Slashdot Mirror

cpfeifer asks: "Russ Miles wrote about going through the pain of setting up his own infrastructure for his OSS project, AspectXML. He asks: 'Are there tools out there that make this process much easier, and perhaps ones that I could take advantage of by moving my own open source project to? Also what experiences have people had with the different community projects?' Should you start up your own gforge server, host it on Sourceforge, or perhaps look to one of the OSS groups like Apache, Codehaus or Tigris?"

rjelks writes "The Register is running an article about Google's new email service that was mentioned earlier, here. The story details the new privacy concerns about Gmail's privacy policy and Google's tracking habits. The policy states that Google will not guarantee the deletion of emails that are archived even if you cancel your account. 'The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Indeed, residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account.'" Reader cpfeifer writes "Rich Skrenta (founder of ODP, and Topix) speculates in his blog that the real product Google is creating isn't web search or email, but a massively scalable, distributed computing platform. 'It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers.' If he's right, the question isn't what product will Google announce next, but what product will they not be able to announce?"

hussar writes "Qwest is expected to announce today its plan to delink telephone service from its DSL offering. Given some comments I have seen in /. discussions of broadband issues, the plan, nicknamed 'naked DSL,' should be a welcome change." Update: 02/25 13:55 GMT by T : cpfeifer points to the Wall Street Journal's coverage.

cpfeifer writes "Paul Baranowski takes a moment to reflect on Open Source Project Management in his blog. His reflections are based on the first two years of the Peek-a-booty project." Interesting comments on media coverage, choice of programming language, when to release a project, and more.

cpfeifer writes "Tristan Louis has started a new group focusing on Usability in OSS products. Among the goals are: examining the state of he usability union in existing products, forming a set of standards and practices and PR for products that make usability strides. Also, check out the discussion on Metafilter."

cpfeifer writes "Jim Waldo expresses a a controversial viewpoint in his blog: "Common wisdom, especially in distributed computing, says that the right approach to all problems is to use a standard. This common wisdom has no basis in fact or history, and is curtailing innovation and rewarding bad behavior in our industry. " He also goes on to clarify his position and explain his reasoning."

cpfeifer writes "Performance has been the albatross around Java's neck for a long time. It's a popular subject when developers get together "Don't use Vector, use ArrayList, it's more efficient." "Don't concatenate Strings, use a StringBuffer, it's more efficient." It's a chance for the experienced developers to sit around the design campfire and tell ghost stories of previous projects where they implemented their own basic data structures {String, Linked List...} that was anywhere from 10-50% faster than the JDK implementation (and in the grand oral tradition of tall tales, it gets a little more efficient every time they tell it)." Want to kill the albatross? Read on for the rest of cpfeifer's review of O'Reilly's Java Performance Tuning, now in its 2nd edition. Java Performance Tuning, 2nd Edition author Jack Shirazi pages 570 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 9/10 reviewer cpfeifer ISBN 096003773 summary It's the most up to date publication dealing specifically with performance of Java applications, and is a one of a kind resource.

Every developer has written a microbenchmark (a bit of code that does something 100-1000 times in a tight loop and measure the time it takes for the supposed "expensive operation") to try and prove an argument about which way is "more efficient" based on the execution time. The problem, is when running in a dynamic, managed environment like the 1.4.x JVM, there are more factors that you don't control than ones that you do, and it can be difficult to say whether one piece of code will be "more efficient" than another without testing with actual usage patterns. The second edition of Review of Java Performance Tuning provides substantial benchmarks (not just simple microbenchmarks) with thorough coverage of the JDK including loops, exceptions, strings, threading, and even underlying JVM improvements in the 1.4 VM. This book is one of a kind in its scope and completeness.

The Gory Details
The best part of this book is that it not only tells you how fast various standard Java operations are (sorting strings, dealing with exceptions, etc.), but he has kept all of the timing information from the previous edition of the book. This shows you how the VMs performance has changed from version 1.1.8 up to 1.4.0, and it's very clear that things are getting better. The author also breaks out the timing information for 3 different flavors of the 1.4.0 JVM: mixed interpreted/compiled mode (standard), server (with Hotspot), and interpreted mode only (no run time optimization applied).

