I usually use the academic database that my public library subscribes to. I just have to put in my library card number, and get access to all the same journals, newspapers, and more that I had when I was at university. - Heather Sillypants Mina
Librarian answer- it depends on what you are looking for. Different databases for different purposes. +1 Heather. See what your library can give you access to. The good ones are $$$$. - suelibrarian
Also State Library of Vic and Nat Lib Oz both give access to good list of databases after registration. - suelibrarian
From Life scientist's room: Scopus (Elsevier) is said to be covering more of the informal literature, and is free for a limited time - I am afraid I don't know for how long. It is pretty good on the formal (published) literature - Maxine
ISI Web of Knowledge, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost are all rather extensive (commercial though). If you are looking for free search engines/ material then perhaps you can try BASE http://www.base-search.net/ and OAIster http://www.oaister.org/ - Wobbler
Disclaimer that I work at Elsevier, but I would suggest Scirus.com, it is Elsevier's free science-specific search engine. If you have access to Scopus, that is the way to go, because it has Scirus search built in. - Michael Habib
“FriendFeed should allow FriendFeed as one of the services. I tried exporting search results as a feed and then importing as an imaginary friend's blog, but that wasn't allowed.”
Quote: Our goal as computer science educators should include teaching programming, in a way that is motivating. Our challenge is to motivate the teaching of programming, not throw it out. I've been accused of "watering down" computer science with my media computation. I don't believe that's true. I like to believe that we are inventing new ways of motivating students to program. Removing programming from computer science is not just "watering down" -- it's gutting the core of computer science. - todd
Perhaps it's because there's a lot less security in that field than there used to be. People have heard too many horror stories, by now, of developer jobs getting moved overseas. - Alex "Pew Pew Pew" Scoble
I thought it was because after the dot-com bust, people who were just getting into CS for the money left for greener pastures. - Morton Fox
Alex: is there actually a lot less security (supported by numbers)? - Amund Tveit
Amund, for things like CS enrollment, numbers don't really matter, perception is all that counts. Being in the startup space, the number of co-entrepreneurs I've met who have off-shored their entire development effort is interesting. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but interesting nonetheless. - Michael Kowalchik
Would you recommend to a young person you knew to become a programmer? I'm not so sure I would. - todd
I'd recommend that if they want to become a programmer that they learn how to securely code...I think there's a good market for developers with expertise in security - Alex "Pew Pew Pew" Scoble
The people in charge of the country through most of this new century have a deep-rooted suspicion of science and technology. There's no leadership around motivating kids to become scientists or engineers. - Tad - the Fresh Maker
I think the dot-com bust suggestion is a valid one. I'd also like to point out that programmers have programmed themselves out of work. You don't need a CS to land coding jobs anymore. Modern languages like C# are so easy to pick up that you can read a couple of books and land yourself a junior-level job. This has begun to produce an ever-widening gap between these Borders-educated people and those who really know software design: algorithms, data structures, design patterns, etc., etc. - Akiva Moskovitz
Good discussion. I think it has a lot to do with the bubble burst and the perception, and reality, that there's a lot less security in the programming job market.... that and a 6.5% unemployment rate in the bay area - Jason Carreira
We're lucky up here still. The tech market in Seattle is doing all right. - Akiva Moskovitz
Programmers are now considered a cost center instead of a profit center. Programming is a sort of mental manual labor that is seen as an obstruction towards goals rather than how those goals are realized. We are interchangeable code producing units whose costs are to be minimized rather than key producers of value. Why enter that field? - todd
Todd: maybe the world needs more programmers who publicly and concretely speak about the value they create? - Amund Tveit
It's difficult because programming is a team effort. Ever watch a show like Top Design? They work in groups to produce beautiful rooms. When asking each individual what they created it's usually difficult to say, but there's the newly transformed room showing something certainly happened. This dove tails into how you reward Agile teams. As a group or individually? The team that produces the product, but clearly some members are more productive than others. Nobody will understand your contribution anyway. - todd
With case studies that illustrate how Hadoop solves specific problems, this book helps you:
* Learn the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), including ways to use its many APIs to transfer data
* Write distributed computations with MapReduce, Hadoop's most vital component
* Become familiar with Hadoop's data and IO building blocks for compression, data integrity, serialization, and persistence
* Learn the common pitfalls and advanced features for writing real-world MapReduce programs
* Design, build, and administer a dedicated Hadoop cluster
* Use HBase, Hadoop's database for structured and semi-structured data - Amund Tveit
this is quite useful, but beware of speakers giving questions all of 2s thought before answering. all too common, and then you get cute or useless answers. - Gregor J. Rothfuss
Place a rubber duck on your monitor and describe your problems to it. There's something magical about stating your problems aloud that makes the solution more clear. - Amund Tveit
Happy is a framework for writing map-reduce programs for Hadoop using Jython. It files off the sharp edges on Hadoop and makes writing map-reduce programs a breeze - Amund Tveit
Map-reduce jobs in Happy are defined by sub-classing happy.HappyJob and implementing a map(records, task) and reduce(key, values, task) function. Then you create an instance of the class, set the job parameters (such as inputs and outputs) and call run().
