./Doom.Root

Windows 7 - First opinions

2009-01-27T07:57:00.002Z

Well, I've been using Windows 7 for a while now - since the beta came out, in fact, and I think that I have been using it for long enough to be qualified to give my two-pence-sterling about this early release.

The first thing to bear in mind with this version of Windows is that it is meant as a preview. I have heard good things from other people about the completeness of this release, although I can't say that I've had the same experience.

First of all, the 64 bit version of Windows 7 does not have good compatibility with some of my favourite applications, the most notable being the browser Google Chrome, which didn't work at all for me. Historically, 64 bit versions of Windows have also had notable driver issues, although, impressively, all of the drivers for my NForce chipset and Nvidia Geforce graphics card worked "out of the box" - the same goes for the 32 bit release, and I think that this is something that Microsoft should have included in Vista. It's the sort of functionality that Linux has been able to provide for years. Still very nice that it's finally happened though.

So, having discovered that the 64 bit version was a bit unpleasant, I stuck with 32 bit Windows 7. This meant that it could only address 3.3 gig of my 4 gig of memory, which would be a problem for me in Vista, but not in Windows 7. My Vista installation is rediculously cluttered and tends to use at least 1.3 gig straight after boot. This is only using 800mb as I type this article.

The experience of using Windows 7 is mixed. On one hand, the new "library" system is great - being able to pull lists of files together from multiple locations is a real blessing. The search and indexing features are much the same as in Vista, although there is a slight annoyance in that the first time I searched my library it did not detect that the index was incomplete and resort to a manual search. The new "superbar" teeters between genius and down-right-irritating. In my installation, (but not in my friend's, mind) there was around a second delay between placing my mouse over a symbol and the window previews appearing - this is one of the top features of Windows 7 touted by Microsoft, and although the previews could be brought up instantly by clicking, it made the experience a bit less nice and a bit more clunky. I managed to reduce the delay by editing a registry value, though, as per a tip on a site I found.

With applications that were designed for Windows 7, the jumplist and preview features are great. It's possible to easily navigate your windows, tabs, IMs etc. The rub for me is that it doesn't work that well with anything else. The main problem is that applications have been providing tab features that duplicate the functionality of the "superbar" by grouping instances of an app into a single Window for a long time, and you find yourself, with such applications, first moving over the icon, then viewing the previews of the windows for that application before focusing on a window and clicking on a tab. It's a problem that I think is likely to go away, though.

There are other issues with older applications and the superbar though, for example, applications that minimise to the tasktray when closed appear as closed on the superbar. This isn't so bad unless you've got them pinned, in which case it's rather tempting to open new instances of the application by clicking on its icon. The other thing I found was that Google Chrome's application shortcuts also do not pin well to the task bar. Not so much a bug in Windows 7 but something not yet included in Chrome.

Whether or not the superbar works well is a moot point in my opinion. I feel that the biggest barrier to it lies in the fact that it's different. Sufficiently so to confuse a large number of users. The ribbon interface in Office 2007 is absolutely brilliant, but most users reject it at first because it's different and forces them to use better working habits when using their applications. If Microsoft go ahead with this superbar, they're going to have to market it and market it and turn it into some kind of demi-god if they want people to use it - and even then they'll only get the nerds interested.

Other than that, I have a couple of slight annoyances with Windows 7. The nvidia drivers that come bundled won't talk to my TV in dualview mode, for one, and when VLC is streaming the output seems pixelated where it was smooth before. It also had quite a lot of trouble getting permission from my document storage on my other hard drive to read and write, although it didn't have any trouble with Nat's. In the end I had to boot vista and set the permissions from there before it would work. That sort of bug is also likely to disappear before the final release. I can't get my front headphone jack to work in Windows 7. The sound card supports audio-jack detection, but my case is not wired for it, and the built in drivers in Windows 7 don't offer any way to turn it off.

I'm also slightly miffed that I seem to be using Internet Explorer more than even before. That's not because its good, though (it even fails to render blogger quite right), but because it supports the tabs-in-preview thing.

There are other things about Windows 7 that I like. The wordpad with Openoffice compatiblity (not personally tested) is nice, and the themes thing is great. Pinning applications is great fun, though somewhat hedonistic if you're like me and never un-pin things. A lot of people praised the way the gadgets have been moved from the side bar, and yes, I think that works well - especially with the new "Desktop peek" feature, and they feel more like a part of the OS than a 3rd party application now.

