Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson

Cool, seriously cool!

We live in such exciting times. I several algorithms which could benefit from much faster global access (and just more processing grunt, but that goes without saying). I do worry how to harness the power embedded in your typical GPU architecture. They do not seem to like data-driven processing order much. Scientifically, that is a challenge of course, not a problem.

I will join

Even if, living in the Netherlands, I might not reap the full benefits. This is an important institution which is very worthy of my support

Long, Dark Teatime of the Seoul

It could be the South Koreans doing it to fellow South Koreans they happen to dislike, and give them a excuse to attack North Korea with similar means. This suggests they are in the third stage of warfare according to Douglas Adams:

1. Retribution: I am going to kill you because you killed my brother

2. Anticipation: I am going to kill you because I killed your brother

3. Diplomacy: I am going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.

Going places

I remember seeing the Voyager launches on the news. I followed all the planetary fly-bys. That thing is really going places. Almost makes me feel lonesome (and certainly small)

A toast to all engineers and scientists involved!

Originally they wanted to call the service "Monty" ...

I'll get me coat

She should have brought dried frog pills instead

so she could hallucinate she was sane.

but then she would probably be able fly without needing a plane

I am surprised

nobody has suggested duck tape yet

How does it report bugs:

Houston, we have a problem

surely?

Spinning platters

There is just no way of escaping them

Great stuff!

"Grasshopper" does instantly remind me of the Kung Fu series with David Carradine, however.

That says a lot about my age, I suppose

It is also about pattern recognition

Indiscriminate adding of data makes finding any information hard. There is a real risk of drowning interesting patterns in noise. Data != Information

As I like to tell students (over and over again): Adding hay does not make finding needles easier

We do do some work on really big data (vast amount of image data from astronomy and remote sensing), but that data has lots of internal structure which helps finding stuff.

Like the definition of IDEs

I now understand why I avoid them for a lot of tasks

Verity is informative as aver

SEP = Someone Else's Problem

as is SEP-fields to render spacecraft invisible

Neat!!

I will post a link for our students in the history of computing section of our Orientation in Computer Science course.