Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

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Mydoom spreading as fast as Sobig: "The latest e-mail computer virus could be worse than last year's Sobig worm which infected millions of computers." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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Virginia Tech to upgrade supercomputer to Xserve G5: "The new system, which went online toward the end of last year and which Virginia Tech said was the most powerful supercomputer at any university in the world at the time, will be completed by May. By moving to the thinner servers, the supercomputer will consume less power and generate less heat [...] The price of the upgrade has not yet settled on, but Varadarajan said it would be minimal compared to the cost of building a new supercomputer from scratch." [The Macintosh News Network]

This was to be expected. The new PowerPC 970FX's in the Xserve G5 require only half of the power of the original 970 processors. This is due to moving from 130 nm to 90 nm manufacturing process at IBM. The upgrade is not a small matter, but if someone can make it happen, Virginia Tech is the place to try it first.

Review of Lessons in Project Management -- Comment()
I today submitted my review (in Finnish) of the book Lessons in Project Management (by Tom Mochal and Jeff Mochal; Apress, 2003). This is a good book, giving 50 practical lessons on problematic situations in managing projects.

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Antitrust Ruling Near for Microsoft in Europe: "According to people present at the closed hearing, the commission's misgivings about the way Microsoft competes were confirmed in the presentations."

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Power, up to a Point: "Some say PowerPoint should be abolished for spreading incomprehensible jargon, while others say they could not survive their working day without it."

Book on solving optimization problems -- Comment()
My textbook on optimization is in press. The book is written in Finnish, and this is the third revised edition. The book is already available on the web in PDF format. Here is the bibliography data for the book:

Optimointitehtävien ratkaiseminen (Solving Optimization Problems).
Juha Haataja.
CSC, 2004. 245 pages, 3rd revised edition.
http://www.csc.fi/oppaat/optimointi/

See the dokument Books on the Web for more of my books on the web.

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Return of the King Wins Four Golden Globes: "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' won 4 Golden Globes, for Best Picture - Drama, Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Original Score (Howard Shore), and Best Original Song ("Into the West" by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh and Annie Lennox)." [Slashdot]

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The bloated, dysfunctional world of Enterprise Solutions: 'What the hell happened to the "best tool for the job" policy? Does the industry really have the money to invest in bloated projects, implemented with non-productive technologies that are just not right for the job at hand? I think not. Why then, does it happen? My theory it has to do with the magic slogan "Enterprise Solution".' [kuro5hin.org]

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Boing Boing Blog points to Screamingly funny lists of 5:

Five ways I tend to feel after speaking with Sprint's Customer Service
1. Like I was just traded to another inmate for 2 packs of menthol cigarettes
2. Like I've been slapped repeatedly with a half-frozen sturgeon
3. Like I've accidentally just agreed to finish the homework of every kid in my middle school
4. Like somewhere in a big Sprint building, there's a fat man with a monocle and a top hat smoking a cigar while dancing a jig and holding a fat bag of five-dollar bills with my bewildered face on it
5. Very, very unclean

It's fortunate that we don't have companies like Sprint here in Finland. Or do we?

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Strung Out by Woody Allen may be the first to use string theory in a humor piece: "What I do know about physics is that to a man standing on the shore time passes quicker than to a man on a boat - especially if the man on the boat is with his wife."