I have Acronis TrueImage, which got good reviews from PC Mag, as my backup software, running against a Maxtor OneTouch over USB 2.0. It's insanely slow: an incremental backup of my data partition takes more than a day. The partition is big (200G) but the delta is some small …
more ...The Netflix optimization challenge exemplifies a situation for which there should be a solution, but which I've not seen a good answer. Namely: for-profit but initially ad-hoc cooperation. For instance, let's just say that I made the case that a Pandora-like "Movie Genome Project" was the key to winning …
more ...Scott Swigart points to this article that gives a non-technical overview of the use of genetic algorithms to determine the optimal tuning characteristics of one's Linux Kernel. This ought to work: many years ago I wrote a genetic algorithm that tuned the optimization parameters of one's C++ compiler and it …
more ...My "Mechanical Turk" reference in the previous post was, as Michael Chermside says, a facetious strategy of using Amazon's cheap-human-labor service to improve movie recommendations. I've been trying to come up with a joke about this that involves the word "Bollywood" and yet which isn't potentially offensive...
In the real …
more ...Well, looks like my Christmas shopping is done for the year... [via Jeff Atwood]
more ...Netflix is offering \$1M to the first person who can achieve 10% better movie recommendations than their current system. Sweet.
I have all sorts of ideas on this. Thank heavens I have copious spare time.
more ...Jon Udell's latest Screening Room is about Windows Live Writer, Microsoft's quite-nice blogging client. However, the discussion of microformats glosses over a significant limitation in the current version of Live Writer, which is that addin content is atomic. For instance, I secured the domain name distributedreviews.com (it's just parked …
more ...Borland is abandoning its two-year-old strategy of delivering a "software development platform" to further the goal of "software delivery optimization." As I feared from the start, Borland's over-stuffed product portfolio and large ambitions clashed with their limited resources.
To summarize: Borland was once the most loved brand in the programming …
more ...Microsoft has granted two additional "grand prizes" to other "Made in Express" finalists. As you may recall, I declared "shenanigans" at the original winner, which was a team project that had been in development for years. An uproar slowly developed and after some reluctance (including a letter from MS Legal …
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The image above is linked to the 2680 x 982 original. If you've got dual-monitors and can stretch it out, it's an amazing vista of …
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