simplify this? What if we could find ways of going through large quantities of information very quickly, figure out what is reliable, what (seems to) make sense and then summarize it into a nice simple packet of information that we can digest quickly.
People as Information Filters
I've had a hypothesis for quite some time that people are information filters and the kind of information that is retained by the person is largely dependent on the character of the person. Now that I've mentioned the words information and character in the same sentence, I ought explain this relationship in more detail.
Though my experiences, I theorize that the character of a person is largely determined by the kind of information they find useful or interesting. As simple as this sounds, I think it is quite profound, as it isn't as stated often like this. If one were to think about it, the kinds of information that we find useful are the kinds of information that allow us to accomplish specific goals, albeit consciously or sub-consciously.
A person characterized as a thrill seeker will most likely find information about the latest scoup on cheap places for bungee jumping, white water rafting and the most exciting get-aways to be particularly useful. This person will obviously will have their eyes and ears peeled for information related to their interest, whether be it through magazines, clubs, newspapers or other forms of media. And I would be willing to go as far as to point out that the greatest source of information are other people with similar interests as it would be obvious that these people are also on the look out for similar information, digesting whatever pieces of data they get to summarize what they learn to actional pieces of data. You will often get the best information digest from other people that have done a fair amount of information and data collection, up to the point where they can anticipate the kinds of questions you will have and immediately fill you in on what you need/want to know.
I personally have to say that the best teachers I've ever had are the ones that know how to summarize information well, communicate it succinctly and be able to lead into the next important topic by anticipating the questions or the interesting points that arise from what was just presented.
I have found that dense exchange of well summarized useful and interesting knowledge to be rare and few. And I find this to be quite unfortunate, but this point is probably for a different essay at a different time, though I should point out that your best friends are likely to be the ones that share information that are the most relative with you... but anyways, I digress...
Machine: A man's best friend?
The old adage was that a dog is a man's best friend-- that you'd be able to send out your dog and have him fetch your shoes, slippers, a dead bird or the newspaper. But what if this time, instead of the newspaper, you had a dog that could surf the web and fetch you all the important things that you should/wanted to know. Imagine that.
Now, with the digitization of information, it has become easy for computers to digest digital representation of text-- in other words, you don't have to teach your computer have to read characters anymore (I still remember the first time I tried to read my elementary school teacher's handwritten comment on one of my assignments and I couldn't make heads or tails out of it)! Now with that problem out of the way, wouldn't it be interesting to see if we could give a computer some simple goals, have it go out into the internet and learn/find what you want to know and then summarize it for you.
What if you told your computer that you wanted to make gourmet food and have it come back at you and asked you what kind while providing a list of different ethnic cuisine. What if in addition to that, it went further to recommend certain dishes because of availability of ingredients based on your geographical region and the season. All of this relevant information would be nicely summarized into something that you can immediately act upon. This is what I believe to be the epitome of useful information (considering that most of information you get through the news and other sources are hardly actionable!).
Intelligence simply does not come from data!
Throughout my high school life, I realized something far more important than just learning what your teachers taught you, but rather more efficient ways of learning. In practice, I focused on finding more efficient ways of learning. I can tell you with certainty that effective learning does not result from wrote memorization. What is more important that just having information is developing relationships between pieces of information, like a puzzle, to create a coherent overview of the body of knowledge learned.
With the combination of having a wide breadth of knowledge and understanding how it fits together, it puts one in the desirable position of understanding the relevance of what they know to quickly understand how new information may fit into their knowledge or knowing how to respond to questions with the most relevant answers. After all, this is what tests are all about.
How do you teach someone/something to learn?
Now this is obviously the million (multi-billion?) dollar question (and if you know the answer, go start your own education company). There is no easy way to teach someone or something to learn. And I believe that the process of learning boils down to motive and objective. What I have found more important that instead of just teaching a subject, is to teach the underlying motivations behind why this body of knowledge was created because if a person could never find a purpose for what they learned, why bother learning it? I think that a topic should be as interesting as it is useful.
Motivating humans, I think, is a far easier task than motivating an inanimate object like a computer to do something. Humans have hard-coded biological objectives to survive and live a happy life. Obviously, by understanding the basic constructs of ourselves, it becomes easier to understand the relevance of information to ourselves. I should point out that the desire to be well informed is not just for survival, but also for entertainment. I don't know about you, but I find myself quite happy to discover or learn profound ideas (where I find myself running around to friends to tell them all about it... despite how little they may care sometimes :)
In order to develop an autonomous computer system capable of learning, it would be very necessary to hard code specific objectives into an artificial intelligence to give it the motivation to learn. Determining what those motivations should be will likely be a challenging topic, but I am sure that without them, a CPU made from silicon will have as much motivation to learn as a chunk of rock. And the same goes for students.
Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of good websites that summarize things very well. I usually end up finding myself surfing from wepbage to webpage looking for details, trying to confirm what I've learned. Quite often this ends up to be a very time consuming task. What if we could simplify this? What if we could find ways of going through large quantities of information very quickly, figure out what is reliable, what (seems to) make sense and then summarize it into a nice simple packet of information that we can digest quickly.
People as Information Filters
I've had a hypothesis for quite some time that people are information filters and the kind of information that is retained by the person is largely dependent on the character of the person. Now that I've mentioned the words information and character in the same sentence, I ought explain this relationship in more detail.
Though my experiences, I theorize that the character of a person is largely determined by the kind of information they find useful or interesting. As simple as this sounds, I think it is quite profound, as it isn't as stated often like this. If one were to think about it, the kinds of information that we find useful are the kinds of information that allow us to accomplish specific goals, albeit consciously or sub-consciously.
A person characterized as a thrill seeker will most likely find information about the latest scoup on cheap places for bungee jumping, white water rafting and the most exciting get-aways to be particularly useful. This person will obviously will have their eyes and ears peeled for information related to their interest, whether be it through magazines, clubs, newspapers or other forms of media. And I would be willing to go as far as to point out that the greatest source of information are other people with similar interests as it would be obvious that these people are also on the look out for similar information, digesting whatever pieces of data they get to summarize what they learn to actional pieces of data. You will often get the best information digest from other people that have done a fair amount of information and data collection, up to the point where they can anticipate the kinds of questions you will have and immediately fill you in on what you need/want to know.
I personally have to say that the best teachers I've ever had are the ones that know how to summarize information well, communicate it succinctly and be able to lead into the next important topic by anticipating the questions or the interesting points that arise from what was just presented.
I have found that dense exchange of well summarized useful and interesting knowledge to be rare and few. And I find this to be quite unfortunate, but this point is probably for a different essay at a different time, though I should point out that your best friends are likely to be the ones that share information that are the most relative with you... but anyways, I digress...
Machine: A man's best friend?
The old adage was that a dog is a man's best friend-- that you'd be able to send out your dog and have him fetch your shoes, slippers, a dead bird or the newspaper. But what if this time, instead of the newspaper, you had a dog that could surf the web and fetch you all the important things that you should/wanted to know. Imagine that.
Now, with the digitization of information, it has become easy for computers to digest digital representation of text-- in other words, you don't have to teach your computer have to read characters anymore (I still remember the first time I tried to read my elementary school teacher's handwritten comment on one of my assignments and I couldn't make heads or tails out of it)! Now with that problem out of the way, wouldn't it be interesting to see if we could give a computer some simple goals, have it go out into the internet and learn/find what you want to know and then summarize it for you.
What if you told your computer that you wanted to make gourmet food and have it come back at you and asked you what kind while providing a list of different ethnic cuisine. What if in addition to that, it went further to recommend certain dishes because of availability of ingredients based on your geographical region and the season. All of this relevant information would be nicely summarized into something that you can immediately act upon. This is what I believe to be the epitome of useful information (considering that most of information you get through the news and other sources are hardly actionable!).
Intelligence simply does not come from data!
Throughout my high school life, I realized something far more important than just learning what your teachers taught you, but rather more efficient ways of learning. In practice, I focused on finding more efficient ways of learning. I can tell you with certainty that effective learning does not result from wrote memorization. What is more important that just having information is developing relationships between pieces of information, like a puzzle, to create a coherent overview of the body of knowledge learned.
With the combination of having a wide breadth of knowledge and understanding how it fits together, it puts one in the desirable position of understanding the relevance of what they know to quickly understand how new information may fit into their knowledge or knowing how to respond to questions with the most relevant answers. After all, this is what tests are all about.
How do you teach someone/something to learn?
Now this is obviously the million (multi-billion?) dollar question (and if you know the answer, go start your own education company). There is no easy way to teach someone or something to learn. And I believe that the process of learning boils down to motive and objective. What I have found more important that instead of just teaching a subject, is to teach the underlying motivations behind why this body of knowledge was created because if a person could never find a purpose for what they learned, why bother learning it? I think that a topic should be as interesting as it is useful.
Motivating humans, I think, is a far easier task than motivating an inanimate object like a computer to do something. Humans have hard-coded biological objectives to survive and live a happy life. Obviously, by understanding the basic constructs of ourselves, it becomes easier to understand the relevance of information to ourselves. I should point out that the desire to be well informed is not just for survival, but also for entertainment. I don't know about you, but I find myself quite happy to discover or learn profound ideas (where I find myself running around to friends to tell them all about it... despite how little they may care sometimes :)
In order to develop an autonomous computer system capable of learning, it would be very necessary to hard code specific objectives into an artificial intelligence to give it the motivation to learn. Determining what those motivations should be will likely be a challenging topic, but I am sure that without them, a CPU made from silicon will have as much motivation to learn as a chunk of rock. And the same goes for students.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Sub-pixel interpolation throwing off my eyes
I spent about $210 getting a new 19" monitor to run on my Linux box. The monitor I got is a Benq FP93G series monitor. I have so far tested the monitor using output both from my laptop and the desktop computer to find that I have mixed feelings about thus monitor-- the images don't come out as crisp as the images on my monitor... it maybe due to the fact that the surface isn't glossy.
The other problem that has been plaguing me recently is that I have yet to find a good way to turn off sub-pixel interpolation of characters on all the software on my Ubuntu Linux installation. Simply put, sub-pixel interpolation attemptes to smooth the display text to make them look rounder and smoother than what your average monitor might be able to show by shading some pixels gray instead of just using white or black to draw a character.
Unfortunately for me (or fortunately for me) is that I have very sharp eyes and when I look at sub-pixel interpolated characters, it actually gives me eye strain and sometimes a headache... as I am facing right now. I much prefer the screen on my laptop compared to the flat panel screen I am working off of at the moment.
I have already tried hooking the monitor up to my laptop (which runs windows, and I have sub-pixel interpolation disabled) and the text I read from the laptop is much clearer to me (though I still prefer reading text directly from the laptop instead of the monitor). I think sub-pixel interpolation might be good for monitors with a glossy surface since the pixels may do a better job of blending through a glossy surface. Unfortunately for me, the monitor I have is just a standard monitor without a glossy surface... as I used to be able to work on a monitor without glossy surfaces.
