In case there was any confusion: I do not, do not speak for my employer or anyone else. So there. [official disclaimer]
29/01/2012
“ G2 now has the ability to consider proportions when determining the best way to count things … evolving counting methods in real-time, without external influence (humans). There is a big difference between zero, one, two, three, etc. But at some point why take the effort to increment a counter from 4,090,223 to 4,090,224? Why is this important? Imagine how much attention it would take if you had to keep an exact count of everything you had ever seen. What a waste. In the interest of saving its energy for more important tasks, G2 starts using orders of magnitude to optimize its resources. Of course, G2 can be told to keep exact counts (despite scale); if an exact count is needed from time to time, G2 will count them, one-by-one. „
“ Tenzing is a query engine built on top of MapReduce for ad hoc analysis of Google data. Tenzing supports a mostly complete SQL implementation (with several extensions) combined with several key characteristics such as heterogeneity, high performance, scalability, reliability, metadata awareness, low latency, support for columnar storage and structured data, and easy extensibility. Tenzing is currently used internally at Google by 1000 employees and serves 10000 queries per day over 1.5 petabytes of compressed data. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Tenzing, and present benchmarks of typical analytical queries. „
“ Denormalzation, creating special purpose objects instead of distributed rows that must be joined, minimizes random IO by reducing the number of trips to the database. Caching can often get around the need for denormalization, but given the amount of timeline data and how much of it is cold, that is it will rarely be viewed, caching everything isn’t a good design. „
“ Like address mapping (and virtual memory) tunneling introduces another address space. However, there are two differences. First, the virtual address space doesn’t have to look anything like the physical. For example, it is possible to have the virtual address space be IPv6 and the physical address space be IPv4. Second, the full address mapping is stored in the packet so that there is no need to create per-flow state within the network to manage the mappings. „
“ IBM’s investment in OpenFlow reflects the market reality that the data center network is vital to business, driving new ways for users to control the functionality of networks to meet application requirements more simply, flexibly and intelligently,” said IBM Fellow and CTO of IBM System Networking Renato Recio. “OpenFlow is a disruptive networking technology that offers a new level of interoperability and user control and which can ultimately transform the very economics of data centers. NEC and IBM have demonstrated leadership as early adopters of OpenFlow, as well as being first to market with a complete, high performance solution that addresses customer needs for a smarter network. „
“ The AWS Storage Gateway is a service connecting an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage to provide seamless and secure integration between an organization’s on-premises IT environment and AWS’s storage infrastructure. The service enables you to securely upload data to the AWS cloud for cost effective backup and rapid disaster recovery. The AWS Storage Gateway supports industry-standard storage protocols that work with your existing applications. It provides low-latency performance by maintaining data on your on-premises storage hardware while asynchronously uploading this data to AWS, where it is encrypted and securely stored in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). „
Substitutes: Every purchase is a choice, and that means the buyer can choose to do nothing or buy something else instead. If there are easy and obvious substitutes to what you sell, that has to be built into your pricing. If you make something rare and unique, you still might not be able to charge a lot—because people can always choose to buy nothing. A 42 carat diamond, for example, might be hard to replace, but it’s not worth $100 million unless someone actually chooses to buy it.
Part of the work of design and marketing is to help people understand that there are no good substitutes for what you have to offer, meaning, of course, that you can happily charge more.
Story: The other half of the pricing formula is the story the price itself tells. A Prius at $40,000 or a Prius at $10,000 is the same car, but the price becomes a dominant part of the story. You can tell a story of value/cheapness/affordability, or a story of luxury. If you price your product or service near the median, you’re telling no story at all with the price, giving you the chance to tell a story about some other element of what you sell.
An insatiable thirst for food, power, energy, reassurance, clicks, funding or other raw material will eventually lead to failure. That’s because there’s never enough to satisfy someone or something that’s insatiable. The organization amps up because its need is unmet. It gets out of balance, changing what had previously worked to get more of what it craves. Sooner or later, a crash.
[…]
An insatiable appetite is a symptom: There’s a hole in the bucket. Something’s leaking out. When a system (or a person) continues to demand more and more but doesn’t produce in response, that’s because the resources aren’t being used properly, something is leaking.
[irq]: techie interrupted