Expert Texture
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for June, 2007
June 15, 2007 at 6:32 am · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing
Microsoft Research has just released a set of tools (both binaries and source code) to help in the search for an AIDS vaccine (full text of the press release here). I am very excited about this announcement and happy to have played a small part in it.
As Dan Fay announced, these tools run on the Digipede Network.
But what part did I play in this? I built a wrapper of the PhyloD model to distribute onto the Digipede Network. This version is the basis for the PhyloDDN project on the CodePlex site.
And what am I excited about? Using PhyloDDN to distribute the model across the Digipede Network allows, well, you know, radically improved application performance! I’m excited that our product will (and is) being used for this important project.
Tags: AIDS, CodePlex, Digipede, Mircrosoft, MSR
June 14, 2007 at 3:06 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing
Yes.
Digipede has been named a finalist (one of three) for the Microsoft Innovation Partner of the Year.
Microsoft has a whole bunch of very innovative partners. To be named one of the top three is quite gratifying.
Thanks, Microsoft!
Tags: Digipede, Innovation, ISV, Microsoft
June 14, 2007 at 10:47 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
My wife and I went and saw The Police last night in Oakland. She was a big fan the first time around. I was not.
Of course, they don’t look much like the guys in this picture.
But they sounded great. Sting’s voice still sounds terrific and the three of them can really play. And their music (lyrics, rhythm, melodies, harmonies, the whole lot) is really good.
I didn’t realize how much I identify their music as a natural part of my life — not only did I really enjoy the show, but I was much more engaged in it than I am at a typical show.
Maybe I am a fan after all.
Tags: Events, music, Rock, The-Police
June 10, 2007 at 6:14 am · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing
John and Dan are doing an MSDN Webcast Tuesday at 10:00 AM. It is titled, Scaling SOA in Financial Services with Grid Computing for .NET. Described as:
Enterprise architects in financial services are looking to service-oriented architectures (SOA) to address many real-world problems – brittle systems with tight interdependencies, data stuck in single-purpose silos, and applications that don’t scale to meet growing demand, to name a few. But implementing an SOA can also expose new scalability issues. New high-performance computing (HPC) offerings from Microsoft and its partners are ideally suited for scaling out compute-intensive components of an SOA. Using real-world examples from financial services companies, this presentation will describe how to grid-enable compute-intensive analytic services for use in an SOA.
I’ll bet they talk about Digipede in there somewhere. 
Go to the link above to sign up.
Tags: Digipede, grid, Microsoft, MSDN, SOA, Webcast
June 10, 2007 at 6:14 am · Filed under Attention, Web 2.0
I recently wrote about some problems I had with the user contracts for Cluztr, an attention service. At the time I promised to write about a user contract I could stomach. Some of these ideas are being rolled into what Steve Gillmor has called Click Insurance to be supported by the GestureBank. More on that soon.
My problem with the Cluztr contract is their version of user opt-in. Cluztr is unremarkable in this way — many companies use the same approach. Their form of opt-in goes like this:
- Read our user contract before you use our service (good);
- Using our service implies acceptance of our contract (good);
- We may change our user contract (not good or bad);
- We may not post any notification that our contract has changed (bad); and,
- Continued use of our service implies acceptance of our new user contract (what?).
I call this the User-Beware Contract. This is any contract expressly allowing the service provider to change it without user notification. The onus is on the user to be wary of the service provider.
Instead, I’d like to see the User-Aware Contract. It goes something like this:
- Read our user contract before you use our service;
- Using our service implies acceptance of our contract;
- We may (and probably will) change our user contract;
- We will notify you of any change;
- Any change will require you to opt-in again formally (through a click-through or other process);
- If you do not formally agree to the new contract, you will be removed form the service and all user data associated with your account will be purged.
This type of contract puts the onus on the service provider. After all, the service provider changed the user contract — shouldn’t they take the responsibility of notifying them and getting their continued opt-in?
A variant of the latter approach is not uncommon (e.g., on banking sites). Your data may not be purged if you don’t accept the new contract; however, you will not gain access to the site unless you do.
That said, the User-Beware Contract is, by far, the dominant contract on the Web. The big players all use it, most of the smaller players use it.
I would like to see an attention service throw out their User-Beware Contract in place of a User-Aware Contract. Of course, they’ll have to notify their users of the change
Tags: AttentionTrust, ATX, Cluztr, GBX2, GestureBank, Gillmor
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