keeping simple

Author: yodaiken

  • more security databases

    “I was pulled aside in a room … and you have to wait your turn to finally be released,” Labbé said. “An hour, an hour and a half, two hours, whatever it is after. Once I was caught in Miami like that for six hours. “It’s always the same questions, about if I’ve lost my…

  • why databases are more interesting than operating systems

    A discovery Cort Dougan and I made 10 years ago when we first got a glimpse at the mighty Oracle building on the Bay and realized that, commercially, operating systems are an afterthought. This article shows that things are just getting better in a $500 million project!! When tested, the new system failed to find…

  • Meaning of concurrent programs and IP

    Most of the new draft of the Concurrent Programs paper has to do with trying to specify problems and solutions in synchronization via an atomic “compare and swap” operation. Even these operations are surprisingly complicated once put under the microscope – or not so surprisingly complicated if you think about the details of using or…

  • Updated: meaning of concurrent programs

    Updated rough draft available with thrilling descriptions of atomic compare and swap and some comments on “formal methods”. Bonus photo

  • More on common weakness

    Dan Quist writes in to point at that writing software is hard and we should expect errors. No doubt. Perfect software is not on the near horizon and good programmers using good tools will make stupid mistakes. But the CWE compendium points to systemic problems in the field. Look at the problem of allowing unfiltered…

  • Common Weakness Enumeration

    The common weakness enumeration is an amazing document. Imagine if there was such a document for architecture/construction. That document would contain admonitions like – “remember to put in structural supports for upper floors” and “don’t lay floors on dirt” or “make sure there are no free unterminated wires left hanging out of walls.”  Here is…

  • New paper “H2” on operating system semantics

    Please see a new version here. I am continuing to try to develop a practical engineering mathematics for operating system and other complex system code.

  • operating systems are harder than quantum physics

    Went to hear Tilak Agerwala talk on the “Future of Data Centers” and was struck again by the way in which system developers and chip architects find solving problems like quantum power leakage and manufacturing devices with 100 angstrom feature sizes to be easier than improving operating system performance or design. Seymour Cray used to…

  • clouds versus pcs

    George Gilder had an article in Wired on data centers as clouds. My instinct is to dismiss anything Gilder writes because of his track record of wacky ideas (e.g. feminism is destroying civilization and supply side economics makes sense). But, in this article, Gilder reports on some smart people. The sheer massive use of electrical…

  • linux kernel

    From LinuxDevices Every Linux kernel is being developed by nearly 1,000 developers, working for more than 100 corporations. An average of 3,621 lines of code are added to the kernel tree every day. A new kernel is released approximately every 2.7 months. Since 2005, the kernel has grown at a steady pace of 10 percent…