This is an interesting paper about how the architecture Google has created to manage their massive search index database.

Also worth noting, pages on MemeStreams are the first results for the search term "google filesystem", on Google. Ironic? Not really, its actually "Google File System", or GFS.

Paper on Google's filesystem

] You also have an incredibly overzealous vocal minority
] that thinks it still owns the Internet, and the
] anarchists that think everything should be free. And then
] you have everybody else that uses the Internet every day
] and doesn't know what ICANN is. I think this is a broken
] model that we have talked to ICANN and the Department of
] Commerce about.

No shortage of things to be angry about in this interview.

"The vocal minority that still thinks it owns the internet". Last I checked, the point was that no one owned the Internet. The problem is that VeriSign thinks and acts like they own the Internet. This vocal minority they speak of are the people who run the Internet, and develop its standards.

CRN Interview: Stratton Sclavos, VeriSign

More comments from Decius:

] The giant recorder of Web addresses sure sparked a fire
] when it redirected site-not-found messages to its own
] search engine. It's a bum rap.

Businessweek doesn't get it. This guy oversimplifies the objections to the service, explains away his oversimiplification, and then claims that sitefinder should be allowed. This is what is known as a straw man arguement. Read the IAB's comments on the servie. Read verisign's technical response. Even Verisign hasn't managed to provide a coherent explanation of how services other then HTTP and SMTP are supposed to handle this change. If you think the internet is made up of SMTP, HTTP, Ping, and Traceroute then you don't understand the internet, and therefore you don't know what you're talking about.

BW Online | October 7, 2003 | Verisign Didn't Deserve This Spanking

] Should we blame the teenager? Sure, we can point the
] finger at him and say, 'Bad boy!' and slap him for it. Will that
] actually fix anything? No. The next geeky kid frustrated about not
] getting a date on Saturday night will come along and do the same thing
] without really understanding the consequences. So either we should make
] it a law that all geeks have dates -- I'd have supported such a law when I
] was a teenager -- or the blame is really on the companies who sell and
] install the systems that are quite that fragile."

Linus is in a position to say things directly that some of us cannot be trusted to say objectively.

[IP] Torvalds: geeky kids need dates [risks] Risks Digest 22.92

] A lovesick hacker brought chaos to America's busiest
] seaport after launching a computer attack on an internet
] chatroom user who had made anti-American comments,
] a court heard yesterday.

] "The defendant's girlfriend was an American called
] Jessica. The defendant was deeply in love with her - in
] fact somewhat obsessed with her. He named his computer
] after her and he dedicated parts of the attack script to
] her rather like the way some adolescents draw graffiti
] on walls with 'I love so-and-so'. This defendant managed
] to weave into the script a sentence about his girlfriend
] Jessica."

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Hacker attack left port in chaos

I don't think I could respond to this any better then Decius has:

] This is a significant test for the entire community
] because if the community can't find a way to introduce
] new services while reaching a resolution on technical
] matters that might arise, then the Internet
] infrastructure will never improve. It's tantamount to
] saying that the Internet world is flat and therefore
] there is no need for further exploration.

Look asshole, if you were interested in reaching resolution on the technical matters that might arise, you would have proposed your change to the community rather then making a unilateral decision. You would have pre-announced a date for the cutover so that people would be prepared to make any changes that they needed to make beforehand. The only people who are buying into your bullshit are people who own stock in your company and have a vested interest in beleiving in you. The rest of us are simply more and more sure that we are never going to do business with you for any reason. The rest of us aren't your shareholders. We're your customers. And you can rest assured that we are quite capable of continuing to deploy innovative services on the Internet without you.

Tell me why I should do business with a company that was not just forced to settle in a fraudulent marketing scheme, but also made significant, unannounced changes in a critical infrastructure service in violation of your contract without prior notification? Your business is about TRUST, and I'd be CRAZY to TRUST you after pulling a stunt like this!

Innovation and the Internet | Verisign Speaks to the technical community

] After Sept. 11, when all the newspapers were recording
] who, what, when, where -- there was a big question of
] why. Why did this happen? What's going to happen in the
] future? A lot of people were spending a lot of time
] looking for news, and I was one of them. All the servers
] were slow and it took a long time to find the content.
] Fundamentally, I wanted to build a tool that would
] automate this: Here's a new development, let's find all
] the articles that talk about this development.

OJR article: Interview with Google News Creator

Now professional journalists have to survive not only competition among themselves, but also from that with ordinary netizens. The only way to compete now is through the quality of their articles. That means that the age of competing through the name card "I am a New York Times reporter" has gone. When a New York Times reporter writes an article and an ordinary citizen -- whether he is a professor or a neighbor -- writes an article criticizing it splendidly, then the citizen becomes the winner.

Good interview with the creator of OhmyNews

Japan Media Review -- OhmyNews Makes Every Citizen a Reporter

] Seriously, though, I'm interested in figuring out how we
] can build a Net that is a lot less prone to viruses and
] spam, and not just by putting in filters and setting up
] caches to test things before they get into your computer.
] That doesn't really solve anything. We need an
] evolutionary step of some sort, or we need to look at the
] problem in a different way.
]
] I'm not convinced there's not something modest we can do
] that would make a big difference. You have to find a way
] to structure your systems in a safer way. Writing
] everything in Java [a programming language created by
] Sun] will help, because stuff written in antique
] programming languages like C [a widely used language
] created by Bell Labs in the early 1970s] is full of
] holes. Those languages weren't designed for writing
] distributed programs to be used over a network. Yet
] that's what Microsoft still uses. But even Java doesn't
] prevent people from making stupid mistakes.

Juicy intervew with Bill Joy

] VeriSign Inc., the firm that operates a key piece of the
] Internet's address system, said it would temporarily shut
] down a new service that makes money off the typos of Web
] users after the Internet's oversight body threatened to
] take legal action against the company.

Thats great!

However, at the time I blogged this, the gtld's were still sending me to sitefinder..

VeriSign Freezes Search Service (TechNews.com)