Carpet Bomberz Inc.

Category: blogroll

This is what I subscribe to myself

  • History of Sage

    A screenshot of Sagemath working.
    Image via Wikipedia

    The Sage Project Webpage http://www.sagemath.org/

    Sage is mathematical software, very much in the same vein as MATLAB, MAGMA, Maple, and Mathematica. Unlike these systems, every component of Sage is GPL-compatible. The interpretative language of Sage is Python, a mainstream programming language. Use Sage for studying a huge range of mathematics, including algebra, calculus, elementary to very advanced number theory, cryptography, numerical computation, commutative algebra, group theory, combinatorics, graph theory, and exact linear algebra.

    Explanation of what Sage does by the original author William Stein 

    (Long – roughly 50 minutes)

    Original Developer http://wstein.org/ and his history of Sage mathematical software development. Wiki listing http://wiki.sagemath.org/ with a list of participating commiters. Discussion lists for developers: Mostly done through Google Groups with associated RSS feeds. Mercurial Repository (start date Sat Feb 11 01:13:08 2006) Gonzalo Tornaria seems to have loaded the project in at this point. Current List of source code in TRAC with listing of commiters for the most recent release of Sage (4.7).

    • William Stein (wstein) Still very involved based on freqenecy of commits
    • Michael Abshoff (mabs) Ohloh has him ranked second only to William Stein with commits and time on project. He’s now left the project according to the Trac log.
    • Jeroen Demeyer (jdemeyer) commits a lot
    • J.H.Palmieri (palmieri) has done  number of tutorials and documentation he’s on the IRC channel
    • Minh Van Nguyen (nguyenminh2) has done some tutorials,documentation and work Categories module. He also appears to be the sysadmin on the Wiki
    • Mike Hansen (mhansen) Is on the IRC channel irc.freenode.net#sagemath and is a big contributor
    • Robert Bradshaw (robertwb) has done some very recent commits

    Changelog for the most recent release (4.7) of Sage. Moderators of irc.freenode.net#sagemath Keshav Kini (who maintains the Ohloh info) & schilly@boxen.math.washington.edu. Big milestone release of version 4.7 with tickets listed here based on modules: Click Here. And the Ohloh listing of top contributors to the project. There’s an active developer and end user community. Workshops are tracked here. Sage Days workshops tend to be hackfests for interested parties. But more importantly Developers can read up on this page, how to get started and what the process is as a Sage developer.

    Further questions that need to be considered. Look at the git repository and the developer blogs ask the following questions:

    1. Who approves patches? How many people? (There’s a large number of people responsible for reviewing patches, if I had to guess it could be 12 in total based on the most recent changelog)
    2. Who has commit access? & how many?
    3. Who is involved in the history of the project? (That’s pretty easy to figure out from the Ohloh and Trac websites for Sage)
    4. Who are the principal contributors, and have they changed over time?
    5. Who are the maintainers?
    6. Who is on the front end (user interface) and back end (processing or server side)?
    7. What have been some of the major bugs/problems/issues that have arisen during development? Who is responsible for quality control and bug repair?
    8. How is the project’s participation trending and why? (Seems to have stabilized with a big peak of 41 contribs about 2 years ago, look at Ohloh graph of commits, peak activity was 2009 and 2010 based on Ohloh graph).

    Note the period over which the Gource visualization occurs is since 2009, earliest entry in the Mercurial repository I could find was 2005. Sage was already a going concern prior to the Mercurial repository being put on the web. So the simulation doesn’t show the full history of development.

  • AppleInsider | Apple seen merging iOS, Mac OS X with custom A6 chip in 2012

    Steve Jobs while introducing the iPad in San F...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Rumors of an ARM-based MacBook Air are not new. In May, one report claimed that Apple had built a test notebook featuring the same low-power A5 processor found in the iPad 2. The report, which came from Japan, suggested that Apple officials were impressed by the results of the experiment.

    via AppleInsider | Apple seen merging iOS, Mac OS X with custom A6 chip in 2012.

