waaaaazzup! neah, just reading...

5:10PM PST - some politics again...

COLEMAN CONCERNED RECORDING INDUSTRY’S RUBBER-STAMP SUBPOENAS INADVERTENTLY TARGET UNWARY CONSUMERS
Norm Coleman (R-MN): "Law of unintended consequences" may be needlessly threatening American citizens. [via blogcritics a post by Michelle Dittrich]

5:03PM PST - i've thought that i've been doing something useful ;)...

Procrastinology or Procrastiscience. Does a study of procrastination considered as utilization time?
Procrastination 101, Structured Procrastination, Procrastometer via Antony J Hicks's weblog

2:30PM PST - little break to continue my reading...

Bitstream Vera (it's a font) will be released for use under a special open license agreement, giving advanced font capabilities to all free and open source software developers and users. Here is something that's wierd - I've that font installed sometime ago and I still have it. Why the text refers to the future release?

J2EE or not J2EE? Hamlet is a sucker...

"For vendors to legally claim that their software is J2EE compatible their products must undergo a series of tests. Sun makes money on J2EE by administering those compatibility tests and licensing the logo to vendors.

Sun has claimed that JBoss misled customers by using the J2EE brand in its marketing materials without having performed the tests. JBoss, which sells consulting services based on the freely available JBoss application server software, had complained that Sun's licensing price for the testing suites was too high. It also argued that the value of J2EE certification was on the wane."

AOL 9.0 plastic surgery, - a Desperation for Love in Autumn.

America Online ...will begin offering its next-generation online service as part of its effort to rescue itself from plummeting online advertising revenue and a corroding narrowband subscriber base.

My Source of Visual Intoxication. Indeed!...

Now Cisco have something to buy. Who is next? Belkin?

Networking-technology maker Netgear raised $98 million in an initial public offering Thursday, posting a strong debut and contributing to some signs of life in the beleaguered initial public offering (IPO) market.

Leap for Cheap?... We cannot do outsourcing, because it will make our software cheap... Atta Boy!

More U.S. jobs at American technology and services companies will flow to developing countries, as offshore outsourcing becomes an attractive financial option, according to Gartner.
A study released by the research firm on Tuesday states that one out of every 10 jobs at information technology companies and at companies that provide IT services will move to emerging markets. It also forecast that one out of every 20 jobs within internal IT departments will shift overseas by the end of 2004.

Geekery Geekery Geee... mpt (by Matthew Thomas) is an excellent blog to read (if you are in a geeky mood ;) My favorites today: Keyboard Shortcuts with a link to a hilarious article from The Onion: The Area Man Knows All The Shortcut Keys. and the post about *cruft* in permalinks That's my kinda reading today... It makes me wonder... and discover another plцgg(s).

now a little new theme for SPAM letters... (oops! correction) i meant - political news...

Get rich quick! It's a new business in United States of Iraq - a tipster.
AP News: Two of Saddam Hussein's daughters took refuge in Jordan on Thursday, while the Bush administration approved a $30 million payment to the tipster who led U.S. troops to the deposed Iraqi leader's two sons.

NNTP//RSS and Bayesian Blog Classification

does OSX make developers more innovative?

Clutter by Sprote Rsrch.

"Clutter is a small MacOS X application that lets you put music CDs on your desktop. You can drag them anywhere -- they're really windows. Line them up neatly or put them in piles, it's your choice. Each one looks like the real CD's cover, and double-clicking it tells iTunes to play that CD.
Think of Clutter as an alternate user interface to your music collection. When deciding what to play next, instead of searching through a huge alphabetical list, let your eye roam over the covers of your favorite CDs and those you've been listening to recently."

Here is another one (also for MacOS X)
Eastgate Tinderbox: the tool for notes
The best feature of Tinderbox is Tinderbox's agents automatically scan your notes, looking for patterns and building relationships. Agents help discover relationships and help make sure important things don't get lost. Agents are easy to make and easy to modify. They're flexible and powerful.

NYT: Is It About to Rain? Check the Typeface

The parametrized typeface that morphs, - the concept is simple and very appealing. people in general like to change style: in fashion, in interior, and now in typeface... beatuful work...

