Category: billblog

While cosmologists explore a universe which exists independently of them or, except at the quantum level, their choices as to what to observe and how, things are rather different for those of us who study what is happening on the Internet.

For although the physics of electronic circuit design and the mathematics of signal processing provide some boundaries to the possible and force engineers into ever more inventive approaches to getting more processing cycles per second or bits per square centimetre, much of the design and implementation of the network architecture is a matter of choice.

Continue reading “Meet the new flaws, same as the old flaws..”

[As ever, you can also read this on the BBC News website]

The myth of the borderless Internet, never very credible to those who had any real understanding of the interplay between politics and technology that underpins the network, took another hit last week when the US Congress voted to ban bank and credit card payments to gambling firms. Continue reading “Complete control”

So I bought myself a present….

[There’s an edited version of this on the BBC News website]

Mark Cuban doesn’t think much of video-sharing site YouTube or its prospects for future growth. Speaking to a group of advertisers in New York Cuban, who might be thought to have a vested interest as the founder of a high-definition TV channel, argued that YouTube will eventually be ‘sued into oblivion’ because of copyright breaches. Continue reading “How do you solve a problem like YouTube?”

[You can also read this on the BBC News website]

If you buy a Zune player from Microsoft then you’ll be able to share your songs with your friends using its built-in wireless link.

However Microsoft, clearly worried about what the record companies will think, have decided that you’ll only be able to listen to a transferred song three times, and that after three days you won’t be able to play it at all. Continue reading “Digital enclosures”

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website]

Now that Microsoft has announced the players, accessories and online store that make up its  Zune music service we can begin to see how it stacks up against the iPod and other MP3 players.

The player has a 30Gb hard drive, much smaller than the top of the range iPod with its 80Gb of storage, but it will no doubt grow. It’s got a larger 3-inch screen, a built in FM radio tuner, and comes in three colours: white, black and brown.

Continue reading “Welcome to the Zuniverse?”

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website too]

Most of the discussions about Craigslist, the phenomenally successful classified advertising website that started over ten years ago in the US, focus on the job ads and accommodation listings and how they are challenging existing advertisers.
But the site is also used extensively for personal ads of all sorts, including many from people looking for sex with no complications.

The ads, some of them very explicit, can be found in the ‘casual encounters’ area of the personals section, behind a warning notice designed to deter children or the easily offended.
Continue reading “Who can you trust?”

Max and I were in London yesterday, and after watching Arsenal draw 1-1 against Middlesbrough (see the comment below!) we took a trip on the London Eye just as the light was beginning to fade. Excellent views…

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

I used to be a programmer, working for a small software house in Cambridge on the development of a database management system. I wrote programs in C, running on a multi-user Unix-based system that supported sixteen dumb terminals with half a megabyte of main memory and, if I remember correctly, a ten- or twenty-megabyte hard drive.
They were happy days, even if the entire office was running from a system less powerful than my swanky new XDA mobile phone with its two gigabyte memory card, and I still describe myself as a programmer sometimes, mostly when I want people to leave me alone at parties.
Continue reading “I want my XNA…”