Miscellany

(Credits)

Item on BBC Ceefax 13-Jan-1996:

A post card sent from a PoW camp in 1941 has arrived at last.

One of H.G. Wells' predictions:

World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia (original link)

The Information Society: Agenda for Action in the UK

The House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology report - fascinating & worthy - now will it happen?

Risks Digest (local archive Dec-1991...)

Lots of fascinating and funny (and not so funny) stories about the risks of computer systems

The Coming Software Shift

Software's complexity has long been rising exponentially yet power to get real work done has been rising additively. When you try to get several ever more complex software products to work together, there should be significant synergy: usually though there are modest gains (hence the "additive" judgement). Thus new Parkinson's Laws for software:

• Software expands to fill the available memory
• Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware gets faster

The article also gives a fascinating description of the history of Netscape and the people behind it.

George Gilder's Telecosm archive.

Item in the CEN on 29-Apr-1997:

An Italian mayor failed to get reelected, even though he was the only candidate, as the turnout was so low in the village of Clauzetto (north of Venice). He got less that the minimum 50% of votes.

Posted to uk.sci.weather on 12 May 97 by Rob Bale:

I don't know if anyone in the Met Office can confirm this. There was painting being done in the corridors of the Met Office and the usual sign WET PAINT was displayed to which someone had added BECOMING DRIER LATER.

The Trabant

The UK Trabant Owners Home Page

The Trabant at Anglia

FAQ: Moving from the US to the UK and An Outsider's Practical Guide to Cambridge.

A fascinating read - lots of unexpected things need to be said (e.g. incompatible refridgerator sizes) and interesting perceptions.

Item in the CEN 10-May-1997:

A volume of A Complete History of England by Bishop White Kennett has been on loan from Havard Library for 233 years - a bookseller has offered to sell it back to the Library.

Online Community Initiatives

Online communities, articles, discussion and related sites.

"Free Speech Online"/the "Blue Ribbon" campaign/the U.S. Communications Decency Act

I'm all for free speech generally but so many Web pages, not just in the U.S.A., featured this during 1996 & 1997 due to the CDA, culminating in pages such as the Profoundly Repugnant CDA page at JASBITS. I never understood what the fuss was all about for those outside the U.S.A. (though I respect the concern & sincerity): previous barmy U.S. legislation such as Prohibition was just a curiousity to the rest of the world. In any case it seemed inevitable the CDA would be declared unconstitutional (as it has). I think it's more repugnant that a world-famous hospital for sick children is being denied its rightful royalties.

Area Accurate Map: The Peters Projection

The interest here is why it's not caught on - it gives a far better world view

Tim Berners-Lee on the World Wide Web - past, present & future

Scottish Voluntary Euthanasia Society Homepage

A history of Anglia Polytechnic University

Page last updated 26-JUL-1997