Month: May 2008

Major Overhaul Started

You may have noticed a change of format of the blog pages, starting with the header ? Same theme / style, but much re-organized.

MOST IMPORTANT – for users of my “Pirsig Pages” – notice the updated note on the old Pirsig Pages redirecting you manually to the entry point for my new Pirsig Pages. Any existing links to and within the blog pages (including the new header links) are automatically updated. If you switch your Pirsig Pages link to the new “PHP” page – any future changes will be automatic too.

So, if you link directly or via “favourites” to my Pirsig Pages,
Please switch your link
from www.psybertron.org/pirsigpages.html
to www.psybertron.org/pirsigpages.php

The link to the Pirsig Biographical Timeline is unchanged, and will remain so.

Further changes are taking place to add new blog capabilities, whilst simplifying the overloaded side-bar; to create some new pages to help organise and orientate through the subject matter; oh, and a new project – can you tell what it is yet ?

The Inter-Web-Thingy Invented ?

Yesterday I noticed yet another web 15th birthday story.

The usual Tim Berners-Lee / CERN story proposing and then releasing URL / HTML / HTTP freely. The precise birth of that “web” depends on which point in that process you consider significant – the proposal to do it (1989), the agreement to do it, the doing of it, or the agreement to let it go free (1993).

The point that always confuses me is the DARPA TCP/IP story – I’m guessing that’s the invention of the internet – network of interconnected communications – (as opposed to the web of information on the internet).

From memory that packet-based redundant / multi-route connectivity was invented for reasons of secure (US) military communications so that messages broken into packets on multiple, random network routes could never be (easily) intercepted, and a receiver could always know if a packet had been lost, since the message could not be rebuilt without it – secure as in reliable.

Let me check. Yep, that’s it – ARPANet in 1967/68. I guess the perspective that agitates W3C people is the “free” collaborative standard aspect as opposed to the earlier military need aspect of ISoc. 20 years between the internet and the web, but it “took off” when the web information standards were set free, since the important internet comms standards were already free to use.

[Post Note : Even spam pre-dates the web; almost as old as the Arpanet itself, 30 years.]

Top 100 Intellectuals

A poll of the top 100 public intellectuals, in Prospect Magazine, with an interesting take on not just voting but also suggesting an alternative; plus a blog-meme that I picked-up from Sam, to list:

(1) those with whom you could carry on a conversation.
(2) those with whom you’ve actually had any contact.
(3) those who are must-read and those who are unworthy of the listing.
(4) those you have read some, and intend to read more before confirming an opinion.
(5) those you would add to the list.

As Sam says, the number unread or unrecognized just adds to your reading list. I see Zizek appearing again – not read yet. Anyway, coming soon … my lists:

RIP – Albert Hofmann

Died yesterday aged 102. Blogged twice about his 100th Birthday.

Also this interesting story today on the effects of LSD too … change that is, created by people who were affected by it.