Archive For The “Ramblings” Category
Want to join a startup team within Amazon Web Services? I’m deeply involved and excited about this project and another couple of talented engineers could really make a difference. We are looking for: User Interface Software Development Engineer We are looking for an experienced engineer with a proven track record of building high quality, AJAX…
I’ll be taking a brief hiatus from blogging during the first three weeks of August. Tomorrow we leave for China. You might wonder why we would go to China during the hottest time of the year. For example, our first stop, Xiamen, is expected to hit 95F today, which is fairly typical weather for this…
There have been many reports of the Fisher Plaza data center fire. An early one was the Data Center Knowledge article: Major Outage at Seattle Data Center. Data center fires aren’t as rare as any of us would like but this one is a bit unusual in that fires normally happen in the electrical equipment…
MIT’s Barbara Liskov was awarded the 2008 Association of Computing Machinery Turing Award. The Turning award is the highest distinction in computer science and is often referred to as the Nobel price of computing. Past award winners are listed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award. The full award citation: Barbara Liskov has led important developments in computing by creating…
I’ve brought together links to select past postings and posted them to: http://mvdirona.com/jrh/AboutPerspectives/. It’s linked to the blog front page off the “about” link. I’ll add to this list over time. If there is a Perspectives article not included that you think should be, add a comment or send me email. Talks and Presentations Best…
Our 1999 Mitsubishi 3000 VR4 For Sale. Black-on-black with 80,000 miles. $12,500 OBO. Fewer than 300 1999 VR-4s were produced for North America, and only 101 in black-on-black. We love this car and hate to sell it, but are living downtown Seattle and no longer need a car. It’s a beautiful machine, 320 HP, and…
The HotPower ’09 workshop will be held on October 10th at the same venue and right before the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 2009) at Big Sky Resort Montana. Hotpower recognizes that power is becoming a central issue in the design of all systems from embedded systems to servers for high-scale data centers. From…
There has been lots of speculation about the new name for Microsoft Search. The most prevalent speculation is that Live.com will be branded Kumo: Microsoft to Rebrand Search. Will it be Kumo? Confirming that the Kumo brand is definitely the name that is being tested internally at Microsoft, I’ve noticed over the last week that…
HotCloud ’09 is a workshop that will be held at the same time as USENIX ’09 (June 14 through 19, 2009). The CFP: Join us in San Diego, CA, June 15, 2009, for the Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing. HotCloud ’09 seeks to discuss challenges in the Cloud Computing paradigm including the design,…
Google Maps is a wonderfully useful tool for finding locations around town or around the globe. Microsoft Live Labs Seadragon is a developer tool-kit for navigating wall-sized or larger displays using pan and zoom. Here’s the same basic tiled picture display technique (different implementation) applied to navigating the Linux kernel: Linux Kernel Map. The kernel…
Last night, TechCrunch hosted The Crunchies and two of my favorite services got awards. Ray Ozzie and David Treadwell accepted Best Technology Innovation/Achievement for Windows Live Mesh. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels accepted Best Enterprise Startup for Amazon Web Services. Also awarded (from http://crunchies2008.techcrunch.com/) Best Application Or Service Get SatisfactionGoogle Reader (winner)MintedMeeboMySpace Music (runner-up)Yelp Best Technology…
In a previous posting, Pat Selinger IBM Ph.D. Fellowships, I mentioned Pat Selinger as one of the greats of the relational database world. Working with Pat was one of the reasons why leaving IBM back in the mid-90’s was a tough decision for me. In the December 2008 edition of the Communications of the ACM,…
Five or six years ago Bill Gates did a presentation to a small group at Microsoft on his philanthropic work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was by far and away the most compelling talk I had seen in that it was Bill applying his talent to solving world health problems with the…
I’ve resigned from Microsoft and will join the Amazon Web Services team at the start of next year. As an AWS user, I’ve written thousands of lines of app code against S3, and now I’ll have an opportunity to help improve and expand the AWS suite. In this case, I’m probably guilty of what many…
Last week, IBM honored database giant Pat Selinger by creating a Ph.D. Fellowship in her name. I worked with Pat closely for many years at IBM and much of what I learned about database management systems was from Pat during those years. She was a one of the original members of the IBM System R…
Going boating: http://mvdirona.com/ so I’ll be taking a break from blogging until mid-august when I’m back and caught back up. Enjoy, –jrh James Hamilton, Data Center FuturesBldg 99/2428, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, 98052 W:+1(425)703-9972 | C:+1(206)910-4692 | H:+1(206)201-1859 | JamesRH@microsoft.com H:mvdirona.com | W:research.microsoft.com/~jamesrh | blog:http://perspectives.mvdirona.com