NYT article: Is It About to Rain? Check the Typeface
"Residents of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul may soon have a new way to assess quickly if their summer picnic is about to turn frosty. A digital typeface developed for a local graphic-design competition can change in response to such real-world factors as temperature fluctuations and traffic conditions. When a heat wave is imminent, motorists passing an electronic billboard might view an advertising message with rounded letters, while rectilinear text might signal an approaching cold front.

Twin, as the interactive typeface is called, was created by Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, co-founders of the Dutch design firm LettError. They were commissioned to develop Twin by the University of Minnesota Design Institute, which invited six designers to submit proposals last year for a civic typeface that would represent the urban area. Their idea was chosen, and the prototype was unveiled on Saturday at a typography convention. The prototype can be seen at the Design Institute's Web site (design.umn.edu)."

NYT: Techies by Necessity, Not by Choice

Techies by Necessity, Not by Choice
This article is a perfect illustration of a computer ugliness for the non-tech people...

Google Web Search Features

anil dash is asking rhetorical question!

is's funny that MSFT is actually blamed for something that has not been changed for a while. And because of this *non-change* something that used to be a feature suddenly... starts irritatating.
The point is valid - modern computer UI is ugly, especially for people who does not give a thing about computers in their life. That part of world population is simply use computers or avoid those *inventions* not because they are not smart-enough to comprehend it, but simply because the UI is butt ugly... and does not make any sense: clicking, dragging, tapping on pda... what's up with that...
I'll go even further, I think that most of UI *innovations* are actually disruptive to the function people trying to apply computer for...

Is RSS a perfect match for Personal Software Agents?

Byte Magazine, March 1995 issue. State of the Art: Agents of Change

Some blog-noise about the topic:
Amazon.com Syndicated Content
0xdecafbad: Finding the RSS in Amazon searches
Dan Gillmor: Amazon Does RSS, Officially
Wired.com search results in RSS format...
http://www.sellsbrothers.com/news/showTopic.aspx?ixTopic=703

some more sources
http://www.onfocus.com/comments.asp?id=3264
http://a.wholelottanothing.org/archives.blah/007190
http://www.dashes.com/anil/index.php?archives/006842.php#comments

i'm writing about it... 2b continued...

LASEC: Welcome to Advanced NT Password Cracker

For the cracking process, we need at least the LanManager HASH. With only this information, you'll get the password in capital letters.
If you add the NT HASH, the password will be cracked completely.
...
Note:This demo only cracks alphanumerical passwords. Please avoid submitting hashes of passwords that are not alphanumerical (fully made of letters and digits). They will stay up to 3 minutes on the cracker without any result.
...
Currently there are 100 requests in queue, yours will be treated in about 150 minute.

Here is the basic science behind it...

F5 Networks - Staffing Agencies

F5 Networks - Staffing Agencies

F5 Networks appreciates the assistance outside resources can provide, when necessary, to fill our personnel needs. We strive to maintain a collaborative effort with a quality, rather than quantity, group of agencies and recruiters.

At this time, we are not looking to add to our vendor base. We will review our needs and whether to bring in new partners once a year (in July). To be considered at that time, please forward information about your firm/yourself to:

F5 Networks
Recruiting Department
401 Elliott Avenue West
Seattle, WA 98119

Please, no phone calls.

Unsolicited resume submittals from contracted or non-contracted agencies are not subject to placement fees.

F5 Networks is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Interesting statement. I wonder what are reasons why job agencies so disqualified to contact employer by phone?

Microsoft Peer-to-Peer SDK and accompanying article. Will RIAA eventually sue MSFT for enabling p2p, and therefore supporting a content distribution method that violates copyright?

Apple Memorabillia

RedLightRunner - Apple Logo Collectibles

Job Market: Filtering the Noise.

DonXML is so right about the job market influenced by *inexperience*

"These inexperienced programmers are flooding the market with resumes, just trying to make something stick. These resumes are making it impossible to try to find the good quality programmers' resumes. To make matters worse, you can't even go thru a recruiting agency or a consulting firm, because any recruiter that was worth anything got out of that field when the jobs got scarce. So the recruiters aren't doing their jobs and just push the bad resumes along."

