Computer Science

This podcast features an interview with George B. Adams III, Associate Director for Programs, Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University. Our interview was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

nanoHUB provides users with “fingertip access” to over 70 simulation tools for research and education. Users not only launch jobs that are executed on the state-of-the-art computational facilities of Open Science Grid and TeraGrid, but also interactively visualize and analyze the results--all via an ordinary Web browser. nanoHUB middleware hides the complexity of Grid computing, handling authentication, authorization, file transfer, and visualization, and letting the researcher focus on research. This approach also helps educators bring these tools to the classroom, letting them bypass the difficulties of Grid computing and focus instead on learning science and engineering.

I've seen some confusion recently about the differences between standards and programming languages.

Standards

A standard is a document which describes the structure, layout and meaning of something. Materials that follow the description are said to comply with the standard. The The Chicago Manual of Style is a standard for laying out certain kinds of print on the page. ASCII and Unicode are standards for representing strings of characters. SGML and HTML which is based on it, are standards, as are their successors XML and XHTML respectively.

Open standards are standards under the control of ``impartial'' groups and freely usable without patent infringement or licencing costs. Organisations such as the International Organization for Standardization/International Standardization Organization (ISO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) define open standards. Open standards you may use regularly include: the design of electrical plugs, which allow different manufacturer's appliances to plug into each other; international telephone system, which allows you to dial telephones across the world irrespective of the manufacturers of telephone at the other end or the exchanges between you; and DES/AES encryption which allow banks to communicate securely, and enable wire rather than physical money transfers.

I have just returned from Java 5 catches up with C# by Barry Cornelius, a talk he gave here at the RTS. I've got to admit that while Barry is right, Java 5 is catching up with C# in the sheer number of features, I seem to disagree with him on whether this is a good thing.