в этом году 25 лет 1992му выпуску

GWU has a list of Student Home Pages. Strangely enough it's impossible to get into it by following any links from the main page.

Flashlight without a battery

This is an old Soviet flashlight. It works from the energy generated by your wrists!

PRMIA Quarterly Member Update is not quarterly at all

PRMIA has Quarterly Members Update magazine. What's funny's that it has never been quarterly! Here's the number of issues per year:

2002 - 24 (bi-monthly)
2003 - 15 (monthly-ish)
2004 - 13 (monthly-ish)
2005 - 10 (monthly-ish)
2006 - 11 (monthly-ish)
2007 - 6 (bimonthly)
2008 - 4 (ok, quarterly, at last!)
2009 - 3 (quarterly-ish)
2010 - 1 to date (yearly?)

Stephen Hawking says God isn't necessary | TG Daily

Stephen Hawking says God isn't necessary | TG Daily

Electric carmaker Tesla to open D.C. store

Electric carmaker Tesla to open D.C. store

Awesome! I'd love to own one of those.

I got my talk accepted at JavaOne this year

It's quite exciting, but now I need to prepare the slides by Sept 3rd.


There's 18 competing sessions on JavaOne track, and 9 more in Oracle. This is intimidating. Is anyone going to show up on my session? :)

Witold Lipski

It's a Pi Day today!

I thought it's fitting to post about Witold Lipski. In his short life (36 years) he managed to leave an impressive body of work. I love his monograph on combinatorics. It was printed in Soviet Union under title "Комбинаторика для программистов". It came with Pascal code and contained a wide range of algorithms. It's written clearly and very "applied" in style.

ФТТ-XI

It's 11th conference on solid states physics in Kazakhstan. The first one was in 1986.

Freelancer resource web sites

elance.com
www.getafreelancer.com
www.guru.com
www.odesk.com

Linus' blog: Happy camper

Linus' blog: Happy camper - Linux Torvalds bought Google Nexus One phone. Smart decision.

Fairfax envy

Montgomery County's "Fairfax envy" manifested itself in this comparative study of two counties.

Error in Powell Function!

L. C. W. Dixon1 and D. J. Mills1

(1) Numerical Optimisation Centre, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England
Abstract It has become customary to compare the performance of unconstrained optimization algorithms on families of extended symmetric test functions. In this paper, results are presented which indicate that the performance of the variable metric algorithm on such functions is greatly distorted by rounding errors that destroy the special nature of these functions. A simple method of overcoming this difficulty is demonstrated, and it confirms the theoretical result that the number of iterations required to solve such problems is independent of the dimension.
Key Words Unconstrained optimization - variable metric methods - quasi-Newton methods - rounding errors

Advice on Minimization Methods

German Java Numerics

PNY eSATA 2 Port CardBus Review

I bought this card at Geeks.com for ~$19 shipped. Its manual says "supports SATA data transfer rate of 150 MBps". Obviously, I didn't exepct anything near 150, but was hoping for at least 50 MB, which would at least 2x faster than the internal hard drive on my Dell Latitude D430 laptop. One guy told me that I won't get even 10 MB. However, this guy seemed to use very similar card on his Lenovo, and after some initial trouble managed to get 50 MB rates measured with HDTune tool. I usually use HDTach.

Anyways, I got the card, installed it and connected through SATA II cable to an external 1TB WD10000H1CS WD My Book drive. It's not the fastest drive ever by HDTach on dell desktop with eSATA II ports shows me 140MBps burst and ~70MBps sustained read speeds.

The the card in my laptop shows up as PCMCIA Adapter R/RL/5C476(II) and SCSI/RAID Silicon Image SiI 3512 SATALink Controller. HDTune results are here.

HD Tach reports me 2% CPU utilization, 70MB/S burst and 44 MB/s average read speeds, random access 15ms. I'm quite satisfied with this performance, although it could have been better.

PCMCIA's web site has this theoretical throughput. I'm not sure which one's applicable in my case though:

PC Card/CardBus Throughput

Theoretical maximums are as follows:
16-bit I/O Transfers (255 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 3.92 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 7.84 Mbytes/sec

16-bit Memory Transfers (100 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 10 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 20 Mbytes/sec

CardBus (32 bit burst mode)
* Byte mode: 33 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 66 Mbytes/sec
* DWord mode: 132 Mbytes/sec

Please note that actual throughput may be substantially less than the theoretical maximums of the interface.

First annual "Parasat" awards in Kazakhstan for scientists

National Center of Scientific and Technical Information of Kazakhstan (АО НЦНТИ) was collecting a database of Kazakh scientific and technical publications. They analyzed the publication and citation data for several years. They are probably modeling it after Thompson Reuters Web of Sciense databases.

This year they awarded First annual "Parasat" award to scientists with highest numbers in citation and publication numbers in several categories. Apparently, it was a big event, with a lot of prominent figures from scientific and artistic circles present.

Interestingly, there were articles in several magazines and newspapers, but none of them published a complete list of nominations. Even the center's web site doesn't have this information. I found it on one of its staff's blogs! Thank you!

I post the list from that blog here.

1. Наиболее публикуемые казахстанские авторы за рубежом
Певрое место - Адекенов Сергазы Мынжасарович
Касенов Булат Кунурович
Мустафин Едиге Суиндикович
Турдыбеков Кобланды Муборякович
Второе место - Нуркеева Зауре Сагиевна
Мун Григорий Алексеевич
Хуторянский Виталий В.
Третье место - Боос Эрнст Гербертович
Мукашев Булат Нигматович
Жаутыков Булат Орынбекович
Покровский Николай Старевич

2. Наиболее цитируемые казахстанские авторы за рубежом
Первое место - Боос Эрнст Гербертович
Баракбаев Асет Нуралиевич
Жаутыков Булат Орынбекович
Покровский Николай Старевич
Гайтинов Адгам Шаянович
Андреева Нина Павловна
Бубнов В. И.

