Week 5 Readings 

Foster and Godbole, chapters 7 and 10: 

7: It was rather funny to me at first that they would call it relational algebra, when adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing are more like elementary level mathematics. Also, thought it was interesting when the text pointed out how important it is to be specific in the commands that were given, to say how it is to be carried out and not just what is to happen. Looking at the examples of command language, I remember thinking that I will need to get used to it. It looked so different! In addition, the idea of reorganizing the data was curious to me. When and how would does the database go about that? 

10: The concept that no one has a monopoly over SQL was an interesting way for me to hear about it being open source. It emphasizes that it is available to everyone, not just the corporation that owns it. I liked learning what it stood for; sometimes I see those acronyms and I really don't know what the letters represent. The charts were helpful in looking at the various commands and what they mean. I also thought it was interesting to read that SQL is actually rather limited in its scope. 

David Hawking, parts 1 and 2: 

1: I learned the phrase that expresses the idea that websites have an infinite number of pages, automatic calendars. I thought that was interesting. After our lectures about lossy and lossless, I paid special attention to how the web compresses, in a sense, all the data that it must look through when doing a query. In some ways it was like lossy and lossless: it recognizes and eliminates duplication and rejects low-value content. With an internet search, though, there are other matters to consider, like data that does not pertain to what is being searched for, restricted content, and spam. I was not surprised to read about the tricks that modern spammers use to get their spam by the filter. It's clever to be able to cloak it so that the content looks different to web crawlers and the filters. 

2. The idea of a search engine having a term dictionary was curious to me. It sounded familiar, and yet different at the same time. To do a search, they look up the term so that the computer knows which sites are about that. In the same vein, document partitioning sounds a lot like divide and conquer  to me. Too, the idea of popularity is brought in here in a different way. Each site has a popularity score, depending on how often it is linked to other sites. I would imagine that those are searched first, since they have more connections. 

TED talk: 

First of all, I was glad that I could stream a video for this one, and that it wasn't more reading. It was like meeting the founders of Google. Google seems like it's different than other companies. There are the small ways: they can bring their pets to work, they can do their laundry there, and their employees don't look like the usual business professionals-- at least, from the photos that they showed. They also give to charity and charitable initiatives rather generously through the Google foundation and grants. They seem to be a big corporation that wants to stay creative and close to its roots. It tries to do this by allowing their employees 20% of their work hours to work on what they are interested in and keeping small projects going, no matter how big they may get. I was also struck by how they feel a sense of responsibility to give people access to good information that is reliable and not confused with advertising.