[Readings] So you want to learn python?

But personally, I recommend you go straight to the source. After all these years, there is still no substitute for Knuth.

--from Neopythonic by Guido van Rossum
[blog link]

Computer Architecture vs Architecture

读了篇博客：Beaux-Arts and kernel hacking...

Grand Central Terminal
Penn Station
看到这些宏伟的建筑确实是有叹为观止的感觉。完成一件可以历经百年的建筑，确实是一件非常值得做的事情。

[Videos]Conversation with scientist, engineer and database legend Jim Gray

[视频地址]Conversation with scientist, engineer and database legend Jim Gray

• 笔记：

1. The Singularity is near.这本书已经两个人推荐过了。一个是Craig Murdie，一个是Jim Gray。抽时间看看。还有一本Gödel,Escher,Bach
2. Gray真是nice。一些人在评论里面提问，他都不厌其烦地解答。
3. 最后讲的他最喜欢的数据结构里面，Kilroy没怎么听懂，cmpxchg之前没有碰到过，实际上Gray用到的是cmpxchg8b

• 引用：

1. How can a developer be more effective and efficient?  I think the simple answer is think more write less.  If you are like me, you are lazy and just sit down and write the code.   I really have to force myself to think.  Then the phone rings or an email arrives or some other distraction comes up.  So, thinking is both very hard and at least for me, requires some quiet time -- a scarce commodity these days.
2. What's exciting? My problem is that almost everything interests me.  The challenge is focusing on a FEW things and making a contribution there.   Long term, I think we are on a path to make intelligent life and extend human life indefinitely, and completely change the human condition (Kurtzweil's "the singularity is near".)  That's pretty exciting

[Readings]A Conversation with Jim Gray

A Conversation with Jim Gray.
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=864078

DAVE PATTERSON What is the state of storage today?

JIM GRAY We have an embarrassment of riches in that we're able to store more than we can access. Capacities continue to double each year, while access times are improving at 10 percent per year. So, we have a vastly larger storage pool, with a relatively narrow pipeline into it.

...

DP Will serial attached disks make it easier?

JG That should be a huge help. And Firewire is a help. Another option is to send whole computers. I've been sending NTFS disks (the Windows file system format), and not every Linux system can read NTFS. So lately I'm sending complete computers. We're now into the 2-terabyte realm, so we can't actually send a single disk; we need to send a bunch of disks. It's convenient to send them packaged inside a metal box that just happens to have a processor in it. I know this sounds crazy—but you get an NFS or CIFS server and most people can just plug the thing into the wall and into the network and then copy the data.

...

DP What are storage costs today?

JG ... Our chore is to figure out how to waste storage space to save administration. That includes things like RAID, disk snapshots, disk-to-disk backup, and much simpler administration tools.

...

DP To change the subject, I think one of the reasons you received the Turing Award was for your contributions in transactions, or for making the databases work better. Is that a fair characterization?

JG It's hard to know. There is this really elegant theory about transactions, having to do with concurrency and recovery. A lot of people had implemented these ideas implicitly. I wrote a mathematical theory around it and explained it and did a fairly crisp implementation of the ideas. The Turing Award committee likes crisp results. The embarrassing thing is that I did it with a whole bunch of other people. But I wrote the papers, and my name was often first on the list of authors. So, I got the credit.

But to return to your question, the fundamental premise of transactions is that we needed exception handling in distributed computations. Transactions are the computer equivalent of contract law. If anything goes wrong, we'll just blow away the whole computation. Absent some better model, that's a real simple model that everybody can understand. There's actually a mathematical theory lying underneath it.

In addition, there is a great deal of logic about keeping a log of changes so that you can undo things, and keeping a list of updates, called locks, so that others do not see your uncommitted changes.The theory says: "If that's what you want to do, this is what you have to do to get it."

The algorithms are simple enough so most implementers can understand them, and they are complicated enough so most people who can't understand them will want somebody else to figure it out for them. It has this nice property of being both elegant and relevant.

