Patrick Truchon's Collection

Moved

2010-03-22T13:09:00.001+08:00

Goodbye Blogger, I've now aggregated my two blogs to Wordpress, which also allows me to create extra webpages.

Most of the old post will stay here for a while, but you might want to update your links.

See you there!

Study Hacks

2009-12-08T21:16:00.001+08:00

Psychologist Donald Hebb was once asked the following question by a journalist: "which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?" This question can easily be tweaked to the two main occupations of a student, studying and learning stuff, to ask: "which, natural ability or hard work, contributes most to learning?" His answer was this question: "which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?" [1]

We can't do much about our natural abilities, but we can learn to work better and smarter. To this end, I would like you to do the following:

Read these two articles from Study Hacks: <first>, <second>, and a few more of your choice from <this one>.
Write a first draft of your "Study Plan", including scheduling and how you intend to make it work, and post it on your blog (with a tag (not a title) called "Study Hack").
Post the website of your blog in the comment of this blog post.
Write a new blog entry every Friday, reviewing how your week has been, how your plan has worked out, and what you can do to make it even better. (an also tag it "Study Hack")

Update:
Some of you have described your schedules, but the information is much too general to help you plan your work. Read this "auto-pilot" article to help you make your schedule more specific. While some of the details in your schedule will depend on what is happening at school at the moment, the skeleton of your auto-pilot schedule should be constant.

You can look at mine if you need an example, but keep two things in mind:

This kind of planing works for me but something different might work better for you.
It doesn't work perfectly so I have to keep tweaking it from time to time.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;There are basically two things I need to keep track of: HIS work, and Chinese.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; The Chinese is pretty linear so I don't need to keep track of anything: just study characters and do my homework on time.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; The HIS work depends more on what's going on, so for that I use a simple text file on my flashdrive that I call "ToDo.txt" and which right now looks something like this:&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;blockquote&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;font face="Courier New"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;* Math 11: Grade Exponential Spreadsheets&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;* Math 12: Grade 3.8 HW&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;* Math 12: Prepare test on Chapter 3 (by Tuesday!)&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;* Math 11: Grade Trigonometric GSP&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;* Math 11: Grade Quadratic Redos&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/font&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/blockquote&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;I kept it simple on purpose so that it wouldn't distract me from the essential, which is I've got stuff to get done.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; So as new things come up, I add them to my list, review it, and move the most urgent items at the top.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; When it's time to work on this stuff, I don't have to waste time thinking about what I need to do, I just start at the top and move my way down the list.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;This is my "auto-pilot" schedule.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; With Google Doc, I also have other (separate) calendars for important dates to remember (HIS, Personal, B-days, ...)&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;I would like you to create yourself a DETAILED autopilot schedule in Google Doc and share it with me.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; When you create your items, you should make sure that they repeat weekly since you don't want to have to do this every week.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; Thus, when you'll tweak your schedule, just tweak it all.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; Don't think about what came before.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; Think of this as a weekly schedule.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp; It should be the same for every weeks (until you get a new schedule in the new semester). &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Links:&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;ol&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Wikipedia: Nature versus Nuture, &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Study Hacks: &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;i&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The Straight-A Gospels: Pseudo-Work Does Not Equal Work&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/i&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;, &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/07/26/the-straight-a-gospels-pseudo-work-does-not-equal-work/" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/07/26/the-straight-a-gospels-pseudo-work-does-not-equal-work/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Study Hacks:&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;i&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/i&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;, &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/15/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Study Hacks: A Study Hacks Primer, &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/11/20/a-study-hacks-primer/" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/11/20/a-study-hacks-primer/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Study Hacks: Building an Autopilot Schedule &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/04/07/monday-master-class-how-to-reduce-stress-and-get-more-done-by-building-an-autopilot-schedule/" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/04/07/monday-master-class-how-to-reduce-stress-and-get-more-done-by-building-an-autopilot-schedule&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/li&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/ol&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div class="zemanta-pixie"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=e5d8cb45-e317-86d7-8915-0a3fe69f9bea" alt="" class="zemanta-pixie-img"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Here are a few things to notice:

This is a weekly schedule that doesn't change from week to week. All the items in there repeat automatically every week so that I don't have to redo all of it every time. When I tweak something, I just tweak the whole thing at once.
The first thing I planed was my sleep. Everything else goes around that. The time I have to wake up goes first, and the time I have to go to bed goes second to make sure I have about 9 hours of sleep. It's not to say that I don't break that rule from time to time, but this is the ideal I try to achieve (and most of the time, I manage it just fine).
The second thing I put in the schedule are my regular classes and lunch and dinner times.
Then, I filled my "free time" with specific topics (Grade/Prep, Chinese, Philo).

But aren't those "topics" too vague?

"Philo" is the least urgent of all: I just want to set time aside to read. It doesn't really matter what I read and when I finish reading it.
"Chinese" is more structured, but very simple to follow: every week I have a list of characters to learn and a chapter's worth of homework to do. Easy to keep track of.
"Grade/Prep" is the most dynamic of the tasks. To keep track of what I need to do, I have a text file on my flash drive called "ToDo.txt" It's a very low-tech solution that allows me to focus on the important stuff: what I need to get done. Every time I have a new task to do, I write it down in my list and ensure that the most urgent tasks are at the top. I also write a dead line when there's one. Here's what my ToDo list looks like right now:
* Math 12: Grade 3.8 HW (by Monday 4pm)
* Math 11: Grade Exponential Spreadsheets
* Math 12: Prepare test on Chapter 3 (by end of Tuesday)
* Math 11: Grade Trigonometric GSP
* Math 11: Grade Quadratic Redos

Whatever your system, it needs to be simple: you want to spend your time doing stuff, not planing it; and it needs to be effective: when I open my ToDo.txt file, I know immediately what I need to work on; no time wasted with "getting started".

The Auto-Pilot Schedule is not an "important date" calendar. For that, you'll need to create a different calendar. You may even want to create two or three. I have a total of four calendars in my Google Calendar:

Auto-Pilot
Personal (important dates about personal stuff)
HIS (important dates related to HIS)
B-Days (that auto-repeat every year)

For your next revision, I would like you to do the following:

Create a Google Calendar named as followed: "YourName's Auto-Pilot"
Share it with me
Describe (on your blog) other methods you are using to keep you organized.
Read the articles on Study hacks and discuss how you are adapting his ideas to your own situation...

Good planing is only the first (and easiest) part. Once your done this, you'll need to stick to your own rules and actually do the things you need to do in the time you set yourself to do them in. This might help you.

Academic Honesty

2009-10-01T12:17:00.001+08:00

When I was in college, there was an ongoing debate amongst the students as to what constituted cheating on assignments. Our professors would give us weekly assignments from the textbook meant to help us develop concepts and problem solving skills. They encouraged us to work in groups and discuss the problems with our peers, as long as our solutions reflected our own thinking. They also encouraged us to research, read other books, find articles online, etc.

A group of students realized that it was pretty easy to search for the same course in other universities, and to find complete solutions (worked out by other professors) to the same problems we were working on. They would then do the assignments aided by these solutions. Their perspective was that it was simply "good research" and not cheating because they weren't simply copying the solutions: they were working through them, trying to understand them, and only then, would they write their own "researched" work.

A different group of students disagreed with this view and claimed that this was cheating.

It's now your turn to have that debate. What is cheating? Where do you draw the line? If copying someone else's work word for word is cheating, what about using someone else's work to help you with yours (if you write it in your own words)? What is legitimate research? Should you always quote your sources (of help)?

In trying to answer these questions, I would like you to watch this talk by Clay Chirky. (If your connection isn't so good, remember that you can download Youtube Videos) Most of the talk is about the broader topic of Information Overload and Filtering, but there's a very good section where he talks about social networking tools (like facebook) and cheating. What do you think of his views?

Just because it works...

2009-09-30T11:57:00.001+08:00

"Just because it works, doesn't mean we should" is a motto that applies to almost every (if not all) aspects of life. In education, for example, good teachers are always trying to find better methods of teaching, while keeping the big picture in mind. A disciplinary method might be very effective in a short term, but if it doesn't preserve the student's dignity, it shoudn't be used. It's tempting to make the argument that methods that don't preserve the student's dignity are ineffective in the long run and so that's why we shouldn't use them, but there's something more important than effectiveness: human dignity is an end-in-itself, not a means. Every good teacher understands this principle and tries to live by it as faithfully as possible.

I think the same also applies to the choice of software we use (especially in education). In this case, however, the end-in-itself is freedom. Just because a program does what we want, if it is not free (as in freedom, not as in gratis), then we shouldn't us it. Again, it might be tempting to make the argument that free software are better at what they do (because more people get to improve them), but there's something more important than effectiveness.

Although the argument is not much more complicated than the example about student discipline (ok, maybe a little), for some reason, it seems overshadowed. Last year, I started writing a series of (ongoing) blog posts on this issue. [1] I would love to know what educators and instructional technologist think.

Links

Patrick Truchon, Free Software (Part 1: The Philosophy), <http://his-truchonp.blogspot.com/2008/05/free-software-reflections.html>

Electronic Election Ballot

2009-09-23T12:02:00.002+08:00

We'll be having SRC elections soon at our school, and I'm wondering if Google Forms could be used to compile the ballots... Here's how I'm thinking it could go:

Numbers between 001 and our total number of students are printed on a small piece of paper and are separated into "hats" at the polling stations. (It's pretty easy to generate these numbers with a spreadsheet)
A student at the polling station first picks a random number, gives it to the election official who enters it into the form.
The number is destroyed.
The student can then vote and submit their form.
The election official reloads the page for the next student.

Here's a template ballot I made (feel free to play around with it). The winners could be immediately known right after the elections simply by checking the "Summary"

Before doing that, however, we could make sure that no-one has voted twice by looking for duplicate "Secret Codes" or codes that we know we didn't print.

Is the voter's anonymity preserved (enough)? Is the system secure (enough) in preventing double (or outside) votes? Any thoughts on making this better/clearer/safer/more private?

It would be nice if there was a way to ensure that each voters can only vote once, but it's apparently not possible (yet?)

How to Imagine More Than 3D

2009-08-18T21:53:00.005+08:00

This summer, a friend of mine and I were talking about science fiction, and how one interpretation of quantum mechanics (as we understand it) says that everything that can happen does in parallel universes. In his book, "The Elegant Universe", Brian Green attempts to explain in layman terms the ideas of String Theory. Green also made a good documentary about this subject.

In the "Multiple Dimensions" segment of the documentary [1], he explains that the mathematics of String Theory requires 6 extra dimensions to the 3D of space and 1D of time that we feel, and that the only difference between these extra dimensions and the three we know is their "shape".

I've watch this documentary several times over the past few years, and I've never really been able to "picture" these extra dimensions in my mind, until (maybe) today. Rob Bryanton, author of "Imagining the Tenth Dimension" has this really clear animation on his website [2]. Basically:

Start with a point which has zero dimension
Then draw another point somewhere else and connect them to get a line in 1D.
Then draw another point somewhere off the line to get a different direction thus creating a 2D space.
Then instead of imagining "height", stay in this flatland and imagine a "worm whole" that takes you from one point on this sheet to another without traveling on the sheet. You'd have to travel in the 3rd dimension to do that.
Now imagine this 3D environment as if it were a point traveling in a straight line (through time), that's the 4th dimension, which looks like the 1D line from above except the "points" it connects are actually 3D spaces. (Now we're in 4D)
If you imagine an alternate future to the one you actually have, you're imagining a different ending point which is off the line your drew, so you're creating a 2D space of possible universes (We're now in 5D).
If you jump from any of those points in these possible universes without traveling in this 2D space of possibilities, you'd need an extra dimension (We're now at 6D).
Now imagine all of these possible universes with all their different endings as a single point. It seems that we can't imagine much more than that. I mean, what else is there than the sum of all possible universes? Well, all these universes started from the same Bigbang, so now we can imagine a different Bigbang with all its different possible endings. We draw a line between these two sets of universes to get a line in 7D.
We imagine another Bigbang and its endings off that line to get a 2D space of different Bigbang-with-alternate-endings points (Now we're in 8D).
Again, if we travel from one of these points to another without touching the surface of that 2D space, we're using an extra dimension to do it (Now we're in 9D)
Finally, we're done. We have imagined all possible beginnings, with their respective possible endings, and every ways to travel between them as a 9D space. We can step back and look at that space as if it were a point now residing in 10D.

This seems to be a very different picture than the one Green tried to explain in the Nova documentary, but in the "Parallel Universes" segment Green explains how the extra dimensions maybe used to contain the other universes. Maybe, they're all talking about the same thing then...

I really have no idea though. As much as I love thinking about all that stuff, I really have no expertise in any of it. So, if any of you ever become string theorist, please invite me for lunch one day to tell me what's really going on.

Link

Nova, The Elegant Universe, <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html>
Imagining the Tenth Dimension, <http://tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php>

Blogging and Tweeting tools.

2009-07-20T10:59:00.003+08:00

Since I started using Twitter (want to follow me? [1]) I noticed that I was blogging less. At first I thought I was being lazy: writing in 140 words chunks is easier than writing full sentences (and organizing them in paragraphs!). Turns out, it was laziness, but it came from having to go to blogger [2], making sure I'm signed into the right Google account, which was usually not the case (or at least it felt like it), and going through the interface to start a blog post... Of course, I would be just as lazy with Twitter if I weren't using a desktop client like Seesmic [3]. So this morning I finally decided to install a blog client.

ScribFire [4] is a Firefox plugin that gives you ultra quick access to an editor and allows you to post to your blog in one or two clicks; you can even edit previous entries! For me, the greatest advantage is the ability to have multiple blog accounts setup. No more signing in and out of my Google accounts. Just select an account, write, and click publish. Beautiful!

