Also Bruce Schneier - http://www.schneierfacts.com/
How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
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Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#12Also Bruce Schneier - http://www.schneierfacts.com/
Also, Jon Skeet (specific to Stack Overflow) - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#13Also Bruce Schneier - http://www.schneierfacts.com/
Also, Jon Skeet (specific to Stack Overflow) - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts
Also, Doug McIlroy: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sinclair/doug/
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#14The work that Jeff Dean and colleagues at Google are doing is pretty mind blowing [1]. Sometimes, I feel that you need Google's scale of problems to be forced to push technology that way. The joke at my company is that everytime Google publishes about one of their technology on a paper, they already have a next-gen version of it running internally. [1]: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2013/08/learning-meani...
That's not a joke - it's true... The joke part of it is in: there are two types of systems at Google, the ones that are deprecated, and the ones that are not yet ready for production.
That's not a joke either. Inside of Google you can ask anyone whether a particular API is the version that's deprecated or not ready yet, and they will always know which one it is.
Try it.
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#15Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations.
I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science. They may apply it to a somewhat different problem domain but the solution already existed for the taking. Core high-scale computer science domains like HPC traditionally don't publish shiny geek-friendly know-how but there are very deep existing pools of expertise out there.
Google has excelled at branding concepts like MapReduce, Spanner, etc that already existed in real systems for many years. Google has made people aware of these technologies but it is a stretch to say they "invented" them in any material sense beyond publicizing their own implementations. I think they receive a little too much credit in many cases for invention when their primary contribution has been popularization.
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#16Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations. I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science…
I think they receive a little too much credit in many cases for invention when their primary contribution has been popularization.
That's being a little pedantic. Applying X for Y is definitely being inventive. That's how largely every domain works. We stand on the shoulders of giants etc.
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#17Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations. I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science…
I think they receive a little too much credit in many cases for invention when their primary contribution has been popularization. That's being a little pedantic. Applying X for Y is definitely being inventive. That's how largely every domain works. We stand on the shoulders of giants etc.
The weakness of this contribution is often cited as the reason many types of software patents should be invalid. Putting a shiny wrapper on an old idea in an obvious but slightly different context is something upon which many software hackers would normally cast a jaundiced eye.
My point was largely that e.g. MapReduce had literally been used in the HPC world for quite some time in countless variations. Something similar occurred with Spanner where it was a minor variant implementation on a concept that existed in many systems decades old. I worked on systems that used both of these "inventions" in the 1990s; no one thought it was novel then either. When I think of "invention" in computer science, I assume some hard problem in computer science was solved. That is not the case for most of what Google is credited with in the realm of computer science.
The absence of meaningful novelty in Google's systems strikes me as a good basis for being skeptical of claims of invention. Relative obscurity of computer science does not confer invention claims on the first to popularize it.
People frequently attribute more computer science invention to me than is warranted (I do a lot of high-end algorithm work). I always try to make it clear that much of what they see as "invention" is their first exposure to obscure computer science that I happen to be familiar with and know how to exploit. Much of what is attributed to Google is similar in character; people conflate the source of their introduction with the inventor of the concept.
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#18The original Chuck Norris jokes were sarcastic. No one thought he was much of a bad-ass, but 90% of the people who stumble across Internet memes are too stupid to understand them. That being said, Chuck Norris is a hell of a nice guy and I wish him the best, even if he isn't a bad-ass.
> That being said, Chuck Norris is a hell of a nice guy and I wish him the best, even if he isn't a bad-ass. You must be joking. http://www.wnd.com/author/cnorris/
What has he done that you don't like? I'm not going to read through a dozen or so articles and try to guess which one you have a problem with. Going from the titles I see a lot of stuff about cancer charities, and a few articles about religion in public schools.
If its the latter, he lost that battle, just like all the other Christians.
I'm just going off of his personality. He makes a lot of USO appearances, and my best friend actually got to hang out with him and his family a few times as a teenager when Chuck rented out the bed and breakfast he worked at.
He seems pretty down to earth and nice, that doesn't mean that he doesn't hold ideas that I disagree with.
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#19"But if his fake accomplishments are hard to understand without a real computer-science background..." I got no formal education, i still understood most of the puns. Woop, feeling a little proud atm :D
There is a very big difference between having no formal education and having a background in something. Especially in computer science where so many people are self taught.
Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they receive a little too much credit in many cases for invention when their primary contribution has been popularization. That's being a little pedantic. Applying X for Y is definitely being inventive. That's how largely every domain works. We stand on the shoulders of giants etc.
The weakness of this contribution is often cited as the reason many types of software patents should be invalid. Putting a shiny wrapper on an old idea in an obvious but slightly different context is something upon which many software hackers would normally cast a jaundiced eye. My point was largely that e.g. MapReduce had literally been used in the HPC world for quite some time in countless variations. Something sim…
Can you give a citation for the MapReduce and Spanner predecessors?
I've seen similar papers that predate MapReduce (I'm curious if you will find the ones I have). But I've also noticed that most people who think MapReduce is old hat have never used it and/or misunderstand what it actually is.
And if it was already so well known, there wouldn't be hundreds of CS researchers continuing to publish both theoretical and systems of papers about it.
The MapReduce paper has 7992 citations so far, and the number continues to increase every year! http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...
What paper should they be citing instead? It's hard to believe that 7995 sets of authors would ignore prior research, especially since some of those authors are a decade or two older than the MapReduce authors.