Music and Raw Data Aggregation

There is utility and power in aggregation of resources, especially electronic resources today. 
Wikipedia aggregates more information than those shelves and shelves of old encyclopedias. Google aggregates the world's websites, putting them at our fingertips through simple searches. The list goes on.
But, more aggregation can be done in the way of electronic resources for music and raw data.

Consider the electronic resources for music:

-For radio I go to Pandora, LastFM, or maybe some other site
-For streaming a specific song I try to find the song on YouTube, or go to Grooveshark
-For biographical information I go to Wikipedia
-For lyrics I search in Google and sort through the results (most of which bombard with pop-ups) ... the same for guitar tabs
-Band websites are found on Myspace and Facebook 
-For "musician wanted" classifieds, or instrument classifieds, I go to Craigslist
It would be powerful to combine all of these resources into one music website.

Also, consider raw data aggregation:
What the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST) has done is to put all of the publicly available temperature records in one place, in a common format, making it much easier for outside researches to cross check and do their own analysis. Temperature analysis is now both easier for other researchers, but also more accurate since more data means less statistical uncertainty.
Now imagine if all publicly available raw data - scientific, governmental, commercial - were put in one place, in a common format. It would save researchers an unfathomable amount of time, which would be put towards data analysis instead of searching for and organizing data. Additionally, such aggregation would inspire and enable new research ideas that would not have been possible otherwise. Raw data is being used for anything from cell phone apps to physics papers, and it seems essential to begin forming a central database to provide better universal access.

Free Software Arrrr!

It’s amazing how easy it is to get ANY software you want free from the internet these days. I don’t know who these wizards are who figure out how to crack the software, but thank god they’re out there.

I recently realized that some people just don’t know how easy it is, have had bad experiences in the past with torrents (the file that lets you download the program from other people), or just don’t like going to torrent websites because of the vulgar advertising that you’re always bombarded with, so I would like to share the way that I have consistently had a good experience…well, my experience used to be hit-or-miss. I would do a Google search for the software that I wanted, then scour the various results that popped up. Forget that strategy. Just go to Pirate Bay “top 100” and you always find torrents that work. Simply put, statistics work. People see the comments that others post on the torrents that are offered and choose the best one, consistently.

So to get free software there are 2 steps:

1) Download a torrent application (Client)

    - Transmission for Mac (I wish they made it for PC, too)

    - MicroTorrent for PC 

2) Go to "Pirate Bay Top 100" and look for your desired software

    - Download using program

It's easy to say it's easy when you've already figured it out, so I will share the fruit of my downloading with you via a nifty website called DropBox that allows you to upload and share up to 2GB of files for free on the internet and gives public links for files with no maximum file size. Awesome!

Download for free:

- Microsoft Office 2011 (Mac)

- Microsoft Office 2010 (Windows)
- iWork 2009 (Mac)

Make BART Automated!

One of the most interesting things that I learned in my mass transportation class at Berkeley is that BART can run entirely automated. When BART was first built in the 70’s it was demonstrated that the system can run without drivers, but the leaders of the project thought that the public wouldn’t want to put their fate in a computer’s hands. That initial decision has had lasting consequences: due to strong unions, BART administrators now cannot eliminate drivers. The public trusts automated trains - wikipedia has a list of "large scale metros" that are driverless - so why don’t we make the trains automated and put all of those driver salaries towards making BART run at night and add additional lines? My frustration with BART comes from the fact that they are always somehow strapped for cash despite the fact that passengers pay exorbitant prices to pack themselves like sardines in a 10-car train for a quick ride under the bay. It costs $8.65 to go from SFO to downtown Berkeley, but to go the full length of the route, SFO-Pittsburg/Baypoint costs $10.90, and with an average of 75 people per car (that's how many in my BART car as as I write), that's a ton of money.

 QUICK MATH: ~75 people x 10-car train x $10.90 =  $8,175. The full trip takes 1hr 20 mins. Where does all the money go? Service. Look at these salaries of BART employees. Drivers, known as "train operators" can make more than $136,000 dollars a year + awesome benefits. For what?... driving  - something a computer could do a better job at doing, it seems. I guess just knowing that other metros, like Vancouver's SkyTrain, have used technology to liberate human beings from the unnecessary task of driving makes it feel like something within BART's reach. To me this is representative of a larger movement as we move forward of making computers do menial labor for us wherever possible.