Part 1 : Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
The book starts off with three chapters of sage advice about the tools and process of profiling/tuning. Before you spend any time profiling, you have to have a process and a goal. Without setting goals, the tuning process will never end and it will likely never be successful.

The author outlines a general strategy that will give you a great starting point for your tuning task forces. Chapter 2 presents the profiling facilities that are available in the Java VM and how to interpret the results, while chapter 3 covers VM optimizations (different garbage collectors, memory allocation options) and compiler optimizations.

Part 2 : The Basics
Chapters 4-9 cover the nuts and bolts, code-level optimizations that you can implement. Chapter 4 discusses various object allocation tweaks including: lazy initialization, canonicalizing objects, and how to use the different types of references (Phantom, Soft, and Weak) to implement priority object pooling. Chapter 5 tells you more about handling Strings in Java that you ever wanted to know. Converting numbers (floats, decimals, etc) to Strings efficiently, string matching -- it's all here in gory detail with timings and sample code.

This chapter also shows the author's depth and maturity; when presenting his algorithm to convert integers to Strings, he notes that while his implementation previously beat the pants off of Sun's implementation, in 1.3.1/1.4.0 Sun implemented a change that now beats his code. He analyzes the new implementation, discusses why it's faster without losing face. That is just one of many gems in this updated edition of the book. Chapter 6 covers the cost of throwing and catching exceptions, passing parameters to methods and accessing variables of different scopes (instance vs. local) and different types (scalar vs. array). Chapter 7 covers loop optimization with a java bent. The author offers proof that an exception terminated loop, while bad programming style, can offer better performance than more accepted practices.

Chapter 8 covers IO, focusing in on using the proper flavor of java.io class (stream vs. reader, buffered vs. unbuffered) to achieve the best performance for a given situation. The author also covers performance issues with object serialization (used under the hood in most Java distributed computing mechanisms) in detail and wraps up the chapter with a 12 page discussion of how best to use the "new IO" package (java.nio) that was introduced with Java 1.4. Sadly, the author doesn't offer a detailed timing comparison of the 1.4 NIO API to the existing IO API. Chapter 9 covers Java's native sorting implementations and how to extend their framework for your specific application.

PART 3 : Threads, Distributed Computing and Other Topics
Chapters 10-14 covers a grab bag of topics, including threading, proper Collections use, distributed computing paradigms, and an optimization primer that covers full life cycle approaches to optimization. Chapter 10 does a great job of presenting threading, common threading pitfalls (deadlocks, race conditions), and how to solve them for optimal performance (e.g. proper scope of locks, etc).

Chapter 11 provides a wonderful discussion about one of the most powerful parts of the JDK, the Collections API. It includes detailed timings of using ArrayList vs. LinkedList when traversing and building collections. To close the chapter, the author discusses different object caching implementations and their individual performance results.

Chapter 12 gives some general optimization principles (with code samples) for speeding up distributed computing including techniques to minimize the amount of data transferred along with some more practical advice for designing web services and using JDBC.

Chapter 13 deals specifically with designing/architecting applications for performance. It discusses how performance should be addressed in each phase of the development cycle (analysis, design, development, deployment), and offers tips a checklist for your performance initiatives. The puzzling thing about this chapter is why it is presented at the end of the book instead of towards the front, with all of the other process-related material. It makes much more sense to put this material together up front.

Chapter 14 covers various hardware and network aspects that can impact application performance including: network topology, DNS lookups, and machine specs (CPU speed, RAM, disk).

PART 4 : J2EE Performance
Chapters 15-18 deal with performance specifically with the J2EE APIs: EJBs, JDBC, Servlets and JSPs. These chapters are essentially tips or suggested patterns (use coarse-grained EJBs, apply the Value Object pattern, etc) instead of very low-level performance tips and metrics provided in earlier chapters. You could say that the author is getting lazy, but the truth is that due to huge number of combinations of appserver/database vendor combinations, it would be very difficult to establish a meaningful performance baseline without a large testbed.

