Thursday, January 23, 2014
Let There Be Light Redux.... Pope Francis (by gins, 23 Jan 2014)
The Internet is a “gift from God” that facilitates communication, Pope Francis said in a statement released Thursday, but he warns that the obsessive desire to stay connected can actually isolate people from their friends and family.
Let There Be Light..... Google's Quantum Computer (by gins, 23 jan 2014)
And AC said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light--
—Closing line, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
Google on benchmarking the D-Wave 2 quantum computer -
BTW, I had to look up Quantum Annealing
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
There Will Come Soft Rains (by gins, 4 Aug 2026)
At CES, the Internet of Things was all the rage, and just yesterday, Google announced the intent to purchase Nest for a whopping $3.2B (which in fact was close to its valuation after the latest funding round). I won't rehash the various pros/cons of the transaction on privacy or positive steps forward to the connected home, or make humor of it..... "Dave... I don't approve of your surfing habits.... I'm going to freeze you out tonight." It hits home in more ways than one, since we've installed two Nests and four Protects.
But the first thing I thought about, looking forward to ultimate positives and negatives, was a short story from Bradbury, published years before I was born, at a time when the smart home was truly science fiction...
(c) Ray Bradbury, 1950
But the first thing I thought about, looking forward to ultimate positives and negatives, was a short story from Bradbury, published years before I was born, at a time when the smart home was truly science fiction...
In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to
get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The
clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time,
seven-nine!
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.
Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today..." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.
Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.
At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.
Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.
Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.
Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the children, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.
Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today..." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.
Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.
At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.
Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.
Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.
Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the children, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.
(c) Ray Bradbury, 1950
Friday, January 3, 2014
White Goods, White Boxes, and a view to 2014 (posted by gins, 3 Jan 2014)
When I was a kid, my parents used the term 'white goods' to refer to major appliances. Although branded, they were pretty generic in their functions (remember this was the time before fridges with built-in displays or even ice makers) and differentiation at a given tier was primarily on price. You bought it, it fit, and you hoped it was reliable. This was the world of white goods.
Fast-forward to 2014 and we have our own version of white goods for networking - 'white-box' switches. Over the past two to three years, primarily in conjunction with SDN, the concept of a white-box switch has taken hold. Here, generic hardware is provided by an OEM or ODM, offered as a reference design by a merchant silicon vendor, or created by a large cloud service provider. It introduces some interesting business models, sometimes disruptive, for traditional networking vendors or even some of the new SDN specialists. Do you continue to offer a complete stack under your own brand, consisting of the switch hardware and network operating system (NOS), or do you refer customers to a third party where they may purchase the hardware, later applying your NOS (and hoping that everything works as advertised).
However, the white-box switch itself is not the gist of the discussion, and too much has been made of the fact that these switches will result in generic offerings. Hardware vendors still have the opportunity to differentiate based on functionality if they understand the intended application, while keeping COGS and TTM in-line. And this doesn't apply only to the SDN/controller space. There are many segments within the larger switching and routing market that require optimized hardware and where today's off-the-shelf designs or even platforms offered by some of the larger vendors don't meet the bill. Or, hardware platforms that can better adapt to different NOSs, much like x86 supporting Windows, OS X, and Linux. These are all areas ripe for innovation. Moving up the stack, the value is also of course in the NOS, and here is where networking vendors can add differentiation, even across third-party hardware.
In 2014 we'll see continued innovation in this space balancing realistic expectations. In the same way that 2013 served as a good gut-check with regard to SDN in general, tempering the promises of many of the startups in this space, the coming year will provide clarity on the how, what, and where of white-box switches.
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