Cow’s Blog

July 16th, 2008

photo: Darren Hester

The dream of distributed computing (or grid computing) is that it can cut the costs of computing and cut carbon emissions. In this post, I am to explain how it works.

Let us imagine a scenario where both Carl and Daniel have computers. Carl has a computer which is twice as efficient - that is it costs him half as much to do the same thing on his computer. Let’s say it costs £1 in electricity for Carl to run a computer model; and £2 for Daniel. In total, it costs £3 to society to run the computer model once for Carl and once for Daniel.

Cost to Carl: £1
Cost to Daniel: £2
Total Cost to Society: £3

With Distributed Computing

Now imagine the same scenario but with one addition: distributed computing. As it costs Carl less money to run the model on his computer than it would cost Daniel, Daniel could pay Carl to run the model for him. Imagine that Daniel paid Carl £1.50. It only costs Carl £1 to run the model Daniel’s model for him, but he has gained £1.50 for his effort giving him a profit of 50p. Daniel only spends £1.50 to have his model run, as opposed to the £2 which it would have cost him to run the model himself.

Everybody benefits by saving money and the end result is the same: Carl and Daniel have both had their model run.

Cost to Carl: 50p (£1 to run his own model, subtract 50p profit from running Daniel’s model)
Cost to Daniel: £1.50 (He pays Carl £1.50 to run his model for him)
Total Cost to Society: £2

What assumptions have we made?

photo: Ack Ook

There are no costs involved in the transaction itself. Imagine that it costs £2 for Daniel to send a copy of the computer model to Carl and then to receive the results. If Daniel had to print out instructions on how to use the model, then FedEx it to Carl and wait several weeks to see the results of the model, that’s perfectly conceivable. In this case, it costs of Daniel asking Carl to run the model for him would be £3 (£1 for Carl to run the model on his computer and £2 in transaction costs). In this case, he might as well have run it himself. Real world transaction costs would include slow network connections and incompatibilities between different computer systems. So for distributed computing to work we need fast, reliable network connections and software compatibility.

Daniel would happily allow Carl to run the model for him. Are there privacy implications for example? Daniel must be confident that he can allow Carl to run the model for him and be equally confident that Carl couldn’t have a peek at the results of his model. After all, there might be trade secrets in there. Similarly, Carl must be confident that Daniel isn’t sending him malicious software which could break his computer. For distributed computing to work, there must be a foolproof and hackproof way for Carl and Daniel to trust each another to keep to their side of the bargain.

photo: JohnSeb

Thirdly, Daniel must actually be able to cut his costs. Let me explain. It’s possible that Daniel will have his computer on 24/7 anyway. That is, it’ll cost him £2 whether he’s runs the model or not. If he’s leaving his computer running at 100% but idle and still asks Carl to run the model for him, he essentially pays for the model to be run twice. My computer doesn’t dynamically underclock so whether or not I’m using it, it’s eating up the same amount of energy. For distributed computing to work, our own computers must make much more efficient use of resources. We need to have thin-client computers with neglible costs.

The real world

Distributed computing hasn’t taken off yet on any large scale. The three conditions don’t yet exist:

• We need fast, reliable network connections and software compatibility. This definitely doesn’t exist at the moment: I don’t trust my own network connection to be 99.9999% reliable. It’s OK for downloading files and sending e-mails but it needs to be good enough for me to be able to send entire computer programmes over the network in under a second. Additionally, software isn’t at the stage where it’s “write once, run anywhere”. We need standards, standards and standards.
• There must be a foolproof and hackproof way for Carl and Daniel to trust each another to keep to their side of the bargain. There is no way I would let anybody run a piece of software on my computer without me checking it first. If I had to pre-approve every single piece of software, that adds to the transaction costs which I discuss. Virtual machines are one way we can get around this issue by creating safe ways to isolate software and to track it’s progress. Still, I’m not sure if there is a secure way to run software on a computer with the confidence that the owner of the computer can’t take a peek. And I’m not sure if we’ll ever reach the point where people will happily allow third-parties to run software on their computer and have no possible way to find out what it’s doing.
• We need to have thin-client computers with negligible costs. I’ve already debunked this one. My computer uses exactly the same amount of power whether it’s active or idle. I don’t believe that people will drop the idea of “a computer on every desk in every home” until they are confident the first two criteria have been met. Only then will they accept owning a thin-client computer.