Chapter 15 is a reiteration of Chapter 1, Tuning Strategy, re-tooled with a J2EE focus. The author reiterates that a good testing strategy determines what to measure, how to measure it, and what the expectations are. From here, the author presents possible solutions including load balancing. This chapter also contains about 1.5 pages about tuning JMS, which seems to have been added to be J2EE 1.3 acronym compliant.

Chapter 16 provides excellent information about JDBC performance strategies. The author presents a proxy implementation to capture accurate profiling data and minimize changes to your code once the profiling effort is over. The author also covers data caching, batch processing and how the different transaction levels can affect JDBC performance.

Chapter 17 covers JSPs and servlets, with very little earth shattering information. The author presents tips such as consider GZipping the content before returning it to the client, and minimize custom tags. This chapter is easily the weakest section of the book: Admittedly, it's difficult to optimize JSPs since much of the actual running code is produced by the interpreter/compiler, but this chapter either needs to be beefed up or dropped from future editions.

Finally, chapter 18 provides a design/architecture-time approach towards EJB performance. The author presents standard EJB patterns that lend themselves towards squeezing greater performance out of the often maligned EJB. The patterns include: data access object, page iterator, service locator, message facade, and others. Again, there's nothing earth shattering in this chapter. Chapter 19 is list of resources with links to articles, books and profiling/optimizing projects and products.

What's Bad?

Since the book has been published, the 1.4.1 VM has been released with the much anticipated concurrent garbage collector. The author mentions that he received an early version of 1.4.1 from Sun to test with. However, the text doesn't state that he used the concurrent garbage collector, so the performance of this new feature isn't indicated by this text.

The J2EE performance chapters aren't as strong as the J2SE chapters. After seeing the statistics and extensive code samples of the J2SE sections, I expected a similar treatment for J2EE. Many of the J2SE performance practices still apply for J2EE (serialization most notably, since that his how EJB, JMS, and RMI ship method parameters/results across the wire), but it would be useful to fortify these chapters with actual performance metrics.

So What's In It For Me?

This book is indispensable for the architect drafting the performance requirements/testing process, and contains sage advice for the programmer as well. It's the most up to date publication dealing specifically with performance of Java applications, and is a one-of-a-kind resource.

You can purchase Java Performance Tuning, 2nd Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

cpfeifer writes "Washington Post has this article about Verizon rolling out it's ultrawideband wireless service based on EvDO (Evolution Data Only). Reiter breaks 1xEV-DO down for us."

cpfeifer writes "Building browser-based java applications has involved a mixed bag of server side technologies (servlets, JSPs), client side technologies (HTML, Javascript) and frameworks (webmacro, Struts, Taglibs, Velocity). As these technologies appeared and matured, "The Right Way" (tm) to build web applications evolved to be an application of the classic model-view-controller pattern." Below is Craig's review of Struts in Action, a book which attempts to illustrate a successful path to making sure that web applications are designed the right way. Struts in Action author Husted, Dumoulin, Franciscus, Winterfeldt pages 630 publisher Manning rating (11/10) it goes to 11 reviewer Craig Pfeifer ISBN 1930110502 summary More than just a book about how to use the Struts framework, covers the best practices of web application design and development. If you are building a java web application of any appreciable size, YOU NEED THIS BOOK.

What's Needed So it is generally acknowledged that using the MVC pattern is the proper way to build web applications, but with the large number of technologies and frameworks it can be a long road to figure what is the best solution for your application. What we need is a book that covers the best practices of web application design and development from both a technology/architecture perspective, and is written by a few folks who have deep understanding of the underlying problems of building robust web applications.

That's what I love the most about this book, it doesn't just talk about how to configure and develop with Struts. It's a web application manifesto. Anyone can write a book about how to use Struts to build a web application. That's not the point. This book is ~8 people-years worth of first-hend developer knowledge (4 authors x ~2 years of working on the Struts project) condensed down into 630 pages. It doesn't just teach you how to use Struts (and Velocity and Taglibs and Tiles), but why you should use them. That's the most important thing this book has to offer. If your project is looking at using Struts & other Jakarta technologies, you need this book. If your project is currently using Struts & other Jakarta technologies, you need this book.