Overall, I give Windows 7 two thirds of a Stone Henge out of 0.981.

Google Application Engine

2008-12-29T10:36:00.003Z

As it stands, google runs my favourite search engine, my favourite web browser, this blog, my email and even my calendar. They also help me get from A to B, watch videos that I'm interested in and find the cheapest price for things that I want to be.

Since I do all of this whilst logged in to my google account - it stands to reason that google owns a worrying amount of information about me. Sometimes I worry about it, but then I stop worrying, because, after all, I can stop using google's services any time I like, and, to be fair, my habits as an individual probably aren't that interesting to a large, multinational organisation like google.

Google application engine, on the other hand, completely changes the name of the game.

GAE (the application engine) is a service provided by google that allows online web applications to be built using Python and then hosted - completely free - on google's servers. They promise that the engine is extremely scaleable - that means that an application created using GAE could be used by 4 people, or by 4 million people. The service could be used to create almost ANY type of data processing system, provided that it is web oriented.

That sounds wonderful, but it raises the question of ethics. Google operates in hundreds of different legal climates, although it is in itself an American organisation. What happens when the application engine is used, for example, to store information about the mis-treatment of prisoners in one country, or measures taken to drive out dissidence in another. On a less ethical note, is it really a good idea to trust the innermost aspects of the workings of your organisation to another company? No less one that is incredibly good at indexing and data mining.

In fact, I believe that the British Data Protection Act makes it illegal for any company to pass your data to another organisation without seeking permission from you for it first. If google ran servers in countries that DON'T have similar data protection laws, you would need to ensure that none of your customer's information lands on those servers - that's another requirement of the Data Protection Act.

Nevertheless, Google's application engine is a very useful and interesting peice of technology. It is easy to work with, includes a set of tools that are fairly standard for web applicatioons in Python, and encourages best practises for scaleability by providing an excellent set of standard tools. It includes a powerful data storage system (with its own problems, mind you - I might discuss those in another post), and it can run easily in both development and production environments.

Using google's servers can be extremely useful if you run a small to medium sized site and you don't mind passing your data to google. In fact, you can run the engine on a server of your choosing, as long as it supports a django environment. That was your information is NOT all passed to google - useful when you start storing information that matters.

All in all, I believe that GAE is a fun bit of technology. It could be used in a fairly large number of situations to make life easier and simpler for the amateur web application developer. Should it be used for larger organisations? Probably not - or at least, I believe it shouldn't.

Bye for now!

Esperanto

2008-12-28T20:34:00.001Z

Esperanto is a spoken and written language that was constructed some time ago by an academic type that thought it would be lovely if the whole world was able to speak some universal second language. The idea does sound grand at first doesn't it? International politicions would be able to talk to each other honestly and directly - without any translation needed. They would be able to avoid the bias of using a language that belongs to a particular nation! That would be great.

Probably the most important thing about esperanto is that it is constructed - it doesn't originate from any nation, and it doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage because they come from a country that already speaks it. I think that's important - the british people are particularly bad at getting on with the rest of the world, and I think that partly it's because we're so rubbish at learning other languages - we simply expect other people to speak our own!* That's an attitude that we often extend to culture and tradition - sometimes without even realising it.

Of course, another major advantage of Esperanto can be demonstrated by looking at the story of The Tower Of Babylon - as described in The Bible (by God). In The Bible, when civilisation first grew all of the nations of the world spoke one language and acted under one banner. One day, they decided to build a fucking huge tower so that they could become closer to the heavens. God didn't like that, so he went super-saiyan and smashed the tower with a kamayamaya wave before spreading humanity all over the world. To make sure that the tower would never be built again, he gave them all different languages. For this reason, I believe Esperanto would help to anger God.

Good eh?

Esperanto is taught in a few different places. Notably, in the UK, Manchester university helps 4 primary schools teach it - the schools believe it will help the children to learn the basic skills needed to acquire further languages. There are 2500 books in Esperanto, and 2 films. There are between 100,000 and 2 million speakers world wide. This is an abysmal figure when you consider that it's been around for well over a century. Looks like that pesky tower isn't going to get built, after all! :(

The problem, as I see it, is that Esperanto is a novelty. It's spoken by few - you could go out and learn it, but the only people you could speak to are the sort of people who speak Esperanto; I'll bet that would be dull. Of course, the language itself also has some flaws - for example, words are intoned according to a general rule - it is not permitted to use intonation of words to convey meaning. Words spoken without intonation would sound extremely un-natural and artificial to any human being. The language is also nowhere near as neutral as it should be. It uses european pronunciations and european letters. It also derives many of its word roots from european words. Speakers that haven't grown up learning some European language find it difficult to pick up Esperanto.