It’s already being used…

Last year I worked at a company which employed distributed computing on a smaller scale. They had a small cluster (~20 computers) with identical hardware, each linked with Gigabit Ethernet. Software ran inside virtual machines and those virtual machines moved around between computers depending on the amount of spare capacity each one had.

The reason why they could employ distributed computing is because within their own system, they knew that:

• They had a reliable intranet connection and because all the computers were identical software worked on every single computer.
• Because they only ran a limited number of programmes and all the computers were under their own control, there were no trust issues.

photo: Petrick2008

Distributed and grid computing isn’t yet practical on a worldwide scale but I think we’re making progress. Networks are becoming more reliable. Software platforms appear to be becoming more standardised. Virtual machines are coming of age. And our computers are becoming more environmentally concious and adapting their resource usage to the amount of processing power required.

So there is the blueprint to how we can lower the costs of computing. You might be wondering what that’s got to do with the environment. Well, simply replace the £ sign with Joules of energy. Like free-market trade can leads to an efficient allocation of resources in the real world, the trade of computer time in a distributed grid of computers leads to a more efficient allocation of computing resources. And that lowers the energy consumption of computing and it’s environmental impact.

• Economics , Linux , Science
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July 15th, 2008

Hi guys! I’m back in England… I spent the last two weeks in sunny America and had the delight of seeing Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon as well as spending July 4th in America (odd being British and in America on Independence Day but there goes). You’ve been treated to a couple of scheduled posts over the last two weeks; hopefully we’ll be back to full operation soon!

photo: Todd Huffman

When I was in America, I had plenty of opportunity to experience the wonders of American cable television (which also seems to have a ridiculous number of commercial breaks).

I saw a discussion programme about UFOs and there was a theory about UFOs and why “aliens” haven’t yet made contact which I thought was pretty concieved and quite funny.

Now, the standard theory about UFOs is that they are aliens of extra-terrestrial origin. They crash landed at Roswell and the government has been covering it up ever since, either because they feel we are not ready to know or because the military feel it is a tactical advantage to keep such information secret.

They’re actually time travelling humans…

The theory put across by one contributor to the TV show was that they are not actually aliens, but humans from the future. They believe that time travel was discovered in the Philadelphia Experiment. The laws of physics don’t actually prevent time travel; they are apparently possible using wormholes. Some people have claimed to have made small particles travel in time. It is perfectly conceivable that a time travel device could be constructed in the future for humans or spacecraft. This time travel device might arguably be easier than a civilisation developing the capabilities to traverse great distances to make contact with extra-terrestrial civilisations (in this case, us). They argue that UFOs are actually time travellers from the future who have come back to prevent us from making big mistakes which would impact the future (like the temporal agents of “Star Trek: Enterprise”).

The reasons why we can never know the truth about UFOs is because if we know, we’d change the future. We might panic and destroy ourselves.

Why has it been documented that people in circumstances where they might experience more stress (e.g. during Wars) see more UFOs? Psychologists say that these people are more likely to “imagine” or make up stories about being abducted by aliens. But theorists say it’s because those are also the occasions are the ones which we might need more help to stop us from doing what is wrong.

photo: Jami Dwyer

If there are indeed aliens swarming around in UFOs everywhere, why aren’t there more documented cases, especially with the number of camera phones around these days? Because the future human in their UFOs wouldn’t visit us unless there was something in history to correct.

I thought this was a totally genius theory because it manages to answer why the governments can’t disclose anything about UFOs and the paradoxes of believing UFOs are of extra-terrestrial origin as well as finding a solution for a paradox of time travel.

I thought it was certainly a rather interesting, although rather concieved theory for the origin UFOs. Of course, I’m very skeptical about it as am I about the existance of UFOs. The beauty of the theory is it can’t be disproved. But I’m sure that my future self will be able to come back in time and stop me from making this post to prevent me from the embarrassment of having to admit I’m wrong.