What's Bad?

The Velocity coverage is pretty light. If you are more comfortable building logic with a quasi-shell script language instead of using markup tags, then you should look to the project's documentation for further reference before embarking on a prototype. The Jakarta Lucene project, is touched on in the sample application they build, but are left as an exercise for the reader to investigate. While it's good to bring in related technologies to flesh out your sample apps, you have to be careful not to get sidetracked from the primary topic. You could easily write several books about the other components developed by the Jakarta project.

What's Good?

The best part is that the 4 authors are all Struts authorities (one Jakarta project manager, 2 Struts committers, one principal consultant), so they know Struts and the other Jakarta web frameworks inside and out. More than that, these guys have been solving the problems involved with web applications for several years now. They have deep experience in the patterns and best practices of building robust and flexible web applications, and this book passes on their experiences to the reader.

So What's In It For Me?

With this book and a little bit of effort on your part, you will be a competent Java web application developer. With a little bit more effort, you will become a Java web application architect. It's worth the extra effort. This is a tremendous book that will set the standard for web application references and will continue to be useful for years to come. It reminds me of the first Manning book I read, Neward's Server-Based Java Programming in terms of it's scope. approach and usefulness.

You can purchase Struts in Action from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

cpfeifer writes "According to this article in the Washington Post, high-end subdivisions are running fiber-optic cable to each house and rolling the cost of broadband, digital cable and local phone service into the home owners association cost. Apparantly home pre-wired for broadband have a better resale value and higher demand in the market."

On-the-fly organization may suffice for keeping track of scripts /bin on your local machine, but larger projects have more at stake when it comes to coordinating the effort of programmers, especially when they're not even in the same timezone, never mind in the same room. CVS has become the lifeblood of many such projects. Reader Craig Pfeifer suggests CVS Pocket Reference as a good way to help keep that lifeblood flowing.

CVS Pocket Reference author Gregor N. Purdy pages 75 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8 reviewer Craig Pfeifer ISBN 0596000030 summary Indispensable handbook for administrators of all but small CVS installations, and probably for the small ones as well.

The Scenario

As a former CVS repository administrator, I wish I had this book when I started, it's much easier than pawing through the canonical documentation for quick answers. CVS is the #1 choice for open source projects. If you plan on organizing or working on an Open Source project, this is reference might be for you.

What's Good?

This pocket reference is a guide to basic CVS functions (branch, merge, update) but the real strength is in the description of server and client side control files and environment variables. Gregor describes how to setup email notification when someone commits a change to the repository, how to customize the repository to treat certain files as binary (versus text), and other useful things. He even goes as far as to describe how to hack the repository to change it's structure while the project is in motion, and how to hack the sandbox (the name for a developer's work space) to change any property such as which branch or repository the files will be committed to. Of course you don't really need this because developers never make mistakes, it's always CVS' fault &ltwink wink&gt. All in all, it's a great reference for all the bits and pieces of CVS that you're supposed to mess with (and a few your aren't) and anyone who is expected to administer a moderately complex installation should own it.

Gregor also gives pointers to some great add-on modules for CVS: CVSWeb for making your source tree web-browsable, and WinCVS to make CVS look SourceSafe-esque.

What's Bad?

The organization of this pocket reference could use a little help. I've seen reviews for other O'Reilly pocket references ask for an index, but that wouldn't be helpful here. It would be helpful if they added section tabs in the outside margins of the pages (a la their java nutshell series), so that you could quickly thumb to the section you're looking for. Also, organizing the content by server side and client side instead of simply adminstrator and user would help folks to find the specific information they are looking for.

My last gripe is a small, petty one. The books binding doesn't allow it lay flat when you set it down. Yes it's petty, but I hate losing my page when working. You need to keep a medium sized object with a decent bit of heft (e.g. a stapler) within arms' reach to hold it open.

So What's In It For Me?

