You may have heard about the Comcast/Level 3 dispute around the ‘tubes by now. If not, then a few links for background are in order. They each give a summary, so pick your favorite. NY Times – Media Encoder Blog Ars Technica Susan Crawford My summary is this: Level 3 runs a major Internet backbone … [Read more…]
The “most emailed” story in the NY Times today is about the prices and costs of sending text messages from a mobile phone. Mobile phone companies charge an arm and a leg for these–in terms of markup on costs it has to be the single most lucrative service they offer. US carriers charge 20 cents … [Read more…]
The Oxford Bodeian Library‘s collection is one of the main tangible things that makes Oxford a world-class research institution. The troves of primary sources, obscure titles, and first editions make it a mecca for historical and literary research. This is a promise which I don’t think the Oxford Libraries live up to in practice, because … [Read more…]
There’s another problem with passwords which deserves its own post: what do you do when you forget one? It’s bound to happen, right? With so many passwords floating around in our heads, we inevitably forget one entirely or forget which password goes with which account. Sites can’t just tell you to get lost when you … [Read more…]
Maybe Microsoft should move its headquarters to 1 Infinite Loop. This morning, while trying to send out some mail in Microsoft’s Outlook 2007, I noticed that after nearly 10 minutes, the message I tried to send was still sitting in my Outbox. When I clicked “Send/Receive,” like ya do, Outlook decided to get stuck in … [Read more…]
Uniform Resource Locators, commonly known as URLs are the address system for finding things on the internet. Unfortunately, they’re often not very humane. Can you imagine having to type this lovely example into your browser (much less trying to remember it!) http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000100000020200502000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes Yikes! (This, by the way, is the URL of our new physics paper) … [Read more…]
I’m a student at the University of Oxford, and as is standard practice, they provide a email system for staff and students. It’s called Herald, and I assume it’s a home-grown email server that has evolved from code written in the 1980s. It’s a piece of crap. I kid, I kid! Admittedly, that’s probably dropping … [Read more…]