Author: andy

Rotisserie – an interesting approach to threaded discussion lists.

Another quiet week, blog-wise. I was up in the Lake District on a short pre-war backpacking trip. It rained almost continuously every day except Friday, which was warm and sunny with a completely cloudless blue sky. It was also the day I had to travel home. Still, an enjoyable and strenuous week. Photos should appear in the photos area soon. #

I spent the evenings simultaneously trying not to worry about the coming war, and re-reading a battered old copy of 1984. Consequently, I now have a solid grounding in the principles of doublethink. #

Some reading material to pass the time before the 24 hour rolling coverage starts:

Farewell to the old world (Guardian). “Momentous events and decisions, each weighty in its own terms, are tripping over each other. There is a sense of history suddenly speeding up, of a loss of control…“

The war of misinformation has begun, by Robert Fisk (Independent).

Project for the New American Century: Statement of Principles. Check out the names at the bottom of the page. Double-plus-scary.

George W. Queeg (New York Times). “But more and more people now realize that even if all goes well at first, it will have been the wrong war, fought for the wrong reasons ? and there will be a heavy price to pay.” (Confused about the title? I was. Try this).

America’s deep Christian faith (BBC). “It’s not uncommon to see White House functionaries hurrying down corridors carrying bibles.“

The Thirty-Year Itch (MotherJones.com). “Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington’s hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf’s oil.“

The day the earth died (The Observer). Victims recall Japan’s WWII bio-weapons tests.

Off to bed now, to try to sleep.

www.boring.com – Is this real, or some kind of elaborate joke?

Much to my surprise, Its a month since I last posted anything to this blog. Blame moving house and all the associated life-trauma. Anyway, normal service has now been resumed. #

I’m currently having another try at using a news aggregator. This time its NewsGator, which runs as an add-in to Outlook. So far I really like it. Even better, its only $29! #

Don Box on XML, late night phone calls, and sleep. This is cool – like an extract from Microserfs. I haven’t done an all-night coding session for about ten years, and I think my eyeballs would probably drop out of my skull if I tried it now. Don, you’re my hero. #

Paul Thurrott has a fascinating series of articles on the development of Windows from NT 3.51 to Windows Server 2003. Well worth a read. #

Wired News has an article about a guy who claims to have developed software that can visually digitize a vinyl record. You scan the record using a flatbed scanner, and the program reconstructs the music from patterns of light and dark in the image. I’m skeptical about this: even if the record is clean and the scan resolution is good enough, I just can’t believe that the music quality is going to be any good. Since I don’t have a scanner or any records, my opinion is unlikely to change. Nice idea though. #

Look. The reason I haven’t installed Three Degrees is because I haven’t got Windows XP. Okay.  Its not because I’m too old to understand it, and its definitely not because my attention span isn’t short enough. Got that? Anyway, review here continues here. Check here for how this abomination came into existence. #

Interesting paper (PDF) from AT&T Research on counting hosts behind a NAT box. #

And this one was probably on slashdot too: Millennium Prize problems in mathematics.

We’re moving house on Friday. Gotta start packing today.

NASA TV is webcasting briefings at 1630 GMT from NASA HQ and  2130 GTM today from the Johnson space centre. My experience of the last couple of days is that their streaming video servers is give up when heavily loaded. Broadcast.com/Yahoo has alternative feeds, and they support Windows Media Player. #

A good example of a blog covering the Columbia disaster. CNN’s timeline. #

NASA has a couple of mailing lists that I’ve found useful. For press releases, email majordomo@lists.hq.nasa.gov with “subscribe press-release” in the message body. For human spaceflight news, email majordomo@listserver.jsc.nasa.gov with “subscribe hsfnews” in the message body.

