Doctor Recommended
100% All Natural

Tis the season to be imbibing… and testing out the “Core 3 Trio.”

Be sure to read some of the more witty nerdy comments in the original Digg thread.

For better and for worse, I watched a ton of college football this season. To top that off, both my roommates and many of my friends are football fanatics, so I hear more than my share of pig skin commentary. Here are my predictions of the various bowl games:

Emerald:
I think UCLA will handily beat a struggling Florida State team. Despite the long break, I do not think Bobby Bowden has his act together — plus UCLA still has their recent upset of USC fresh in mind. Margin by 14.

PetroSun Independence:
I think Alabama will give Oklahoma State a run for their money, but the recent firing of Mike Shula will effect the battered team. Cowboys by 7.

Pacific Life Holiday:
Call me biased, but I think this will be one of the better match-ups of the season. Cal plays in a West-coast style conference and never had to face the halfback option. In contrast, Texas A&M has faced several West-coast style teams during the year (e.g. Texas Tech), and uses the option as their bread and butter. I give Aggies the slight edge (see their close loses); winning by 10, but only if the J-train is given the ball at the goal line.

Texas Bowl:
Not even a competition, Rutgers is going to run all over Kansas State, winning by 21+.

Gaylord Hotels Music City:
I think Clemson is a better program athletically, and Kentucky does not have their 285+ pound quarterback to fall back on. Clemson by 10.

Brut Sun:
Missouri started off great this year, until they met the Aggies. I still think they are a great team but Oregon State has more confidence in executing the passing game. Beavers by less than 10.

AutoZone Liberty:
It would be fun to see a mid-major upset of a Spurrier team, but I do not think this is going to happen. In fact, I think the Game Cocks (perhaps the porniest mascot name in D-IA play) will slaughter the Cougars by more than 20.

Insight:
I think the strength of schedule serves as the best indicator of victory in this game. Minnesota sneaked in at 6-6, with wins over heavy weights such as North Dakota State and Temple. Texas Tech wins by 30+ and will bench their starters at the half. Note: I hate Tech.

Champs Sports:
Both teams did terrible against T-25 opponents, but I think Purdue played a better season against a harder schedule. Plus, William & Mary and Middle Tennessee State should not be on any back-to-back schedule — false confidence. Purdue by 10.

Meineke Car Care:
Aside from the dumb bowl name, this game will be lopsided in Boston College’s favor. Not only was their schedule more difficult than Navy’s, but they actually won games that mattered. The only wrench is the head coaching transition for the Eagles, yet they will still win by at least 14.

Alamo:
Even if Colt McCoy, Mack Brown, and the entire University of Texas student body keep whining about the crappy bowl they were invited to, their grade A athletes will still run all over Iowa — not even a close one. Longhorns by a million.

Chick-fil-A:
This game should not have been scheduled. Virginia Tech will remind Georgia of why the latter was originally a prison colony while the former yielded the creme-de-la-creme of society. Hokies by a constitution or two.

MPC Computers:
Don’t forget the sponsor name because they bet the farm that you would buy something from them… oops. The third string water boy at Miami has more talent than the entire varsity squad of Nevada. Yet Miami players have attitude malfunctions like Texas Tech girls have STDs. Good thing there is something to do in Boise the night before, because Miami bench warmers might be too tired to start brawling on the field. Result: hung over and sleepless Hurricanes will somehow stay on-side long enough to run the ball the right direction every other drive. Heck, they might even win in the 4th overtime.

Outback:
This should be a good game. However, even though both teams played a tough schedule, I think Tennessee is ready and able to win the big game. Note: Joe Paterno is my hero, he walked it off like a man.

AT&T Cotton:
I would like to think that Nebraska will win it, but they managed to lose all the big games this year. Whereas Auburn at least can savor their wins against Florida and LSU. Auburn by at least 17.

