Google has proposed a new image format for web applications. They say they’ve used compression technologies from VP8 to reduce file sizes below what JPEG provides. They don’t say anything about patents.

This story came up in a conversation today, and I thought I’d post the link: The Story of Mel. Many years ago I made a little poster with a quote from this story:

If a program can’t rewrite its own code, what good is it?

I’ve kept it on my bulletin board ever since.

A similar story my father told me: the IBM System/360 model 30 implemented the S/360 architecture through microcode, and by changing the microcode it could also emulate an IBM 1401. This way shops that had a 1401 could get a model 30 and still run their old programs while they were rewriting them for the System/360: shut it down, switch the microcode, and restart it in 1401 mode. (And it ran those programs twice as fast as a real 1401.) The microcode was on copper-clad punch cards; the instructions were sensed based on the capacitance.

My father, who was an IBM Systems Engineer at the time, was working with a customer (I think it was Lockheed) that had customized 1401’s with an extra instruction. (Yes, back then computer companies would customize the instruction set on your computer if requested.) To use their old programs on their new model 30, they needed IBM to customize the 1401 emulation, so IBM flew out a microcode guru. He asked them what the instruction code was, and they told him, so he sat down, did some calculating, and said, “That would make the tape drive rewind and unload the tape.”

“Yes,” they said, “that’s what happens.”

“What do you want it to do?” he asked.

They told him, and he sat back down, did some more calculations, pulled some copper-clad cards and a hole punch out of his briefcase, punched a bunch of holes in the cards, and stuck them in the machine.

“Now try it,” he said, and it worked.

The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center celebrates its 40th anniversary this week. The Register has a good write-up: PARC turns 40: mice, money and the new interwebs.

I don’t always agree with everything “Paul Murphy” (it’s a pseudonym) says, but he’s often thought provoking. This weekend he examines “The CIO role in the Unix enterprise”:

From a long term perspective CIO stability and willingness to do as little as possible are the critical managerial success factors because the system as a whole is very much like Unix itself: something that works until brought down by an idiot with root access -or in the organizational context, a senior executive with hiring control over the CIO role.

This author is really hostile to IBM, but his ideal “UNIX enterprise” is a lot closer to how Data Processing was run when I started here than to the “DP shop” he’s always railing against. I think this is another example of how the people who make the decisions have a more significant effect than the technology chosen to implement those decisions.

p.s. The server that hosts this blog is scheduled to be down for maintenance tomorrow morning, Tuesday, September 21 9:00 – 11:00 p.m.

Interesting article: SciDB: Relational daddy answers Google, Hadoop, NoSQL

I was going to post about Tim Bray’s anecdote about Oracle and developer mindshare, but I hadn’t figured out exactly what I wanted to say and then Adam beat me to it. And like he says, I’ve been a bit obsessed about the need for a strategy the whole time I’ve had this blog. I’d like to feel like I’m working to make the University a better place, but without the big picture and clear priorities only a strategic vision can provide, how can I know?