We present an analytically tractable model of Internet evolution at the level of Autonomous Systems (ASs). We call our model the Multiclass Attraction (MA) model. All of its parameters are measurable based on available Internet topology data. Given the estimated values of these parameters, our analytic results accurately predict a definitive set of statistics characterizing the AS topology structure. These statistics are not parts of model formulation. The MA model thus closes the measure-model-validate-predict loop. We develop our model in stages adding increasing detail characterizing dynamic interaction between Internet ecosystem players. We validate each stage using recent results in Internet topology data analysis. We describe the emergence of ASs, peering links formation, bankruptcies and multihoming. Our model also explains how certain circumstances naturally lead to consolidation of providers over time, unless some exogenous force interferes.
As We May Think | Vannevar Bush | July 1945 | The Atlantic
Topic: Technology
10:07 pm EST, Nov 5, 2007
A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
... All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.
There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.
Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.
This text sets out a series of approaches to the analysis and synthesis of the World Wide Web, and other web-like information structures. A comprehensive set of research questions is outlined, together with a sub-disciplinary breakdown, emphasising the multi-faceted nature of the Web, and the multi-disciplinary nature of its study and development. These questions and approaches together set out an agenda for Web Science, the science of decentralised information systems. Web Science is required both as a way to understand the Web, and as a way to focus its development on key communicational and representational requirements. The text surveys central engineering issues, such as the development of the Semantic Web, Web services and P2P. Analytic approaches to discover the Web’s topology, or its graph-like structures, are examined. Finally, the Web as a technology is essentially socially embedded; therefore various issues and requirements for Web use and governance are also reviewed.
While I sat at my desk one day, two of my classmates figured out how to overwrite the entire screen, which seemed kinda naughty at the time. They giggled, did it again, then giggled some more. From curious children, hackers were born.
There is a contradiction in the very phrase "software company." The two words are pulling in opposite directions. Any good programmer in a large organization is going to be at odds with it, because organizations are designed to prevent what programmers strive for.
Your code is your understanding of the problem you're exploring. So it's only when you have your code in your head that you really understand the problem.
It's not easy to get a program into your head. If you leave a project for a few months, it can take days to really understand it again when you return to it. Even when you're actively working on a program it can take half an hour to load into your head when you start work each day. And that's in the best case. Ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never enter this mode. Or to put it more dramatically, ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never really understand the problems they're solving.
Now that we’ve arrived at the 10th anniversary of the first appearance of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” it seems like an opportune moment to take a closer look at both the benefits and the limitations of peer production as a means of business innovation. What’s the bazaar good for, and what isn’t it good for?
Here's a nugget:
It seems fair to say that although the bazaar should be defined by diversity, the cathedral should be defined by talent. When you move from the bazaar to the cathedral, it’s best to leave your democratic ideals behind.
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
Topic: Technology
2:26 pm EDT, Jun 2, 2007
The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences.
If you like this book, you might also be interested in Why to Not Not Start a Startup, a recent essay by the author of the book.
The big mystery to me is: why don't more people start startups? If nearly everyone who does it prefers it to a regular job, and a significant percentage get rich, why doesn't everyone want to do this?
There have been discussions about Y Combinator here in the (recent) past.