I am quite annoyed that things turned out the way they did and will be looking for a way to work around this problem as I cannot stand blurry text.
I have tried watching videos on my monitor and found no problem at all with the display quality. It's only a problem when I have to look at high contrast images.
The other problem that has been plaguing me recently is that I have yet to find a good way to turn off sub-pixel interpolation of characters on all the software on my Ubuntu Linux installation. Simply put, sub-pixel interpolation attemptes to smooth the display text to make them look rounder and smoother than what your average monitor might be able to show by shading some pixels gray instead of just using white or black to draw a character.
Unfortunately for me (or fortunately for me) is that I have very sharp eyes and when I look at sub-pixel interpolated characters, it actually gives me eye strain and sometimes a headache... as I am facing right now. I much prefer the screen on my laptop compared to the flat panel screen I am working off of at the moment.
I have already tried hooking the monitor up to my laptop (which runs windows, and I have sub-pixel interpolation disabled) and the text I read from the laptop is much clearer to me (though I still prefer reading text directly from the laptop instead of the monitor). I think sub-pixel interpolation might be good for monitors with a glossy surface since the pixels may do a better job of blending through a glossy surface. Unfortunately for me, the monitor I have is just a standard monitor without a glossy surface... as I used to be able to work on a monitor without glossy surfaces.
I am quite annoyed that things turned out the way they did and will be looking for a way to work around this problem as I cannot stand blurry text.
I have tried watching videos on my monitor and found no problem at all with the display quality. It's only a problem when I have to look at high contrast images.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
I type this from my Linux box
Back in my university days, I managed to salvage a 1 GHz computer from the dumpster. The PC box already had 512 MB ram and a video card. A few more weeks of checking out the dumpster later, I managed to find other scrapped computers to salvage a sound card, a network card and a 12 GB HD and I would have a fully working computer... which I ended up donating to a friend of mine that didn't have a computer at the time.
Well right before leaving university, he didn't need the computer anymore and I bought it with me to my new home where I bought a new 19" LCD to go with the system an installed Ubuntu (a very easy to setup Linux distribution) on the computer. The desktop looks something like this:
My Desktop while getting some music going.
The distribution comes complete with Open Office which is a suite complete with a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation preparation programs. All of this comes free with the operating system and can be easily installed into other systems as well. Linux comes complete with programming tools, program editors with the option to add a whole slew of software for free.
The desktop side of Linux is becoming very attractive, especially for those with good video cards to go with their computer (though most of it is just eye candy... it's also very pleasing eye candy). The desktop is managed by a piece of software developed from the Compiz Fusion project, which was a project to develop an incredibly beautiful/slick desktop environment. Check out the following link for a video demonstration. It just goes to say that you done necessarily need Windows for a decent working environment. The best part of it all is that all of this software, and more comes for free and all the code on how to write these programs are publicly available should you be interested in doing some programming of your own.
Windows and the together already costs atleast $200 or more, then throw in any other software that you might be interested in and you are probably looking at $1000 more in costs for installed software on the computer. If you want an image editor, programming environment, HTTP server or anything, all of this can be had for for free just by downloading the software you want from an online software repository. Simple as that and you'd be saving yourself $1200+ in software that easy.
Though, I think the biggest hang up of using Linux is that there might be one piece of software that might not be available on Linux. Well fear not, there exists a piece of software that can interpret Windows programs and have it run on a Linux OS. That piece of software is other wise known as "wine." All one needs to do is install it and have it run the program of your choice. Simple as that.
I do have to admit that I am still a little uncertain of gaming on a Linux box with the standard titles out there, but I have heard from some people that many usual Windows games are playable through the Wine emulator software (and I heard that it runs fast enough that there isn't any significant slowdown of the game).
Most likely, I will be upgrading this computer later on (or rather rebuilding the whole thing) with much slicker hardware to take play around with the Linux OS. So far, I am quite impressed.
Well right before leaving university, he didn't need the computer anymore and I bought it with me to my new home where I bought a new 19" LCD to go with the system an installed Ubuntu (a very easy to setup Linux distribution) on the computer. The desktop looks something like this:
My Desktop while getting some music going.
The distribution comes complete with Open Office which is a suite complete with a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation preparation programs. All of this comes free with the operating system and can be easily installed into other systems as well. Linux comes complete with programming tools, program editors with the option to add a whole slew of software for free.
The desktop side of Linux is becoming very attractive, especially for those with good video cards to go with their computer (though most of it is just eye candy... it's also very pleasing eye candy). The desktop is managed by a piece of software developed from the Compiz Fusion project, which was a project to develop an incredibly beautiful/slick desktop environment. Check out the following link for a video demonstration. It just goes to say that you done necessarily need Windows for a decent working environment. The best part of it all is that all of this software, and more comes for free and all the code on how to write these programs are publicly available should you be interested in doing some programming of your own.
Windows and the together already costs atleast $200 or more, then throw in any other software that you might be interested in and you are probably looking at $1000 more in costs for installed software on the computer. If you want an image editor, programming environment, HTTP server or anything, all of this can be had for for free just by downloading the software you want from an online software repository. Simple as that and you'd be saving yourself $1200+ in software that easy.
Though, I think the biggest hang up of using Linux is that there might be one piece of software that might not be available on Linux. Well fear not, there exists a piece of software that can interpret Windows programs and have it run on a Linux OS. That piece of software is other wise known as "wine." All one needs to do is install it and have it run the program of your choice. Simple as that.
I do have to admit that I am still a little uncertain of gaming on a Linux box with the standard titles out there, but I have heard from some people that many usual Windows games are playable through the Wine emulator software (and I heard that it runs fast enough that there isn't any significant slowdown of the game).
Most likely, I will be upgrading this computer later on (or rather rebuilding the whole thing) with much slicker hardware to take play around with the Linux OS. So far, I am quite impressed.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The importance of a good keyboarding posture
It has nearly been about 3 years since the last time I really worked on a desktop computer. It wasn't until a while back where I recovered a desktop computer from the dumpster at the University garbage disposal area that I decided to build myself a Linux box running the Ubuntu distribution of Linux to give it a try.
I like the idea of free software which is just as good or even better than commercial applications that is out there right now. Spreadsheets? Word processing and etc? There's open office. Need to do programming but don't want to shell out for the expensive Microsoft IDE? Linux has several nice options all available for free. You just can't beat that and I have also decided to try and learn more about the Linux OS and play around with what they've got here.
A long while back, I got used to working on a laptop keyboard. I still remember getting wrist cramps the first time working on the laptop just because I wasn't used to working on a laptop keyboard, though I don't have a problem with it now. The problem is getting back to the traditional keyboard. I bought a really cheap one a while back that doesn't support my wrists and found that almost after 30 minutes of typing, I was getting some mild cramping. There is just absolutely no way that I want to develop wrist problems in the future so I've opted for a better keyboard and changed my typing posture actually, my wrists don't rest on the table below or on the keyboard and I find this the most comfortable typing position.
Suffice to say that most of our activities revolve around using a computer and it would be simply crippling (in more ways than one) should we not be able to use a computer due to wrist injuries.
I like the idea of free software which is just as good or even better than commercial applications that is out there right now. Spreadsheets? Word processing and etc? There's open office. Need to do programming but don't want to shell out for the expensive Microsoft IDE? Linux has several nice options all available for free. You just can't beat that and I have also decided to try and learn more about the Linux OS and play around with what they've got here.
A long while back, I got used to working on a laptop keyboard. I still remember getting wrist cramps the first time working on the laptop just because I wasn't used to working on a laptop keyboard, though I don't have a problem with it now. The problem is getting back to the traditional keyboard. I bought a really cheap one a while back that doesn't support my wrists and found that almost after 30 minutes of typing, I was getting some mild cramping. There is just absolutely no way that I want to develop wrist problems in the future so I've opted for a better keyboard and changed my typing posture actually, my wrists don't rest on the table below or on the keyboard and I find this the most comfortable typing position.
Suffice to say that most of our activities revolve around using a computer and it would be simply crippling (in more ways than one) should we not be able to use a computer due to wrist injuries.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Finally, Internet
Been a while since the last post. Not having internet in the room does tend to slow things down, but finally, that has changed.
Internet in Japan is vastly superior to what I used to work on in Canada. Most apartments are now equipped with fiber-optic connections (usually shared) allowing me to go up to about 800 kB/sec (I am talking about kilobytes here!) on peak (when I am really pushing it) or easily to 200 kB/sec on a few downloads. I used to share a connection with my roommates when I shared an apartment and it would only cost each of us $15/month ($45/month total).
Since relocating to the company dorm, I have opted for a shared internet connection going for about $15/month. This time, it being shared with about 100 other people, I think. I decided not to bother with a dedicated connection to my room since I don't have any plans on using my connection that heavily and large downloads can be completed with the computer running while at work.
The cell phone carriers in Japan are working on putting together full coverage of high speed internet to the cell phones here. We are looking at about 250kB/sec on bandwidth... though the packet charges are going to be insane if people really start downloading hoards of material onto their cell phones. Phone carriers here offer a $15/month unlimited packet service to the cell phones in addition to the basic package plan. If I had it my way, I'd opt or the cheapest cell phone package and see if I can hack Skype onto a cell phone to make phone calls over the net. I predict that full-blown high speed internet to mobile devices will eventually be available to hand-held devices in the near future.
Work so far, has been quite good. I have lots of freedom to do whatever kind of work want and the organizational structure for my research team is very flat, making getting access to superiors very easy (especially for Japan). I have so far been supplied with a brand-new Sony laptop since my first day in the company. I have a few thoughts about working in large corporations but I will leave those for later.
Time to enjoy the internet!
Internet in Japan is vastly superior to what I used to work on in Canada. Most apartments are now equipped with fiber-optic connections (usually shared) allowing me to go up to about 800 kB/sec (I am talking about kilobytes here!) on peak (when I am really pushing it) or easily to 200 kB/sec on a few downloads. I used to share a connection with my roommates when I shared an apartment and it would only cost each of us $15/month ($45/month total).
Since relocating to the company dorm, I have opted for a shared internet connection going for about $15/month. This time, it being shared with about 100 other people, I think. I decided not to bother with a dedicated connection to my room since I don't have any plans on using my connection that heavily and large downloads can be completed with the computer running while at work.
The cell phone carriers in Japan are working on putting together full coverage of high speed internet to the cell phones here. We are looking at about 250kB/sec on bandwidth... though the packet charges are going to be insane if people really start downloading hoards of material onto their cell phones. Phone carriers here offer a $15/month unlimited packet service to the cell phones in addition to the basic package plan. If I had it my way, I'd opt or the cheapest cell phone package and see if I can hack Skype onto a cell phone to make phone calls over the net. I predict that full-blown high speed internet to mobile devices will eventually be available to hand-held devices in the near future.
