Collaboration in Science: Three models
, 1 min read
Collaboration in Science: Three models
The “e” prefix is obselete
, 1 min read
The “e” prefix is obselete
The “e” prefix is obselete
, 1 min read
Nicholas Carr asked whether IT departments mattered. What is IT all about? e-Collaboration, e-Mail, e-Learning, e-Health, e-Business, and so on. Does the “e-” matter? I am working on a graduate program in e-collaboration. At some point, I had to stop and think… isn’t all…
What is academic blogging about?
, 1 min read
From the lowly Ph.D. student at a small school, to the Havard professor, researchers are blogging. Here are some of the reasons why they blog: Research is a social activity. Blogging allows us to keep and create links with diverse researchers whose varied interests keeps our mind open and…
Why aren´t there more scientific breakthroughs?
, 2 min read
Most research papers are boring. They rehash existing work with almost no new insight. Mihai PătraÅŸcu blamed me for saying that big conferences were for people without imagination: what I actually wrote was that focusing on prestigious conferences tends to encourage self-reinforcing biases.…
Do you share and index your history?
, 1 min read
When you edit a document, some software will generate automatically a new version of the document and allow you to see what changed. If the software is sufficiently smart, you might even know when and by whom the change was made. Wikipedia is good at keeping traces of everything. Email and blogs…
Automatic domain name generation?
, 1 min read
I do not usually link to random research ppaers, but this one is worth a look: Kwyjibo: automatic domain name generation. Here is the abstract: Automatically generating good domain names that are random yet pronounceable is a problem harder than it first appears. The problem is related to random…
Researcher or marketing drone?
, 1 min read
In my previous blog post, I defined research as the need to do great things. What I had in mind was quite broad, ranging from someone who does research to build a prettier garden, to the writer who does research for his next book, and including the artist who tries to come up with a new painting. I…
The upcoming genetic divide?
, 2 min read
I just finished watching the first three seasons of the 4400. It is yet another cheesy, low-budget sci-fi TV series. Or is it? The premise is interesting. A scientific breakthrough has been made: we are now able to improve substantially human beings at the genetic level. Not all human beings are…
The need to do great things
, 1 min read
The title of this post is my best attempt at explaining what research is. And I do not mean just academic research.
Everything is pseudocode
, 1 min read
Michael says that everything should be code. If you accept the strong Church-Turing thesis and believe in the principles of digital physics, that the universe is indistinguishable from a computer simulation, then everything is already code. But Michael means that representing everything as code…
The negative myths about academic blogging
, 2 min read
Blogging is dangerous for non-tenured faculty: Blogging will not get you tenure. Neither will giving talks worldwide. Tenure is usually granted because you were able to hold a decent research program, and you showed respect for the students. However, if blogging prevents you from getting tenure,…
Do not invest in Blu-ray technology?
, 1 min read
Do not invest in Blu-ray technology?
Do not invest in Blu-ray technology?
, 1 min read
Some time ago, I asked whether optical disks were obsolete. The best way to ship 50 GB of data might still be to ship a Blu-ray disk by mail. However, Apple is now the first music retailer in the USA.
The Microsoft-ISO debacle
, 1 min read
ISO just approved the Office Open XML format. In case you do not know, it is a controversial decision. I have a unique perspective on the issue because I used to be a member of a Canadian ISO committee. I resigned out of disgust. I am a bit suprised people still take ISO seriously. Here is my…
Programming with lego bricks and code completion
, 1 min read
Erlang is a fashionable programming language. The main benefit of Erlang is that it was designed with concurrency in mind. One high profile project based on Erlang was CouchDB. Well, no longer. Damien switched to Java. Yes. It is a joke. Nevertheless, some of his remarks are interesting. Erlang…
How to solve hard problems
, 1 min read
Some people start out in life able to solve hard problems. Others cannot seem to do it. I believe that intelligence is not innate, but few people know how to work on hard problems. Some may learn by luck, or by observing smart people. Here are a few things I was able to learn over the years: Use…
Blogging is and will remain a fringe effect in science?
, 1 min read
My friend Sébastien Paquet got me upset. He sent me a link to a post by David Crotty. What David says is that Wikipedia and blogging, the whole Web 2.0 fad, is not and will not have an impact in science. (Update: Not quite what David wrote.) Ok David. I can respect your opinion on the matter. But…
Google has broken my roman numeral captcha
, 1 min read
Maverick Woo sent me an email to let me know that Google does roman numeral arithmetic. I can’t help but imagine the discussion between between the Google engineer and his boss: (Engineer) Hi boss! I plan a new feature for our search engine… roman numeral arithmetic! (Harvard MBA) What a great…
Multicore programming? Yawn!
, 1 min read
It looks like Intel is trying to push parallel programming. No doubt many colleges are going to keep surfing on the parallel-programming hype — to predict a new surge of interest in Computer Science. Alas, there is no upcoming multicore revolution in computer programming. For a large fraction of…