Peter Lee @ November 30, 2008 # 5 Comments
Today is my birthday, something that is almost impossible to forget nowadays due to Facebook announcing it to my entire circle of online friends. ;-)
Last year I wrote about the very nice painting that Carlos Guestrin gave me. Very cool. This year is a bit, well, geekier. My wife and son treated me to the […]
Peter Lee @ November 25, 2008 # No Comment Yet
The “Computing Research Highlight of the Week” is a new feature of the CCC web site, designed to expose more exciting research in computing to key policymakers and the public at large. This week, work by James Hays and Alexei Efros on estimating the geolocation of photographs via data mining is being highlighted.
I think this […]
Peter Lee @ November 23, 2008 # 8 Comments
A few weeks ago Berkeley’s Randy Katz told me about an interesting book by one of his colleagues, Richard Muller. It’s called “Physics for Future Presidents” and is based on a course by the same name.
The book is described as explaining the “science behind the headlines — the tools of terrorists, the dangers of nuclear […]
Peter Lee @ November 23, 2008 # No Comment Yet
A Senate resolution sponsored by Hilary Clinton, Bob Casey, and Arlen Specter plays tribute to the role that Randy Pausch played in giving “a voice to victims of pancreatic cancer” and inspiring “people to live life to the fullest.”
As we have all lived with Randy it is sometimes hard to understand the full extent of […]
Peter Lee @ November 20, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Yesterday it was publicly announced that Sun Microsystems will be teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University to support the development and deployment of Alice v3. The partnership makes perfect sense for both Sun and CMU. For Sun, the Alice system is a fantastic vehicle for promoting innovative teaching of Java programming to students at all […]
Peter Lee @ November 18, 2008 # 2 Comments
The current issue of ScienceNews has an interesting article on computer-assisted checking of mathematical proofs. The article explains the issue of how to verify that a proof is correct — an issue that has become increasingly important in mathematics, given the rise of extremely large proofs such as Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Conjecture.
Proof-checking […]
Peter Lee @ November 16, 2008 # No Comment Yet
A rare weekend home for me, and very little homework for my son (age 11). We played some LittleBigPlanet, the new PS3 game from Media Molecule. Wow! I didn’t realize the progress on the latest console games. The photo-realism and physics are beyond anything I’ve seen before. A short video from MM’s web site appears […]
Peter Lee @ November 16, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Almost exactly one year ago we started an initiative with Yahoo! to test-pilot one of their large computing clusters. Well, it has been a very busy year. This past week a review was conducted of our use of the Yahoo! M45 cluster and, in a nutshell, it has proven to be really valuable. In talking […]
Peter Lee @ November 13, 2008 # 3 Comments
My travel schedule has been a little bit crazy lately, with one or two trips a week. It’s easy to complain about the availability of flights in and out of Pittsburgh, but overall it is still just wonderful how easy it is to get to key meeting centers. Last week I was in Chicago, a […]
Peter Lee @ November 11, 2008 # 2 Comments
The latest issue of Discover Magazine has a feature on the “50 best minds of science”. No surprise, but our very own Luis von Ahn is on the list. (As of this writing, the feature is not available in the online edition, so you’ll have to run to the newstand to read all about it.) […]