El Cártel

Not the best movie. Storyline is shallow, and to say the least, actors fail to impress, nevertheless I liked the way they tied every little story in the movie to some powerful principles.

They appear in reverse order in the movie. 12th principle is my favourite.

Principles:
1. You can’t succeed unless you try.
2. Always have an exit strategy.
3. When you’ve got the right strategy, execute.
4. There’s no such thing as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
5. When you discover you’ve executed the wrong strategy, stop.
6. Follow your passion.
7. Don’t ignore your problems.
8. The most valuable asset in any venture is thought.
9. Success begins by surrounding yourself with quality people.
10. Opportunity is a liability, not an asset.
11. Never ignore the signs.
12. Success comes by doing many things right, over a very long time.
13. Success is never guaranteed.

Wolfram Alfa

It is new type of search engine that does mathematical computation based on the input and based on data available on the Internet, and “tries” to generate useful information to display. I have been waiting for the launch of Wolfram Alfa for a long time now, today is the May! Alas, the website is still not working, and doesn’t mention what date on May they will launch.

You can see the Wolfram Alfa in action here. Although video gives some idea of how it works, the poor quality of the video fails to show the details of the search results. The video includes a number of queries, including calculating the GDP of France which results in a graph of the GDP over time, and the number in Internet users in Europe, generating a relevant histogram, but again it is hard to see from the video.

Some say it is a strong competitor for Google, I disagree they are different tools. I rather think it is a potential rival for any type of free online encyclopaedia websites. I expect this engine to evolve by time and use (I assume, the more queries the “cleverer” it gets) and eventually save us tons of browsing time in search of relevant information.