While I'm on the topic of Firefox addons, here are a few more that I find indispensable:

Sage [5] is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader. It's part of my morning routine to go through my new RSS feeds, and Sage makes that super easy to do.
Xmarks [6] synchronizes my bookmarks with my other computers. I love being able to add something to my bookmarks at home, and have them show up on my computer at school (or my EeePC, or my Ubuntu partition, ...) It's a must for anyone with more than one computer.
For those using Thunderbird [7] to access their Gmail, Zindus [8] is a plugin that sychronizes contact lists. Again, it's very useful if you're using more than one computer.

Pat's Twitter page, <http://twitter.com/ptruchon>
Blogger, <http://blogger.com>
Seesmic, <http://seesmic.com>
ScribFire, <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730>
Sage, <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/77>
Xmarks, <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2410>
Thunderbird, <http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird>
Zindus, <http://www.zindus.com>

Ideas Too Powerful to Handle?

2009-06-17T08:19:00.007+08:00

Pre-reflection

Today in Math 11 we will be watching a documentary [1] about four scientists who had such powerful ideas that they went crazy (some of them even committed suicide). Before we find out more about what these people saw, I'd like you to think about the following questions.

Scientific laws govern (or describe?) how the universe operates. These laws are expressed mathematically. What do you think is the relationship between mathematics and the universe we live in?
Do you think mathematics is discovered or invented? Think of the slope of the tangent at a point (using the slope of a secant when we let ∆x -> 0). This idea is at the centre of Calculus. Was it invented or discovered? Think of a computer algorithm (which is just a complicated set of logical operations). Are computer programs invented or discovered?
Do you believe there is an built-in limitation to mathematics' ability to explain (or describe?) the universe? Do you think there's a built-in limitation to what computer programs can do?
Do you believe there is an built-in limitation in our (human) ability to understand mathematics and its consequences.
Do you think a perfectly logical being could deduce all the laws of mathematics, or does it take something more (intuition, imagination, etc...)

=============================================
Stop reading now and write down your ideas before continuing...
=============================================

Preview of five great mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers:

Georg Cantor (1845-1918) [2] realized that there are different "sizes" of infinities. In fact, he proved that there is an infinity of infinities. For example, there are an infinite number of integer numbers, but between any two intergers, there's an infinite number of fractions, and between any two fractions, and infinite number of irrational numbers... Cantor tried his whole life to find the relationship between the sizes of infinite sets in the form of what is now called the "continuum hypothesis". He never succeeded to prove or disprove it.

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) [3] was the founder of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. He shook the world of physics because instead of assuming a deterministic model of the universe, he allowed for probabilistic laws. He pioneered the concept of entropy, and his theories gave time a direction. "Boltzmann had in essence, captured mortality in an equation".

Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) [4] came up with two "incompleteness theorems" which prove that any complex systems of arithmetic has inherent limitations. In these systems, there will always be true statements which can't be proven true, and it's impossible to know which one they are.

Alan Turing (1912-1954) [5] made Gödel's abstract ideas more concrete by thinking about the inherent limits of computers (since they are bound by logic).

All four of these men felt a deep connection between the abstract questions they were investigating and the big questions of consciousness and "ultimate reality".

In contrast, Richard Feynman (1918-1988) [6], one of the greatest quantum physicists, was very comfortable with the unknowable and didn't do physics to discover the "ultimate reality", but simply to "find out more about the world". [7]

The videos:

Watch BBC's Dangerous Knowledge [1] first and end with Feynman's. [7]

Your reflections:

Post your reflections in the comments of this blog post.

How are your opinions about mathematics, logic, and human consciousness clearer, or more confused now?
Compare and contrast Cantor, Boltzmann, Gödel, and Turing's *attitude* about their questions with Feynman's. What is your opinion on how a "good scientist" should approach a problem?

Links:

Youtube: BBC Dangerous Knowledge, <http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6EE4707D6ADE3857&search_query=BBC-Dangerous+Knowledge>
Wikipedia: Georg Cantor, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor#Continuum_hypothesis>
Wikipedia: Ludwig Boltzmann, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann>
Wikipedia: Incompleteness Theorem, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems>
Wikipedia: Alan Turing, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#University_and_his_work_on_computability>
Wikipedia: Richard Feynman, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman>
Youtube: Richard Feynman on doubt, uncertainty and religion, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeCHiUe1et0>

Impressed with Blender

2009-05-20T13:19:00.004+08:00

Big Buck Bunny [1]

I know absolutely nothing about graphics design and computer animations, but I'm so impressed with the short movies on the Blender site! [2] It's not only that they look so professional (we're all used to seeing pretty impressive special effects in movies), but it's that they're all made using only free and open source software. The idea that anyone with enough time, dedication, and will to learn (and a computer) could produce such high quality animations is mind blowing...

From the looks of it their website seems to have pretty extensive tutorials...

Two other programs that they seem to have used are GIMP (like photoshop) [3], and Inkscape (like Illustrator) [4]

Links

Big Buck Bunny, <http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download>
Blender: Movies, <http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/movies>
GIMP, <http://www.gimp.org>
Illustrator, <http://www.inkscape.org>

Trompe l'oeil

2009-05-06T20:22:00.007+08:00

"Trompe l'oeil" is a French term that means "trick the eye". The idea is to draw something that will look 3D from a specific angle. [1]

For example, this swimming pool (drawn on the sidewalk)...

source [2]

...would look completely different viewed from the other side. Notice, for example, how long the leg had to be:

source [2]

I really wonder what this one would look like from the other side:

source [2]

I don't know how this artist does it, but one comment I read explains how to do it with a computer projector. The idea is to draw a sketch of the image you want, then project it from from the angle you want people to see it. Then, draw over the projected image. [3]

An art student used this idea to camouflage a car:

source [4]

But not when it's viewed from a different angle though:

source [5]

Links:

Wikipedia, Trompe l'oeil, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe_l'oeil>
Tabblo, <http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/224920>
Boingboing.net, #12 posted by mstoddard, <http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/04/art-student-creates.html#comments>
BBC News, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/8030766.stm>
Telegraph, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/5261764/Invisible-car.html?image=3>

Mobile devices...

2009-04-10T22:48:00.002+08:00

The implicit messages we may be sending when we use our mobile devices:

"What's happening here, now, isn't as important to me as what could be happening anywhere else"

"Our reality is less interesting than the story I will tell about it later"

"I share, therefore I am"

Energy and the Environment

2009-04-10T11:48:00.006+08:00

Definitively not a book to be judged by its cover![1]

I just started reading one of the most refreshingly clear book I've ever read about the energy and environmental crisis. What's so different from David JC MacKay's take on the problem is that he makes himself very clear from the get go that his aim is not to debate an ethical point of view.

"Debates about energy policy are often confusing and emotional because people mix together factual assertions and ethical assertions."[1, p.17]

Instead, he "simply" aims at explaining the numbers as clearly as possible so that we can then have informed ethical discussions:

"[if] we need to know how the one "huge" compares with another "huge," namely our huge energy consumption, [...] we need numbers, not adjectives."[1, p.3]

But this book is not just about listing the right numbers, it's about understanding them. You'd think that such required reading should be a little dry, but surprisingly, his writing style is ... kind of entertaining!

At the end of the second chapter, just before diving into the real meat of the book, he summarizes his goal:

"Throughout the book, my aim is not only to work out numbers indicating our current energy consumption and conceivable sustainable production, but also to make clear what these numbers depend on. Understanding what the numbers depend on is essential if we are to choose sensible policies to change any of the numbers. [...] I will need to use equations like
\text{kinetic energy} = \frac{1}{2}mv^2
However, I recognize that to many readers, such formulae are a foreign language. So, here’s my promise: I’ll keep all this foreign-language stuff in technical chapters at the end of the book. Any reader with a high-school/secondary school qualification in maths, physics, or chemistry should enjoy these technical chapters. The main thread of the book (from page 2 to page 250) is intended to be accessible to everyone who can add, multiply, and divide. It is especially aimed at our dear elected and unelected representatives, the Members of Parliament.

One last point, before we get rolling: I don’t know everything about energy. I don’t have all the answers, and the numbers I offer are open to revision and correction. [...] The one thing I am sure of is that the answers to our sustainable energy questions will involve numbers; any sane discussion of sustainable energy requires numbers. This book’s got ’em, and it shows how to handle them. I hope you enjoy it!" [1, p.28]

If that wasn't good enough he licensed the ebook Creative Commons by-nc-sa [2]:

This is a free book

I didn’t write this book to make money. I wrote it because sustainable energy is important. If you would like to have the book for free for your own use, please help yourself: it’s on the internet at www.withouthotair.com.

This is a free book in a second sense: you are free to use all the material in this book, except for the cartoons and the photos with a named photographer, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. (The cartoons and photos are excepted because the authors have generally given me permission only to include their work, not to share it under a Creative Commons license.) You are especially welcome to use my materials for educational purposes. My website includes separate high-quality ﬁles for each of the ﬁgures in the book. [1, p.viii]

Links

David J.C. MacKay. Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. UIT Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3. Available free online from <www.withouthotair.com>
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk>

I, Robot and Game Theory

2009-04-08T12:07:00.006+08:00

Cover of I, Robot illustrates the story "Runaround". [7]

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov [1], is a collection of nine short stories where robots and positronic computers follow three laws [2] supposed to protect humans:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The theme of the movie was probably based mostly on the last story, called The Evitable Conflict [3]. In this story, powerful positronic computers around the world have the task of optimizing the world's economy. Naturally, such a complex problem cannot be solved without making trade offs and sacrificing the well being of some individuals for the greater good. As such, the machines come to generalize the First Law to mean: "No robot may injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." The three laws, which were supposed to prevent robots from taking over, in essence, dictate them to do so (for our own good).

In the movie, the detective uncovers this scheme soon enough, and with the help of a non-three-laws robot, manages to shutdown the main computer in time. In the book, however, humans realize that the solutions the machines are implementing are the best, and any deviation from their scheme would leave us worse off overall. And so, they come to accept the benevolent (and selfless) dictatorship of the machines.

When I read this story, I wondered if a "best solution" could exist to such complex problems as "optimizing the world's economy". I was recently reminded of this question after watching political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita speak at TED [4] about how game theory [5] can be used to predict the most likely outcome of a situation where many players are trying to optimize their own self interest.

In the language of game theory, it seems that Asimov's machines were finding some kind of equilibria. But with all the machines cooperating not for their own self interest, but for that of humanity, would game theory be the proper tool to use?

Finally, Cory Doctorow puts a spin on things with his I, Robot [6], and imagines a world divided into two: In the West, robots are bound by the three laws; in the East, the are not. Maybe because of this division, his three-laws-bound robots don't seem to generalize the first law. His non-three-laws robots, however, open up a whole new set of possibilities...

Links:

Wikipedia: I, Robot, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_robot>
Wikipedia: Three Laws of Robotics, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics>
Wikipedia: The Evitable Conflict, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict>
TED: , <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talk/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html>
Wikipedia: Game Theory, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory>
Craphound: Overclocked , <http://craphound.com/overclocked/download>
Wikimedia File, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I_Robot_-_Runaround.jpg>

Ultra Fast Charging Batteries...

2009-03-13T19:28:00.002+08:00

Imagine what you could do with a battery that can recharge in a matter of minutes or seconds...

Completely recharge your laptop while you're having breakfast.
Recharge your fully electric car while taking a bathroom break at a truck stop.
...

According to Nature [1], a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge found a way to use existing materials to build lithium ions batteries that can recharge super rapidly.

What I love about reading news online is the Comment section. Here, someone posted:

"Hmm, here's a provocative article from The Register which indicates this technology (and in fact, Nature's reportage) is less than meets the eye. It might be a good idea for Nature to follow-up, and to refute if necessary: www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/fast_charge_battery_bubble_stab/
Posted by: M Williams "

With someone else answering:

"It is true that discharge rates are the standard for measuring battery speed, but the team also measured some full charge-discharge cycles that were just as fast. For those who are subscribers, it can be found in figure four of the paper.
Posted by: Geoffrey Brumfiel"

As a reader, what excellent opportunity to exercise critical thinking...

Links

NatureNews, <http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090311/full/news.2009.156.html>

Hiding money...

2009-03-12T19:18:00.004+08:00

source

How much money do you think you'd be able to hide in your room? What do you think 1 million US$ looks like compared to 1 billion US$ or even 1 trillion US$ ?

Links

Pagetutor, <http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html>

Re: Your Brains

2009-03-05T14:22:00.007+08:00

Jonathan Coulton [1]

To those of you who would like to hear the brain song... The writer is Jonathan Coulton [2]. All of his songs are licensed Creative Commons by-nc [3], which means that we are allowed to copy his music, give it to others, and remix it as long as we say where it comes from and that we don't make money off it.

So here's "Re: Your Brains" [4] that I copied from YouTube and put on our server so that listening to it wouldn't slow our internet.

Update: To download the video, right click on the 4th link and chose "Save as..."

Links:

Jonathan Coulton Picture, <http://www.jonathancoulton.com/primer>
Jonathan Coulton Homepage, <http://www.jonathancoulton.com>
Creative Commons by-nc <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0>
Jonathan Coulton, Re: Your Brains, <http://secondary.hisdomain.hdis.hc.edu.tw/users/truchonp/misc/JonathanCoulton_ReYourBrains.mp4>

A different point of view...

2009-03-02T19:39:00.003+08:00

It's always a good exercise to imagine the world from a different point of view. Here is one I definitely never thought about: what would a restaurant like Sushi Express look like from the perspective of... a plate of sushi.

Well, a woman in Japan found out... It's pretty funny to see the reaction of people...

Mandelbrot Set (the song)...

2009-02-26T17:48:00.029+08:00

This started with a song by Jonathan Coulton [1] that I didn't really understand. After exploring a few wikipedia and youtube pages, I thought I'd share my results so that you too can appreciate the musical talent of this geeky musician...

The idea is simple: What is the shape below, where does it come from, and how is it drawn?