My experience with job market is very much confirms that: when the job market become *crowded* and very little employers were hiring, many *good* and professional recruiters change their carreers and new recruiters came to work into job agencies. And this new inexperienced crop of recruiters start to deal with a *swamp* of resumes from inexperienced job seekers.

I personally had have been interviewed for the position that was mirepresented to me by a recruiter who did not bother read beyond the skills summary and paid attention only to "keywords", - whatever they are .NET, J2EE, SQL... I'm still observing this trend and I'm still looking for a good permanent job, while doing some little (and cheap) contracts here and there.

The contract job is not a buster, due to the fact that outsourcing companies are very active in the industry. And they offer *better* (read cheaper) rates, hoping to get *the foot in the door* and than exploit the customer using it as information source. Observing few outsourcing projects I finally have consern that the final cost of project outsourcing will be comparable with projects performed locally. This is because the cheaper rate does not mean the same quality or comparable timeframe. Anyway, I've got off the subject about job market that is clogged by inexperience. So back to the point, networking is always been good: I've heard some statistics (I cannot validate it, but it seem very true) that 85% of jobs available at any moment on the market are filled by internal references, the 80% of the remaining (%15) are filled by extrenal referrals (friends, networking) and only the rest will be available to the people who are seeking employment on their own.

And Roy is giving a perfect advise to all job seekers publisize yourselves! nobody but you will do it better.

The dawn of APIs. GoggleIt again? nah, - I'll better AmazonIt!...

Or eBayIt! - sounds like a fun! APIs are poping up as (insert your favorite comparison).

Did you noticed? Here they are - Google API, Amazon API and eBay API. Are these "creatures" showed up in a desperation for the "paradigm shift" or the tech industry is again trying to hype itself? Is there an Application for such API? Does avearge homer-Joe or corporate-Joe need a program that uses those APIs?

Google API is providing search results and it is a commodity (best of breed, but still a commodity, and there is nothing to buy or sell at Google.com, besides advertisements). eBay API let you to sell and buy staff on eBay.com (if you have an account), Amazon API allows you to shop Amazon or its affiliates... The Browser is no longer good for Amazon or eBay... Why?! Because The Browser is a commodity... and it's spoiled by pop-up advertisments and security flaws... Or maybe we are really facing a new sofware industry, where the market is already divided between major landowners and it's time to make this industry a commodity as it happened with lumber, steel, phone, railroad, automotive, and airplane industries... there is not much left... oops!

Open standards, Open standards, bloody-blah - there are no such things. There is no closed standard as well, - it called proprietary. Sure, there are few levels of proprietary: trade secrets, patent protection, "use it, please" (a.k.a. open source) etc., and of course there are standards - created... between few commercial bodies. Standard is an agreement. Proprietary is a declaration. What is "open" in eBay, Google or Amazon's APIs - those are proprietary technologies that are available for "limited use" to the community of developers and independent enterpreneurs, and are using some standards: HTTP, XML, etc...

Why some independent enterprenheur or maybe just "hobbit-hacker" would consider using those API? Of course everybody are thinking about end-user... and therefore would like to offer new *convenient* features in the little pieces and huge chunks of the code called "easy to use" and "user-freindly" applications. And who are prospectors, - development community, call them "open source", "hackers", internet enterpreneurs... it's all the same.. And the winner is... (just joking :)

Anyways I felt tricked at this moment with all of the excitment... It looks like Amazon and eBay have no clear direction where to go, - they are become leaders, each in their category, and it's time to do something before market is totally saturated... so an "open" API with "limited use" is a perfect way to peek somebody's else brain for the new ideas... Ok, I've been bad, sorry for the rough tone, - it's just for today. But still, I cannot get what is so wonderful behind these APIs. The business part is *perfect*. The brands and networks must grow... thanks Internet. Why is the development community is so excited about these *proprietary* and legally protected API? It seem that sofware industry is exausted to innovate, so everyone is happy about *innovative* APIs. BTW, did anyone noticed that since XML and XML-RPC there was no big innovations in computer industry. SOAP, .NET? Nope! - these things are results of natural evolution those are not core innovations. P2P is still rudimentary and experimental despite the RIAA controvercy. What else?... Nothing!

