Stanford Experts on Climate Change and Carbon Trading
Google engEDU
1 hr 42 min - Jan 27, 2006

Google TechTalks
January 27, 2006

Thomas C. Heller and Stephen H. Schneider

Abstract
Please join two distinguished Stanford Professors, Dr. Stephen Schneider and Professor Thomas Heller, for a discussion on climate change and the emerging carbon trading markets. Dr. Schneider is one of the world’s leading scientific experts of climate change (his name is cited on all those climate change charts and graphs we’ve seen so far). Dr. Heller has extensive experience with policy and negotiations surrounding climate change and sustainable development. Professor Heller also recently served as Sergey’s host at the recent UN Climate Change Conference meeting in Montreal where Prof. Heller proved his indepth knowledge of thenuances of legislative works, such as the Kyoto Protocol, and the mechanisms that are currently being employed.

This tech talk will be different than our previous climate change talks. These men have helped steered the international course of policy, scientific verifications and the overall consensus on the existence of climate change. They both have plenty to say about what the failures and successes have been along the way, and what their predictions for the future of climate change policy will be. Email me if you have any questions. Read the rest of this entry »

A Googly MySQL Cluster Talk
Google engEDU
55 min - Apr 28, 2006

Google TechTalks
April 28, 2006

Stewart Smith
Stewart Smith works for MySQL AB as a software engineer working on MySQL Cluster. He is an active member of the free and open source software community, especially in Australia.

ABSTRACT
Part 1 - Introduction to MySQL Cluster The NDB storage engine (MySQL Cluster) is a high-availability storage engine for MySQL. It provides synchronous replication between storage nodes and many mysql servers having a consistent view of the database. In 4.1 and 5.0 it’s a main memory database, but in 5.1 non-indexed attributes can be stored on disk. NDB also provides a lot of determinism in system resource usage. I’ll talk a bit about that.

Part 2 - New features in 5.1 including cluster to cluster replication, disk based data and a bunch of other things. anybody that is attending the mysql users conference may find this eerily familiar. Read the rest of this entry »

Algorithmic Mechanism Design
Google engEDU
57 min - Aug 15, 2007

Google Tech Talks
August 15, 2007

ABSTRACT

One of the challenges that the Internet raises is the necessity of designing distributed protocols for settings where the participating computers are owned and operated by different owners with different goals. Over the last decade or so there has been much research that aims to address these issues using ideas taken from the micro-economic field of mechanism design. In this talk I will survey the current state of the field: how mechanism design is applied in computational settings, how far can classical ideas go, and what are the challenges for further research. Among the applications discussed will be combinatorial auctions, cost sharing, scheduling, and routing in networks. Read the rest of this entry »

Sowing the Seeds for a more Creative Society
Google engEDU
54 min - Oct 26, 2006

Google Tech Talks
October 26, 2006

Mitchel Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Laboratory, develops new technologies and activities to engage people (especially children) in creative learning experiences. Resnicks Lifelong Kindergarten research group developed ideas and technologies underlying the LEGO Mindstorms and PicoCricket construction kits. He co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, a network of after-school centers where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Resnick earned a BA in physics at Princeton University (1978), and MS and PhD degrees in computer science at MIT (1988, 1992). Resnick has consulted throughout the world on the use of computers in education. He is author of Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (1994), co-editor of Constructionism in Practice (1996), and co-author of Adventures in Modeling (2001).

ABSTRACT
In the 1980s, many people talked about the transition from the "Industrial Society" to the "Information Society." In the 1990s, people began to talk about the "Knowledge Society." But as I see it, we are now in a transition towards the "Creative Society." Success in the future (for individuals, for companies, for nations as a whole) will be based not on what we know or how much we know, but on our ability to think and act creatively. Unfortunately, current educational practices are woefully inadequate. In this talk, I will discuss new technologies and new educational initiatives designed specifically to help children develop as creative thinkers — so that they are prepared for life in the Creative Society. I will focus especially on two projects we are developing at the MIT Media Lab: (1) a new programming language, called Scratch, that makes it easier for kids to create animated stories, games, and interactive art — and share their creations with one another online ( http://scratch.mit.edu), and (2) a new breed of construction kit that combines art and technology, enabling kids to create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, and other artistic inventions — and learn important math, science, and engineering ideas in the process. For more information, see scratch.mit.edu and www.picocricket.com and llk.media.mit.edu Read the rest of this entry »

Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second Price Auction
Google engEDU
1 hr 3 min - Feb 9, 2006

Google TechTalks
February 9, 2006

Michael Schwarz

Michael Schwarz served as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Economics Department after earning a Ph.D. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economics Research. Dr. Schwarz specializes in economic theory and industrial organization and applications of theory to business decision making and public policy.

ABSTRACT
We investigate the "generalized second price" auction (GSP), a new mechanism which is used by search engines to sell online advertising that most Internet users encounter daily. GSP is tailored to its unique environment, and neither the mechanism nor the environment have previously been studied in the mechanism design literature. Although GSP looks similar to the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism, its properties are very different. In particular, unlike the VCG mechanism, GSP generally does not have an equilibrium in dominant strategies, and truth-telling is not an equilibrium of GSP. To analyze the properties of GSP in a dynamic environment, we describe the generalized English auction that corresponds to the GSP and show that it has a unique equilibrium. This is an ex post equilibrium that results in the same payoffs to all players as the dominant strategy equilibrium of VCG. Read the rest of this entry »