Второе место - Нуркеева Зауре Сагиевна
Мун Григорий Алексеевич
Хуторянский В. В.

Третье место - Кудайбергенов Саркыт Елекенович

3. Наиболее цитируемые зарубежные публикации
The Russian-American Gallium Experiment (SAGE) Cr neutrino source measurement // Physical Review Letters, 1996. V. 77. № 23. P. 4708-4711. Авторство: Караулов В. Н., Левитин В. Л., Маев В. И., Наза-ренко П. И.., Школьник Владимир Сергеевич, Скориков Н. В.

Relatively recent construction of the Tien Shan inferred from GPS measurements of present-day crustal deformation rates // Nature. 1996. V. 384. № 6608. Р. 450-453 Авторство: Алдажанов С. А, Калабаев К. Б.

Mercury in the aquatic environment: A review of factors affecting methylation // Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology. 2001. V. 31. № 3. Р. 241-293 Авторство: Абдрашитова Светлана Анваровна

4. Наиболее публикуемые авторы по химии и экологии в Казахстане
Первое место - Ергожин Едиль Ергожаевич
Жубанов Болат Ахметович
Пралиев Калдыбек Джайлауович
Бектуров Есен Абикенович
Джусипбеков Умурзак Жумасилович
Ю Валентина Константиновна

Второе место - Нуркеева Зауре Сагиевна
Мун Григорий Алексеевич
Мансуров Зулхаир Аймухаметович
Хуторянский В. В.

Третье место - Надиров Надир Каримович

Первое место - Ергожин Едиль Ергожаевич
Пралиев Калдыбек Джайлауович
Жубанов Болат Ахметович
Бектуров Е. А.
Мухитдинова Баян Ануарбековна
Ю Валентина Константиновна

Второе место - Нуркеева Зауре Сагиевна
Мун Григорий Алексеевич
Хуторянский В. В.

Третье место - Надиров Надир Каримович

6. Наиболее публикуемые авторы по отраслям промышленности в Казахстане
Первое место - Кенжалиев Багдаулет Кенжалиевич
Второе место - Надиров Надир Каримович
Третье место - Омаров Амангельды Джумагалиевич
Шевко Виктор Михайлович

7. Наиболее цитируемые авторы по отраслям промышленности в Казахстане
Первое место - Сергеева Любовь Викторовна
Бекмухаметов Арыстан Еркебулатович
Беспаев Халел Абдулхакеевич

Второе место - Абишева Зинеш Садыровна
Третье место - Трофимов Александр Степанович

8. Наиболее публикуемые авторы по отраслям агропромышленного ком-плекса в Казахстане
Первое место - Изтаев Ауелбек Изтаевич
Еркебаев Мурат Жумадилович
Витавская Анастасия Васильевна
Рскелдиев Бердикул Абдазимович
Байболова Лязат Кемербековна

Второе место - Абугалиева Айгуль Изтелеуовна
Уразалиев Рахым Алмабекович

Третье место - Чоманов Уришбай Чоманович

9. Наиболее цитируемые авторы по отраслям агропромышленного ком-плекса в Казахстане
Первое место - Изтаев Ауелбек Изтаевич
Кузембаев Канаш Кузембаевич
Налеев Оналбек Налеевич
Витавская Анастасия Васильевна
Кулажанов Куралбек Садибаевич

Второе место - Абугалиева Айгуль Изтелеуовна
Третье место - Жайлыбай К.М.

10. Наиболее публикуемые авторы по точным наукам в Казахстане
Первое место - Кукетаев Темиргали Абильдинович
Ким Леонид Михайлович
Юров Виктор Михайлович

Второе место - Михайлова Наталья Николаевна
Соколова Инна Николаевна

Третье место - Буркова Наталья Александровна
Жаксыбекова Кулян Айтмагамбетовна

11. Наиболее цитируемые авторы по точным наукам в Казахстане
Первое место - Кукетаев Темиргали Абильдинович
Тонконогов Марк Павлович

Второе место - Михайлова Наталья Николаевна
Соколова Инна Николаевна

Третье место - Джумабаев Дулат Сыздыкбекович
Асанова Анар Турмаганбеткызы

Inspec citation database

Inspec

Ведущая англоязычная база данных по физике и техническим наукам. Содержит около 10 млн. записей: статьи из журналов, материалы конференций, книги, отчеты, диссертации, патенты. Хронологический охват: с 1969 г. по настоящее время.
Для удаленного доступа в систему:
Логин: s6591992
Пароль: host

from here

Motorola Verizon Droid's accelerometer is LIS331DLH

I just installed Sensor Insider Lite on my co-worker's Droid, and it shows the accelerometer chip as LIS331DLH

It has 1kHz sampling rate, which is 10 times higher than G1's accelerometer.

Versions as bookeeping

From November 2, 2009 10:56 AM PST
Chrome and others nibble away IE usage by Stephen Shankland at CNET

Chrome offers an interesting contrast to IE's slow change rate. By default, Google upgrades the browser automatically without giving people any say-so. That might cause some heartburn among some, but it rapidly distributes security patches and new features. To Google, Chrome version numbers are for bookkeeping in the background, not for splashing prominently in front of users.

I found this snippet interesting. It sounds as if MS was following traditional product management strategy, where version numbering is part of marketing, while Google is tweaking it. Google's marketing was quite unusual. When the ycame up with GMail and some other products, they didn's advertise them. Users would somehow find out about them during beta, and start using, so that when the final production release comes out, it's no longer a news.