Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, May 8, 2003

A career in supercomputing -- Comment()
This week I submitted two new columns to a Finnish IT magazine. One of the columns is written for the web site of the magazine, and the other for the printed version. In the print column I wrote about my experiences in supercomputing.

I have spent now over one third of my life working with supercomputers. During this time, the computational capacity had increased approximately by a factor of 1000. (My PowerBook G4 is about as fast as the first machine, a Cray X-MP, with twice the memory.) It is interesting to see if this rate of development will continue for the next dozen years. (As a sidenote, in 1997 I wrote an essay titled 'Working with Information Technology'. This essay discusses my experiences of computational science.)

AAC is hot -- Comment()
Every once in a while I look at the referrals to this site. Most of the referrals are typically generated by Google, or other such search services. Typically there are 150-200 page reads daily, of which over 80% are generated by Google.

Today I noticed that really many of the referred Google searches were focused on AAC audio format used in the Apple iTunes Music Store. (AAC is Advanced Audio Coding, a part of the MPEG-4 specification.) I have also apparently mistyped (once again) on my weblog, because also searches containing the term ACC were referred here. (I inserted a correction to the original entry.)

Is USA becoming Culture? -- Comment()
I pointed earlier to an review of science fiction. The review presented (among other authors) my great favorite, Iain M. Banks: "Banks' books are dark; there is just no other succinct description for them. They are often violent, cruel and an ordeal for the characters. Most of his books with M. in the name are set in the Culture universe, which is special for the Ships' Names that they choose for themselves, if nothing else."

I read most of the books by Banks several years ago, including the non-fiction books. Recently I found a disturbing real-life similarity: the recent actions of USA are almost like the actions of the machine-civilization known as Culture. People seem to be like hand baggage, discarded when not needed any more. And the firepower shown in Iraq is cannily similar to the "space opera" themes of the Culture books. Is USA becoming a machine civilization?