Quantum computing offers hope to Web users

New research from an institute in Switzerland suggests that breakthroughs in quantum computing could help in that most cutting edge of computer usage, browsing the Web.

Users of modern computers are able to edit and process many channels of audio and video simultaneously and compile programs whilst also using the computer for word processing, DTP and other activities. However, the next step – using a computer to look at more than half a dozen Web pages without the browser crashing or the computer crawling to a halt – has eluded the world’s top scientists until now.

But now a team of mathematicians and nuclear physicists at the Notwendigenanpassungenvornehmen Institute in Bern has calculated that a server farm of as little as 500 military-grade computers using quantum processing may be able to run a browser capable of accessing as many as 24 Web pages and remain stable in laboratory conditions for up to half an hour.

“The team has worked very hard on this matter”, declared the spokesman, Prof. Wilhelm Verarschung. “The technology required will probably not be available for 20 years yet, but it offers hope that a stable yet capable Web browser might be achievable in the not-too-distant future”. He added: “Sooner, if someone manages to come up with some decent verdammt software”.

Responses from the Web authoring community to this news have been mixed, ranging from “Server unresponsive” to “ASP error”. Many of the Web’s most cutting-edge sites have already declared that the new quantum technology will not be supported, and that you should try upgrading to the latest of Flash. Even if you just did. Twice.

Yamaha announces the Pocketrak CX

With the Pocketrak 2G, Yamaha succeeded in making a solid-state audio recorder that was so compact and light that it could be carried around habitually by the keen sound-recordist much as a keen photographer might never leave the house without a compact camera. Better recordings can be obtained with larger, heavier devices, but there is much to be said about always being ready to record into a device that is smaller than most mobile telephones.

Yamaha has now announced the Pocketrak CX. Reviews have yet to appear, but judging by the specifications, we should expect better sound fidelity at the expense of increased size. The design is reminiscent of the LS-10 by Olympus, as are the dimensions: the unit is a little chunkier than the 2G and so it’s quite possible that the 2G will remain in production for those who value its small size. The LS-10 can record uncompressed audio at 96 kHz, which the CX cannot: that won’t be a practical issue for many users, but comparisons are invited by the design, and it’s surprising that this sample rate was not matched.

Apple style guide

Apple’s support site advises:

“Don’t install older versions of Mac OS than what comes with your computer”.

Stylish.

On learning a little Polish

Polish is widely perceived by those who have English as their first language to be very difficult, not least – to take just two examples – because few words bear any relation to their equivalents in English and because verbs have not only seven cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and vocative) but two “aspects” (whether the action has been completed or not). Words are heavily inflected to indicate all the cases and other grammatical niceties and there are many exceptions to the elaborate rules.

Yet on the other hand, pronunciation of Polish to an acceptable basic standard requires little more than the practice of unusual combinations of consonants (getting used to saying “ch” after “sh” in many words seems less strange with time!) and the spelling of words is almost uniformly regular. The orthography of Polish is a wonder. Somehow methods were devised to transcribe the slavic sounds of Polish using an augmented Latin alphabet – whereas the related Russian language was deemed by missionaries to require its own specially invented alphabet.

Polish is spoken by almost as many people outside Poland as inside Poland, and cities throughout Europe are now blessed with shops owned by Poles, selling their totally adequate beer and refreshingly bitter jam. So there are plenty of opportunities to practice baffling Poles with attempts at speaking their language. In practice, most Poles seem very surprised that anyone not born to the language would try to learn it. In fact, that puts it mildly. There are two reactions: speechless astonishment that a native speaker of English could pronounce the language at all and the sort of incredulous laughter one might produce when confronted with a talking dog (if one finds such incongruity funny). But they are often also very nice about it, and happy to help with the pronunciation of such words as chrząszcz (“beetle”).

As you may have discovered at school, learning a foreign language can be a hard, unrewarding graft, but if you choose one that has some arbitrary appeal (rather than knuckling down because it might be “useful”), it’s a more rewarding use of brain muscle than, say, sudoku. Learning even just a little bit about a foreign language gives interesting perspectives and it’s also an absorbing diversion, but few of us in the UK are confident linguists and as the famed philologist Dirty Harry said in Magnum Force (available with subtitles in Czech), “a man’s gotta know his limitations”.

(Some very useful resources for beginners have been prepared by the University of Pittsburgh).

Ill-bred

It’s sad to see The Guardian giving space to a tantrum by a GM fanatic, even in the interest of balance of coverage to this subject, but it’s also not without its funny side.