When you call run(), Happy serializes your job instance and copies it and all accompanying libraries out to the Hadoop cluster. Then for each task in the Hadoop job, your job instance is de-serialized and map or reduce is called. - Amund Tveit
I just passed 100k conversations as well. In only about half the time it took you. I feel special, or maybe that's just the sense I'm wasting my life reading email. - Alex Power
“hm, not entirely convinced of the new friendfeed ui, in particular 2 things: 1) distance between what used to be tabs and the search field/button, and 2) increased density of links to click on when adding a new message.”
Unfortunately there are situations where Amdahl's law is insufficient. These are addressed by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... Gustafson's original paper is referenced at the bottom of that wikipedia article - Adewale Oshineye
Ade: I believe that Gustavson's assumption: "Assuming the serial function a(n) diminishes with problem size n, then speedup approaches p as n approaches infinity, as desired" is quite optimistic. - Amund Tveit
That's a misinterpretation introduced by the Wikipedia article. His original, and very short, paper: http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/Pub... looks at it the other way round. "When given a more powerful processor, the problem generally expands to make use of the increased facilities" So if you have more machines then you solve the same problem with more data or higher resolution or more degrees of freedom. - Adewale Oshineye
Gustavson's perspective only makes sense in scenarios where you can scale up the difficulty of the problem in order to make better use of the increased number of processors and thereby get better results. One example would be rendering frames for a film. More processors mean you'll render it at higher resolutions and greater frame rates. The heart of it is this paragraph: - Adewale Oshineye
"The expression and graph both contain the implicit assumption that p is independent of N, which is virtually never the case. One does not take a fixed-size problem and run it on various numbers of processors except when doing academic research; in practice, the problem size scales with the number of processors. When given a more powerful processor, the problem generally expands to make use of the increased facilities. Users have control over such things as grid resolution, number of timesteps, difference operator complexity, and other parameters that are usually adjusted to allow the program to be run in some desired amount of time. Hence, it may be most realistic to assume that run time, not problem size, is constant. - Adewale Oshineye
Although Yuan Shi makes the rather disturbing claim that both laws are equivalent: http://www.cis.temple.edu/~shi... but that we're misusing Amdahl's original formulation. I might be wrong about that as the maths is a little tricky and digging into the citations of Yuan Shi's paper (to see how it's been received) is a little tricky for me thanks to the ACM's paywall. - Adewale Oshineye
can anyone point out some applications of Hadoop framework (Mapreduce programming model + HDFS storage) in computational finance? what kind of algorithms in computational finance is suitable MapReduce programming model (I know MPI does most of the existing work)? - platformgeek
platformgeek: what problems in computational finance are you trying to solve? - Amund Tveit
platformgeek: drop me a line (jeff.hammerbacher@gmail.com) and i'll let you know a few. i'm curious to know what is sparking your interest in using hadoop for computational finance. - jeff hammerbacher
oooo popcorn and friendfeed watching... - Caroline
i remember when Merrill Lynch meant somthing - Caroline
@Henry, mr.Greenspan says he didn't see it through his 50 years career... - silpol
and this event essentially is proof for my very personal theory that brands are essentially scalps pulled off from corpses by Ind... argh, I mean proto-Americans ;) - silpol
what is the most financially sound bank? - Amund Tveit
A series of mono and di-N-2,3-epoxypropyl N-phenylhydrazones have been prepared on a large scale by reaction of the corresponding N-phenylhydrazones of 9-ethyl-3-carbazolecarbaldehyde, 9-ethyl-3,6-carbazoledicarbaldehyde, 4-dimethyl-amino-, 4-diethylamino-, 4-benzylethylamino-, 4-(diphenylamino)-, 4-(4,4-4'-dimethyl-diphenylamino)-, 4-(4-formyldiphenylamino)- and 4-(4-formyl-4'-methyldiphenyl-amino)benzaldehyde with epichlorohydrin in the presence of KOH and anhydrous Na(2)SO(4) - Frank
37/male/Beaverton, OR. Interesting fact: I have a brother named Robert that you may have heard of...Not that interesting? OK, how about I have 3 cats, one male (Oliver AKA Pumpkin Butt) and two females (Tilly and Miso) - Alex "Pew Pew Pew" Scoble
31/Male/San Antonio, TX, I used to DJ clubs in Houston - Haggis (Sean)
46/M/Ontario California. I shook Gerald Ford's hand at a political rally in 1977. - Ontario Emperor
24/m/Massachusetts, USA. . . I see profiles on FF! (sometimes) - Hao Chen
29/F/Chattanooga TN. I'm heavily tattooed and lean politically conservative - a rarity in librarians ;) - ωαřмaiden
@AlexScoble oh yeah I know your Bro I debate politics with him. I like it too, makes me a better debater. - Colide81 (James)
