Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Online cannibalism

I stumbled across this website earlier today and it piqued my interest in the cannibal nature of the internet.

Check out GWEI (Google Will Eat Itself) here.

Friday, September 4, 2009

DO NOT DISTURB

Sorry to tell you but I am going to be MIA for the next 72 hours at least as my parents are about o put themselves through the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Rabbits of DOOOOOOOOOM

Sorry to be overly dramatic but I just don't trust rabbits. To prove my case, I offer you the following examples or Rabbits of DOOOOOOOOOM *ahem*:


1. Alba the "glowing" rabbit: Artist Eduardo Kac created Alba with the use of green fluorescent protein so that under UV lights, it would glow iridescent green. The truth of the matter is Alba is nuclear powered and despite the fact these kinds of rabbits are banned in most countries the world has not fully come down hard enough on them. Down right creepy and potentially what Iran is planning with their nuclear "program".




2. Little Bunny Foo Foo: Here is rabbit that, according to the rhyme at least, went about the forest bashing mice on the head. Yeah that's real cute. If you are considering writing a dissertation on the origins of bullying then you would be well versed to check it out (I have also sourced a video version of the rhyme just in case the words aren't vivid enough).

3. Jackalope: Believe the hype and fear the jackalope. A cross between an antelope and a jack rabbit, the jackalope has already claimed the lives of 23 people in Wyoming, a baptist minister in Omaha and Michael Jackson last month. Only one person has survived a jackalope attack but they were so shocked by the death in its eyes that no-one has been able to garner just how they did it.






4. The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog: If it wasn't for the brilliant documentary Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we might never have heard of this rabbit of DOOOOOOOOOOOOM. Don't take my word for it, watch the section of the documentary for yourself. Not sure if it was on NatGeo or Discovery.

5. The Energizer Bunny: Kids, this is a public service announcement -- DON'T DO DRUGS. The final in our Rabbits of DOOOOOOM section is proof that long-term use of amphetamines, as seen here on your left, is bad for you. Not only will you think it cool, nay necessary to wear dark sunglasses everywhere, you will also think it "cool" to wear flip-flops every day, even to work. Kids, that is NOT cool. Have some respect for yourself and get off the gear.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Don't be a follower -- an analysis of internet shopping and crowd bias

Can you trust the hordes when it comes to product voting and rankings on websites such as Amazon?

Would you indeed trust a book review from some nonce on Imdb or BookCrossings (BC)? Are they all biased?

Vassilis Kostakos, of the Department of Mathematics & Engineering, University of Madeira
and Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University certainly thinks so in the paper Is the crowd’s wisdom biased? A quantitative assessment of three online communities

Forgetting the obvious argument that everything in this world is biased so of course voting would in turn should also be considered such, Vassilis sets out to discover whether you will get bang for your buck if you follow the “wisdom of the crowd”.

Vassilis' research aims to identify and remove said "wisdom" by designing a system that would give a more solid identification of whether a product is good or bad.

"This study shows that despite the large community size of each website, there exist significant biases in users’ voting and rating behavior," he writes.

He finds:

"That more than 50% of users on Amazon and BC cast only one vote. Similarly large portions of items receive a single vote, with the exception of Imdb where only 7% of items are rated only once.

"Furthermore, the experts (top 5% of voters) cast as few as 7 votes on Amazon, while on BC they cast 30, suggesting that BC consists of proportionately more expert users within the community.


"Even so, the top 5% of popular items receive as little as 10 votes on both sites.


"Conversely, Imdb’s popular items receive at least 662 votes."


Imdb, he explains, is simple -- any person can vote without leaving anything more than a tick or a cross. As long as you are a member you have the right to vote.

Conversely not only do you have to be a member of Amazon and BC but you MUST leave a review as well as a star rating.

That means you have to think about why you like/dislike the product to tell people.

Vassilis finds that in particular, BC expert voters "vote for mostly obscure titles with few votes" and "that many obscure items of small popularity are likely to be of interest to a few select experts, while the crowds -- made up of people who buy only few times -- are likely to be interested in “popular” items."

Check out the full report but be warned, basing your ideas on the thoughts of others will generally lead to disappointment.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Spreadsheets blamed for Global Financial Crisis

That's right fellow hedgehoggers, you read it here first.

