Sybreon Ones Nought

Another step closer to a Star Trek technology. The title of the paper says it all – “The interaction of a flowing plasma with a dipole magnetic field: measurements and modelling of a diamagnetic cavity relevant to spacecraft protection.”

From the website:

Here we describe a new experiment to test the shielding concept of a dipole-like magnetic field and plasma, surrounding a spacecraft forming a “mini magnetosphere”. Initial laboratory experiments have been conducted to determine the effectiveness of a magnetized plasma barrier to be able to expel an impacting, low beta, supersonic flowing energetic plasma representing the Solar Wind. Optical and Langmuir probe data of the plasma density, the plasma flow velocity, and the intensity of the dipole field clearly show the creation of a narrow transport barrier region and diamagnetic cavity virtually devoid of energetic plasma particles. This demonstrates the potential viability of being able to create a small “hole” in a Solar Wind plasma, of the order of the ion Larmor orbit width, in which an inhabited spacecraft could reside in relative safety. The experimental results have been quantitatively compared to a 3D particle-in-cell ‘hybrid’ code simulation that uses kinetic ions and fluid electrons, showing good qualitative agreement and excellent quantitative agreement. Together the results demonstrate the pivotal role of particle kinetics in determining generic plasma transport barriers.

I’m not quite sure if most Malaysians know about this, but you can actually have vernacular language classes in national schools (SK). I have a feeling that most people do not know how to go about having these POL classes (as they are called) run in their own schools. The actual requirements are actually fairly simple and most parents should actually get this done in the national schools if they wish to have the vernacular languages taught to their kids.

The most basic requirement is demand. There needs to be at least 14-15 children who wish to have the POL classes. This means that the parents could collect signatures or it would be far easier to raise this issue during the PTA meetings and have it officially voted on. The request can then be forwarded to the school principal and the district education department for action. What is usually done is that a teacher from a SJK would then be hired to teach these POL classes.

These POL classes are usually held on Fridays, between the hours of 12.30pm to 2.30pm. So, students from both morning and afternoon sessions would be able to attend. However, I believe that it is also possible to schedule these classes on Saturdays as well. Either way, the teacher from the SJK would come to the school and teach the lessons during these times.

This is actually a win-win situation for everyone involved.

The teachers get paid an additional allowance for teaching these POL classes. The students get to have an additional 2-hours per week of a third language. The school gets to provide an additional service for the community. The parents can have their children learn a third language. I don’t see how this could be a lose for anyone.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if this is being done in most schools. I have a feeling that most parents do not even know that they can get POL classes in national schools. Even if they do know that such things are possible, they may not know how to go about requesting for it either.

I know that my nephew has it in his school. Not sure about the rest though.

According to a recent article, Intel wishes to enter the smart-phone market, which has so far been a mainly ARM market. The article correctly points out that the Intel Atom currently consumes too much power (a few Watts) as compared to ARM processors (under 100mW). So, from a technical stand-point, there is still a significant barrier to cross.

However, Intel has always been a chip-fab in disguise as a microprocessor company. So, I won’t be surprised if they managed to use their fabrication prowess to come up with an Atom that approaches the power envelope of an ARM processor. According to the article, Intel is targeting to push down its Atom power envelope around 50 times by 2011. Assuming that the surrounding hardware of both platforms are the same, then Intel will be in the right power envelope to mount a competition.

However, I’m not quite sure if they will succeed.

You see, the strength of ARM isn’t that they are very power efficient. There are plenty of power efficient RISC processors out there and the newest Cortex ARMs do suck quite a bit of power. I believe that their strength lies in their licensing. You see, you cannot buy ARM processors from ARM simply because ARM does not make any ARM processors. ARM’s business model works by having them license out their processor designs to other companies for manufacture and sale.

You can buy ARM processors from a number of different companies, such as Motorola, TI, Samsung and even, once upon a time, Intel (before they sold off their ARM division to Marvel). Therefore, in order for Intel to penetrate the smart-phone market, it would have to out-sell a bunch of other major chip companies, who will very likely gang up of Intel to keep them out.

