via The Register -

Visit Apple's Advanced Computing Group web page at http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/acgresearch.html and scroll to the bottom. You will find a link to (an admittedly dated as it lists a 500 Mhz G4 as the fastest available) white paper from NASA evaluating the G4 for scientific computation against Cray, Alpha, MIPS, and P3 based systems in terms of flops per dollar and concluded that the G4 offers "bang for the buck" advantages in factors of between 5 and 8 over Alpha and P3 systems.

Here's that link: Research from the Advanced Computation Group

An Evaluation of PowerMac G4 Systems for FORTRAN-based Scientific Computing with Application to Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation

by Craig A. Hunter, NASA Langley Research Center

http://math.wm.edu/~cahunter/NASA_G4_Study.pdf

Very interesting reading. Shame I've already written my exam questions ;-)

The Chronicle: Microsoft Gives Researchers and Students Access to Code for Web-Services Platform

The Microsoft Corporation is attempting to win the minds of academic researchers and college-aged programmers by offering universities more than a million lines of source code from the company's much-vaunted .NET programming platform for Web services.

It may be much-vaunted, but I would suggest - as others did in the article - that more than a million lines of code is pretty indigestible. I also wonder just what it would do in terms of contaminating students when they go looking for work with Microsoft's competitors. Microsoft's track record suggests that they'd resort to litigation to protect their IPR. Most universities and professors I guess will be reluctant to place themselves in such a vulnerable position.

O'Reilly Network: An Architectural Tour of Rotor

The Microsoft Shared Source CLI Implementation (aka "Rotor") is a source code distribution that includes fully functional implementations of both the ECMA-334 C# language standard and the ECMA-335 Common Language Infrastructure standard. These standards together represent a substantial subset of what is available in the Microsoft .NET Framework. The source code will build and run under Windows XP or FreeBSD 4.5, and the distribution contains numerous additional goodies, including a JScript compiler written entirely in C#, an IL assembler, a disassembler, a debugger, tools for examining metadata, and other samples and utilities. To complement this article, we've also published "Get Your Rotor Running", which takes you through the steps of installing, building and running Rotor.

Radio.Outliners.Com : Instant Outliner Beta Notes

Good morning Outliner fans.

Mark today on your calendar, March 26, 2002. The day the bootstrap began.

First, let me apologize for inflicting such an unfinished and inadequate piece of software on such unsuspecting and good-natured people. It's totally confusing. It's ridiculous. If we had any idea what we were doing we would hang it up right now. We're such fools. We decided to go ahead anyway even though we know this software is very bad.

But it works. You can have an Instant Outlining Experience with this software. And with any luck we'll fix some of the bugs and add some features over the coming days weeks and months, so you and your friends can have even more fun.

Yet another cool technology from Userland.

Mark Dunlop - a friend and colleague at work - is going to Cycle for Euan

At the end of June 2002 I plan to cycle from Portpatrick (SW corner of Scotland) to John O'Groats (NE corner). Although it cannot be denied I am doing this for the good of my health, the main aim is to remember Euan and raise sponsorship for The Meningitis Trust.

I will head off from Portpatrick on Friday 21 June and hopefully reach John O'Groats by Tuesday 2 July averaging just under 50 miles per day. The route I will take follows the national cycle routes and will cover just over 500 miles.

Euan was Mark's baby son who tragically died of meningitis on 23rd December, 2001.

Mark's sponsorship target is £1000. I think he should achieve that easily as everyone in the department was so badly affected when they heard the news after returning to work after the Christmas break.

Please help by sponsoring Mark.

Stanford Magazine > March/April 2002 > Feature Story > Mighty Mouse

In 1980, Apple Computer asked a group of guys fresh from Stanford's product design program to take a $400 device and make it mass-producible, reliable and cheap. Their work transformed personal computing.

My student's will know that John Hennessy is one of my heroes due to his co-authorship of the Computer Architecture and Design book that is essential reading for my CA & D class. Professor Hennessy is also currently President of Stanford University and in his Stanford Magazine: January/February 2001: President's Column he emphasises that the study of the humanities remains the cornerstone of Stanford's undergraduate curriculum.

At freshman convocation this year, I told a story that I have repeated many times to prospective freshmen inclined toward science and engineering. In 1997, in my first year as dean of the Engineering School, I ran into an alumnus of our Medical School, whose son was a freshman at Stanford with a strong interest in engineering. We discussed what advice he had given his son about choosing among the universities that had offered him admission. In recommending Stanford, he said: "I wanted my son to know who Thoreau was, and what he wrote about."

Right on! I've read John Muir's books but I should supplement these with Thoreau.

Sad news: BBC News | SHOWBIZ | Comedian Dudley Moore dies. Moore was one of my favourite comedians. Moore and (Peter) Cook were a fabulous duo.

I attended the funeral of my sister-in-law's father today. Of course, it was a sad occasion but also a celebration of the life of a remarkable man. I feel privileged to have known Walter as part of my extended family.

The most sad/joyous moment was when Walter's coffin was carried from the church to the Dambusters theme. As an ex-RAF bomber navigator in WW2 it was most fitting.

God bless you Walter