Hadoop: Funny Name, Powerful Software

Please explain what this is. How does it work? What computers are being used? Is this anything like BOINC?

Oh good, I'm not the only who is mystified. Though this part caught my attention:

Quoting: The key lies in mining insights from mind-boggling amounts of data. If a woman repeatedly reads reviews of sport-utility vehicles, then clicks on automotive classifieds and then orders a book about helping a child adjust to kindergarten, she might be in the market for a new family-size car, according to a Yahoo sales presentation.

So how do they know it's a woman, and how do they know it's the same woman reading all those reviews? How do they know she has a kid with kindergarten issues? This sounds like CreepyWare, not something to be happy about.

The Register had a fairly in depth write up on several weeks/months ago: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/11/hadoop_dziuba/

I was irritated by the title enough not to bother reading it.

Hadoop is nice, I used it for one class at the University. It as some time ago and it has evolved since then, so I guess it's even nicer now. They also continue the "funny name" thing and are layering a language called Pig on top of the framework. http://hadoop.apache.org/pig/

Quoting:So how do they know it's a woman, and how do they know it's the same woman reading all those reviews? How do they know she has a kid with kindergarten issues?

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