What has the Particle Physics ever done for us?

Other than this? i.e. the internet.

While the LHC may not be about to give you a new version of the microwave a lot of the 'spin-off' tech is VERY useful (HTML, radiation imaging for medicine, modeling systems used in finance etc click here for more). More direct uses are common as well this is a report from CERN on a new experiment that's just starting up to look at how cosmic rays may affect cloud formation and climate change. There are also experiments being designed that will create x-ray lasers (XFEL, LCLS and one in japan who's name I forget)use linear electron accelerators, to create x-ray lasers that will allow us to probe matter at even deeper levels: being able to image the absorption of chemicals into a cell, for example.

Anyway that's it - just a micro-rant on "what have the particle physicists ever done for us?"

The rise of journal sharing?

There is a very interesting (and short paper) on the impact of and ease of illegal sharing of journal articles here.

For those of the tl;dr (too long didn't read) variety basically a large number of journals that practice closed access (you have to pay to read articles) are having their articles shared via websites etc. The estimated cost of one of these websites to the 2,000 odd journals whose articles were republished as $1.4Million (based on $30.00 per article).

I'm not a big fan of intellectual property (IP) laws (maybe because I have nothing to protect) but I feel that several things have come into play in recent years. The IP laws are now as likely to protect large companies from individuals as the opposite (in fact more likely as an individual will rarely have the resources to cover legal costs) and the rise of the internet which has blurred the line of what can actually be protected. Is code something that you can patent? that particular bit of code or the concept behind it. These issues have already been met by firstly music, then movies and now slowly the publishing world (look at the trouble google is having with news that they license and various books).

In the case of scientific publishing the real question is whether we should pay for information. Prior to the internet a lot of the work of publishers was exactly that: editing and publishing articles that would then be bound together and sent to those who were interested often costing a lot of money in the process. Now in the publishing world most of the work is done electronically, editing and organisation of the information is still important but the cost of actually printing the article is often no longer an issues as people will read the papers online. Should we then be paying up to $30 for an article?

I don't think we should. Information is at its best when everyone can access it, creating a situation in which multiple people can all review and learn from someone's contribution is far preferable to creating an arbitrary barrier for people to cross. This is especially true in the case of the sciences where people are interested but only a very minor percentage will want to pay up to $100 for a paper that they're only interested in browsing. The upshot of charging people to learn is that you create a capitalist market for information. On the internet this means that people will go where it's freely available (eg wikipedia) or where it's free but wrong (eg Answers in Genesis). As part of the purpose of science is the propagation of knowledge forcing people to pay to get good information seems counter-intuitive. This is more of a problem now when information is so freely available in general and people are treating science more and more like magic: either something to be feared or avoided as un-knowable. Giving good and easy access to genuine science will mean that those who are interested can get hold of the actual information that is needed and make their own mind up about it. I'm not saying this will stop websites like Age of autism from spreading misinformation but with access to genuine papers on vaccines or the LHC people who might otherwise take these websites at face value (especially when presented with the scientific world hiding its information behind a pay wall) they may read up and find out the real facts.

While this is a very similar situation to the one found in the entertainment industry I think the subtle differences make the case stronger for open access journals. While the entertainment industry should be free in some form (I pay for the cinema and yet still insists on adverts why!?) funded through pay-to-dodge ads or a pay-to-own system etc. The journals system should be completely free, a lot of journals already have adverts if these moved onto their websites in a "pay for the ad free premium version" system I would be more than happy.

Further VHDL adventures

Well I've finally made my shiny toy do something vaguely useful. With the amazing power of science (and several weeks hard work/hackery of other's code) I've made my board into an 8-bit binary to hexdecimal converter. It does this by changing the output of the seven-segment LED display to the relevant character based on the position of the 8 sliders.

That's about it. Next stop something genuinely useful.

First week

Well half way through my first week as a PhD (well technically MPhil) student and what have I learnt? Mainly that PhDs HURT I've spent the last 2 days trying to cram the better part of a terms worth of electronics (well logic mainly) into my brain. Doing fairly well so far.

I have also learnt that there are far too many annoying webmail systems that don't sync with stuff properly also that the new Microsoft Outlook live sucks utter balls.

anyway that's all I have to report at the moment (yes this was a worthless post but no one reads this so sod it).

will maybe post something more substantial soon when I think of it.

