These are my notes from the keynote session MapReduce, BigTable, and Other Distributed System Abstractions for Handling Large Datasets by Jeff Dean.

The talk was about the three pillars of Google's data storage and processing platform; GFS, BigTable and MapReduce.

...

Google hires smart people and lets them work in small teams of 3 to 5 people. They can get away with teams being that small because they have the benefit of an infrastructure that takes care of all the hard problems so devs can focus on building interesting, innovative apps.

Are your hard problems taken care of?

If not, find three smart people.

Google Scalability Conference Trip Report

You've got until June 30th to download a free copy of the July issue, which sports a spiffy redesign and, over all, a more accessible look. (Same good old content, though.)

The July issue of Scientific American is FREE

This is Jeffrey Toobin's comment that I mentioned recently.

The Rehnquist Court had its share of divided rulings, of course—most notably, Bush v. Gore—but the new conservative ascendancy has prompted a striking reaction from the dissenting liberals, John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. It has been the custom at the Court for dissenters to explain their views individually or in small groups; but this group, led by Stevens, the senior member of the Court, has taken to uniting around a single opinion, as if to emphasize a collective view that the majority is taking the law in dangerous directions. In the case about the missed appeal deadline, the dissenting opinion, by the usually mild-mannered Souter (who was joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer), reflected true anguish: “It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way, and there is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch.”

He concludes, with perhaps a heavy hand:

At this moment, the liberals face not only jurisprudential but actuarial peril. Stevens is eighty-seven and Ginsburg seventy-four; Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are in their fifties.

The Court, no less than the Presidency, will be on the ballot next November, and a wise electorate will vote accordingly.

Five to Four

Cyberspace can be made safer from the chaos and crime that threaten to overwhelm it. But most recipes for security and order come at a very steep price: the loss of the Internet’s creative potency.

This is a rare HBR article that's freely available. But it's only free for a few more days -- until June 27. So get it now, save it, print it.

See also this interview with Zittrain:

In his June 2007 Harvard Business Review article, "Saving the Internet," Jonathan Zittrain describes a looming battle between the yin and yang -- the positive and negative forces -- that the Internet enables. Because of its simple, open design, the Internet is ideal for what Zittrain calls “generativity” -- the capacity of a system to welcome “unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” Generativity is what makes the Internet a productive wellspring of innovation; but it also makes the Net vulnerable to spam, fraud, porn, predation, and increasingly severe and numerous attacks on the network infrastructure itself.

Saving the Internet

There is much to love about TiVo, but there is also much to hate and even fear about the vision of technology that it represents.

See also this video:

Jonathan Zittrain proposes a theory about what lies around the corner for the Internet, how to avoid it, and how to study and affect the future of the internet using the distributed power of the network itself, using privacy as a signal example.

See also this paper:

The generative capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers has ignited growth and innovation in information technology and has facilitated new creative endeavors.

It has also given rise to regulatory and entrepreneurial backlashes.

A further backlash among consumers is developing in response to security threats that exploit the openness of the Internet and of PCs to third-party contribution. A shift in consumer priorities from generativity to stability will compel undesirable responses from regulators and markets and, if unaddressed, could prove decisive in closing today’s open computing environments.

This article explains why PC openness is as important as network openness, as well as why today’s open network might give rise to unduly closed endpoints. It argues that the Internet is better conceptualized as a generative grid that includes both PCs and networks rather than as an open network indifferent to the configuration of its endpoints.

Applying this framework, the article explores ways -- some of them bound to be unpopular among advocates of an open Internet represented by uncompromising end-to-end neutrality -- in which the Internet can be made to satisfy genuine and pressing security concerns while retaining the most important generative aspects of today’s networked technology.

From a bit in Wired earlier this year:

Q: You really think the sky could be falling?

JZ: Yes. Though by the time it falls, it may seem perfectly normal. It’s entirely possible that the past 25 years will seem like an extended version of the infatuation we once had with CB radio, when we thought that it was the great new power to the people.

See also my post about CNA and the Hundred Years' War.

The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It

The most important constraints are not imposed by the laws of physics.

They are the constraints that arise from the limitations of human individuals, of socioeconomic institutions, of human preferences, fears, and sentiments such as elation and outrage. Nowhere in our society does engineering confront these human constraints more seriously than in the functions that sustain our democracy—registering to vote, voting, tallying the vote, reporting exceptions and results, and accepting the certified outcome with confidence that it reflects the collective intent of eligible voters.

... Our hope is that these articles will contribute to the realization of an election and voting environment that satisfies the needs of voters and election officials. ... New rules and reliable, trustworthy voting systems might win over voters and become known as the solution that overcame the constraints and saved our democracy from itself.

Elections and the Future of E-Voting

John Schwartz can't spell DDOS, but there are some quotes here.

how bad would a cyberwar really be — especially when compared with the blood-and-guts genuine article? And is there really a chance it would happen at all?

Whatever the answer, governments are readying themselves for the Big One.

...

"I think cyberwarfare will be far more subtle ... it will be that we can’t trust information we’re looking at."

Consider the Hundred Years' War:

The Hundred Years' War was a time of military evolution. Weapons, tactics, army structure, and the societal meaning of war all changed, partly in response to the demands of the war, partly through advancement in technology, and partly through lessons that warfare taught.

When Computers Attack

James Bamford said one cynical interpretation of the move to declassify the family jewels could be that the agency was looking to make the operations for which it has most recently been criticized seem less nefarious by contrasting them with what went on in the old days.

CIA Chief Tries Preaching a Culture of More Openness

It is increasingly common for online communities to rely on members rather than editors to contribute and moderate content. To motivate members to perform these tasks, some sites display social comparisons, information designed to show members how they compare to others in the system.

In this study, we investigate the effect of email newsletters that tell members of an online community that their contributions are above, below, or about average.

We find that these comparisons focus members’ energy on the system features we highlight, but do not increase overall interest in the site. We also find that men and women perceive the comparisons very differently.

Social Comparisons to Motivate Contributions to an Online Community

Many small online communities would benefit from increased diversity or activity in their membership. Some communities run the risk of dying out due to lack of participation. Others struggle to achieve the critical mass necessary for diverse and engaging conversation. But what tools are available to these communities to increase participation? Our goal in this research was to spark contributions to the movielens.org discussion forum, where only 2% of the members write posts. We developed personalized invitations, messages designed to entice users to visit or contribute to the forum. In two field experiments, we ask (1) if personalized invitations increase activity in a discussion forum, (2) how the choice of algorithm for intelligently choosing content to emphasize in the invitation affects participation, and (3) how the suggestion made to the user affects their willingness to act. We find that invitations lead to increased participation, as measured by levels of reading and posting. More surprisingly, we find that invitations emphasizing the social nature of the discussion forum increase user activity, while invitations emphasizing other details of the discussion are less successful.

Talk Amongst Yourselves: Inviting Users To Participate In Online Conversations