Work so far, has been quite good. I have lots of freedom to do whatever kind of work want and the organizational structure for my research team is very flat, making getting access to superiors very easy (especially for Japan). I have so far been supplied with a brand-new Sony laptop since my first day in the company. I have a few thoughts about working in large corporations but I will leave those for later.
Time to enjoy the internet!
Friday, March 28, 2008
Another short update
I've now moved into the company dorm at Sony. Fortunately, I lucked out and got a room in the newer dorms and have a fairly spacious room. The rent I pay is $160/mo for the room plus $20/mo for the water and electricity is metered, so I expect to be paying about $220/month in total.
The starting salary for new grads in Japan is quite low where most people make approximately $30k/year. I hear, though, that salaries rapidly increase over several years to be on par with salaries in developed countries. I will be looking to see how things turn out on the financial end.
Laptop Woes:
It has been over a month since my ACER laptop has broken down. With the warranty being 1 year out of date, I am now running on the extended warranty I purchased. Customer support without the original warranty is terrible.
I have so far sent my laptop for repairs at the original store (Yodobashi), with them estimating a 3 week turn around for the laptop and that repair costs up to $850 will be covered. I know that my laptop has a motherboard problem and the last time I checked was that repairs was in the $600-$700 range. After 3 weeks of waiting, they finally quoted me with a repair bill of $1200 and that I would have to cover the additional $350 extra over the $850 coverage.
This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit.
I went to great lengths to figure out what company they sent my laptop to and requested that they give me the contact number so I can figure out why the repairs cost so much. Yodobashi refused my request and told me that they would relay my message to them and they also told me that laptop parts were expensive to justify the tepid explanation of the cost. I was furious.
I would have loved an audio copy of the conversation just to show how ridiculous the situation was. And at first, they told me that if I did the repairs anywhere else that I would be on my own, they've since reversed that position and that I would get store credit for the costs of the repairs.
When it comes to customer report, I am now going to take the stance of recording my calls using external software through Skype to have concrete evidence if I need to make a complaint. It's much better than just making arguments based on hearsay.
I have since sent out an e-mail to the ACER guys in Japan to get a quote on the repairs a few days ago and have yet to hear from them. The computer has been out of operation for over a month now and I am quite annoyed about it. Has this computer been a desktop, I'd have it up and running within a few days for a fraction of the cost.
Laptops are useless if they aren't reliable and repair fees are exorbitantly expensive. It would be very nice to have a website that could rate the reliability of the laptop sold to help the average consumer out on choosing a good company to buy from.
On another note:
The moving company that shipped my scooter from Sendai to Kanagawa busted something with one of my brake handles and I have no front breaks for the time being. I am going to have to get that repaired and see if the moving company can have it covered.
Ugh... headaches.
The starting salary for new grads in Japan is quite low where most people make approximately $30k/year. I hear, though, that salaries rapidly increase over several years to be on par with salaries in developed countries. I will be looking to see how things turn out on the financial end.
Laptop Woes:
It has been over a month since my ACER laptop has broken down. With the warranty being 1 year out of date, I am now running on the extended warranty I purchased. Customer support without the original warranty is terrible.
I have so far sent my laptop for repairs at the original store (Yodobashi), with them estimating a 3 week turn around for the laptop and that repair costs up to $850 will be covered. I know that my laptop has a motherboard problem and the last time I checked was that repairs was in the $600-$700 range. After 3 weeks of waiting, they finally quoted me with a repair bill of $1200 and that I would have to cover the additional $350 extra over the $850 coverage.
This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit.
I went to great lengths to figure out what company they sent my laptop to and requested that they give me the contact number so I can figure out why the repairs cost so much. Yodobashi refused my request and told me that they would relay my message to them and they also told me that laptop parts were expensive to justify the tepid explanation of the cost. I was furious.
I would have loved an audio copy of the conversation just to show how ridiculous the situation was. And at first, they told me that if I did the repairs anywhere else that I would be on my own, they've since reversed that position and that I would get store credit for the costs of the repairs.
When it comes to customer report, I am now going to take the stance of recording my calls using external software through Skype to have concrete evidence if I need to make a complaint. It's much better than just making arguments based on hearsay.
I have since sent out an e-mail to the ACER guys in Japan to get a quote on the repairs a few days ago and have yet to hear from them. The computer has been out of operation for over a month now and I am quite annoyed about it. Has this computer been a desktop, I'd have it up and running within a few days for a fraction of the cost.
Laptops are useless if they aren't reliable and repair fees are exorbitantly expensive. It would be very nice to have a website that could rate the reliability of the laptop sold to help the average consumer out on choosing a good company to buy from.
On another note:
The moving company that shipped my scooter from Sendai to Kanagawa busted something with one of my brake handles and I have no front breaks for the time being. I am going to have to get that repaired and see if the moving company can have it covered.
Ugh... headaches.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A short update
It's been a little while since the last post. This post will be a random mish-mash of topics.
Moving:
Moved out of Sendai to Kanagawa in preparation for working with Sony. Will have a physical check tomorrow and I think my belly has gotten a little bigger this month as a result of lots of eating out with friends (farewell parties).
Moving is a bit of a pain and it amazes me with how much stuff I have. After traveling for 3 months I definitely want to cut down on personal belongings to the essential (stuff I use often). The rest just clutters up the room and I find that I lead a more focused life when I restrict myself to only having the essentials for what I want to do.
Stock Market:
The US is going to go into a recession. The FED is eventually going to run out of space with their interest cuts and will have nowhere to run. They are just prolonging this slow decline. I recommending holding gold and minimizing your USD unless you're good at investing in this climate, either finding companies that thrive or good stocks to short sell.
Prediction Market:
I've also started getting into the prediction market with contracts $700 bet for a $300 return that Obama will win the Democratic nomination and contracts at $290 bet for a $130 return for a US recession by the end of this year.
Moving:
Moved out of Sendai to Kanagawa in preparation for working with Sony. Will have a physical check tomorrow and I think my belly has gotten a little bigger this month as a result of lots of eating out with friends (farewell parties).
Moving is a bit of a pain and it amazes me with how much stuff I have. After traveling for 3 months I definitely want to cut down on personal belongings to the essential (stuff I use often). The rest just clutters up the room and I find that I lead a more focused life when I restrict myself to only having the essentials for what I want to do.
Stock Market:
The US is going to go into a recession. The FED is eventually going to run out of space with their interest cuts and will have nowhere to run. They are just prolonging this slow decline. I recommending holding gold and minimizing your USD unless you're good at investing in this climate, either finding companies that thrive or good stocks to short sell.
Prediction Market:
I've also started getting into the prediction market with contracts $700 bet for a $300 return that Obama will win the Democratic nomination and contracts at $290 bet for a $130 return for a US recession by the end of this year.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Rescinding the CPU+GPU argument
Andrew and I have been having quite an interesting discussion through the comment section of the the last article about the future of CPU+GPU processing and I have been taking a much closer look at the topic over the last few days to develop a better understanding. What I have found out so far has led me the opposite conclusion of my previous article, that there will not be big benefits from the CPU+GPU combination in terms of processing power.
I have taken a closer look at CPU and GPU issue closer and have come to the realization that a CPU+GPU combination is likely a bad combination, unless one is designing system on a chip (SoC) processors for embedded or portable systems, though I expect the performance characteristics for these devices to be far less powerful compared to the desktop variant.
The main reasoning behind this realization is the high memory bandwidth demands most GPUs have for rendering frames. The memory used in most video cards consist of high performance RAM; of either DDR2 or the more expensive GDDR3 (5.6~54.4 GB/sec) or GDDR4 (64~156.6GB/sec) variants. The necessity for such high bandwidth is a the nature of graphics rendering where large datasets including textures, skins, masks are stored in memory and often pasted or multiplied onto a surface, not to also mention 3D geometry transformations as well. It is thus very necessary for a very parallel GPU to have fast access to the memory to perform a variety of calculations to render a 3D environment. This level of bandwidth is generally not achievable on your standard motherboard front-side-bus (FSB).
To get an idea of this problem, one simply needs to look at the amount of bandwidth the FSB provides, somewhere in the ball park of 4 GB/sec for a Hyper Transport 2 specification on an AMD based motherboard (I expect about the same performance on an Intel based chipset). The bandwidth provided by the FSB pales in comparison of the data bandwidth of a video card. This is also a core reason why integrated graphics processors on a motherboard fare so poorly when it comes to 3D rendering.
The obvious solution to this problem is to provide these integrated graphics processors access to a specialized memory controller and high speed RAM to to counter this problem, however I expect that incorporating this hardware into the motherboard will increase complexity and cost easily by $50 to $100, which may make a motherboard look incredibly expensive to a purchaser. There is also the problem of the on board graphics hardware becoming obsolete and therefore useless when the user ends up buying a plug-in video card to maintain parity with the demands of new 3D software.
There are possible workarounds for this problem as both ATI/AMD and Nvidia are working on their respective Crossfire and SLI platforms to allow paired video cards or even a video card + integrated GPU to work in conjunction to improve processing power. This technology is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen if significant improvements can be had by offering this as a possible upgrade path.
On an interesting note, I have been thumbing through the bandwidth capacities of various components in a computer while looking at this topic and I will summarize what I've noticed so far (this information is accessible from wikipedia at its list of device bandwidths page):
FSB: 4GB/sec (up to 22GB/sec, future)
PCIe 1.1: 250 MB/sec for each channel. One device may have up to 16 channels or 4GB/sec
PCIe 2.0: 8 GB/sec (16 channel), 16 GB/sec (32 channel)
RAM:
For DDR2 800, 1000MHz (dual channel): 12.8GB/sec ,16.0GB/sec
For DDR3: 21.2 GB/sec ~ 25.6 GB/sec
HD BUS:
For UDMA 133: 133MB/sec
For SATA 150, 300: 187.5 MB/sec, 375MB/sec
HD devices:
For Solid State Drives: 170~300 MB/sec read, 105 MB/sec write
For Normal Hard Drives: 44.2 ~ 1114 MB/sec (depending on RPM and location of read)
DVD Drive (16x): 21.1 MB/sec
USB 2.0: 60 MB/sec
So what does this all mean? While looking at this data, it becomes very apparent to me that the bandwidth for RAM and FSB is quite sufficient for current computational applications. I find it rather unlikely that the average user will come close to maxing out this bandwidth unless doing very intensive simulations or gaming.
However, it becomes quite apparent that the main bottleneck of most computer systems lies with the mass storage components of the computer, mainly the hard drive with read and write times 2 orders of magnitude slower compared to the faster RAM and FSB. The solid state drive is obviously much faster than your standard HD but it still lags far behind to what the rest of the computer can handle.
