Haibane.info

Author: Otaku-kun

  • make war, not bosons

    I try to keep things apolitical around here, and its not my intent to change that policy. But this is an issue of science funding as a national priority, so I feel it is relevant: Fermilab funding ends in September.

    U.S. researchers will soon abandon their search for the most coveted particle in high-energy physics because of a lack of funding.

    Researchers working at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, had wanted to run their 25-year-old atom smasher, the Tevatron, through 2014 in hopes of spotting the so-called Higgs boson before their European counterparts could discover it with their newer, more powerful atom smasher. But officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which funds Fermilab, informed lab officials this week that DOE cannot come up with the extra $35 million per year to keep the Tevatron going beyond September.

    “Unfortunately, the current budgetary climate is very challenging and additional funding has not been identified. Therefore, … operation of the Tevatron will end in [fiscal year 2011], as originally scheduled,” wrote William Brinkman, head of DOE’s Office of Science, in a letter to Melvyn Shochet, chair of DOE’s High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) and a physicist at the University of Chicago in Illinois.

    Fermilab is, as far as I am concerned, a national treasure like the Hoover Dam or Mount Rushmore. It’s about 50 miles from my home growing up and I still remember a childhood visit there 20 years ago.

    The worst thing about this is how science is a victim of political climate. As others have pointed out, even the reduced spending on Afghanistan as we draw down there still means we spend more in six hours there than we’d need to keep Fermilab funded through 2014. I’m not saying we shouldn’t spend the money in Afghanistan (which puts me at odds on my other blog communities, as some of you are aware). But I am saying that maybe in the grand scheme of things, with a deficit in the trillions anyway, we shouldn’t be penny wise and pound foolish.

    end rant.

  • I dodged a bullet…

    Thank god I pulled the trigger on my new build in December prior to Sandy Bridge. Had I waited, I’d probably have convinced myself to do a Sandy Bridge build instead, and then I’d be facing this:

    Intel has today announced that its 6-series chipset, for use with the Sandy Bridge processors released earlier this year, has a serious flaw and that the company is recalling and replacing the affected parts. The chipsets, which provide PCI Express, USB, and other connectivity to the processor, have a problem in their SATA controllers causing performance to degrade over time.

    In its statement, the company states that customers who have taken delivery of systems with the P67 and H67 “Cougar Point” chipsets can continue to use their systems “with confidence,” suggesting that the flaw is restricted to a performance issue and cannot cause data loss. Nonetheless, such users should contact their computer manufacturers to obtain a fixed system.

    bottom line, anyone who has a Sandy Bridge motherboard and CPU is going to need to return their components for new ones.

    Anandtech has way more detail. I’m quite happy to have dodged this bullet, and that I ignored lots of advice to wait for SB.

    Sharikou is going to gloat like crazy about this one!

  • The Annual Great Midwest Trivia Contest

    spiffUPDATE: see the wrap up below.

    Trivia, you say? Why yes:

    The Midwest Trivia Contest, webcast by Lawrence University’s internet radio station WLFM (http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/wlfm/), was founded in 1966 by J. B. deRosset, ’66, and each January offers 50 consecutive hours of questions such as “What is the Minnesota state muffin?” and “What was the name of the first American hotel with indoor plumbing? (answers: blueberry and the Tremont House in Boston, respectively).

    My affiliation with Lawrence University is nonexistent, but as it is located in Appleton WI, the home town of some of my dearest friends in college, I am what you might call a veteran of Lawrence Trivia. My participation in recent years has been lax, but our team, the Hobgoblins of Little Minds typically ranks among the top scorers every year.

    And now, Haibane of Little Minds, I ask you to join us. Are you potentially going to be bored at all this weekend? Have a few spare moments worth spending in trivial pursuit? Then tune into WLFM’s live feed of the Trivia Contest, and if you know an answer, post it below in the live chat room below. Our Trivia Mavens are standing by!

    UPDATE: Well Trivia has ended, and the Hobgoblins took fourth place, ties for our best showing ever. Much respect to the worthy opponent teams such as Trivialeaks, Scott Pilgrim vs. The Superbad Iowans in Revolt, and Trivia Pirates Arrr!. Final scores will be posted to the official Trivia blog.

    Along the way, we scoured the wierd corners of the Internet, from Tarvuism to stuffed animals with mental disorders. And of course, much food and fun was had by all, and sleep had by few.

