This Washinton Post article on a SCADA failure at a US nuclear power plant was noted in Slashdot, but not much elsewhere. Specifically, experts worry that vulnerabilities were introduced into the systems that regulate the electrical grid as power companies
Cleantech and history of software
I’m on my way to Linz, Austria to participate in a panel at an event called Cleantech Venture Forum. We’ve spent a lot of the last two years looking at ways to save power in data centers and mini-data centers
Patent trolling and guilty knowledge
Mr. Myhrvold: All of this fear is from people who have guilty knowledge of their own actions. There are lots of major tech companies that grew from zero to gigantically successful in a very short period of time without investing
US Elections and startup/small-business economics
I’m surprised that John McCain’s proposal to make health insurance benefits taxable has not received more notice. For a startup, cash is expensive and hard to find and it is a tremendous handicap for US startups that we have toÂ
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
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
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
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
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