• Sci Fi , Science
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July 6th, 2008

photo: Hamed Saber

The New Scientist reports on a study at the University of Plymouth where students were asked to assess the slope of a hill. Those with friends estimated the slope at 10 to 15 degrees less steep than those who were alone during the experiment. They also found that the same effect could be achieved just by thinking of somebody close to you.

Fascinating stuff. I guess it’s pretty metaphorical too… how we can do tough and seemingly impossible things when we’re surrounded by great people who give us support all the way.

I wish the paper was made available for free. It would have been really interesting to find out exactly how the experiment was done and how other factors were accounted for e.g. saying something is easier than you percieve it is to impress your peers.

• Science
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June 30th, 2008

photo: *L*u*z*a*

There is some fascinating research from Michigan State University about the use of online social networking sites by college students and the effect on their social capital. For non-economists, social capital is one of the three types of capital or “wealth”. The other two types are physical capital (what you own e.g. a computer, machines, money) and human capital (skills, experience). The third type of capital is your social connections - or social capital.

The study found that Facebook allows people to keep in contact with communities more efficiently, hence increasing their social capital. The authors of the study wrote, “Social capital has been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes, such as better public health, lower crime rates, and more efficient financial markets.” In addition, there was a correlation between Facebook usage and psychological well-being.

Of course, Facebook started off as a social networking site for college students only. Hence, it encouraged people to develop their relationships with people within their local college communities and people who they know offline which is more useful social capital than that which would be gained through forums and sites such as Digg.

photo: Kate_A

The study goes on to look at two different types of social capital: bonding (cementing networks of homogenous groups of people) and bridging (social networks of socially heterogeneous groups of people). The argument is that some types of social capital are bad: criminal gangs, racist and extremist groups have high levels of bonding capital. The study found that Facebook tends to generate the good type of social capital: bridging.

Perhaps my criticism of the study is how it can be shown that Facebook causes an increase in social capital. To me, it seems pretty likely also that people with greater social capital will be more likely to sign up to Facebook.

But it’s certainly an interesting study. There certainly hasn’t been much study in the general area but I think it’s an area which needs studying: just as the web allowed us to enhance our human capital by learning more about different kinds of things, the social web will allow us to enhance social capital.

The “social web” may have drastic implications for our society and economy.

• Economics , Facebook , Internet , Science , Web 2.0
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June 21st, 2008

photo: steve_steady64

I saw a really interesting use of game theory in last week’s New Scientist about the origin of leadership and I wanted to share it here.

Regular readers will know that I’ve written about game theory many times in the past: I find game theory to be a very elegant way of modelling human behaviour with many applications in economics and the social sciences.

This piece of game theory concerns the question of why hierarchy exists in society. Why do we have leaders? Imagine the following scenario. Let us imagine two people, Persons A and B, who both need to hunt in order to eat. They can choose from one of two forests to hunt in, but they must travel together for their protection.

Person A is familiar with Forest 1 as it is where he typically hunts. Person B is familiar with Forest 2: that is where he usually hunts.

Which forest will they choose to go to? Obviously each person will prefer to go to the forest that they are most familiar with and to hunt there: by doing this they maximise their own success (the “number of kills” and the amount of food they can bring back). The following diagram shows the payoffs:

photo: hans s

Person A knows all the ins and outs of Forest 1, so he’s an efficient operator. In Forest 1, Person A gets 3 “kills” but Person B gets 1 “kill” as he doesn’t know it at all.

If they both decided to travel to Forest 2, the opposite is true. Person B gets 3 “kills” as he knows the forest well, Person A only gets 1.

If Person A and Person B couldn’t agree on which forest to travel to, neither of them would bring back any food, let alone reach a forest, because they can’t travel unless they travel together for protection.

In the scenario, what would happen? Well, Person A would choose to travel to Forest 1, the forest he knows the most well. If he chooses Forest 1, he has possible payoffs of either 3 kills or no kills. If he chose to travel to Forest 2, he has the possibility of no kills or 1 kill. Conversely as the payoffs are opposite for Person B, he will choose to travel to Forest 2, his favoured forest.

The end result is that both people will attempt to travel to their own favoured forest and neither of them would have any food to eat.

photo: Hamed Saber

For society, the best solution is that both people work together to agree where they want to hunt (this way society as a whole gains food from 4 “kills”). However, for this to happen, one person must take a lead but someone else must agree to follow: somebody must accept a smaller payoff and a smaller amount of food than which he would have had if he was leader.

