David Gristwood engages David Chappell in conversation about Windows Azure and cloud computing, and explore which applications are great candidates for Windows Azure, and, interestingly which ones don’t, as well as discussing the differences between Infrastructure vs Platform as a Service, and the role of private vs public cloud.
To make cloud computing work, we must make applications run substantially faster, both over the Internet and within data centers. Microsoft Researchs measurements of real applications show that today’s protocols fall short, leading to slow page-load times across the Internet and congestion collapses inside the data center. Microsoft Research developed a new suite of architectures and protocols that boost performance and the robustness of communications to overcome these problems. The results are backed by real measurements and a new theory describing protocol dynamics that enables us to remedy fundamental problems in the Transmission Control Protocol.
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01:13:28
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It’s been far too long since we’ve chatted with the great Brian Beckman, an astrophysicist, software architect, and Channel 9 icon. Some of you may know him as the wizard who appears out of thin air whenever the word Monad is said three times in succession. :->
A few weeks ago, Erik Meijer sent an email to Brian with a link to some videos about the use of analog computers in the US Navy in the 1950s. This got Brian thinking and reflecting about his past. Turns out Brian’s father was a famous Hollywood actor who also produced training movies for the US Navy. Well, I was added on to the email thread and we taped the conversation in this video a few days later.
It’s always a pleasure to embark on an unscripted chat with Dr. Beckman. There are always great nuggets of wisdom and insight around every corner. Here, you’ll learn about some of Brian’s personal history, some insights on analog computing, and even some discussion on the Drake equation, N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL, which attempts to formalize the probability of intelligent life in the universe.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy.
Over thousands of years, language has evolved in order to provide mankind a mechanism for making it easier to communicate with one another. Today, the world is filled with a wide variety of languages, some of which are radically different from one another, while others bear striking similarities. In addition to improving interpersonal communications, however, languages have evolved to facilitate the transfer of information, instructions, and intent between people and machines.
Understanding, designing, and evangelizing many of these languages, and democratizing the programming methodologies within them, is Erik Meijer. Erik is a legendary figure in the programming language design community and one of Niner Nation’s favorite personalities. Today, tune in and meet the man behind the code; some of Erik’s fascinating personal and professional histories may well surprise you. The great Robert Hess moderates this latest edition of Behind the Code.
Enjoy.
PS: Erik will be speaking at MIX10!
March is Women in Technology Month. We kick off the festivities on Channel 9 with a great conversation with an industry thought leader in interactive user experience design and architecture.
Meet Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs, which focuses on software and services that are centered on social connectivity, real-time experiences, and rich media. Lili’s a big fan of and active participant in social communication and the interactive design of social computing on the web.
Lili talks to @ritzy and @Carmine007 about her tenure at Microsoft which started in 1995. Lili is another shining example of a successful woman in technology, but more importantly her full time job consists of both pushing the envelope of social interaction and the inventing new experiences for social computing. Push on, Lili and team!
Time:
50:37
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Science & Technology
MSDN Events is hosting some local deep dives into Windows Azure and cloud computing. If you happen to be in one of the cities below, you can register for the free courses at http://www.msdnevents.com. The course will cover data storage, SQL Azure, and deployment of apps on Windows Azure. City list after the jump.
Dr. Maria Klawe joined the board of directors of Microsoft in 2009. She is a distinguished computer scientist, scholar and president of Harvey Mudd College. If that’s not enough, she’s also an accomplished artist. We had to catch up with Maria for WM_IN to learn about her path to success and accomplishment in computing and higher education, so when the opportunity presented itself recently Ritzy and I were all over it! What a treat it was to spend some time with Maria. It’s hard to fathom just how motivated, capable and intelligent one person can be. We’re very fortunate to have Maria as one of the people who govern Microsoft’s future.
Tune in and learn about what it’s like to be a member of Microsoft’s board of directors (What does the board do, anyway? What’s it like in the boardroom?) and president of one of the best engineering and mathematics liberal arts colleges in the United States.
In this second installment of C9 Conversations, a format where we sit down with various big thinkers to discuss a wide range of big topics related to computing; all in high quality video and audio, the topic is Complexity (ambient complexity, to be precise – it’s hard to program systems that are radically composable. Why?).
Dr. Brian Beckman is an astrophysicist and software architect with a long history of dealing with various levels of complexity. In some sense, most of what we do as programmers and engineers is control complexity to solve problems of various difficulty. In our world of software engineering, we strive to carve simplicity out of the complexity of computing. Dr. Beckman provides his insights into why it so hard to achieve radical composability in the software systems we design and build and what it will take to realize ambient simplicity as we march into the increasingly complex world of general purpose computing.
We think you’ll really enjoy this conversation with one of Microsoft’s best thinkers.
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