The obligatory late post

Hello again! I'm back (well while I remember this anyway). Various things to report: firstly I'm heading into a PhD so back to uni very soon (which is just awesome!) Also in a new flat (that's my excuse for lack of posts anyway) and finally loving the iPhone - if you use the net a lot while on the go get one.

Anyway on to something slightly less egotistical: interesting developments. The main thing of interest to me at the moment has been the prospect of building a CNC Milling machine (basically a computer controlled router - the type for carving). This is a project between me and a friend and we're hoping to start on it very soon. This will mean I should have access to an amazing carving machine: essentially plug in the information for what you want to build and it will (so long as it can be carved from a block of whatever).

Other cool gubbins that has been circling is that I've recently finished Iain Bank's "Crow Road" this is an amazing book if quite sad. Well worth a read.

Anyway looks like I can't think of much else to post and I'm ready to install Dawn of War II so I'm off to enjoy that

New Comic

Hey Guys,

I'm back again (briefly) to post a link to this a comic a friend of mine is drawing. Should be a good read once a week so take a look - only one up at the moment though so not too much to worry about.

In other news I'm still fighting with VHDL and my lazyness in trying to get my JAVA-fu going again. Will be posting up some more games reviews soon as well (mainly once I've got some second games down), I'm hoping to put up reviews for 'Race for the Galaxy' and 'Crunch' I've had a single game of RftG and a few of crunch and both are very good. As I'm off to a games club tomorrow I should hopefully have a few more games down to pass judgement on.

CAPTCHA humour

It's early moring so this is excused, but does anyone else find humour in the silly sequences of letters that you have to type in to let a website know your a human?

For example today I had one that was 'humpa' as these are randomly generated I wonder if they ever produce rude words etc?

Anyway bed time, need an early start so chores can be done early prior to massive amounts of world of warcraft.

worth reading

Charles Stross is a dude - near future sci-fi is a) VERY interesting and b) not often done well. He pulls it off - if your interested I highly recommend accelerando.

Either way this is his keynote speech from a recent MMO conference - which doesn't have too much to do with MMO's but a lot to do with the future of the internet and computing in general.

The concept that I think is most interesting and already semi-visible within current high-end gadgets (ie the iphone) is the dissolution of the net-space/meat-space boundary (ie internet becoming part of the real world rather than something on the other-side of a screen). This is something that will be most likely the next paradigm shift (the advent of the 'net was the last one). Moving to a society that treats information and the access of it as a basic human right. Currently its only the hard-core netizens (ie me) that get annoyed when they are cut off from internet access but this is rapidly changing.

The business and academic worlds have accepted email as the standard method of communication, Twitter and its blogging brethren are becoming the accepted methods of breaking news (see swine flu and the Mumbai bombings). While much of the populous consider the internet a hobby or something to use to send the odd email it is rapidly (for people under 30) becoming the only method of communication and research.

In my case more and more of my 'luxury' purchases (ie DVDs) come from online and using google maps on my phone has saved me several times (can't wait to get my iPhone once i can afford it). With things like the sixth-sense in development and pushing more of the internet into the real world.

Going back to the speech I think one of the most interesting aspects of this is that it is predicted within the next 20 years - with e-readers and similar already hitting the market as well as the iPhone considered the bench mark for next-gen mobiles I wonder if a lot of this won't be here sooner. It's also interesting to see how the rate at which we lose the ability to predict the future is lessening. In the 1900's people thought they could see clearly to about now. Now people are un-willing to bet beyond the next 5-years let alone several decades.

Weighing in (feather weight stylee) on Simon Singh..

For those of you haven't heard of this story click here otherwise keep reading (a copy of Simon's piece can be found here).

This is going to be pretty quick as I expect what I'm about to say has been said before by people much better at it that myself but here is my take.

Firstly Simon did say something a bit dumb.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

That is not a statement to win friends. Equally though it doesn't deserve to be labeled libel. The piece is clearly comment/opinion to begin with and within the realms of comment/opinion the claim that there "is not a jot of evidence" should be reasonably permissible - the argument should be clearly that within the author's opinion there is no reputable evidence that supports the BCA's claims.

This isn't how the court has seen it.

In fact the court didn't even hear the case as the judge read a pre-written judgment as soon as the parties had said their piece.