    Following up on an article they did back on May 27th, and one prior to that on May 6th,  AppleInsider does a bit of prediction and prognosticating about the eventual fusion of iOS and Mac OS X. What they see triggering this is an ARM chip that would be able to execute 64-bit binaries across all of the product lines (A fabled ARM A-6). How long would it take to do this consolidation and interweaving? How many combined updaters, security patches, Pro App updaters would it take to get OS X 10.7 to be ‘more’ like iOS than it is today? Software development is going to take a while and it’s not just a matter of cross-compiling to an ARM chip from a software based on Intel chips.

    Given that 64-bit Intel Atom chips are already running on the new Seamircro SM10000 (x64), it won’t be long now I’m sure before the ARM equivalent ARM-15 chip hits full stride. The designers have been aiming for a 4-core ARM design that will be encompassed by the ARM-15 release real soon now (RSN). The next step after that chip is licensed and piloted, tested and put into production will be a 64-bit clean design. I’m curious to see if 64-bit will be applied across ALL the different product lines within Apple. Especially when the issue of power-usage and Thermal Design power (TDM) is considered, will 64-bit ARM chips be as battery friendly? I wonder. True Intel has jumped the 64-bit divide on the desktop with the Core 2 Duo line some time ago and made them somewhat battery friendly. But they cannot compare at all to the 10 hours+ one gets on a 32-bit ARM chip today using the iPad.

    Lastly, App Developers will also need to keep their Xcode environment up to date and merge in new changes constantly up to the big cutover to ARM x64. No telling what that’s going to be like apart from the previous 2 problems I have raised here. Apple in the 10.7 Lion run-up was very late in providing the support and tools to allow the developers to get their Apps ready. I will say though that in the history of migrations in Apple’s hardware/software, they have done more of them, more successfully than any other company. So I think they will be able to pull it off no doubt, but there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And hopefully we’ll see something better as the end-users of the technology, something better than a much bigger profit margin for Apple (though that seems to be the prime mover in most recent cases as Steve Jobs has done the long slow fade into obscurity).

    If ARM x64 is inevitable and iOS on Everything too, then I’m hoping things don’t change so much I can’t do things similarly to the way I do them now on the desktop. Currently on OS X 10.7 I am ignoring completely:

    1. Gestures
    2. Misson Control
    3. Launch Pad
    4. AppStore (not really because I had to download Lion)

    Let’s hope this roster doesn’t get even longer over time as the iOS becomes the de facto OS on all Apple Products. Because I was sure hoping the future would be brighter than this. And as AppleInsider quotes from May 6th,

    “In addition to laptops, the report said that Apple would ‘presumably’ be looking to move its desktop Macs to ARM architecture as well. It characterized the transition to Apple-made chips for its line of computers as a ‘done deal’.”

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  • Apple patents hint at future AR screen tech for iPad | Electronista

    Structure of liquid crystal display: 1 – verti...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Apple may be working on bringing augmented reality views to its iPad thanks to a newly discovered patent filing with the USPTO.

    via Apple patents hint at future AR screen tech for iPad | Electronista. (Originally posted at AppleInsider at the following link below)

    Original Article: Apple Insider article on AR

    Just a very brief look at a couple of patent filings by Apple with some descriptions of potential applications. They seem to want to use it for navigation purposes using the onboard video camera. One half the screen will use the live video feed, the other half is a ‘virtual’ rendition of that scene in 3D to allow you to find a path or maybe a parking space in between all those buildings.

    The second filing mentions a see-through screen whose opacity can be regulated by the user. The information display will take precedence over the image seen through the LCD panel. It will default to totally opaque using no voltage whatsoever (In Plane switching design for the LCD).

    However the most intriguing part of the story as told by AppleInsider is the use of sensors on the device to determine angle, direction, bearing to then send over the network. Why the network? Well the whole rendering of the 3D scene as described in first patent filing is done somewhere in the cloud and spit back to the iOS device. No onboard 3D rendering needed or at least not at that level of detail. Maybe those datacenters in North Carolina are really cloud based 3D rendering farms?