38/Male/Paris, France. Computer IT engineer and amateur photographer - Olivier
26/M/Toronto, Canada - I can crack just about every joint in my body. - Shey
43/M/Greenville, SC - I've eaten boiled shrimp with Dizzy Gillespie. - steplow is Steve
34/m/Winnipeg - interesting fact: i'm late for work!!!! - Trent Olson
29/F/Indianapolis (gee, this is such an old-school web thing to do :P ). I went to art school. I can oil paint and stuff. I also did cartoons for my high school & college newspapers. - Kamilah Gill
28/Male/San Antonio, TX --- I Love Flyfishing.... - Sean McGee
39/M/Phoenix AZ. Interesting fact: I predicted the rise of MMOs and the their societal impact back in the early 90s. I also sounded like a stark raving lunatic back then trying to talk to people about nanotechnology and the singularity. Don't feel quite so crazy nowadays... - Tad - the Fresh Maker
24/M/Westchester, NY - Fact: I recently got engaged and I fractured a toe once. - James Ferguson
36/M/Dublin, Ohio - I bit my tongue off as a infant/toddler; they sowed it back on, and it better than ever. Neat scar. - RAPatton
@shey ouch that sounds like it would hurt. @Warmaiden I am conservative too. @Olivier I am a amateur photographer too. - Colide81 (James)
@Sean Oh noes! Two Sean's in San Antonio? I don't think this city can handle so much awesome - Haggis (Sean)
29/M/California - I can't think of an interesting fact.... :P - Donato (ricin)
26/F/Seattle. I'm married to Akiva Moskovitz and our first anniversary is in 2 weeks. - Rochelle
29/m/Manchester UK. Interesting fact: I make electronic pop music and have a choc-ice fetish. - Martin Bryant
@Kamilah Yeah I wanted to do this because I don't feel like I know anything about anyone but we all talk every night, or during the day. Or someone will see something I post at night and reply during the day. I mean I hope Friendfeed never becomes facebook, but I was sorta afraid to ask some ladies on here how old they were so I thought group discussion. I was afraid to ask how old some women were cause whenever I ask it seems they blush and say I shouldn't ask their age. - Colide81 (James)
29/M/Stamford, CT - Wireless Engineer - Fact: I was one of few to ever beat Bionic Commando on the NES - Steve Sebestyen
via twhirl
37/F/Los Angeles, Ca -- interesting fact -- I play text based MUDs and I love it. - Monique
Good idea I like that! its a place to tell about your self. Who you are, maybe talk about your interests and all? - Colide81 (James)
36/F/Kansas City - I leave for Disney World in 5 days! :) - Paula Hawk
wow I didn't think my comment would reach this far. I love friendfeed because of things like this. - Colide81 (James)
34/M/Edinburgh, Scotland -- I went to school with the trumpet player from Belle & Sebastian and bought my first drumkit from his brother. - Grant Fitzgerald
34/m/Puyallup, WA. Seattle people will know where I am, everyone else will just go 'huh?' play the guitar/bass/keys/etc ... - Bren
@Steve Sebestyen I am sorta the same way but you just gotta go talk to others. Get involed in conversations. I am shy in real life and so I am sorta shy on here too but I try to pull my self out of my shell. - Colide81 (James)
@Colide81 I try to invwehnolve myself as much as possible and I get feedback from others posts but I've not once received a reply from a direct post. It's frustrating, either my content sucks (and that's certainly likely) or my accounts broken and nobody can see my posts. But I'm not giving up, when I finally get a reply I'm gonna put down my keyboard and retire.... then it's onto Plurk!! haha - Steve Sebestyen
via twhirl
41/M/Nomad. Retired traveler (Helping non-profits for 4-5 years was a bitch, and gave up in disgust May 2007) Enjoy dance (modern/jazz/hip-hop), food, photography (bought first camera at age 39). Do some coaching/consulting/private equity/entrepreneurship. - Mitchell Tsai
36/F/San Francisco i'm really good at playing games (not head ones) - anna
39/F/Kentucky, USA - I sometimes refer to my motorcycle as my "mid-life crisis purchase." I bought it a few weeks ago on my 39th birthday. - MiniMage
I would add Indy to the list of alternative cities. With incredibly low cost of living, and solid Tech and Informatics programs at both IU and Purdue turning out lots of qualified talent, central location, and growing creative class, we are a attractive alternative.. And did I mention our cost of living/ - Lorraine Ball
Austin/San Antonio seems to be the place....The City of San Antonio has been very accommodating and friendly with hosting giant RackSpace. - Sean McGee
@Zack, the UK is a good place. They score higher than the US as a place of doing business and London has a good VC and startup culture so financing and hiring are not problematic for a young company. Zack there is a group on FF for Europe related discussion - http://is.gd/2pB7 - Roger Kondrat
Rochester, NY is sorta cool... ok I WANT it to be more cool. We are heavy into IT here...lots of students and universities...nice spot! (no earthquakes, hurricanes or tornados either!) - Susan Beebe
NC in the house! For those interested, there is a Research Triangle Park, NC, but this is largely home to big research campuses (as you might guess). Folks live in Durham (like me), Chapel Hill/Carrboro, Raleigh. This is a great place to live. - Ayşe E.