This reference will not make you a CVS guru, but it will help you remember the command line options (if I had a nickel for every time I typed 'cvs --help tag' I would be frequently mistaken for a Kennedy), figure out what all those little files are without breaking your CVS installation, and most importantly keep you from having to consult the the cannonical documentation for simple things.

If you have inheirited a CVS installation or plan to set one up for the first time, spend the US$9.95/CN$14.95, do it right the first time and save yourself some time and reap all the bennies that CVS offers.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Installing CVS
3. Administrator Reference
4. User Reference
5. Relata

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Thanks to Crag Pfeifer for sending a review of James Gleick's Faster. If you've ever felt like life's moving faster then ever, this is worth reading. Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything author James Gleick pages 324 publisher Pantheon, 1999 rating 8/10 reviewer Craig Pfeifer (cpfeifer@acm.org,http://www.cpfeifer.org ISBN 0679408371 summary An observation of some of the causes, symptoms and results of living in an accelerated age.Rating: (8/10)

The Scenario Ever feel that the pace of life today is much faster than 10 or 20 years ago? You're not alone. James Gleick offers us 37 insightful observations of the causes, symptoms and results of living in an accelerated age. Interestingly enough, this book is the victim of the condition it describes: out of the 37 chapters, not one of them is more than 12 pages long (7.36 pages on average).

If you are looking for high theory about the effects of technology on society and culture, shoot for Marshall McLuhan. If you're wondering who flipped the switch 20 years ago to push western society into overdrive, read on.

What's Bad? Absolutely nothing. The anecdotes hit their mark each time. But don't expect a precise scientific examination of the psycho/sociological effects of technology. Faster is a well-grounded reflection on the current state of society with references to relevant articles and interviews. These reflections do tend to wander slightly off course. For example, you probably didn't expect to receive a history of the major advances in modern elevator technology, in the middle of an explanation of the origin of the 'close door' button. What's Good? Gleick's perspective has the clarity of someone looking in the window of the western world, and the intimacy of a fellow participant. Gleick has a gift for expressing technical subjects with such sensitivity, passion and understanding that the topics and people come alive on the page. This is evident in Gleick's other works, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman most notably. Also, a wonderful bibliography is provided for further reading.

Summary of Selected Chapters: Pacemaker "Humanity is now a species with one watch and this is it," explains Gleick on his trip to the National Directorate of Time at the Naval Observatory in northwest Washington, DC. In the first chapter, Gleick takes us on a visit to the global metronome that measures time in units so small they pass before you notice they existed. Here devices track the frequencies of atoms and engage 50 other devices around the world in the same conversation millions of times a day: what time is it? We know that a day is 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, but the length of a year changes. To account for the subtle wobble of the earth's axis and gradually slowing spin rate, they add a "leap" second whenever it is neccessary to keep everthing in synch. As time goes on, we will have to add this second more and more often.

The second half of this chapter is an overview of the 36 upcoming vignettes: Technology enables us to process more information than ever before, but it also allows us to produce more information than ever before. "500 channels" at the click of a button on a remote control, 30 different coffees at the corner coffee franchise. "What is true that we are awash in things, information, in news, in the old rubble and shiny new toys of our complex civilization, and -- strange, perhaps -- stuff means speed."