The API does not make an innovation, furthermore API, in most cases, used to extract value of the stable market, and APIs indicate the fact that the innovation cycle is slowing down. Just remember the history of Windows API, that basically helped to establish the leadership of Microsofton the stable market of programming, after Intel created low-cost PC market. The API is a contract, and the *public API* is a contract between the market leader and independent developers, the only trouble that it's the benefits need to be dicovered by API prospectors at their own risk. There is definetely something for API proprietor, but there are only opportunities for the main innovative workforce in the industry. I have to say that, there is nothing bad about this situation - those are APIs beyound HTTP and XML, but same time those API are focused on creation of commodity market. It's hard to guess will APIs make the difference or not. What is clear, that these changes are result of fundamantal changes in software industry. There are still some opportunities to extract the value, but the path of innovation already gone under highway of API.

As of innovations, there are at least two promising directions in software studies: Code Generation and Adaptive User Interface... And those are not about API (yet), those directions are fundamental areas that can change the way we use computers. Adaptive User Interface can be really simple and helpful and the beginning of use and later can help users to be more productive *changing* along with changes in user's experience, - adopt according to an individual's *Learning Curve*. Code Generation is another essential part of the future technology. There is no satisfying model for data taxonomies, because of constantly changing nature of information. Code Generation that uses pattern discovery and creates modules of the computer code that process those patters is a very powerful concept.

There are sometimes controversial, but inevitable cons and pros in these innovations, like the possibility to change (even maybe eliminate) the still-dominant "craft" of sotfware development and therefore change the cost models in the information processing industry and therefore major potential changes in economy. But there are no "safe and comforatble forewer" environments, just embrace it, and it will make you different again...

I've also noticed that none of the APIs above are using Microsoft .NET for implementation? What's up with that? I need to study that more closely. later...

Update: Apparently eBay is using a Microsoft platform for their web applications. I'm not sure about .NET at the moment I need to get my hands dirty and find out...:)

Glossary.
-------------------------------------
"hobbit-hacker" is the harmless type of hacker who does his/her "things" just because he/she can't resist... without any other agenda... Ya betcha! - there are other types - "black" and "white" hackers... (for best results - RTFM or Read the !%#*&ng Lord of the Ring!). "hobiit-hacker" usually works at some hi-tech company or close to computers and at spare time to write/hack some little code "for myself"...

qlink

Digging for Googleholes - Google may be our new god, but it's not omnipotent. By Steven Johnson: "Digging for Googleholes
Google may be our new god, but it's not omnipotent."

Sony's CLIE PEG-UX50


I'm really impressed... That's very close to an excellent device... And it's a wallet size!

qlink

Technology at Harvard Law: RSS 2.0 Specification moves to Berkman

ADS on your web page: Internet age Racket or Slavery?

OK, here is the plan -

at first, start some site that host contentfor other people.
get money, buy some computes and bandwidth and go on...

now, get some affiliates and cross promotion going on...
sell that to advertisers: hey, i've got this site it's popular and everyone is going to get your ad... cool?

But the person who is hosting the page is naturally wants to GET RID of ADS. But hosting provider that ask to be paid for that!

OK, I agree to pay and have my site cleared from annoyance of the ADS, selected by hosting provider.

So the question is how much money are made off serving ADS on NON-COMMERCIAL (a.k.a. private) pages? It seem to me that the whole concept of ADS ON PERSONAL WEB PAGES is bogus and invented by hosting providers to extract money from customers. I have ads on this page and those are absolutely off the topic... and by the those ads are from google AdWords and placed inside an ugly frame...

200000 readers are not reading 200000 feeds

Few days ago Phil Wollf started talk [@ klog apart] about scalability of XML news distribution: "Scaling Echo: P2P and Cached Feeds".
"The syndicated blogosphere will reach 300 million feeds in 3 years."

intresting, I've been thinking abouth the same just yesterday without reading his post.

Update: I need to return to this issue later... I have some interesting thoughts to publish... later!

Generation-Blog: To Read or Not To Read?

Pack-rats, Book-worms, Lukers, Stalkers - How you would name Next-Gen of RSS Readers?

steveClarke.WebLog: "One of my single biggest frustrations in life is that there's not enough time on Earth to read everything I want to read, nor is there enough strength in my eyes or brain. Another problem is that I can't scan books - I'm terrified that if I skip over even a single paragraph I'll miss an important piece of info."

