University Rankings

I believe that the below information is really useful for prospective students searching master or phd studies/schools

1) First Anglosaxon country universities rankings as they are doing education as a business (earn money) and work more profesionally:
-US universities are ranked on the USNews

US News conducts periodical research on rankings and publishes the results annually on http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/t1natudoc_brief.php

-UK University Rankings on
http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/
You can also find special subject rankings on this web site (such as computer science ranking etc.)

2) German university Rankings can be found on:
http://www.daad.de/deutschland/hochschulen/hochschulranking/06543.en.html
You can also use this web site to customize the search criteria

3) International university ranking from China:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm
This ranking is making a good progress on the acceptance and respect.

4) Rankings according to the university web sites (and some other criteria):
http://www.webometrics.info/

That is all for now.

Better ...

Ideas imposed to us...

After a chat with one of my friends, I dived into the meaning of "better". Better, better, better something is better, that is better etc. The word itself is really /comparative/\relative/ to something. Simply the relation (I call it a relation) better is :
Better(A,B) = {A and B are the elements of the same domain say SomeExistence, A is preferred to B}

or

Better(A,B) = {A and B are the elements of the same domain say SomeExistence, B is worse than A}

or
...

You can increase the alternative definitions. A simple look to the above definitions reveal some other relations "preferred" and "worse". These relations can be defined by some other relations which breed new relations to be defined. At the end, there should be a base relation that is, in my humble opinion, an assumption. So do we know is this assumption is truely selected? What if our assumption is wrong? Then all things we say better are actually were worse?

At this point, human dimension of "better" comes up to my mind. A good point... If I say something is better for me, is this true for all people? No, some can say yes, some others say no, and there are abstainers (asking us why we called them :)). So the generalization of this dimension (human) constitutes the relativity property of the "better". Briefly, one better is worse for someone, or it's not preferred.

So, please tell me what is better...?

To be continued...

Bios of Von Neumann, Einstein and Kurt Godel

After watching the movie John Nash, I found myself searching the biographies of Von Neumann, Kurt Godel and Einstein from wikipedia. I learned some important facts that I didn't know. I had some info about Einstein but not that much about Von Neumann.

First of all Von Neumann's origin is mathematics and physics (I didn't know) while Einstein's is physics (I knew :)). Although Von Neumann is well-known with his "computer architecture" in the computer literacy, he has done really important contributions in physics (especially nuclear physics --> hydrogen bomb), economics and mathematics (Game theory).

They are three of the four people invited to Princeton. Einstein was born earlier than Von Neumann who is around the same age with Godel. Von Neumann and Einstein were born to Jewish families, Kurt Godel lived in the circles of Jewish people. I think that's why they all moved to the US because of German pressure. They all grew up in German-origin countries (Germany, Hungary-Austria).

Then I could conclude that, World War II worked for the US :)... But I would say the president of US at that time (transferring these guys to the US) is a really brilliant guy predicting the future.

Name                      Contributed to
Von Neumann --> Physics, Computer Science, Mathematics,
                                Economics (ohh man this guy is great)
Einstein            --> Mathematics, Physics
Kurt Godel       --> Logic, Mathematics


There are lots of things to learn from these biographies : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

Stay tuned...

People

We are all people, but some people are

lovely ...

devoted/loyal ...

aspirant ...

arrogant ...

natty ...

kinky ...

ambitious ...

trustworthy ...

jealous ...

similar X unique ...
ambiguous ...

beatiful ...
fickle ...

kind ...

talkative ...

timid ...

picky ...

strange ...
surprising ...

strange ...
obsessive ...

objective ...
prejudiced ...

unexpected ...
sticky ...

conservative ...
modern ...

shy ...
willing ...

respectful ...
provocative ...

happy X sad - sorrowful - grieved .........

friendly ...

rationalist ...

isolated ...
elegant ...

nifty ...
direct ...

strong X weak ...
helpful ...

intelligent ...
polite ...

experienced ..............
unpredictible ...

sneaky ...
stealthy ...

generous ........

and some are not .......But something takes over all of them :).

Find yours.

The Way Back Machine

You want to see the old versions of web sites in a chronological way ? --> then here you go http://www.archive.org

Decision Making (Quotation from Lao Tzu)

Once upon a time, there was an old and a poor farmer in the ancient Chinese empire. He had the most beatiful horse in the land. The mare was so beatiful that the emperor proposed the farmer a treasure for the horse. But the farmer didn't accept. One day the mare ran away without leaving any signs/clues.

Folks of the village came and said :"You are so unfortunate, you didn't accept the treasure and look. You lost your horse now".

But the farmer replied :"Don't hurry to judge and to conclude with a decision, may be it is bad may be not..." .

Several days later, the mare returned with another stud horse. The villagers said:"How lucky you are. You had one horse, Now you have two...".

The farmer returned and stated:"You are in hurry for the decision. May be it is bad, may be not".

While the son of the farmer was trying to tame the stud, he falled down and broke his leg.Again the villagers came and said :"How unlucky you are. You had only one son caring you and your work and he broke his leg. Now you will be poorer than the past".

He returned and said again:"Don't decide that early, may be it is bad, may be not...".

Several days later the son of the farmer broke his leg, the enemy invaded the country. The emperor of the country published a decree and called all the young people for the army.

Villagers came and said : "How fortunate you are. Your son was not taken". To which the farmer replied :"Don't hurry up for the decision, may be it is bad may be not ...".

So here is the inference :

Don't hurry up for the decision. The brain progresses and develops until a decision is made. Whenever you decide on something the development stops. So after enough progress/development, a decision should be made.

By the way I am not a Taoist :).

Scepticism and Paranoia

There is a thin line between paranoia and scepticism. Ok, scepticism can be unhealthy (not paranoia yet) sometimes, but I am talking about the pushing force of natural sciences. With the knowledge and experience I have now in my mind, I would say the breaking point of these two is the startup of instinctive forces. When someone loses rationality and starts behaving instinctively then scepticism will return into paranoia? Or there are instinctive details behind all rationalist doubts/suspicions. I will probably change my mind with the new feeds...
How did I come here? Asking??? Search for computer security :).

Read, think, read, think ...