Someone, somewhere, once quipped that hardware is out of date software. One can just about take that at face value; Wall Street quants run engines out of FPGA arrays to rapidly calculate banyan fibonacci mojo ratios, let alone the insights given to March Madness here in the United States coming, no doubt, from hijacked cloud computing resources.
Meanwhile, the "not all gigabytes are created equal" applies to this industry where unit costs of storage hardware drop precipitously (and mostly predictably) whilst total storage management costs increase....but at typically lower unit costs.
Then the state diagram of "where does the market find equilibrium" sloshes in another direction with emergent nano densities (we visited that topic in November or December 2007 in here) which sloshes further with announcements of IBM Racetrack topologies (updating previous announcements from neoBUNCH forces on the development of first gen nano which was expected to ship late this year) for chips with billions of atomistic nanowires and even higher densities.
It's interesting to note that Buckminster Fuller, for whom the nanostructures of carbon called "Buckyballs" due to their resemblance to his Geodesic Dome (we've got the one he built and lived in when he taught at the local University here around 37.5W and 89N) also coined the word "ephimeralization".
Do more and more with less and less until you're doing everything with nothing basically sums up that principle; however, what is added to that koan? Haiku? whatever is information.
Seems that, to me, information is what holds that airy ship aloft, information represented as software and rules. So, the perfect storm (strike that, cliché) the fuzzball of storage becomes a witches brew of rapidly increasing "consumer driven" data (oodles of video, oodles of endpoints). And boy howdy, don't them metas get busy?
Problems of managing versions (dedupe, mirrors backups, recoveries), placement of data to manage service levels (cache, multiple copies, P2P or P4P) and (jargon alert) semantic web wherein constructs of tags of tags and winding hyperlinks reflecting states and relationships, not just for catching the great Diet Coke and Mentos research but to get the skinny on what the latest method is to build something, cure something, learn something, share something, price something, buy something, sell something.....
Or use the stored images to catch a thief (or worse) or provide compliance (not just for the SEC; as part of researching video applications for education, a fine gentleman named Mike Fink advised that some hospitals and emergency rooms are adopting video as anticipatory evidence when conducting particularly parlous procedures. (Perspicacity!)
The technology and methods approach not only Kurtzweil's "singularity" of intelligent machines, but the holodeck (hold on, Chief!) appears in the form of a walk about simulation of the hours before Pompeii's demise. The user of the system can move through that simulation by walking. (Heard that one on late night radio just before a discussion of alien abduction but I'm all about eclectic.) This, plus Wii systems have seen rapid adoption in physical therapy....
Consumers all over the joint.
Explicitly: this does not (yet) forecast the immediate demise of spinning media or tape, but the pricing pressures are and will continue to approach "unit costs of zero", with improving wide area connectivity which, while not allowing (for now) ignoring special relativity, multiple managed instances of information and stateful knowledge will appear more and more as abstractions within a deeply interconnected network. Seems not unreasonable to expect some form of bid/ask mechanisms to appear for dynamic allocation of, particularly, entertainment or thematically oriented information linking secure objects, generating additional copies, cleaning out the old data, and optimizing data (and processing) placement based upon dynamic needs.
Given that software itself decays, through maintenance in particular as cited in COCOMO models, etc., the management of storage more becomes the art of software as an increment to the art of understanding the more physical mechanisms of striping, RAID, densities, and mirrors. And the dark force of entropy, lo, will drive more preemptive testing and quality assurance (said the winner of sundry service packs).
And with the flat out impossibility of exhaustively testing every combination of lines of instructions (NP completeness means never having to say you're done) more nuanced and practical methods have emerged to do statistical measures akin to Design Of Experiment methods; however, still better hang on to that last working version.... Given that pretty much every buzzword required in a tech oriented article has been used here (oops, yeah, and Social Networking too!) we might as well toss in quantum computing.
And part of the quantum and string theory models is the many universes theory, which comforts me because it suggests, if true, I might finally be one of the smartest guys in the room, albeit a Cub Reporter.
