Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, May 2, 2003

Encyclopedia Britannica in action -- Comment()
I'm rather satisfied with Encyclopedia Britannica, which I recently bought. Here are two short extracts from EB:

supercomputer: any of a class of extremely powerful computers. The term is commonly applied to the fastest high-performance systems available at any given time. [...]
Moore's law: [...] Moore may be best known for a rather simple observation. In 1965, for a special issue of the journal Electronics, Moore was asked to predict developments over the next decade. In reviewing past increases in the number of transistors per silicon chip, Moore formulated what became known as Moore's law: The number of transistors per silicon chip doubles each year. In 1975, as the rate of growth began to slow, Moore revised his time frame to two years. His revised law was a bit pessimistic; over roughly 40 years from 1961, the number of transistors doubled approximately every 18 months. Magazines regularly referred to Moore's law as though it were inexorable - a technological law with the assurance of Newton's laws of motion. Only time will tell if Moore's law will be repealed.

While reading these entries it felt that the writer actually knew something about the topics.

Nokia mobile phones, SyncML, and Mac OS X -- Comment()
I'm wondering how compatible the new Nokia phones are with Macs? According to this article, the best bet would be to get an Ericsson, but as a Finn I find myself reluctant to go this route.

I'm interested in the Nokia 6800 model with built-in keyboard for writing, but I'm unsure of how well the phone would work with my e-mail server and the Address Book of Mac OS X. I'm currently not using the iCal applications, but if there were a Nokia phone which would sync with iCal I would definetely be willing to try it out. (Apple iSync currently only supports Ericsson.)

How good is the AAC music format? -- Comment()
Slashdot discusses the AAC music format: 'I'm not surprised that Apple is using AAC. For one thing, it is clearly better than the decade-old MP3 format in all respects, and the licensing costs are probably the same or better. Technically, it may not be as good as Ogg, but most people don't even know what Ogg is so it doesn't matter. As long as Apple can say "our format is better than MP3 and CD audio" (the two prevailing formats), they will have the attention of consumers. AAC is a more mature format than Ogg (Ogg isn't bad, but AAC is more tried-and-proven), and is probably more compatible with existing DRM technologies. DRM is important to keep the recording companies happy and to ensure that the files will only play on devices that Apple specifies (like on Macs and iPods).'

For my purposes the quality of ACC [correction: AAC] at 128 kbit/s seems to be good enough. And the AAC codec in QuickTime 6.2 is more efficient than the mp3 codec. My iBook was significantly faster ripping cds to the AAC format (compared to mp3). This was especially noticable when I was listening to music at the same time.

Using Encyclopedia Britannica on a PowerBook -- Comment()
I wrote a week ago: "I ordered a copy of the DVD version of Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 [...] The user reviews at Amazon.co.uk were sharply in disagreement, so this may be a disappointment. But at least I'll have one rerefence work on my portable."

Now I have EB installed on my PowerBook. The application is written in Java, so the user interface was not like Mac OS X. (But as a benefit EB runs also on Windows.) The articles are long and factual, and there is suprisingly few illustrations. And the maps don't go into much detail. But the text is well researched and written, which makes this a nice reference.

I installed EB on the hard disk of the PowerBook, which took 2.4 GB of disk space. But now I don't have to carry the DVD with the portable.

iTunes 4 and music in AAC format -- Comment()
I converted about 60 cd's to the new AAC format in iTunes 4, to conserve disk space on my iBook and iPod. (AAC is Advanced Audio Coding, a part of the MPEG-4 specification.) Previously I had used mp3 coding (192 kbit/s plus Variable Bit Rate), but with AAC it seems that 128 kbit/s is enough, at least when listening to the music through my Sony hifi system.

This means that I have over 500 MB more free disk space available. And iTunes was easy to use: it remembered the previously converted cd's and asked to replace the old versions with new.

Converting 60 cds in two days to AAC was perhaps not one of the most productive exercises to do on your spare time, but I managed to listen through quite a few nice cds at the same time.

When the music is in electronic format, you tend to forget some of it. I haven't used my cd collection for listening music for some time, so now I again saw all the disc I actually have. Having a cd in your hands is something else than having an iPod with 300 cds on it. But I must admit I will not go back to listening cds, because the iPod (and iBook) are so much more convenient for playing the music.

To be able to use the AAC coding I had to upgrade to QuickTime 6.2, iTunes 4, and iPod software 1.3. But the having more disk space was worth the hassle of having to reboot the iBook and the iPod.

Perhaps I'll buy some more music when the new Apple music store opens up for us Europeans also.