CHIPS 'N DIPS

Musings on Broadbus and Multicore.

December 2007

Of the many things I love about electronic publishing is that I will never be compelled to atone for a bad prediction by running my words through a blender and drinking the resulting text-smoothie in front of hundreds of people.

If you believe everything you read in the Wall Street Journal, you should be worried about the coming "exaflood" that will soon drown the last mile of internet connectivity and for which the only solution is to give up on this idea of net neutrality.

As Nate Anderson explains in one of those long essays at Ars Technica, the exaflood threat may just a wee bit overblown. Not too surprising, considering where the author of that WSJ scare story works. And a scary story it is: he's gone and got the Hollywood Reporter all stirred up.

Thanks to Nate for reminding us that Bob Metcalfe, who knows a lot more about network capacity than Bret Swanson, had to eat his column on stage a decade ago for predicting internet "gigalapses" in 1996. "I was wrong," Metcalfe wrote. "I ate the column. I am sorry. I am not worthy."

Perhaps we can save Swanson the trouble (and indigestion) and say the same for him.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 04:24 PM  Permalink |

In a long series on Apple's encroachments into what we are now supposed to call 'the enterprise,' Andrew Burger at MacWorldNews takes time out to talk about how and why Apple is so popular in scientific computing.

The example he cites is Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC), which was set up in 2006 and attempts to foster the use of innovative computing tools in scientific research. "The IIC enables science that would not be possible today without the innovative use of computational technology," IIC asserts.

What Burger asserts is that nearly every researcher in the interdisciplinary IIC program chose a Mac as their desktop computer. One reason, Berger figures, is the strength of Apple's 3-D imaging and visualization tools. But the Windows compatibility, Unix functionality, and the Mac GUI are probably part of the reason for Mac's popularity among scientists.

Or maybe they just like the commercials. Ho ho ho.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 04:32 PM  Permalink |

Udi Manber has quite a sense of humor.

Google's VP of Engineering wonders on his personal website, "Why is there no synonym for 'thesaurus'?" I wonder why someone so interested in online content hasn't substantially updated his personal website in ten years.

Manber's interest in web-based content is what this posting is actually about.

Google generally doesn't do dumb things, but this project to develop 'knols,' which are basically encyclopedia entries, has me scratching my head. And not just because 'knol' is such a butt-ugly word. After all, 'blog' is pretty grotesque, and there are a grotesquely huge number of those things.

But what's this business about people who post to the Web not getting enough credit? Certainly not true of the blog-sotted web I frequent, although I suspect that this is just a dig at Wikipedia. As is the idea that static knols will compete for attention, as opposed to the Wikipedia model of refining one entry to perfection. Snark tag on that last word.

Out on that bloggy web where people are sharing their Google-unauthorized knols about this Google project, it's being described as a terrible idea and a step too far. The phrases 'grassy knol' and 'death knol' recur. Andrew Orlowski thinks that for Google to attack Wikipedia is ingratitude. Rick Munarriz gets it that Wikipedia works because it is understood to be inaccurate by nature. If Googlepedia promotes the reliability of its experts but is no more reliable....

Well, whatever the Google strategic thinking is, it's apparently keeping someone awake nights, judging from the sample knol Google provides. (It's written by Manber's wife: make of that what you will.)

Doubtless the whole thing will be made clear soon. I'll keep checking Manber's Wikipedia page for the real skinny.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 03:15 PM  Permalink |

Bill Inmon coined the term 'data warehousing,' wrote the first book on the subject, and held the first conference on data warehousing. Lately he's turned his attention to the broader challenge of managing unstructured textual data.

His new book Tapping into Unstructured Data [with Anthony Nesavich, Prentice Hall, 2008] tackles the challenge of integrating such messy data into business intelligence.

If you think like a database, and when you're compiling and processing and using corporate business intelligence, you pretty much have to think like a database, unstructured data doesn't even exist. There's information there, of course, but it is not expressed in a form that can make any meaningful connection with databases. It is as though the databases are blind to it.

How you cure that blindness is the subject of the book, and for me the most enlightening part of the book was the case studies. Here the authors paint a clear picture of the iterative process of extracting meaning from unstructured data, using the meaning extracted at each step to inform the next step.

Vast amounts of information are tied up in unstructured documents. This blog is adding to the pile. It is really encouraging that efforts like this book are underway to extract from it the kind of meaning that is needed for business, medical, and other decisions.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 05:41 PM  Permalink |