August 27, 2004
The Week's Work
I've been pretty busy with work this week, and did not take the time to update the blog with news of what exactly I was working on. My main activity for the week was reading "Operating Systems" by Andrew Tanenbaum. The CS-interested readers should know that this is the book that Linus Torvalds used when first learning about how OSes worked, and that he consulted in the 7 months in which he wrote the very first versions of Linux. Fewer...
Posted on August 27, 2004 07:39 AM
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August 25, 2004
First Gold for Austria
Australian born Austrian Kate Allen just won the first Gold medal for Austria, in the Women's Triathlon. Allen got virtually no attention from the international press at the beginning of the race, and was far behind when she started the running phase (3 minutes). With her incredibly stunning running performance, she surprised everyone, and overtook the leading Australian a few hundred meters before the finish line, and managed to get ahead 6 seconds of her. I was lucky enough to...
Posted on August 25, 2004 02:54 AM
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August 25, 2004
Rethinking the iMac
I want to give a bit of an apology for my last post on the new iMac. While I still think that having a consumer computer without an optical drive (except for some subnotebooks) is a terrible idea, this is apparently not what this iMac model is meant for. The targetted market is computer clusters, where having an optical drive is often seen as a security risk, because system administrators often forget to change the boot order, so that the...
Posted on August 25, 2004 02:41 AM
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August 22, 2004
A Terrible Mistake
Apple is widely believed to release a new G5 powered iMac at its upcoming Paris Expo, to be held on August 31. As with many Apple products, rumoured specifications of the upcoming iMac have been all over the web for a while. When it comes to rumours there are few websites that tend to be as accurate as ThinkSecret. But according to this ThinkSecret article, the new iMac's Education priced model will not come with an optical drive:Experts Think Secret...
Posted on August 22, 2004 06:27 AM
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August 20, 2004
New AIM Name
For those of you who don't now yet, I got a new AIM name this week: BeingCS. Here is a short explanation to those who always wondered what my old AIM name (minbari1aut, now defunct) meant: Minbari was my long time ICQ nickname and is a race from Babylon 5. The 1 came from an attempt to make the name unique for use on AIM. The aut stands for Austria. My old name was meant to be used for a...
Posted on August 20, 2004 12:27 PM
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August 20, 2004
Silver After All
After posting yesterday's Medal post I went out for dinner. When I got back I was shocked to see that the decision was reversed, and that Rogan won silver after all. I am not nearly knowledgeable enough about the rules of swimming to say whether there was any reason to disqualify Peirsol in the first place, but I think that giving him the gold medal was still the right decision. Both Peirsol and Rogan swam amazing races and nobody can...
Posted on August 20, 2004 01:24 AM
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August 19, 2004
Another Silver Medal....GOLD!!!
I'm first to report it this time: Markus Rogan won his second Olympic Silver medal, and therefore earned Austria its 100th medal in the history of..........OMG. Peirsol was disqualified, Markus Rogan won GOLD!!!!!...
Posted on August 19, 2004 09:56 AM
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August 19, 2004
XML & Friends
After delving into FOAF two days ago I spent yesterday reading about on XML, RDF, and related technologies. I have always considered myself to have unsufficient knowledge of many XML based web technologies, and the emerging field of webservices, and want to change this. Before elaborating what I have been looking at, I should not how prevalent this is among CS Students (at least at Stanford), and large groups of academics as well. Much of what is happening in webservices...
Posted on August 19, 2004 04:15 AM
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August 17, 2004
FOAF-a-licious
I had been thinking about adding a FOAF profile for a long time now. After Travis added a link to his (not yet uploaded) profile, I decided to create a preliminary FOAF profile too. Though I do not yet have many links to other people, everything else is complete. I will be adding more details in the future, when I see what FOAF can do past what is configurable using FOAF-a-matic. I also encourage all of you out there to...
Posted on August 17, 2004 06:08 AM
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August 17, 2004
Markus Rogan on Austria
Those who know me, know how I miss and appreciate Vienna nowadays. Those that know me well also know my problems with my home country, and I have seldom heard them summarized better, than in this interview of Markus Rogan, fellow Austrian and recent Stanford graduate, with the Stanford Daily.In Austria, there is a national culture of being mediocre. I think they have just lost too often, Rogan said. [...] [Austrians] are perfectly happy to be in the middle, Rogan...
Posted on August 17, 2004 05:54 AM
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August 16, 2004
Silver for Austria & Stanford
Markus Rogan just won the Olympic silver medal in the 100 meter backstroke. Though the Austrian ORF was first to post the story, I want to congratulate as well. This is Austria's first swimming medal in 92 years, which is amazing considering that Rogan is said to be far better at the 200 meter backstroke. We will see what happens in the next few days....
Posted on August 16, 2004 10:15 AM
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August 15, 2004
Back Home
I've been back from Madrid since Friday and currently cooking Paella (its on the stove right now). I spent the last few days catching up on things and getting back to work. One big goal for next quarter is going to be the GRE, which I have started looking into more deeply today. While I am not worried about the math section, my vocabulary is definitely a bit rusty. The writing section has always my greatest obstacle, but two years...
Posted on August 15, 2004 01:05 PM
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August 05, 2004
Homage To Catalonia
Barcelona, to be precise. We've been in this lively city for two and a half days now, which has mostly welcomed us with scorching heat and sun. This does not, apparently, affect the city's native inhabitants who go (run) about their business undisturbed. Barcelona to me is large crowds of people crossing streets and running down Boulevards with shopping bags in their hands at an incredible pace. Its also a city of rather chaotic traffic, where crossing the street is...
Posted on August 5, 2004 01:48 PM
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August 02, 2004
Ready for Spain
I'm all packed up and ready for Spain. I had to double check if our hotel reservations for Barcelona and Madrid were for the right dates (we had to change our travel schedule a bit), and fortunately, everything worked out perfectly. Nine days in Spain should be very relaxing indeed, and I have been feeling enthusiastic and inspired today. I finished up Great Expectations, which I read after having seeing the fabulous movie adaptation (I had bought the book long...
Posted on August 2, 2004 01:13 PM
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August 02, 2004
Living Life in the Fast Lane
I got back from Germany on Friday, and am going to Spain tomorrow. In between I spent a day at a nearby lake with friends. Germany and especially Berlin was completely awesome, and I could not find any time to sit down and blog about what I was up to. Today I am busily trying to make sure that everything is booked and ready for our Spain trip, and I will most likely be frequently blogging from both Barcelona and...
Posted on August 2, 2004 05:00 AM
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