Picture of the Mandelbrot Set from Wikimedia Commons [2]

Before we can understand the answers to these questions, there are a few things to notice about the picture. The first is that it's a fractal, which means that if you zoom in on the edge of the shape, you'll always see some kind of spiky "structure", no matter how close you get. The animation that follows illustrates this very well. From Wikipedia:

"Regardless of the extent to which one zooms in on a Mandelbrot set, there is always additional detail to see. During the twelve-second zoom in the animation [below], the set becomes magnified eleven-million fold. Thus, assuming the first frame is life-size at 45 mm across, a carbon atom would comprise 36 pixels in the final frame."

11 million fold zoom in. From Wikipedia [3]

The second thing to notice is the axes. They are not the typical x-axis and y-axis we are used to seeing. While the horizontal axis holds the good ol' real numbers we all know, the vertical axis holds weird imaginary numbers. These numbers are called imaginary because they are no-where to be seen on the real number line, but they are still useful (somehow). Indeed, these numbers arise from asking the following question: What number multiplied by itself gives -1 ? The same question could be framed algebraically as: What is x so that:


x^2 = -1

Clearly, x = 1 doesn't work, but neither does x = -1 since two negative numbers multiplied together give a positive number. So, since no real numbers answer that question, mathematicians invented (or discovered?) an imaginary number that would do it, and they called it "i". So now we have:

<br />i^2 = -1<br />

meaning that:

<br />i = \sqrt{-1}<br />

To understand how the Mandelbrot fractal is painted, we have to understand how to multiply and add imaginary and real numbers together. By adding real and imaginary numbers (as if they were different terms) we can make complex numbers that can be plotted in the complex plane. For example, the number 3 + 2i would be plotted as the point (3, 2).

To multiply two complex numbers together, we use the same algebraic rules, but we keep in mind that i squared is -1. For example:

<br />(a+ib)^2 &=& (a+ib)(a+ib)<br />

<br />= a^2 + 2iab + i^2b^2<br />

<br />= a^2 + 2iab -b^2<br />

<br />= a^2 - b^2 - 2iab

Now we are ready to describe the rule that governs the drawing of the Mandelbrot Fractal. The idea is to ask if individual points should be painted black, or left white (ie, ask if the point is in the Mandelbrot set or not). To find out, take the point you want to test (let's call it "c") and square it. Then you add c to the result, and square it again. Then add c and square again. And so on. If you can do this forever without the answer going to infinity, then that point is in the Mandelbrot set and should be painted black.

Mathematically, I think this could be said like:

let:

<br />z_1 = c

<br />z_n = z_{n-1}^2 + c<br />

<br />\left| z_\infty \right| < \infty

then c is in the Mandelbrot set.

After you've "tested" all points in the plane, you get the Mandelbrot Fractal... An easy example of this would be to start with a real number. Imagine c = 0.2

<br />z_1 = 0.2

<br />z_2 = 0.2^2 + 0.2 =0.24

<br />z_3 = 0.24^2 + 0.2 = 0.2576

<br />z_4 = 0.2576^2 + 0.2 = 0.2664...

<br />z_5 = z_4^2 + 0.2 = 0.271...

<br />z_6 = 0.273...

<br />z_7 = 0.275...

<br />z_8 = 0.276...

<br />z_9 = 0.276...

and so on... Since the sequence doesn't blow up to infinity, the point 0.2 is in the Mandelbrot set.

The point i is also in the Mandelbrot set:

<br />z_0 = 0

<br />z_1 = i

<br />z_2 = i^2 + i = -1 + i

<br />z_3 = (-1 + i)^2 + i = \left( (-1)^2 - 2i - 1 \right) + i = -i

<br />z_4 = (-i)^2 + i = -1 + i = z_2 ...

But the point 1 isn't:

<br />z_1 = 1

<br />z_2 = 1^2 + 1 = 2

<br />z_3 = 2^2 + 1 = 5

<br />z_4 = 5^2 + 1 = 26

<br />z_5 = 26^2 + 1 = BIG

Finally, it's time to appreciate the song. To further help visualize the lyrics, a Cornell University student made a really cool "black board animation" . Enjoy!

*Discretion Advise: The following song contains some coarse language.*

"Mandelbrot Set" by Jonathan Coulton [1], is licensed Creative Commons [4]

Links:

Jonathan Coulton, <http://www.jonathancoulton.com>
Wikimedia: Mandelset hires, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mandelset_hires.png>
Wikipedia: Manelbrot set, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set#Zoom_animation>
Creative Commons, <http://creativecommons.org>
YourEquation.com: How to install jsTeXrender for Blogger blogs, <http://forum.yourequations.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14>

0.002$ = 0.002¢

2009-02-05T19:25:00.000+08:00

The US and Canada have cents so that 100¢=1$. Unfortunately, this makes life for some people very complicated...

Science of the obvious...

2009-01-20T22:00:00.003+08:00

Sometimes science simply confirms what we already knew. Sleeping well, for example, is now proven to help reduce the chances of catching a cold. [1]

In this interview with CBC Quirks and Quarks [2] Dr. Alan Douglass, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital answers this question from a listener:

"Under extreme sleep deprivation, would a person eventually fall asleep anyway -- regardless of discomfort, bright lights, or screaming infants? And, can a person actually die from sleep deprivation?"[2]

The details are actually somewhat surprising, but the big picture isn't: Dr. Douglass concludes with saying that sleep is important for... life.

Links

Los Angeles Times, Fighting a cold? Every bit of sleep counts., <http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-sleep17-2009jan17,0,6215645.story?>
CBC: Quirks and Quarks, Question of the Week: Sleep Deprivation, <http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/03-04/nov15.html#6>

200 years ago...

2009-01-20T21:47:00.004+08:00

Take a few seconds to stare at this picture...

You're looking at people who were born almost 200 years ago! Like this commenter said:

"The thing that amazes me [...] is that we're looking at a "modern" photo of someone born in 1812. The changes that person would have seen are simply mind-boggling. [...] James Madison was president when they were born, and America was only 36 years old. And here they are in a relatively "modern" photo. Totally amazing." [1]

For some reason, staring at the full size picture [2] gives me a strange sense of vertigo...

Links

Shorphy, Slaves Reunion: 1916, <http://www.shorpy.com/node/5380#comment-52670>
Shorphy, Slaves Reunion: 1916 (Full size picture), <http://www.shorpy.com/node/5380?size=_original>

Help me help you better...

2009-01-18T22:32:00.003+08:00

The survey results are back. Thank you so much for your honesty and your constructive feedback.

It was nice to hear your positive comments. I'm glad that so many of you enjoy the classes, and that you find them effective. Nothing is ever perfect however, and I read your suggestions very reflectively. I hope that the last question also gave you the opportunity to think about what you can do to improve your learning. I appreciate the honest reflections you wrote about yourselves.

But back to what I can do to help you better...

The Grade 7's said:

You can organize speed of teaching people about math so we can learn more.
You should stop making so many typos.
You could give us more time to ask questions.
We need more practice in the questions we don't know
You could improve student learning by listening to our opinions
You could give us more feedback on our homework
You could teach some basic information before starting to study individually.
You could use more examples with pictures.
You could get a translator to translate what you say into Chinese when we don't understand because of English problems.

The Grade 8's said:

Don't use the meter stick to hit students (haha).
You could listen to students more.
You could give us more stuff that we don't know.
You could help us more when we don't understand.
I would like more time to prepare for test and also have a review before.
I'd like to have more activities in class.

The Grade 11's said:

You could give us more direction to each course in the class
We'd like more practice questions (like from the textbooks)
You could give us more individual assistance.

The Grade 12's said:

I know it's hard but maybe you could slow down the pace
I noticed that recently your temper is not very good. I'm not sure why, but I hope you can calm down more.
I think we need to do more practice problems. Chapter examples are not enough because I have a hard time doing my homework.
We could work out the homework problems together on the board instead of just reading his solutions online.
I'd like the class to slow down a bit, but I understand that we are under time constraints.

Each class seems to have its own themes, which lead me to believe that I can definitely focus on a few things that will make a big difference for you.

Please feel free to comment on any of these suggestions or add more. The only rule is that your comments have to be constructive.

Cheers!

Supporting Free Software

2009-01-12T05:38:00.003+08:00

Switching to only using free and open source software can be a difficult (but realistic) project. Gradually moving towards this ideal by using more and more free software, though, is easier than one might think.

The office suite you use is a good example. OpenOffice.org [1] and its OS X port NeoOffice [2] are two very good office suites that compete strongly with Microsoft Office. I have personally been using NeoOffice "freely" for a few years now and I'm now at the point where I find it more intuitive than MS Office.

Now, I've been given a good opportunity (and insintive) to express my gratitude and show my support: On March 31st, NeoOffice 3.0 will be availlable for everyone to download for free. However, by giving a donation of 25$, it will be made availlable to you this Thursday. [3]

NeoOffice 2.2.5 is solid and I don't really have a reason to upgrade so quickly, but the Early Access Program made me realize that I should help the two guys who have been porting OpenOffice to the Macs for years...

I hope many of you decide to do the same too!

Links:

OpenOffice, <http://www.openoffice.org>
NeoOffice, <http://www.neooffice.org>
NeoOffice Early Access Program, <http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/earlyaccess.php>

State-wide Electric Vehicule Network

2008-12-13T08:27:00.004+08:00

Could we be witnessing the rebirth of the electric car? [1]

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle has unveiled a plan for the island state to create an electric car network by 2012. [2]

For all their advantages (quiet, more energy efficient, less maintenance, no use of oil, much cheaper to operate, etc), electric vehicles have two big disadvantages: shorter range and longer re-fueling (charging) time. These two disadvantages are enough to discourage even the most interested early adopters from making the switch away from the mainstream (archaic and harmful) internal combustion engine. With the proper infra-structure, however, these disadvantages can be circumvented.

Charging an electric vehicle from home, for example, takes about 5 hours. The limiting factor used the be the batteries, which had to be charged slowly, but now, it's the homes, which can't deliver enough power to charged the new generations of batteries in about 10 minutes. Hawaii is exploring the idea of scattering fast charging stations across the island. [3] They are also exploring the idea of having battery swap stations, where they would take your empty battery, put in a full one, and recharged the empty one (slowly) during off-peak hours.

I can't help but longing for such a system to be even considered here in Taiwan. I love my electric scooter [4] for all the above advantages. But I also have to make sure that I never get farther than 30 km away from school (where I charge it for the price of about 50NT / 2000km). A rise in popularity would mean that I could chose a different, more powerful, model. [5] It would also mean much cleaner and quieter streets, and could potentially drive Taiwan to invest in clean energy production...

Links:

Wikipedia: Who Killed the Electric Car?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_killed_the_electric_car>
Daily Tech, Haiwaii Endorses Plans for Electric Cars,
<http://www.dailytech.com/Hawaii+Endorses+Plan+for+Electric+Cars+/article13578.htm>
State of Hawaii, Proposed Electric Vehicle Rapid Charging Sites,
<http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/cc/evchgmap.html>
EVT, <http://www.evt.com.tw/html/evt_info/english/index.htm>
Wikipedia: Electric Motorcycles and Scooters,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_scooter#Comparison_of_select_production_vehicles>

Open Source film wins prize.

2008-12-04T04:22:00.005+08:00

Montreal filmmaker Brett Gaylor's documentary exploring copyright issues in the information age has won the top audience award at the 21st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.

His RiP: A Remix Manifesto won the 5,000-euro ($7,900 Cdn) Dioraphte Audience Award on Saturday. It is voted on by the 40,000 audience members at the Amsterdam documentary festival who rate each film from "hopeless" to "superb."

RiP: A Remix Manifesto is an open source documentary that investigates the implications of the current legal climate that has movie studios and record producers suing ordinary citizens.

The film was created over six years, collaboratively remixing the work of hundreds of people who contributed to a website [1]

You can watch a preview of the film on their website [2]. Also, one of the man in the documentary is Larry Lessig, professor law at the Standford Law School. He gave an excellent talk on TED [3] that provides a lot of background information on the topic of culture and copyright. Another one is Cory Doctorow [4], co-editor of BoingBoing [5], who puts all of his novels (mostly science fiction and pop culture essays) as free Creative-Commons [6] download on his website. His book "Content" is an especially good overview of the topic. [7]

Links:

CBC, Open Source film wins audience award in Amsterdam
<http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/12/02/gaylor-award.html>
RiP: A Remix Manifesto
<http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/rip-a-remix-manifesto>
TED, Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html>
Craphound
<http://craphound.com>
BoingBoing
<http://www.boingboing.net>
Creative Commons
<http://creativecommons.org>
Cory Doctorow, Content
<http://craphound.com/content/download>

OpenOffice

2008-11-22T08:25:00.004+08:00

In our continued effort to use as much free and open source software as possible, I'm glad to announce that a few weeks ago, OpenOffice.org (OOo) [1] released a mac version of their excellent office suite.

To give a brief history: OOo was originally written for Unix and Linux systems, but the community of developers took the time to port their code to Windows systems (for obvious reasons). As such, OOo has been strong and stable of Linux and Windows systems for many years. Until last week, however, Mac systems weren't on their radar. So what happened is that when OS X first came out eight years ago, two dedicated folks took the OOo code (since it's free and open source) and created their own program (still free and open source) to run naively on Mac. The NeoOffice project was born. [2]

Since both OOo and NeoOffice are free (and open source), I've got both of them on my machine. Because the code for NeoOffice comes from OOo, they are both completely compatible with each other and look and feel very much the same. Some people, however, have suggested that NeoOffice is faster and more stable than this first release of OOo for Mac because it has been around (on Mac OS X system) for eight extra years. [3]

Regardless of which is best (at this point in time), I strongly suggest that you install both of them on your computer. I know that some of you have had some frustrations with NeoOffice crashing repeatedly. Maybe that's when you could give OOo a try... I have been using NeoOffice (and OOo on my Linux computer) for many years now, and I'm now more fluent in these free and open source office suites than with the proprietary Microsoft Office suite. I encourage each of you to make the switch from Microsoft Office. In a long run the school will be moving towards using more and more free and open source software. We should all start making baby steps now...

