Author: Michael

Postdoc Positions available at CTIC Aarhus

A number of postdoc positions are currently available at CTIC, Department of Computer Science. The positions are for 1 year with the possibility of extension. The intended starting date is 1 August 2014. We are looking for applicants committed to playing an active part in continuously building strong research collaborations between the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University (www.cs.au.dk) and IIIS at Tsinghua University, Beijing. In particular, the successful applicants will spend significant time at IIIS, with funding for such visits being part of the post doc position.

via CTIC.

New approach to vertex connectivity could maximize networks’ bandwidth

Computer scientists are constantly searching for ways to squeeze ever more bandwidth from communications networks.

Now a new approach to understanding a basic concept in graph theory, known as “vertex connectivity,” could ultimately lead to communications protocols — the rules that govern how digital messages are exchanged — that coax as much bandwidth as possible from networks.

Graph theory plays a central role in mathematics and computer science, and is used to describe the relationship between different objects. Each graph consists of a number of nodes, or vertices, which represent the objects, and connecting lines between them, known as edges, which signify the relationships between them. A communications network, for example, can be represented as a graph with each node in the network being one vertex, and a connection between two nodes depicted as an edge.

via New approach to vertex connectivity could maximize networks’ bandwidth – MIT News Office.

SCSU prof explains how college has become a very expensive, complete joke

Education thus has degenerated into a game of “trap the rat,” whereby the student and instructor view each other as adversaries. Winning or losing is determined by how much the students can be forced to study. This will never be a formula for excellence, which requires intense focus, discipline and diligence that are utterly lacking among our distracted, indifferent students. Such diligence requires emotional engagement. Engagement could be with the material, the professors, or even a competitive goal, but the idea that students can obtain a serious education even with their disengaged, credentialist attitudes is a delusion.

via Education: SCSU prof explains how college has become a very expensive, complete joke | Best of Cain.

MySQL scripts

In order to do a MySQL dump on a remote machine with ssh, one can do it with the following command:

ssh name@URL 'mysqldump -u root dbname -ppasswd > dbname.sql'

This results in the following Warning:

Warning: Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure

In order to avoid it, add the file

~/.my.cnf

in the remote machine home directory, with the lines

[client]
password="passwd"

and change its permissions with

chmod 600 ~/.my.cnf

and use the following command instead:

ssh name@URL 'mysqldump -u root dbname > dbname.sql'

Chrome Sync

One of the nicest features of Chrome is the sync between various devices: Desktop, laptop, iPod, etc. All of them will be synchronized with the same book marks, open tabs, passwords, etc. I had a small glitch that arose as follows: I bought my desktop after my laptop, and I installed my files from the laptop’s Time Machine backup. As a result, the following directory was placed on the desktop machine:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome

which contains Chrome’s configuration, preferences and caches. Thus, on my desktop Chrome was running with the preferences from my laptop. One of the ways that this manifested itself was that the laptop and the desktop were seen by the Chrome sync process as one and the same. The way to fix it was simple; delete the directory above, and reinstall Chrome. Here is a related post.

Chrome rules the web

EMPIRES rise and fall swiftly on the internet. Google’s Chrome browser, which celebrates its fifth birthday next month, has captured much of the territory of older browsers and is now responsible for about 43% of all the web traffic generated by the world’s desktop computers. When Chrome was launched the dominant browser was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), with a 68% share—it is now down to just 25%.

via Browser wars: Chrome rules the web | The Economist.