This illustrates the importance of hierarchy and leadership in society: without somebody taking the lead to make a decision and other people following, society would not function. Society needs a leader and a follower.

Natural selection might be expected to select the leaders. After all, they are more successful at hunting and perform better. But natural selection at the group level would favour groups which worked well together (as the game theory diagram shows, groups which have a leader and follower are more successful as a whole).

• Maths , Science
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June 16th, 2008

I received an e-mail from the team at AMV BBDO about the THINK! Driving Challenge which I wanted to share with all of you.

It is a website which demonstrates just how difficult it is to talk on the mobile phone whilst driving: an issue which is quite close to my heart. Last year I was crossing at a crossroads: opposite was a stationary car. The driver was obviously distracted for some reason and moved off harshly whilst we were crossing. Thankfully she stopped the car a few inches before she knocked us out.

Anyway, give it a go before you proceed any further down the post so it’s not spoilt for you!

Nicola Davies writes:

Just over a year on from the introduction of the tough new penalty of three penalty points and a £60 fine for using a mobile phone whilst driving, the Driving Challenge directly builds upon a film made by the University of Illinois 10 years ago which demonstrates the psychological principle of ‘inattentional blindness’.

I wrote about a gorilla/basketball video several years ago which demonstrated this inattentional blindness.

Credits:

Client: Department for Transport
Agency: AMV BBDO
Creative: Gary Hoff, Stuart Woodall, Sean Vrabel
Account Management: Kate Gault, Giovanna Cucchi, Olivia Browne
Digital Producer: Nicola Davies
Web Production: iCG
Film Production: Brick and Pin
Director: Richard Topping
Exposure: Online

• Science , UK
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June 15th, 2008

photo: code poet

Science and nanotechnology never fails to amaze me. From New Scientist comes news that scientists have created nano-paper which is almost as strong as steel. Similarly to normal paper, it’s made from celluose.

Celluose nanofibres are the main structural reinforcement material in plant structures. Normally, paper is made through a mechanical process which damages these fibres, reducing the strength of the paper. The new method of producing paper involves breaking down the pulp with enzymes and fragmenting them with a mechanical beater. When water is drained away, the fibres join together through hydrogen bonds giving “nano-paper”.

According to New Scientist:

Mechanical testing shows it has a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, making it stronger than cast iron (130 MPa) and almost as strong as structural steel (250 MPa). Normal paper has a tensile strength less than 1 MPa.

Wow. I wonder what novel uses could come from this.

• Science
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June 8th, 2008

photo: izarbeltza

The society of Star Trek invented by Gene Roddenberry is sometimes held up by fans as something we should strive towards. In the Star Trek universe, they don’t use money: people strive towards bettering themselves and humanity. Doesn’t that sound like communism to you?

If we tried to apply these principles in our world today, it certainly wouldn’t work. That’s been demonstrated in communism. Money is a much better way to carry out transactions than bartering: with bartering there needs to be a double-coincidence of wants. A baker may barter a few loaves of bread in exchange for a haircut with a hairdresser. Now, the baker only needs his hair cut once every month or two. Between haircuts, the hairdresser has nothing to barter and thus cannot have any bread on the table.

As for striving towards bettering ourselves and humanity? It doesn’t work in communism: communism gives people incentives to do as little as possible as they aren’t individually rewarded. Free-market economics (or capitalism) works simply because it gives people individual incentives to work and perform better: wages for workers, profits for companies and dividends for shareholders. Economics uses the fact that people act in their own self-interest to lead to an optimal outcome for society. I’d argue that economics is the single most important invention ever: one which paved the way for science, technology and pretty much every single aspect of life we experience today.

I was watching Visions of the Future on the BBC the other day and it did lead me to wonder whether we might be on the verge of this Star Trek age where we might be able to do without money. There are two bits of technology which I believe would allow this to happen.

photo: mugley

First of all, nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion promises to be an abundant source of energy which is inexhaustible. Limitless and pollution-free, nuclear fusion could render the assumption of scarcity in economics out of date (that society doesn’t have enough resources to meet human wants). With an infinite amount of energy, we could do anything: mitigate global warming, travel to other planets, whatever we like.