Links:

OpenOffice,
<http://openoffice.org>
NeoOffice,
<http://neooffice.org>
nnforums, OpenOffice vs. NeoOffice,
<http://forums.macnn.com/82/applications/380482/openoffice-vs-neooffice/>
Download NeoOffice,
<http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/maindownload.php>
Download the lastest NeoOffice patch,
<http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/patch.php>
Download OOo,
<http://download.openoffice.org/index.html>

What do kids really do online...

2008-11-21T18:22:00.004+08:00

Finally, after three years of research involving 800 interviews and 5000 hours of online observations, a group of researchers from the University of California, the University of Southern California, and the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education have put together a taxonomy of how kids use the internet.

Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or playing video games. The researchers explain why youth find these activities compelling and important. The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression. These activities have captured teens’ attention because they provide avenues for extending social worlds, self-directed learning, and independence. [1]

Needless to say that the results will have tremendous value to 21st century educators such as those at HIS. They can be downloaded from the Digital Youth Research website [1] and are presented at three different levels of depths: a two-page summary, a 58-page summary white-paper, or as a full length html report.

The taxonomy of activities is divided into three main categories:

(1) Hanging out:

Most youth use online networks to extend the friendships that they navigate in the familiar contexts of school. [...] With these “friendship-driven” practices, youth are almost always associating with people they already know in their offline lives. [1]

(2) Messing Around:

A smaller number of youth also use the online world to explore interests and find information that goes beyond what they have access to at school or in their local community. Online groups enable youth to connect to peers who share specialized and niche interests of various kinds. [1]

(3) Geeking out

Contrary to popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged, although usually not driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn instead to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers. [...] Youth respect one another’s authority online,
and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed. [1]

I haven't read the full report yet, but research of this type is so important for the field of education, especially the type that we are doing here, that it should be on all of our top reading list...

Link

Digital Youth Research,
<http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/>

I don't know

2008-11-07T20:45:00.006+08:00

I always like to figure out in which of the four cells of this table my beliefs fall:

There's stuff...

...I know that I know	...I know that I don't know
...I don't know that I know	...I don't know that I don't know

Doesn't this also apply to politicians and public figures? After reading this article from the BBC [1], it would seem not [insert sarcastic face here] Why that is is definitely something that I know I don't understand...

Richard Feynman was, in the world of physics, one of the greatest minds of the previous century. And yet, he said: "... I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and [there's] many things I don't know anything about ..." [2]

Isn't it ironic that such a brilliant mind, studying one of the most precise sciences, would be so aware of his own uncertainty, while regular folks, debating such complex fields as politics, psychology, or education, are so sure of themselves.

Why is that?

There's definitely something to be said for entertaining doubt...

In fact, in math 11, we have recently begun exploring ways to approximate statistical uncertainties. For example, by measuring the time it takes for a weight to slide down an inclined air track from 20 different distances, students found out that the acceleration due to gravity was (9.5 ±0.1) meters per second squared. Although the "answer" of 9.5 is interesting, the uncertainty of ±0.1 is extremely important. What's more, this uncertainty only describes random error and says nothing of the systematic errors that might have crept in the measurements... That's why there's even whole field of statistics devoted to the study of error analysis. [3]

Why are people so afraid of saying "I don't know"?

Links

BBC, Three Little Words So Hard To Say,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7711221.stm>
BBC Interview with Richard Feynman,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MmpUWEW6Is>
Wikipedia, Error Analysis,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis>

What is "time"?

2008-11-02T08:07:00.003+08:00

Is this a philosophical or scientific question?

Recently on Quirks and Quarks, science writer Dan Falk talked about his investigation of the question "what is time?" [1] Dan gives a nice overview of the problems, but doesn't go into many of the details, much to Bob's persistent questioning. A much more interesting interview about the subject was conducted by the same host, for the same show, seven years earlier.

In this older radio show [2], Bob interviewed four physicists about their various "theories" of time. Some of them are totally weird! This interview is definitely a must for anyone wishing for a little bit of totally useless brain wracking.

At that time, I was in my second year studying at Simon Fraser University, taking courses in physics, mathematics and one on metaphysics from the philosophy department. For my final paper [3], I had to try and answer the question: "What criterion defines two events as being the same?" The pure math and the physics I was learning, and the questions Bob raised in his interview all came colliding in what ended up being a very confusing musing of time... Fun though!

My next pondering: "What is the ontological status of nostalgia?"

Links

Quirks and Quarks, In Search of Time,
<http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/08-09/qq-2008-10-25.html#1>
Quirks and Quarks, It's About Time: Inside the Fourth Dimension,
<http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/01-02/sep0801.htm>
Patrick Truchon, The Identity of Events,
<http://secondary.hisdomain.hdis.hc.edu.tw/users/truchonp/misc/TheIdentityOfEvents.pdf>

How well does it fail?

2008-10-31T15:29:00.004+08:00

I changed my mind about my previous post [1], where I was so impressed about this (still pretty cool) electric motorcycle. Something I didn't ask myself at the time was: "how well does it fail?"

Of course, we're happy when things work the way they should. But we should always consider what happens when things go wrong. This cool motorcycle needs a small computer in order to stay balanced in the forward-backward directions. What would happen if the power suddenly shot off? In a split second, you'd find yourself falling head first at up to 60km/hr (or on your butt, if that's any better) For that reason alone, I think this type of transportation will never get approved...

This filter question can also be asked about other things. In fact, the first time I heard it asked explicitly was in an argument for Wikipedia. In one of his talks [2], Cory Doctorow was comparing Wikipedia to the Britannica, saying that although Wikipedia is not perfect, compared to the Britannica, "it fails beautifully". The fact that Wikipedia keeps a history the changes made to its pages provides as much information about a topic, if not more, than the current version of the "truth" being displayed...

In an unexpected turn of event, this post will end with a short announcement:

Wikipedia has put together a downloadable "DVD" of its best educational articles, after reviewing and polishing them. The result is "Schools-Wikipedia" [3] I put a copy of it on our server for internal browsing or copying. [4]

Links
Patrick Truchon, Futuristic Electric Transportation,
<http://his-truchonp.blogspot.com/2008/04/futuristic-electric-transportation.html>
Internet Archive, The Totalitarian Urge
<http://www.archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_The_Totalitarian_Urge>
Schools-Wikipedia,
<http://schools-wikipedia.org/>
HIS Wiki, Student Corner
<http://secondary.hisdomain.hdis.hc.edu.tw/wiki/doku.php?id=student:home>

"Organized" cycling...

2008-10-13T22:12:00.002+08:00

In England formal demonstrations have to be notified to the police in advanced. Are 400 cyclists getting together every last Friday of the month to cycle across a bridge part of a demonstration? That's what the highest court in England will have to decide next week... [1]

Anyone seen V is for Vendetta ? [2]

Links

BBC, When is a demo, not a demo,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7667183.stm>
Wikipedia, V is for Vendetta,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_is_for_Vendetta>

Carbon Pricing...

2008-09-29T09:57:00.002+08:00

This weekend, Bob McDonald, host of the excellent science show Quirks and Quarks, [1] interviewed top environmental economists about their solution to reducing green house emission: "carbon pricing". [2]

The idea of carbon pricing is simple enough: put a price on emissions. A carbon tax, or a cap and trade are two examples of this, but they're not the only ones. What's important is that the focus be on emissions not on the energy source. An example of why this focus is important is with the price of oil. As oil gets more expensive (because of scarcity, not because of taxation), we might think that people will use less of it, but because the focus is not on the emissions:

"We shouldn't assume that high oil prices solve this problem [...] [because] on the supply side, we're making more investment to get coal, oil sands, [etc] that we can use to make gasoline [...] So if you don't price emissions, rising oil prices can actually lead to rising emissions."

They also discuss other ideas like the pros and cons of regulation vs pricing, whether we should focus on changing people's behaviour (like driving) or changing the technology we use (like using clean cars), and what this will mean to a country's international competitiveness.

All in all, this interview is an excellent primer for anyone wanting a glimpse at big picture solutions. Especially for Canada, in view of the up-coming federal elections...

Links:

CBC Radio 1: Quirks and Quarks,
<http://www.cbc.ca/quirks>
Quirks and Quarks Podcast: Carbon Pricing,
<http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/quirks_20080927_7842.mp3>

Another Typhoon (UPDATE)

2008-09-28T00:07:00.002+08:00

Typhoon Hagupit [1] passed south of Taiwan and reached HongKong today at about Category 4. Except for a windy day, we didn't really feel it in the north of Taiwan.

About one week behind, Typhoon Nineteen [2] is projected to follow the same path, only it should be a bit closer to Taiwan, and stronger. I really hope this one does turn north. Category 4 is scary!

UPDATE:

Well, it seems that "Nineteen" is now called "Jangmi" and that it will pass right through Taiwan (very close to where I live) at category 4 and turn towards Japan as a tropical storm. Here's where it should be in 24 hours: [2]
Red is supposed to evoke fear, but this satellite video of the past 24 hours does a much better job at it I find. Notice how big the eye of the storm grows to be!

JangMi for the past 24 hours [3]

Links:

Tropical Storm Risk, Hagupit
<http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/tracker/dynamic/200818W.html>
Tropical Storm Risk, JangMi
<http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/tracker/dynamic/200819W.html>
Japan Meteorological Agency,
<http://www.jma.go.jp/en/gms/index.html?area=1&element=0&mode=UTC>

Blast From the Past

2008-09-21T13:32:00.005+08:00

The Google search engine in November 1998 [1]

With web 2.0, everyone can write stuff on the internet now... But when we delete something from the internet (a blog post, a picture, etc) it's gone right?

Wrong!

I've been using the Internet Archive [2] to go back in time and search for old websites that are now "gone". I found an old personal webpage I had made 5 years ago, I looked at what my old college website was like when I was studying there, I even found our HIS website three years ago [3].

Part of being a literate person in the 21st century is to understand that the internet is not only public in the sense of being accessible by everyone, but also in the sense that it is being recorded and archived. What we put on the internet today will be accessible by everyone, for as long as there is an internet.

I wonder what it will be like to be a historian in 300 years...

Links

Google back in time,
<http://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com>
Internet Archive,
<http://www.archive.org>
HIS website in 2005,
<http://web.archive.org/web/20051013074825/www.hdis.hc.edu.tw/html/main.html>

Little Brother

2008-09-20T14:09:00.005+08:00

I finally just finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. [1] I'm really happy to finally be done with it because I had a really tough time putting it down: "just another chapter and I'll go to bed", I promised myself repeatedly on the same night. Finally I'll be getting more sleep again! ^_^

Little Brother is modern dystopian story with themes similar to those of Orwell's 1984. The setting, however is present day San-Fransisco. Like 1984, the government goes all surveillance freak on the population. Unlike 1984, the events leading to this extremism are extremely plausible, and the technology used to achieve it already exists.

Appart from being an excellent story, Cory, through the main character (a 17-year old highschool senior), teaches us about really cool stuff like cryptography, security, and the internet in general. Its thesis, that security is the opposite of secrecy, is extremely well developped. This is the kind of books I wished I had read when I was 15 years old, but very much enjoyed (and will probably read again) at 30...

What's more, Cory's book is available for free in e-book form from his website. [1] Cory also organized a project for people to donate books to schools. [2] I signed us up: scroll to the bottom of that page to see our school there.

Links

Cory Doctorow: Little Brother,
<http://craphound.com/littlebrother/>
Cory Doctorow: Little Brother's donation page
<http://craphound.com/littlebrother/donate/>

Ebooks, Information Economy, and Education

2008-09-14T15:30:00.009+08:00

Last Wednesday morning, I woke up and spent my regular 30 minutes of blog perusing, which lead me to downloading Cory Doctorow's latest book, Content [1], an anthology of essays. I'm a little less than halfway through it now, but some of the essays were filled with such important ideas that I had to write about them now.

First though, I little bit about the author, blogger, thinker, futurist and activist Cory Doctorow, and how I came to know about him. I don't remember when I discovered Boingboing.net [2], which he co-edits, but I know that I've been reading it every morning that I have had internet access ever since. The first time I heard him "live" was last year when I listened to a recording of his talk, "The Totalitarian Urge: total information awareness and the cosmic billiards", that he gave at my university [3]. Cory is one of the few people who understands the link between technology and society. Of course, he is a nerd (many sigmas away from the mean), but a terrifically eloquent and socially apt one.

Ever since last year, I've been thinking really hard about the "ebook problem". This problem is particularly important for us at HIS because we are trying to pave the way to 21st century learning, and books, in one form or another, are a big part of that learning... The way I see it, the problem is two fold: Most people today still prefer to read "real" books, which is good because it means that authors can still get paid for their work the old fashion way. This is one of the reasons why Cory allows us to download and copy most of his books right from his website [4] (which I've recompiled into one easily downloadable zip file [5]). Indeed, he says that:

"A [science fiction] writer's biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn't know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version. " [1]

This, however, is bound to change. As ebook readers become more convenient and enjoyable to read, the desire for printed books will probably decrease substantially. I have to admit that I personally find it more convenient to read plain text off my Cowon A3 [6] than off a printed book, and definitely much more convenient than off my computer screen. I really like reading novels on my hand held device because it is small, I can adjust the text colour and lighting, I can hold it in weird angles without worrying about the pages flipping, etc. For all those advantages, however, I would still prefer being able to write my penciled notes in the margins of a more difficult piece of philosophical or mathematical writing... But as I was saying, with new technology, these last practical problems will probably get solved. Which will lead to the second fold of the problem...

