Nicholas Carr has an article in The Atlantic titled Is Google Making Us Stupid? that got me thinking over the weekend. I’ve noted before how Google’s ubiquitous nature can have unintended consequences, such as the de facto standardization of spelling and grammar. In his article Nick notes that the nature of searching for information is having profound impact on the way in which he and others read:

“. . . what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

I’ve noticed this myself as well, a feeling that the Internet is condensing all information into Cliff’s Notes. In particular, this has been quite concerning in the blogosphere, where it often seems folks expect hard issues to be discussed and resolved as quickly as they can post. In a previous post on standards for cloud computing I cited a few threads where folks expected publication of specifications and standards as easily as posts to a blog. Of course, that simple isn’t possible, but I believe that the speed with which we access information online builds that expectation.

It appears that one unintended consequence of unhindered access to information is a sort of commoditization of thought. Information is simply so easy to come by that we tend to value it less. Worse, ideas and the effort to communicate them are discounted by the sheer volume of information that floods our senses at every waking moment.

As an example, when I was an undergrad some 25 years ago at CSUF, research was painful. I might spend hours scouring through microfiche, racks of books or the dreaded manual stack for the CDC Cyber mainframe trying to find information. Having unearthed what I was looking for, I was certain to write it down or copy it.  Today, however, I write down as little as possible. Written information is the first thing I lose. I also almost never copy of print information. Rather, I rely on my ability to search for it again. Google has become an integral part of my process for consuming information.

I can’t share Nick’s more pessimistic view of the situation though. Humans are resilient and have a way to adapting technology to their needs even if at first it appears the other way around. I, for instance, picked up an Amazon Kindle a couple months ago. Using the same technologies that can commoditize thought, the Kindle places entire books at my disposal even when I’m unconnected at 30,000 feet. Since getting it I’ve read two novels, three business books, a science book, and numerous magazines and newspapers. That would have been more than a year’s reading before. Plus, I’ve noted more young kids carrying books with them recently than laptops. They’ve got their phone for texting, and their iPod, but no laptop. Perhaps, the market is already pushing back.

We’ve gotten a lot of questions and generated a few blog posts since we announced Cloudware back in June along with our desire to start a standards effort. Many, like this post from James Urquhart, are from other vendors in the space concerned about whether this gives 3tera an edge. Others, like Rich Miller’s post, are just good technologists wondering aloud what we’re trying to accomplish and whether open source would be a better way to go. So here goes a post that’s sure to raise a few eyebrows.

Open source does NOT provide interoperability.

I know that’s not the popular wisdom, but IMHO it’s true. Consider for a moment that in the relatively new space of cloud computing there are already several services based on open source. Unfortunately, none of them interoperate. Why? There are two reasons I see. First, although there are open source systems for the base technology, they aren’t a complete solution. Each provider must complete the solution themselves. Second, and IMHO more important, providers are looking for competitive advantage. So, while open source may let them get to market early each provider is free to change the system, and many do.

Let’s consider a larger market for comparison. Linux is open source, yet there are countless variations. From debian to ubuntu, Suse to Fedora, Redhat to CentOS, and countless others. Variations between distributions are at the same time the power and problem of Linux. The ability to modify the system enables users and vendors are able to tailor it for their specific application. Linux can be stripped down to run in 16MB or can power the largest servers. I myself have used Linux numerous times as the basis for routers, switches and load balancers. It’s embedded in cell phones, cars, etc. Everyone of us depends upon Linux every day whether we know it or not. However, it’s precisely because anyone can modify Linux, that not all versions interoperate. Most of us can name software packages that only work with specific distributions.

So, one interesting question to consider is if all those embedded Linux systems exist, how do they interoperate. Obviously, my cell phone can connect to the tower and from there to the rest of the phone system. All my Linux based networking gear works together to create my LAN. The answer is this interaction  happens at a layer above Linux, a set of interfaces defined by standards. In fact, Linux itself couldn’t exist at all without the standards that define the hardware it runs on. The growth in Linux was possible because so much of the x86 hardware interfaces are standardized. From ISA to PCI-X busses, from SCSI to IDE to SATA drives, graphics, keyboards, serial interfaces and memory are all standardized.

For example, take a look at Ethernet. Virtually every Ethernet port built in the past 15+ years will still work in your network. How is that possible given the technological changes that have occurred over that time? IMHO it’s because there’s a very well defined standard. HTML is a standard as well. HTTP is a standard. TCP is a standard. IP is a standard. USB too. The plug for your phone and your electrical socket are all standardized. When’s the last time you had trouble with one of them?

3tera supports the open source market. We use it and contribute to it. However, we feel it’s critical for users to be able to depend upon the interoperability of cloud computing services and that the best way to accomplish this is through standards. It’s also important to note that this in no way eliminates the potential for open source. Quite the opposite. Vyatta, for example, offers open source software based on networking standards. Apache emboddies the HTML and HTTP standards. So I’m certain we’ll see open source efforts built around cloud computing standards as well.

