The emergence of the internet has disrupted the equilibrium in the entertainment world and radically changed the way content providers and users interact. It was no longer just through televisions or radios at a certain set time but also through the web on-demand available 24/7 with just a click of a button. The music industry […]

Referenced Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/18/conservation.aaas
There are many situations that involve a finite amount of a very valuable resource. Everybody involved has an interest in procuring portions of that resource (often as much of it as possible), but it is in nobody’s interest alone to conserve or maintain that resource. There is a conflict between adhering to self-interest […]

Referenced Paper: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1090000/1080199/p116-jun.pdf?key1=1080199&key2=1552844021&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=18506295&CFTOKEN=73653288
BitTorrent is a protocol for downloading large files, and is often a faster alternative to regular client-server downloading. Essentially, BitTorrent is able to increase download speeds by utilizing a network of people downloading the same file at the same time. The network of people, in BitTorrent terminology, is referred to as […]

http://irl.eecs.umich.edu/jamin/courses/eecs494/fall06/lectures/lecture12-balance.pdf
The link above is a pdf file that describes how game theory is used to make games more interesting. As an example, the balance among the three races of Starcraft:Broodwar showed up. The three races are Zerg, Terran, and Protoss. One of the reasons that this computer game has been such a hit is that […]

http://www.egwald.ca/operationsresearch/chickengame.php
The link above describes a variation of the Hawk/Dove game theory, as presented in a popular James Dean movie. In this game, there is no dominant strategy for each player. Two people drive their cars towards a cliff or each other; the first person to jump out is the chicken, while the last is the […]

At http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm, howstuffworks explains how the internet is physically connected, and we can relate the internet to some important ideas of graph theory. Say we have a computer in a corporate network (A) that wants to connect to a computer (B) across the country, on some other network. If we start with a […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/technology/26tube.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/pakistan-blamed-for-worldwide-youtube-break/?ex=1204606800&en=1911c530be444f91&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Although I was not personally aware of it at the time, apparently YouTube was made unavailable to most of the world this past Sunday for a period of about 2 hours because of an alleged accident made by the Pakistani state-operated Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). The two above links will direct you a New York […]

Reporters tap into social networks and find gold
Social networking websites have certainly gained prominence in the past several years. Less than a decade ago, social networking sites were practically unheard of. Now, MySpace, Facebook, and their lesser-known competitors play a major role in the lives of over 300 million people. With such a large […]

As I write this blog post, I’m engaging some opponents in fierce online gameplay in Settlers of Catan.  As far as I can remember, I’ve played online multiplayer games since I was in 4th grade-starting out games against computer A.I “bots”, and then working my way up to people I’ve never met before online toward 7th […]

New Scientist Tech: Wireless worms will follow influenza’s example
It probably comes as a surprise to many people as to how closely real-life flu is related to its digital counterpart, or rather, the other way round. After all, wireless worms are just mere exploit codes running on devices capable of communicating with other devices. Devices […]