Author: BaseN

::: nBlog ::: After my presentation here in Dresden I was flattered to have evoked parallels with such giants as Alan Turing and Ray Kurzweil, in the minds of some listeners. My poetic title – The Ephemereal Soul of All Things Computing – was probably to blame. Although Kurzweil goes a bit far by postulating that […]

::: nBlog ::: The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) of the human body is a marvellous logic controller maintaining all the essential life support functions below the conscious brain activity. It is connected to thousands of nerves which collect and transmit data every few milliseconds. Based on these measurements, it then issues chemical and electrical signals in order to […]

::: nBlog ::: For the last 16 years, the European Court of Auditors (ECA), the independent audit institution of the European Union, has issued predominantly negative statements about EU’s budget implementation, especially on the largest accounts like Agriculture and Energy. In the latest report from September 2011, the court states: XI. The Court concludes that overall […]

::: nBlog ::: Politicians in the Nordics are grinning in agreement when giants like Facebook and Google convert old paper mills and other aging blue chip infrastructure into high density data centers. Electricity supply is not a problem and cooling is usually available from a nearby river or sea. Sounds great? Well. While the EU has […]

::: nBlog ::: Predicting the future is hard. Some of the earliest and even nowadays most powerful supercomputers are used eg. for weather forecasting and financial market analysis. Accuracy has surely increased, but not even nearly at the pace of the available storage and processing capacity. As an experiment, New Scientist magazine recently tried to predict the […]

::: nBlog ::: When I was made a VP in 2000, my first thought was that I again need to learn, and a lot. So I went on and bought more than hundred books of management, each promoting a bit different approach to perfect management.  Empathic, evidence based, phenomenal, compassionate, questioning, firm, listening, demanding, goal […]

::: nBlog ::: Yesterday while I was driving to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, I got a simple SMS message from Finnair, asking whether I wanted to upgrade to business class with 9k frequent flyer miles. Answering just U completed the whole process, and I got a new boarding pass in the next SMS a few seconds later. Within […]

::: nBlog ::: Today’s electrical grids are based on 50 or 60 Hertz alternating current (AC) in three phases, 60 degrees apart. This makes generators with rotating permanent magnets and three coils in symmetric positions quite durable and easy to engineer. A fixed speed electric motor at the receiving end is equally simple – the grid […]

::: nBlog ::: Last Friday I had the privilege to visit Valmet Automotive factory, together with mayor Kari Koski of Uusikaupunki. What comes to cars, during the last 22 years I’ve owned six of them, with only one of them built elsewhere than in that specific factory. (All Saabs, latest made in Trollhättan, Sweden) Valmet Automotive […]

::: nBlog ::: It seems that even the most tightly regulated businesses like airlines are now embracing possibilities for real time measurements, as described in the latest IEEE Spectrum. I find this heartwarming as I first envisioned such a system in 1992. What is more, BaseN is now able to provide scalable core components for this […]