All in all, I give this language 6 out of 16. Nice concept - but poorly implemented.

Yummy biscuits

2008-12-24T09:44:00.002Z

Today I made a batch of my favourite type of biscuit - shortbread. As you can see in the picture to the right, they went down well enough for all but three of them to have been eaten by the time I could take the photo!

This is a big achievement for me, as a person who can't cook. Finally, I have the independance to cook sugary buttery treats whenever I want to!! However, I can't really take credit as the recipe did, in fact, come from Andy's mum's brilliant website about baking, Cake Frills. The site is regularly updated, includes loads of great seasonal recipes and has the added advantage that I can pester the person who runs it if I ever get stuck! You should definitely check it out.

On an unrelated note, I miss my guitar :(

Google Chrome

2008-09-03T08:00:00.000+01:00

It's official - google are trying to take over the internets!

Clearly, the next stage in their evil plan is controlling how you ACCESS it. Yesterday, on the 2nd of September, google released their innovative new web browser, Google Chrome.

Web browsers

Before I launch into a rant about this new release from the masters of the internet, I will first explain what a "Web Browser" IS.

When you want to use the web on your computer, for example, to look on wikipedia or facebook, you will probably either be clicking on an icon called "Internet explorer" or "Firefox" on your desktop. This will then launch a program that will probably take you to your home page. You can then type addresses or navigate to where you want to be, and get the information you want to see. That program, that you are now using, is a web browser.

So what's Chrome?

Google chrome is an example of a browser. A few years ago, when firefox was released, it hailed a revolution in the usability and the safeness of the internet. It was more reliable than internet explorer - more universally intuitive than Safari or Opera, or even its ancester, Netscape. However, firefox does have its weaknesses - simple design issues that arise from the fact that it is such a mature project that still recieves a very large number of new features.

One of the "Problems" that Chrome deals with is the complexity of the Javascript stack.

Javascript

When a website changes its content without loading a new page, it is using a special programming language called javascript. Javascript has been around for a long time - it gave us those menus that appear when you hold your mouse over something, and disappear when you move it away. More recently, it has been used in web pages to grab or send information back to the website without the page being reloaded - you no longer have to wait for everything you change on a web page to have an effect for the next thing to happen. This can be seen on Facebook - where you can type your new status in and save it straight away, or start searching for something and recieve suggestions back immediately. The technique itself is referred to around the internet as AJAX.

The problem is that it only works because it relies on technologies that were very old. When the first lines of code for Firefox were put together, Javascript was something altogether different from what it is now. This means that despite all modification, Firefox is still not running such websites as fast as it should be.

That's where Chrome comes in. It features a whole new Javascript that is as fast as they come.

Concurrency

When you are using the internet, you often browse many web pages at once. These web pages all behave as parts of one program - they can communicate to each other to a limited degree, and if one crashes, they all crash. That's a problem when it comes to security and reliability, in an increasingly dangerous internet. Google solves this problem using an unusual approach - each website you view with Google chrome runs as if it is a seperate program. It all appears within the same Window, with tabs, such as can be seen with Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, but each website is actually seperated - it can not interfere with the others.

First impressions

My first impressions of Chrome are warm. It's not a finished product yet, which is why I don't think it's a Firefox killer in its current state. The colours leave a little to be desired, though the rest of the user interface is rather nice, with space maximised by a simple, intuitive layout - something that's important for a web browser. The lack of any sort of extension at the moment is disappointing, though I don't know if there are any plans to implement this. I have also lately been using something called "Ubiquity", which is a clever little technology that at the moment only works with firefox, so I would miss that.

Alcohol and the Olympics

2008-08-05T10:47:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I discovered a few new things about myself. The first is an utterly practical realisation:

I cannot drink 1 x Bitter, 4 x Lager, 1 x Spirits and 1 x Wine + eat half of a Mushroom & Ham pizza and a plate of chips without throwing up. This information would be more useful, however, If I knew whether it was the alcohol or the food that caused such a tempestuous, vile outpour from the deepest depths of my stomach. It was probably the drink, But this is irrelevant - I simply cannot forego my end-of-night takeaway, so the two are pretty much joined together.

