Instant restore after a media failure

Media failures usually leave database systems unavailable for several hours until recovery is complete, especially in applications with large devices and high transaction volume. Previous work introduced a technique called single-pass restore, which increases restore bandwidth and thus substantially decreases time to repair. Instant restore goes further as it permits read/write access to any data on a device undergoing restore--even data not yet restored--by restoring individual data segments on demand. Thus, the restore process is guided primarily by the needs of applications, and the observed mean time to repair is effectively reduced from several hours to a few seconds. This paper presents an implementation and evaluation of instant restore. The technique is incrementally implemented on a system starting with the traditional ARIES design for logging and recovery. Experiments show that the transaction latency perceived after a media failure can be cut down to less than a second and that the overhead imposed by the technique on normal processing is minimal. The net effect is that a few "nines" of availability are added to the system using simple and low-overhead software techniques

A Report on the Media and the Immigration Debate

Analyzes media coverage of immigration since 1980 and how industry practices and new media have conditioned the public to associate immigration with illegality, crisis, controversy, and government failure, causing a stalemate in the policy debate

A Critical Appraisal of Remedies in the EU Microsoft Cases

We discuss and compare the remedies in the two cases antitrust cases of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft. The first EU case alleged (i) that Microsoft illegally bundled the Windows Media Player (WMP) with Windows; and (ii) that Microsoft did not provide adequate documentation that would allow full interoperability between Windows servers and non-Microsoft servers as well as between Windows clients and non-Microsoft servers. After finding Microsoft liable and imposing a large fine, the EU imposed as remedies the requirements on Microsoft (i) to sell a version of Windows without WMP (Windows-N); and (ii) to publish and license interoperability information. Windows-N was a commercial failure, and there has been only limited cross-platform server entry. In its second investigation of Microsoft, the EU alleged illegal tying of Internet Explorer (IE) with Windows. The EU settled with Microsoft with Microsoft undertaking the obligation to ask (through compulsory Windows updates) consumers whose computers have Internet Explorer pre-installed to choose a browser from a menu of competing browsers. Thus, the EU imposed quite different remedies in the two cases: an unbundling remedy for the WMP but a close to a must-carry requirement for IE. We analyze and compare the different approaches.antitrust, remedies, Microsoft, complementarity, innovation, efficiency, monopoly, oligopoly, media player, interoperability, Internet browser

Atossa’s Dream Yoking Music and Dance, Antiquity and Modernity in Maurice Emmanuel’s Salamine (1929)

This essay explores the conflicting trends of tradition and modernism, unity and independence in Parisian musical and dance culture in the late 1920s through an analysis of Maurice Emmanuel’s (1863-1938) aesthetics of contemporary and ancient Greek music and dance. It begins by outlining and critiquing Emmanuel’s relevant scholarly contributions to ancient Greek dance history and music history before demonstrating how these tensions manifested in the 1929 production of Emmanuel’s opera Salamine based on Aeschylus’s The Persians. Exploring Emmanuel’s aesthetics of music and dance (ancient and modern) affords a unique opportunity to see how these creative media were theorized and practiced in the tumultuous years after the Ballets russes, while illustrating some of the conflicts between what Léandre Vaillat termed “the academic and the eurhythmic” in dance and music

Shifting the Conversation: Colbert\u27s Super PAC and the measurement of satirical efficacy

Stephen Colbert’s announcement in 2011 that he was starting his own Super PAC oneupped The Colbert Report’s already substantial commitment to boundary muddling. By raising real money, producing commercials, and exploring the nuances of campaign finance regulations, Colbert acted out his critique of current law in tangible form. The novelty of the experiment created anticipation amongst fans and commentators that the project would have a direct effect on attitudes about campaign finance, or that Colbert would veer into clear advocacy work. Indeed, expectations matched the standard assumptions about satire: that efficacy should be gauged by measurable influence on individual opinions. In reality, the PAC’s commercials likely did not influence many outside his existent fan group. However, the project as a whole did work to license journalistic attention and to impact the wider debate about campaign finance. The example demonstrates that the more grandiose expectations of political entertainment are often misdirected, as they are premised on the prospect of instant audience malleability. Rather the most interesting possibilities involve more incremental shifts in the public conversation

