[PRL] Re: [Fwd: CSAIL Event Calendar] TALK:7-14-04 Prof. Mor Harchol -Balter From CMU

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Jul 14, 2004, at 10:26 PM, Kenichi Asai wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I attended Mor's seminar.  Her talk was impressive.  She showed that
> SRPT (Shortest Remaining Processing Time) policy is superior than the
> simple PS (Processor Sharing, or the standard time sharing) in all
> cases regardless of the processing time of each job.  It appears that
> she obtained this conclusion after studying and experimenting almost
> all the conceivable cases.
>
> It was also interesting to hear that we can apply the lesson to our
> daily life.  When a professor has too many students, he should better
> finish a smaller task first rather than allotting equal amount of time
> to each student.  This would reduce the mean response time.  I feel
> this actually coincides with the experience.
>
> She talked most about static documents, but she says her current focus
> is on dynamic documents.  I thought that if you want to work in this
> area, she is the right person to contact.
>
> In the seminar, I did not see any other people from PL lab in
> Northeastern.  I think it is a good thing to know that having so many
> nice talks nearby is not the world standard.  Rather, it is very
> specific to Boston.  I would advise to take this advantage as much as
> possible while you are in Boston.

Good advice. But here is some co-advice: A good researcher will always
suffer from too many ideas, too many good opportunities to explore.
Learn to say "no" early and focus your energies on those ideas that
you care about.

-- Matthias