Unit 7 Readings

Andrew K. Pace, “Dismantling Integrated Library Systems”

Integration may have been lost as library technology made the jump onto the web, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be recovered. As vendor software comes and goes it will likely grow to meet demands and standards as they are established. What will increasingly distinguish products is as the author says, “new products and alliances,” (34). Successful vendors are those who will take into account the library communities resistance to change quickly by innovating there products on top of existing products as much as possible, that way the changes are gradual and older versions/systems are not left quite as behind.

Jeff Tyson, “How Internet Infrastructure Works”

POP=Point of Presence, or the place for local users to access a company’s network through phone or dedicated line. Managed (coordinated?) by high-level networks connected through NAPs or Network Access Points.

“What is incredible about this process is that a message can leave one computer and travel halfway across the world through several different networks and arrive at another computer in a fraction of a second!” Indeed, but how exactly is it possible? In addition, how are the various continents physically connected? Are there just big underwater cables stretching from here to there?

The backbones are clearly very fast, are home connections slower because the limbs to the backbone are slower? If I was the only person on the Internet one day would I be able to take advantage of OC-48 speeds, or would my home modem, router, cables, etc. still limit me?

The IP address examples must be ghost addresses because there’s nothing there. Spooky!

I feel like the majority of this article was covered pretty well in class, but the DNS and URL discussions helped to clear a few things up.

Brin and Page video

A 20-minute presentation on why Google’s founders think their company’s great. Nothing is really addressed in any depth, though the model of who is using Google and where was interesting. I wondered how their Montessori education influenced Google, they mention it, but not really what that meant to the company. Also, beyond the mention of the future and showing a slide of HAL 9000, what did they actually say about the future? Nothing really, Page just showed a tiny screenshot of a blog that Google’s algorithm was making fun of.