Secondly, I care a lot more about the Beijing Olympics than I thought. I am already an individual that has resolutely decided never to go to China - many of their policies on censorship and "freedom" are uncomfortably close to fascism(this is the natural viewpoint of a naive male that has grown up in Britain in the decedant 90s). China's viewpoints are founded on poverty and overcrowding, so it's natural that they would entertain a different political stance to us - however, the same could be said of pre-war Germany - poverty that was "Inflicted" by the non-germanic races was the founding influence of the Reich - or so I hear. The viewpoints within Germany quickly became a problem under a warlike leader. Luckily, the Chinese government only seems interested in internal rather than external compliance - so the current solution to the problem is to simply not go there.

This is not so easy you are holding a major sporting event there. However, up until recently I trusted that China would recognise that the Olympics were little more than an excellent tourism opportunity and an exciting sporting event. The way of the Olympics have always been to rise above international politics - rivalries between countries should be demonstrated by winning (cheating) in the sports field rather than in the streets or in the battlefield. I am beginning to have my doubts, however, as the Chinese authorities have announced a sort of "Cleansing" of Beijing of minority groups. They are taking the appearance of Beijing during the Olympics very seriously indeed - enforcing the "Correct" image through decidedly immoral means. Migrant workers are being forced to leave their jobs. People who have STDs are banned from the events. Spies are being employed to pretend to be Olympic goers and punish "Trouble makers". Moreover, China is also persecuting against those that "Are likely to cause trouble". This could be political dissidents, government members of freedom loving countries, or even members of any ethnic groups that Chinese culture doesn't approve of. This sporting event is now being used by China's government as an excuse for a free reign of fascism - and this worries me greatly.

I sense a disturbance in the force.

Happy birthday. to me!

2008-07-11T09:27:00.001+01:00

Today is my 18th Birthday. This essentially means that if you were born after the 11th of July, 1990 (A wonderful year), then you are younger than me. If you were born BEFORE that date, you are older. If you were born ON that date, Happy Birthday! You should probably get yourself a cup of tea to celebrate.

I have, happily, received several wonderful gifts for my birthday. The warm congratulations of a portion of my gratuitously oversized but loving family, some bubble wrap with eighteen one pound coins on it, a cake, some money to spend on clothes, and, of course, an ASUS EeePC.

Unlike my extended family, the EeePC does NOT have mammoth proportions. It is, in fact, about 11 inches from the top left corner to the top right corner. That's VERY small, and it means that carrying it around (in the snazzy sleeve that it comes with) is very easy. It's also light, because of its minuscule size, and it's a bit less easy for me to break, as it has fewer mechanical components than a traditional laptop.

I'm actually sat in bed, keeping my toes warm whilst typing this post. The wonders of technology - it's all very novel to me right now, as up until today I've only ever owned full sized desktop PCs with old fashioned cathoid ray tube monitors.

Well, I'm off to eat some cake! Good bye!

Mono (Not the desease) and Linux (Not the virus).

2008-07-08T08:54:00.000+01:00

I've recently re-installed linux onto my computer, after finally getting round to destroying my old, broken installation (incidentally, I also attempted to install Mac OSX with the help of Mr Joice, who has done it before. That didn't work out well.) . I think the most important thing for me is that it's now... ooh, about 4 days until my 18th Birthday - when I will be recieving one of those snazzy EeePCs with linux on. I haven't used Linux in a while, but I wanted to get back into the swing of programming for it, so I burned a lovely DVD of xubuntu, using the DVD burner that I really SHOULD return to my friend, and installed it into the gaping void that used to contain Mac OSX. One almost destroyed computer and a huge amount of worry over the loss of countless hours worth of inadequately backed up source code later, I had a happy new linux installation on my computer.

On the right you'll notice that I've got all my old folders from Windows. There are two ways to do this - when you install ubuntu in a "Partition" you can ask it to copy all of your Windows files and settings for you. That's not what I did, though. I was hardcore and I created some "links" within linux itself. Linux supports something called "Symbolic links", which anyone who has done any web site administratin will probably be familiar with. These links act like any other folder on the hard-drive would - when I'm browsing for something using my Word program, there's no way of telling that these are links and not actual folders.

Linux has lots of nice little features like this, which can be very rewarding for those with the patience to use it as an operating system. You see, the problem with Linux is that with me, and with many other users, on first use it scared me ~~shitless~~ silly. It still does sometimes. My girlfriend recently left a linux live-cd disk in her computer by accident, and was terrified when white text started scrolling across her screen and it asked her which layout she wanted her keyboard to be in. She wrote on the disk "creepy, virus imitating linux".

