Archive forFebruary, 2009
Feb
27
What’s your (Dunbar) Number?
February 27, 2009 | 17 Comments
The Network Effect, or Metcalfe’s Law, states that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of its users. Here’ Bob Metcalfe’s original slide illustrating that fact: Whether or not it is correct, Metcalfe’s Law illustrates the value of the Network Effect, that the more people, devices and IP-aware [...]
Feb
18
Exa-Flood or Drought?
February 18, 2009 | Comments Off
An Exabyte is a lot of data. (An exabyte is 1018 bytes, or one billion gigabytes.) According to MINTS, five to eight exabytes flow through the internet each month. All this data has led to predictions that the coming deluge of data from all the new video sites and other traffic congestion would flood the Internet. [...]
Feb
13
Une semaine d’enfer
February 13, 2009 | Comments Off
Things weren’t going well before Tuesday. We continue to battle a serious defect in the code of our student email system – and with 51,000 active accounts this is no easy thing to debug. For the last four weeks, Carla Granberg has been working miracles on this issue and there may be light at the [...]
Feb
5
Here come the Robots or Viva La Roomba!
February 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
Ok I’m back – but instead of a hard hitting treatise on enterprise systems, structurational models or cloud computing, today I’d like to talk about vacuum cleaners. You see there was a big sale on iRobot Roombas at London Drugs this week and I snapped up the last one in town – apparently. For the [...]