Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, October 7, 2002

-- Comment()
Sony Cybershot DSC-F717 review: "Our full in-depth review of Sony's five megapixel DSC-F717. In this review we have gone further than we have before including comparisons of the DSC-F717 to the camera it replaces, the DSC-F707..." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

-- Comment()
Kramnik beats machine in game two: "World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik drew first blood by defeating the computer program Deep Fritz in game two of the "Brains in Bahrain" tie on Sunday." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
IT companies show support for latest DRM bill: "Intel Corp., Gateway Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. joined a host of companies and organizations representing the IT industry, consumers and libraries that expressed support Thursday for the latest digital rights management (DRM) bill..." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Donald Norman On Software And Other Things: "Hands up if you still have trouble opening the door to your office first time, figuring out the dashboard controls of your car or navigating your computer. Sadly, that'll be most of us, says Donald Norman. He's the guru's guru of a world in which people really care whether everyday gadgets work intuitively. Wendy M. Grossman talks to him about why gadgets in the real world are still so hard to use, and why computers need emotions." [Slashdot]

-- Comment()
Why the poor need technology: "Access to information and communications technologies can have a huge impact on all aspects of life, especially in developing countries." [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]

-- Comment()
Man and machine draw first chess game: "The reigning human chess champion, Vladimir Kramnik, and the newest computer champ, Deep Fritz, drew their first game here Friday in what is being billed as the successor match to Gary Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
The K5 Top Ten Stories nominations: "I recently referred yet another friend to this site, and again wished that there was a list of the best stories that K5 has to offer to send him to. Thus, this story." [kuro5hin.org]

This is the 532nd post -- Comment()
This is the 532nd post on this weblog, according to the Radio software I'm using. It was less than two months ago when I started this blog. Now I have committed to writing here more or less regularly.

I have noticed that the mainstream media here in Finland contains more and more articles about blogging. In retrospect it seems that I started blogging at the same time as many other web users.

However, some bloggers have been writing for years, so they should have perfected their skills. But who knows, perhaps the biggest stars of the future blogging universe are starting up at this moment.

-- Comment()
1Mb/s through mud: "The DoE has announced a high-speed data-transfer that runs on drillpipe, through "a 4-inch diameter steel pipe immersed in electrically conductive mud at pressures up to 1000 atmospheres, temperatures up to 150 deg C, and with vibrational accelerations of hundreds of g's." [Boing Boing Blog]

-- Comment()
Radio Free Blogistan points to Blogs better or worse for the lack of editors?

What these people need is someone with a discerning eye who can say, "Cut this in half. It is nowhere near as amusing and clever as you seem to think it is." ... Editor's do that. They also catch errors, clarify confusing passages and tell writers to start over and take a different approach. ... [W]e will always need good editors.

-- Comment()
Radio Free Blogistan thinks about Salon blog watch: "Reverse Cowgirl rocketed past me into No. 3 position yesterday and went to No. 2 overall today. Scott has a pretty big lead in his No. 1all-time position but if I were him I'd still be nervous! I think it's clear, though, that RevCow is the first huge breakout success we've had here in our little Salon Blogs community, such as it is."

Implementing GA (genetic algorithms) -- Comment()
Brett Morgan's Zilla points to Cultured Perl and doing GA in perl. I have programmed genetic algorithms in Fortran 90/95 and Matlab, but Perl seems a strange choice, because GAs are quite cpu-intensive applications. But why not?

An implementation of the so-called differential evolution algorithm in Fortran 90/95 is published in our textbook on Fortran 90/95. This book is available in Finnish in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

My lecture on Modeling and Optimization last Friday at the Helsinki University of Technology contained a lot of GA-related examples and case studies. The slides are available in PDF format.

The Very Slow Time Machine -- Comment()
I read a short story collection called The Very Slow Time Machine (by Ian Watson) during the weekend. This book appeared in 1979, and has been on my to read list for a long time.

The book was provocative and insightful. Some stories were a bit funny due to aging, but quite readable still. This was the first science fiction book I have read for some time. This book is not quite on the level of Harlan Ellison or Ray Bradbury, but good nonetheless.

I organized my bookshelf during the summer, and decided to get rid of about 60 books. I thought the books would be interesting to other readers, so I went to a second-hand bookshop to trade. In all, I made four trips to the bookshop.

The first time I got cash for the books, but later on the bookshop only agreed on trading the books for similar ones (English-language paperbacks). That is why I now have a dozen or so books waiting to be read. And this is why the bookshop has an oversupply of English science fiction.