It looks like BART,
 but it's the 47 mile driverless SkyTrain of Vancouver

The most ridiculous aspect of BART is that it doesn’t run at night. How is it possible that BART trains don’t run between the hours of 1am and 7am on weekends? Do the administrators not realize that such a decision is absolutely crippling to everyone in the Bay Area? 

The effect it has on my life is that when I go clubbing in the City, it means that me and my friends can't get home afterward, so I end up getting in a car with a drunk driver. It means I can't make the 7:35am flight from SFO to Santa Barbara which is my only chance flying standby (my dad works at the airport).

So why don't they run it at night? Again, service. You have to pay everyone more for working late-night. If there weren't drivers, would all-night trains fit into the budget? How about all of those extensions, like to the San Jose airport? 

Let's embrace technology and modernize BART.

Physics Courses in the 21st Century

What are physics classes coming to, now that more information is becoming more readily available via the internet? How can you assign a homework problem that has  "4,392 results" on the internet, found in "0.15 seconds," and grade it as if it were representative of the student's ability?

There are only so many ways that you can write the standard "projectiles" problems, or "Gauss's Law" problems, etc., and today you can find the solution to ANY problem online, guaranteed. A professor can try to write problems in a covert way, but students aren't stupid: they'll sniff out the parallel problem on the internet and copy it to get their 100% homework score, which varies in fraction of the final grade from 30-50%.

    So what purpose does homework serve then?Well here's an illustrative example: I had one professor for E+M who knew all the students had the solutions manual to the Griffiths E+M book (again, found on Google in 0.15 seconds), but he'd assign all the problems from it anyway - this was the part that at first confused me, but by imagining yourself in his shoes it makes sense. He recognized the fact that to try to 'fool' the students by writing one of the standard problems in a covert and more confusing way would be petty and counterproductive, so his strategy was 'screw it, let them copy homework problems if they so choose.' He would assign an enormous number of problems that no student had time to finish without the aid of the solutions manual, and had a firm 'no late homework' policy. The trend was like this: at the beginning of the semester students started the homework early in the week, and used the solutions manual only to check their answers, due at 5pm every Friday in the Reading Room homework box. Then, as the semester went on students would start the homework later and later, to the point that they would start the assignment on Friday -- imposssssible to finish without shutting down your brain and copying as fast as your poor sore hand can write. Sure enough, when you'd look through the box of graded homework on Monday, you'd see all perfect scores. Then, for tests the professor allowed "cheat sheets," up to three pages of notes of any kind. Then on tests the class average would be below 50% with a perfect Gaussian spread --- how? Some students just copied homework and didn't spend time making good cheat sheets, while others put in the time necessary to actually learn the homework problems (no surprise here).  

    When I studied abroad in Italy, their system was different. There were only two exams that decided your grade: the written exam and the oral exam. You were required to first pass the written exam before being able to take the oral exam, but almost everyone passed the written exam; yet again, there are only so many different ways you can write the standard "particle in a box," "harmonic oscillator," and step/delta function problems, so the students simply got the previous exam solutions from last students, then aced the exam, which was always similar to past exams. But then there's the oral exam: I talked with one student who said that he didn't even get the book, for the oral exam the professor simply wants to hear his own words regurgitated back to him.

   My problem with these education systems is that students end up wasting a lot of time jumping through hoops rather than learning. This happens because the institution needs to give the appearance that its students have learned to solve crazy problems, and can give eloquent answers to difficult oral exams, but in reality students are shutting down their minds copying homework, memorizing solutions to problems knowing that it will show up on the exam, and regurgitating what the professor said without thinking at allllll. The students who choose to do things the hard way, 'nobly', spending all week on the problem set and still not finishing it, who don't write problem solutions onto their cheat sheet out of principle, who study from multiple outside resources for an oral exam rather than memorizing the professor's words verbatim, get screwed. There are an enormous number of extremely bright students who just can't put up with the hoops that universities like Berkeley throw at them, which is a shame. I look forward to a future education system in which students end up learning instead of jumping through hoops.