When considering this, it becomes easy to understand why it may take upwards of a minute to boot up your computer. Assume that your OS has 3 GB of files to read and your HD can put out an average of 50 MB/sec. This alone will take approximately 60 seconds and as a result, the hibernate feature has become an attractive feature compared to completely shutting down the computer-- most of the data is left in RAM, thus removing the need to reload everything from HD.
Thus, I do not see any major advantages to be had for GPU+CPU integrated chips on desktop systems. Even if GPU+CPU combinations are putout, it will be necessary to incorporate a dedicated memory controller memory for the GPU, which might be better off accomplished on a separate video card. The GPU+CPU combination may be useful in portable devices, though I highly doubt that the GPU in this case will be doing any high performance rendering. A second possible application for the GPU+CPU combination might be in research applications using Stream calculations as seen at the folding@home project. Researchers at Harvard have shown that GPUs are 20 to 40 times faster at processing their data sets as compared to a normal CPU. A large cluster of GPUs or GPU+CPUs in these research endeavors may be incredibly useful, though I would think the market for these computers might be small.
As of this moment, I think the best performance gains are to be had from developing much faster mass storage devices. As a result, I will most definitely be pursuing a computer with a more modest CPU and going after a dual HD system in a RAID 1 setup, offering me data redundancy and better HD read throughput.
I have taken a closer look at CPU and GPU issue closer and have come to the realization that a CPU+GPU combination is likely a bad combination, unless one is designing system on a chip (SoC) processors for embedded or portable systems, though I expect the performance characteristics for these devices to be far less powerful compared to the desktop variant.
The main reasoning behind this realization is the high memory bandwidth demands most GPUs have for rendering frames. The memory used in most video cards consist of high performance RAM; of either DDR2 or the more expensive GDDR3 (5.6~54.4 GB/sec) or GDDR4 (64~156.6GB/sec) variants. The necessity for such high bandwidth is a the nature of graphics rendering where large datasets including textures, skins, masks are stored in memory and often pasted or multiplied onto a surface, not to also mention 3D geometry transformations as well. It is thus very necessary for a very parallel GPU to have fast access to the memory to perform a variety of calculations to render a 3D environment. This level of bandwidth is generally not achievable on your standard motherboard front-side-bus (FSB).
To get an idea of this problem, one simply needs to look at the amount of bandwidth the FSB provides, somewhere in the ball park of 4 GB/sec for a Hyper Transport 2 specification on an AMD based motherboard (I expect about the same performance on an Intel based chipset). The bandwidth provided by the FSB pales in comparison of the data bandwidth of a video card. This is also a core reason why integrated graphics processors on a motherboard fare so poorly when it comes to 3D rendering.
The obvious solution to this problem is to provide these integrated graphics processors access to a specialized memory controller and high speed RAM to to counter this problem, however I expect that incorporating this hardware into the motherboard will increase complexity and cost easily by $50 to $100, which may make a motherboard look incredibly expensive to a purchaser. There is also the problem of the on board graphics hardware becoming obsolete and therefore useless when the user ends up buying a plug-in video card to maintain parity with the demands of new 3D software.
There are possible workarounds for this problem as both ATI/AMD and Nvidia are working on their respective Crossfire and SLI platforms to allow paired video cards or even a video card + integrated GPU to work in conjunction to improve processing power. This technology is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen if significant improvements can be had by offering this as a possible upgrade path.
On an interesting note, I have been thumbing through the bandwidth capacities of various components in a computer while looking at this topic and I will summarize what I've noticed so far (this information is accessible from wikipedia at its list of device bandwidths page):
FSB: 4GB/sec (up to 22GB/sec, future)
PCIe 1.1: 250 MB/sec for each channel. One device may have up to 16 channels or 4GB/sec
PCIe 2.0: 8 GB/sec (16 channel), 16 GB/sec (32 channel)
RAM:
For DDR2 800, 1000MHz (dual channel): 12.8GB/sec ,16.0GB/sec
For DDR3: 21.2 GB/sec ~ 25.6 GB/sec
HD BUS:
For UDMA 133: 133MB/sec
For SATA 150, 300: 187.5 MB/sec, 375MB/sec
HD devices:
For Solid State Drives: 170~300 MB/sec read, 105 MB/sec write
For Normal Hard Drives: 44.2 ~ 1114 MB/sec (depending on RPM and location of read)
DVD Drive (16x): 21.1 MB/sec
USB 2.0: 60 MB/sec
So what does this all mean? While looking at this data, it becomes very apparent to me that the bandwidth for RAM and FSB is quite sufficient for current computational applications. I find it rather unlikely that the average user will come close to maxing out this bandwidth unless doing very intensive simulations or gaming.
However, it becomes quite apparent that the main bottleneck of most computer systems lies with the mass storage components of the computer, mainly the hard drive with read and write times 2 orders of magnitude slower compared to the faster RAM and FSB. The solid state drive is obviously much faster than your standard HD but it still lags far behind to what the rest of the computer can handle.
When considering this, it becomes easy to understand why it may take upwards of a minute to boot up your computer. Assume that your OS has 3 GB of files to read and your HD can put out an average of 50 MB/sec. This alone will take approximately 60 seconds and as a result, the hibernate feature has become an attractive feature compared to completely shutting down the computer-- most of the data is left in RAM, thus removing the need to reload everything from HD.
Thus, I do not see any major advantages to be had for GPU+CPU integrated chips on desktop systems. Even if GPU+CPU combinations are putout, it will be necessary to incorporate a dedicated memory controller memory for the GPU, which might be better off accomplished on a separate video card. The GPU+CPU combination may be useful in portable devices, though I highly doubt that the GPU in this case will be doing any high performance rendering. A second possible application for the GPU+CPU combination might be in research applications using Stream calculations as seen at the folding@home project. Researchers at Harvard have shown that GPUs are 20 to 40 times faster at processing their data sets as compared to a normal CPU. A large cluster of GPUs or GPU+CPUs in these research endeavors may be incredibly useful, though I would think the market for these computers might be small.
As of this moment, I think the best performance gains are to be had from developing much faster mass storage devices. As a result, I will most definitely be pursuing a computer with a more modest CPU and going after a dual HD system in a RAID 1 setup, offering me data redundancy and better HD read throughput.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
The Future of Computing: Integrated GPU and CPUs
For those that might not be as well versed in the realm of computer lingo, a general processing unit (otherwise known as a GPU) is the heart most video processing devices. Its difference from a CPU is its ability to run several processes in parallel compared to a CPU that runs a single process at a time but very quickly.
The GPU differs from the CPU as a result of application, where the CPU is designed to run single program quickly versus a GPU that is used at performing many calculations simultaneously to render graphics on a computer screen. What we will be seeing in the future is a merging of these two chips into a single processing unit and the company that is probably the best suited for this is likely AMD should they work out the kinks in their merger with ATi.
Several years ago, the computer industry was obsessed with improving computer speed by ramping speeding up the CPU clock cycle, or the number of calculations a single set of computer circuitry can handle per second. Unfortunately, further advancements in this area provides diminishing returns as CPUs require more power the faster they operate, which is something undesirable considering that many CPUs are now being used in battery operated Laptops. In addition, it is also becoming increasingly challenging to continually push the clock speed faster. So what the computer industry has done instead is go through a simpler route; the integration of several processing units into a single silicon package to reap further performance gains. This is possible due to patterning technologies allowing makers such as AMD and Intel make smaller and smaller CPUs making it cheaper to design chips with several integrated processors on a single chip, resulting in multi-core CPUs being currently sold on the market. I believe that this trend will change in the coming years.
A new revolution in computing devices is occurring with a push to smaller and more portable computing systems. My previous post covered touched lightly on the growing trend of ultra-portable computers-- expect to see more of them in the future. With computers moving in this direction, there will be a need for tighter integration of computer parts to achieve further miniaturization. I have covered this before in a previous post but will reiterate some of the important points here.
Components for both desktops and laptop computers are made of discretized parts. In the desktop case, the computer parts consist of modular cards that can be swapped into a mainboard. If you want a new video card, simply buy a newer version and swap the parts. Laptops, on the other hand, do away with the modular design to focus on integrating the video, sound and networking chips onto a single mainboard for a compact design. This miniaturization will continue, but this time will occur on the silicon chip level as opposed to the circuit board level and I believe that simply adding more processor cores to a silicon die is the wrong solution.
I predict that the next leap in processing technology will be the integration of a CPU and a GPU core onto a single die. I believe that this will be a very big step in the development of smaller ultra-portable hand-held computing devices.
The CPU and the GPU are the most computationally intensive chips in a computer system, quite often with the CPU continually communicating with the GPU to render graphics on to a computer monitor. A communication lag exists between the CPU and the GPU as a result of current computer design architecture. The following graph illustrates this issue:
The northbride/southbridge configuration of a computer (source: Wikipedia)
Computer chips and peripheral devices are connected using memory controller chips, otherwise known as the northbridge and southbridge chips. Data between devices flows between data lines, otherwise known as a "bus." Video cards, as a result of the amount of data they continually process are generally given a fast bus to allow the video card to transfer data quickly between the CPU or on-board RAM (which is not often as most video cards come integrated with their own RAM). Unfortunately, the data transfer limitation of the bus between the CPU and GPU is a bottleneck, especially for high resolution 3D rendering as sufficient data cannot reach the GPU quickly enough, sometimes resulting in choppy video at higher resolutions. The obvious solution is the tighter integration of the CPU and the GPU together resulting in superior data transfer rates and processing capabilities. The combination of these chips would also remove the need for a northbidge chip, thus simplifying the computer architecture further.
There are also other advantages to having a GPU core integrated with a CPU. Primarily for the reason that a GPU is a parallel processing unit, though somewhat slower than a CPU. Most operating systems operate using several concurrent processes running at the "same time." In reality, this is because the CPU operates very quickly; it rotates between running these processes giving the illusion that it does these things at the same time. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal solution because the computer must either save it's memory of what it was doing and for one process while it switches to another process. This memory swapping business is what often slows down computers running many concurrent programs. However, this is fine for processes with some little time lag; so that it can run off and do something else while it waits for data or commands to arrive.
Unfortunately, in other cases, this might not be possible when multiple processes require continual CPU attention and since a CPU has the equivalent of a one track mind, it becomes advantageous to have other computing components to deal with these continual demands. This is originally why discrete chips were often used for specialized functions including video, sound and networking. Enter the GPU, the silver bullet.
Because of the parallel design of the GPU, integration of a chip like this in addition to the CPU will allow for significant performance benefits, allowing a computer to handle more processes simultaneously while having a main CPU for computationally intensive processes. The GPU in it's current state could replace the sound chips with all processing done directly by the GPU. This is advantageous since sound and video often go hand-in-hand in video applications.