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  • Distracting chatter is useful. But thanks to RSS (remember that?) it’s optional. (via Jon Udell)

    editing my radio userland instiki from my 770
    Image by Donovan Watts via Flickr

    I too am a big believer in RSS. And while I am dipping toes into Facebook and Twitter the bulk of my consumption goes into the big Blogroll I’ve amassed and refined going back to Radio Userland days in 2002.

    When I left the pageview business I walked away from an engine that had, for many years, manufactured an audience for my writing. Four years on I’m still adjusting to the change. I always used to cringe when publishers talked about using content to drive traffic. Of course when the traffic was being herded my way I loved the attention. And when it wasn’t I felt — still feel — its absence. There are plenty of things I don’t miss, though. Among t … Read More

    via Jon Udell

  • A cocktail of AR and social marketing | Japan Pulse

    From top left: Shinjuku, Tokyo Tower, Rainbow ...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Though the AR element is not particularly elegant, merely consisting of a blue dot superimposed on your cell phone screen that guides the user through Tokyo’s streets, we think it’s nevertheless a clever marketing gimmick.

    via A cocktail of AR and social marketing | Japan Pulse.

    Augmented Reality (AR) in the news this week being used for a marketing campaign in Tokyo JP. It’s mostly geared towards getting people out to visit bars and restaurants to collect points. Whoever gets enough points can cash them in for Chivas Regal memorabilia. But hey, it’s something I guess. I just wish the navigation interface was a little more sophisticated.

    I also wonder how many different phones you can use as personal navigators to find the locations awarding points. Seems like GPS is an absolute requirement, but so is one that has a Foursquare or Livedoor client as well.

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  • Kim Cameron returns to Microsoft as indie ID expert • The Register

    Cameron said in an interview posted on the ID conferences website last month that he was disappointed about the lack of an industry advocate championing what he has dubbed “user-centric identity”, which is about keeping various bits of an individuals online life totally separated.

    via Kim Cameron returns to Microsoft as indie ID expert • The Register.

    CRM meet VRM, we want our Identity separated. This is one of the goals of Vendor Relationship Management as opposed to “Customer Relationship”. I want to share a set of very well defined details with Windows Live!, Facebook, Twitter, Google. But instead I exist as separate entities that they then try to aggregate and profile to learn more outside what I do on their respective WebApps. So if someone can champion my ability to control what I share with which online service all the better. If Microsoft understands this it is possible someone like Kim Cameron will be able to accomplish some big things with Windows Live! ID logins and profiles. Otherwise, this is just another attempt to capture web traffic into a commercial private Intraweb. I count Apple, Facebook and Google as Private Intraweb competitors.

  • Tilera throws gauntlet at Intels feet • The Register

    Upstart mega-multicore chip maker Tilera has not yet started sampling its future Tile-Gx 3000 series of server processors, and companies have already locked in orders for the chips.

    via Tilera throws gauntlet at Intels feet • The Register.

    Proof that sometimes  a shipping product doesn’t always make all the difference. Although it might be nice to tout performance of actual shipping product. What’s becoming more real is the power efficiency of the Tilera architcture core for core versus the Intel IA-64 architecture. Tilera can provide a much lower Thermal Design Point (TDM) per core than typical Intel chips running the same workloads. So Tilera for the win on paper anyways.

  • Intel readying MIC x64 coprocessor for 2012 • The Register

    Image representing Intel as depicted in CrunchBase
    Image via CrunchBase

    Thus far, Intels Many Integrated Core MIC is little more than a research project. Intel picked up the remnants of the failed “Larrabee” graphics card project and rechristened it Knights and put it solely in the service of the king of computing, the CPU.

    via Intel readying MIC x64 coprocessor for 2012 • The Register.