Here the word "problem" should come with a connotation that "there's something to be solved", not that "there's something to be avoided". Cory describes it as such:

"An "information economy" can't be based on selling information. Information technology makes copying information easier and easier. The more [information technology] you have, the less control you have over the bits you send out into the world. It will never, ever, EVER get any harder to copy information from here on in. The information economy is about selling everything except information. "[1]

To illustrate this "problem", he uses the music industry as an example: When radio and records were invented, live performers who had charisma but not much musical talent lost their economic edge. The environment changed, and in a kind of Darwinian sense, the musician population changed with it. We didn't loose music, we only got different kinds of musicians. Today, Cory is suggesting that access to "free" music through P2P networks is triggering a new change (which ironically, is taking us back full circle). Many musicians now give their music for free so that they may get better known, so that when they give a live performance people will pay to see them. Jonathan Coulton [7] is a great example of this. In essence, what Cory is advocating for is the development of a new business model that takes into account the fact that digital media inherently asks to be copied and shared. He doesn't have a clear idea of the details of that business model, but in his "Microsoft Research DRM Talk" [1], he makes a compelling case as to why anti-copying measures cannot, in principle, be part of it.

This is important for us at HIS, because as we are investigating new ways of using ebooks, we have to think about the kind of technology that we want to invest in. In particular, we should really investigate the Kindle more critically since it is crippled with many such anti-copying measures. Cory wrote a short essay about Amazon, which I recopy in its entirety here. It is definitely a must read!

"Let me start by saying that I love Amazon. I buy everything from books to clothes to electronics to medication to food to batteries to toys to furniture to baby supplies from the company. I once even bought an ironing board on Amazon. No company can top them for ease of use or for respecting consumer rights when it comes to refunds, ensuring satisfaction, and taking good care of loyal customers.

As a novelist, I couldn't be happier about Amazon's existence. Not only does Amazon have a set of superb recommendation tools that help me sell books, but it also has an affiliate program that lets me get up to 8.5% in commissions for sales of my books through the site - nearly doubling my royalty rate.

As a consumer advocate and activist, I'm delighted by almost every public policy initiative from Amazon. When the Author's Guild tried to get Amazon to curtail its used-book market, the company refused to back down. Founder Jeff Bezos (who is a friend of mine) even wrote, "when someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this."

More recently, Amazon stood up to the US government, who'd gone on an illegal fishing expedition for terrorists (TERRORISTS! TERRORISTS! TERRORISTS!) and asked Amazon to turn over the purchasing history of 24,000 Amazon customers. The company spent a fortune fighting for our rights, and won.

It also has a well-deserved reputation for taking care over copyright "takedown" notices for the material that its customers post on its site, discarding ridiculous claims rather than blindly acting on every single notice, no matter how frivolous.

But for all that, it has to be said: Whenever Amazon tries to sell a digital download, it turns into one of the dumbest companies on the web.

Take the Kindle, the $400 handheld ebook reader that Amazon shipped recently, to vast, ringing indifference.

The device is cute enough - in a clumsy, overpriced, generation-one kind of way - but the early adopter community recoiled in horror at the terms of service and anti-copying technology that infected it. Ebooks that you buy through the Kindle can't be lent or resold (remember, "when someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book...Everyone understands this.")

Mark Pilgrim's "The Future of Reading" enumerates five other Kindle showstoppers: Amazon can change your ebooks without notifying you or getting your permission; and if you violate any of the "agreement", it can delete your ebooks, even if you've paid for them, and you get no appeal.

It's not just the Kindle, either. Amazon Unbox, the semi-abortive video download service, shipped with terms of service that included your granting permission for Amazon to install any software on your computer, to spy on you, to delete your videos, to delete any other file on your hard drive, to deny you access to your movies if you lose them in a crash. This comes from the company that will cheerfully ship you a replacement DVD if you email them and tell them that the one you just bought never turned up in the post.

Even Amazon's much-vaunted MP3 store comes with terms of service that prevent lending and reselling.

I am mystified by this. Amazon is the kind of company that every etailer should study and copy - the gold standard for e-commerce. You'd think that if there was any company that would intuitively get the web, it would be Amazon.

What's more, this is a company that stands up to rightsholder groups, publishers and the US government - but only when it comes to physical goods. Why is it that whenever a digital sale is in the offing, Amazon rolls over on its back and wets itself?"[1]

If anything, I think this article demonstrates that the blueprints of an "information economy" is still in its infancy. Many models are being tested and bugs are being exposed. As a school on the forefront of 21st century learning, we not only have to be brave while walking these uncharted territories, but we must also be careful. There are many ways to gain free (and legal) access to ebooks, and more and more ways to read them more and more comfortably. We should explore as many options as possible judging them not only by their short term convenience, but also by their ethics and long term sustainability.

Links

Cory Doctorow, Content,
<http://craphound.com/content>
BoingBoing.net,
<http://boingboing.net>
Internet Archive, The Totalitarian Urge
<http://www.archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_The_
Totalitarian_Urge>
Craphound,
<http://craphound.com>
Patrick Truchon's Compilation of Cory Doctorow's ebooks,
<http://secondary.hisdomain.hdis.hc.edu.tw/users/truchonp/
misc/CoryDoctorow.zip>
Wikipedia: Cowon A3,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowon_A3#Cowon_A3>
Jonathan Coulton,
<http://www.jonathancoulton.com>

Why????

2008-09-06T09:53:00.007+08:00

In this TED talk, Jonathan Drori asks science questions that everyone should understand, but that most don't: [1]

A little seed weighs next to nothing but a tree weighs a lot. From where does the tree get the stuff that makes up a wooden desk?
Can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery, a bulb and one piece of wire?
Why is it hotter in summer than in winter?
Could you scribble a plan diagram of the solar system showing the shape of the planet's orbits?

---

---

Spoiler warning: Don't read the rest if you don't want the answer to the first question.

Jonathan mentions that failure to understand where trees get the stuff their made of has deep environmental implications. I totally agree with him! As he rightly explains, the carbon that trees are made of is extracted from the air, not the ground. That's one of the points of photosynthesis [2]: during the day, trees use sunlight to convert CO2 from the air into more complex carbohydrates [3] like cellulose [4].

Jonathan, however, doesn't really talk about why understanding this idea is extremely important. It's not so much because it helps us realize that trees "purify" the air, but quite the opposite! Trees, to a large extent, can NOT help us get rid of the CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere... [5], [6]

The basic physics concept here is "conservation of mass", in particular, conservation of carbon atoms. Imagine that you could track all the carbon atoms on this planet. A lot of them would be in living things, some of them would be in the atmosphere (as CO2) and some more would be buried deep down into the grounds as oil. Let's track a few that are in the atmosphere to see what happens to them:

They might get trapped by a tree, and converted into wood
Eventually the tree dies, falls in the forest where no-one is there to hear (so does it make a sound?), and then what?
It rots! It gets eaten by bacteria, and eventually, most of the wood is decomposed back into CO2, released into the atmosphere. Again.
Some of the carbon atoms might start sinking into the ground where they will be crushed into becoming oil... Very, very slowly. But most, goes back into the atmosphere...

The basic idea is that trees use CO2 from the atmosphere when they grow, but release most of it back when they die and rot. We are pumping oil from the Earth at a much faster rate than is returned there by natural processes. And planting trees really doesn't speed up that process...

Who would have thought that a simple question like "where does the wood in the trees come from?" could be so essential and cover so many deep scientific concepts... Talk about an "essential question"!

Links

TED Talks: Jonathan Drori: Why we don't understand as much as we think we do, <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_drori_on_what_we_think_we_know.html>
Wikipedia: Photosynthesis,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis>
Wikipedia: Carbohydrate,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate>
Wikipedia: Cellulose,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose>
CBC: Quirks and Quarks,
<http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2005-2006/mp3/qq-2005-12-03f.mp3>
CBC: Quirks and Quarks,
<http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/05-06/dec03.html>

Children Teaching Themselves...

2008-08-28T22:24:00.004+08:00

After seeing how children can teach themselves to use computers with absolutely no adult guidance, Sugata Mitra reaches two main conclusions:

Values are acquired, doctrine and dogma are imposed
Learning is a self-organizing system.

Personally, I question the extent to which the last one is true. Although learning, on a global scale is self-organizing (if we assume that no Aliens came to teach us anything and that we figured it out ourselves), I wonder how true it becomes with "smaller" groups.

One commenter wrote: "Wow, kids will play with a computer. Astonishing [...] When they teach themselves AP Physics I'll be impressed ..." [1]. I think this comment expresses the obvious idea that some things can be discovered by a single person in one life time, while other things are the culmination of generations of thinkers who built on past ideas.

Of course, the problem is to find better ways to help the new generation learn from the previous one...

Link

TED Talks, Sugata Mitra: Can Kids Teach Themselves? <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html>

Proprietary Software Issue in Government.

2008-08-28T07:31:00.004+08:00

It seems individuals and schools are not the only one struggling with migrating to free and open source software. The Quebec government is being sued for not even considering this migration...

"[T]he provincial government, as well as its federal counterpart, is woefully behind the rest of the world in terms of adopting open-source software in the public sector. Governments around the world are looking to lower their costs and reliance on specific software makers. France, for example, migrated more than 400,000 public-sector employees to open-source software in 2006, while the Netherlands recently banned the use of proprietary products in government." [1]

Links

CBC News, Quebec government sued for buying Microsoft Software, <http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/08/27/tech-quebec.html>

Computer Use and Brain Development

2008-08-16T09:08:00.003+08:00

It is definitively easy to see the good side of technology. With computers and the internet, easy access to information, and the increased ability to share and collaborate with others are obvious advantages that we would find difficult to do without nowadays.

However, neuroscientist Baroness Greenfield has some good comments and questions as to the long term effect of computer use on brain development.

"The technology is creating an environment that is answer rich, but we're question poor" [1]

"[C]ould it be if a small child is sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons and getting reactions quickly for many hours, they get used to and their brains get used to rapid responses?" [1]

Links

BBC NEWS, Is Computer Use Changing Children, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7564152.stm>

Appeal to Authority

2008-06-18T22:05:00.002+08:00

From Wikipedia:

"An appeal to authority or argument by authority is a type of argument in logic consisting on basing the truth value of an assertion on the authority, knowledge, expertise, or position of the person asserting it. It is also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge, but a fallacy in regard to logic, because the validity of a claim does not follow from the credibility of the source." [1]

This is basically saying that if you hope to learn something, your best bet is to listen to someone who is supposed to know what they're talking about. But it's still a "bet", and of course, anybody can be wrong...

So here's an exercise: Do you think that we currently have the technology to switch to electric cars? According to this article [2] (who appealed to the expert opinion of physics professor Normand Mousseau) we don't.

But what about the EV1, a fully electric car designed by GM in the late 1990's [3] Apparently, the costumers were very happy with them...

So which "authority" are you to believe?

References:

Wikipedia: Appeal to Authority <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority>
CBC: Quebec tests electric cars <http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/17/qc-quebecelectriccar0617.html>
Wikipedia: General Motor's EV1 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1>

Free Software (Next Part??)

2008-06-10T00:34:00.005+08:00

What Happened

I was planing to write "Free Software (Part 3b)" last weekend, but a few reasons conspired to make me reschedule it until the end of school:

Lack of time last weekend: I spent both days dragon boat racing, re-hydrating, eating, sleeping, and not much of anything else...
Lowered priority: Since the topic was going to be about using a GNU/Linux system, which we are really not ready to do, I decided to use my time doing other more urgent (but not more important) things.
New, more relevant ideas: I also started reading a new book, which I think is more relevant to our current situation. As such, I want to spend my free time reflecting on that first. Below is a few quotes from the introduction.

The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop it.

About the author:

"Jonathan Zittrain is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, and co-founder of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society."[1]

In the introduction, Zittrain contrasts the two "revolutions" brought about by Steeve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. The first, in 1977, was when he introduced the Apple II, the first mass produced microcomputer. The second, in 2007, was when he introduced the iPhone.

"The Apple II was quintessentially generative technology. It was a platform. It invited people to tinker with it. Hobbyists wrote programs. Businesses began to plan on selling software. Jobs (and Apple) had no clue how the machine would be used. They had their hunches, but, fortunately for them, nothing constrained the PC to the hunches of the founders. (...) The Apple II was designed for surprises.

(...)

The iPhone is the opposite. It is sterile. Rather than a platform that invites innovation, the iPhone comes preprogrammed. (...) Its functionality is locked in, though Apple can change it through remote updates. (...) The machine was not to be generative beyond the innovations that Apple (...) wanted. Whereas the world would innovate for the Apple II, only Apple would innovate for the iPhone." [2; p. 2]

This idea, that technology can be used to either foster or suppress creativity, is also paralleled in Web 2.0. This is particularly important for us, in education, because we value the collaborative potential that this new internet offers us. However, Zittrain warns that we must be highly critical of these new tools. Not every new web application empowers the user.

"[I]nformation appliances and Web 2.0 platforms like today’s Facebook apps and Google Maps mash-ups [...] are not just products but also services, watched and updated according to the constant dictates of their makers and those who can pressure them." [2; p. 5]

Back to GNU/Linux

Of course, all of these issues are intimately tied in together. I plan to come back an finish my "Free Software" trilogy (in four parts) soon. Whether before or after posting my upcoming reflections on Zittrain's book I'm not sure though...

References

Homepage <http://futureoftheinternet.org>
Zittrain, Johnathan. The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It <http://futureoftheinternet.org/static/
ZittrainTheFutureoftheInternet.pdf>

Free Software (Part 3a: New Apps)

2008-06-01T09:21:00.008+08:00

<< Part 2

Introduction

Last week, I explained that schools have special reasons to use free software:

Free software generally costs less than proprietary software
Free software and free file formats have better interoperability
Free software promotes the spirit open inquiry
Free software promotes ethical and social responsibility

I also introduced two ways in which I believe we can be addicted to proprietary software:

We are "psychologically" addicted because learning to use different software (even if better) is time consuming, potentially boring, and inefficient (in a short term), so we tend to resist change.
We are also "physically" addicted because a lot of the work that we've produced over the years might be saved in proprietary file formats that are inaccessible by free software. This creates a situation called "vendor lock-in" [1], where costumers don't have a choice but to keep buying a specific product if they want to continue having access to their own work. For example, documents saved in Apple Pages format won't open in Open Office (or in Microsoft Word for that matter). Thus switching to a completely free system may deny us access to our own archived work. It's important not to confuse "free format" with "free software", but both issues are intimately related in their philosophy.

