Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!eos!eugene From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: Scientific Visualization again Message-ID: <5692@eos.UUCP> Date: 1 Dec 89 19:00:39 GMT References: <11726@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <1989Nov25.142552.1702@hellgate.utah.edu> <3399@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <5646@eos.UUCP> <1989Nov30.222404.2817@csustan.CSUStan.Edu> <7153@portia.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) Distribution: na Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif. Lines: 106 Hit 'n' if you are not interested in the topic. In <7153@portia.Stanford.EDU> rick@hanauma.UUCP (Richard Ottolini) writes: >Jim Helman at Stanford divides SciVis into NerdVis and EdVis (and ShowVis). >Mainly a differences in quality. Exchanging some mail with Jim, I better understand what he is looking for: Jim is seeking a greater degree of interaction in the Ed and NerdVis than say the ShowVis. NerdVis has to be easily usable by a user. It should be quick and dirty if the case is needed. If Ron Levine arranges of the January meeting location and date, I assume I can make it, then I will try to fill out meeting content. I am already overloaded. We can talk about it there. I would hate to see this Bay Area TIG die. rsc@altair.csustan.edu (R. S. Cunningham) wrote: >This is an excellent statement of one of the overlooked opportunities of >computer graphics. Lots of people have written lots of "his (or her) own >thing for his (or her) own class with little cooperation or sharing" and >it shows -- we really aren't making much progress in the area. There are several reasons for this: the original report was good in this respect: there are the dilects of different programming languages, operating systems, hardware; of course NO ONE IS WILLING TO CHANGE. What's being done isn't science in some cases. Call it pre-science. Science is a somewhat fleeting thing. It's also at time some what competitive. Cooperation is kind of a new thing as well, e.g., tenure is a one person evaluation. The problem is science does not get a lot of support, either in money or resources or even pats on the back. Another things that people see is that when you write a code, there is that potential for money. They think about making more money. In the past, scientific information had a somewhat greater degree os sharing (not always). It didn't have an immediate economic value. I think in computer science the computer graphics and artificial intelligence people have recognized the value of their codes more than anyone. This has hurt the non-computer sciences as well as CS to some degree. You don't see Richard Stallman writing graphics code (might be nice if we had a Stallman for graphics code). I digress, but one more If you did, you might get some interesting consequences. Consider a non-graphics "Back to the Future"-type case: we send "Biff" back to the late 1940s to prevent AT&T from licensing the transistor to Sony. AT&T has clearly benefited from the basic research (science) of the transistor but it took Sony to develop it. What about all the other science which depended on it being cheap, etc. We will never know. Science cannot afford to have considerations like this, its information must flow freely lest we hinder it be it for money, morals, etc. The character of science is changing. It's more international. The exchange of information is greater than ever. You (we) now want other disciplines to see what we do. Now the question is how to capture some of this in a meeting? The following is really off the wall. Hit 'n' if you think the above is too off the wall. What we are doing is a science of studying how sciences do their science. We need a representative sample of sciences (the "four" basics). It occured to get a casual sample of my off-hours friends. Why not? Don Knuth (March 1985, Amer. Math. Monthly) grabbed a sample of books off his shelf and looked at Page 100 of each one to understand math and CS. So I thought I would ask Bill Burke, skiing and climbing partner, cosmologist, author (2 books), Godfather of the Santa Cruz Chaos Cabral, to come over. Bill computes on a PC. Bill's kind of a neat fellow, he's not a mainstream physicist, I have steered him to write YACC and LEX code. He doesn't way to fly around black holes, he wants to understand what they are doing. He once traced rays thru the bottom of a beer glass. An interesting contrast, a more main line physicist is a friend at LLNL. Solving the diffeqs. He won't be able to talk about his work directly, but he is an interesting fellow and completely on the opposite spectrum from Bill. It has been said physicists are the polo players of science (prima donnas) [Feigenbaum]. A third and fourth set of friends could talk about the biology of wine. These two have made interesting statements to me about mitosis going on within the biology community between mainline biology and the "systematics" people, the gene splicers. Bob Langridge would be a good case as well. So forth with a chemist, others, etc. Funny thing with one exception I do lots of outdoor activities with these guys. Thru the years I have met them on a yearly Caltech ski trip. I think they all have a common set of threads. Oh yes, I think I would like to say a few words about computer performance measurement (CS is a science) and remote sensing (past life). Some of these people do not like computers. Now how do we do it? We each talk about what and how we do our sciences. Math is part of the unifying theme, but we also have to get away from it. That is something I will have to put together. It's not "How computers will help you do science," but "how do you do science right now?" More specific questions (I have several), please send to me. Another gross generalization from --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?" "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology." {ncar,decwrl,hplabs,uunet}!ames!eugene Support the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com