Even when it's not terrifying people, Linux isn't really that useful at the best of times. For example, my particular environment doesn't have the built in ability to take screenshots. Lord knows why, but at length found a guide on google that instructed me on how to add screenshot functionality using tools that were already present on my computer. That added about 15 minutes of wasted time to the creation of this article.

That said, it's getting better. For example, when I first started using linux, if you wanted to connect to a wireless network you would need to click "Application -> Accessories -> Terminal" and do something like:

sudo iwconfig eth0 ESSID ZyXEL KEY s:xcs0fs8df232

and then:

sudo dhclient eth0 up

That's not really very user friendly and it didn't always work either.

Luckily, there's now a little button of a signal bar in the top right of the window that you can press to open the wifi selection toolbar.

Perhaps my favourite advance that has been made in the linux operating system since I last used it, though, is the Mono .net runtime. This program allows certain applications that have been written for windows to load under linux. It is NOT an emulator, however. The .net framework, which is an idea pretty much stolen from Java by Microsoft, doesn't produce binary code that can be understood by the computer. It instead produces binary code that can be read by a program that IS understood by the computer. It seems pretty pointless, but it essentially means that if a program has been compiled for .net, it can be run on Linux, Windows, Solaris or OSX. It's hard to get excited about if you've never had a play with .net before, but essentially it means that I can now develop applications using the excellent tools provided by Microsoft for windows, and then log into linux, and without any modifications, recompilations, bugs or incompatibilities, run my program as if it had been written for linux all along. On the left you see a program that I wrote to watch the size of the files within a selected folder in real time. It is part of the Project II library, and it works seamlessly.

This kind of interoperability, without the messing around, tinkering and general tomfoolery required by many similar projects, has impressed me most and given me hope once again for the future of the linux operating system.

2008-06-05T19:57:00.001+01:00

Ah, the time has come for me to once again favour you humble serfs with the joys of my witty banter and poignant ruminating. This week's soliloquy will cover...

THE ENVIRONMENT

"The environment of a system is that part of the universe that is in communication with the system, but is not part of the system." [Walter Fritz, Intelligent Systems and Their Societies]

The environment is a pretty awesome thing. It provides an outside, so that an inside may exist. (For information about that, consult a philosopher). Moreover, without the environment we'd be pretty stuck. Now, many political pressure groups, such as Greenpeace and Russia, talk about protecting the environment. But why? Why would we do that?

See that? That a tree. Essentially, what it does is this:

During the day:

What trees do is take nasty CO2, a nasty gas that we produce when we breathe, fart, drive, get on aeroplanes or burn effigies of our enemies, and turn it into O2. CO2 is bad because it collects around the atmosphere (The bit of air pulled close to the earth by gravity), and makes the earth trap more heat. Kind of like a blanket, except that if the earth gets too hot then the cold bits of it start to melt and then flooding happens and the weather gets all crazy and films like "The day after tomorrow" start to come true. O2 is good, because we breathe it and we use it when burning stuff and we would be pretty bummed out if we couldn't burn things any more.

Trees take the carbon from CO2 and put it in their barks.

At night:

Trees breathe out some CO2, but mostly the carbon stays inside them and so they take more out than they put back in.

So that's pretty hunky dory, right? There are loads of trees! Except no. Because what happens to all that extra carbon? Well, if things are left to their own devices, the tree will die eventually and the carbon it left behind will simply end up in the ground. It then gets compacted with the carbon from loads of other trees, and creates coal. Something similar happened a while back with fishes, and we got oil. Also, there's gas and I think that came from animals that walk on land. That's fine, but the problem now is that we keep burning that coal, which means that all of the carbon, carefully put away for us by millions of years of trees, is being let back out in the atmosphere. That means that the whole business of the world getting too hot happens anyway, and we all die painfully.

That's pretty crap, right?

The Binomial Distribution

2008-05-18T14:43:00.001+01:00

This is something that keeps catching me out with my A2 statistics, so I figured that I may as well write a quick listing of notes to help myself, and hopefully, anyone who reads this page.

What is the Binomial Distribution?