This week, I'd like to present some of my own ideas on how to make the switch from proprietary to free software, and outline some of the steps to break the addiction. These ideas are based mostly on my own personal experience with being a Microsoft Windows user for almost 10 years, before switching to Apple for a few years, and then to GNU/Linux (for my personal computing) two years ago. I will describe the first two (of four) steps that I think should be followed to make the transition less painful. Although I think they should be followed in roughly this order, overlap between them is natural. They are:

Converting files to free formats using our current operating system and software.
Using free software alternatives that are (as much as possible) cross-platform and discontinuing proprietary software on our current operating system.
Switching to a GNU/Linux Operating System (with non-free drivers if needed) and using some of the same cross-platform applications as in Step 2.
Buying new hardware that supports free drivers, firmware, and file format.

You will notice that this specific order helps ensure that the “psychological” aspect and the “physical” aspect of the addiction are not experienced at the same time too much.

Step 1: Converting File Format

The first step should be to convert all our important files into an open file format [2] so that we can access them easily using free software. It is worth noting that although proprietary software usually use their own proprietary file formats (such as DOC for Microsoft Word), they sometimes use open and free formats as well. HTML, for example, is a free format that many proprietary software (such as Microsoft Explorer, or Apple Safari) use.

Although I believe that breaking the "physical" aspect of the addiction is much more labour intensive than breaking the "psychological" one, the former seems to feel less daunting than the latter so it should be done first. Below are a few examples of what the job might entail.

Office Documents:

One of the ways to convert our office documents to open formats is to use the original program (Microsoft Office or Apple iWork) to open our files and then “save as” (or “export”) to an OpenDocument file format. [3] For example:

Text files should be saved as either ODT or RTF files instead of DOC or PAGES files.
Spreadsheets should be saved as ODS or CSV files as opposed to XLS or NUMBERS.
Presentations should be save as ODP or PDF files instead of PPT or KEYNOTE files.

One of the problems we will encounter is that heavy formating may not convert well. Thus, when the fancy appearance of a document is crucial, we should also exported it as a PDF file first. This ensures that it will continue to be printable and viewable exactly as we intended. It will not be editable, however.

Most of the time, the conversion can be done using the original proprietary software. In some cases, though, it may also be useful to use a special conversion software [4] or the free software alternative (such as OpenOffice [5][6]), which can sometimes (but not always) open proprietary format files. Obviously, new files should be saved as an OpenDocument file format directly, so that after enough of the old files have been converted, we can begin Step 2 of the liberation process.

Incidentally, there is also a new habit that we should develop to help others: We should never attach proprietary-formatted files such as DOC (MS Word) or PPT (MS Powerpoint) to our emails since doing this implies that the recipient should buy a copy of the software. Instead, we should email free-formatted files or their PDF output since these can be open by free software and proprietary software alike, thus giving our audience complete freedom. [7]

Multimedia Files

Converting multimedia files can be more tricky, because there are more choices. Because it is difficult to make a (wise) choice without understanding the situation, I'll begin by giving a (hopefully) brief explanation of the different formats available. Beware: it is quite a messy situation!

Let's start with sound files. There are three different types of sound file formats: [8]

Uncompressed: The data is stored in a way that is directly readable without trying to organize it in a way that is more compact. This is how traditional CD's store data, which explains why only about 15 songs can be stored on a 700MB CD. Most uncompressed formats (like WAV for Windows and AIFF for Apple) are free.
Lossless Compression: The data is reorganized to save space, and the quality is preserved entirely. This is analogous to “zipping” a file. A good, free lossless compression codec is FLAC. [9]
Lossy Compression: The quality is degraded somewhat in order to compress the file even more. The most popular lossy compressed formats (like WMA and MP3) are proprietary. An excellent lossy compression algorithm is OGG Vorbis. [10]

Going off in a bit of a tangent, I found a pretty cool section on Wikipedia that "explains" how OGG Vorbis works (sort of):

“Vorbis uses the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) for converting sound data from the time domain to the frequency domain. The resulting frequency-domain data is broken into noise floor and residue components, and then quantized and entropy coded using a codebook-based vector quantization algorithm.” [11]

Doesn't this just make you want to learn more math? I mean, pure cosine waves are pretty cool to start with. Now imagine playing with a “modified discrete cosine transform” to covert stuff from the “time domain to the frequency domain” and using a "codebook-based vector quantization algorithm" ... Wow!

Anyway, back to the issue of converting our audio files... We'll be faced with two problems: The first one is that every time a file is converted from a lossy format to another lossy format, the quality degrades. So, although converting our entire MP3 collection into OGG Vorbis is possible without too much trouble, our music will suffer some loss in quality. If we are about to compress audio files for the first time however, then we only have to worry about the second problem, which has to do with hardware.

Indeed, here's a preview of Step 4: not all portable music players can play OGG Vorbis files. Some can, but iPods, for example, can't. That's why it's important to choose good hardware...

For videos, it's an even messier business. There are so many proprietary compression algorithms; it's ridiculous. Fortunately, the free software movement suggests using only one format: The OGG [12] is the container format for the following codecs:

Vorbis for lossy music
FLAC for lossless music
Speex for speech
Theora for video

This is true unification of digital multimedia!

There's a good section on our school documentation wiki about codecs [14]. It's targeted at Mac users, but Windows users will also find a lot of relevant information (and GNU/Linux users don't really have to worry about this anyways).

In General

Although office and multimedia files are probably the most obvious and numerous files we'll need to convert, the list of file formats is much too long to be addressed separately, and so a general awareness of the problems should be kept in mind. Every time we are tempted to use a new piece of software, we should make sure that its product can be saved in an open file format. A program that only saves its product into a secret format enslaves us. [1] A program that saves its output to a free format gives us the freedom to use a different program if we wish to.

Step 2: Using Free Software on our Current OS

Now that most (but not all) of the hard work of converting our files is done, it's time to (gradually) start facing our “psychological” addiction and begin using more and more free software alternatives, more and more often, even if it seems (at first) more complicated. I am definitively not advocating going cold turkey and switching to a completely free system all at once. Although some might find this a fun challenge, I'm guessing that most would probably find it much too frustrating. We will thus make small steps in the right direction instead of attempting a giant leap forward.

A good place to start, then, is with the OpenOffice suite. I find OpenOffice [5] (and its OS X port NeoOffice [6]) to be very similar to MS Office 2004 (but not 2007) and to handle most tasks just as efficiently. Of course, the tool bars are organized slightly differently, which is slightly annoying, but it's easy to get used to. I suggest installing this software very early on and to start using it gradually until you find yourself barely using the other office suite. When the going gets tough and we want to go back to our level of comfort, we must remember why we're doing this: We are trying to break our addiction to software that has “secret” inner workings, and that saves our work in a format that they control. And finally, when you feel brave enough, go ahead and delete your other office suite... It'll feel good, trust me.

Our school's documentation wiki has a pretty good list of free (and not so free) programs. You'll be able to see which platform they run on, and whether they are free, or proprietary. [13]

Next...

Next, I had planned on addressing the next two steps in transitioning to a completely free system. Although these are, in my opinion, the most exciting steps to take, they are probably the furthest away. Even if these final steps cannot be taken for months, even years, all the work done above still pays off so let's not get discouraged by the enormity of the task a head. We may indeed decide that some freedom is better than no freedom at all, and that complete freedom is too unpractical for the time being. Freedom is not a black and white concept, and every step in the right direction takes us closer to an asymptotic ideal we may never completely achieve in practice.

Never the less, I would like to discuss using the GNU/Linux operating system on current hardware (which may require non-free firmware), and then buying only hardware that supports free software to achieve nearly perfect freedom.

Update (Sept 18, 2009):

More than a year after I orginially wrote this series of blog posts, I'm finally getting around to finishing it. I'm hoping to be done in a few weeks... I'll add a link to the next post when it's ready.

References

Wikipedia: Vendor Lock-in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in>
Wikipedia: Free File Format
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_file_format>
OpenDocument Fellowship
<http://opendocumentfellowship.com>
OpenDocument Fellowship: Conversion Software
<http://opendocumentfellowship.com/applications#convert>
Open Office
<http://www.openoffice.org>
Neo Office
<http://www.neooffice.org>
Richard Stallman, "We Can Put an End to Word Attachments"
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html>
Wikipedia: Audio File Format
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_file_format>
FLAC
<http://flac.sourceforge.net>
OGG Vorbit
<http://www.vorbis.com>
Wikipedia: Vorbis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis>
The Xiph.org foundation
<http://www.xiph.org>
HIS Documentation Wiki, Software List
<http://secondary.hisdomain.hdis.hc.edu.tw/wiki/doku.php?id=documentation:students:os_x:software >
HIS Documentation Wiki, OS X: Codecs <http://secondary.hisdomain.hdis.hc.edu.tw/wiki/doku.php?id=documentation:students:os_x#codecs>

Paradox of Choice

2008-05-29T17:26:00.002+08:00

A few years ago, I listened to an interview of Barry Schwartz on Quirks and Quarks [1] about the main thesis in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. I was blown away by the simple, yet extremely powerful idea that happiness and choice are not related in a monotonic fashion. In other words, more choices does not lead to more happiness. Later, I watched his talk on TED [2] about the topic and understood his point a little bit more deeply. Just now, I finished watching another one of his talks, this time at Google [3], and again I was fascinated by his ideas and their applications.

Here are a few quotes that I transcribed from the Google Talk:

Speaking about the idea that when we have too much choice we do better, yet feel worse, Schwartz applies this to the feeling of not having enough time. He argues that it's not all the things we have to do (on our to-do list) that creates that feeling, so much as all the things that we desire to do:

"What really seems to create a sense that there's not enough time is all the things that we want to do and would like to do that we don't have time to do and that we're gonna have to make choices upon."[3]

He also applies his ideas to the various "default options" that we should be faced with.

"In a world where people are more and more likely (because of the overwhelming number of choices they face and the complexity of life) to do nothing, the most useful thing that policy can do is organize the space so that when they do nothing, good things happen"[3]

I don't want to add to your unhappiness by giving you too many choices, so instead I'll say that you should listen/watch ALL of the clips below (and in order)! ;-)

Enjoy!

References:

Quirks and Quarks
<http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/03-04/may01.html>
TED
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/93>
Google Talk
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200>

Free Software (Part 2: In Schools)

2008-05-24T16:19:00.017+08:00

<< Part 1

Introduction

Last week [9], I outlined the definition and philosophy of free software, and explained parts of Richard Stallman's argument of why people who consider themselves contributing members of a good society should only use free software. I tried to emphasize that the issue is not about software or technology, but rather about people's freedom to cooperate with each other and make positive contributions to our society. It is a political and social issue, not so much a technological one.

Indeed, the term “free software” doesn't refer to the price of the software, but to the freedoms that people have to [1; p.20, pp.165-166]:

Run it, for any purpose.
Modify it to suit their needs.
Redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
Distribute modified versions for the benefit of the community.

Since last week, I finished reading Stallman's collection of essays “Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman” [1], and added a few references to my previous blog entry to help readers find more information more effectively. I also found other resources, such as the diagram at the beginning of this entry, which should help explain how various kinds of software relate to each other.

In a nutshell, a proprietary software has a claim of ownership made on it, where as a free software does not. A claim of authorship, however, can be made on a free software, since authorship does not violate any of the four necessary freedoms. [1; pp. 47-51]

This week I'll focus on the special reasons that schools have to use only free software. Some of these reasons were outlined by Stallman during his talk on May 15th [2], while others are my own extrapolations. When paraphrasing Stallman's ideas, I will cite from one of his online essays on the subject. [3]

Practical Reasons

First is the cost. Free software, in addition to giving the user more freedom, is generally... well... pretty inexpensive. Having the freedom to copy and install a piece of software on as many computers as needed, and to share it with other schools has tremendous financial benefits. [3] Although financial considerations might be considered pretty shallow by some, money saved by not buying proprietary software is money that is hopefully spent to enhance other aspects of the students' educational experience. The financial reason, however, is not the best reason since companies selling proprietary software often give their software to school free of charge (or at a discounted rate).

Accepting to use proprietary software under these conditions is dangerous in a short term (since companies may decide to charge for subsequent upgrades [3]), but there are also long term ethical problems with schools using proprietary software. The longer we encourage students to use proprietary software, the more addicted they become to it. I believe this addiction is both psychological and “physical” (although, not physiological). It is psychological because students become comfortable using the software and will most likely continue to use it after they graduate since that's the easiest thing to do. More importantly, however, the addiction is “physical” because if students' work is all saved in proprietary formats (such as doc, pages, mp3, etc), then it can be extremely tedious and time consuming to convert all this work into open formats and break the addiction. From Wikipedia:

“If the information is stored in a way which the user's software provider tries to keep secret, the user may own the information, but have no way to retrieve it except by using their software. If the user can't retrieve it but the software manufacturer can — they have practical control of the user's information. The fact that the user depends on a piece of software to retrieve the information stored in his/her proprietary format files gives almost guaranteed sales for future releases of that software, and is the basis for the vendor lock-in concept.” [4]

In contrast,

“The primary goal of open formats is to guarantee long-term access to data without current or future uncertainty with regard to legal rights or technical specification.” [5]

Stallman paints a grim dystopian picture of what using proprietary format might lead to:

“Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself. ” [1; p. 118]

Does that remind anyone of the movie “I, Robot”, when all the robots (except one) were getting “updates” from the central computer?

Educational Reasons

One of the reasons that Stallman gives is somewhat limited in scope, but none-the-less very valid. He writes: “When students reach their teens, some of them want to learn everything there is to know about their computer system and its software. That is the age when people who will be good programmers should learn it.” [3]

If a student comes and asks me how Garage Band works, I can only answer that I don't know and have no way of knowing (short of going to work for Apple). But if he or she asks me how Audacity [6] works (the software I used to edit the music for our musical), I can say: “I don't know, but let's go on their website, download the source code, study it, and find out...” Stallman argues that computer programmers become good programmers in the same way that writers become good writers: by reading and writing a lot (of computer code). [3]

The concept of free software is in direct alignment with the concept of learning by studying the work of others and expending on it. Contrasting this to proprietary software, Stallman writes: “In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software field.” [1; p. 128] This is probably a reference to Isacc Newton, who wrote in 1676: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” [7], thus inventing Calculus to solve orbital mechanics problems...