    Here was the final Super Garuda question, whose answer I will not reveal, as a challenge to you all 🙂 After all, in accordance with Trivia Tradition, this will also be the first question of next year’s contest:

    What was log entry on Sept 29th 1961 at 2PM PST in the Alamo Airways Daily Log at McCarran International Airport?

  • cargo cult quantum physics

    From time to time I encounter people online who are enamoured of quantum physics in a dilettante sense, obsessed with the implications upon macroscopic reality, and the broader philosophical questions about what is real anyway. I’ve come to think of their arguments as “cargo cult physics” because in a way, they simply snowball the debate with terminology, quote papers, etc and basically obfuscate beyond the capability of anyone to really follow what they are saying.

    Here’s an example from a particularly painful (for this, and other reasons) thread at Talk Islam.

    aziz 3:03 pm on January 26, 2011 Permalink | Edit
    Keid, you take the extremist position that there is no reality – and then you insist that reality is only empirical. There’s a fundamental tension that not even Godel can save you from here.

    I welcome your intellectual pity, and i reciprocate.

    THE 6:56 pm on January 26, 2011 Permalink | Edit
    OK deconstruct. I am not saying there is no reality. (How could I possibly know that?). I am saying reality is for us a theory.

    Now it’s very possible that it is a true theory. It certainly agrees with all the empirical evidence, in the information flows we have access to, that there is an external causal reality. That external stuff also seems to form our physical substrate.

    But we try to make theories now about the nature of that external & substrate-level reality. We start to understand that although it obeys rules that seemed to be mechanical when we first started to study it, the deeper we go into the structure, the more it becomes abstract and information-like.

    Particles become quanta become qubit states in a information-bearing field?

    Also very important this: The whole notion of a continuous space with continuous fields, breaks down as you get to the Planckian level, 10^-35 meters. So we need a new paradigm.

    So now we postulate: Is there a supportive subPlanckian substrate to the entire world? Presumably it could be even more information-like, more abstract. Could it be pure information?

    How could this work?

    Well there are clues. Number one IMHO is the holographic conjecture. We can reinterpret the quantum fields that make up the universe as a isomorphic to fields in an outgoing 2 dimensional surface at the edge of the universe. The area of that surface has to be quantized into planck-sized areas. Could it be a cellular lattice of some kind? In some, as yet unknown, geometry?

    Then the information could be qubits being exchanged between cells in that geometry.

    Understand that lattices can arise naturally, e.g Crystals. Geometry just has to have the right symmetry, thats all, to form repeating cells capable of computation.

    I know this is vague and impressionistic, but I’m not a real physicist and I’m out of my depth here.

    As you can imagine, I’m paying a lot of attention to current attempts to confirm Hogan’s noise.

    THE 8:12 pm on January 26, 2011 Permalink | Edit
    I found Paola Zizzi’s paper thought provoking.

    How to respond to this? Well of course, reality is a theory. But it’s a damn good one. The entire point of theory is to approximate reality in a useful way. Invoking crystals and quantum cubits and whatnot is just adding noise. Unlike Hogan’s noise, this noise is well confirmed.

    Anyway I am not trying to pick on my interlocutor here, just frustrated with the way these sorts of debates turn out. Basically it’s all a condescending attempt to wave big words around at me to intimidate me because I have spiritual faith. Pointing out I have a PhD in physics is kind of pointless here. I believe in God, so I must be an idiot on some fundamental way, and here’s the proof: [insert gibberish].

    You see the same sort of thing with people who believe in Singularity – but I’m a Singularity skeptic.

  • hard drive woes

    UPDATE: In retrospect, it’s probable that the BSODs with Carbonite earlier were not Carbonite’s fault, but the bad drive. No impugning of Carbonite was intended 🙂 My apologies to the Carbonite staff who are not reading this post anyway.

    I’ve had a bad time of it, but thanks to the support from Microsoft’s forums it’s clear that my hard drive is the problem. The OS loses a connection to the drive, which could be a bad or loose cable. I think that its bad blocks however as my file backup hangs in certain specific places and I might actually have to abandon some data (though I have the bulk of it copied to a new disk).

    My intention is to use the secondary drive (2TB Caviar Green, lower performance but great power consumption profile) as local backup and bulk storage. The question is, what do I do now for a primary drive? I am considering several options:

    – an SSD. Advantage, massive performance boost. Disadvantage, would only hold the OS and then my secondary drive is my data bottleneck. Given my problem with Carbonite earlier I am cool on cloud backup now. Also, cost of course. And then I would also need to decide whether a drive supporting SATA 6 Gb/s woudl be worth it or not.

