Author Archives: admin
Insuring against cloud failures
We all store (and often share) our information on a cloud. Cloud storage is typically free for limited amounts of memory (which may mean 25 GB, which is by no means a small amount...). When we assign our data to a cloud, … Continue reading
Is the number of LinkedIn connections a measure of professional success?
A few days ago, Antonio, an old acquaintance of mine, sent me an e-mail message, proudly warning me that his daughter, a graduate student of Economics in her mid-twenties, was surpassing my number of LinkedIn connections (which, btw, is a … Continue reading
GECON 2014
Last week I attended the 2014 edition of the 11th International Conference on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services (GECON). The conference took place in the nice town of Cardiff, hosted by prof. Omer Rana of the School of Computer … Continue reading
Cloud availability: third-party measurements needed!
When subscribing to a cloud infrastructure (I'm mainly interested in cloud storage, but the issue concerns computing applications no less than storage), we expect availability performance not worse than what our in-house infrastructure would provide us with. However, what do … Continue reading
Oh, it's so boring...
While attending the PODC conference in Paris, I had an interesting phone conversation with M., a long-time dear friend of mine (Though she will probably never read these lines, I prefer sticking to the initial of her name, just in … Continue reading
The Big Data Revolution
Last week I was in London to attend a seminar by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger at the Data Science Institute of the Imperial College. Viktor is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the role … Continue reading
A tour of the Internet in 40 maps
Through the always interesting blog of Arthur Charpentier I've seen a fascinating graphical view of many facets of the Internet. Several issues are addressed through 40 maps (you can explore the whole set of maps here), which are divided into 6 groups: … Continue reading
Data protection ant IT security after Snowden
This was the title of the keynote speech delivered by Peter Schaar at the Annual Privacy Forum 2014 held in Athens. The speaker is presently the Chairman of the European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection (EAID), after having … Continue reading
The Annual Privacy Forum 2014
Last week I was in Athens to attend the Annual Privacy Forum, jointly organized by a mixed set of organizations: ENISA (the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security), the European Commission (Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology), … Continue reading
Privacy and big data
The ever-present concerns for privacy are further heightened by the growing diffusion of big data. Nearly everyone among us has its personal data stored in some (most probably many) databases around the world, with virtually no control over them. The … Continue reading