Toyota Gator:
Another game that should not have been scheduled. The entire West Virginia team could fall into a well and still beat an overrated George Tech team by throwing their cleats whenever the Jackets passed; effectively downing it into the end zone every drive. The Mountaineers will win by 12 safeties.

Capital One:
I think that Arkansas is the better team talent and schedule wise, but that Wisconsin will come out of nowhere and beat them by 10.

Rose Bowl:
I really wanted USC to beat Texas last year, believing that Reggie Bush - our Lord and Savior - would lead the Trojans to the Promised Land. Unfortunately he did not and I do not think that Pete Carroll will be able to beat Michigan either. Michigan by 14.

Fiesta Bowl:
Uhh, this is why mid-majors are not in a BCS conference, because of match-ups like this. Stoops managed to take a scandal, drama, and injury-plagued team and managed to win almost all the big games this year. Adrian Peterson will win this by himself, by 34 (he kicks two field goals). Note: I think Rhett Bomar got the shaft.

Orange:
Wake Forrest will start off strong but Louisville will not choke like they did against Rutgers. Cardinals win by 14.

Sugar:
It is games like this that make you want to rewrite that automatic bid Notre Dame gets in the BCS contract. As big a fan I am of the Irish, I think LSU will destroy them in a crawfish-boiler fashion: by cooking them alive and dipping their carcasses in cocktail sauce. Tigers by 21.

Championship game:
I think Jim Tressel will sit down with Urban Meyer and will agree to face-off in a show down of rock, paper, scissors. Florida fans will be disappointed though, because rules are different in the Midwest: dynamite is allowed. Thus, the Buckeyes will win in a blowout.

Joe-blow bowl
For all the other bowls I did not mention: your bowl name was either not sexy enough or the opponents seemed about as exciting as watching the winners of the grueling Pilgrims Pride Junior College bowl face off against the winners of the Special Olympics badminton team.

See also:
- The Bowl Championship Series: A Case Against Subjectively Aggregated Statistics
- Bowl Chaos System Receives Sternest Reprimand Yet
- Florida State University to Phase Out Academic Operations by 2010

I like Tiger as much as everyone else, but here is my nomination for the most hardcore roadrunner currently playing the game of ultramarathoning.

Who new super glue could be used that way?

I have previously discussed one of the methodological debates between the likes of Betrand Russell, Henri Poincare, and indirectly, Ludwig von Mises (whose brother ironically was a positivist).

Geordie Rose (who should blog more often, see his mullet post here) pointed to an interesting interview from the latest print edition of New Scientist. It is with physicist David Deutsch and is certainly worth the quick read. Below is one of the quotes that caught my eye:

Logical positivism is a form of solipsism. If you say physics is only about predicting the outcomes of experiments, you can only really say it’s about experiments that you personally do, because to you any other person is just another thing you’re observing. But solipsism is a dead-end philosophy and when it comes to science it’s a poison. It doesn’t allow further progress from existing theories, and that’s why I think applications of quantum theory, particularly quantum computation, were overlooked for decades. You could say people didn’t really think the theory was true because they had rejected the idea of truth in science. Truth in science must mean correspondence to reality, or it means nothing.

More on the fallacious philosophy of logical positivism: 1 2 3

If you were interested in the technical concepts presented in “Specialization, Centralization, and the Future of Chip Integration” you will probably enjoy Jon Stokes analysis of where AMD-ATI is heading as well.  Be sure to also peruse the forum discussion of his post.

Just like Chuck Norris, the A-Team is a force to be reckoned with. Here is my contribution to their infamy (special thanks to Philoi, Didymus, and Randall):

• Never leave a blow torch around. They will find it and build a tank and/or cow plow before the commercial break.
• Their bullets work, you always shoot blanks.
• They never have to reload; you burn through magazines like a chain smoker off the patch.
• Your rockets are imported from Durka Durkastan and at best, will only blow out tires.
• You have a better chance of finding them than the entire Armed Forces, especially if you are disabled, a small child, or a very good looking girl.
• When the theme song starts playing: stop, drop, and roll.
• If you are a Colonel, a petty thief, or an ugly girl in despair: don’t quit your day job.
• There’s always a white convertible corvette parked and ready if the black van isn’t fashionable enough for the occasion. And it is also weapon/rock/animal-proofed.
• Don’t be surprised if you wake up groggy on a helicopter when you’ve told everyone you don’t like to fly.