We were out shopping for vegetables when the space shuttle broke up over Texas. I was buying onions and spinach, and they were dropping down from orbit at Mach 18 in their big white spacecraft, watching the wings glow red and the sky grow lighter. A normal Saturday afternoon for me, until the TV coverage kicks in and, just like the Challenger in ’86, we watch contrails in the sky over and over and over…

A lot has been written about what happened yesterday. As usual, many people are questioning the need for manned space flight – on the ground of cost, safety, and scientific effectiveness. Some are saying that know is the time to ground the shuttles and mothball the space station. I think that they miss the point. Human exploration of space is important for the scientific knowledge it brings now, for the economic benefits it may soon begin to produce, and for our long-term destiny as a species. But it’s also important for us, now.

As a child, I had a telescope and like many, I dreamed of space flight. Then I grew-up and, of course, filled my life with the things that adults do: like going to work and reading newspapers and shopping for veg on a Saturday afternoon. I’ll never see a sunrise from orbit, or watch the sea and land turn beneath me. Somewhere deep inside me, the child that I was feels sadness at that; at never going up there. As an adult, though, I’m happy enough that someone is doing it. As long as I know that some part of the human species is out there, doing the job on all our behalves, I don’t mind taking care of the little things.

The exploration of space is trancendant, powerful, heroic, mythic. It’s not just about a few individuals: its characteristic of us all as humans. They do it for us. For you and me.

And thats why we have to carry on doing this. And not ever stop.

Good article on mobile blogging in Business 2.0. Apparently we’re supposed to call them “moblogs”. I mentioned this subject a couple of weeks ago. #

Classic science paper of the day: As We May Think by Vannevar Bush. Written in 1945, this is the original paper on hypertext, human-computer interaction, and many other fields. It also influenced amazing people like Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, and Douglas Engelbart. I first read this paper as a graduate student over ten years ago and it was such a pleasure to find it again. Another classic tomorrow. #

(I promised myself I’d keep the War/Bush stuff to a minimum today, but this one from toostupidtobepresident.com is just too good!)

I had an interesting idea for a personal security/cryptography product (and a corresponding market niche) recently, so I’ve been doing some reading about the CLR’s crypto classes. VisualStudio Magazine has some decent articles here and here and here. Food for thought… #

Wired has a good piece about the RIAA‘s attempts to shut down Kazaa, and Kazaa’s attempts to resist. This is deeply cool: networks of off-shore front companies, crypto, edgy software, decentralised networks, worryingly foreign-sounding names. Think data havens. Think Cryptonomicon. Bruce Sterling. Neuromancer. Entire business models liquefying into obsolescence like melting ice. Starving record-company execs begging on the streets for the price of a can of Special Brew… #

Anyway *cough* where was I? Ah yes, crypto. Adi Shamir, who muddied the waters a few years ago with Twinkle, is now describing an faster, hardware-based implementation of the Number Field Sieve factoring algorithm. He claims that his new device, called Twirl, should be able to factor 1024-bit RSA keys in under a year with a $10M cost. Frankly, I don’t have the maths to even begin to understand his paper or whether it might scale-up to, say, military-strength 2048 bit keys; but if it does then its goodbye banking system. I’m waiting for Bruce Schneier to tell me what to think about this one.

Can’t wait for Gulf War II? Then play the game. Great stuff. #

Oh wait, the real thing might already of started. Plenty of happenings “with possible British involvement” being reported here. #

The Herald Tribune has a thoughtful article on the coming war by William Pfaff:

“The difference between European and American views is more sensibly explained in terms of an irresponsible and ideology-fed enthusiasm of Bush administration advisers and leaders for global adventure and power, fostered by people with virtually no experience, and little seeming imaginative grasp, of what war means for its victims.”  Europe and America: Some know more about war #

Finally, here’s your very own cut-out-and-keep list of handy links for when you see that suspicious-looking crop-duster circling the city centre:

Patterns of Global Terrorism, brought to you by the US Dept of State Counterterrorism Office.

Center for the Study of Bioterrorism and Emerging Infections at St. Louis University.

TOXNET: Materials on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, and related areas from the US National Institutes of Health.

State of Michigan Biodefense Resource Centre.

Can Terrorists Build Nuclear Weapons? From the Nuclear Control Institute. They also have the entertaining Nuclear Terrorism – How To Prevent It.

UK Resilience, from our own dear government.