I had an interesting thought after reading that: Who is reading, and who is writing? Scaling of the Web caused "raise of" Google. Blog tools will eventually (if survive) simplify posting of the information on the Web. [I specifically refer "ze information" to avoid judgemental "labeling" - it is not "good" and "bad" (or "truth" vs "lie") information, - it is some form of media]. RSS reading apps are good for now, but they suffer same ol' problem of information storage - when there are "too much" stuff, one will do either of the following: clean it up by throwing "crap" away and make the rest "tidy" and "neat", start to ignore [it] rss reading as activity at all, or focus on fewer feeds and keep all the rest "just in case", avoiding organization (it also called pack-ratting). the last possibilty is to "keep" and "organize" all the stuff, which is known as book-worming...

The point is, - blog tools will scale content on the web further. Let's assume that people will continue to read it (a.k.a. "browse"). There are limited amount of time in a day... Therefore the readers need to be helped, with efficient reading toools...
2b continued...

Hey, what are you bloggin' for?

I do not want to start any speculations, but I googled the question and found that more than 20K sites are "blogging for... something".

It seem that a lot of people on the Net are obsessed with a search for the meaning of life... oops! i meant blog.

Gain 100lbs in 30 days or your Money Back!

This is just beautiful. It made me really happy - the promotional letter that disguises under funny message... Whoever come up with the idea, - it's just brilliant... BTW: I have to point out that this is not a SPAM. It is a promotional newsletter within special interest group... The message is simply elegant (of course if the context is known - SPAM e-mail on the Internet in 2000-2003...)

From: Simon...
To: blahblah-list@bloodyblah.com
Subject: Gain 100lbs in 30 days or your money back!

Practical probability:
Horseracing
Convergence and Destiny
Advice to a Day Trader

and finally...
WASHINGTON, March 13, 2000 -- Intel Corporation and Science Service tonight awarded the $100,000 first-place college scholarship for the Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS) to Viviana Risca, a 17-year-old high school senior at Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in Port Washington, N.Y. The Intel STS is America's oldest, and most prestigious, pre-college science scholarship competition, often considered the "Junior Nobel Prize." This year, Intel has increased award scholarships and equipment from $330,000 to $1.25 million.

Viviana, who entered a computer science project in molecular computing titled "DNA-based Steganography," is the third youngest woman in the last seven years to win the top prize. Viviana studied steganography, a data encryption technique that embeds secret messages within large amounts of seemingly innocent information. She encrypted the message, "JUNE6_INVASION: NORMANDY," inserted it in the gene sequence of a DNA-strand, and flanked it by two secret "primer" DNA sequences. Then she combined the molecule with many other similar molecules. The hidden message could be retrieved only by someone knowing the two secret primer sequences - the keys to the code. Because the pair of primers provides a trillion trillion options, she concludes that the code is essentially unbreakable. First in her class, Viviana is managing editor of the school's literary magazine, and has won numerous science and writing awards. A native of Romania and a published poet, she enjoys computer programming, painting and badminton, and hopes to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Arithmetic Riddle... What is the cost of a US Trooper. via [MSNBC]

I just love numbers: the co$t of a single trooper in Iraq is $ 26351 and 35 cents per month. Using reverse counting there are approximately 26000 troopers in Afganistan. Of course it is true only if the cost of a sigle trooper is the same in both locations. :)

Under questioning from Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Rumsfeld said he did not know how much the administration would propose to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the new budget year that begins Oct. 1.
He said under the $62.4 billion midyear spending bill, the United States expects to spend an average $3.9 billion a month on Iraq from January through September this year. An average of $700 million a month is being spent in Afghanistan.

PENTAGON STATISTICS
The Pentagon said Wednesday 1,044 American servicemen and women have been wounded in action or injured since the war in Iraq began March 20. Of that total, 382 have been wounded or injured since Bush declared major combat over, according to the Pentagon’s figures. Of the 212 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since the war began, 74 died after May 1, not including Thursday’s toll.
The Army’s 3rd Infantry Division is beginning a phased pullout of its 16,000 troops, with the entire unit expected back in the United States by September, Rumsfeld told the committee. The division, which played a central role in capturing Baghdad in April, is based at Fort Stewart, Ga.
Rumsfeld said there are now 148,000 American troops in Iraq. [source MSNBC]

[Meanwhile...]