This design mirrors the architecture of the human brain and body as it should be no surprise that our sense of sight, hearing and taste are kept close to the brain reducing the lag time in processing and responding to important sensory data quickly. The sense of touch is somewhat different since it encompasses the whole body, but it is interesting to note that the body has a spare processor in the spine for reflex responses from sudden dangerous touch responses.
The future of computing will go in this direction and the integration of multi-core CPUs are a crude step in this direction-- expect more eloquent GPU-CPU chips to come out in the next few years with solutions in the works from both Intel and AMD.
I believe AMD is in the best position to accomplish this after acquiring ATi and it's portfolio of design expertise in developing video card technology. Unfortunately, the merger is not going very well at the moment, causing AMD to stumble. AMD's current offering of CPUs are somewhat inferior compared to Intel's offering in terms of maximum computational power, but AMD offers a better price/performance compared to Intel chips. What I am certain of is that Intel has limited design experience with their motherboard integrated video chips as they provide the poorest performance when compared against ATi and Nvidia's solutions. As Nvidia currently does not have the same close working relationship with Intel as ATi has with AMD, I doubt that and Intel-Nvidia CPU-GPU combination will be produced in the near future unless AMD-ATi dominates the market with their offerings.
The target for AMD's new CPU-GPU chips will most likely be for the growing mobile computing market segment and I believe this to be the wisest move. The next few years in computing technology will be quite interesting.
The GPU differs from the CPU as a result of application, where the CPU is designed to run single program quickly versus a GPU that is used at performing many calculations simultaneously to render graphics on a computer screen. What we will be seeing in the future is a merging of these two chips into a single processing unit and the company that is probably the best suited for this is likely AMD should they work out the kinks in their merger with ATi.
Several years ago, the computer industry was obsessed with improving computer speed by ramping speeding up the CPU clock cycle, or the number of calculations a single set of computer circuitry can handle per second. Unfortunately, further advancements in this area provides diminishing returns as CPUs require more power the faster they operate, which is something undesirable considering that many CPUs are now being used in battery operated Laptops. In addition, it is also becoming increasingly challenging to continually push the clock speed faster. So what the computer industry has done instead is go through a simpler route; the integration of several processing units into a single silicon package to reap further performance gains. This is possible due to patterning technologies allowing makers such as AMD and Intel make smaller and smaller CPUs making it cheaper to design chips with several integrated processors on a single chip, resulting in multi-core CPUs being currently sold on the market. I believe that this trend will change in the coming years.
A new revolution in computing devices is occurring with a push to smaller and more portable computing systems. My previous post covered touched lightly on the growing trend of ultra-portable computers-- expect to see more of them in the future. With computers moving in this direction, there will be a need for tighter integration of computer parts to achieve further miniaturization. I have covered this before in a previous post but will reiterate some of the important points here.
Components for both desktops and laptop computers are made of discretized parts. In the desktop case, the computer parts consist of modular cards that can be swapped into a mainboard. If you want a new video card, simply buy a newer version and swap the parts. Laptops, on the other hand, do away with the modular design to focus on integrating the video, sound and networking chips onto a single mainboard for a compact design. This miniaturization will continue, but this time will occur on the silicon chip level as opposed to the circuit board level and I believe that simply adding more processor cores to a silicon die is the wrong solution.
I predict that the next leap in processing technology will be the integration of a CPU and a GPU core onto a single die. I believe that this will be a very big step in the development of smaller ultra-portable hand-held computing devices.
The CPU and the GPU are the most computationally intensive chips in a computer system, quite often with the CPU continually communicating with the GPU to render graphics on to a computer monitor. A communication lag exists between the CPU and the GPU as a result of current computer design architecture. The following graph illustrates this issue:
The northbride/southbridge configuration of a computer (source: Wikipedia)
Computer chips and peripheral devices are connected using memory controller chips, otherwise known as the northbridge and southbridge chips. Data between devices flows between data lines, otherwise known as a "bus." Video cards, as a result of the amount of data they continually process are generally given a fast bus to allow the video card to transfer data quickly between the CPU or on-board RAM (which is not often as most video cards come integrated with their own RAM). Unfortunately, the data transfer limitation of the bus between the CPU and GPU is a bottleneck, especially for high resolution 3D rendering as sufficient data cannot reach the GPU quickly enough, sometimes resulting in choppy video at higher resolutions. The obvious solution is the tighter integration of the CPU and the GPU together resulting in superior data transfer rates and processing capabilities. The combination of these chips would also remove the need for a northbidge chip, thus simplifying the computer architecture further.
There are also other advantages to having a GPU core integrated with a CPU. Primarily for the reason that a GPU is a parallel processing unit, though somewhat slower than a CPU. Most operating systems operate using several concurrent processes running at the "same time." In reality, this is because the CPU operates very quickly; it rotates between running these processes giving the illusion that it does these things at the same time. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal solution because the computer must either save it's memory of what it was doing and for one process while it switches to another process. This memory swapping business is what often slows down computers running many concurrent programs. However, this is fine for processes with some little time lag; so that it can run off and do something else while it waits for data or commands to arrive.
Unfortunately, in other cases, this might not be possible when multiple processes require continual CPU attention and since a CPU has the equivalent of a one track mind, it becomes advantageous to have other computing components to deal with these continual demands. This is originally why discrete chips were often used for specialized functions including video, sound and networking. Enter the GPU, the silver bullet.
Because of the parallel design of the GPU, integration of a chip like this in addition to the CPU will allow for significant performance benefits, allowing a computer to handle more processes simultaneously while having a main CPU for computationally intensive processes. The GPU in it's current state could replace the sound chips with all processing done directly by the GPU. This is advantageous since sound and video often go hand-in-hand in video applications.
This design mirrors the architecture of the human brain and body as it should be no surprise that our sense of sight, hearing and taste are kept close to the brain reducing the lag time in processing and responding to important sensory data quickly. The sense of touch is somewhat different since it encompasses the whole body, but it is interesting to note that the body has a spare processor in the spine for reflex responses from sudden dangerous touch responses.
The future of computing will go in this direction and the integration of multi-core CPUs are a crude step in this direction-- expect more eloquent GPU-CPU chips to come out in the next few years with solutions in the works from both Intel and AMD.
I believe AMD is in the best position to accomplish this after acquiring ATi and it's portfolio of design expertise in developing video card technology. Unfortunately, the merger is not going very well at the moment, causing AMD to stumble. AMD's current offering of CPUs are somewhat inferior compared to Intel's offering in terms of maximum computational power, but AMD offers a better price/performance compared to Intel chips. What I am certain of is that Intel has limited design experience with their motherboard integrated video chips as they provide the poorest performance when compared against ATi and Nvidia's solutions. As Nvidia currently does not have the same close working relationship with Intel as ATi has with AMD, I doubt that and Intel-Nvidia CPU-GPU combination will be produced in the near future unless AMD-ATi dominates the market with their offerings.
The target for AMD's new CPU-GPU chips will most likely be for the growing mobile computing market segment and I believe this to be the wisest move. The next few years in computing technology will be quite interesting.
Cheap computers will not be good for Microsoft
Earlier I made some predictions on the future of computing, with the rise of ultra portable systems last year in August. That prediction came to fruition late last year with the release of the EEE PC (my short review) and then Apple's Air.
With every passing year, computing technology advances with incredible leaps and bounds, pushing the envelope of performance upwards and the cost of a computer unit considerably down. We are now entering a phase where computers are becoming ultra-cheap. The EEE PC sells for approximately $400 for a "7 portable computer. Basic bare-bones desktop systems can be had for as low as $225 and there is going to be more of this in the future. One thing is obvious to me with these prices in mind, Microsoft and it's Windows platform is going to be in trouble over the coming years. The point I make should be obvious when I start talking about the price of Windows.
"The price of Windows!? Since when was the last time did anyone buy Windows?" might you wonder. For the most part, most people do not make a conscious decision to buy Windows, but Microsoft's business model is partly based on earning revenues from OEM computers with a pre-installed version of Windows. Current prices of windows online indicate that the cheapest version of Win XP goes for a price tag of $99 and the more expensive Windows Vista goes for $140 to about $190 depending on the flavor of Vista you get.
Before when the cheapest computer systems ran for at least $1000 the price of the included OS for approximately $100 was not very noticeable and most people just gritted their teeth and bit the bullet when making a computer purchase. However, things have now changed. As prices for a complete system hit in the sub $400 range, it is apparent that the relative price of the operating system has balloned into the ballpark of 20%-50% of your computer purchase. This will be unacceptable to a consumer considering their options.
Consider the following. A $300 system with a $100 (minimum) Windows OS for $400 total compared to the same computer with a Linux operating system (costing $0) for $300 total. I think that many people will now start thinking twice before buying a computer with Windows. In addition, I also believe that computer vendors are going to be very conscious about the competitive price point and will likely start dropping Windows in the ultra-cheap computer market segment. Microsoft will invariably have to reduce the relative price of their operating system to stay viable while taking a hit to profits. The only thing they have going for them at this point is the familiarity of their operating system vs Linux or Apple's OSX acting a barrier keeping the Windows market segment alive; but even this will be eroded with time.
For those of you not very familiar with Linux and it's capabilities, I recommend that you take a chance to check out the power of a Linux desktop. The compiz fusion desktop is very impressive, though still in development. Though this desktop is somewhat computer resource hungry as it is beautiful, there are plenty of other configurations that will allow a cheap computer to run with ease. All of this software and the majority of applications can be had for free.
With my recent troubles with laptops, I will definitely be investing in at least one desktop system (and perhaps a second cheap system to experiment with Linux). Linux will be making its way into the mainstream. It is only a matter of time.
With every passing year, computing technology advances with incredible leaps and bounds, pushing the envelope of performance upwards and the cost of a computer unit considerably down. We are now entering a phase where computers are becoming ultra-cheap. The EEE PC sells for approximately $400 for a "7 portable computer. Basic bare-bones desktop systems can be had for as low as $225 and there is going to be more of this in the future. One thing is obvious to me with these prices in mind, Microsoft and it's Windows platform is going to be in trouble over the coming years. The point I make should be obvious when I start talking about the price of Windows.
"The price of Windows!? Since when was the last time did anyone buy Windows?" might you wonder. For the most part, most people do not make a conscious decision to buy Windows, but Microsoft's business model is partly based on earning revenues from OEM computers with a pre-installed version of Windows. Current prices of windows online indicate that the cheapest version of Win XP goes for a price tag of $99 and the more expensive Windows Vista goes for $140 to about $190 depending on the flavor of Vista you get.
Before when the cheapest computer systems ran for at least $1000 the price of the included OS for approximately $100 was not very noticeable and most people just gritted their teeth and bit the bullet when making a computer purchase. However, things have now changed. As prices for a complete system hit in the sub $400 range, it is apparent that the relative price of the operating system has balloned into the ballpark of 20%-50% of your computer purchase. This will be unacceptable to a consumer considering their options.