Happy Spring!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
What: availability. A how: Continuous Data Protection
Took a look at the published "inventory" of information on Google to give myself some orientation to the development timeline of what folks have been saying about availability (specifically"High Availability") and "Continuous Data Protection" to see when people started turning ideas into products.
The HA issues zipped right along from around 1985 or so (this is a survey, not a census, dear reader) with articulated specifications, formation of managed service offerings, products, etc. zipping right along to our current worlds.Continuous Data Protection, and by that, *that* particular search term shows up circa 1991 as prelim to disk mirroring products appearing later that decade.
The pre Sysplex days (and more people were working on the distributed problem than IBM) rested upon dark fiber, to me, reflecting the some people longing for dial tone at 40 pfennings a minute. SMDS, SONET offerings hadn't yet shown up, but the results were pretty convincing among some (rumored) blue sparks and flame that having trusted data in at least two places at once with a prayer (improvement) in recovering ones systems from the distributed data, well.... very good thing.
I'd argue, however, that the Continuous Data Protection model is the converged solution for how to answer the question of applications availability; the economics of (planned) redundancy favor that information distribution. Kindred concerns of custodial, compliance, and reliable connectivity, while significant, do invite innovations in putting the data objects. Market momentum for how to build higher availability into applications comes from known good libraries of "how to do this".
The DeDupe market space, as well, offers cost relief from the ability to recycle and realize more efficiencies in net storage capacities. The cautionary tale here comes from distributed computing, wherein some applications resemble Yorkie Terriers. Very very good at playing "this, all of this, is mine!" to the tune of "Big Boss Man" resulting with a conundrum of which manager manages the manager managers and a stack of dueling control systems oh heck lets put another piece of monitoring software in there that ought to hold 'em....
Which in turn brings back memories of notoriously brittle High Availability systems from the 90s, wherein the prudent management discipline was to establish that it was at last working and hanging up a sign that said "Was working fine when I left it. You broke it."
Some local use cases (involving moderate storage requirements and a thin network infrastructure) indicate that Continuous is the way to go (assuming that the data "containers or objects" allow for incremental updates). Saves network, and keeps one closer to the point in time when the fan will make a rude noise. Seriously looking at the peer to peer model has some wonderful attributes of survivability, and redundancy (boy, you can say that again) also with the potential for borrowing resources across networks.So in no way is it a motherhood issue as to how.
Barbie: Math is hard. She caught H E Double Hockeysticks for that but that's a fact.
Meanwhile, the what is of the motherhood issue (viz, a requirement to keep things going). But that how (one's chosen implementation). Hoo Wee! That how's a poser. But to me there's something in the thought that "this system swaps things about all of the time and keeps running with a provable audit trail of service levels" as more comforting than "it's in Lou's truck". One can always, as it were, burn a disk. Demonstrating recovery during system operation as a normal course of business.... cool.
The HA issues zipped right along from around 1985 or so (this is a survey, not a census, dear reader) with articulated specifications, formation of managed service offerings, products, etc. zipping right along to our current worlds.Continuous Data Protection, and by that, *that* particular search term shows up circa 1991 as prelim to disk mirroring products appearing later that decade.
The pre Sysplex days (and more people were working on the distributed problem than IBM) rested upon dark fiber, to me, reflecting the some people longing for dial tone at 40 pfennings a minute. SMDS, SONET offerings hadn't yet shown up, but the results were pretty convincing among some (rumored) blue sparks and flame that having trusted data in at least two places at once with a prayer (improvement) in recovering ones systems from the distributed data, well.... very good thing.
I'd argue, however, that the Continuous Data Protection model is the converged solution for how to answer the question of applications availability; the economics of (planned) redundancy favor that information distribution. Kindred concerns of custodial, compliance, and reliable connectivity, while significant, do invite innovations in putting the data objects. Market momentum for how to build higher availability into applications comes from known good libraries of "how to do this".