A standard GM industry tactic is to pretend that genetic modification of organisms is both brand new and yet at the same time nothing new at all. In his Guardian polemic, one Henry Miller claims that “genetic modification is not new” because “Plants and microorganisms have long been genetically improved by mutation and selection”. Putting aside the issue of what “genetically improved” actually means to anyone who doesn’t think that The Market is all that counts, we are left with a claim that “gene splicing, tissue cultures and the rest” are exactly the same thing as selective breeding. Which makes one wonder why he refers to the “new biotechnology” (Woo! Go team! Go team!) at all, or whether he is at all familiar with the basics of evolutionary science.

As Charles Darwin patiently explained in the very first chapter of On the Origin of the Species, by way of setting out the facts known by breeders to some of the more blinkered scientists (yes, they had them back then too), selective breeding is really just natural selection under human guidance. This is not to say that selective breeding itself is an issue that is free from contention – but Miller’s equating of this harnessing of natural selection to “gene splicing, tissue cultures and the rest” suggests that he is either ignorant of the basic facts or hopes that the rest of us are and is trying to put one over on us.

Either way, he is very, very cross with the Prince of Wales for blowing the whistle so loudly (if not, it has to be said, virtuosically) and opposing the imposition of GM crops. He whines that Prince Charles is feebleminded, inbred, not-so-bonnie (when ad hominem attacks get that bitchy, you know the writer is on unsure ground), misguided and – gasp! – anti-technology.

The writer finishes off by limply tossing off some apologias about “the ability of consumers to cast their votes in the marketplace” (the only place we “consumers” can now “cast our votes” if such people get their way – but then have you tried reasoning with your New Labour MP lately?) and “a real-life struggle for the availability of products that will prolong and enrich lives” (a pale shadow of the discredited claim that GM crops were of any benefit to humanity at all).

The final source of grim merriment appears on another site. The essential resource Lobbywatch quotes an interview with the New York Times by the same writer: “Food biotech is dead. The potential now is an infinitesimal fraction of what most observers had hoped it would be”.

So there we see the defeated mindset that those truly ill-bred remarks sprang from. And it gives us all just a little more hope that maybe we can win this one after all.

The John Baker Tapes

From the enterprising and unusual Trunk Records comes this pair of CDs celebrating and preserving the music of the late John Baker, covering his work as part of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (on The John Baker Tapes – Volume 1) and elsewhere (“Soundtracks / Library / Home Recordings / Electro Ads” on The John Baker Tapes – Volume 2).

Volume 1 promises a “vast spectrum” of sounds but given that Baker overused some of his sound sources – a twanged ruler and a blown bottle feature repeatedly – this is a little charitable. Nevertheless, Baker worked wonders with such limited raw material, using tape recorders to change the playback speed and therefore the pitch of the note, and cutting and rejoining lengths of recording tape to build up tight, syncopated pieces of music. The musical styles include cheery jingles, light jazz and light jazz with cheery jingles – don’t expect much in the way of abstract soundscapes, since much of this music was designed for documentaries and radio station branding purposes.

The tracks are very well documented, with summaries of where the music was used, an illuminating biography by John’s brother Richard and a few photographs.

Volume 2 contains a few more photos and an obituary from 1977 which omits details of Baker’s troubles – for those, the biography in Volume 1 is required reading. This second CD covers wider ground, and ranges from piano performances to “electro” pieces for advertising and library music purposes. It’s mostly pleasant listening, but instead of the sound of a ruler being twanged you can almost hear in places the sound of a barrel being scraped. However, that sort of misses the point of both these releases: they are primarily documentation, and the fact that a lot of the tracks are also enjoyable to listen to is really a bonus. The John Baker Tapes mark a time when creating upbeat electronic music for radio and commercials involved a high level of technique and dedication, a time before sampling and sequenced synthesiser lines, a time when electronic music was created with microphones, tape recorders and whatever could be coaxed into making a useful sound. These releases also provide a succinct epitaph (or two) to one musician’s life and work.

More information can be found on Trunk Records’ site. Volume 1 was released in July. Volume 2 is scheduled for release on 25th August.

It’s spelt “Number 16 Bus Shelter” and it’s pronounced “Number 16 Bus Shelter”

“New Zealand law does not allow names that would cause offense to a reasonable person, that are 100 characters or more long, that include titles or military rank or that include punctuation marks or numerals”

- But beyond that…

South Birmingham Community Radio launches on Saturday

The Birmingham Post reports that South Birmingham Community Radio is due to commence broadcasting on the FM band this coming Saturday. The article also covers the setting up of Rhubarb Radio, which was mentioned on this weblog previously.

BBC ends its online coverage of experimental music

In all fairness, we only glanced at the BBC’s online section on experimental music extremely rarely but even so we were surprised to see that it has been axed, apparently as of late June.

The “Accessibility help” link on the same page was presumably in vain.

No no, it’s spelt “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116″ but it’s pronounced…

 

 

“… Albin“.