Consider the following. A $300 system with a $100 (minimum) Windows OS for $400 total compared to the same computer with a Linux operating system (costing $0) for $300 total. I think that many people will now start thinking twice before buying a computer with Windows. In addition, I also believe that computer vendors are going to be very conscious about the competitive price point and will likely start dropping Windows in the ultra-cheap computer market segment. Microsoft will invariably have to reduce the relative price of their operating system to stay viable while taking a hit to profits. The only thing they have going for them at this point is the familiarity of their operating system vs Linux or Apple's OSX acting a barrier keeping the Windows market segment alive; but even this will be eroded with time.
For those of you not very familiar with Linux and it's capabilities, I recommend that you take a chance to check out the power of a Linux desktop. The compiz fusion desktop is very impressive, though still in development. Though this desktop is somewhat computer resource hungry as it is beautiful, there are plenty of other configurations that will allow a cheap computer to run with ease. All of this software and the majority of applications can be had for free.
With my recent troubles with laptops, I will definitely be investing in at least one desktop system (and perhaps a second cheap system to experiment with Linux). Linux will be making its way into the mainstream. It is only a matter of time.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
iPod nano (3rd gen) does not work with 3rd party software
I bought a new iPod nano about 2 weeks ago, before I had to send in the old computer in for repairs. I didn't think that was too much of a problem considering that I had a back up computer to operate from, since I could just charge the iPod off of the EEE PC, that wasn't so.
So it seems that Apple has decided to try and lock people into using iTunes only for uploading and downloading music to the newer generation iPods. What Apple has done is implement a hash check on the files in the iPod whenever files are synched. A hash check basically creates a code using the contents and the sizes of several files that must pass a test within in the iPod. If this hash file does not check against the files uploaded, the iPod does not list the songs as available to be played. An quick news posing on slashdot is here.
The big problem is that there is no iTunes for Linux and it's Linux variants for the time being, leaving people to hack the interface to work (it has been done) the problem being is that with the nature of Linux, one will find themselves needing to compile files for them to work... unfortunately in my case, the EEE PC does not have a C compiler to save space on the HD (which is theoretically downloadable, but I have yet to figure out how to do that yet). I have also yet to find any other players that will allow me to work the iPod nano with my EEE PC.
So, I am very unhappy with Apple for the time being. As soon as an easy to install hack is available, it's getting installed and that will be the end of the matter.
So it seems that Apple has decided to try and lock people into using iTunes only for uploading and downloading music to the newer generation iPods. What Apple has done is implement a hash check on the files in the iPod whenever files are synched. A hash check basically creates a code using the contents and the sizes of several files that must pass a test within in the iPod. If this hash file does not check against the files uploaded, the iPod does not list the songs as available to be played. An quick news posing on slashdot is here.
The big problem is that there is no iTunes for Linux and it's Linux variants for the time being, leaving people to hack the interface to work (it has been done) the problem being is that with the nature of Linux, one will find themselves needing to compile files for them to work... unfortunately in my case, the EEE PC does not have a C compiler to save space on the HD (which is theoretically downloadable, but I have yet to figure out how to do that yet). I have also yet to find any other players that will allow me to work the iPod nano with my EEE PC.
So, I am very unhappy with Apple for the time being. As soon as an easy to install hack is available, it's getting installed and that will be the end of the matter.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Legos and the political structure of a 3rd grade class
I was just reading an article entitle Why we banned legos, which is a critique of a power struggle over the communal set of lego bricks that morphed into a "lego town" where certain students got early into the game controlled most of the pieces and came up with finding interesting ways (or excuses) to pick up more pieces for themselves.
I highly recommend a read of this article purely for interest sake because the raw and honest perspective of a child is something that is something quite rare to find, especially when it comes to a political power system and finding ways of getting control or power in it.
Children are very well aware of power and ownership (ie. this is mine!), though this is obvious, it is not a point that pointed out very often. The students whom have founded "lego town" naturally were in control of many pieces and were very reluctant of relinquishing ownership or control of the pieces they used. Very interestingly, these students were very good at using "political" speak at the age of 8. I have excerpted a conversation from the article to illustrate this point:
In another except, some of the students were asked about what power meant to them and they responded with the following:
Finally I'll include one more excerpt:
I highly recommend a read of this article purely for interest sake because the raw and honest perspective of a child is something that is something quite rare to find, especially when it comes to a political power system and finding ways of getting control or power in it.
Children are very well aware of power and ownership (ie. this is mine!), though this is obvious, it is not a point that pointed out very often. The students whom have founded "lego town" naturally were in control of many pieces and were very reluctant of relinquishing ownership or control of the pieces they used. Very interestingly, these students were very good at using "political" speak at the age of 8. I have excerpted a conversation from the article to illustrate this point:
Several times in the discussion, children made reference to "giving" Lego pieces to other children. Kendra pointed out the understanding behind this language: "When you say that some kids ‘gave' pieces to other kids, that sounds like there are some kids who have most of the power in Legotown — power to decide what pieces kids can use and where they can build." Kendra's comment sparked an outcry by Lukas and Carl, two central figures in Legotown:I found it very interesting how clever these 8-year olds were when it came to framing their power control over the lego pieces as something insignificant, especially when it comes to telling other students that they get to use lego pieces at the leisure of the ones in control.Carl: "We didn't ‘give' the pieces, we found and shared them."
Lukas: "It's like giving to charity."
Carl: "I don't agree with using words like ‘gave.' Because when someone wants to move in, we find them a platform and bricks and we build them a house and find them windows and a door."
These children seemed to squirm at the implications of privilege, wealth, and power that "giving" holds. The children denied their power, framing it as benign and neutral, not something actively sought out and maintained. This early conversation helped us see more clearly the children's contradictory thinking about power and authority, laying the groundwork for later exploration.
In another except, some of the students were asked about what power meant to them and they responded with the following:
I found this part of the analysis very interesting, as it is something that few are willing to admit when it comes to power.Marlowe: "If your parents say you have to eat pasta, then that's power."
Lukas: "You can say no."
Carl: "Power is ownership of something."
Drew: "Sometimes I like power and sometimes I don't. I like to be in power because I feel free. Most people like to do it, you can tell people what to do and it feels good."
Drew's comment startled us with its raw truth. He was a member of the Legotown inner circle, and had been quite resistant to acknowledging the power he held in that role. During this discussion, though, he laid his cards on the table. Would Drew's insight break open new understandings among the other members of the inner circle?
Finally I'll include one more excerpt:
Issues of fairness and equity also bubbled to the surface during the animated discussion about the removal of the Legos:Needless to say, I find what these educators found while watching a bunch of 8 year olds play with a lego set is something quite similar to the political power scheme we see today. The next question get begged to be asked is whether if we have grown up from our elementary days.Lukas: "I think every house should be average, and not over-average like Drew's, which is huge."
Aidan: "But Drew is special."
Drew: "I'm the fire station, so I have to have room for four people."
Lukas: "I think that houses should only be as big as 16 bumps one way, and 16 bumps the other way. That would be fair." ["Bumps" are the small circles on top of Lego bricks.]
This brief exchange raised issues that we would revisit often in the weeks ahead. What is a fair distribution of resources? Does fairness mean that everyone has the same number of pieces? What about special rights: Who might deserve extra resources, and how are those extra resources allotted?
Monday, February 18, 2008
The ACER laptop dies again!
Unlike a cat, my ACER laptop does not have 9 lives. With the basic warranty just expiring last month, the computer decides to crap out again. This time, I press the power button, the computer powers up but the monitor does not power up. After waiting a day and powering up the computer again, it was obvious to me that there was a hardware problem as the clock on the BIOS had froze and was 7 hours behind compared to the current time.
I decided to give the computer another go to hope that this problem would not occur, but alas, it did and this time after a day of waiting the computer did not boot up again. In the span of about 2.5 years and over 2 different ACER computers, I have had 3 hardware failures. Long story short, these computers are about $100 cheaper than the other brands, but it certainly is not worth purchasing ACER computers because having a computer puts you out for several weeks while the computer is repaired and in the worst case scenario, you have to fork out some extra cash for a new working system.
Based on my experiences with ACER computers, I am never going to buy another one again. I have paid too high a price working on their computers.
Currently I am working off the EEE PC which I was very fortunate to pick up during my travels. I am going to see how long this computer lasts me, lasts longer than my ACER PCs, then ASUS definitely puts ACER to shame.
Of an interesting note, thanks to having Linux installed on the EEE PC, I get to play around with Python while waiting for my usual computer to get repaired. Hopefully, I will be able to write out some interesting software in the mean time.
I decided to give the computer another go to hope that this problem would not occur, but alas, it did and this time after a day of waiting the computer did not boot up again. In the span of about 2.5 years and over 2 different ACER computers, I have had 3 hardware failures. Long story short, these computers are about $100 cheaper than the other brands, but it certainly is not worth purchasing ACER computers because having a computer puts you out for several weeks while the computer is repaired and in the worst case scenario, you have to fork out some extra cash for a new working system.
Based on my experiences with ACER computers, I am never going to buy another one again. I have paid too high a price working on their computers.
Currently I am working off the EEE PC which I was very fortunate to pick up during my travels. I am going to see how long this computer lasts me, lasts longer than my ACER PCs, then ASUS definitely puts ACER to shame.
Of an interesting note, thanks to having Linux installed on the EEE PC, I get to play around with Python while waiting for my usual computer to get repaired. Hopefully, I will be able to write out some interesting software in the mean time.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Understanding Money as Debt
The US economy is now falling into a recession as a result of US-debt spending and the sub-prime loan problems. Essentially, the US has been financing most of their purchases with debt, including credit cards, mortgages and US government deficit spending. So, what does this mean? I will set out to explain what is money and it's impacts on the economy, society and you.
Money is a bank loan, IOU or just simply "debt"
The world operates on a fiat monetary system, where we use a paper currency backed by essentially nothing that represents wealth. What money is essentially debt, in other words, an IOU or a promissory note of a debt that must be paid off.
Most of us have been educated that money is regulated and printed by the government as we are often shown videos of a government mint manufacturing money. Unfortunately, this is only partially true-- the real manufacturers of money are the banks. How does this work might you ask? Allow me to explain.
It is commonly assumed that banks make their money by lending money deposited by the average person, where in actuality, banks lend a multiple of the amount of the money you deposit. For example, should you deposit $1000 in cash, the bank would be able to lend out $10,000 of cash (depending on the regulations) at a 7% interest rate (for example) to someone else looking for a loan to buy, perhaps, a car. The bank submits an order to deposit $10,000 in cash to the car retail dealer and then takes your car as collateral until you pay off your debt to the bank. The end result is that instead of making $70 at 7% yearly off of the $1,000 you deposited, the banks make $700 off the $10,000 it lends and all it had to do is conjure up an additional $9,000 to give to you.
