I'm working at ebrary now. Here's some information on them:
Reading PDFs Online with No Download
Integrating ebrary content
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Review of A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel
<
A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel And Einstein by Palle Yourgrau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In the annals of twentieth century physical and mathematical thought there were a series of crises, and as a result of those crises, in many cases some kind of limitative result was derived.
Two of the figures involved in these results became deep friends in their late years at Princeton: the voluble Einstein and the strange reclusive Gödel, and this book dwells on the development of their philosophical views and the outcomes of some of that thought in the late work of Kurt Gödel.
Gödel, it is to be remembered, demonstrated a general approach that separated the concept of truth from the concept of provability from a set of axioms: every completely formal mathematical system possesses at least one true statement that cannot be demonstrated by it, regardless of what modifications you attempt. Gödel was extremely dubious of logical positivism, and essentially deriving his outlook from Plato, regarded formal methods as merely a rigorous way of arriving at fundamental, prexisting, intuitions of truth.
Einstein, more familiar to most readers, produced a geometrical interpretation of space and time not existing independently, but wholly determined by measurement, matter and energy.
Gödel became extremely interested in the aspect of time as psychological time, time that flows, and asked the question as to whether the intuition of time was something that should prove as reliable and fundamental as the notion of truth. Or was Plato's hint to be followed that time was not truly to be taken as real?
Gödel in exploring Einstein's general relativity came to the conclusion that time was an illusion, at least in the sense that we intuit it. Or perhaps one might say, it lacked the power and generality to become a fundamental intuition. It is odd, in that in his master work, his Incompleteness Theorem, he rigorously demonstrated the generality of the intuition of truth; yet in his work on relativity, he demonstrated deep flaws in the intuition of time.
Background: Unlike special relativity, general relativity allows the large scale distribution of matter to determine "average" or in some sense privileged observers at any region of space and time, in which it could be said time is to pass.
Gödel proceeded to
1. artificially imagine a universe in which the large scale distribution of matter is rotating about an axis
2. demonstrate that an observer could follow a path in which they would end up eventually in their own path
3. argue that in such a world time in the sense of a linear flow that we can intuit is an invalid concept
4. argue that if time cannot be validly applied to all possible worlds it has no true validity in any.
It may be noted that Gödel invented a totally new and completely valid solution of Einstein's field equations, but with very odd conditions clearly not followed by our actual universe. The argument from complete necessity in all possible worlds, may strike the reader as odd, or may seem to recall strange resemble to the Ontological Proof of the existence of God (Gödel played with formalizing the Ontological Proof, but never published it.)
I gave 3 stars to this book because (I have read the monograph on the Incompleteness Theorem, so trust me on this) I thought some of the explanations for the general reader, especially the Incompleteness Theorem were a little poor. It did give a very brilliant portrayal of Gödel's philosophical concerns. I also not that this is the non-technical companion to a much more rigorous exploration of Gödel's war on time, also by Yourgrau.
View all my reviews >>
A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel And Einstein by Palle YourgrauMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
In the annals of twentieth century physical and mathematical thought there were a series of crises, and as a result of those crises, in many cases some kind of limitative result was derived.
Two of the figures involved in these results became deep friends in their late years at Princeton: the voluble Einstein and the strange reclusive Gödel, and this book dwells on the development of their philosophical views and the outcomes of some of that thought in the late work of Kurt Gödel.
Gödel, it is to be remembered, demonstrated a general approach that separated the concept of truth from the concept of provability from a set of axioms: every completely formal mathematical system possesses at least one true statement that cannot be demonstrated by it, regardless of what modifications you attempt. Gödel was extremely dubious of logical positivism, and essentially deriving his outlook from Plato, regarded formal methods as merely a rigorous way of arriving at fundamental, prexisting, intuitions of truth.
Einstein, more familiar to most readers, produced a geometrical interpretation of space and time not existing independently, but wholly determined by measurement, matter and energy.