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the private Arms Control Association, was one of several experts challenging the administration.
“We, along with an increasing number of others, believe that the administration made its case for going to war by misrepresenting intelligence findings as well as citing discredited intelligence information,” Kimball said Wednesday.
And on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he had a fear “we may find ourselves in the throes of guerrilla warfare for years.”
“We cannot leave Iraq,” Skelton said at a committee hearing with retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander in the war. “This must be a success.”

Bush, responding to concern about the rising casualty toll, said, “There’s no question we have a security issue in Iraq, and we’ve just got to deal with it person to person. We’re going to have to remain tough.”
More than 70 American soldiers have died since Bush declared major combat over May 1, 31 in hostile fire incidents. “It’s going take more than 90 to 100 days for people to recognize the great joys of freedom and the responsibilities that come with freedom,” he said. “It’s very important for us to stay the course, and we will stay the course.”

Franks testified, meanwhile, that besides the 19 countries with forces in Iraq, another 19 were preparing to send troops and 11 were discussing it.

.Net: 3 Years of the 'Vision' Thing

Rob Helms, research director for Directions on Microsoft, a research company that tracks Microsoft, in Kirkland, Wash., said the .Net initiative described a vision for how software and the Internet would evolve; a new platform for software development that supported the vision; and a new business—application hosting—that would drive future growth for the company.

"Three years later, most of the hopes behind the .Net initiative have not been realized," Helms said, adding that .Net has now almost vanished from Microsoft's vocabulary.

But others, including Microsoft executives, disagreed. "I think it is important to emphasize that .Net is our Web services strategy across the company and is fundamentally something we are absolutely committed to," said Neil Charney, director of Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group, in an interview recently.

However, GM's Scott issued a strong warning to Microsoft, Sun and the other players in the Web services industry, that enterprises will not tolerate the standards wars of the past. "We have no appetite for it," he said.

Looking forward, Charney said Microsoft's top priority with .Net over the next year involves continuing to integrate it within all its products, and, as that Web services stack got higher and higher in capabilities in terms of security, reliability and transactional capability, that would be infused in more of its products. "That's where we are focused currently and moving forward and enabling that vision that we described three years ago," Charney said.

Dissertation Could Be Security Threat (TechNews.com)
Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information

By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page A01

Sean Gorman's professor called his dissertation "tedious and unimportant." Gorman didn't talk about it when he went on dates because "it was so boring they'd start staring up at the ceiling." But since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gorman's work has become so compelling that companies want to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda operatives -- if they could get their hands on it -- would find a terrorist treasure map.

Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

BBC NEWS: Hi-tech babble ...must simplify its vocabulary

'The technology industry must simplify its vocabulary so that consumers around the world can better understand the benefits technology can bring to their lives,'
-- Patrick Moorhead, chairman of AMD's Global Consumer Advisory Board, which commissioned the study.

Applied research - search optimization for p2p networks

Search Optimization in the Distributed Networks.: by S.Osokin.

Abstract
Superpeers (also sometimes called ultrapeers) are generally considered to be a promising approach to content search improvement in the distributed networks. This study analyzes the performance of several superpeer architectures from the practical standpoint, comparing the different architectures and superpeer role assignment algorithms when the goal is to to maximize the search query reach in a peer-to-peer network. The study also investigates the performance of the 'Local Indices' mutual index caching architecture from the same standpoint, and suggests an optimal caching approach that tries to maximize the peer-to-peer search performance by distributing the superpeer functionality across all network nodes. This approach can significantly improve the query reach in comparison with the superpeer architectures, since it allows all network hosts to maximize their contribution to the overall network resource pool, potentially approaching the theoretical limits of the peer-to-peer network search performance. The study shows that the search performance of this hybrid approach is directly tied to the average host bandwidth and to its hardware (RAM and CPU) resources, as opposed to the normal superpeer case, when the search performance is tied to the bandwidth and resources of the 'best' network hosts. Thus the suggested algorithm does not require careful superpeer selection and does not present the high-profile superpeer targets to the attacker, which makes it less fragile than the conventional superpeer architectures.