When looking at the situation in this manner, money is an IOU which the borrower gets from the bank to spend to buy things. Eventually, this $9,000 must make its way back to the bank in sometime in the future to release the borrower of their obligations to the bank.
The large majority of money is created in this manner, whether be it loans for cars, houses, companies and etcetera. Quite often, all a bank needs is a down-payment on a loan to be able to loan the rest of the money required for the purchase. Thus, the majority of cash in circulation represents an IOU or a promissory note to repay the bank at in interest.
While money is loaned, the money supply must exponentially grow
Banks create money for circulation and nearly all cash in circulation is loaned out to people at interest by the banks. Should everyone stop taking loans and pay off their debt, the money supply shrinks, profits shrink and people run into a dizzying panic worrying if they will have enough cash to survive on. In order to keep the circulation of money going, the banks must encourage borrowing to keep the economy afloat. There is a fundamental problem with this model.
Suppose that the money supply is at $100 trillion and the average loan interest rate is at 7%. With the idea that all money is debt, an additional $7 trillion in value must be produced in value and paid off to the bank. But where does this money come from? It must again be loaned from the bank for people to make their interest payments and the money supply grows to $107 trillion and continues growing every year at 7%.
The money supply must grow every year because the money in circulation is all debt and incurs a cost to society at interest to the bank (both in the financial and literal meaning of this statement). $100 trillion this year becomes $107 trillion next year at 7% interest. To make up for the next $7 trillion in interest, $7 trillion of value must be created which is thus backed by the bank in collateral and loaned to society for consumption (actually, banks generally loan money faster than we can produce wealth, resulting in some inflation somewhere in the ball park of 3%). As a result, money as debt demands that production must increase exponentially to satisfy our debt obligations resulting from the money we use.
Losing the race against interest payments leads to recession
Society is locked in a race against money; to out produce what the interest rate demands. Unfortunately, there will be times when the interest payments demanded from society is less than what we can offer. Society loses wealth as the banks start to call in our collateral, fear spreads as people lose confidence in their earning capacity, they take fewer loans, the money supply shrinks, profits drops, production slows and people are out of work not knowing what to do. This process is the fundamental mechanics of a recession.
Fortunately, with the right economic policies, recessions are temporary. The burden of interest payments are reduced with interest rate cuts with the hopes of the economy/society regaining confidence, taking on loans, going back to work to continue it's race against interest payments.
Why do recessions happen?
I have partially answered this in the last section, but I wish to give further detail here. The answer to recessions happening I proclaimed is "losing the race against interest payments." Now, let me explain how the economy can lose this race.
The first way of going into a recession is by productivity not keeping up with interest rates. By default, society must continually produce more and more to meet the interest obligations of our money to the banks. This requires the economy to continually grow to meet these targets. If you ever wondered why the news reports that growing economy is a good thing is implicitly for this reason and by definition a recession is "an economic contraction."
The second route to a recession is simply not just by production not keeping up, but can also occur by taking on too much debt. This is the case for what is going on in the US sub-prime mortgage crisis that we see going on today. What occurred is society taking on far too much loans and not being able to meet their obligations. When this occurs, borrowers no longer have sufficient cash to invest in themselves or the economy to allow it to continually grow.
Exponential growth is unsustainable, both economically and ecologically
Though a "healthy economy" is considered as continually growing, this debt based (or fiat) monetary system demands that we produce wealth exponentially, year after year. Perhaps a company produces 100 houses this year, next year it must produce 107, then 114, 123, 131, 140 and 150 houses year after year. After 6 years production capacity has been increased by 50% and 865 houses have already been "consumed," and yet demand must be kept up some how to keep the economy running smoothly to meet its debt obligations.
Unfortunately, as most of us realize, the production capacity of an individual is not capable of exponentially increasing without bound year after year and society makes use of ever advancing technologies and growing human numbers to expand our production capacities. Though our creativity to continually push our productivity may seem limitless, the size of this planet and the resources it can provide is obviously constrained.
Should an economic collapse occur from a lack of resources, no changes in monetary policy will be able to solve this problem. By this time, the fundamental concepts of our debt based economic system must be changed to something sustainable.
Working and Living for Money
Explicitly, most people in general do not live for money, though implicitly this is what our activities have lead our society to do. As a result of our debt obligations to the money circulation, it is required that the economy continually grow and that we must continually produce and increase our economic productivity. In short, paying off financial obligations to the bank now or in the future will play a very significant part in our lives.
I find it rather unfortunate that we cannot enjoy our free time more, despite very impressive technological advancements giving the average person productive capabilities that far out stretch what a person might have been able to accomplish 100 years ago.
Financial independence and Freedom
Perhaps this is the topic for another essay but I would like to leave this idea with you for the time being.
With all this talk about debt and obligations of our society to this monetary system, it should be noted that a society is not necessarily free so long as it carries a financial obligation, which is largely impossible under this monetary system, that we are required to work to pay interest the loans which society has placed upon it self.
I believe that the biggest restraint on us as a society is our obligations to debt instead of living our lives on a surplus. This is probably the biggest barrier that most people have when it comes to having the freedom to do what they love versus working for money (the best case being doing what you love for money and taking the chance to try).
Further "Reading"
Much of this essay and my studies has been inspired by a variety of sources and I have found many good videos online regarding this matter. I would only consider this essay to be a primer to understanding economics, currency valuation, the stock market (booms and crashes), the roles and goals of companies, the fundamentals of the monetary system and more.
For those that are interested in learning more and perhaps some history behind how the current monetary system works I recommend the animated video Money as Debt, a 47 minute documentary on how banks posted at Google video.
Money is a bank loan, IOU or just simply "debt"
The world operates on a fiat monetary system, where we use a paper currency backed by essentially nothing that represents wealth. What money is essentially debt, in other words, an IOU or a promissory note of a debt that must be paid off.
Most of us have been educated that money is regulated and printed by the government as we are often shown videos of a government mint manufacturing money. Unfortunately, this is only partially true-- the real manufacturers of money are the banks. How does this work might you ask? Allow me to explain.
It is commonly assumed that banks make their money by lending money deposited by the average person, where in actuality, banks lend a multiple of the amount of the money you deposit. For example, should you deposit $1000 in cash, the bank would be able to lend out $10,000 of cash (depending on the regulations) at a 7% interest rate (for example) to someone else looking for a loan to buy, perhaps, a car. The bank submits an order to deposit $10,000 in cash to the car retail dealer and then takes your car as collateral until you pay off your debt to the bank. The end result is that instead of making $70 at 7% yearly off of the $1,000 you deposited, the banks make $700 off the $10,000 it lends and all it had to do is conjure up an additional $9,000 to give to you.
When looking at the situation in this manner, money is an IOU which the borrower gets from the bank to spend to buy things. Eventually, this $9,000 must make its way back to the bank in sometime in the future to release the borrower of their obligations to the bank.
The large majority of money is created in this manner, whether be it loans for cars, houses, companies and etcetera. Quite often, all a bank needs is a down-payment on a loan to be able to loan the rest of the money required for the purchase. Thus, the majority of cash in circulation represents an IOU or a promissory note to repay the bank at in interest.
While money is loaned, the money supply must exponentially grow
Banks create money for circulation and nearly all cash in circulation is loaned out to people at interest by the banks. Should everyone stop taking loans and pay off their debt, the money supply shrinks, profits shrink and people run into a dizzying panic worrying if they will have enough cash to survive on. In order to keep the circulation of money going, the banks must encourage borrowing to keep the economy afloat. There is a fundamental problem with this model.
Suppose that the money supply is at $100 trillion and the average loan interest rate is at 7%. With the idea that all money is debt, an additional $7 trillion in value must be produced in value and paid off to the bank. But where does this money come from? It must again be loaned from the bank for people to make their interest payments and the money supply grows to $107 trillion and continues growing every year at 7%.
The money supply must grow every year because the money in circulation is all debt and incurs a cost to society at interest to the bank (both in the financial and literal meaning of this statement). $100 trillion this year becomes $107 trillion next year at 7% interest. To make up for the next $7 trillion in interest, $7 trillion of value must be created which is thus backed by the bank in collateral and loaned to society for consumption (actually, banks generally loan money faster than we can produce wealth, resulting in some inflation somewhere in the ball park of 3%). As a result, money as debt demands that production must increase exponentially to satisfy our debt obligations resulting from the money we use.
Losing the race against interest payments leads to recession
Society is locked in a race against money; to out produce what the interest rate demands. Unfortunately, there will be times when the interest payments demanded from society is less than what we can offer. Society loses wealth as the banks start to call in our collateral, fear spreads as people lose confidence in their earning capacity, they take fewer loans, the money supply shrinks, profits drops, production slows and people are out of work not knowing what to do. This process is the fundamental mechanics of a recession.
Fortunately, with the right economic policies, recessions are temporary. The burden of interest payments are reduced with interest rate cuts with the hopes of the economy/society regaining confidence, taking on loans, going back to work to continue it's race against interest payments.
Why do recessions happen?
I have partially answered this in the last section, but I wish to give further detail here. The answer to recessions happening I proclaimed is "losing the race against interest payments." Now, let me explain how the economy can lose this race.
The first way of going into a recession is by productivity not keeping up with interest rates. By default, society must continually produce more and more to meet the interest obligations of our money to the banks. This requires the economy to continually grow to meet these targets. If you ever wondered why the news reports that growing economy is a good thing is implicitly for this reason and by definition a recession is "an economic contraction."
The second route to a recession is simply not just by production not keeping up, but can also occur by taking on too much debt. This is the case for what is going on in the US sub-prime mortgage crisis that we see going on today. What occurred is society taking on far too much loans and not being able to meet their obligations. When this occurs, borrowers no longer have sufficient cash to invest in themselves or the economy to allow it to continually grow.
Exponential growth is unsustainable, both economically and ecologically
Though a "healthy economy" is considered as continually growing, this debt based (or fiat) monetary system demands that we produce wealth exponentially, year after year. Perhaps a company produces 100 houses this year, next year it must produce 107, then 114, 123, 131, 140 and 150 houses year after year. After 6 years production capacity has been increased by 50% and 865 houses have already been "consumed," and yet demand must be kept up some how to keep the economy running smoothly to meet its debt obligations.
Unfortunately, as most of us realize, the production capacity of an individual is not capable of exponentially increasing without bound year after year and society makes use of ever advancing technologies and growing human numbers to expand our production capacities. Though our creativity to continually push our productivity may seem limitless, the size of this planet and the resources it can provide is obviously constrained.
Should an economic collapse occur from a lack of resources, no changes in monetary policy will be able to solve this problem. By this time, the fundamental concepts of our debt based economic system must be changed to something sustainable.