The Binomial distribution is a method that applies to the probabilities of a number of events that can either be as success or a failure. A better way of explaining it would be to look at cars. Say, for example, I know that the probability that a Car has been manufactured by Vauxhall is 0.3 – in other words, I know that they make 30% of all cars. If I then sit outside in my street and wait for 5 cars to pass, I can use my probability to find out the likely hood that a certain proportion of those cars will have been made by Vauxhall.

Say, for example, that I want to know what the odds of all 5 of the cars going past being made by Vauxhall are. The laws of probability state that the chance of two independent events happening is the probability of the first multiplied by the probability of the second. Our probability is 0.3, and we want that to happen 5 times, so we can do:

0.3*0.3*0.3*0.3*0.3 = 0.00243

This means that the probability of Vauxhall having made all three cars is 0.00243, or 0.243% - that's about 1 in 400! However, if we want to know what the odds of 3 of the cars being made by Vauxhall are, we would need to replace some of those 0.3s with 0.7s, the probability that the car is not made by Vauxhall – two in fact, leaving us with the probability that 3 cars are made by Vauxhall and 2 are not. At first, this sounds simple:

0.3*0.3*0.3*0.2*0.2 = 0.00108

But that's not quite right – there are more than one ways we can combine 3 Vauxhalls and two other cars, and that probability only covers one of those ways. Since there are lots of different combinations, and we can have any of them, we need to add them all up...

0.3*0.3*0.3*0.2*0.2
0.2*0.3*0.3*0.3*0.2
0.2*0.2*0.3*0.3*0.3
0.3*0.2*0.2*0.3*0.3
0.3*0.3*0.2*0.2*0.3
........... etc .............

The list goes on – as you can imagine, it would be impractical to calculate all the different combinations. For this reason, we use the Binomial Distribution.

How does it work?

The binomial distribution is defined as:

Now, that looks pretty nasty the first time you see it but basically all it does is give you the probability of an event happening "x" times out of "n" (where "X" represents what actually happens), without having to go through and work out each combination. In our car example, we would work it out as follows:

That means that there's a one in 10 chance that exactly 3 of the cars will be manufactured by everyone's favourite car company!

Ah, but there's more!

That's not even a question.

However, there is more to it, because these binomial distributions can be pretty powerful. In an exam, we're more likely to be asked to work out the probability that 3 OR LESS of the cars are made by Vauxhall. We could do this by simply putting 3, 2, 1 and 0 into the equation and adding the results. That would get very long-winded if you had larger numbers, though, which is why the table called "CUMULATIVE BINOMIAL DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION" is available in the exam.

This is set out in boxes, for different values of "n". In our case, we want the box headed n=5, because we're looking at 5 cars. We could look at 50, in which case the method would be unchanged but you would look in a different box. We know that our probability is 0.3, so we look for the column marked "0.3" at the top. Now, down the left hand side are the values for "x". These actually represent the value for "x" that "X" is less than, so when we look up a value in the table we actually get P(X ≤ x). Have a look at the row for "3", in the column we found earlier. The value written down should be 0.9692 – I've highlighted it in green on the table below.

	n=5
0	0.9510	0.9039	0.8587	0.8154	0.7738	0.7339	0.6957	0.6591	0.6240	0.5905	0.4437	0.3277	0.2373	0.1681	0.1160	0.0778	0.0503	0.0313
1	0.9990	0.9962	0.9915	0.9852	0.9774	0.9681	0.9575	0.9456	0.9326	0.9185	0.8352	0.7373	0.6328	0.5282	0.4284	0.3370	0.2562	0.1875
2	1.0000	0.9999	0.9997	0.9994	0.9988	0.9980	0.9969	0.9955	0.9937	0.9914	0.9734	0.9421	0.8965	0.8369	0.7648	0.6826	0.5931	0.5000
3		1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	0.9999	0.9999	0.9998	0.9997	0.9995	0.9978	0.9933	0.9844	0.9692	0.9460	0.9130	0.8688	0.8125
4						1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	0.9999	0.9997	0.9990	0.9976	0.9947	0.9898	0.9815	0.9688
5											1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	1.0000

If you've been paying attention, rather than dozing off, you might have noticed that the values for P in that table only go up to 0.5. That's fine for us, but what if the Vauxhall Astra suddenly became this season's big thing and Vauxhall became the manufacturers of 60% of cars? We'd be in a right pickle then. But, luckily, the probability of less than or equal to 3 cars being made by Vauxhall is the same as the probability that more than 2 cars weren't made by them. Think of it like this.

