Helpful votes received on reviews:
83% (168 of 202)
Location: Baltimore, Maryland USA
In My Own Words:
'To live life, you must think, measure, simulate, experiment with, dance, paint, draw, challenge, caress, and calculate it'. Welcome to the 21st century: Out-of-control technology; hundreds of new transgenic animals and plants; genetically engineered viruses, humans, plants, and animals; advanced artificial intelligence; molecular manufacturing; self-repairing networks; robotic and human explora… Read more'To live life, you must think, measure, simulate, experiment with, dance, paint, draw, challenge, caress, and calculate it'.
Welcome to the 21st century: Out-of-control technology; hundreds of new transgenic animals and plants; genetically engineered viruses, humans, plants, and animals; advanced artificial intelligence; molecular manufacturing; self-repairing networks; robotic and human exploration of the solar system; volatile financial markets; and the final demise of the religious worldview..........exhilirating isn't it?
Interests:
Algebraic geometry,algebraic and geometrical topology, numerical analysis, combinatorics, probability and statistics, quantum field theory and dynamical systems, chaos, automation of network management, automation of scientific and mathematical discovery, Laban notation, movement analysis, physics of dance, Motif theory, sequence analysis,bioinformatics, genome databases, mathematical genetics, weather and energy derivatives, Latin dance, ballroom, modern dance (Humphrey-Weidmann technique), jazz, Irish clogging, analytical, ethical and moral philosophy, aesthetics, erotica, cacti and succulents, exotic houseplants, ornithology, herpetology, ichthyology, entomology, poultry husbandry.
Book Project: 'The Rise of the Machines? The Status of AI in 2008'. To be completed by the end of 2012. This book, to be around 1100 pages in length, will hopefully give a practical summary of the status of AI to the year 2012. Eschewing philosophy, it will emphasize practical implementations of AI and will give working definitions of machine intelligence.Other topics (with mainly original material) to be addressed include: automated choreography, smart networks, automation of legal reasoning, intelligent diagnostics.
Occupation: Mathematician/physicist.
Education Level: PhD (Physics, 1989, University of Texas At Austin)
Income Level: Live very comfortably
Location: Belcamp (suburb of Baltimore)
Race: White
Ethnicity: Swedish/British hybrid
Religion: Atheist
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Research Projects: 'Quantization of Mathematics'(in progress). What would happen if mathematical structures were viewed from a strictly 'quantum' point of view? This research is thus an attempt to view mathematics from such a 'quantum strategy'.
My statement on Amazon reviews: All the books I review I have read completely or if not have indicated as such in the review itself. With the exception of two authors, I have not met any of the authors of the books I review and do not have any personal or financial connection with them. I put my full name and contact information for those who want to contact me. It is my opinion that reviewing another person's work requires great care and respect, and should not be done anonymously under any circumstances. This holds for books on Amazon as well as scientific papers and monographs not affiliated with Amazon. Anonymity in reviews, no matter in what context, never serves any useful purpose, has absolutely no scientific value or validity, and is morally unsound.
A few readers have Emailed me asking how I manage the time to read. But it should be noted that the books I have reviewed I have read over the span of about 35 years. The reviews are posted at my leisure, and it should not be concluded that a book review that is posted 3 days after a prior one implies that the book was read in three days. Most of the books I have reviewed I read long before Amazon was even conceived. The books were therefore not read in the sequential order in which their reviews are posted.
For a technical book, I usually spend a few months (calendar time) studying it. I do not monitor how much real time it takes me to read the book as this is not of interest to me. For a non-technical book, a few days or possibly a few weeks calendar time.
Also, I have no idea how Amazon ranks the reviewers and do not care at all what my ranking is in that regard.
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Reviews
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This book gives a fascinating overview of machine music as seen through the eyes of the author, who has been actively involved in this field for many years. The reading of this book is recommended for anyone who is interested in the extent of machine musicianship and musical creativity. Not being an expert in music theory should not dissuade one from its perusal. In fact, not possessing extensive knowledge of musical theory may be an advantage, in that one can read the passages and listen to the musical compositions on the accompanying CD with minimal bias as to what constitutes enjoyable or "good" music. Indeed, if one were to approach musical listening, musical composition, and music… Read more
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The concept of content switching is relatively new, but for those engineers who work with content switches in real networks, their behavior can be very unpredictable and can conflict with existing hardware and applications. Indeed, there are a few instances where content switch server load balancing competes with the load balancing done in some multi-tier environments running certain types of protocols, such as T3, coupled with the use of WebLogic activated over an application cluster. These issues are not discussed in the book, but instead the authors give a purely descriptive and qualitative overview of the history, functioning, and use of content switches. However, from the title, a… Read more
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Optimistic in its projections, and sometimes exaggerating what is currently possible, this book gives an interesting overview of the status of the 'autonomic computing' project of IBM. Targeted to the network manager reader, the book views autonomic computing as a new approach to computer and systems management. Reducing costs are its goal, as well as increasing the quality of the service. An autonomic system must, according to the author, have knowledge of itself, have the ability to configure and reconfigure itself, as well as self-optimize itself. It must also have the capability to self-heal, to protect itself, and the ability to discover knowledge of its environment and context, and… Read more
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