Philosophical Reasons

This last thought leads us to consider deeper reasons for using free software in schools. The very concept of learning demands that such information be free of access in the same way that mathematical algorithms (such as the Standard Deviation) should not only be computed by calculators, but studied explicitly. When we use proprietary software, we send an implicit message that such secrecy of automation should be the norm. It's akin to saying that it doesn't matter if we don't know how a mathematical algorithm works as long as the calculator can give us the answer somehow.

As educators, we want our students to become people of high character, to be critical thinkers, active learners, effective communicators, and community contributors. The final reason Stallman gives is, in my opinion, the most powerful as it relates to many of these five outcomes. Using free software allows our students the possibility of being real community contributors by writing code or documentation that is free for all to use and expend, or simply by promoting the use software and formats that are based on these values. These activities strengthen civic and moral leadership.[2]

Conclusion

We have a civic duty not to use proprietary software since it enslaves us. In a society that increasingly relies on the use of computer software, it becomes increasingly important that we be free to use it as we wish, free to modify it to suite our needs, free to share it with others to help them, and free to share our improvements with others. Our school system must be permeated with these values, and we must find the strength of character to do what's right, even if it's not the easiest.

The Next Step

Next week, I will be more pragmatic and outline a few ideas that I have to help us migrate into the free software world. It can't happen overnight, but I believe that steps in the right direction can be taken without too much difficulties (although it will be some work). Until then, if some of you are curious about the GNU/Linux system, you're welcome to come and it in action on my computer in 202...

Part 3a >>

References:

Stallman, Richard M. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, Boston, MA USA: GNU Press, 2002. <http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html>
Stallman, Richard M. Part of a talk given at Tsinghua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. May 15, 2008. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=V0MKGCBdNBk>
Stallman, Richard M. Why schools should exclusively use free software <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html>
Wikipedia: Proprietary format <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_format>
Wikipedia: Open format <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format>
Audacity <http://audacity.sourceforge.net>
Wikipedia: Isacc Newton <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton>
Diagram by Chao-Kuei. Available under the terms of any of the GNU GPL v2 or later, the GNU FDL v1.2 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike v2.0 or later. <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/category.jpg>
Truchon, Patrick, Free Software (Part 1: The Philosophy), <http://his-truchonp.blogspot.com/2008/05/free-software-reflections.html>
Truchon, Patrick, Free Software (Part 3a: New Apps), <http://his-truchonp.blogspot.com/2008/06/free-software-part-3a-new-apps.html>

Free Software (Part 1: The Philosophy)

2008-05-18T18:13:00.039+08:00

Preface

On May 13 2008, I had the chance and privilege to go hear Mr. Richard Stallman speak at TsingHua university. Over the following few months, this led me to research the issue of freedom and technology in more depth. During this time, I documented my findings in three blog posts, which I edited slightly a few times since.

At the end of each post, you will find a link to the next part, as well as a reference section where much more material can be found on the topic. I hope you find this summary useful, and I welcome your feedback and comments.

(last edited on Sept 18, 2009)

Update: (May 20, 2008)
Shortly after finishing this entry, I emailed Mr. Stallman to thank him for his talk and to ask him whether my interpretation of his ideas was correct. He emailed me back the next day saying that "aside from (...) two points, I think it is very good." [6] I've added these points in green in the text.

Introduction

This is the first of a three part blog entry about free software. I will begin here by describing the meaning of “free” in the context of software, and give a brief survey of the philosophy behind it. In part 2, I will summarize Richard Stallman's argument as to why using free software is particularly important in education. And finally, in part 3, I will propose concrete steps that we can take to migrate (if only partially) to using free software at our school.

One of the difficulties with discussing the concept of free software in English is that the word “free” has at least two meanings: free as in “free stuff” and free as in “freedom”. In French, for example, this ambiguity can be avoided easily by using the word gratuit for the first meaning, and libre for the second (in English, you can think of the words “gratis” and “liberty"). Here, it is the second meaning that is intended, and the phrase “free software” actually describes the freedom of the user, not the price of the software. Indeed, many pieces of freeware are gratuit but not libre, and it is possible to have to pay to acquire libre software. A lot of the time, however, software that is libre is also gratuit (but not necessarily).

Some Vocabulary

Although the important issue is related to ideas of freedom and ethics (and have little to do with programming in itself), familiarity with a few nerdy terms might be necessary to follow the argument. Here's a short list of terms that should help the less tech-savvy readers.

OS: Acronym for “Operating System”. An OS is the collection of programs that allows the user to interact with other programs. Examples are Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Unix, GNU/Linux, etc. You can think of the OS as the stage on which other programs are made visible for the user to interact with.

Unix: A powerful proprietary OS mostly used in academic circles and installed on servers.

Kernel: A program at the heart of the OS. The kernel allocates resources to other parts of the OS.

GNU: A free OS pioneered by Richard Stallman in 1983. Since most of the variants of the system today use the Linux kernel, such systems are called GNU/Linux. Unfortunately, the name “Linux” has come to be mistakenly used to refer to the whole system instead of just its kernel.[1; p. 50] The name "GNU" is a recursive acronym for “Gnu is Not Unix”. It refers to Unix because it was built to be its free, compatible alternative.

GNU GPL: The GNU General Public License is a “copyleft” license that gives everyone permission to run the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute modified versions without being allowed to add restrictions of their own. [1; p. 22]

Machine Code: Computer code made of 0's and 1's that computers use to perform tasks. This code can't usually be understood by programmers, except in very simple cases. The machine code (also called "binary program") is what people download and install on their computers. It doesn't contain human-readable instructions on what the program is actually doing. [1; p. 3]

Source Code: Code written in a programming language that is read (and written) by programmers. Source code also usually contains comments written in plain English that do not contain computer instructions, but instead explain the logic of the program so that other programmers can more easily understand it. Computers cannot execute source code directly, so it needs to be converted it into machine code first. [1; p. 3]

Compiler and Assembler: Computer programs whose task it is to convert source code written in a specific programming language, into machine code that the computer can read. [1; p. 3]

What is “free software”?

“Free software” doesn't refer to the price of the software, but the freedom that the user has in using the software. According to the GNU GPL definition, a software is free if and only if it satisfies the following four conditions (called “the four freedoms”). [1; p.20, 165-166]

You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is exceedingly difficult.)
You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.

All of these four freedoms are necessary for a software to be called "free", or else, loopholes appear in which it is possible for software developers to have unethical control over the users.

Why is free (libre) software important?

I think one of the difficulties that some people have with the idea of free software is that they don't see any problems with the source code of a program being kept secret. To help us understand why this is a problem, Stallman used the analogy of a recipe. Unfortunately, during his talk last week, I don't think he exploited this analogy as much as he could have. Thus, I expend his idea, hoping that it will help clarify the reason why it is important to use only free software.

Imagine that you have a very sophisticated robot-cook in your kitchen (for which you probably payed good money). In today's day and age, kitchens are not designed for humans anymore so you don't have access to it. Furthermore, the ingredients are being ordered by the robot, and delivered directly to your kitchen, so you don't know what these are either. When you want a meal, the only thing you can do is tell your robot what you want (with a few personalized options) and the robot downloads the required instructions for making your meal from an online database (downloads for which you may or many not have to pay). Here are the problems with this scheme.

First, because you can't understand the instructions (machine code) sent to your robot, you have to trust that the company who creates them is not trying to poison you. More realistically, companies would probably not want to kill their costumers (that would be a pretty bad business plan), but they might want to make their meals as delicious as they can (to be competitive) and cut corners, even if it means using some unhealthy chemicals to achieve this goal.

However, even assuming that you had complete trust in the company you use, there is still the possibility of honest mistakes, which you have no way of checking for yourself. For example, maybe one of the ingredients reacts badly with another, and no-one in the quality control team caught that. "Or maybe, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the recipe itself, but a few people are allergic to ingredients that would normally be harmless to others." [6] The point is that you have no freedom to check the ingredients and the recipe for yourself (or to ask your uncle's cousin's best friend who knows about stuff like that); and that's bad.

Consider the following alternative. When you want a meal, your robot accesses an online database similar to Wikipedia where users write their own recipes, hold discussions and debate about them, and extend each other's creative ideas. There are three obvious advantages to this scheme.

First, access to these recipes would probably be free (gratuit), but they wouldn't have to. Secondly, the quality of the resulting recipes would probably be better because they are written by the people, for the people. Indeed, the fact that the recipes are public ensures that only the best recipes survive scrutiny. Imagine someone proposing an alternate recipe that was less healthy. With such public scrutiny, the flaws would quickly be exposed, the recipe fixed, and the reputation of the “developer” tarnished. Thirdly, and most importantly, a database of free (libre) recipes gives you the freedom to think for yourself and to make real choices about what you want to eat.

To continue with this analogy, consider the following criticism: In this day and age (where robots cook for us), very few people actually know how to read, analyze, and write recipes anymore, so really, only an elite portion of the population has this increased freedom. To some level, this is true. Only a few people can really exercise the second and forth freedoms defined in the GNU GPL. However, while it is true that the average Joe can't really read recipes for himself, he still benefits from the peer review process under which recipes are subjected. As Aled justly pointed out during one of our conversations about this, the process is similar to that of scientific inquiry: Scientists propose hypotheses, form theories, devise experiments, and then subject their work to peer review; and the process starts over again with the next generation of ideas. All this time, less scientifically minded people benefit from the fruits of this open process.

The same goes for software. When only the machine code is given, only the programmer who wrote the code and the computer that executes it know what the program is really doing. The program might contain “evil” instructions to spy (spyware and viruses anyone?), or more charitably, honest mistakes (called "bugs"), but there's no way of telling. [1; p. 117] When the programing source code is also given, then public discussions are generated which ensures a high level of quality and ethical standards.

Another criticism of free software is that we should not be allowed to copy and share all software since it would destroy the economy of computer programs. The third freedom of the GPL is not saying that programmers can't get paid for their work. Indeed, they could still be commissioned to write custom-made programs for a particular users. As Stallman points out: “The free software philosophy rejects a specific widespread business practice, but it is not against business. When businesses respect the users’ freedom, we wish them success. ” [1; p. 24]

This leads, however, to a forth criticism that I heard yesterday when talking with a friend of mine about this: Nobody would ever go for such an idealistic scheme. Why would anyone want to spend time writing code (recipes or whatever) for free? Forcing companies to allow people to share their software freely will lead to the extinction of software used by normal people. Fortunately, we don't need to try to theorize about the depths of human psychology to answer this one. The truth is that people do. Wikipedia is one of the best known examples and the GNU/Linux project has now reached such a high level of maturity and user-friendliness that everyone can download and use a free system already.[2] It's already here and working! For some reason, people are contributing to this free knowledge. It's just a matter of actually using it. Why the resistance?

Why is free (gratuit) software dangerous?

Software that is only gratuit but not libre is dangerous because it creates addictions. Doing the right thing is usually not the easiest thing to do. Sometimes it is, but most of the times it requires more effort. The same goes for using free (libre) software.

Companies usually have ulterior motives in developing attractive, free (gratuit) software. For example, Apple's OS, though not free at all, could be argued to be easier to use than the free alternatives, but it is only allowed to run on Apple hardware. [5] Next thing you know, you not only want a MacBook, but also an iPod, an iPhone, and other iThings. Once you're fully equipped, you really have to hope that Apple continues to go in the direction you like, or else you your stuck. In addition to the long term problems that this creates, there are also serious short term problems: Software, and songs that are filled with DRM's [7] can't be used on other systems. Most songs bought though iTunes, for examples, can only be played on a restricted number of "authorized" computers. DRM's are one example that immediately restrict the user's freedom. [6]

The longer we use proprietary programs like Keynote, Pages, or Garage Band, the harder it becomes to convert our work and make the switch to a free system. I use Apple instead of Microsoft as an example because that's what we use at our school, and also because Microsoft is already heavily criticized by others anyway. Software that is gratuit but not libre usually fuels a corporate addiction that is difficult to break; Microsoft and Apple are no different in this respect.

Conclusion

Again, the essence of the issue is not about software, or programming, or even about technology. It is about preserving the freedom to know what we are using, and the intellectual freedom of discovering new and better ways of doing things. The same underlying philosophy applies to science, politics, and other areas of civic life. With technology, however, one of the biggest problems is that “interest in the software is growing faster than awareness of the philosophy it is based on.” [1; p. 31] This can lead to dangerous addictions that are hard to recognized and acknowledge, let alone dealt with.

Having realized that we now have the possibility of being free from proprietary software, one might feel excited and keen on switching to a free system, thinking that the only work left is to help free others. Unfortunately, there are still many ways in which free software is threatened. We always run the risk of losing the ability of running free software. One of these ways is if hardware manufacturers keep their specifications secret (such as hardware made for Microsoft Vista). Regular users should therefore pay special attention to buying only hardware that is supported by free software. [1; p. 28]

Another danger lies at the political level: The patenting of the ideas of what software can do. A patent is very different from a copyright. "Copyrights cover copying only (...) A patent is an absolute monopoly on using an idea." [1; p. 97] For example, the method for encoding and decoding mp3 files is patented and "in 1998, a free program to produce mp3 compressed audio was removed from distribution under threat of a patent suit." [1; p.30] In such cases, users need encourage new (free) ways of doing things (like using the OGG compression algorithm [3] instead of the MP3 algorithm [4]). We should also be politically active and push for proper use of patents. In fact, "an Australian government study of the patent system in the 1980’s (...) concluded that aside from international pressure, there was no reason to have a patent system—it did no good for the public—and recommended abolishing it." [1; p. 99]

"Switching to a free system" will be the subject of Part 3 of this blog entry. Before we get to that, however, Part 2 of this blog post will summarize Stallman's argument of why these ideas are particularly important for schools.

