Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, July 12, 2004

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The Hostess Diary tells about working in a place where so many celebrities have been coming that they have grown selective: "If they are meek and I am bored, I will let them in. But if they become agitated, I turn away, or even better - pick the group behind them. Either way, my ego is going to get a boost."

Will the Grid survive? -- Comment()
Here is a well thought pessimistic analysis of Grid Supercomputing: "Therein lies the conundrum of the Grid-as-supercomputer: the oversupply of cycles the Grid relies on exists because of a lack of demand. PCs are used as many things -- file cabinets and communications terminals and typewriters and photo albums and jukeboxes -- before they are used as literal computers. If most users had batch applications they were willing to wait for even as long as overnight, the first place they would look for spare cycles would be on their own machines, not on some remote distributed supercomputer."

I agree on this analysis. However, one should note that grid is not only about computing - it is also about collaboration, access to resources, and politics (USA vs. EU etc.). So, in the end it may turn out the grid model is a success after all.

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Why Mac OS X is Better: "Almost every serious programmer I know and respect now uses one—and many of them asked me that question before they took the jump and bought a PowerBook." [x180: journal]

The attraction of iTunes Music Store -- Comment()
Now it is official: iTunes Music Store hits 100 million song milestone. I haven't downloaded or bought a single track from the store, because it is not yet open in Finland. Lucky me, otherwise I might need to upgrade my iPod and iBook to hold the music. However, I have bought recently more and more cd's and ripped them into AAC format. The ease of using iPod may be the biggest reason for buying yet more music, even though I have enough music in my collection already.

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How to Make a Guerilla Documentary: "Greenwald rigged up a dozen DVD recorders and programmed them to record Fox News 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for about six months. After scrutinizing the initial footage, Greenwald and a team of researchers compiled a list of what they saw as Fox's telltale themes and techniques: stories questioning the patriotism of liberals; relentlessly upbeat reports on Iraq; belligerent hosts who scream at noncompliant guests. [... The] film clips grouped by theme, together with voice-overs and commentary, would lay bare Fox's tactics, frame by frame." [via Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

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Here is a great analysis of the Finns... Finnish Animals: "I haven't seen a lot of wildlife in Finland. I suspect that, like the Finns themselves, the animals are all rather shy."