Parents frequently need to discuss issues, but their kids rarely give them the opportunity to do so. Speaking freely is usually counterproductive, because you're often talking about the kids (e.g. they'll flip out if they find out you're discussing whether they can have candy). But today I realized we've stumbled upon a method which actually helps the kids a lot.

Currently, we alternate between speaking Spanish and using large words (at least 3 or 4 syllables). It's obviously beneficial for them to be exposed to multiple languages. And using large words not only gives my own vocabulary a workout, it's great for the kids. After a few uses, our 3 year old is randomly using 4-syllable words in sentences. Now I'll have to dig deeper for harder words, and he'll pick those up too! There isn't anything much cuter than hearing a 3 year old trying to say "complicated" or "detonation".

This evening, NPR aired a report discussing the need to reduce our dependence on oil. One of the analyst's comments began, "Whether you believe in global warming or not, oil is unhealthy for humans and the environment." Those issues are too much for me to handle, but the way such topics are discussed is part of the reason they're so difficult to address. The analyst was implicitly stating that beliefs, or feelings, are what determine the reality/myth of global warming.

It is incredibly frustrating when beliefs, or even organized religion, become tangled up in politics and policy making. Scientists discovered and improved every single method we use to extract energy. Scientists determined how to measure global climate, simulate events and provide weather predictions. Their research indicates that human activities are resulting in climate change. I'm all for finding fault in their methods and results, but it's ignorant behavior to simply "not believe" their results.   read more >>

Last month Intel released their new line of enterprise-class x86 server processors, the Xeon 7500-series "Nehalem-EX" processors. This is very significant, as their existing enterprise x86 processors (7400-series) were getting quite old and were not particularly competitive. The new Xeons provide much higher computational performance, as well as many enhancements for reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS). They are immediately available in 4-socket configurations and will also be appearing in 8-socket configurations.

With a product this complex, it's very difficult to cover every aspect of the new design. I will be focusing primarily on the performance of the new processors, with a particular focus on HPC as that is the market with which I'm most familiar.

To the best of my knowledge, the Xeon 7500s are some of the most diverse processors released under the same name. Their core counts range from 4 to 8, with clock speeds ranging from 1.87GHz to 2.67GHz and L3 cache ranging from 12MB to 24MB. This makes the decision of which processor to purchase more difficult than ever before, as one can't easily determine which processor is "best". You have to carefully evaluate your application and requirements, as well as the capabilities of each model.   read more >>

Data is an extremely valuable resource. That's a little vague, but it's probably the most profitable asset of our era. Businesses such as Google and Facebook live or die based on the data at their disposal - and they carefully guard this data. There have been lawsuits filed over unauthorized use of these data sets, even just for using publicly available data.

That being said, Google does make their search data available. It's not provided in a convenient format, but you can learn very interesting/humorous/scary things. And it provides a window into what your neighbors have on their minds.   read more >>

I recently described the pleasure available to anyone attempting to watch DVDs on a computer. Then I went out and purchased Star Trek. The media industry has been very reluctant to face facts, and it really seems they're completely out of touch or just belligerent.

Let me explain:   read more >>

Kids love to watch movies, but they are not kind to equipment. Some of the older media, such as VHS tapes, might be technically inferior to DVDs but they certainly were more durable. We have tried to get our kids to carefully handle DVDs, but it just doesn't happen. A few were destroyed before I learned my lesson.

It turns out that most geeks with kids have realized the same thing: you just can't give kids DVDs. All the films and videos they love can be stored on your hard drive with much better results: no more messing with scratched discs, no more fumbling for the right video case, instant access to whichever video they want to watch, and you won't have to replace broken DVDs over and over (something which will make our corporate overlords very unhappy).

This had been working well for us until I tried to save the new Pixar film Up. A quick bit of googling revealed that movie studios have attempted a new form of disc copy protection: ship broken discs.   read more >>

I have always been a big fan of the guys running Vendetta Online. They are one of the only indie teams I'm aware of that have successfully built an MMO game and turned a profit. What's more, they seem to use the right tools for the job, know what they are doing, built a solid game and interact very well with the user community. I guess those are the keys to success for an indie MMO.

I'm at the stage where really I just need to use the right tools for the job. In most respects, I believe that good games are timeless (1 2) - I'm not concerned about a decade of development time. So I can take all the time I want and I've spent the last few years researching the right tools for scalable game development. Like the developers of Vendetta discovered, all roads lead to Erlang. It seems to have become the de-facto standard for highly-available, scalable, reliable applications. Engineers building an MMO would be foolish to not strongly consider Erlang for their backend. And all of Erlang's strengths are based on a single premise: components should be simple, well separated and communicate through messages.   read more >>

I've been dabbling with computer game design for half a decade (I had crazy dreams about making games way before that, but didn't write code back then). It's been strictly a part-time hobby, but for the amount of time I've spent I don't have much visual evidence of my work.

Compared to coders who churn out games in a couple weeks, it's fairly embarrassing. This seems to be a common joke among game creators, as everyone on the net claims to have the "best" idea for their game and none are ever produced. I'd bet most game ideas don't even turn into a single line of code, and those that do are soon abandoned. I'm trying to rationalize how this doesn't apply to me...   read more >>

When working on high performance supercomputers, network latency and bandwidth are of utmost importance. If messages cannot be sent quickly enough between compute nodes, a supercomputer may actually perform more poorly than a standard server or workstation. So much time is spent waiting for input from other locations that nothing is actually accomplished. These days, more time is spent optimizing latency than bandwidth since most clusters have all the bandwidth they need (2-4GB/sec).

I've discovered that an analogy can be made with traffic on the highway. Computers keep getting faster, and now maybe traffic can too. I promise you'll notice this the next time you head out on the road.   read more >>

I think acronyms used to change less frequently. With the Internet's rapid development of new memes, it can be quite difficult to keep up with the latest fads. Older, slower institutions (particularly government) are unable to keep up. There have been many instances of "offensive" license plates being revoked after being issued. But for something a little lighter, I give you LOL Cheese.   read more >>