Ed Bugnion was the first to emphasize this concept to me. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I like it: it’s simple, makes sense, and is actually being done. Rather than talking about Software Defined Networks as a battle between new ideas and old ideas, instead to think of it as a synthesis of […]
Ruminations, Insights & Confusions...
Small Business and the Cloud
A couple of months ago, I got asked at the last moment to contribute an essay to a booklet on Small Business and Technology, with mine to focus specifically on the Cloud. I’ve put the entire booklet up on our site for download. The first essay is one of the best quantitative descriptions of small business that […]
“Get Rich U” — Ken Auletta in the New Yorker on Stanford
In the current issue of the New Yorker, Ken Auletta has a wonderful piece on entrepreneurism and Stanford . I recommend it highly (fortunately for all of you who don’t subscribe to the New Yorker, this is on the public website).
Google and OpenFlow
Urs Holzle from Google gave the opening keynote at the ONF Summit last week, and talked about Google’s production use of their own OpenFlow enabled switches to run the WAN that interconnects their data centers (there is an entirely different WAN that provides user connectivity to Google). This is bound to cause a confusing discussion […]
ONF Summit Redux
The second Open Networking Foundation is coming up later this month at the Santa Clara Marriott (the first meeting blew out the obvious conference space at Stanford). I’m looking forward to seeing how things have evolved, although I seem to have been voted off the island for expressing some questions as to how all of […]
Intel and Apple
Intel just held their annual Analyst Summit, which is always a joy to attend because they are such an amazing execution business run by very smart people. A year ago, they were somewhat in denial about the shifts being driven by the iPhone, iPad and iCloud but they seem to have moved to the acceptance […]
Apple and Security
Engineers in Silicon Valley don’t like Microsoft, by and large (in spite of Dan’l Lewin’s hard work for years), for understandable cultural reasons. I don’t mind people having dislikes (I don’t like the Dallas Cowboys, as it turns out) except to the degree it colors their professional judgment. For years, I have had to listen […]
Sports and Big Data
I’ve been a sports analytics fan for a long time, especially when it came to Bill James’ efforts to create more meaningful baseball statistics. It turns out that MIT Sloan School holds a Sports Analytics Conference annually. For awhile I pondered attending it but in the end just watched the video highlight stream (most of […]
Things I Wish I Hadn’t Seen at RSA
Understanding the “threat landscape” is at the same time fascinating and terrifying. Two of the most interesting discussions at RSA had that quality. First, in the Cryptographer’s Panel (traditionally an annual review by the great old men of public key technology) a fresh new face was Stefan Savage from UCSD. He’s done some very creative […]
RSA & Wireless Security
A picture is worth 1,000 words. After I had drafted these snarky comments, I watched Bruce Schneier sneak into the Press room and plug into the hardwired network. I asked him what he was up to and he said he couldn’t make the show wireless work (and that he complained to RSA about it every […]