According to a paper released by Grenville J. Croll, Chair of the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group, the cause for the current Global Financial Crisis is all to do with spreadsheets and their susceptibility for human errors.

As Croll states, "to err is human" and it should not come as any surprise that the GFC was human based, after all, it is not like we hedgehogs had anything to do with it, it was all your fault for spending money you didn't have in the first place, accumulating debt at record rates than wondering why your house is remortgaged.

Anyway his paper Spreadsheets and the Financial Collapse states that: “Spreadsheets are integral to the function and operation of the global financial system”.

Awesome news. Of course these snippet do not give me confidence of this revelation.

"The majority (>90%) of spreadsheets contain errors. Recent research has shown that about 50% of spreadsheet models used operationally in large businesses have material defects."
That's hardly reassuring.

Then there is this:

"Because spreadsheet users do not go looking for errors, they don’t find any or many. Spreadsheet users are therefore overconfident in their use of spreadsheets."

If it ain't broke don't fix it but if it is broke but no-one realises, how can you fix it? But more concerning is the fact that humans can design a system, unintentionally create errors within it they can't see or fail to realise until it's too late but then interpret it incorrectly:

"Translation of a business problem into the spreadsheet domain can “…lead to a position where decision makers may act in the belief that decisions can be made with confidence on the output from the spreadsheet despite evidence to the contrary”."

That's a whole lot of whoops right there.

But it gets worst.

"Most spreadsheet models rely upon a fairly lengthy series of explicit or more usually, implicit, assumptions. Not least of these is the Ceteris Paribus assumption of all other things being (or remaining) equal. Clearly the assumptions underlying many spreadsheet models now no longer apply."
He concludes that: "We have confidence in concluding that spreadsheets played a role, perhaps even a significant role, in the recent collapse of the financial system ... in our opinion, their primary role is centred around the fact that they were one of the principal technologies used in the Credit Derivatives marketplace."

Furthermore:

"This market grew very quickly due to the ease with which it was possible to design and promulgate opaque financial instruments based on large spreadsheets with critical flaws in their key assumptions."

Anyway you should check this report out if you are interested in the GFC.

I think the interesting thing here however is the fact that in their recommendations, they suggest:

"If it is the case that we cannot build a safe and effective global financial system using spreadsheets as a key component, then we will have no alternative but to gradually replace
them, which will be time consuming and expensive, if indeed it is possible at all.

"The decision to replace a spreadsheet or set of spreadsheets with an alternative is a straightforward commercial decision, influenced by regulatory considerations, which would look at the risks, costs and benefits of each of the alternatives."

If you want to replace spreadsheets then where would you start? I guess you could always turn to the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group -- I am sure they would have the answers.

Slippery sucker

F. Boyer, D. Chablat, P. Lemoine and P. Wenger of the Institut de Recherche en Communications et Cybern´etique de Nantes in France have come up with a robot that can swim like an eel.

Why is that so exciting? Have you ever seen an eel swim? It is truly amazing (see this video) anyway the lads designed, studied and built a prototype measuring about 2 metres in length. That is a giant robot.

How did they do it? Well I’ll let them explain:

“Each vertebra includes 3 degrees of freedom, bending around two planes (yaw / pitch) and twisting around its column. The prototype includes 12 vertebrae (36 dof), a rigid head and a passive and flexible tail. The head is equipped with side wings mimicking the pectoral fins dedicated to control animal roll and pitch.”

Wicked.

They also use a “spherical wrist”, developed by Clement Gosselin, technology “used to guide a camera in space” and “consists in three rotary motors, of which axes intersect at the centre of the wrist and three “legs” consisting of two revolute joints each, which also cut the main center of the wrist.”

“The skin is made with three types of materials, plastic rings for reinforcements, chains of rubber to ensure continuity in curvature, and a latex skin to seal and lift between the fluid and the eel-like robot.

The skin of the eel is attached to each vertebra.”

Is it safe to go back in the water? Hells yes.

Wedding of the CENTURY


So my mum and dad twisted my tiny little arm behind my back to post this on my blog so here it is, a story about their wedding at Voodoo Doughnuts, a doughnut store in Portland, Oregon.