Author Archive
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Monday, March 12th, 2012Google has posted a nice little video about Bletchley Park and the Colossus machine, including nice remembrances of hardware designer Tommy Flowers. There’s also a posting about Tommy Flowers in the Google blog. I had the opportunity to see the reconstruction of Colossus in operation, breaking actual codes, when I visited the British National Museum […]
Does the New York Times paywall misuse HTTP?
Thursday, December 1st, 2011Many people have commented on the pros and cons of the New York Times paywall. Most of these comments debate the effectiveness of the paywall in meeting the Times’ financial goals, discuss ways in which users will circumvent the paywall, etc. Here I’d like to explore a different issue: it seems to me that the […]
Book: The first war of physics: the secret history of the atom bomb, 1939-1949
Sunday, September 4th, 2011I’m hoping to do more book reviews here, as I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading this year. So, here’s one to get started… The first war of physics : the secret history of the atom bomb, 1939-1949 [ISBN: 1605981974] by Jim Baggott is an excellent history of the physics, politics, wartime events and […]
Detecting ISPs that violate network neutrality
Sunday, August 21st, 2011Dan Kaminsky has a really interesting talk at Chaos Communication Camp 2011 showing how to quite reliably detect ISPs that artificially delay traffic to particular sites (video of Dan’s talk). Note that the first 2/3 of the talk is a very interesting exploration of the security characteristics of Bitcoin, also showing how the Bitcoin database […]
Four Rock City Band appearances in May
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011I have gotten out of the habit of announcing all of our Rock City Band appearances here on the blog, in part because I’m now keeping a mailing list for those who are interested. May is a particularly busy month for us, with four appearances coming up, so I thought I’d make an exception and […]
Why the New York Times paywall is not like public radio
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011One of the excuses that’s been trotted out by several commentators in defense of the New York Times paywall is that it’s “just like public radio”. Well, no. When I contribute to public radio, which I do, my contribution helps make all of that content freely available to everyone. If I “contribute” to the New […]
Documents in applications
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011It has become fashionable to divide Web resources into two broad categories: each resource is either a document, rendered primarily in HTML, or an AJAX-style Web application that uses Javascript to facilitate very dynamic interaction, navigation and information retrieval. My purpose here is to argue that we need to be more careful, that many AJAX […]
Rock City Band March 2011 Appearances
Monday, March 7th, 2011Rock City Band is appearing for two nights, March 18 & 19th, at Princeton Station in Chelmsford, MA. We’re on from 9PM to 1AM both nights. We’ve got three more gigs in early April too.
Jeni Tennison appointed to the TAG
Monday, March 7th, 2011When I said all those nice things about Jeni Tennison yesterday I was not yet aware that she had been appointed to join our W3C Technical Architecture Group. Well, now she has been. Terrific news for us and for the Web!
Jeni’s terrific post on #!
Monday, March 7th, 2011There are excellent introductions to the !# controversy available from Tim Bray (Broken links) and Mike Davies (Breaking the Web with hasb-bangs), but Jeni Tennison last night posted a truly remarkable, detailed and insightful analysis. Very, very highly recommended. I confess that I’m not entirely comfortable with her conclusion that “hash-bang URIs are an important […]
Updated post: what’s that AF-ON button for anyway?
Sunday, February 13th, 2011I’ve added a brief new section titled “Exposure and AF-ON” to the entry DSLR hint: what’s that AF-ON button for anyway?
Four Rock City Band gigs in the next 3 weeks
Sunday, January 30th, 2011I’ll be playing bass for Rock City Band four times in the next few weeks: Saturday, Feb. 5th, at Princeton Station in Chelmsford, MA. If you live in northern Boston suburbs like Arlington or Lexington, this is about 20 minutes up Route 3. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 11th and 12th, in the lounge at the […]
Some interesting readings in Computer Science
Friday, January 21st, 2011I’ve just posted on the main Arcane Domain Web site a short bibliography of Computer Science papers that I have found to be particularly worthwhile. There’s no attempt here to be comprehensive or balanced. Rather, it’s a list of papers that I think are interesting, well written, of unusual historical significance, or just under-appreciated. A […]
Joining the band
Monday, January 3rd, 2011After several years as the backup, I’ve just joined Rock City Band as their full time bass player — first gig is this Friday, January 7th, at Princeton Station in Chelmsford, MA, 9 PM to 1 AM. We’ll also be welcoming back the terrific Brenda White as our lead vocalist. Schedules, song lists, and other […]
The Web is 20 Years Old Today
Saturday, December 25th, 2010Twenty years ago today, on December 25th, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau first successfully connected a browser to a Web server — the Web as an operational system is 20 years old today.
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