P(X≤3) = P(X=0,1,2 or 3)
= P(X'=5,4,3 or 2) (X' (not X), should be N-X . X+X' must always add up to 5. If I see 3 green cars, I must see two that aren't green)
= P(X'≥2)

Now, we know that the probability that a car is made by Vauxhall is 1-0.6, since both the probabilities must add up to 1.

X' ~ B(5, 0.4)
P(X'≥2) = ?

However, our tables won't give us a value for "Greater than". We know that:

P(X'≥2) = P(X'=5,4,3 or 2)

But for a full set of possibilities, which will have a probability of 1 (The probability that we see between 0 and 5 Vauxhall cars), we also need:

P(X'=0, or 1) or P(X'≤1)

Giving us:

P(X'≤1) + P(X'≥2) = 1
P(X'≥2) = 1- P(X'≤1)
=> P(X≤3) = 1- P(X'≤1)
= 1 - 0.3370
= 0.663

Which means that there is more than a 1 in 2 chance that 3 or less Vauxhalls will be spotted!

In conclusion

As long as you remember that all the possibilities must add up to one, you shouldn't have trouble using these Binomials. It seems that examiners LOVE to ask you to turn the inequalities on their head, but as long as you visualise the possibilities and remember to account for everything, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, even for you :P.

Punctuality

2008-04-07T21:15:00.001+01:00

If you're of a sensitive disposition and would like to read something creative, please look away now.

The reason for the above disclaimer is that I have decided to write a post about punctuality – topical, you see, because I haven't posted to this blog in many moons. I could offer some excuses for that, divulging information about my life and the wonderfully wacky ways in which I spend my time, but that would be too much like a real blog and would not be very interesting besides.

See, I feel that punctuality is a very interesting topic. For me it's like some sort of mythical beast that almost always narrowly escapes my grasp. I can meet deadlines if they're suitably vague, but I have a complete inability to do anything more specific, like turn up on time for something or get on the right train or anything along those lines.

The problem that I have is that I find it hard to care. I personally cannot see why the clock has such a massive influence on our society. Sure, it's nice to get things done, but do they have to be completed at nice round intervals like 9:00am, 10:15am etc.? It's natural for us to have some concept of time – there's only so much that you can get done in a day and likewise a finite quantity of food that you can grow in a year. Waiting around isn't fun, but is it really such a problem to have to do it for 5 or 10 minutes? Use those 5 or 10 minutes for reflection or quite contemplation – it's time that you might not otherwise have. Alternatively, you could use that time to meet strangers while you wait – you never know, they might share the same feelings towards time that you do!

Of course, there is a more philosophical way of looking at punctuality – it could well be argued that time is simply a side-product of our way of processing the universe, and as such is merely a hypothetical and that basing our lives around it is logical fallacy. That may well be the case, but I tend to look at philosophical arguments as hypothetical too– moreover, this one in particular seems to be far less practical in itself than the fallacy that it attempts to disprove.

I do understand the need for time –accurate measuring of it give us the potential to have fuller days and richer lives (less time spent waiting for each other). I just wish that I didn't get in to trouble because of it so often.

Can't I be made exempt?

Just a heads up

2008-03-10T17:42:00.001Z

On a normal blog, this sort of thing would belong on the blog roll, but I don't know how to work it and I would like to add my comment to it anyway.

A friend of mine (Skenmee!) has recently posted to his blog about a rather silly development in Oklahoma about the teaching of science in school in relation to religion. Here's the link:

Oklahoma Waters Down Science

The thing that makes me think that this is stupid is not that people are being allowed to express their beliefs, sure, do that – but this sort of grading and awarding really discourages any sort of logical or independent thinking – at least when teaching real science students are expected to demonstrate an eagerness to learn and understand more and more as they progress through education – religion, on the other hand, promotes acceptance and not understanding.

I am not saying that religious people shouldn't be allowed to study and become qualified in science, it's just that there's a right and a wrong way to go about it – I know people who do both – there's the friend who tries to bring creationism in biology lessons, or the friend who keeps his faith out of his science lessons entirely. I personally approve of the latter and I would encourage others to do the same, though this is just my opinion and you should really listen to someone who actually takes a science as a subject, such as the guy who wrote the blog that I linked to above! :D

Why music is sometimes good but also sometimes bad.

2008-03-09T21:29:00.001Z

Sorry for the stupid title, couldn't think of anything better.