Gödel became extremely interested in the aspect of time as psychological time, time that flows, and asked the question as to whether the intuition of time was something that should prove as reliable and fundamental as the notion of truth. Or was Plato's hint to be followed that time was not truly to be taken as real?
Gödel in exploring Einstein's general relativity came to the conclusion that time was an illusion, at least in the sense that we intuit it. Or perhaps one might say, it lacked the power and generality to become a fundamental intuition. It is odd, in that in his master work, his Incompleteness Theorem, he rigorously demonstrated the generality of the intuition of truth; yet in his work on relativity, he demonstrated deep flaws in the intuition of time.
Background: Unlike special relativity, general relativity allows the large scale distribution of matter to determine "average" or in some sense privileged observers at any region of space and time, in which it could be said time is to pass.
Gödel proceeded to
1. artificially imagine a universe in which the large scale distribution of matter is rotating about an axis
2. demonstrate that an observer could follow a path in which they would end up eventually in their own path
3. argue that in such a world time in the sense of a linear flow that we can intuit is an invalid concept
4. argue that if time cannot be validly applied to all possible worlds it has no true validity in any.
It may be noted that Gödel invented a totally new and completely valid solution of Einstein's field equations, but with very odd conditions clearly not followed by our actual universe. The argument from complete necessity in all possible worlds, may strike the reader as odd, or may seem to recall strange resemble to the Ontological Proof of the existence of God (Gödel played with formalizing the Ontological Proof, but never published it.)
I gave 3 stars to this book because (I have read the monograph on the Incompleteness Theorem, so trust me on this) I thought some of the explanations for the general reader, especially the Incompleteness Theorem were a little poor. It did give a very brilliant portrayal of Gödel's philosophical concerns. I also not that this is the non-technical companion to a much more rigorous exploration of Gödel's war on time, also by Yourgrau.
View all my reviews >>
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Hacking your cell phone (for techies)
Dude (or dudette) where's my pictures?
Some cell phones don't give you access to your pictures, videos etc., other than to run up data charges by sending them. If you want to get access to them, there are tricks you can use. This is for the fairly techie user, so it is just an example. My laptop is running Vista,and my cell phone is a cheap LG VX5500 but the principles should work on other systems.
Obviously if you have a smart phone, you probably don't need to do all this. But if you are smart and your phone is dumb, or if you are just a general mad scientist type, read on.
1. Assuming you have a mini-USB port on your phone, get a cable for it. If this doesn't work, it will at least let you charge your cell phone from your computer.
2. Plug the mini-USB cable into the computer and the cell phone and turn each on.
3. In Vista, it should auto detect and install a device driver for you. If that doesn't work, you can Google for the driver for your phone and install it yourself.
4. Ho hum. OK you are set? you should go into Device Manager (or equivalent) and confirm that it sees the device. You will not see it in the file system (e.g. Computer, My Computer etc.).
5. Go to www.bitpim.com and download BitPim. It supports:
Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
Linux RPM
MacOS X 10.3+ (Universal)
6. If you are the type that likes to ask for directions or use manuals, you may want to read the online help first. (Nah.)
7. Figure out what model of phone you have. Set up BitPim accordingly. You don't really need to know what port you are on, you can choose autodetect.
7. You can select an advanced option to access the cell phone's file system. You should be safe as long as you are only doing downloads and don't muck with the files on the phone itself. (If something bad happens, don't blame me, go back to the store and say "it just stopped working".)
8. On most of the Verizon LG phones, the user media files are in subfolders of the brew folder, you just have to explore around a bit and find them (buncha files ending in .JPG!).
9. Right button click and select the option to make a zip file backup. You can also find things like your calendar, text messages and address book and back them up as well. Here's what I see on BitPim on my phone:
Here is my cellphone's filesystem in BitPim!
The picture folder (directory) is highlighted.
Right button click on a directory and it offers to make a zip file on your local file system.
If you double click on any file it will bring it up in a HEX editor.
Here is my cellphone's filesystem in BitPim!
The picture folder (directory) is highlighted.
Right button click on a directory and it offers to make a zip file on your local file system.