Trump as a Constitutional Failure

The election of Donald Trump as president represented a failure of American politics. Trump is a serial liar, a sexual predator, deeply conflicted financially, hostile to bedrock democratic institutions such as free press, and ignorant of even the broad brushstrokes of important policy matters. The best evidence suggests that he is a white nationalist, a plutocrat, and a professional con artist, dangerously attracted to corrupt and incompetent sycophants, self-obsessed and aggressive to the point of psychopathy, and otherwise temperamentally unfit to be in charge of the world’s largest military and nuclear arsenal. There is some evidence that Trump or members of his campaign conspired with a hostile foreign power to help secure his election. His electoral opponent (whom he promised to prosecute criminally if elected) re-ceived nearly three million more votes than he did, and he assumed office as the least popular elected president in recorded history. No credible account of a healthy electoral process can abide Trump’s election as an acceptable outcome of that process. But you want to know what I really think. Less clear than the status of the Trump presidency as a political failure is whether Trump’s election also represented a failure of the U.S. Constitution. Do our constitutional arrangements predict just the kind of political failure that materialized in November 2016? If so, does that mean that the long-term remedy for that failure lies in constitutional reform? Does our constitutional fate, in other words, determine our political fate

A successful failure: Russia after Crime(a)

Russia has become a very different country since it annexed Crimea three years ago. By breaching international law, its relations with the West are now fraught with tension, even in areas where there was once hope of cooperation. In a bid to reduce its dependence on Europe, Russia has touted its pivot to Asia and its Eurasian Economic Union, but those wheels have been slow to turn. Inside the country, three years of economic stagnation have followed that historic takeover of 2014. Sanctions are biting, and so are low global oil prices. Within the government bureaucracy itself, power struggles are underway: new ideologies and new faces are jostling for prominence. The aim of this book is to provide an analysis of these trends providing a road map for anyone seeking to understand the workings of "post-Crimean" Russia. It includes studies of Russia-West relations, the role of sanctions, Western policy towards Ukraine, anti-Americanism, Russia's military doctrine, the fate of its army’s modernization plans, migration, the increasing "weaponization" of history, and the government's attempts to build a new "Crimean consensus" with Russian society, a reworked social contract emphasizing traditional values and a vastly different understanding of human rights to that in the West

A Critical Appraisal of Remedies in the EU Microsoft Cases

We discuss and compare the remedies from the European Union’s two cases against Microsoft. The first E.U. case ("E.U. Microsoft I") alleged that Microsoft illegally bundled the Windows Media Player with Windows and that Microsoft did not provide adequate documentation that would allow full interoperability between Windows servers and non- Microsoft servers, as well as between Windows clients and non-Microsoft servers. After finding Microsoft liable and imposing a large fine, the E.U. imposed as remedies two requirements on Microsoft: (1) to sell a version of Windows without Windows Media Player ("Windows-N") and (2) to publish and license interoperability information. Windows-N was a commercial failure, and there has been only limited cross-platform server entry. In its second investigation of Microsoft ("E.U. Microsoft II"), the E.U. alleged illegal tying of Internet Explorer with Windows. The E.U. settled with Microsoft by having them accept the "choice screen proposal": an obligation to ask consumers whose computers have Internet Explorer pre-installed to choose a browser from a menu of competing browsers through compulsory Windows updates. Thus, the E.U. imposed quite different remedies in the two cases: an unbundling remedy for the Windows Media Player but close to a must-carry requirement for Internet Explorer. We analyze and compare the different approaches

Resisting Obsolescence: Polaroid Practices in the 'Digital Age'

This thesis looks at today’s Polaroid practice in order to explore questions of the materiality of media, its agency, and the possibilities of media technologies to challenge and resist processes of obsolescence. By approaching Polaroid from a perspective that encompasses the material and social realm of the practice, and drawing on a 12-month networked ethnography that focused on the online and offline sites the practice inhabits, this thesis looks at the social, material, and cultural meanings of Polaroid in relation to other photographic practices today. Through the analysis of online digital platforms, mainly Polaroid dedicated Facebook groups, and the offline sites where members of Polaroid-centred communities gather (London and Vienna), this thesis explores the way Polaroid as a practice is produced, consumed and circulated. In addition, this research seeks to contribute to the understanding of media technologies not only as transmitters of content but also as enablers of sociality, in a context in which this sociality (and by extension, materiality) is fundamental for the infrastructural maintenance of the practice. By reading Polaroid media technology in terms of both continuity and transformation, and tradition and innovation, this thesis proposes three main arguments. (1) Analogue and digital photographic practices do not stand in opposition to one another but in a supplementary relationship in which each practice informs the other. (2) It is through residual practices and the building of an informal infrastructure that so-called obsolete technologies can continue to intersect the present and challenge assumptions of technological progress. (3) Obsolescence is a mutable, variable category that is not necessarily related to the material dimensions of the media object, but to ideological discourses that see progress through material culture