Hence, this no longer becomes a question of technology. It’s a question of cost.

While Intel may be able to produce a low-power Atom, it could only feasibly do so using very specialised and bleeding edge manufacturing processes. However, the rest of the chip companies can produce an equivalent ARM using yesterday’s technology. This means that it will always cost more to produce an Atom than an equivalent ARM.

Additionally, a mobile phone company would be able to buy an ARM processor from any number of ARM licensees. Hence, there is market competition for price. If one vendor doesn’t give you a part at a price-point that you are looking for, just call up another vendor. It will be nigh impossible for you to buy an Intel processor from anyone other than Intel. So, there is less choice and competition.

Moreover, since ARM merely licenses out its core, there is also more innovation in the System-on-chip market. Each vendor is free to throw in any number of components around the ARM in order to produce highly cost-efficient and compact chips. For example, TI produces the OMAP platform, which marries an ARM core with their own DSP cores provide a boost in multi-media processing.

So, I don’t see how this could translate into a win for Intel. I’m not Intel bashing here.

Ultimately, in the real-world of design and manufacturing, you will want whichever part is cheaper. In this sense, ARM has the numbers on its side. Furthermore, Intel would need to take on not just one company, but a whole armada of large chip companies if it wishes to push ARM out of the market. Unless it has some way of subverting enough of them, it is unlikely to succeed.

There is one possible way though – Intel licensing out the Atom core. That will open up a whole other can of worms for them, but that may be the only way for Intel to compete directly against ARM.

I was browsing at Digital Mall, Section 14, yesterday when I saw the Aspire Revo sitting quietly in the corner. I jumped when I saw it. I thought that it would’ve taken them longer to actually bring this new product to Malaysia. Wonderfully, it is now available in Malaysia for a cheap price of RM1399 (about $399). So, I managed to get my paws on it to admire its design.

It is obviously made for the HTPC market. In fact, it is advertised just as much. Also, it even comes with a TV-mount so that you can attach the Revo to the back of any VESA compatible screen-mount, which includes all wall-mountable televisions and monitors. It also comes with a set of wireless keyboard and mouse. The way that it was designed is obvious that even when mounted at the back, the important slots and ports are easily reached.

Unfortunately, it comes bundled with Windows, which is dumb. It didn’t even come with the Media-Centre Edition but came with the Home Edition instead. According to the Internet, there is a Linux version that comes with an 8Gb SSD instead for much much less (RM800). However, it seems that they would not be carrying that in Malaysia seeing that we’re a bunch of dumb jocks who do not know how to use anything other than Windows.

For its price, it comes pretty full featured. It is based on the NVIDIA ION platform, which as a 9400GM graphics chip paired with an Atom 230 processor. It comes with 2Gb of RAM and a 160Gb hard-disk. It also has 802.11b/g/n wireless for streaming movies off a network. It has a multi-card reader for reading all the digital photos from my DSLR. As mentioned, it comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Plus, it is low-power with only a 65W power supply.

As for the performance, I was not able to try it out exactly. However, I did manage to find this video on Youtube, of the Revo running XBMC Live and playing back a 1080p video. It is capable of HDMI audio and video. This baby rocks! It will most definitely be the platform for my HTPC. Now, I’ll need to shop around a bit for better prices in other stores.

PS: It is easy to take apart and infinitely hackable too. I intend to do just that when I get one. Dissect it and take out what I don’t need (such as the hard-disk) and adding some other things that I want (like an SSD).

Oh my goodness! Taking everything at face-value, Apple has just dropped the equivalent of a thermo-nuclear bomb into the mobile phone market. The Apple iPhone is now available at a very cheap price of just $99 (RM350). This will be so disruptive on so very many fronts.

Firstly, in the traditional mobile phone market. Most new entry level phones are priced at around RM300 or so. This is true of all brands from Nokia to LG. The only phones priced below this price-point are really basic phones for the cost conscious who do not really need any functions in their phones. However, at $99, the iPhone is set to disrupt this entire market segment.