If you double click on any file it will bring it up in a HEX editor.
Here's a guide that gives you some information about the common locations for many VERIZON cell phones. I can't vouch for it, as I don't own every damn phone listed. But if can give you some good ideas where the goodies are, even if you have a different model.
http://mark.cdmaforums.com/FileLocs.htm
10. Unzip the files and do what you want.
As I side note, I actually took, and downloaded a pixelated photograph from my cell phone, and blew it up and it was actually accepted in a juried photography show. (The image quality gave it a somewhat impressionist quality.
Note: this is for informational purposes only, and I take no responsibility for the accuracy of this information.
Some cell phones don't give you access to your pictures, videos etc., other than to run up data charges by sending them. If you want to get access to them, there are tricks you can use. This is for the fairly techie user, so it is just an example. My laptop is running Vista,and my cell phone is a cheap LG VX5500 but the principles should work on other systems.
Obviously if you have a smart phone, you probably don't need to do all this. But if you are smart and your phone is dumb, or if you are just a general mad scientist type, read on.
1. Assuming you have a mini-USB port on your phone, get a cable for it. If this doesn't work, it will at least let you charge your cell phone from your computer.
2. Plug the mini-USB cable into the computer and the cell phone and turn each on.
3. In Vista, it should auto detect and install a device driver for you. If that doesn't work, you can Google for the driver for your phone and install it yourself.
4. Ho hum. OK you are set? you should go into Device Manager (or equivalent) and confirm that it sees the device. You will not see it in the file system (e.g. Computer, My Computer etc.).
5. Go to www.bitpim.com and download BitPim. It supports:
Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
Linux RPM
MacOS X 10.3+ (Universal)
6. If you are the type that likes to ask for directions or use manuals, you may want to read the online help first. (Nah.)
7. Figure out what model of phone you have. Set up BitPim accordingly. You don't really need to know what port you are on, you can choose autodetect.
7. You can select an advanced option to access the cell phone's file system. You should be safe as long as you are only doing downloads and don't muck with the files on the phone itself. (If something bad happens, don't blame me, go back to the store and say "it just stopped working".)
8. On most of the Verizon LG phones, the user media files are in subfolders of the brew folder, you just have to explore around a bit and find them (buncha files ending in .JPG!).
9. Right button click and select the option to make a zip file backup. You can also find things like your calendar, text messages and address book and back them up as well. Here's what I see on BitPim on my phone:
Here is my cellphone's filesystem in BitPim!
The picture folder (directory) is highlighted.
Right button click on a directory and it offers to make a zip file on your local file system.
If you double click on any file it will bring it up in a HEX editor.
Here is my cellphone's filesystem in BitPim!
The picture folder (directory) is highlighted.
Right button click on a directory and it offers to make a zip file on your local file system.
If you double click on any file it will bring it up in a HEX editor.
Here's a guide that gives you some information about the common locations for many VERIZON cell phones. I can't vouch for it, as I don't own every damn phone listed. But if can give you some good ideas where the goodies are, even if you have a different model.
http://mark.cdmaforums.com/FileLocs.htm
10. Unzip the files and do what you want.
As I side note, I actually took, and downloaded a pixelated photograph from my cell phone, and blew it up and it was actually accepted in a juried photography show. (The image quality gave it a somewhat impressionist quality.
Note: this is for informational purposes only, and I take no responsibility for the accuracy of this information.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Java Kicks Ruby on Rails in the Butt | Ruby-On-Rails
Java Kicks Ruby on Rails in the Butt | Ruby-On-Rails.
A nice presentation, although the Englsih grammar is a little sketchy. I did think he handwaved a bit about migrations, in that the pseudo-sql in ruby is what is supposed to generate the actual SQL. Nice summary of model driven development, though.
A nice presentation, although the Englsih grammar is a little sketchy. I did think he handwaved a bit about migrations, in that the pseudo-sql in ruby is what is supposed to generate the actual SQL. Nice summary of model driven development, though.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Principal Principle
is it just me?
