This week’s lecture was on how to grow the GDP (gross domestic product) by two of the seven possible factors. “Human capital” as well as “growth in population”.
He started by discussing the “ideal state” and the need for growth, and with interceptions on the latest OECD studies, and their discussions on the state of Germany, as well as discussions on the influence of longer life expectancy…
Sorry for being a bit brief this week, to much to do… ;-)
I again did enjoy it immensly, again a beautiful start of the week!
Matthias
P.S.: Last week, he also did discuss the hysteresis, a phenomenon to be seen in economies. The number of “re-employments” after a downturn never does reach the number of “un-employment”… ;-( So un-employment grows and grows…
This week’s lecture was on “labor market policy” vs. “economic policy” and how to handle “employment politic”. It’s been about Keynes and his economic ideas as well as neoclassical economics. He’s been talking about supply and demand as drivers or basis for thinking on how to influence the market. He’s been talking about the definitions of unemployment rates, and the different types of unemployment and social security systems, and the effect of employment protection legislation on the “unemployment rate.
As usual: great to start the week with his lecture!
Matthias
Today was the second lecture, last week Bert was not able to do it, as he had to be at a meeting with the chancellor and China government. He did excuse himself.
Today he did cover the differences between “economic policy” and “trade cycle policy”, did explain the drivers and the need for drivers for change or market demand. He did cover the Lorenz curve, the Kuznets curve, he did talk about why Germans are more afraid of inflation, whereas Americans are more afraid of depression.
He did talk about the differences of managing need or stimulating need (US: Trains were build privately, but need was territory, so union pacific and western pacific did have an interest in building the train, Europe: Trains were build by governments to regulate need and build an “useful” infrastructure). (also see: Allmende)
He did start the day with the question, when ecology started to become important in financial politics. Answer is: 1962, with the book Silent Spring
As always, I can not cover or retell everything he mentioned or covered, but these are the things I remember (besides the talks about all Western being based on the Trains (he did ask about the main topic of the movie Once Upon A Time In The West) and the Exit Game (if you were promised money, based on the requirement to give a part of that money to someone else, and the second requirement that that someone else needs to accept that part, how much would you give away)).
As always, very refreshing, it’s a real good start for each week.
Matthias
I’m now also twittering, see http://twitter.com/pfuetz
Matthias
Yesterday, we’ve been to the Darmstadt Staatstheater. They did present Chaplin‘s first long movie The Kid with music played by the orchestra live. The original music was written for piano, but in the 50-ties Chaplin re-set the music for orchestra, and that’s, what’s been played yesterday. Orchestra on-stage, screen above them, and magnifically played music. I guess, nothing needs to be said about the film…
Those, that have NOT been there: You know, you did miss out badly!
http://www.staatstheater-darmstadt.de/content/view/1131/693/
Matthias
Yesterday I was at the Heidelberger Frühling, visiting Thomas Hampson‘s Liederabend. When we bought the tickets, it was indicated, that he might be singing Schumann’s op. 39, something, that Thomas did not yet sing or record. Sadly that had been reverted to op. 35, and the concert also did cover Liszt songs and some of the Rückert songs by Mahler.
It seems, Thomas had hay fever, like many in the audience. That coughing “even in the quietest moments” is a bad habit, that does seem to get worse every time. Thomas was (due to the hay fever?) not as good, it seemed, he had some problems with the upper notes, but still, his voice is good, and his pronunciation of german is exquisit.
So, with some mixed emotions, I did enjoy the concert, but had heard better of him already.
Matthias
Now that we heard and read about the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, let’s look out to what lies ahead of us:
Tons of opportunities!
Just a small sample of my braindumps:
- Combining Oracle and the Sun Cloud
- Sun Cluster will get more important then ever
- There is a bright future for Solaris
- Sparc will continue
- Lot’s of appliances coming, we just started with Amber Road
So, I think, this is a really good day!
Matthias
Today I took the liberty to start the week and the day with visiting the first lecture of one of Bert Rürup‘s two last lectures ever. He did retire from his job at University Darmstadt this term, and during the Summer he will give two last lectures: Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik (economic and financial policy) and Einführung in die VWL (für Hörer anderer FB) (introduction to economics (german word: Volkswirtschaftslehre) for students of other faculties).
As the later is scheduled at a time-slot, that does not go to well with people having real jobs, it’s been easy to decide, which lecture to choose, to see and listen to the renowned Professor for a first and last time. The first lecture is a bachelor lecture, the second is a diploma lecture for non economics students.
Today was the first lesson, the room was bursting (not all could sit, the room can sit 200), and Bert was talking about Augustinus, Machiavelli and Aristoteles as being the three major founders of economic policies. He also did talk about the differences between policy and politics (no corresponding words available in german, as he sadly stated), and about the differences in US government and german government (no real economic consultants in Germany working for the government, only the Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (Wirtschaftsweisen) are working in Germany, but that’s a criticism council, no advisory board).
He also stated, that the lecture will primarily talk about policies, but mentioned, that due to his engagement in german politics of the last 40 years, he will also induce some “politics” into his lecture, to give the students the “reality check”. He already today mentioned some of his meetings with Helmut Schmidt, and explained changes in wording of politicians to highlight the difference between “status quo” and “wishful thinking”.
Although it’s supposed to be a 2 x 45 minute letcure, today he did finish after 45 minutes.
I did enjoy it, and will try to also visit the next lectures on the following Mondays!
Matthias
Folks,
responding to an article on virtualization.info:
KVM is a type-2 hypervisor, Xen is a type-1 hypervisor. So, there is NO apples-to-apples comparison here, you’re comparing apples-to-peaches.
Where’s the difference?
With KVM ALL your “guests” run in the SAME user-space (there is only one kernel, namely Linux!), and therefore attacking one “guest” from a different “guest” seems way easier then with Xen, where they do get completely separate environments. You would need to HACK into the Xen microkernel to have access, whereas with KVM you have all access directly from your Linux-login.
Is that, what you want? One single unpriviliged user (or any other user!) being able to influence your “guest”? I bet, you don’t like that!
If you want to compare KVM with VMware Workstation, Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox, ok, that would be the right comparison. But nobody does do this comparison. Why?
Because Linux after all still doesn’t seem to be “ready for the DataCenter”… OK; I’m making it easy (oversimplifying), but that thinking, expressed in KVM vs. Xen totally ignores many important points that are relevant in datacenters. These do not apply to Laptops, and that’s still seemingly the domain of Linux…
Please, start thinking… (I do not want to discredit Linux, but the comparing of apples-and-peaches in this case really is sadening…)
Matthias
Now, it’s official: Ulrich Gräf and myself will be giving the lecture on innovative operating system elements. Check out:
https://qis.pvw.tu-darmstadt.de/qisserver/rds?state=verpublish&status=init&vmfile=no&publishid=43048&moduleCall=webInfo&publishConfFile=webInfo&publishSubDir=veranstaltung
Slides are at: http://www.dvs.tu-darmstadt.de/teaching/iose/2009/
Our intention for content currently is:
- 17.04.: OS – What’s that? (UG)
- 24.04.: IO (UG)
- 08.05.: High Availability (UG)
- 15.05.: Cluster Methods (MP)
- 22.05.: Storage (UG)
- 29.05.: CPU and scheduling (UG)
- 05.06.: Networkfeatures in OSes (MP)
- 12.06.: Posix (UG)
- 19.06.: Security (UG)
- 26.06.: Management / SAN / Filesystems (MP)
- 03.07.: Filesystems (UG)
- 10.07.: Virtualisation / VM (MP)
- 17.07.: Virtualisation / OS (UG)
Matthias
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