Monthly Archives: July 2008

Randy Pausch RIP

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Randy Pausch, the popular computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon whose appetite for life was only sharpened by a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer in September 2006, has died.

Pausch’s inspirational “Last Lecture” a year later, titled “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” was posted to YouTube and became an unexpected sensation, viewed millions of times. It evolved into a best-selling book, and Pausch used his sudden celebrity to be an advocate for both cancer research and savoring life. Randy Pausch died this morning at his home. He was 47. In the “Last Lecture,” he said, “I mean I don’t know how to not have fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there’s no other way to play it. You just have to decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I’m clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. Never lose the childlike wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us.”

How big is the web?

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Nobody really knows, but here is an interesting post on the Official Google Blog…

We’ve known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we’ve seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days — when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

How do we find all those pages? We start at a set of well-connected initial pages and follow each of their links to new pages. Then we follow the links on those new pages to even more pages and so on, until we have a huge list of links. In fact, we found even more than 1 trillion individual links, but not all of them lead to unique web pages. Many pages have multiple URLs with exactly the same content or URLs that are auto-generated copies of each other. Even after removing those exact duplicates, we saw a trillion unique URLs, and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day.

So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don’t know; we don’t have time to look at them all! :-) Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite — for example, web calendars may have a “next day” link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a “new” page. We’re not doing that, obviously, since there would be little benefit to you. But this example shows that the size of the web really depends on your definition of what’s a useful page, and there is no exact answer…

The key to the past

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The Donegal coastline makes one want to be a geologist. Walking it leaves one awestruck by the evidence of the forces which have shaped and tortured the trillions of tons of rock which makes up this landscape. Looking at the segment shown in the photograph (at Maghera, near Ardara) I fell to thinking that, to a geologist, it’s probably like an open book, whereas to me it’s just awe-inspiring and opaque.

And then I fell to thinking about Charles Lyell, the geologist without whom Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection would have been incomprehensible. Evolution needs aeons to do its work, and it was Lyell who provided the evidence that the geological timescale was sufficient.

Apple’s Culture of Secrecy

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There’s a very good article by Joe Nocera in the New York Times about the recurring rumours about Steve Jobs’s health. This is a tricky subject because of the need to balance a CEO’s right to privacy with his duty to shareholders — and to a stock market which is increasingly intrusive. Mr Nocera treads the line adroitly. But his concluding passage is interesting.

It would be horrible if Mr. Jobs had a recurrence of cancer. I hope it never happens. At 53, he is in the prime of his life, the father of a young family. And for the rest of us, it’s exhilarating watching him work his magic in the marketplace. Steve Jobs has created more value and driven more innovation than just about anybody in business. Who doesn’t want to see what he’ll come up with next?

He also, though, needs to treat his shareholders with at least a modicum of respect. And telling them whether or not he is sick would be a good place to start.

On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.

Advantages of Lisbon

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One of the less-discussed advantages of the Lisbon Treaty is that it would put an end to the ‘rotating’ Presidency under which the EU is currently run. This is the Buggins Turn system in which the Prime Ministers of even piddling little states get to strut it on the world stage for six months, miming an importance and power that they do not possess. Each one embarks on his or her moment in the sun with a grandiose ‘agenda’ which, given the glacial pace of inter-governmental processes, is unachievable within the allotted term. (Nicolas Sarcozy is the current incumbent and he is determined to ‘sort out’ the Irish Referendum result.) And then the baton is passed to another, equally deluded, premier whose fantasies and pretensions have likewise to be taken seriously by EU officials.

I remember being in Ireland when we first held the Presidency. Sue and I stayed in the Westbury in Dublin, which was the official hotel for the EU Summit. We seemed to be the only non-EU residents in the entire hotel. Outside was permanent gridlock of black limousines and motorcycle outriders. I fell into conversation with a bored driver who was waiting for his assigned clutch of VIPs. “This is not a good weekend to die in Ireland”, said he. I inquired why. “Because”, he said, “the government has hired cars from every funeral director in the country. There’s nothing left out there except bloody hearses.”

Political science

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Spotted (and photographed) by Fiona in a Donegal field. At first we thought it a tribute to the literacy of Irish crows — and then realised that it was a hangover from the Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

Does Skype have a back door?

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Answer: probably yes. I’ve long suspected that anyway. Now comes this interesting report from an Austrian online news site…

According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations. At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception of IP based services held on 25th June, high-ranking officials at the Austrian interior ministry revealed that it is not a problem for them to listen in on Skype conversations.

This has been confirmed to heise online by a number of the parties present at the meeting. Skype declined to give a detailed response to specific enquiries from heise online as to whether Skype contains a back door and whether specific clients allowing access to a system or a specific key for decrypting data streams exist. The response from the eBay subsidiary’s press spokesman was brief, “Skype does not comment on media speculation. Skype has no further comment at this time.” There have been rumours of the existence of a special listening device which Skype is reported to offer for sale to interested states.

There has long been speculation that Skype may contain a back door. Because the vendor has not revealed details of its proprietary Skype protocol or of how the client works, questions as to what else Skype is capable of and what risks are involved in deploying it in an enterprise environment remain open.

Last week, Austrian broadcaster ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, reported that the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections. Interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia declined to provide heise online with a comment on the matter. He did, however, offer general comments on the meeting, which were, however, contradicted by other attendees…

I use Skype quite a lot and find it very useful for family stuff etc. But I wouldn’t use it for anything that was commercially sensitive.

Skype would be able to charge quite a hefty fee to governments for this, er, feature.

Also, I wonder how this latest speculation squares with an earlier report that I logged claiming the German police were unable to crack Skype encryption. Perhaps the Germans weren’t willing to pay Skype the required fee for entry to the back door?

Blowing in the wind

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Walking across the headland yesterday we came on something I’ve always longed to photograph — bog-cotton (er, Eriophorum angustifolium to you). It’s amazingly tough stuff, but I wouldn’t want to make a living picking it. Its presence, says Wikipedia, “is a useful indicator to hikers of potentially dangerous deep peat bogs to be avoided”. It is indeed: you should see the state of my jeans.

Dave’s bike

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Here’s an interesting stunt: David Cameron’s mountain bike was stolen recently and has now ‘turned up’ on eBay. Current bid (at 09:55 on July 25) is £1,020. Blurb reads:

Well this bike is not *exactly* new but it is *nearly* new because it has only been used for a couple of photo-opportunities.

It is BIG and BLUE and despite looking quite well-balenced [sic] it leans oddly to the right.

It would suit a real commuter right down to the ground.

I want to sell it because It ‘does not feel right’

I picked it up outside of Tesco. It comes complete with a lock (locked). Hardly a scratch on it to be honest.

Buyer should collect, directions to my South London lock-up can be found here.

Looks like a smart publicity stunt by an online gamer (who also claims to run The Omerta Shop). Wonder what eBay have to say about it. And I suppose now Gordon Brown will have to arrange for his bible to be stolen. Where will it all end?