Category: Uncategorized

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

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.

I’ve just added a new set of photos taken back in 1987, when I walked the Coast to Coast path. There’s a couple of me looking very young. Ahh, those really were the days…

Is Everett Worth the Switch? Not to me it isn’t, especially as it seems that most of the good bits will be available as separate free downloads anyway – you just don’t get the IDE integration. I’ll definitely upgrade when Yukon is released. I mentioned Everett last November. #

Become a wireless ISP: for ?300. I really, really like this technology. #

The tool of the day is Reggie. A better regsvr32. #

The United States Army is branching out into online video gaming (yes, really). Getting decent reviews. If I were living in the middle-east right now I’d find this pretty bloody insensitive. God bless America. #

And finally, from the stale links department:

Good stuff: The Guardian Century news archive (1899-1999). Beautiful landscape photographs by Charlie Waite.

Silly stuff: Gallery of classic British TV test-cards. Dictionary of Australian slang – bonzer! A lipsum generator.

Downright strange: Database of payphone numbers. Happy Tree Friends (warning: cartoon violence/gore).

Yikes! A company called SBC Intellectual Property is claiming to have a US patent covering the concept of navigation bars (like the one on the left-side of this page) in web sites. Now they’ve started demanding licence fees from small e-commerce sites. The patent seems very broad and un-innovative to me. Hopefully, like BT’s attempt to patent hyperlinks, it’ll be struck-down.

Related madness: RIM are sued for transmitting emails over wireless networks. And Palm go down to Xerox over its graffiti. So lets get this straight – the idea of writing in a “single, unbroken stroke” is new and innovative is it?

Hard disks getting smaller: This week its 5GB in a credit-card-size form-factor, which is smaller than last week. #

Meanwhile, Cambridge University re-invents the X Terminal. Actually, the statelessness idea is quite neat. #

There is no escape: 3Mbps broadband becoming available on aircraft. You have to use an airline-supplied laptop, though. #

Latvia hosts phone throwing championship. This actually seems to be genuine.

Another bad week in the global village war. Ricin in North London, Bush is running out of patience, Blair can’t make up his mind, Fylingdales gets to work for the man for a couple more decades, and over on the other side of the city that I live in, an ordinary policeman dies with a knife in his chest.

I lived in Crumpsall for three years. I must have walked, biked, or drove past that house hundreds of times. I’ve also walked on the moors surrounding Fylingdales many times. And we’re driving down to North London tomorrow to visit Debra’s family. This is getting horribly close to my little life.

Maybe this is how it starts: a few little events, getting closer. And then, if you’re us, buildings are falling and people drop in the streets. And if you’re them, you get to watch B52s carving contrails across your sky while the bombs fall and the food and medicine run out and the rats grow fat. #

“A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre” – The United States of America has gone mad, by John Le Carre.

Personally, I’ve never met an American that I didn’t like. And I’ve met quite a few. I like their sense of fairness and justice, their pride in individuality and self-reliance, and their sense of optimism. I like Americans. But I’m starting to suspect that this is because I’ve only ever met the minority who are open-minded enough to travel abroad. #

“We have about 60 per cent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 per cent of its population. Our real task in the coming period (will be) to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world benefaction … the day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered then by idealistic slogans the better.“
– George Kennan, head of U.S. State Department Planning, February 24, 1948. #

Surfing the Apocalypse. Cool video from the Guerrilla News Network.