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According to Curt Monash, few people should be buying high-end Database management systems: There are relatively few applications that wouldn’t run perfectly well on PostgreSQL or EnterpriseDB today. (…) What’s more, these mid-range database management systems can have significant…
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My top blog posts in 2007
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Now that January 2008 is coming to an end, maybe it is time to give 2007 a final loop. According to my logs, my most popular blog posts in 2007 are: Netflix: an interesting machine learning game, but is it good science? Google recommends blogs Formal definitions are less useful than you…
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Tag clouds are graphical representations of attributes and their relative importance. In a recent paper, we have argued that tag clouds might help bridge the gap between collaboration and Business Intelligence. Here are some fun things to do with tag clouds: In our paper, a tag cloud computation…
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Database indexes are less useful than you think
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An index helps you find an item without scanning all of the data. David DeWitt and and Michael Stonebraker have made comments opposing index-light systems such as MapReduce, SimpleDB, and CouchDB. But David DeWitt and and Michael Stonebraker failed to tell us about schemas falling apart as you…
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Steve Jobs just introduced the MacBook Air. The MacBook Air is thin and light, but what matters to me is that it uses a solid-state drive: Using technology similar to that in the iPod nano and other Flash-based products, MacBook Air introduces a solid-state drive. This drive has no moving parts…
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Maybe you got monetarily richer over the last few years, but do you have more time outside work? A time tax is a required task with no productive output. When you do not keep these taxes under control, you end up with no free time for your family and friends. To avoid these time taxes, I know of…
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Carr made the headlines recently because he predicted the death of the IT department. Some time ago, I wrote: (…) institutions are no longer required to get the system running. No vice-president, no staff. It means you can run the world from your kitchen. Or at least, get some research…
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Andre points us to SciImago — a Web site to mine science journals. Using their aggregates per country and some data from Wikipedia, I made up a table on number of science papers produced per country going back to 1996. Country |Science papers (1996-2006) |Population…
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Shortly after I read You and your research, I decided to keep a roadmap. My current roadmap is a simple graph using less than 30 words — I use Graphviz. I list 4 recent papers, 3 ongoing projects and 7 upcoming projects. Each node of the graph is a project I can complete in a few months. I update…
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I just watched a talk by Bill Gates. His key insight is that complexity is what prevents us to solve problems. I would take this a step further. Extracting the simple, but important ideas should be the duty of any scholar. Unfortunately, we sometimes equate simplicity with triviality. Yet, smart…
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As a student, I would jog regularly. It helped me cope with stress. I gave up jogging, but I still often start my day by a long walk. It seems to be correlated with higher intellectual productivity. I see two possible explanations: Physical workout has a mood relaxing effect. As you workout, you…
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In 2008, work fewer hours
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In 2008, instead of losing weight or earning a larger salary, work fewer hours and spend more time with your family and friends. Longer hours, beyond a certain minimum, do not seem to increase intellectual production. Contrary to popular belief, the amount of time spent studying or at work had no…
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Harold asks: do we suffer from information overload or do we have the wrong tools? Clearly, email is inefficient. It is like cars: everybody gets stuck in traffic. To cope, I answer and compose emails only once a day, on a schedule (after 4pm). I check and prune my email regularly however. How do…
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Active Time is a free MacOS application keeping track of how much time I spend in various software applications — automatically! My bet is that most of my time is spent in a browser, but I want to get hard numbers.
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We are in an era of overabundance. Many of the problems we face — spam, information overload, obesity, pollution — are actually the result of overabundance. Scientists need new strategies: Create fast, discard faster. Aim for quality. When people have too much content, they want quality. Focus…
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What to get with your Nintendo Wii?
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I will not use negations…- I will avoid UA (useless acronyms). When appropriate, my writing will be in an active voice… I will very much try to avoid carefully needless words in my writing. I will employ uncomplicated terms. Here is a call to my readers: what annoys you about my writing? I…