… in 1993, CERN put the Web into the public domain. See the original document here.
Monthly Archives: April 2008
On this day…
… in 1975, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and the war was over.
The photograph shows a North Vietnamese tank entering the Presidential palace on the day.
A night at the Opera
We went to see English touring Opera’s production of Don Giovanni last night. It was competent and enjoyable, though not first rate. As usual, I had to be restrained by my lovely companion from singing along — especially when the tenor playing Don Ottavio, er underplayed Il mio tesoro. Here’s how it should be done, IMHO:
Or, even better, here’s John McCormack:
For some reason, my household seems to think that my operatic performances should be restricted to the bathroom. Bah!
Web pages continue to expand
Register report:
The mean size of a web page has more than trebled since 2003 from 97.3KB to more than 312KB, according to a review of available research by WebsiteOptimization.com.
The mean number of objects per page has meanwhile near-doubled from 25.7 to 49.9. The authors blame external objects for the majority of delays experienced by web browsers.
The last calendar year saw sites really pack on the data poundage with widgets, gadgets, web crapps, embedded video and other mashtastic tinsel. The average page swelled by more than 60KB to 312KB by the end of December. Projections put next new year’s weigh-in at 385KB.
While broadband connections have more than kept pace with the rapidly fattening web, those stuck using dial-up are increasingly marginalised, unable to view many sites unless they plan a weekend around it.
BT bundles MS Office with Linux laptop that won’t run it
Sometimes, you wonder what these folks are on. This from The Register …
This week’s award for the Most Astutely Selected Software Bundle goes to BT after the teleco tried to hook potential purchasers of Asus’ Linux-running Eee PC 900 by offering to ship it with a copy of Microsoft Office.
BT is offering the 20GB 900 for £335.99, but if anyone out there is willing to buy it for £422.34, the telco will include a copy of Office Home and Student in the box.
This despite the fact that, just a little way further down the page, BT’s list of Eee specifications admits that the elfin laptop is not “Office ready”.
The Register calculates that buying the bundle saves each punter a whopping £1.76 on the cost of purchasing the two products separately.
Like I say, what are these guys smoking?
US Department of Justice banned from Wikipedia
Interesting story…
Wikipedia has temporarily blocked edits from the US Department of Justice after someone inside the government agency tried to erase references to a particularly-controversial Wiki-scandal.
Early last week, the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) was accused of organizing a secret campaign to influence certain articles on the “free encyclopedia anyone can edit”. Just days later, the DoJ’s IP range was used to edit the site’s entry on the Pro-Israel “media-monitoring group,” lifting a new section that detailed the controversy.
The DoJ did not respond to our requests for comment. But odds are, the edits were made by a single individual acting independently. Wikipedia’s ban on the department’s IP is due to be lifted today…
The Digger fails (for once)
Well, well. The Digger may have had his way with the WSJ, but he’s come unstuck in the UK. From The Register…
An independent appeals panel has overturned a heavily-criticised decision to hand control of the myspace.co.uk domain to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Interactive Media.
Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service (DRS), had ruled in favour of MySpace in January, despite the domain having been registered by a small British ISP six years before the US social network was founded.
Barring any possible further High Court action by MySpace accusing TWS of “passing off”, the judgement, released on Thursday last week and passed to The Register today, means control of the address remains with Stockport’s Total Web Solutions (TWS).
TWS managing director Paul Fallon said: “We refused to be bullied by one of the largest media organisations in the world. This has been a very stressful case for a legitimate medium sized ISP to have to take on – but we had to defend our reputation and to stand up for what was right.”
A MySpace representative did not return a call requesting comment.
TWS originally registered myspace.co.uk in August 1997 to provide its clients with a cheap and easy-to-use homepage and email address in the early days of the web. It also registered bigspace.co.uk for the same purpose. 18 TWS customers still use @myspace.co.uk email addresses.
Bully for Mr Fallon!
Gene sequencing for the masses
Well, perhaps not quite yet. But it’s definitely on its way. This from Technology Review:
An inexpensive new gene-sequencing machine is due to hit the market next month, and its creators hope that it will make sequencing more common, ultimately giving a boost to personalized medicine. The machine is the brainchild of George Church, a genomics pioneer who developed the first direct sequencing technology as a graduate student in the 1980s and helped initiate the Human Genome Project soon after.
Church sees greater access to sequencing as a vital component in the drive toward personalized medicine, in which treatments and preventative medicine are tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup. The new machine, which was developed with an “open source” philosophy, was commercialized by Danaher Motion, based in Salem, NH, with the specific intent of keeping costs low. “It seems like the biomedical-instrument field in general tries not to commoditize,” says Church, who heads the Center for Computational Genetics at Harvard Medical School, in Boston. “It tries to keep profit margins high and slow the inevitable decrease in cost.” The Danaher device will cost roughly $150,000, a third to a tenth of the cost of systems currently on the market…
And for a few bucks more, we’ll even throw in Windows 95
Truly, you could not make this up. Latest report on the Vista downgrade story from Good Morning Silicon Valley…
The slings, arrows, snubs and insults just continue to land on poor old Windows Vista, the least-loved best-selling software in history. The latest is the decision by the three top PC makers to help their customers take advantage of an escape hatch in Microsoft’s OS program in a way that will keep Windows XP available, in a fashion, beyond the June 10 deadline for the end of retail sales. Both Vista Business and Vista Ultimate (but not Vista Home Premium or Basic) come with what turns out to be a valuable little feature — “downgrade rights.” Buyers of machines with those versions can legally wipe the brand new OS off their machines and retreat to the familiar comforts of Windows XP Professional.
With their interest in keeping their Vista-shy customers satisfied, Microsoft’s hurt feelings be damned, HP, Lenovo and Dell are now all offering product packages that include the downgrade option. HP and Lenovo will include an XP Pro recovery disk with qualifying systems, while Dell, lobbied heavily by its customers, will do the work for you, first installing Vista on your new machine, then cleaning it off and putting on XP, all in a little charade that lets Microsoft keep counting up the new Vista sales even among those who refuse to use it.
Don’t you just love the Dell ‘solution’? It’s almost as daft as having to press ‘Start’ to stop your computer.
The price of failure
Wow! This from Technology Review…
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese electronics maker Toshiba said Friday its net profit plummeted a staggering 95 percent in the January-March quarter due to losses related to its exit from the next-generation video HD DVD business.
Toshiba Corp.’s profit stood at 1.25 billion yen ($12 million), sharply down from 26.17 billion yen a year earlier.
”Our net profit sharply fell due to the end of HD DVD business,” Toshiba spokeswoman Hiroko Mochida said, adding the one-time for pulling the plug on its HD DVD business cost about 48 billion yen ($461 million)…