Please feel free to comment, ask questions, propose solutions, about anything you read here...

Part 2 >>

References:

Stallman, Richard M. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, Boston, MA USA: GNU Press, 2002. <http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html>
The Free Software Foundation Directory <http://directory.fsf.org/>
Vorbit <http://www.vorbis.com/>
Stallman, Richard M. Why Audio Format Matters. <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html>
Apple Hardware and Software Product Agreements <http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/>
Email from Richard Stallman received on May 20, 2008
DefectiveByDesign Home page <DefectiveByDesign.org>
Truchon, Patrick, Free Software (Part 2: In Schools), <http://his-truchonp.blogspot.com/2008/05/free-software-part-2-in-schools.html>

(Anti) Plagiarism Week...

2008-05-14T21:09:00.021+08:00

This week, we've been investigating the idea of plagiarism. What is it? Why is it bad? How can we avoid it? As we're discovering, none of these questions are easy to answer.

From what I understand, the degree to which an idea is "owned" by someone varies somewhat. Some ideas have put in their time and have earned their place in the "public domain", while others still live a very sheltered life and are completely proprietary. And then, naturally, there's everything in between... Indeed what is plagiarism depends on how much I "own" (and have internalized) an idea, which is kind of gray...

Thankfully, as we have also seen, there are plenty of resources to help us be safe and attribute the work of others properly. The OWL [1] is definitively a resource worth bookmarking somewhere... There's also a good article on Wikipedia [2] about citation that's full of links to other resources.

As such, I took on the task of going back through all my blog posts and cleaning up my citations. I based my citation style on how Wikipedia deals with them, but I'm not 100% sure that it's completely legitimate. I hope it is though because I find that this style also has the added advantage of allowing my posts to be copied and pasted without losing the links (since they are written explicitly), which is very nice...

Something else I just learnt: Wikipedia has a component called WikiCommons [3], which "is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files (...) in the public domain or released under free licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License." [4] In other words: here's a great source of images that can legally be used (as long as they are properly attributed).

So reading my blog, leave me a comment if you think I might have overlooked something and thus plagiarized!

Update (2008.05.15 7:35):
Doing more research, I found that I could improve the list of works cited at the end of my posts (which I've called "Links") by following the MLA formatting style for electronic resources as explained by The OWL at Purdue. [5] That'll be my next update...

Reference:

The Purdue Online Writing Lab. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 14 May 2008 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu>.
"Citation." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 14 May 2008. 14 May 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation>.
"Wiki Commons." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 14 May 2008. 14 May 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikicommons>.
Wikimedia Commons 6 May 2008. 14 May 2008 <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>
Stolley, Karl., et all. "Works Cited: Electronic Sources." The OWL at Purdue. 9 April 2008 Purdue University Writing Lab. 14 May 2008 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/09/>.
Ringkasan. Illustration for Cheating 14 May 2008 <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cheating.JPG>.

The founder of GNU/Linux coming to Hsinchu!

2008-05-13T13:20:00.019+08:00

Anyone free on Thursday between 7pm and 10pm?

Richard Stallman [1] launched the GNU/Linux project (incorrectly referred to as simply "Linux") in 1983. He was also the founder of the GPL [2] (a license used for Free Software). (Wikipedia, [3])

Well, guess what? He'll be giving a talk at Tsinghua university on Thursday! [4] I certainly won't be missing that... I'll find out more about it tonight, so if you're interested in coming, catch up with me tomorrow...

Update: I'll be at the Tsinghua main gate (off Guangfu rd. near Nova) at 6:30pm to meet anyone interested in coming. Then at 6:45pm (sharp!), we'll all walk together to the building. Sorry, but I don't actually know the name of the building; a friend of mine will be guiding me there...

Links:

Richard Stallman Homepage
http://www.stallman.org/
GNU GPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Richard Stallman on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
Free Software Foundation Events Page
http://www.fsf.org/events/20080515hsinchu
Picture of Richard Stallman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Portrait_-_Denmark_DTU_2007-3-31.jpg

The technology seems to be here...

2008-05-13T12:52:00.007+08:00

I just found a blog entirely devoted to the idea of energy efficiency [1]. The author reports tech news that give me great hope in the possibility that we might just be able to escape global disaster and mass extinction. If only the political will was there... But that's a topic in itself. Anyhow, reading this blog, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that the technology seems to be here!

Links:

Metaefficient: The optimal green guide
http://www.metaefficient.com/

_________ was here.

2008-05-13T05:32:00.001+08:00

I enjoy writing these entries because they allow me to reflect more deeply about the ideas I read. But I also like to think that I'm sharing these ideas with you. If you read this, please leave a comment on this post to let me know that you were here. It will make me happy! ^_^ Also feel free to contribute any of your own ideas by leaving comments where you see fit...

Cheers!
P. Truchon

Economy and Reproduction

2008-05-07T20:46:00.011+08:00

Cory Doctorow [1], co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing [2], wrote this very interesting article [3] comparing micro-economy to reproduction.

The gist of the idea is to first consider two different kinds of reproductive strategies. The one we use is expensive because it takes years to grow a few kids so we better make sure that they are successful. The one that dandelions use is cheap because they produce thousands of seeds that they carelessly send everywhere.

The analogy with economy starts here. If making copies of something is expensive (like printing books), then we want to adopt the first strategy and make sure that we get money for every copy sold. If, on the other end, making copies is cheap (like posting an ebook on a website), then we should adopt the second strategy and not care about who copies it and where copies lend...

Regardless of whether the analogy is faulty or not, the image is powerful, and the topic ties in really nicely with what I blogged about yesterday... It's kind of cool too to think that maybe (and this is my own extrapolation of Cory's ideas) our economic system is (unconsciously) motivated by our reproductive strategy (not in the Freudian sense I hope). Maybe that's why we find it so difficult to accept ideas of Open Source and Star Trek type utopias: we're not dandelions...

Links:

Craphound
http://craphound.com/
Boing Boing
http://boingboing.net/
Locus Online Article
http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/05/cory-doctorow-think-like-dandelion.html

Free as in "freedom", not as in "free stuff"

2008-05-06T21:45:00.006+08:00

I've edited this entry a couple times since I first posted it. In the beginning, I only wanted to write a little bit about Creative Commons [1], but I found myself backtracking a little bit into the history of the free (libre) content realm... None-the-less, I start with one of the most recent addition to the concept: the Creative Commons licensing. From their website:

Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." [1]

Larry Lessig, professor of law at Standard, is the founder and CEO of Creative Commons. [2] In 2007, he gave this excellent talk at TED [3] about how outdated copyright laws strangle the evolution of culture. Since I first found out about CC, I've noticed a lot of CC work on the internet.

Cory Doctorow [4] is an author who always gives electronic versions of his books, with the permission to share and remix them. The reason he does this is that "giving away ebooks gives [him] artistic, moral and commercial satisfaction" [5] It's easy to understand why anyone would get artistic and moral satisfaction from having people read their work, but "commercial satisfaction"? Read his short article to find out why he believes he makes more money by giving away his ebooks.

Johnathan Coulton [6] is "a former computer programmer and self-described geek, [who] tends to write quirky, witty, fanciful lyrics about a variety of topics such as science fiction and technology..." [7] Since his songs are licensed CC BY-NC [8], they are perfect for use in remix work and podcasts (as well as being plain ol' fun to listened to).

It's hard to speak about the idea of Creative Commons without thinking about Free (libre) Software, especially because the Free Software movement came first. Some computer programmers write software that can be downloaded for free (as in "free stuff"). But others go further and actually put the source code online and give permission to anyone to change it and improve it. In this case, "free" refers to the freedom that the user has, not to the price of the software. A good place to learn more about this is to read the GNU website [9]. The best example of all, however, is probably the most recent and popular offspring of the GNU/Linux project: Ubuntu [10]. Ubuntu is an entire operating system created and maintained by users with a new version released every 6 months. Another "big" examples of a Free and Open Source software is the office suite OpenOffice [11] and its OS X port, Neooffice [12]. Of course there are many more. A good place to start might be this wiki [13]. Beware that although every piece of software on this wiki is gratis, you (the user) do not have complete freedom for all of them... Never-the-less, the list itself is "open source" since you are welcome to edit it...

Which leads to the next idea: Blogs, Forums and Wikis are excellent places to share ideas freely and collaboratively. A blog entry that leads to a forum discussion, which leads into an organized wiki document is an excellent example of how many users, who don't know each other, can create a comprehensive work of reference. Wikipedia [14] is probably the most popular example, but it is certainly not the only one. For example, here's an excellent site for eeePC users [15] entirely created and maintained by users. Everything I've learnt about this computer is from that site...

Do you know any other good places to find Creative Commons or Open Source work? If so, leave a comment and with your links.

Links:

Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org
Larry Lessig on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Lessig
Larry Lessig's Talk on TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187
Cory Doctorow's Home page
http://craphound.com/
Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother"
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/#freedownload
Johnathan Coulton's homepage
http://www.jonathancoulton.com
Johnathan Coulton's Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Coulton
Creative Commons by-nc Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
GNU Website
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com
OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org
NeoOffice
http://www.neooffice.org
Fosswiki
http://shedreamsindigital.pbwiki.com
Wikipedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/
EeeUser
www.eeeuser.com
Creative Commons Spectrum Image
http://creativecommons.org/images/spectrum.png

Exercise For the Brain

2008-04-30T05:57:00.005+08:00

I've heard this one before: "the brain is like a muscle, if it doesn't get exercise, it becomes weaker". Although it's kind of intuitive that thinking and trying to solve problems should make you better at it, the organ itself is very different from a muscle... New research, however, shows that it's true: "brain training" does help you become a better problem solver. Here's more about the research and the findings from the BBC news [1].

So those who don't appreciate the beauty of math can at least view it as exercise for the brain...

Links:

BBC news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7373026.stm
Picture of the PET scan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PET-image.jpg

Futuristic Electric Transportation

2008-04-27T06:12:00.002+08:00

The Segway [1] "personal transporter" has been around for a while now. The idea is that people should not use a whole car if they just want to go to the convenient store. (The physics of this thing is really cool too! It keeps its balance "on its own"...) Sadly, it doesn't seem that this idea has taken off. I've seen (but not tried) the Segway once at SFU [2], and I can understand how inconvenient it would be to use: too slow for the streets, and kind of big and too fast for the crowed sidewalks. Although in Taiwan, people don't seem to mind slow moving "motorists" on the roads...

I believe 18-year old Ben Gulak [3] found a way to clearly solve that conundrum: ride on the streets, at about 60km/hr too...) And what he's done is basically cross the Segway with an electric motorcycle! It's exciting to see so much creativity being expended by young minds. I really hope he keeps his perseverance and continues working on this project. Can you imagine the streets filled with these instead of cars (or gas scooters) ?

A quick note about Ben: he's graduating this year and made it to the waiting list at MIT. [4] The WAITING list! WHAT?!

As for my own resolve to buy an electric scooter, I was faced with a new challenge yesterday: after two weeks of using my bicycle every day, someone came our school to fix another scooter and had a look at mine at the same time. It turned out that all that was needed was to replace the battery for 1000NT... I think I'll keep it at school during the week until I find a buyer to keep away the temptation of using it unnecessarily... I've been enjoying riding my bike to school everyday, but it's so easy to be lazy!

What I'm learning from all this is that people care about the environment. It's just that it's hard to make decisions that always go against the grain of existing (and thus more convenient) infrastructures. Were everything built for sustainable living, I'm convinced people would embrace the idea... That can be a nice or depressing thought depending on what you think about the probability that major changes will be made to our infrastructures.

Links:

Segway Homepage (attribution for picture of the personal transporter)
http://www.segway.com/individual/models/index.php
Simon Fraser University Homepage
http://www.sfu.ca/
Ben's Homepage
http://www.the-uno-tomorrows-transportation.com/Home_Page.html
Article about Ben
http://www.innovationcanada.ca/29/en/articles/gulak.html
Picture of the Uno from MotorcycleMojo Website
http://www.motorcyclemojo.com/articles/the-uno/

Electric Transportation

2007-06-03T06:05:00.002+08:00

Last weekend, I watched the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car" and was astounded. As a scientifically inclined person, I am ashamed that I didn't know about this: The technology required to produce practical electric cars has been ready for many years. A really nice car was even produced by GM (EV1) and leased to happy costumers more than 10 years ago, but it was recalled and destroyed a few years later...

Except for their more limited range, which is still enough for daily commuting, electric cars are better than internal combustion engine cars in many respects: they pollute much less, they are more energy efficient, they are quieter, and even have a greater acceleration than gasoline cars. Yet, we are in 2007 and car technological research is still focusing on things like hybrids, ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, ... Why? Because electric cars would be too simple to operate and maintain and wouldn't generate as much revenue.

Forget also about the promises of the hydrogen economy (at least for now). First of all, hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's a means of storage. The only clean "source" of energy is solar, and we already have a means of storing it (ie. batteries). Second of all, hydrogen technology has been 15 years away for the past 30 years... The only reason governments are pushing these alternatives instead of electric motors is simply because we would still have to refuel and support the big energy companies.

Here in Taiwan, it's much more practical to have a scooter than a car so I started wondering if it would be possible to convert my gasoline scooter to an electric scooter. I found someone on the internet who did something similar with his motorcycle [1][2]. But soon after, I found a Taiwanese company who already designs and produces electric scooter here on the island. [3] Someone else even converted that particular model of scooter into a solar powered scooter! [4] Of course, if I had more money, I'd buy this wicked cool car / motorcycle / jetfighter / ... ! [5]

What are we waiting for? Electric transportation technology is ready and available, with a little more research than mainstream advertisement...

Links:

Electric Motorcycle Mod
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fPe-q5lhq74
Mod Update
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tlIMixjQPzA&feature=user
EVT Scooters
http://www.evt.com.tw/
EVT Solar Modification
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4430/
Fly the road
http://flytheroad.com/