"thought provoking" entries

Visualization of names and words used by Presidential candidates

The New York Times has a really interesting Circos/Clusterball style visualization of the names used by US presidential candidates to refer to opponents in the debates preceding the Iowa caucuses. (Link) A graph of common words used by candidates in the debates is available as well: Link (via information aesthetics & visualmethods.blogspot.com)…

The Other Side of China

Last week, I wrote about the sense of dynamism and opportunity in China that I felt during our Beijing Foo Camp earlier this month. All of the Chinese I met were wonderful to be with, and there wasn't a single sour note in my own experiences in Beijing, except for the pollution that I noted in that story. But I…

Tribute to honor Jim Gray on May 31st, 2008 at UC Berkeley

A tribute to honor Jim Gray will be held on May 31st, 2008 at UC Berkeley. The general session is open to all, followed by a technical session reviewing a small fraction of Jim’s lasting contributions. Registration is required to attend the technical session. General Session Program 9:00am – 10:30am, Zellerbach Hall Opening Remarks – Joe Hellerstein A Tribute, Not a Memorial: Understanding Ambiguous Loss – Pauline Boss The Search Effort – Mike Olson Jim’s Impact on Berkeley – Mike Harrison Jim as a Mentor: Colleagues – Pat Helland Jim as a Mentor: Faculty and Students – Ed Lazowska Why Jim Got the Turing Award – Mike Stonebraker Jim’s Contributions to Industry I – David Vaskevitch Jim’s Contributions to Industry II – Rick Rashid Technical Session Program 11:00am – 5:30pm, Wheeler Hall (Registration is required) IBM/Transaction Processing – Bruce Lindsay Tandem/Fault Tolerance – Development & Effect of TPC/A Benchmark – David DeWitt DEC, Architecture, Memex and More – Gordon Bell Writing the Transaction Processing book: “Is There Life After Transaction Processing?”

Questioning functional programming

We've been tracking functional programming languages like Haskell and Erlang for a while, most recently watching the release of the Prags' "Programming Erlang and the rapid progress Bryan, John, and Don are making on Real World Haskell. Leon Brocard drew my attention to The 10th ICFP Programming Contest. Others like Tim Bray have also been getting their hands dirty (Tim…

The Stickiness of Stories

From my brother James, whose company, Travelers Tales makes travel guidebooks out of stories: From a Yahoo Finance/BusinessWeek piece today, The Seven Secrets of Inspiring Leaders [by Carmine Gallo]: "Few business leaders appreciate the power of stories to connect with their audiences. A few weeks ago I was working with one of the largest producers of organic food in the…