There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
Microsoft Sidles Up to Big Content
Topic: Business
5:31 am EST, Mar 6, 2007
Bill Gates may not be CEO any more, but Microsoft still thinks Content Is King.
"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the back of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising and initial public offerings."
"Google is saying to you and other copyright owners: ‘Trust us, you’re protected. We’ll keep the digital copies secure. We’ll only show snippets. We won’t harm you, we’ll promote you’."
"But ... anyone who visits YouTube ... will immediately recognise that it follows a similar cavalier approach to copyright."
Microsoft is trying to differentiate itself from Google by portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders than Google.
The lead single from Freeland's debut album is ... We Want Your Soul which has been getting massive plays in the clubs.
The most surprising remix out of the bunch, Ed Rush & Optical take the original and speed it up past the 160 bpm mark for a drum'n'bass remix. It sounds like a crossover between rock and drum'n'bass, something which I haven't heard since Roni Size/Reprazent's last album ...
You can hear and watch the original for comparison.
Systematic Topology Analysis and Generation Using Degree Correlations
Topic: Technology
4:29 pm EST, Mar 3, 2007
Researchers have proposed a variety of metrics to measure important graph properties, for instance, in social, biological, and computer networks. Values for a particular graph metric may capture a graph's resilience to failure or its routing efficiency. Knowledge of appropriate metric values may influence the engineering of future topologies, repair strategies in the face of failure, and understanding of fundamental properties of existing networks. Unfortunately, there are typically no algorithms to generate graphs matching one or more proposed metrics and there is little understanding of the relationships among individual metrics or their applicability to different settings.
We present a new, systematic approach for analyzing network topologies.
We hope that a systematic method to analyze and synthesize topologies offers a significant improvement to the set of tools available to network topology and protocol researchers.
RFC 3439 Some Internet Architectural Guidelines and Philosophy
Topic: Technology
4:18 pm EST, Mar 3, 2007
The Amplification Principle states that there are non-linearities which occur at large scale which do not occur at small to medium scale.
COROLLARY: In many large networks, even small things can and do cause huge events. In system-theoretic terms, in large systems such as these, even small perturbations on the input to a process can destabilize the system's output.
An important example of the Amplification Principle is non-linear resonant amplification, which is a powerful process that can transform dynamic systems, such as large networks, in surprising ways with seemingly small fluctuations. These small fluctuations may slowly accumulate, and if they are synchronized with other cycles, may produce major changes. Resonant phenomena are examples of non-linear behavior where small fluctuations may be amplified and have influences far exceeding their initial sizes. The natural world is filled with examples of resonant behavior that can produce system- wide changes ...
In the Internet domain, it has been shown that increased inter-connectivity results in more complex and often slower BGP routing convergence.
The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.
SIGCOMM 2007 Workshop 'IPv6 and the Future of the Internet'
Topic: Technology
10:43 pm EST, Feb 27, 2007
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
# Advantages and challenges the very large IPv6 address space bring to the Internet routing system # Scalable and robust solutions to multi-homing and traffic engineering # Host and Network Mobility # Multicast and Anycast protocols # Worms, DoS, and other security threats in IPv6 networks and possible enhancements to address these challenges. # IPv6's Applicability to sensor networks, low-power personal area networks, and other types of challenged networks
# A critical assessment of IPv6's viability as a global communication infrastructure for the future or of its fundamental limitations, if any.
"We wanted the best, but it turned out as always."
-- Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russian prime minister, 1992-1998; now, a billionaire oligarch
Found in a recent review of "House of Meetings", by Martin Amis:
Chernomyrdin was referring to a disastrous episode in the Kremlin's attempts at economic reform that he oversaw in the early 1990s, and his statement has become a popular sardonic proverb among Russians.
* What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. * How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice? * What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful? * Who cares? If you're successful, what difference will it make? * What are the risks and the payoffs? * How much will it cost? How long will it take? * What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?
