http://www.thingsthatscale.com Franco Travostino's blog on services at Internet scale Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:29:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I cannot think of a more deserving recipient of the ACM Turing award than Chuck Thacker. I was actually surprised that he hadn't been considered before for this high recognition. I've been tuned to his brilliant work since the days that I've studied the Alto at school. I chronicled my ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2010/03/two-thousand-tens-turing-to-thacker/ Like in a Petri dish, I keep observing how the iPhone single-handedly pulls the roadmap of a telco infrastructure. Both iPhone and AT&T wireless infrastructure are expanding at torrid pace and beyond the wildest imagination (to an outside observer like me at least). The reaction is amplified by Apple’s single-track ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2010/03/iphone-pulls-through-att/ Ever since I moved to the left coast, UC Berkeley has become the most frequent destination of my research outings (it used to be MIT when I lived in Boston). I’m a regular guest at their RADlab retreats. Yesterday, I joined the 1-day Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium (BEARS). The ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2010/02/berkeley-bears-symposium/ This week, slashdot called my attention to EFF’s effort to level set the community on web tracking --- how unique (and traceable) does my browser make me look when I visit a web site?  This new EFF site returns my overall score along with the break down of its factors ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2010/02/web-track-me-if-you-can/ The word generativity jumps at me while I’m reading Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, “The Future of the Internet – and How to Stop it”. Zittrain defines generativity as  a “system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through contributions from broad and varied audiences”. Internet, PC, wiki/wikipedia best exemplify generativity. It’s "generativity" ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2010/01/generativity/ In my monthly CACM issue, I found a delightful and somewhat unusual article on "Scratch". With Scratch, Mitch Resnick et al.  at the MIT Media Lab have created a programming environment with the lowest up front investment for children and teenagers. As you would expect in a platform that speaks ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2009/11/teach-programming/ With a landmark decision, AT&T will let me and some other 4+ million users initiate Skype calls from the iPhone without being limited to Wi-Fi hotspots. I expect that other carriers will follow suit. It's a tipping point for the mobile Internet. It's a boon for the smartphone segment. In turn, some ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2009/10/att-opens-2g3g-to-voip/ Although I'm not a big fan of video clips, there's something that I really like in this video produced by my PayPal colleagues. It conveys a powerful vision. It does so in terms that are easy to relate to. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgT7gGciQrg] Clearly, these folks were not blindsided and timely anticipated a connected world ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2009/09/paypal_vision/ The Internet is a late-bloom gift from the 60s --- the decade that gave us so many things in the way of technology innovations and social advances. It now feels as Kleinrock & C. were prescient of the 60s legacy and wanted to squeeze their pioneering proof of concept in, ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2009/09/internet-big-four-o/ I’m increasingly involved in security and thus managed to make a brief appearance at the Black Hat 2009 Briefings in Las Vegas. I enjoyed the program. Hereafter some of my personal take-away and favorite sound bites. Smartphones. There will be exploits: Target volumes and personal data becoming interesting, really interesting Hordes of 1st-time programmers ... http://www.thingsthatscale.com/2009/08/black-hat-2009/