This judgment was impressive in taking the case far beyond what was expected (even I expect by the BCA) in that by using the word "bogus" Simon supposedly meant that BCA made its claims with fore-knowledge that they were harmful (some of them are but I don't think many chiropractors believe this). That the BCA practices maliciously is clearly far more than Simon meant through the use of the word "bogus" (in fact I've never known it to have the connotation that something was maliciously false just false).

This case is terrible on two fronts - firstly it highlights some of the problems with libel rules, secondly it shows just how important good scientific reporting is and how hard it is to produce.

In terms of libel like a lot of the grayer areas of law its a very difficult thing to balance - too much on the side of the plaintiff and it becomes to write anything without either filling it with 'apparently's and 'maybe's or being sued. Too far the other way and you can say what you want with impunity.

Whats interesting about this in terms of the law though is it highlights the problem of online blogging. If Simon had initially published his piece as a blog would the reaction have been the same? whats going to happen when blogs start getting picked up and published by papers? Will it be libel in the country posted from? from the country its hosted? In the US blogs are protected speech and cannot be sued for libel. As more of our journalism is done from the net these sorts of problems will arise.

Moving on from the legal aspects (which I can only question as my law knowledge is pretty poor) the journalism aspect is even more interesting. This sort of case is a huge problem for scientific reporting. The bottom line is that this case represents a large group suing someone for being critical of their methods.

Scientifically Simon is reasonably well supported - there isn't much good evidence that chiropractic treats much other than bad backs. Saying that shouldn't get you sued. Even in a national paper - if there is a genuine scientific basis for a statement saying so shouldn't land you in trouble.

If we're being fair so long as you set it as opinion you should be allowed to say pretty much what you want. It doesn't work but it might encourage people to be a little more critical in their assessment of claims made by people. Libel laws are their to protect people from unfounded claims - unfortunately a lot of organisations know how to avoid them and a lot of individuals don't.

trying to get back to this

Well as I seem to be pissing people off spamming interesting stuff to facebook I'm going to start spamming it here instead.

First thing of shiny at the moment is that I've truly discovered the joys of BBC iPlayer the last few evenings (hell its been that or revision) and so discovered a pretty good radio drama called "Old Harry's game" which is written by Andy Hamilton (regular of various radio comedies).

The premise is pretty simple, a character called 'the Prof' is in hell and Satan (played by Andy) is trying to crush him. Only listened to one episode so far but was well written, some clever jokes and an interesting take on the human condition.

In other news did i mention I hate revision?

Tiredness

Tiredness sucks, also realising how bad I've been at a) keeping this up and b) other general projects... Pah.. there may be a new year resolution in this; if I don't die of man-flu first that is.

Interesting fact...

Pitong (as in the title of this blog) is a word I 'made' up - turns out it is the name of a place in China, part of the name of both a Philippine film (Pitong dalagita) as well as a song title (Pitong Araw) by the band Hale to top it all off there is also a Russian profile that turns up.


The joy of avoiding quantum mechanics homework and google....

Pah I should start

Well, I've got one (rejoice you know you want to) yes I've joined the blogsphere; which no matter how many times I hear still sounds like a cult...

This is supposed to be about me but I'm too tired for the joyous rubbish that all personal statements tend to be so I'm going to be even more boring and tell you about what I've been up today.

Firstly I was inspired which is pretty cool - really good idea for a short story which I will post more on (and maybe even it) later.

Secondly I set up what has to be the most serendipitous solution ever - it in fact solves two problems (possibly three) that I've been trying to resolve to do with my computers ('lil asus eee laptop and a custom desktop). Mainly I wanted cake to eat in the form of source control for my master's project (deep sea neutrino detector arrays, modelling of) and synchronised notes etc. This is not easy I have discovered; unless you use dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) which will sync any files that are placed in its sync folder with the net - and then with any other computer that you give access to your online area. Not only does it allow this wonderful syncing it also has basic version control in that you can revert to previous saves of files and access them on any OS (well windows mac and 'nix)

hmmm anything else? slaving away over the longest install process ever - installing the highly useful (if you do high energy or particle physics) geant4 toolkit on my lil asus eee - now done after a mere 4 hours (estimate).

well it wasn't quite a personal statement but it seems to be most of one anyway... I'm off to test drop box some more. I also highly recommend to all you 'nix users a nice lil app called tasque which syncs up task lists with your desktop and rememberthemilk.com as well as allowing integration with tomboy notes