How Many Hours Do You Work? Juliet Schor calculated that the average American employee spends a full extra month working today compared with similar employees in the 1970's. Based on this, Gleick examines where all of this time went. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll records show a stedy decling in weekly hours over the past four decades. But the research is inconclusive: some studies show that we're working more than ever, others show that working hours actually have decreased steadily since the 1950's. This could be due to the fact that the traditional definition of "work time" is changing. Today more people "work from home," spend more time outside of the office thinking about work, spend more time commuting, and take less vacation time than 20 years ago. Why? Gleick posits that time has become a "negative status symbol." If you have "spare time", you must not be very important. How about lunch next week? Let me check my Palm Pilot/Franklin Planner/leather-bound officious looking object that projects to everyone around me that I'm a very busy person... This week is bad, how about in two weeks? "Overwork equals importance." says Gleick. Attention Multitaskers! This chapter (weighing in at a terse 5.5 pages) hits very close to home. One of the biggest contributors to the speed up of life in the western world: multitasking. The simultaneous execution of unrelated activities (flossing and catching up on email) makes us feel more efficient that we shave seconds off of our daily routine, and ensures that we never have to sit idle. New devices have encouraged this habit: cell phones, so we can have meaningful conversations wherever we are, the remote control so we can watch 3 programs all at once, and the ultimate multitasking tool, the computer. Gleick tells us about a Bloomberg employee who is engaged in a phone conversation to a colleague in New York, and simultaneously exchanging e-mail volleys with another colleague in Connecticut. Multitasking is another way we try to do more with our vanishing time, and make sure that every second of our attention is fully utilized. So What's In It For Me? The insights are painfully true, and hit home on multiple levels. The French novelist Stendahl said "a novel is a mirror walking down a road." And that is exactly what purpose this books serves; it is a reflection of the collective choices we have made as a society over the past 20 years, for better or worse. Faster doesn't pass judgement about whether the acceleration that has taken place over the past 20 years is a "good thing" or a "bad thing," it simply points them out and presents the context which allowed them to happen.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

1. Pacemaker
2. Life as Type A
3. The Door Close Button
4. Your Other Face
5. Time Goes Standard
6. The New Accelerators
7. Seeing in Slow Motion
8. In Real Time
9. Lost in Time
10. On Internet Time
11. Quick -- Your Opinion?
12. Decomposition takes time
13. On Your Mark, Get Set, Think
14. A Millisecond Here, a Milisecond There
15. 1,440 Minutes a Day
16. Sex and Paperwork
17. Modern Conveniences
18. Jog More, Read Less
19. Eat and Run
20. How Man Hours Do You Work?
21. 7:15 Tooke Shower
22. Attention! Multitaskers
23. Shot-Shot-Shot-Shot
24. Prest-o! Change-o!
25. MTV Zooms By
26. Allegro ma Non Troppo
27. Can You See it?
28. High-Pressure Minutes
29. Time and Motion
30. The Paradox of Efficiency
31. 365 Ways to Save Time
32. The Telephone Lottery
33. Time is Not Money
34. Short-Term Memory
35. The Law of Small Numbers
36. Bored
37. The End
38. Acknowledgements and Notes
39. Index

Thanks to Crag Pfeifer for sending a review of James Gleick's Faster. If you've ever felt like life's moving faster then ever, this is worth reading. Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything author James Gleick pages 324 publisher Pantheon, 1999 rating 8/10 reviewer Craig Pfeifer (cpfeifer@acm.org,http://www.cpfeifer.org ISBN 0679408371 summary An observation of some of the causes, symptoms and results of living in an accelerated age.Rating: (8/10)

The Scenario Ever feel that the pace of life today is much faster than 10 or 20 years ago? You're not alone. James Gleick offers us 37 insightful observations of the causes, symptoms and results of living in an accelerated age. Interestingly enough, this book is the victim of the condition it describes: out of the 37 chapters, not one of them is more than 12 pages long (7.36 pages on average).

If you are looking for high theory about the effects of technology on society and culture, shoot for Marshall McLuhan. If you're wondering who flipped the switch 20 years ago to push western society into overdrive, read on.

What's Bad? Absolutely nothing. The anecdotes hit their mark each time. But don't expect a precise scientific examination of the psycho/sociological effects of technology. Faster is a well-grounded reflection on the current state of society with references to relevant articles and interviews. These reflections do tend to wander slightly off course. For example, you probably didn't expect to receive a history of the major advances in modern elevator technology, in the middle of an explanation of the origin of the 'close door' button. What's Good? Gleick's perspective has the clarity of someone looking in the window of the western world, and the intimacy of a fellow participant. Gleick has a gift for expressing technical subjects with such sensitivity, passion and understanding that the topics and people come alive on the page. This is evident in Gleick's other works, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman most notably. Also, a wonderful bibliography is provided for further reading.