...and Conclusion
Search performance is one of the most important characteristics of peer-to-peer networks. This study analyzes the performance of the peer-to-peer networks with a non-guaranteed search that represent the majority of the most popular peer-to-peer systems today. The study shows that for the superpeer-based architectures the best search performance can be achieved by using the massively redundant superpeer clusters, and that today's openly discussed peer-to-peer architectures just scratch the surface of the potential search performance of the peer-to-peer systems.

After that, the study analyzes the search performance of the mutual index caching architecture and shows that this architecture can achieve the best theoretically possible search performance for the non-guaranteed search networks, since it can fully utilize the available resources of all network hosts, whereas the superpeer architectures utilize only the resources available on the most powerful hosts. For the practically interesting case of the ad hoc network with a finite host session time the study suggests the optimal volume of the mutually cached data on the host. It also proposes the simple fully decentralized network bandwidth management algorithm for the hosts in this network, showing that with the network parameters typical for today's file-sharing systems this algorithm outperforms the massively redundant superpeer clusters, and that this performance gap will continue to widen as the average host session time will grow with the continued broadband deployment.

The study suggests that unlike the superpeer architectures, the mutual index caching approach effectively distributes the superpeer functionality over all network hosts, which makes it not only better-performing, but also easier to develop, deploy, manage and maintain. The absence of the explicitly assigned superpeer roles also eliminates the obvious performance bottlenecks and attack targets in such a fully decentralized peer-to-peer network.

Digital Gunfire - How 2B independent from RIAA

Digital Gunfire - Industrial Strength Aural Assault is a wonderful iradio station that promotes industrial music. The trick is simple - the music played by this iradio station is published by independent labels. one side of independency is being independent form RIAA. As a result we have great music. Thanks, Simon!

The noise remains the same... or does it? Let's google It...

Creating some noise in the infosphere:

At first some "useful links":
http://www.internetisshit.org
http://www.wibsite.com/wibblethorpe/
http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/

According to Google's patented PageRank - the Rank of the page depends on number of OTHER pages that contains links (A HREFs) to a page that is being Ranked. [BTW: I think that it is hilarious that Larry Page is an inventor of the PageRank] One of the basics of the theory of information is a concept of signal2noise ratio. I'm wandering, does anyone have some idea about (or even think of it), what is signal, and what is noise on the web...

Clay Shirky is writing about behavioral patterns of a social group. At the same moment RSS-Echo-NEcho-Funky-Shmanky conspiring controversy (a.k.a. collaboration) is going on. Fumes of "semantic web" are floating in the air, creating delusional perseption that information is meaningful in "some" scope. The problem remains the same - what is the scope?

Google's original sin (a.k.a. PageRank) or a Common Sense? Google is a commercial search engine - so it does not make sense to argue "Democratic" nature of the search result. It is not! - because it is commercial...

Interesting subject for thoughts would be attempt to comprehend, what is considered as noise in the information? Is it a spam e-mail - we're fighting it now!, or a junk snail-mail - we hate it, but it still exists, maybe pop-ups - it's a distraction, but the it's been built using features of the browser's software.

Why spam is spam? At first, because it offers something that we DO NOT NEED at the moment. Second, it can be a part of "pyramid" scam or a simply fraud. Now we have something like Google's AdWords that is placing ads using guesstimations based on search terms (I suppose it also uses some information about browser preferences, - I'm getting russian ads too when I select russian as prefereed user interface language). Good guess, but still ads are about STUFF I'M NOT INTRESTED. Pity :)

Perceptional (or perceptual) focus is something 2b considered maybe? [GoogleIt! "perceptional focus" and "perceptual focus"]. BTW: both terms are making sense. Understanding the ones perception usually require some statistical observations, - here we go! it has the name - "spyware". But everybody hates spyware it is more disruptive than pop-ups. OK we're not doing it. Is there any way that can expose ones perceptions without being annoying? It would be nice to stick "commercial" nose into somebody's private mailbox, wouldn't it? Its invasion of privacy. How about blogs! People like to express themself, they collect bookmarks, nowadays people use blogs to make friends and have some "social" life beyound circle of close friends and family. Not everybody blogs, but more and more people like it. It's easy to search blogs. Let's google blogs! It's already happened...

[2b continued...]

it's easy to forget the blog you've started some time ago...