Since it was cool out, we had the windows open yesterday and last night.
I woke up about 6AM to the smell of bacon wafting up from the vents of the diner 2 floor below.
How pleasant to wake to the smell of bacon… and how horrible to know that I’m not waking up to the smell of bacon being made for me.
1 comment July 2nd, 2007
It’s been quite a while since I heard anything about Google and their dark fiber ambitions. I just got home from an Akamai user forum, and happened to see a link in IRC to one of Joel Spolsky’s posts. From there, I followed a few links, and eventually ended up here.
That links to an article from November of 2005 in which Cringely talks about Google’s ability, with datacenter-in-a-shipping-container, to be a bit of a Walmart on steroids. That, of course, brought to mind both archive.org’s Petabox and Sun’s Project Blackbox. Actually, the Petabox philosophy (aside from the shipping-container form factor) even seems to jive with Google’s storage philosophy.
This is more than another Akamai or even an Akamai on steroids. This is a dynamically-driven, intelligent, thermonuclear Akamai with a dedicated back-channel and application-specific hardware.
Man, this has to get you thinking. I know that the number of Google’s data centers has gone up dramatically… are they just dumping these shipping containers everywhere and wiring them up? When does it end? Is there a need for it to end? Was Google polite with China because they have 600 of these things ready to deploy inside the Great FireWall? Does Google scale up the Google Apps that compete with Office by dropping one in an office park? Or even crazier, in a parking space leased to them by Wal-Mart?
Add comment May 8th, 2007
Well, I’ve certainly been one of those who has noticed the way that Manhattan sidewalks often appear sprinkled with glitter. Sometimes sparkling like a thousand tiny flashbulbs, I’ve been known to think of it as my paparazzi.
Turns out that it’s due to the Manhattan schist, the native bedrock which has flecks of mica in it, which has been mixed into the cement that makes up many of the island’s sidewalks.
Add comment April 15th, 2007
On June 9th, Amy and I will be walking in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Out of the Darkness Overnight walk. It’s a 20-mile overnight walk to raise funds for suicide prevention.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever walked nearly that far, but if I can move my 19+ stone (sounds so much better in British informal units) 20 miles on foot power, perhaps you might be able to make a tax deductible donation in support?
Add comment March 29th, 2007
It would appear, from my recent online banking visits, that there must be some mandated April 1st deadline for implementing “security questions” — additional security methods to verify identity by asking the user for his favorite song or movie, mother’s birthplace, or similar.
Some of the questions seemed good, most are so vague or unfitting to my life to be useless.
“What was your childhood home’s street number?”
Which childhood home? The one to which I was brought home from the hospital? The one I lived in from 4-8 years of age? The one I started and finished high school in?
My favorite movie? What if I have such ambivalence, even for good movies, that I wouldn’t have an answer for that question?
I assume that this is for some kind of regulatory (governmental or industry-specific) compliance… but is it really making my data more secure for EVEN MORE data being compiled on me somewhere?
If I answer the same question for multiple sites, with the same answer, isn’t that — in itself — a security problem?
I know that the initial reaction from most would be that “at least they’re doing something,” but I don’t really buy into that. Seems to me like a false sense of security, which can, in the right circumstances, be far worse than known-flimsy security.
Add comment March 27th, 2007