Working and Living for Money
Explicitly, most people in general do not live for money, though implicitly this is what our activities have lead our society to do. As a result of our debt obligations to the money circulation, it is required that the economy continually grow and that we must continually produce and increase our economic productivity. In short, paying off financial obligations to the bank now or in the future will play a very significant part in our lives.
I find it rather unfortunate that we cannot enjoy our free time more, despite very impressive technological advancements giving the average person productive capabilities that far out stretch what a person might have been able to accomplish 100 years ago.
Financial independence and Freedom
Perhaps this is the topic for another essay but I would like to leave this idea with you for the time being.
With all this talk about debt and obligations of our society to this monetary system, it should be noted that a society is not necessarily free so long as it carries a financial obligation, which is largely impossible under this monetary system, that we are required to work to pay interest the loans which society has placed upon it self.
I believe that the biggest restraint on us as a society is our obligations to debt instead of living our lives on a surplus. This is probably the biggest barrier that most people have when it comes to having the freedom to do what they love versus working for money (the best case being doing what you love for money and taking the chance to try).
Further "Reading"
Much of this essay and my studies has been inspired by a variety of sources and I have found many good videos online regarding this matter. I would only consider this essay to be a primer to understanding economics, currency valuation, the stock market (booms and crashes), the roles and goals of companies, the fundamentals of the monetary system and more.
For those that are interested in learning more and perhaps some history behind how the current monetary system works I recommend the animated video Money as Debt, a 47 minute documentary on how banks posted at Google video.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Free from money, free from taxes
We are taxed, and we are taxed so heavily.
Depending on what we earn,
we are taxed from 30% to 50% of our money.
12 to 20 years of our working lives go to running the government.
They tell us that it's for our health,
to keep us safe,
for us to be educated,
and for our roads to be maintained.
Do we really need to work all these years to maintain all these things?
I'd rather not pay taxes,
Because I can't believe these costs.
I'll build my own house,
grow my own food.
I'll make my own things
and still be just as happy.
I'll stop working for money,
and they'll have "no-thing" to take.
They'll come to my door in panic,
because they're getting no cash.
They'll demand that I work,
It's my income they want.
I'll tell them "no way,"
because I'm not your slave or for money.
Depending on what we earn,
we are taxed from 30% to 50% of our money.
12 to 20 years of our working lives go to running the government.
They tell us that it's for our health,
to keep us safe,
for us to be educated,
and for our roads to be maintained.
Do we really need to work all these years to maintain all these things?
I'd rather not pay taxes,
Because I can't believe these costs.
I'll build my own house,
grow my own food.
I'll make my own things
and still be just as happy.
I'll stop working for money,
and they'll have "no-thing" to take.
They'll come to my door in panic,
because they're getting no cash.
They'll demand that I work,
It's my income they want.
I'll tell them "no way,"
because I'm not your slave or for money.
Asking ourselves the wrong question
Today, I will keep it brief because I wanted to try something different. I've noticed while reading on the internet that there is just so much fluff in writing online that just bores me. "Get to the point" I keep on thinking, but the article just keeps on meandering to make it's point, mostly these end up to be multi page articles posted online so that people have to click through to be bombarded with more ads and I abhor it. So I was wondering if I could materialistically write and see if my point still gets across, or even better yet, stimulate thinking instead of me explaining everything. I could write a whole essay, but I will hold off this time around.
Today's thought is:
I think we've been asking ourselves the wrong question. We'd always get asked "what do you want to be when you grow up" and we'd answer with "doctor," "firemen," "pilot" and more. But we've missed the point of it; it's not about what do we want to be, it's all about what do we want to do. What we turn out to be is just a by-product of the things we are doing.
Today's thought is:
I think we've been asking ourselves the wrong question. We'd always get asked "what do you want to be when you grow up" and we'd answer with "doctor," "firemen," "pilot" and more. But we've missed the point of it; it's not about what do we want to be, it's all about what do we want to do. What we turn out to be is just a by-product of the things we are doing.
Monday, January 28, 2008
The joy of living out of a suitcase
It has now been about 10 days since I got back to Japan. I've finally unloaded my suitcase, stashed all the things I bought while on my trip in various places in the house and in while doing so, I came to the realization that a lot of the things in my room, I never really use.
It's kind of an interesting feeling moving from living out of a suitcase/backpack to a room with closets, shelves and more. The only things I needed while traveling were my clothing, maybe a guidebook, something to read, my camera, toiletries, wallet and passport. That was it. Everything I needed to survive on was packed neatly into a suitcase (which was only 1/2 full). I carried a backpack and a small shoulder bag for short day trips. Everything in the bags I carried, I used nearly every everyday and it was amazing how few things I needed to get by on.
I look at my room right now with books, tools, a printer, a map, a closet full of dressy clothing for special occasions and more. The interesting thing about most of my belongings is that I don't use them all that often. They sort of sit in my room collecting dust most of the time, till the point where I might pull it out and use it once in a few months or so; the rest of it all is clutter.
When thinking about my belongings in this manner, I can't seem to understand how our culture is so wrapped up about shopping or going out and buying things. Take a walk in city and look around, what you will see is that nearly all the activities of people out there is for shopping or shopping related (ie. delivery vans, people tending stores, etc). My experiences living out of a suitcase for the past 3 months has been a great eye opening experience when it comes to looking at my belongings. I find it strange that spending both our time and money to buy things is so important, even just for keep's sake when we can easily get by on so much less, leaving us with so much more to do many other things.
My life living out of a suitcase was entirely different-- I didn't have the luxury (that is, if I can still call it one now) of keeping many possessions; I wanted to be unburdened. If there were things that I didn't need any more, like a traveler's guide, I'd be pretty willing to give it away to some other traveler that can make good use of it. Or gave away the cell phone cards or things I didn't need anymore.
Since coming home, I also noticed that having so many belongings made it harder for me to focus on the immediately important things. While traveling, I would only be concerned about making sure I had a place to stay, having my clothes washed once in a while and making up a plan as I went. It was amazing living a life so focused on exploring different countries, finding out what they had to offer, the different ways of life and even just finding simple ways of enjoying myself while on a budget. Everyday, I knew that I wanted to get up and go off somewhere to find something interesting to see or experience. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do (even if it was random wandering) and had everything I needed to do what I wanted.
After getting home and being around my apartment for the past week, my life has been filled with all sorts of distractions. Mainly the internet, computer games, shopping, getting called out for hanging out (not that it's a bad thing) and more. There's just so many things that could aimlessly play with (I actually spent the last few days just playing computer games). I wake up bored, sometimes not knowing what I want to do and just find something in my room to go play around with.
With these thoughts, I postulate that many of the things we do in life is about killing boredom, whether be it games, shopping, eating, watching movies or whatever. It was never often that I had the chance to wakeup with purpose every morning to find something I was really interested in doing. This is something that I want to focus on more and maybe I can start by getting rid of the things that I don't need, while only keeping the things that are important.
All I need to do is choose what is important to me.
It's kind of an interesting feeling moving from living out of a suitcase/backpack to a room with closets, shelves and more. The only things I needed while traveling were my clothing, maybe a guidebook, something to read, my camera, toiletries, wallet and passport. That was it. Everything I needed to survive on was packed neatly into a suitcase (which was only 1/2 full). I carried a backpack and a small shoulder bag for short day trips. Everything in the bags I carried, I used nearly every everyday and it was amazing how few things I needed to get by on.
I look at my room right now with books, tools, a printer, a map, a closet full of dressy clothing for special occasions and more. The interesting thing about most of my belongings is that I don't use them all that often. They sort of sit in my room collecting dust most of the time, till the point where I might pull it out and use it once in a few months or so; the rest of it all is clutter.
When thinking about my belongings in this manner, I can't seem to understand how our culture is so wrapped up about shopping or going out and buying things. Take a walk in city and look around, what you will see is that nearly all the activities of people out there is for shopping or shopping related (ie. delivery vans, people tending stores, etc). My experiences living out of a suitcase for the past 3 months has been a great eye opening experience when it comes to looking at my belongings. I find it strange that spending both our time and money to buy things is so important, even just for keep's sake when we can easily get by on so much less, leaving us with so much more to do many other things.
My life living out of a suitcase was entirely different-- I didn't have the luxury (that is, if I can still call it one now) of keeping many possessions; I wanted to be unburdened. If there were things that I didn't need any more, like a traveler's guide, I'd be pretty willing to give it away to some other traveler that can make good use of it. Or gave away the cell phone cards or things I didn't need anymore.
Since coming home, I also noticed that having so many belongings made it harder for me to focus on the immediately important things. While traveling, I would only be concerned about making sure I had a place to stay, having my clothes washed once in a while and making up a plan as I went. It was amazing living a life so focused on exploring different countries, finding out what they had to offer, the different ways of life and even just finding simple ways of enjoying myself while on a budget. Everyday, I knew that I wanted to get up and go off somewhere to find something interesting to see or experience. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do (even if it was random wandering) and had everything I needed to do what I wanted.
After getting home and being around my apartment for the past week, my life has been filled with all sorts of distractions. Mainly the internet, computer games, shopping, getting called out for hanging out (not that it's a bad thing) and more. There's just so many things that could aimlessly play with (I actually spent the last few days just playing computer games). I wake up bored, sometimes not knowing what I want to do and just find something in my room to go play around with.
With these thoughts, I postulate that many of the things we do in life is about killing boredom, whether be it games, shopping, eating, watching movies or whatever. It was never often that I had the chance to wakeup with purpose every morning to find something I was really interested in doing. This is something that I want to focus on more and maybe I can start by getting rid of the things that I don't need, while only keeping the things that are important.
All I need to do is choose what is important to me.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
It has been a while
It has been a while since the last time I have done any real writing. over the course of this journey, I havve been traeling and writing short notes on what I have been doing in a hand written journal, of which, I am about 3 weeks behind in writing, something that I will need to complete after I return to my home in Japan.
During the time I have been traveling, I have not had the opportunity to do much essay writing, though I had many interesting ideas pop up and had them written down in a note book. It was not until recently, that I had the chance to take a look at some of the notes and ideas I had and write them out into an essay. Unfortunately, my efforts have yet to bear fruit.
What I realized is that I have a limited time frame to write out my thoughts before they fade. Quite often, ideas simply strike me out of the blue, often while observing the surroundings around me. The idea will often have a central concept and my mind will run through the idea, making a variety of connections. In the end, I may end up with an essay idea crystalized in my head which I am able to hash out into a post.
Unfortuately as of recently, I haven't had the opportunity to do much of that and as a result, my writing capabilities have dwindled somewhat as it becomes harder for me to put words into my thoughts. After returning to Japan, I will have to get back into the grove of writing to bring my ability to articulate myself back up.
For the time being, I will have to shelve some of the ideas I've had during this trip for writing at a future date. What I've noticed sometimes is that some ideas that I don't write about get “redicovered” and I may have a second chance to write about them in the near future.
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