Be sure to see the Family Guy spoof of these universal truths. And this entertaining piece from the Mises Institute.

Even though I don’t agree with all of his observations, War Nerd is one of the most lucid and witty writers around.  And his latest column certainly does not disappoint.

His creative lampooning of the State and its proponents reminded me of one of histories most ironic committees: the State Failure Task Force.

If you have any experience building computers, you are undoubtedly familiar with processor specialization. NIC cards handle network traffic, audio cards - such as those from Creative - synthesize sound, and the GPU analyzes and transforms a slew of pixel-bending instructions to output photorealistic video.

In the past, I have discussed technological concepts such as system-on-a-chip, in which several computational processors (e.g. audio, network, video) are fused onto a single piece of silicon.

This growing trend in integration is nothing entirely new. Years ago, many personal computer manufactures soldered math coprocessors onto circuit boards, to aid central processors in calculation heavy tasks.

The Acronym War (TAW)

And over the past decade technologies such as SIMD, OOOE, and SMT have become a mainstay of a central processor’s plumbing. Seemingly, as quickly as newer acceleration methods can be conjured up, they become integrated into a traditional processor.

A contemporary case-in-point is the Physics Processing Unit (PPU), which became a hot topic of discussion in mid-2005, with the commercial release of the PhysX chip and corresponding SDK. To counter this specialization, the two main incumbent providers of graphics cards, ATI and NVidia, have rolled out several stop-gap solutions.

Assuming you purchase a couple of their newer cards, ATI has developed some software that can turn your current, older video card into a piece of hardware specializing in physics calculations.

And NVidia is working with a popular physics middleware provider (called HAVOK) to do something similar; here is a good FAQ explaining the whole situation.

However the biggest twist is coming in the next couple of years, as the GPU and CPU fields will become increasingly blended.

Out of the blue

This past summer, CPU-manufacture AMD purchased the GPU market leader, ATI. Several months later, they unveiled their long-term plans of what they dubbed Fusion. In a nutshell it involve integrating the GPU’s from ATI onto the same silicon as the CPU.

In fact, according to their financial analyst meeting last week, AMD is actually taking this silicon fusion concept a step further through their Accelerated Processing Units (APU) strategy.

In contrast to Intel’s strategy of including potentially hundreds of CPU’s on a single piece of silicon, AMD’s APU strategy involves integrating a mix and mash of specialized accelerators (such as GPU’s, PPU’s and even AI processors) onto one piece of silicon based upon market demand (be sure to look at the diagrams here and here).

So they might mass manufacture a silicon product that includes 4 CPU’s, 2 GPU’s and 2 PPU’s targeted for real-time render intensive jobs (e.g. CAD, 3D art). Or 3 CPU’s and 5 GPU’s targeted at scientists trying to sequence biological data (e.g. genomes and DNA).

To top this off, a month ago ATI released a new (r)evolutionary product called “Stream Computing.”

Basically what this does is allow programmers to take advantage of the powerful parallel nature within a GPU and gives them the ability to write general purpose computer programs for them.

This concept of Stream Processing or Stream Computing is actually in and of itself not new, as it falls within the category called General-Purpose Computing on GPU (GPGPU). And perhaps the most well-known case involves scientists using GPU’s to analyze and calculate protein folding (see the Folding@home project at Stanford).

And NVidia has also followed suit by releasing a set of tools to aid developers in writing programs that take advantage of the highly multi-threaded aspects of its products.