    – a 1TB drive (performance oriented). Advantage: Cheaper. I’d probably go with Samsung instead of WD because I want a 1TB, SATA 3 Gb/s drive instead of 6 (the caviar black drives all seem to be 6’s now, unless you go up to 1.5 or 2 TB). Disadvantage: the hard drive would be the bottleneck of the system. Here’s a useful comparison of 2-platter terabyte drives, proving there really was no point in paying extra for the WD drive.

    I have the old 1 TB drive from the kids computer to tide me over until I decide what to do. I am torn here. I simply need a fast drive for the OS and my primary data store, which I can backup to the secondary drive.

    Actually, I’m not torn. The Spinpoint is only $60 at Amazon, so if I want to do SSD later on I can always do that, the F3 will be useful until then and even afterwards as “primary” storage secondary to the SSD. Guess I’ll pull the trigger on this…

  • Carbonite backup caused BSOD on Win 7 64

    UPDATE: In retrospect, it’s probable that the BSODs were not Carbonite’s fault, but due to a bad drive. No impugning of Carbonite was intended 🙂 My apologies to the Carbonite staff who are not reading this post anyway.

    I installed Carbonite as part of my backup strategy for PREFECT, and started experiencing all sorts of issues – my system would slow down, freeze, become glacial, and even on occassion do a BSOD. I didnt realize it was Carbonite at first – started wondering if I had damaged the CPU while installed the cooler, or somesuch – but eventually realized the culprint when my router fortuitously lost a connection, causing Carbonite to disable itself on reboot of the system when no network could be detected. The system became much more functional immediately, so i uninstalled it. Again, fortuitously, I had a BSOD immediately afterwards and the XML log indicated Carbonite as the culprit. I’ve uninstalled it now and am running a memory diagnostic, after which I’ll throw Prime95 at it for good measure. I am not 100% positive Carbonite was responsible for the general system instabilities, but the evidence it caused a BSOD was undeniable (see here for my post at Technet support forums).

    I don’t see much else out there about others having issues with Carbonite on W764, so it could just be my unique environment. I am running Dropbox and Live Mesh, so maybe all these cloud services don’t play nicely with each other? I’m not sure. I’ll give Mozy a shot instead; some advantages of Mozy are monthly billing instead of annual (though no 15-day free trial period like Carbonite), and also they will mail you DVDs if you need to do a full restore (never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck carrying DAT tapes, as the legend goes).

    At some point I should post all my benchmarks for PREFECT – if I can get these issues sorted out, this machine should be a real beast by all measures.

    (Though why my memory usage is at 21% after boot with no apps running, I am not exactly clear… I’ve got 8 GB on here for MATLAB!)

  • Fractale and Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo

    Steven looks at Fractale, and … wow. Miyazaki-esque indeed. I am just as intrigued by the fact that the main character engages in routine prayer, as I am by the Dennou Coil-esque augmented reality.

    Also, Nick has screenshots and links to the trailer for Shinkai’s next film opening in May – Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, or Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below.

    In a lot of ways, Shinkai is essential viewing for a Miyazaki fan. He has a way of recapturing that magic that I frankly felt was missing in Ponyo. Looks like Fractale is also an attempt to pick up that standard. Of course, Shinkai’s visual style is not a copy of Miyazaki’s at all, but something wholly new, that manages to evoke the same emotional response. The way Shinkai plays with light, in particular… wow.

    UPDATE: Fractale episode 1 is here. Hopefully new ones will appear there also.

  • Hobbit Watson – a Freeman

    I was seriously depressed when I found out that there were only three episodes of Sherlock filmed as yet. I caught this series on a plane, actually, and was ready to go a-torrenting for the backlog, only to find I’d exhausted it. It’s as good as Dr. Who, as I’ve raved before. Unfortunately the big hold-up seemed to be that actor Martin Freeman (playing John Watson) had commitments to another big story I am anticipating – The Hobbit.

    Well, looks like that’s all resolved:

    there was a worry that Freeman wouldn’t be able to film The Hobbit in New Zealand due to commitments to the BBC series Sherlock. That has all been worked out, apparently. “I know my work plan,” Freeman said. “I start in January, then I’ll have a break in the summer so I can shoot the second season of Sherlock, the BBC show where I portray Watson, and then I’ll be back in New Zealand in September in order to finish the movie by the end of the year.”