The DeDupe market space, as well, offers cost relief from the ability to recycle and realize more efficiencies in net storage capacities. The cautionary tale here comes from distributed computing, wherein some applications resemble Yorkie Terriers. Very very good at playing "this, all of this, is mine!" to the tune of "Big Boss Man" resulting with a conundrum of which manager manages the manager managers and a stack of dueling control systems oh heck lets put another piece of monitoring software in there that ought to hold 'em....
Which in turn brings back memories of notoriously brittle High Availability systems from the 90s, wherein the prudent management discipline was to establish that it was at last working and hanging up a sign that said "Was working fine when I left it. You broke it."
Some local use cases (involving moderate storage requirements and a thin network infrastructure) indicate that Continuous is the way to go (assuming that the data "containers or objects" allow for incremental updates). Saves network, and keeps one closer to the point in time when the fan will make a rude noise. Seriously looking at the peer to peer model has some wonderful attributes of survivability, and redundancy (boy, you can say that again) also with the potential for borrowing resources across networks.So in no way is it a motherhood issue as to how.
Barbie: Math is hard. She caught H E Double Hockeysticks for that but that's a fact.
Meanwhile, the what is of the motherhood issue (viz, a requirement to keep things going). But that how (one's chosen implementation). Hoo Wee! That how's a poser. But to me there's something in the thought that "this system swaps things about all of the time and keeps running with a provable audit trail of service levels" as more comforting than "it's in Lou's truck". One can always, as it were, burn a disk. Demonstrating recovery during system operation as a normal course of business.... cool.
"Say watt again. SAY WATT AGAIN"
Joules, old boy.
The conversations around the topic of "Green Computing" have focussed very much upon the management of heat loads in the metaphor of power. The technology itself heads toward a lower unit consumption of power production of heat due to smaller geometry as balanced against higher densities.
Once upon a time, R. Buckminster Fuller looked at the Spaceship Earth problems of electrical distribution and posited that the total capacities of power could on a global basis (more or less) be reduced (ceteris paribus) if the power grids of the whole world were deeply interconnected.
Sunny side of the planet, dark side of the planet, lighting from the sun, lighting from electricity, factories on, factories off. With some nit picking regarding transmission losses, etc. the proposition yields an interesting gedanken experiment vis a vis networks of computers and networks of storage. With some form of daily (whatever) variations, moving workloads, comprised of payloads of data and eventually application pieces, could let one reduce a given site's "peak capacity" through clever movement of processing.
Yes, latency. Yes, transmission capacities. Yes, etc.
But forms of this more agile distributive model come to us from, gasp, BitTorrent and other computing structures. For anyone who lives with real technology, the working model is that the solution will not be perfect (obsolete as it gets plugged in, in fact) but that the solution should be measurably "better".
We're living in a material world. You go girl.
Part of the Green computing ecosystem has been and will be the interaction of design for life cycles from a Cradle To Cradle point of view, increasing pressure on key materials in the computing industry (rare earths, gold), and improving recognition of the value of these materials in the cycle of creation, use, deconstruction, and re use. Fuller looked in particular at copper cycling through the system; the recycling of component materials in computing, however, has only recently become a design requirement. (LeRoy Budnik noted the "drive that will not die" in a recent post here.)
But the materials will be better "designed" to enable reuse in part because of "goodness" but principally because it makes sound organizational sense from the view of economics.
That the trend of ephemeralization (the less is more than more koan) cuts into this olio will be saved for another time.
When I have the erg.
With apologies.
The conversations around the topic of "Green Computing" have focussed very much upon the management of heat loads in the metaphor of power. The technology itself heads toward a lower unit consumption of power production of heat due to smaller geometry as balanced against higher densities.
Once upon a time, R. Buckminster Fuller looked at the Spaceship Earth problems of electrical distribution and posited that the total capacities of power could on a global basis (more or less) be reduced (ceteris paribus) if the power grids of the whole world were deeply interconnected.
Sunny side of the planet, dark side of the planet, lighting from the sun, lighting from electricity, factories on, factories off. With some nit picking regarding transmission losses, etc. the proposition yields an interesting gedanken experiment vis a vis networks of computers and networks of storage. With some form of daily (whatever) variations, moving workloads, comprised of payloads of data and eventually application pieces, could let one reduce a given site's "peak capacity" through clever movement of processing.