Going to the basement

In fact, this is yet another war zone in which the two competing graphics firms are using different strategies for conquest. ATI has essentially released many of underlying blueprints to their processors through the “Close to Metal” initiative. This plan utilizes a organic, bottom-up method by which hobbyists and researchers can create their own customized software to their specific needs.

In contrast, NVidia recently released a proprietary set of tools - called CUDA - that supposedly interacts with this lower abstraction level.

Currently, ATI’s first Stream Processing solution clocks in at ~375 gigaflops, with 1 GB of RAM and can be purchased for a hefty sum of $2000. Whereas the new NVidia G80, with 768 MB of RAM is currently around $600 on Pricewatch.

Sum of all numbers

Academics such as Hans Moravec, that study brain processing power, suggest that you need 20 petaflops or so to “brute force” the emulation between the human eye and brain.

And based upon where this GPGPU movement is going, Ray Kurzweil’s charts might actually be too conservative in predicting the speed of processor developments.

Granted the software needed to take advantage of the hardware is nowhere near this level of complexity, but the fact remains that the engineering advances in the GPU arena is moving much faster than the CPU which is something that Kurzweil did not foresee at publication time.

As far as actual predictions of what the market will look like 10 years from now:

While you will either be able to purchase or rent 10 teraflops of raw calculation speed for a relatively low price of $500, the price per watt and power consumption will become an increasingly important monetary factor to consider as well. For instance, see Infoworld on datacenter power consumption.

Note: none of the next-gen consoles have a dedicated PPU or AI processor. The PS3 only utilizes the PhysX SDK and not the chip.

See also: Grid Computing, Supercomputing’s Next Revolution, The Information Factories, and Intel Has a Small Urethra

If you have fears of being offended - offendiphobia - then watching Borat will probably help you get over them.

On that note, the always timely tech website DailyTech had an amusing find earlier today: the generalissimo of Kazakhastan is building a 500 foot tall tent.

The funny part is actually all of the comments beneath the article.  Diogenes?

This past September I worked with Isaac Bergman on a book review of Accelerando.

If you recall, I posted some choice quotes from the book that I thought were highly creative and very original.

And despite my qualms with how it handles human action, I still think the book presented some very innovative, cutting-edge thinking.

The book review was published this past Friday over at Mises.org and we have received a number of responses, including one indirectly from Charles Stross, author of the book.

From the Extropy.org mailing list, Stross states:

I couldn’t care less. Being denounced as a “second-hander intellectual mountebank” makes it fairly clear where the author of the hatchet job is coming from.

Why should I waste my time on him?

This reminded me of a couple quotes. The first is the D&D playing comic book store owner from The Simpsons, whose sarcastic rebuttals followed the philosophically deep form: “Worst. Review. Ever.”

It also reminded me of a pompous Ayn Rand, who pretty much took the cake in her undiplomatic handling of critics, likening them to lice, vermin, and cockroaches.

Defending the undefendable

Now, why did we even write the article?

Simply put, for the same reasons why economists Peter Klein and Robert Hanson have problems with how economics is treated by science fiction authors.

Because in many cases they are treated as an afterthought.

In some ways, it is the same problem that plagues artificial economies in games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest.

These developers - for whatever reason - did not take inflation (e.g. Mudflation) into account when pumping the marketplace full of fat loot… and then complain when enterprising individuals build a lucrative aftermarket that rationally calculates the value of both the widget and fiat currency (it is also the same issue that entertainment firms deal with on a daily basis in terms of scalpers and even “legal” aftermarkets such as Ticketmaster. See “Diary of a Scalper” from the latest edition of Wired as well as variable pricing in general).

The “second-hander” comment simply means that in terms of economics, the author is intellectually dependent on someone else. While this may have been harsh, I think this is fairly clear throughout the book that Stross did not have these portions of the book peer-reviewed by independent parties.