    Ahhh, alas poor ol’ Larrabee, we hardly knew ye. And yet, somehow your ghost will rise again, and again and again. I remember the hints at the 80 core cpu, which then fell to 64 cores, 40 cores and now just today I read this article to find out it is merely Larrabee and only has a grand total of (hold tight, are you ready for this shocker?) 32 cores. Wait what was that? Did you say 32 cores? Let’s turn back the page to May 15, 2009 where Intel announced the then new Larrabee graphics processing engine with a 32-core processor. That’s right, nothing (well maybe not nothing) has happened in TWO YEARS! Or very little has happened a few die shrinks, and now the upcoming 3D transistors (tri-gate) for the 22nm design revision for Intel Architecture CPUs. It also looks like they may have shuffled around the floor plan/layout of the first gen Larrabee CPU to help speed things up a bit. But, other than these incrementalist appointments the car looks vastly like the model year car from two years ago. Now, what we can also hope has improved since 2009 is the speed and efficiency of the compilers Intel’s engineers have crafted to accompany the release of this re-packaged Larrabee.

    Intel shows glimpse of 32-core Larrabee beast (Chris Mellor @ http://www.theregister.co.uk)

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  • ARM server hero Calxeda lines up software super friends • The Register

    Company Logo
    Maker of the massively parallel ARM-based server

    via ARM server hero Calxeda lines up software super friends • The Register.

    Calxeda in the news again this week with some more announcements regarding its plans. Remembering recently to the last article I posted on Calxeda, this company boasts an ARM based server packing 120 cpus (each with four cores) into a 2U high rack (making it just 3-1/2″ tall *see note). With every evolution in hardware one must needs get an equal if not greater revolution in software. Which is the point of the announcement by Calxeda of its new software partners.

    It’s all mostly cloud apps, cloud provisioning and cloud management types of vendors. And with the partnership each company gets early access to the hardware Calxeda is promising to design, prototype and eventually manufacture. Both Google and Intel have poo-poohed the idea of using “wimpy processors” on massively parallel workloads claiming faster serialized workloads are still easier to manage through existing software/programming techniques. For many years as Intel has complained about the programming tools, it still has gone the multi-core/multi-thread route hoping to continue its domination by offering up ‘newer’ and higher performing products. So while Intel bad mouths parallelism on competing cpus it seems to be desperate to sell multi-core to willing customers year over year.

    Even as power efficient as those cores maybe Intel’s old culture of maximum performance for the money still holds sway. Even the most recent Ultra-low Voltage i-series cpus are still hitting about 17Watts of power for chips clocking in around 1.8Ghz (speed boosting up to 2.9Ghz in a pinch). Even if Intel allowed these chips to be installed into servers we’re stilling talking a lot of  Thermal Design Point (TDM) that has to be chilled to keep running.

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  • Goal oriented visualizations? (via Erik Duval’s Weblog)

    Charles Minard's 1869 chart showing the losses...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Visualizations and their efficacy always takes me back to Edward Tufte‘s big hard cover books on Infographics (or Chart Junk when it’s done badly). In terms of this specific category, visualization leading to a goal I think it’s still very much a ‘general case’. But examples are always better than theoretical descriptions of an ideal. So while I don’t have an example to give (which is what Erik Duval really wants) I can at least point to a person who knows how Infographics get misused.

    I’m also reminded somewhat of the most recent issue of Wired Magazine where there’s an article on feedback loops. How are goal oriented visualizations different from or better than feedback loops? I’d say that’s an interesting question to investigate further. The primary example given in that story is the radar equipped speed limit sign. It doesn’t tell you the posted speed. It merely tells you how fast you are going and that by itself apart from ticketing and making the speed limit signs more noticeable did more to effect a change in behavior than any other option. So maybe a goal oriented visualization could also benefit from some techniques like feedback loops?

    Some of the fine fleur of information visualisation in Europe gathered in Brussels today at the Visualizing Europe meeting. Definitely worth to follow the links of the speakers on the program! Twitter has a good trace of what was discussed. Revisit offers a rather different view on that discussion than your typical twitter timeline. In the Q&A session, Paul Kahn asked the Rather Big Question: how do you choose between different design alterna … Read More

    via Erik Duval’s Weblog

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