People who know me well will know that I have odd tastes in music. Here are the things that I will openly admit to liking at the moment:

Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip
Tom Rosenthal
Metallica (Specifically, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Dunun Dunun Daa!)
Josh Woodward
Newton Faulkner

This is just to name a few. However, there are other things that I will usually pretend not to like but secretly enjoy (incidentally, these are also the bands that certain people would hit me for liking):

James Blunt (Shut up)
Linkin Park ('s why I still wear that really old t-shirt)
The Flaming Lips
The Darkness (What the fuck.)
Jamie T

Now, if you still have enough respect for me to read the rest of this post, I am going to explain why I like these artists. The reason is not because they are shoved down my throat repeatedly, or have been in the past, but because they represent variety and individuality – each one of these artists has or had something about them that was different. In some cases different enough to have whole groups of people build a sense of identity around them. Perhaps this is not the case with James Blunt, who I like because he drove a tank (Vroom) and because he plays piano music and sings with a silly high voice, but it is more obvious with Linkin Park and the Flaming Lips, both of which were the pretty much definitive of their respective genres. A really extreme example of this is Metallica in the first list, who for a long time pretty much defined metal – their pervasion into teenage culture is incredible; there are still people who wear outfits with "Metallica" plastered on their outfits, many of whom don't even know the music at all!

This also explains why there are so many artists that I really hate. There's no definitive R&B artist, for example, just lots of indistinguishable ones, all of whom are marketed excessively and thrown at us from all angles, leaving extreme bouts of nausea and disorientation (in my case, at least). I really hate that song called "Soldier Boy", because it embodies repetition. The hook of the song is "BOOO dabawabadie" (There are probably words there that I cannot hear), and this hook is repeated hundreds of times so as to become irreversibly embedded in the memory of the listener, luring them in past the point of no return! On the plus side, it's a great money maker for the record companies, who, lets face it, have so much of their music stolen that they are positively impoverished!

Let’s stop whining about Microsoft, Mmkay?

2008-03-08T16:18:00.001Z

This is an uncharacteristic thing for me to say. For a long time now I have been a proponent of open source software, the GNU foundation and Linux based operating systems. I also have this habit of complaining loudly any time someone mentions Windows.

But now is the time for a change of attitude. From this point on I have decided to rant equally about Windows, Linux and Mac OSX (freeBSD gets off lightly), in fair proportions. Why is this, Dominic? I hear you ask. Well, keep your shoes on and don't get your socks in a twist, because I am going to tell you.

The answer is simpler than you might think – Microsoft appears to actually be trying. Most of my prejudices against Windows and Microsoft software come from the fact that so much of it is, well, terrible. Take Windows through the ages, for example. It has basically been bolted together from lots of different components – every time something new needs to be added, it's added on top. Microsoft offers simplicity to the users, but the price uncontrollable complexity underneath; this is why there is such a large attack surface for the creators of malware to exploit. But now, Microsoft is making changes. Recent details about Windows 8 and the underlying technologies that Microsoft is looking to use suggest that they are at last moving towards a more modular, distributed and well managed operating system. There is even tell of an operating system that is not Windows at all! Insanity!

In a more immediate sense, Microsoft has created the ".net" architecture for application developers. To a user, this looks like a hefty download that allows applications to provide the same functionality, seemingly slower. Even to a power user it looks like a clone of Java – a way in which Microsoft hopes to steal a little market share off an open source company. But if you're an application developer, ".net" represents consistency, simplicity and a better way of looking at code and the way it is written. For the first time ever, the same code can be executed on a PC and on a games console! This is something that has been sorely lacking in the past for Windows, a really easy way to develop object orientated programs that work exactly how the developer expects them to (Linux has got a really good standard for this in the form of Python and Perl. Mac OSX provides X-code, which is based around Objective C and supposedly fulfils a similar role).

So why are Microsoft making all of these changes? I am sure that I cannot possibly hope to fully understand, me being a speculating student with a D in AS business studies; Microsoft is a really large business and hundreds of economical factors have an effect on every single decision made on their part. I have a gut feeling though, I think it's...

Fear!

Ahem. Sorry about that. But yes, I think that Microsoft is genuinely worried about its competitors. It's getting to the point now where there's really not much differentiation between OSX and Linux and Windows. At the moment Microsoft is living on borrowed time – if they do not improve then soon enough people will realise that they can get the same product for free. This is at last forcing Microsoft to write some really awesome software that really kicks the shit out of that n00b Torvalds! :D