2008 – Page 9 – The BillBlog

May 20, 2008

My del.icio.us bookmarks for May 19th through May 20th

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between May 19th and May 20th:

Slashdot | A Virtualized Linux System For Windows – If you can do this then you can build a 'hidden city' by getting virtual Linuxes to talk to each other by tunnelling over SSH.
AOL unveils Bebo integration plan | Media | guardian.co.uk – AOL's People division is an interesting way of classifying things
?My heart?s in Accra » Homophily, serendipity, xenophilia – Ethan Zuckerman on serendipity
Routine conduct at risk with MySpace suicide case – A worrying development for us all – and another example of how hard cases make very bad law

May 18, 2008

My del.icio.us bookmarks for May 15th through May 16th

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between May 15th and May 16th:

Children in Virtual Worlds – Excellent programme – looking forward to this a lot.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Gilligan’s web – Excellent critical analysis by Nick, taking on Clay Shirky… always good to see this sort of debate

May 14, 2008

Do we need two Internets?

[As ever, this is also on the BBC News website]

Jonathan Zittrain’s recent book, The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It, has spurred a lot of discussion both online and offline, with blog posts lauding his insights or criticising his over-apocalyptic imagination.

The book itself makes fascinating reading for those who have watched the network grow from its roots in the research community into today’s global channel for communications, commerce and cultural expression.

And the distinction that Zittrain makes between computers and devices that are open for hacking, exploration and creative use and those which are locked down and limited is one that we can clearly see.

An iPhone and an Asus Eee PC are very different objects, and I can’t imagine anyone scrawling ‘this machine kills fascists’ on their iPhone in homage to Woody Guthrie, while my son has just done this to his Asus.

Continue reading “Do we need two Internets?”

May 13, 2008

My del.icio.us bookmarks for May 5th through May 10th

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between May 5th and May 10th:

Slashdot | Round Robin Scheduling Not Power-Efficient – Interesting paper, and an example of how the definition of ‘efficiency’ changes as new factors are taken into account
Computing for the Future of the Planet – Andy Hopper’s research group at the Computer Lab in Cambridge
Smart electricity grid – nIce idea for managing power consumption

May 4, 2008

My del.icio.us bookmarks for March 18th through May 3rd

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between March 18th and May 3rd:

Institute of Contemporary Arts : Talks : War in the 21st Century – Will try to be there…
Still Debating With Plato – I'm a constructivist, always have been,,
Cinema Treasures | Cannon Newcastle upon Tyne – for reference
Charlie's Diary: Brand Dilution – Why it's time to leave Virgin Media and their ISP
Clare Townhill: Valley of the Dolls – commenting on the robots event at the ICA
Changes in Commuting and Working – National Business News – Portfolio.com – Fascinating piece. Thanks to Clare Townhill for spotting it
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | BBC new media boss to stand down – Ashley's off
How to Fix Venture Capital – Harvard Business Online's Umair Haque – Interesting message for my web 2.0 entrepreneurial friends…
WordPress Magazine Theme Released » Darren Hoyt Dot Com – Nice wp theme
Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » Phorm?s Harms Extend Beyond Privacy – excellent dissection of Phorm, who clearly can do no good!
Butterflies and Wheels Article by Frederick Crews – Excellent essay about rationalism
Mr Bojangles: The Big Quiz: I have a dream – Forty years since the assassination of Marin Luther King, this post from Tom Ilube makes chlling but essential reading.
COVERITLIVE.COM – Home – May be worth exploring – tagging so I remember to look later
Options WordPress Theme: What WordPress themes should be like – very nice theme… may have to use it for one of my projects
These Crazy Musicians Still Think They Should Get Paid For Recorded Music – And Mike Arrington disagrees. As you'd expect
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Meanwhile, back at the plantation – Nick Carr following through on Billy Bragg's comments on Bebo's cashin
Spamming my calendar. at TCS Innovations – My post to the TCS Innovations blog
Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery – Google Visualization API – Google Code – That's it for Office… Google Docs Spreadsheet gadgets… ubercool
BBC NEWS | Technology | The offline cost of an online life – My latest BBC column, on energy use

May 3, 2008

Twitter is the Higgs Boson of the Internet

The Higgs field is what gives particles their mass. Go into orbit and try to push a 1 tonne satellite – you can’t. It weighs nothing but its mass is unchanged by being in free fall or even in deep space, and so the force needed to change its momentum is still too great for a mere astronaut.

Without the Higgs field there would be no mass and no matter, because mass is what distorts space-time and creates the effects we interpret as the ‘force’ of gravity. Without the Higgs field there would none of this world, none of us, nothing to be conscious or conscious of.

One way of imagining what the Higgs field does it that it makes space-time exert a drag on objects, like walking through water. It’s a tiny effect, which is one reason why gravity is so weak compared to electromagnetism or the strong and weak nuclear forces, but it adds up. With enough particles you can build atoms and planets and stars and galaxies. A whole observable universe, even.

And Twitter is doing something similar in the virtual world.

Continue reading “Twitter is the Higgs Boson of the Internet”

May 3, 2008

Computer, heal thyself

[This is also on the WattWatt site, an online community for anyone concerned with energy efficiency]

Like every other product of the advanced manufacturing capabilities of a long-industrialised society the computers that surround us – and, for the pacemaker wearers among us, that we have taken into our bodies – carry an environmental cost.

Silicon may be cheap, but turning it into processors requires vast amounts of energy, clean water and many potentially toxic chemicals.

Some of the raw materials used elsewhere, like the coltan in our mobile phones, are extracted at great human and environmental cost.

Displays and casings may contain heavy metals and damaging chemicals, while the disposal of old computers is becoming a significant issue.

And the billions of processors, hard drives, screens and network devices that we increasingly rely upon consume more and more electrical energy, much of it wastefully generated from non-renewable sources that release carbon into the atmosphere.

Continue reading “Computer, heal thyself”

April 30, 2008

15 years of the public domain web

It’s fifteen years since CERN announced that web code was in the public domain

CERN letter

Tim Berners-Lee has talked on the BBC news site about the way things could go in future, and I managed 4 mins on BBC Radio 5 Live talking about why the Web matters…

[audio:https://thebillblog.com/ext/bill/bill5live.mp3]