If you cannot sell, give it for free?

Is this one of those things?

Jasper offers free verification planning tool
Dylan McGrath
EE Times (08/30/2006 5:54 PM EDT)
SAN FRANCISCO — Verification-focused EDA startup Jasper Design Automation is making available a free tool for tracking the progress of verification plans, the company said Wednesday (Aug. 30).

Torture

Article 5 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". According to wikipedia, this was adopted by United Nations (a.k.a UN) in 1948. I guess, since the inception of Article-5, it has been violated by almost every country in the world....ok maybe Switzerland did not violate it, yet.


A friend of mine indirectly encouraged me to look for torture literature on wikipedia. Here is a line from wiki entry on torture which is very fascinating and to some extent I would believe in that....


" In the Roman Republic, for example, a slave's testimony was admissible only if it was extracted by torture, on the assumption that slaves could not be trusted to reveal the truth voluntarily."

Although, this one I found quite stupid..."In medieval Europe, Often, defendants sentenced to death would be tortured prior to execution, so as to have a last chance that they disclose the names of their accomplices."

This is a good website about different torture techniques used all over the world. The background color of this website make the reading a little exciting.
"http://www.angelfire.com/darkside/forgottendreams/Tools.html"

California

If you are not doing anything in your life and the weather itself is not changing..life would be so boring. Perhaps thats why, this state have some of the most dynamic people in the country; otherwise this unchanging weather will kill you.

A Clone of me, in a parallel universe

Here is an interesting argument to prove that, somewhere far, far away, there is a planet which has life. It has humans and animals just like they are on earth. Not just that, It further goes to argue that, in some other planet, somewhere far away, there is an exact replica of myself, writting this, right now!!

Assumptions: The space is infinite, which has been proved to some extent by experimental data of cosmic rays detection.

Argument: The basic argument is, in an infinite space, anything is possible!!

In particular, what is the probability that life exists on another planet. It is some number which is not zero but infinitely small and very close to zero. But, since space is infinite, the probability of life in another planet approaches one. Another ways to see it, in a sample space where infinite number of events can happen, the probability of any arbitrary event happening, out of infinite events is "1". So If I pick that event to be, life exist somewhere else. In an infinite space, it surely is true.

Still not convinced, ok try this: Imagine in a bag, there are infinite number of balls with different weights. What is the probability that at least one ball in that bag weighs 1 pound?

Monte Carlo Methods

Monte Carlo simultion method is a technique to find numerical data for the behavior of a system (like variability, reliability, success rate, blah blah blah), where the exact computation of such data through analytical means is impossible. Such cases might arise in multi-variable equation, each with different probability distribution.

Now, from one of the best books on this method, this is what the author wrote on the first page.

"Monte Carlo is an extremely bad method, it should be used only when all alternate methods are worse"

Interesting, isn't it?

Time Travel Paradox

The twin brothers paradox is a favourite cocktail topic, when talking about time travel. The paradox is stated roughly like this.

There are twin brothers on earth, and one of them takes a flight in a rocket and travels close to the speed of light while the other one stays on earth. After 10 earth-years, when the travelling twin returns to earth, he will be much younger (physically) compared to his twin brother, who has aged 10 earth-years. The earth-years mentioned here is similar to years, but for the sake of correctness, it is termed as earth years.

Most of the explainations for this paradox of twin brothers on internet (including wikipedia) are decently complex for some not scieitific person, who just want to be amused. For thos amusing people, here is an alternate explaination.

Forget about time travel, and twin brothers for a moment (ding dong!!). Lets talk about something else...like

1. Nothing in this universe (or any other universe) can travel faster than light.
2. Nothing in this universe (or any other universe) can travel faster than light.
3. I just repeated the previous sentence, just to emphasize my point.
4. Even *TIME* cannot travel faster than light.
5. Therefore, TIME has a speed.

As a human being, when we move from Spain to Beijing, we are travelling in space. Since it takes us 16 hours to travel from Spain to Beijing, we are also travelling in TIME. We are doing a space-time travel. Everyone on this earth is travelling in time, and with the same speed. Right?

If there is a machine, that can be used to accelerate the velocity of time (as perceived one earth), One can travel 5 earth-days in 2 earth-days only. You got the point.

Once again, nothing can travel faster than light, even time cannot travel faster than light. Time as seen on earth has a finite speed. Therefore, a machine can travel faster than time and does time travel.

This can explain, time travel into future, how do I explain time travel into past? Slow down my Time-Car?

Software Piracy.. Did you know...?

It is quite well known that software piracy is one of the biggest problem faced by american companies in China. It is estimated that 96% of the software in China is pirated resulting in huge losses to american companies.

Humm....How much is really the loss?

From an articke in pcworld magzine, the software piracy in china cost united states roughly 1.19 billion dollars a year. Wow thats a huge number. It is alarming and everybody knows about it. We need to do something about it!!!

According to an article in Red Herring (July 31st issue), some 21% of all softwares in united states are unlicensed (a.k.a pirated, although unlicensed sounds better); and caused in $$ 6.6 Billion dollars losses in 2005, according to trade group Business Software Alliance. That is roughly 5 times 1.19.

Did you know..?

Stem Cell Research - Veto'ed

For starters, a brief introduction on Stem Cell Research can be found at this wikipedia link. Wikipedia is a very good source for general information, but that discussion is for some other post. In general, the information about arcane topics is easier found on wikipedia than using google or yahoo search.

It is believed that, Embryonic stem cell research can cure diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Doug Melton's specialty, type 1 diabetes. There is apparently no direct evidence to support data. However, the invonations in science does not come from the presence of direct evidence, instead from an investigative mind, a plausible theory and freedom to validate (or invalidate) that theory. .. to be continued...