An interesting alternate future near-history, in the form of a Flash animation, explores the possibilities of an 'arms-race' between:
1) Microsoft (and Friendster)
and
2) Google (and Blogger and Amazon)
Talks a little on the ideas of automatic recommendation, and multiple preferential filters (e.g. preferred editors, in this context)
Friday, November 19, 2004
Sunday, November 14, 2004
A new theory of war
The New York Time has an article on the Pentagon's network upgrade.
In it, it is claimed that "military intelligence - including secret satellite surveillance covering most of the earth - will be posted on the war net and shared with troops".
Good to know that the well-trained members of the US military will be able to take advantage of this promising new thing called the Intar-web.
[An interesting paper on friendly-fire inspired by Gulf War 1]
How will they manage the changing tension between:
1) The chain-of-command
2) The chain-of-reporting
In it, it is claimed that "military intelligence - including secret satellite surveillance covering most of the earth - will be posted on the war net and shared with troops".
Good to know that the well-trained members of the US military will be able to take advantage of this promising new thing called the Intar-web.
[An interesting paper on friendly-fire inspired by Gulf War 1]
How will they manage the changing tension between:
1) The chain-of-command
- Alternate instructions from the ERDC's TeleEngineering Operations Center
- Strategic vs tactical views might impel soldiers to act in their immediate best interest (staying alive?) instead of acting to achieve strategically or tactically important objectives
2) The chain-of-reporting
- Secrecy-management problems suggested by the Times article
- Leakage of operational details via request analysis (cp Google's potential for log scanning)
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Technical competence
"Universities can cobble together a cluster of off-the-shelf PCs in a couple of weeks and create a relatively cheap cluster that takes at least the 20 spot on the Top500 fastest machines list" trumpets El Reg.
Keep in mind that the NICs and switch ports for networks other than Ethernet tend to be quite expensive (with a better price/performance ratio than 10GE at the moment).
Let's review:
(source material)
Rank Interconnect
1. Custom IBM
2. Custom SGI (NUMAlink) and InfiniBand
3. Custom NEC
4. Myrinet
5. Quadrics
6. Quadrics
7. InfiniBand
8. Custom IBM
9. Custom IBM (Federation)
10. Myrinet
11. Custom IBM (Federation)
12. Custom IBM (Federation)
13. Myrinet
14. InfiniBand, Myrinet, Custom NEC
15. Custom IBM
16. Quadrics
17. Myrinet
18. Myrinet
19. Quadrics
20. Custom IBM (SP2)
None of the top 20 (with the exception of the Riken Super Combined Cluster at #14) use Gigabit Ethernet as an interconnect.
So "relatively cheap" is cheap compared to what?
Keep in mind that the NICs and switch ports for networks other than Ethernet tend to be quite expensive (with a better price/performance ratio than 10GE at the moment).
Let's review:
(source material)
Rank Interconnect
1. Custom IBM
2. Custom SGI (NUMAlink) and InfiniBand
3. Custom NEC
4. Myrinet
5. Quadrics
6. Quadrics
7. InfiniBand
8. Custom IBM
9. Custom IBM (Federation)
10. Myrinet
11. Custom IBM (Federation)
12. Custom IBM (Federation)
13. Myrinet
14. InfiniBand, Myrinet, Custom NEC
15. Custom IBM
16. Quadrics
17. Myrinet
18. Myrinet
19. Quadrics
20. Custom IBM (SP2)
None of the top 20 (with the exception of the Riken Super Combined Cluster at #14) use Gigabit Ethernet as an interconnect.
So "relatively cheap" is cheap compared to what?
Irony is everything
ABC and several (up to 65) affiliate stations recently self-censored, by choosing not to show Saving Private Ryan in order to avoid possible FCC indecency rulings.
I was all set to write an article about the Parents Television Council and their statement of "context is everything".
On the surface, this seems reasonable, but consider, for example, their attempt to change the context itself. I'm sure that a definition that can be re-moulded on demand by massive mobilization spurred by the PTC is exactly what they would prefer.
To cut a short article long, Lisa de Moraes has beaten me to the punch.
I was all set to write an article about the Parents Television Council and their statement of "context is everything".
On the surface, this seems reasonable, but consider, for example, their attempt to change the context itself. I'm sure that a definition that can be re-moulded on demand by massive mobilization spurred by the PTC is exactly what they would prefer.
To cut a short article long, Lisa de Moraes has beaten me to the punch.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Selection is censorship
The Register rabbits on (again) about the dangers of news.google.com using PR as a source of news.
The problem is not whether PR has news value. PR is just pre-packaged and ready for aggregation (a.k.a. 'publishing') by a news intermediary1. Information wants to be [re-]published.
The problem is really whose PR do you re-publish?
If you publish PR from company (or party) of size x, why not publish PR from those of size >x?
Lettice writes "you need to interface the automated system and the human judgment" and that "censorship has to be a basic component of the selection process".
Now this is just plain wrong. Why censor?
This is Google. They of the 10,000 server back-end (appropriately enough the story also talks about PR flacks having difficulty censoring company geeks). They of the mysterious (yet published) PageRank algorithm. A few simple (ahem) modifications and you could have your own biased outlook on the web.
This should be an exercise in hermeneutics, rather than hermits.
- Al
1 Why not dispense with the taxonomy of publisher, PR agency, news agency, broadcaster, aggregator, blog, et al? Any secondary source is an intermediary between a primary source and the end consumer (i.e. you! And you communicate with your friends, so you are an intermediary too, from their point of view). Envision endless chains of re-publication, eventually arriving at a consumer, only to be bounced further along to other consumers.
The primary source then becomes a special case of intermediary, with no input from other sources. All other intermediaries accept and re-distribute after applying idiosyncratic changes to the data.
The problem is not whether PR has news value. PR is just pre-packaged and ready for aggregation (a.k.a. 'publishing') by a news intermediary1. Information wants to be [re-]published.
The problem is really whose PR do you re-publish?
If you publish PR from company (or party) of size x, why not publish PR from those of size >x?
Lettice writes "you need to interface the automated system and the human judgment" and that "censorship has to be a basic component of the selection process".
Now this is just plain wrong. Why censor?
This is Google. They of the 10,000 server back-end (appropriately enough the story also talks about PR flacks having difficulty censoring company geeks). They of the mysterious (yet published) PageRank algorithm. A few simple (ahem) modifications and you could have your own biased outlook on the web.
This should be an exercise in hermeneutics, rather than hermits.
- Al
1 Why not dispense with the taxonomy of publisher, PR agency, news agency, broadcaster, aggregator, blog, et al? Any secondary source is an intermediary between a primary source and the end consumer (i.e. you! And you communicate with your friends, so you are an intermediary too, from their point of view). Envision endless chains of re-publication, eventually arriving at a consumer, only to be bounced further along to other consumers.
The primary source then becomes a special case of intermediary, with no input from other sources. All other intermediaries accept and re-distribute after applying idiosyncratic changes to the data.
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