Secondly, molecular assemblers or “replicators” as they are known in Star Trek. The development of replicators depends on further research into nanotechnology but the promise is that they can produce more or less anything at the touch of a button by constructing objects atom by atom. The only limitations would be the amount of energy required to replicate the objects and knowing what we want to produce with them.

Many scientists believe that nuclear fusion and molecular assemblers are both viable technologies and may only be about 50 years away.

In a world with limitless energy and the means to create anything that we wanted, nothing is scarce. We could immediately create anything that we want in order to fulfill our wants and needs. And it’s that fact which would render economics redundant. If everything costs nothing to make, why would you need money?

photo: fdecomite

So what would be the effect of such technologies on society? Wealth is more or less meaningless and there is no reason for money to exist, so there will be no such things as city stock traders or economists. In fact, anyone working in the primary and secondary sectors would be made redundant by replicators. The important people in such a society would be the scientists and engineers: in a world where we aren’t limited by resources, we are only limited by our ideas. Scientists and engineers are the people who will come up with those new ideas.

At first glance, the utopian society as described in ‘Star Trek’ can seem like a communist society which would never function in the real world. I believe that today we are beginning to see the glimpses of technology which would bring society into a new age where we are no longer constrained by resources, scarcity and economics. The only constraints would be our ideas and dreams. Gene Roddenberry’s dream of our futuristic society might not seem so farfetched afterall.

• Economics , Sci Fi , Science
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May 16th, 2008

photo: monkeyleader

Big distributed computing projects such as SETI@Home, folding@home and “the BBC Climate Change Experiment” have been around for years. They utilise extra computing power when the computer is inactive to help find aliens, fold proteins or to run climate models to predict the effects of climate change.

Computer scientists have found a new way to help them understand how proteins fold - one of the central problems in biology. From The Economist:

Proteins are the building blocks of life inside cells; they are first made as long chains of molecules and work properly only after they have folded into their final shape. But understanding the rules of protein folding remains one of biology’s central problems.

The existing program uses trial and error, and pre-programmed mathematical rules that govern folding as understood today. But users of the screensaver told David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington and lead scientist on Rosetta@home, they could do better.

…

Players use their computers to fold proteins. The more chemically stable the folded protein becomes, the more points the players are awarded. In trials of the game hundreds of players were given 40 protein puzzles to solve (for the trials, the folding solutions were already known). Many of the best players were not scientists but were able to find the correct structure faster than computers.

It’s great to know that the power of the human brain can still beat a computer! So far the experiment has only been run using proteins for which the folding solutions were already known. The next step is to give players proteins for which solutions aren’t known - the players will then be taking part in some new cutting edge research!

• Games , Science
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May 9th, 2008

photo: Thomas Hawk

I don’t think I’m alone in having difficulties inventing strong and secure but unique and memorable passwords for every website. The problem has really exploded recently as I’ve started to do more online shopping making it even more important to keep all my accounts secure.

I found out about the following technique to choose strong and memorable passwords today and I think it’s really good.

A good technique for choosing a password is to:
Choose a phrase between 8 and 16 words long that will be easy to remember. You can include names and numbers too.

Take the first letter of each word in order, including any numbers, capital letters or punctuation. This then becomes your new password.

For example:

Choosing the phrase: ‘My pet dog’s first name is Rex!’ would result in the password: MpdfniR!

or the phrase: ‘My sister Peg is 24 years old’ would give the password: MsPi24yo

Choosing a password in this way produces a password which should be easy to remember, but cannot easily be guessed. With practice, you should be able to choose phrases which provide the required number of different character types.

You can choose words and associations which are relevant to the site you may be visiting. Say Amazon.com - you might associate that with the environment and therefore one of Gandhi’s sayings: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” By taking the first part of his quote and applying the quoted method, you might have a password like “Epe2semn,“.

I think by more or less any measure, this password is pretty secure. It contains a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, numerical characters as well as punctuation.

Some scientific research on this method is detailed in a Cambridge University paper “The memorability and security of passwords - some empirical results” (2000).

• Internet , Science
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