    Filming for the Hobbit starts now, and filming for Sherlock in the summer – with Dr Who to tide us over until then. And then Sherlock in the fall, and The Hobbit next year.

    Life is good. I will barely miss Stargate Universe. (well, that’s not entirely true…)

    UPDATE: from the article,

    So wait, when The Hobbit comes out, Freeman will have played Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker’s Guide, Watson, and Bilbo Baggins. I mean that’s like a nerd trifecta.

    Heh. Though with regards to Arthur Dent, let me quote Miracle Max: “and thank you for bringing up such a painful subject. While you’re at it, why don’t you just give me a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?”

  • whither Sharikou?

    I saw a headline at Anand that AMD’s CEO is resigning – possibly because despite saving the company from extinction, the board probably wants to sell AMD off. Reading about AMD, and having just completed an Intel/Nvidia build with barely any consideration of AMD or ATI this time around, makes me remember that wacky blogger “Sharikou, Ph.D.” who was the ultimate AMD partisan fanboi back in the day.

    Sure enough, he’s still around, and still pushing the AMD kool aid. Last we checked in with sharikou was almost three years ago, where he was predicting Intel going bankrupt in 2Q08. Obviously that didn’t happen, but it’s pretty funny to search his blog for the terms “intel bk”.

    April 12 2007: Intel will BK 2Q08
    October 17 2007: Intel will BK 1Q09
    October 26 2007: Intel will BK 4 quarters after Phenom enters the market (Phenom entered March 2008)
    December 1 2007: Intel will BK 1Q09
    September 8 2009: Intel BK in 2011 (quarter unspecified)

    So basically, once 2008 rolled around, Sharikou stopped predicting Intel’s demise. Late September, well past his oft-extended deadline, he punted. This seems to be the big year, but Sharikou has yet to narrow down the date. 😛

    At any rate, Sharikou is right that 64-bit computing is indeed pervasive now, with Windows 7 and Vista. It’s practically impossible to build or buy a 32 bit system nowadays. I can’t believe I am rocking 8 GB of fully-addressable RAM, and upgrading to 16GB will cost less than $100. (but is there any point? none I can see, even for MATLAB). I’m not entirely clear what other advantages having 64bits gives me, but it’s pretty cool. 2^6, baby!!

    The only question remaining is whether AMD’s CEO resignation will delay, or speed up, Intel’s BK.

  • on the merits of SATA 3…

    In a nutshell, I made a mistake spending extra for the 6 GB/s version of the Caviar Black terabyte hard drive, rather than the $20 cheaper 3 GB/s SATA II version.

    I should have had the foresight to google the performance benefits of SATA III on traditional hard drives ahead of time; my earlier posts in this series are well-laden with links to my research for the other components. I originally was going to reuse the 1 TB Hitachi drive, but I found it limited my WEI score to 5 whereas the rest of the components were solid 7s. Benchmarks with HDTune were also slightly disappointing; basically in a system I designed for balance, the hard drive was the weak spot.

    In hindsight, I should have realized that the 600 MB/s data rate for SATA III exceeds the physical capability of any mechanical hard drive. SATA II’s uppermost limit of 300 MB/s is already near the ceiling of a hard drive’s data access time, unless there’s some massive technological improvement ahead (akin to perpendicular magnetic recording, but more so).

    At some point, I’ll move to an SSD drive for my main OS install and then use the terabytes for secondary storage (JBOD). I’m waiting for the 256 GB SSDs to come down in price to where the 128 GB drives are now – basically, I’ve realized that for a midlevel enthusiast build, the magic price point is $200 for any given piece of hardware. An extreme, gamer build will have a price point of $300 per piece. This is a rule of thumb I need to flesh out more when I do my final post on building this new rig.

    Anyway, I guess i have a very future-proof disk now 🙂 The other big gotcha I encountered was that I did not set my BIOS to enable AHCI mode prior to installing the OS, which meant that changing the mode after OS install gave me a BSOD. Basically, the problem and the solution as described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 922976. I ran the fixit, rebooted to BIOS, set everything to AHCI, and it worked. I forgot to redo the HDTune and WEI benchmarks, I’ll do that later today along with the other usual benchmark tools and post them here, with some pics of the new build.

    In other news, I installed a DVD drive (multi r/w with BR playback), and I still need to put my CPU cooler in (the Mugen reviewed here). I’m going to call the machine Prefect, in keeping with my H2G2 theme. It definitely is the best machine I’ve ever owned and likely to last me a long time.