Yes, latency. Yes, transmission capacities. Yes, etc.
But forms of this more agile distributive model come to us from, gasp, BitTorrent and other computing structures. For anyone who lives with real technology, the working model is that the solution will not be perfect (obsolete as it gets plugged in, in fact) but that the solution should be measurably "better".
We're living in a material world. You go girl.
" Metals recirculate on a sum-total-of-all-metals-average every 22 1/2 years....
I was able to arrive at that figure of a 22 1/2-year metals recirculating cycle in 1936. I was working for Phelps Dodge Co., which had asked me to give them some prognostications about the uses of copper in the future of world industry."R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path
Part of the Green computing ecosystem has been and will be the interaction of design for life cycles from a Cradle To Cradle point of view, increasing pressure on key materials in the computing industry (rare earths, gold), and improving recognition of the value of these materials in the cycle of creation, use, deconstruction, and re use. Fuller looked in particular at copper cycling through the system; the recycling of component materials in computing, however, has only recently become a design requirement. (LeRoy Budnik noted the "drive that will not die" in a recent post here.)
But the materials will be better "designed" to enable reuse in part because of "goodness" but principally because it makes sound organizational sense from the view of economics.
That the trend of ephemeralization (the less is more than more koan) cuts into this olio will be saved for another time.
When I have the erg.
With apologies.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Why regional markets matter: Driving Distance and Times. Chicago's 35 minutes closer than Kansas City
| From Goreville, IL | Miles | Hours:Minutes | |
| Paducah, KY | 45 | 0:50:00 | |
| St. Louis, MO | 131 | 2:08:00 | |
| Evansville, IN | 144 | 2:21:00 | |
| Nashville, TN | 180 | 2:50:00 | |
| Springfield, IL | 201 | 3:20:00 | |
| Memphis, TN | 205 | 3:00:00 | |
| Louisville, KY | 232 | 3:33:00 | |
| Chicago, IL | 332 | 5:18:00 | |
| Kansas City, MO | 379 | 5:53:00 |
Hi gang, I'll pretty this up at some point but the message is clear: we have export markets which have little to do with upstate. Louisville's about 2 hours closer than Chicago. Nashville, TN is closer than Springfield, IL. Memphis is 2 hours closer than Chicago.
This matters, and I want "regional" to get into the vocabulary ASAP. Geography's a hard thing to grasp, and when any of us (me included!) say Illinois it means a lot of things that I, for one, don't always understand it to mean. The latitude down here is the same as Roanoake VA and San Francisco..... It matters. Thanks.
Yours for good eats,
Mike (Born in Memphis, raised in Grand Tower Illinois, boomerang and proud of it!)
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Network Based Language Learning: Crowdsource Model
If you can’t manage a trip abroad to learn a foreign language, the Internet and a broadband computer connection may do the job, too.
Commentary: Trend O'Rama!
One of the challenges of learning the foreign language becomes the available time to practice, and to a great extent learning the agility required for fluency.
Over time, both "real" video and improving audio will continue to enhance the "being there" experience (referred to as telepresence). For the shy, virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) will be used to shield identities (as well as promise French instruction from, say, Pepé Le Pew).
Commentary: Trend O'Rama!
One of the challenges of learning the foreign language becomes the available time to practice, and to a great extent learning the agility required for fluency.
"LiveMocha (livemocha.com), for example, is a free site where members can tackle 160 hours of beginning or intermediate lessons in French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi or English. There is no charge for tutoring; instead, members tutor one another, drawing on their expertise in their own native language."The "technology" has great potential (and testimonials from its users) and solves problems of time, location, and costs. Expect with time that these services will have certifications; institutions might well consider how to interoperate with these networked educational programs and leverage the resources offered.
Over time, both "real" video and improving audio will continue to enhance the "being there" experience (referred to as telepresence). For the shy, virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) will be used to shield identities (as well as promise French instruction from, say, Pepé Le Pew).
Subscribe to:
Comments
(
Atom
)