In fact, on nearly every page he shows his own mastering of a plethora of technological concepts, however I believe it would behoove him to have consulted an economist of some kind before publishing it. After all, he accepted typo corrections via a web forum and he could have used the same method for economics saliency.

As far as a hatchet job, I think that Isaac and I were not only professional, but also thorough. Besides, when is something a hatchet job? Only when it criticizes the book?

We tried to cite cogent references that illustrate our qualms (for the record, our original review was 50% longer and truth be told, we had 4-5x as many quotes we wanted to dissect than our editor cut) — and comparatively speaking, I doubt he would have received the same courtesy from The New York Times review editor or even Salon.

So in summation: cool science and technology but a little rough around the edges in terms of realistic social interaction. And in the future, I hope that authors continue to add this kind of cultural complexity to the mix.

More responses to our critique: 1 2 3

Before I forget, I wanted to discuss one of my posts from a couple weeks ago. In “Leaving the State to Cannibalize Itself” I mentioned that eventually swarms of nanobots could consume the exterior body surrounding the brain and later place the brain in an artificially constructed ‘black box’ that could electronically connect it to sensation generators.

I knew this concept was not novel in any shape or form, but have since discovered a technical name for it: Wallerstein Brain.

It apparently dates back as far as the original Star Trek series in which Spock has his head transplanted into a jar from which he can interface with computing devices.

Furthermore, back in 2004 Ray Kurzweil discussed this concept with Steve Rabinowitz, a lawyer in NYC. During their exchange, Steve mentioned that:

If you offered me physical immortality as a “Wallerstein brain” in a jar (a human brain maintained in a jar interfacing to a virtual reality through its sensory and motor neurons), I, and I think most people, would reject it no matter how good the virtual stimulation might be. This rejection is based on an inner calculation (which I believe the brain constantly makes in making all kinds of decisions) weighing the risks that such stimulation not being “real” means it may prove unsatisfactory in the long run and weighing of the odds of some sort of preferable reality coming to pass through natural means.

I think it is also worth mentioning that many of the firms that specialize in Cryonics (such as Alcor) give clients the option to simply have their head and spinal column frozen versus their entire body. Their line of reasoning goes along with this nanobot reconstruction/interface model discussed above.

A couple years ago I mentioned that web-based services will ultimately usher in a world in which the “network is the computer.” And while some argue that only 5-6 megaenormousgigantic computer centers will ultimately arise from this growing, yet consolidating service marketplace, there is still room for independent, grass-roots efforts to innovate and push the envelope in other niches.

And today’s edition of thinking different involves one of the first do-it-yourself cell phone kits. See Wired’s write-up of this endeavor as well as their official site.

You may also find these recent articles germane: Supercomputing’s Next Revolution and The Information Factories

Apparently some Wikipedia editors have had enough of random article vandalizations by faceless culprits. In fact, there is now a burgeoning movement to only deface the Chicken article… because everyone knows what a chicken is.

Notice how it is under lock down too?

Note: I have done my fair share of trying to police several articles, some people are absolutely relentless in sullying an otherwise useful endeavor.

The Life Aquatic was a strange, but original movie.  Arguably one of the most memorable musical scores of last year took place in the middle of this clip from the movie (the piano with string accompaniment).

A friend of mine sent along this great short story done with simple sketch work.

Beep beep… road runner?

This transfat abolition is going to be really sad and funny at the same time… I can just see SNL or The Onion doing a parody of “bootleggers” driving barrels of the illegal oil across the Brooklyn Bridge into speakeasies.

Or as EH Munro mentioned to me, eateasies:

“Hey, kid, want some good french fries, deep fried in only the finest transfat… we got some good empanadas and banana fritters, too”

A friend sent along this candid interview with Richard Dawkins.  It is witty, clever and full of good one-liners.

More on Dawkins.

Morbid, but a funny way to look at this sky-is-falling issue.

And this will probably happen sooner rather than later, just look at how the Zune caved in.