should I blog about: i) pragmatic rule induction, ii) a home refurnishing analogy for software engineering, or iii) my take on computational creativity? - Amund Tveit
i) Pragmatic rule induction sounds interesting. - DeWitt Clinton
"Einstein once said something to the effect of, “you cannot solve problems by thinking within the same framework or mindset that discovered the problems.” The implication is that you need to step into another mindset, another level of thinking. So how do we step into another mindset, as Einstein implies we should? One possible method is mind-mapping, which arguably triggers a much more natural way of thinking and problem solving." - Susan Beebe
via Bookmarklet
i think something similar goes for humor, if you thought in the same framework or mindset as the originator of a joke had while writing it, it would most likely not be funny. - Amund Tveit
Perception is the issue. Gregory proposed a constructivist (indirect) theory of perception you may wish to look into. As Dr Gary Hamel often says "Perspective is worth ten IQ points." - Dave Martin
Idea is not so much to vindicate blogging as to get to the point where some people have actually heard of it. - Cameron Neylon
It's this notion of "respectability through seniority" that troubles me. If I read a blog, the position of the author in the academic food chain is the last thing on my mind. So long as they articulate interesting ideas, I don't care who they are. This challenge just feels like an attempt to reconcile the traditional with the new; I'd rather embrace the new and reject the traditional. - Neil Saunders
here here. I support Neil. As possibly a "senior" scientist (the notion scares me) who also blogs, I have tried to encourage colleagues to blog. But in the end, it is the skills and enthusiasm of the blogger that makes their blogs useful and interesting. It is not their level in the current system, which has serious flaws anyway. I propose we try to get more people to consider science blogging. But not focus on particular subclasses. - Jonathan Eisen
Yes but, if senior scientists blog, then more junior scientists might follow. Isn't that a good thing? Its not that the senior scientists write better blogs, more that they lead by example. - Duncan Hull
Actually, I think all we need is for senior scientists to respects blogs and OPen Science as contributions and thus when people are hired and/or promoted they will get some credit for it. If in a committee meeting a department chair says "we want to hire this person in part becuase of their blog" then others in that department might start blogging. I agree, in addition, having senior scientists blog would not hurt, but they have to give the junior ones credit if they start to do it - Jonathan Eisen
Right, Johnathan. It's mostly the younger scientists who are driving the innovation in new forms of publishing, so in a way blogging can serve to balance the overweighting of seniority. - Mr. Gunn
At one level part of the motivation was that we felt there are 'senior' or 'respectable' scientists out there who have interesting things to say and who could kick off an interesting dialogue (as indeed Jonathan does with his blog). A bit of encouragement might get them over the line and into the community and this would provide a more diverse range of perspectives in the science blogosphere. - Cameron Neylon
I think a turning point for scientific blogging will happen when a scientific blogposting stands out and becomes cited. - Amund Tveit
If we go back to the email analogy again - I would guess that the use of email rapidly became mainstream once more senior people realised how effective it was for communication. Just trying to kick start that process for blogs - or at least see if we can move it on a bit. - Cameron Neylon
Disco is an open-source implementation of the Map-Reduce framework for distributed computing. As the original framework, Disco supports parallel computations over large data sets on unreliable cluster of computers. - Amund Tveit
The Disco core is written in Erlang, a functional language that is designed for building robust fault-tolerant distributed applications. Users of Disco typically write jobs in Python, which makes it possible to express even complex algorithms or data processing tasks often only in tens of lines of code. This means that you can quickly write scripts to process massive amounts of data. - Amund Tveit