[笔记]深入浅出HelloWorld

由浅入深的讲了C语言和Linux内核交互的过程。
讲义下载：

• [HackingHelloWorld-PartI-2006-11-25.pdf]
• [HackingHelloWorld-PartII-2006-11-25.pdf]

实验环境：

• www.unic-center.net

[Softwares]试用了beamer

周末学习使用了大名鼎鼎的latex和beamer。
我的笔记：在cygwin中使用中文latex和beamer使用笔记

latex的优点：
因为latex是MVC的，这使得对排版的控制非常精确。同时，可以从模板开始编辑，对于固定的style，只需要修改内容。

beamer的不足：
但是ppt是一个creative的过程，用beamer来做就有点吃力。因为beamer不是所见即所得的，在beamer插入图片和动画确实是不方便。每次插入一个图片都要重新make，然后再点开查看。至于动画，至少我目前还没学会。里面的一个插图，最后还是用powerpoint画的，然后转成了图片。毕竟powerpoint是一群人的作品，beamer是一个人的作品啊~~~

总的来说，对于一个需要作论文和报告的研究生来说，在使用上，我的评价：latex > word = powerpoint > beamer
各自的拳头应用：
latex：论文
word：普通文档
powerpoint：报告
beamer：Just for fun

扩展阅读：
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX
http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/latex_advocacy.html

[转载]承认吧，其实你们喜欢文艺青年

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_55d4fc830100crrn.html

[转载]承认吧，其实你们喜欢文艺青年

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_55d4fc830100crrn.html

Re: [Digest]If You Fear Criticism——

On line version of "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill

http://www.psitek.net/pages/PsiTekTAGRContents.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~ghawk/TGR/index.htm

[Digest]If You Fear Criticism——

Let us examine some of the symptoms of the Fear of Criticism. The majority of people permit relatives, friends, and the public at large to so influence them that they cannot live their own lives, because they fear criticism.

...

Countless numbers of men and women, both young and old, permit relatives to wreck their lives in the name of duty, because they fear criticism. (Duty does not require any person to submit to the destruction of his personal ambitions and the right to live his own life in his own way).

...

Too many people refuse to set high goals for themselves, or even neglect selecting a career, because they fear the criticism of relatives and "friends" who may say "Don't aim so high, people will think you are crazy.

...

I had a fine opportunity, then and there, to kill off ambition before it gained control of me. Later in life, after having analyzed thousands of people, I discovered that most ideas are stillborn, and need the breath of life injected into them through definite plans of immediate action. The time to nurse an idea is at the time of its birth. Every minute it lives, gives it a better chance of surviving. The fear of criticism is at the bottom of the destruction of most ideas which never reach the planning and action stage.


——"Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill

9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. @Tsinghua FIT Floor 3

System Data Mining to Improve Dependability and Supportability
by Yuanyuan Zhou

用数据挖掘要注意什么东西;带着系统的眼光去看问题

太多信息给data mining，没有用;预处理非常关键;什么info给data mining需要你的insight

CP-Miner快的原因，预处理做得好

Problem要到real world找;做system research，不是做理论，需要到real world找问题，要做最先的领头人，要听Industry的需求

From research to product: validation, impact and learning

人生很短，干吗不做点有用的东西？

从发表paper往前走一步

The Pain and Gain of Working across the Borders
by Yuanyuan Zhou

Follow your heart, not your brain;If this is what excites you, go for it;Focus on the impact;不要拿paper来玩这个游戏

iComment怎么做出来（自然语言处理）不重要，insight重要;着眼点是你的问题

related work做踏实;做别人没做过的，然后说清楚为什么重要;客观地评价对哪些管用，对哪些不管用，40%，也很重要

target不是交paper，而是这篇paper publish，交了，被拒了，更难过，又浪费了时间

闪光点，提供证据来support

9:00 am - 12:00 pm @FIT Tsinghua 1-312

Principles of Computer Systems Design (计算机系统设计原理)
by  Weisong Shi

Details:
http://sites.google.com/site/pcsdwss/
http://dragonstar.ict.ac.cn/