3tera will proceed with the standards effort and has begun to solicit participation, albeit due to my limited time I’ve only hit 20 to 30 folks so far, and we’ve had some positive feedback as well. We’ll provide data and describe methods proven to provide portable applications (something by the way no one else has yet demonstrated). If others share their capabilities as we’re proposing to, the result will be better products and services for users and a bigger market for vendors.

Alex Handy at System Management News writes about Digg’s Kevin Rose and Ron Gorodetzky and how they are scaling Digg — see Digging His Way to Web Success.

With all the havoc about Twitter (if you spent the last few months on Mars, Google for it — there was even a post by Twitter’s founder describing what happened), it is refreshing to see someone who did it right and simple. The key point, I think, is that you have to start it simple — especially if you are a startup, you cannot and should not attempt to create the ultimate scalable system in version 1. Aside from this being impractical, it is also impossible for any system that’s actually interesting, because you don’t know which way your system will grow (trying to predict the future and plan for all possible cases is the surest way to never release anything).

Check out what Nati Shalom and Todd Hoff wrote about Twitter and scalability in a larger scope. Also, Todd Hoff’s excellent high scalability blog has a lot of useful info on how various big sites scaled, including Digg.

So how is this related to cloud computing: well, no matter how your application is deployed and operated, you still have do the architecture right for scaling: and not only in a static sense (a one time scalability design) but also in time, as your system grows and takes on different, usually unexpected directions to success. A good utility and/or cloud computing solution will help you in this: from offering ready made “best practices” stacks and solutions, to helping you build, debug, tune, monitor and operate your own particular architecture.

Onward and upward (or, for scalability freaks, outward!)

Being an entrepreneur is a risky business, and as such it certainly isn’t for the faint of heart. However, an email thread circling 3tera today shed a little light on one aspect of our character that I hadn’t seen before.

Tomorrow being the 4^th of July, the thread started out innocently enough wishing everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday. With each “reply all” though, the thread took on a new twist, talking more about fireworks and what we used to enjoy as kids. In the end the thread was about how to make explosions from safe-and-sane fireworks (or other items). In other words, how to break the law. Turns out more than a few folks had ways to make things go bang.

Of course, it isn’t surprising that a bunch of entrepreneurs are willing to take risks for fun. However, I wonder if it’s a requirement. Are all entrepreneurs rule breakers? Is that part of why we build companies instead of going to work for established firms? Is the excitement of seeing your system go live for the first time the same as watching that firework explode?

I’m no psychologist, but I think they are related. Accomplishing what others say “can’t be done” is exciting. And IMHO it is related to the elation of that exploding fire cracker you weren’t supposed to have. So as you’re celebrating tomorrow and hear the din of firecrackers, perhaps you’re listening to the job training of the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

After 2 years+ of showing people how to run Wordpress on a grid, we finally bit the bullet and moved our own blog on Wordpress. On a grid, of course.

As advertised, the process was smooth and easy — the Wordpress famous 5 minute install worked on the standard LAMP cluster infrastructure from AppLogic. Five minutes flat (here’s how).

The rest of the two late nights on the weekend were dedicated, of course, to style sheets, plugins and porting the contents over. Much to my amazement, the process was way easier than I expected.

• The stylesheets (aka themes) in Wordpress are simple to set up, yet powerful — probably the easiest to set up among all the web apps I have used. (Of course, the word easy is cautiously applied to anything that has to do with CSS, but that wasn’t Wordpress’s fault; and, big thanks to Firebug!).
• The plugin model in Wordpress is install-by-file-copy (remember the old DOS days?) while still activation is from the GUI — simply brilliant combination.
• Pouring in the contents — 114 posts dating back to December 2005 — took a bit of work; the easiest way I found was through simulating Wordpress import: simple XML, only a few fields were really necessary, the rest Wordpress seemed to fill in itself (e.g., I set only the post_date and Wordpress autofilled the post_date_gmt; the only surprise was the post_status — must be set explicitly to publish; in hindsight, this could have been fixed with a single checkbox from the manage posts panel). Part of the time was, of course, spent reading some of the old posts — equal bits nostalgic and refreshing.

Overall, quite enjoyable. After the 4-conferences week (aka, the cloud computing conference week plus LTPact) and a lot of talking, talking and talking, it was great to get something done with my own two hands (and two keyboards). There is something really rewarding, in the sense of instant gratification, in putting up web applications and tailoring them to work exactly as you want them (PHP, while not the best language ever, is nearly the perfect instant gratification language, no offense to Ruby).

As a result, now all public facing infrastructure of 3Tera runs on the grid, as does almost all of our internal infrastructure. A shout out to the good folks at SiteKreator for taking our web site all the way to here — we are still running some personal sites on it and I will most definitely set up the first web site of my next startup there again.

Now, I wish our blog would become as popular as to deserve some of the more advanced infrastructure we have for LAMP applications — self-scaling based on load and remote replication. We’ll get there. In the meantime, to those who need such infrastructure today, it is easily available.