Back at the start of the semester, I linked to Betsy in Budapest, a blog maintained by one of our students while studying in the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics (a very well-reputed program). I hope you took my advice and followed that blog. If not, I hope you’ll catch up on it now. [...]
For those mcs students who have ever struggled with the idea of n-dimensional spaces, Edwin Abbot Abbot wrote an interesting novel regarding the evolution of dimension. In Flatland, he explores the notion of 2-dimensional civilizations being brought into contact with 3-dimensional civilization. Since the book’s been around since 1884, you can read Flatland [...]
Any of you familiar with musician Jonathon Coulton may know that he’s got a flair for tongue in cheek, obscure errata, and a prodigious amount of work (in one project, he released a song a week for over a year). At any rate, I wanted to start by not so much to glorify Jonathon Coulton but [...]
I received an interesting email from Phil Miesle, a Gustie Physics major from class of 1995 who took the introductory computer science course back in spring of 1993. In the meantime he’s found himself in the software industry, working for Oracle as a “Principle Performance Architect,” and took some time to reflect upon the [...]
I turn 25 tomorrow—not 25 years on this planet, but 25 years on the net. It was on August 27th, 1981, that I first used a computer connected to the Arpanet, which was just then morphing into the Internet, a process completed 16 months later. That transition from Arpanet to Internet was the [...]
For my first book of summer, I fell into one of my usual genres: analysis of the relationship between information technology and social, political, and legal issues. As a result, I can warmly recommend Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu (Oxford University Press, 2006). [...]
The security expert Bruce Schneier published a Commentary in today’s Star Tribune claiming to show why the NSA’s gathering large amounts of phone call records is useless, rather than merely spooky. (This op-ed is largely self-plagiarized from an earlier publication in Wired News.) The thrust of the commentary is to imagine one possible [...]
Late yesterday afternoon, US District Judge James Ware denied the Department of Justice’s request to compel Google to turn over a sample of its users’ search queries. Privacy advocates have been quick to celebrate a victory. However, although there are several very enouraging signs, a close reading of the reasoning in the judge’s [...]
I always like to hear what our alumni are up to, so of course I was thrilled to get a CD in the mail today from Luther Monson. He does have a day job where he puts his computer science education to use, but his real love is whacking the #%#@ out of drums [...]
As you may or may not know, one of the first calculators (abacus excluded) was a giant gear-laden monstrosity conceived of computing pioneer Charles Babbage back in the early 1800’s. His “difference engine” used gears to calculate 7th order polynomials to 31 digits of accuracy. here are a few modern attempts at using his logic [...]