7. april 2007

Happy 38, Internet It can be argued that the Internet is 38 years old today, as the first Request For Comments (RFC) was issued on April 7, 1969. April 7 is often cited as a symbolic birth date of the net because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and methodologies applicable to internet technology. RFC documents provide a way for engineers and others to kick around new ideas in a public forum; sometimes, these ideas are adopted as new standards by the Internet Engineering Task Force. And if you wondered, the historical RFC 1 was written by UCLA's Steve Crocker about the Arpanet Interface Message Processor (IMP) software. I really have only the vaguest clue what that means. I guess this means the net approaches its midlife crisis. 8:41:44 PM    comment []  trackback []

'Dilettantes like Pelosi' Michael Young of Lebanon's Daily Star is furious with speaker Nancy Pelosi's naive trip to Damascus. We can thank the US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for having informed Syrian President Bashar Assad, from Beirut, that "the road to solving Lebanon's problems passes through Damascus." Now, of course, all we need to do is remind Pelosi that the spirit and letter of successive United Nations Security Council resolutions, as well as Saudi and Egyptian efforts in recent weeks, have been destined to ensure precisely the opposite: that Syria end its meddling in Lebanese affairs. Pelosi embarked on a fool's errand to Damascus this week, and among the issues she said she would raise with Assad - when she wasn't on the Lady Hester Stanhope tour in the capital of imprisoned dissidents Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, and Anwar Bunni - is "the role of Syria in supporting Hamas and Hizbullah." What the speaker doesn't seem to have realized is that if Syria is made an obligatory passage in American efforts to address the Lebanese crisis, then Hizbullah will only gain. Once Assad is re-anointed gatekeeper in Lebanon, he will have no incentive to concede anything, least of all to dilettantes like Pelosi, on an organization that would be Syria's enforcer in Beirut if it could re-impose its hegemony over its smaller neighbor. Ouch. 3:58:30 PM    comment []  trackback []

The end of the world as we know it The Norwegian newspapers are full of dire predictions about future climate change. Journalists who for years haven't known the difference between silicone and silicon, ozone layer and CO2, or anything else even remotely related to science  or mathematics, are now confidently sprouting messages of doom over humanity. It's over. We're all going to die! Brilliant timing, actually. The weather forecast for Easter was brilliant. It was also horribly wrong. On the mountains, people are now desperately trying to survive. We have snow here in Bergen, in April. I blame the extended Al Gore effect. Here's a simple rule of history: Doomsayers are wrong. Always have been, always will be, at least until the sun becomes a red giant, swallowing up our planet. If you peddle doom and gloom predictions, whether from a religious or pseudo-scientific point of view, you have history 100%, totally, against you. 2:43:34 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.05.2007; 04:52:15.