A principle is a law or rule.
A principal is a chief or leader or senior.
Why do people ask for
principle
developers?
principle
developers?
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
App Engine from Scratch
I decided to see how easy it was to deploy an app engine project without reading all the documentation.
I already have the Google plugin for Eclipse.
So I created a new default Google Java application project for GWT and AppEngine, changed the greeting service to reverse a String. Very stupid app, just for testing purposes.
Did have to ask a couple of questions, trying the experiment of NOT reading any documentation.
OK so:
1. Sign up for app engine.
2. Give them your cell phone number.
3. Get an SMS message back.
4. Enter it.
5. Create your application URL at https://appengine.google.com/
5 1/2. Make SURE you put your application name IN your appengine-web.xml file. This is where I ran into a snag!
It will look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appengine-web-app xmlns="http://appengine.google.com/ns/1.0">
<application>edsmiley666test</application>
<version>1</version>
<!-- Configure java.util.logging -->
<system-properties>
<property name="java.util.logging.config.file" value="WEB-INF/logging.properties"/>
</system-properties>
</appengine-web-app>
Yeah, App Engine needs to look at that to be able to deploy! Otherwise appengine says WTF is this and 403s you.
6. Click your little app engine icon to deploy. It will grind away like this:
Compiling module geek.Edsappenginedemo
Compiling 6 permutations
Permutation compile succeeded
Linking into C:\eclipse3.4\workspace\edsappenginedemo\war
Link succeeded
Compilation succeeded -- 24.149s
Creating staging directory
Scanning for jsp files.
Scanning files on local disk.
Initiating update.
Cloning 31 static files.
Cloning 51 application files.
Uploading 26 files.
Uploaded 6 files.
Uploaded 12 files.
Uploaded 18 files.
Uploaded 24 files.
Deploying new version.
Will check again in 1 seconds
Closing update: new version is ready to start serving.
Uploading index definitions.
Deployment completed successfully
The app itself, which is not worth looking at is at http://edsmiley666test.appspot.com/.
Each deployed version gets a subdomain of it, e.g. http://1.latest.edsmiley666test.appspot.com/
I already have the Google plugin for Eclipse.
So I created a new default Google Java application project for GWT and AppEngine, changed the greeting service to reverse a String. Very stupid app, just for testing purposes.
Did have to ask a couple of questions, trying the experiment of NOT reading any documentation.
OK so:
1. Sign up for app engine.
2. Give them your cell phone number.
3. Get an SMS message back.
4. Enter it.
5. Create your application URL at https://appengine.google.com/
5 1/2. Make SURE you put your application name IN your appengine-web.xml file. This is where I ran into a snag!
It will look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appengine-web-app xmlns="http://appengine.google.com/ns/1.0">
<application>edsmiley666test</application>
<version>1</version>
<!-- Configure java.util.logging -->
<system-properties>
<property name="java.util.logging.config.file" value="WEB-INF/logging.properties"/>
</system-properties>
</appengine-web-app>
Yeah, App Engine needs to look at that to be able to deploy! Otherwise appengine says WTF is this and 403s you.
6. Click your little app engine icon to deploy. It will grind away like this:
Compiling module geek.Edsappenginedemo
Compiling 6 permutations
Permutation compile succeeded
Linking into C:\eclipse3.4\workspace\edsappenginedemo\war
Link succeeded
Compilation succeeded -- 24.149s
Creating staging directory
Scanning for jsp files.
Scanning files on local disk.
Initiating update.
Cloning 31 static files.
Cloning 51 application files.
Uploading 26 files.
Uploaded 6 files.
Uploaded 12 files.
Uploaded 18 files.
Uploaded 24 files.
Deploying new version.
Will check again in 1 seconds
Closing update: new version is ready to start serving.
Uploading index definitions.
Deployment completed successfully
The app itself, which is not worth looking at is at http://edsmiley666test.appspot.com/.
Each deployed version gets a subdomain of it, e.g. http://1.latest.edsmiley666test.appspot.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)