Browsing around on Scribd, I was able to find the exact textbook we used for the class. The authors, Papadimitriou and Varizani, were actually my professors for the course. The book was surprisingly easy to read, clear and concise. Take a peak; I think you’ll appreciate the resource.

Randal E. Bryant, dean of the computer science school at Carnegie Mellon University, states that “We in academia and the government labs have not kept up with the times. Universities really need to get on board.” From my personal experience, I’d have to admit that university labs, at least for undergraduates, do not have cutting-edge technology.

Six universities will be involved in the initiative. They are Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Maryland and the University of Washington.

I am really excited by this initiative. On the other hand, I already feel behind the times as the upcoming classes will have more knowledge about parallel computing over large-scale data sets. This is a good reminder of how quick technology is moving.

Details here:

To simplify the development of massively parallel programs Google and IBM have created the following resources:

- A cluster of processors running an open source implementation of Google’s published computing infrastructure (MapReduce and GFS from Apache’s Hadoop project)
- A Creative Commons licensed university curriculum developed by Google and the University of Washington focusing on massively parallel computing techniques available at: http://code.google.com/edu/content/parallel.html
- Open source software designed by IBM to help students develop programs for clusters running Hadoop. The software works with Eclipse, an open source development platform. The plugin is currently available at: http://lucene.apache.org/hadoop/
- Management, monitoring and dynamic resource provisioning of the cluster by IBM using IBM Tivoli systems management software
- A website to encourage collaboration among universities in the program. This will be built on Web 2.0 technologies from IBM’s Innovation Factory.

Here’s my short response to the 40’s

1. Google Reader Shared Items. This is way more useful for those who read a lot of feeds. Plus it shows you who has the most popular blog posts in the past few hours. – Hmm I should check this out
3. The video application – Lets you send video messages to all your friends from your computer’s webcam.Yes this one is definitely cool
6. Upcoming Calendar app. Come on, don’t 20-somethings have to keep track of all the events that are coming their way? – A lot of students just use Facebook Events
7. Blog Friends. Don’t the interns have any friends with blogs? This is how you track them. – Here’s my blog
8. Wordpress. If you blog on Wordpress or Wordpress.com, this is the app for you. Shows your posts AND your comments. I thought every 20-something had a Wordpress blog? – Most college students I know are graduates of Xanga and LiveJournal actually
10. SkypeMe. Lets you use Skype to call me. – Who needs Skype? I know a lot of people who check Facebook messages more than they check email
11. FaceReviews. It’s a Website that reviews Facebook applications. – I thought young people just copy what their friends do?

The students I know don’t go on Facebook for utility purposes. They go on for the “emotional” aspect: writing on people’s walls, seeing who’s in a relationship with who, going through memories in the photo collection, etc. That’s why the most popular applications are Top Friends, X Me, Graffiti, Moods, Superwall. Most students treat Facebook as a playground rather than something serious. Wasn’t the whole point of Facebook to be unproductive during finals week?

This was definitely a wake-up call on just how big Facebook has grown. I remember joining Facebook during the early days when it was only open to about 30 to 50 colleges. Students posted crazy pictures of themselves, not having to worry about that their parents would see it. The whole college experience.

Fast forward 4 years. Now, we got people in their 40’s taking over. Here a picture of from a recent TC report regarding the FB demographics.

Despite what I just wrote above, I am excited that Facebook is starting to show a more mature side.

Update: Orli has his Top 10 here.

Humanity classes focus around methods that are mainly analytical, critical and speculative. It’s not just about how, it’s why. It’s about those red pens bleeding all over my papers, screaming “so what? convince me!” It’s about getting a B- for hackneyed ideas. Each thought has to be original and different. You have to be creative. You have take complicated aspects of humankind and explain it in an understandable way. An entrepreneur must be capable of all these things. You don’t get specifications given to you by the lead designer. Like a paper, you just think of thesis and go.

Recently, I came across a New York Times article, revealing the libraries of CEO’s. What’s surprising is the emphasis of fiction over non-fiction. Sure, those “Top 10 Ways to Networking” books are useful, but it’s the novels and poetry contain raw substance:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

What I found in some of the technical courses (not all) were more “how-to”’s rather than “how-come”’s. Engineers are good at building things. They are good making sure all the small details of a system function correctly. And that’s how big companies work; each engineer is given a modulized task, which are then pieced together. This works great at large organizations, but startup’s are much more messy.

Like a writer, poet, or poet, an entrepreneur has to have an original take on a messy problem. For example, let’s look at the iPhone. It’s probably too early to call it a success, but many things on it just work elegantly. Internet is a huge problem on mobile devices, but Apple has improved it a bit by analyzing and showing that the problem is the UI. There’s no way you could browse around webpages with only buttons. Surprisingly, no one got that. No one was creative enough to get of the common button world and venture into the finger pointing world. Everyone else got a B- while Apple got an A. Human problems are chaotic; those who can analyze and create clear and original solutions win.

In a previous post, I mentioned how we need better entrepreneurship programs in college. I will definitely be giving this some more thought as I organize my fall semester class schedule. To those who found this post boring, considering dropping out of school I welcome all comments.

Update: FRIK, I missed my telebears appointment after working non-stop. Now I’m waitlisted in every class.

As mentioned on Network World, iPhone’s WiFi capability is flooding Duke networks. What caught my attention is that it’s summer! No one is on campus during the summer. That is hilarious.

“Because of the time of year for us, it’s not a severe problem,” says Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke’s Office of Information Technology. “But from late August through May, our wireless net is critical. My concern is how many students will be coming back in August with iPhones? It’s a pretty big annoyance, right now, with 20-30 access points signaling they’re down, and then coming back up a few minutes later. But in late August, this would be devastating.”

The iPhone does not have a standard SDK, so I expect the internet usuage to become much more intense as new apps are released.

Haven’t seen too many iPhones around on the Berkeley Campus yet. But hey, I guess it’s different at those rich east coast schools. I remember when the iPod’s first became popular, practically every student was listening to one between classes. It was pretty anti-social. I wouldn’t be surprised Apple invades the campus again.

By the way, I really want an iPhone.

Also, mentioned here and here