Every other phone maker would need to respond. Otherwise, they risk losing all their market-share to Apple. Normal users would now be faced with the decision of getting a well-designed, sexy and cheap iPhone or a sadly-designed decidedly-stoic looking entry level phone from any other company. Power users would be faced with the decision of shelling out $500 for a power hungry smart-phone or $99 for an Apple device. I’m sure that the other handset makers are cursing Apple for doing this.

Seriously disruptive.

Secondly, this will open up the Apple phone for more than just uses as a mobile/smart-phone. I can now imagine the iPhone as the platform of choice for legions of developers. With the kind of features that the iPhone has at $99, you can imagine building all sorts of applications around the iPhone base platform. I can certainly imagine quite a number of non-phone related uses for a $99 phone.

I’m talking about opening up new markets. If apple moves to provide documentation and development kits based off the iPhone, we can expect to see a flood of new tools that are built on the iPhone – things that we have not even begun to imagine. It will move technology away from being PC centric to really being phone centric. We’ve talked about this for ages but this is the first time that we have the hand-set to base it on.

Seriously disruptive.

Finally, the only question that I have is – the catch. Obviously there is one, or more. Unless we’ve been scammed all this time, phones this good, do cost a bit to make. According to iSuppli, the iPhone 3G costs around $173 to build. Turns out that you will only get that price for new subscriptions of specific phone plan packages in the US.

So much for being seriously disruptive.

PS: So, don’t expect Maxis to be selling you RM350 iPhones anytime soon.

The recent unfortunate Air France crash may have cost 228 lives, but the investigations into the cause for the crash are far from over. With the aircraft’s black boxes sunken to the depths of several kilometres, we may never be able to accurately ascertain the cause of the crash. However, of the many prevailing theories, one that interests me is that of fly-by-wire technology.

Most people may or may not know this, but most aircraft today are flown using fly-by-wire technology. What this means is that, the human is not in direct control of the aircraft. The pilot tells an on-board computer what to do and the computer then controls the flight surfaces to do it. There are pros and cons to this technology. In an extreme example of the F117A stealth fighter, it would be impossible to fly that craft manually due to its extremely non-aerodynamic shape. It would be like trying to fly a piece of rock.

Therefore, in most cases, everyone believes that fly-by-wire is beneficial in the long run. However, where Boeing and Airbus disagree on philosophically, is in the case of emergencies. Boeing allow the pilot to manually override the computer and fly the plane by feel, while Airbus believes that computers can react far faster and respond much better in an emergency. So, the question is which design philosophy is better.

On the surface, both companies have excellent safety records. But if I was to postulate my personal opinion, I think that Airbus is right, on one condition – that the control software must be well written and able to adapt to all sorts of emergencies.

Personally, I do not know enough about flying aircraft to know what sort of parameters need to go into controlling these things safely. However, I am guessing that there are a lot of them. On top of this, I doubt that the control software is able to adapt to unimaginable edge cases. We have just not come far enough in decision making software to accomplish this.

So, while I think that ultimately, computers should be put in charge of something as delicate as flying an aircraft, I do not believe that our software is quite there yet. We may have to lose a few more aircraft in order to successfully learn how to write proper flight control and decision making software, particularly in testing out rare edge scenarios.

Believe it or not, the Swedish Pirate Party has garnered enough votes to send at least one MP to the European Parliament. According to Ars, they’re still tallying the numbers but the party has already breached the 4% minimum needed to qualify for a single seat. They’re currently polling at 7.1%. While a single MP in a parliament of 700 may not do very much, it is quite an achieve for a political party that is less than 2 years old and formed with a very narrow set of agendas that deal with intellectual property rights.

Personally, I think that it is great that a political party is able to ride on an intellectual property platform. Obviously, the recent spec-trial of The Pirate Bay helped boost their cause. As a result, they are currently the second largest political party in Sweden and their youth wing is the largest in Sweden. While most people may argue that they are a fringe party, they are a fringe party which has accomplished a lot – more than most other older mainstream political parties.

Personally, I think that this is a great achievement. While they may not wield much power today, they’re the largest under-30 political party in the EU. This gives me hope for the future. Now, if they only opened up a branch in Malaysia.