Summary of Selected Chapters: Pacemaker "Humanity is now a species with one watch and this is it," explains Gleick on his trip to the National Directorate of Time at the Naval Observatory in northwest Washington, DC. In the first chapter, Gleick takes us on a visit to the global metronome that measures time in units so small they pass before you notice they existed. Here devices track the frequencies of atoms and engage 50 other devices around the world in the same conversation millions of times a day: what time is it? We know that a day is 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, but the length of a year changes. To account for the subtle wobble of the earth's axis and gradually slowing spin rate, they add a "leap" second whenever it is neccessary to keep everthing in synch. As time goes on, we will have to add this second more and more often.

The second half of this chapter is an overview of the 36 upcoming vignettes: Technology enables us to process more information than ever before, but it also allows us to produce more information than ever before. "500 channels" at the click of a button on a remote control, 30 different coffees at the corner coffee franchise. "What is true that we are awash in things, information, in news, in the old rubble and shiny new toys of our complex civilization, and -- strange, perhaps -- stuff means speed."

How Many Hours Do You Work? Juliet Schor calculated that the average American employee spends a full extra month working today compared with similar employees in the 1970's. Based on this, Gleick examines where all of this time went. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll records show a stedy decling in weekly hours over the past four decades. But the research is inconclusive: some studies show that we're working more than ever, others show that working hours actually have decreased steadily since the 1950's. This could be due to the fact that the traditional definition of "work time" is changing. Today more people "work from home," spend more time outside of the office thinking about work, spend more time commuting, and take less vacation time than 20 years ago. Why? Gleick posits that time has become a "negative status symbol." If you have "spare time", you must not be very important. How about lunch next week? Let me check my Palm Pilot/Franklin Planner/leather-bound officious looking object that projects to everyone around me that I'm a very busy person... This week is bad, how about in two weeks? "Overwork equals importance." says Gleick. Attention Multitaskers! This chapter (weighing in at a terse 5.5 pages) hits very close to home. One of the biggest contributors to the speed up of life in the western world: multitasking. The simultaneous execution of unrelated activities (flossing and catching up on email) makes us feel more efficient that we shave seconds off of our daily routine, and ensures that we never have to sit idle. New devices have encouraged this habit: cell phones, so we can have meaningful conversations wherever we are, the remote control so we can watch 3 programs all at once, and the ultimate multitasking tool, the computer. Gleick tells us about a Bloomberg employee who is engaged in a phone conversation to a colleague in New York, and simultaneously exchanging e-mail volleys with another colleague in Connecticut. Multitasking is another way we try to do more with our vanishing time, and make sure that every second of our attention is fully utilized. So What's In It For Me? The insights are painfully true, and hit home on multiple levels. The French novelist Stendahl said "a novel is a mirror walking down a road." And that is exactly what purpose this books serves; it is a reflection of the collective choices we have made as a society over the past 20 years, for better or worse. Faster doesn't pass judgement about whether the acceleration that has taken place over the past 20 years is a "good thing" or a "bad thing," it simply points them out and presents the context which allowed them to happen.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

1. Pacemaker
2. Life as Type A
3. The Door Close Button
4. Your Other Face
5. Time Goes Standard
6. The New Accelerators
7. Seeing in Slow Motion
8. In Real Time
9. Lost in Time
10. On Internet Time
11. Quick -- Your Opinion?
12. Decomposition takes time
13. On Your Mark, Get Set, Think
14. A Millisecond Here, a Milisecond There
15. 1,440 Minutes a Day
16. Sex and Paperwork
17. Modern Conveniences
18. Jog More, Read Less
19. Eat and Run
20. How Man Hours Do You Work?
21. 7:15 Tooke Shower
22. Attention! Multitaskers
23. Shot-Shot-Shot-Shot
24. Prest-o! Change-o!
25. MTV Zooms By
26. Allegro ma Non Troppo
27. Can You See it?
28. High-Pressure Minutes
29. Time and Motion
30. The Paradox of Efficiency
31. 365 Ways to Save Time
32. The Telephone Lottery
33. Time is Not Money
34. Short-Term Memory
35. The Law of Small Numbers
36. Bored
37. The End
38. Acknowledgements and Notes
39. Index