Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, January 5, 2004

How PowerPoint destroyed the space shuttle Columbia -- Comment()
Today appeared my net column on how PowerPoint was partly to blame for the Columbia disaster (written in Finnish, Kuinka PowerPoint tuhosi avaruussukkulan). The idea for the colunm came from an NY Times article, as described in a little note I posted here.

But I started to write about my personal view on the matter only when I received the booklet The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward R. Tufte. This booklet is definetely necessary for anyone using PowerPoint or any other presentation package.

-- Comment()
A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies points to an article from Harpers: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. But for those who said we hadn't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found them. We knew where they were." [Ming the Mechanic]

This was a chilling piece of text. It is sad to see that lies are often accepted when they are delivered with the voice of authority.

Who was first with 64-bit computing? -- Comment()
A reader commented my entry on the three best products for 2003 as follows: "[The] G5 really is a nice machine, however, it isn't the machine that made 64-bit computing a reality in the market place, nor is it the first machine to do so. The first true, consumer machine to do that would be a PC, the AMD Opteron. It was out first, for quite a bit cheaper with comparable if not better performance. Granted, neither of them really makes USE of the 64-Bit capabilities since neither Windows nor OS X does. Running Linux would give you that but...not all applications work well with it."

Thanks for this view. Here we have an argument, as I wrote in my entry: "Apple PowerMac G5 dual 2 GHz [...] is (arguably) the fastest desktop on Earth, and made 64-bit computing a reality in the workplace". But I must admit: neither Opterons nor G5 are really that widespread in the workplace so far. It takes some time for 64-bit computing to become mainstream.

As a sidenote, a PC magazine in Finland selected the Apple G5 dual as the computer of the year 2003. But there was a separate category for 64-bit computing, and no mention of the G5 in this category. What were they thinking?

However, neither G5 and Opteron can boast of being the first 64-bit machine on the desktop. That accomplishment belongs to - who? Perhaps an Alpha-based workstation was the first?