On random thoughts

I have been working on an article for 2600 Magazine, not really sure if it constitutes something suitable for a hacker magazine, more a computer networking thing, but I'll see how I feel about it when I am done tweaking. It's actually inspired by my article, On 802.11 networking.

This brings me around to a question my mother asked me this evening, when did The Internet start? Well actually that's a really easy question, surprising though that may sound, August 30, 1969. On the second last day of August, just 41 days after Neil Armstrong kicked up moon dust, an IMP (Interface Message Processor) was connected to a SDS Sigma-7 Minicomputer at UCLA. On October 1, 1969 a similar IMP was connected to an SDS-940 at the Stanford Research Institute. The first message to go over The Internet was "log", the Standford machine crashed before completing the first "login", a few minutes later the bug was fixed and The Internet began. IMPs would evolve into routers, although Europeans call them Intermediate Systems (hence the routing protocol, IS-IS.)

Tonight my father and I watched the movie, There Will Be Blood. That movie serves as a good reminder of how greed has always been such a driving force behind the oil industry. There is no industry that I know of, that is as corrupting as big oil. I am still trying to come to terms with what I saw, but I will say this, the camera work was outstanding, little wonder it won an Oscar for cinematography, it was well earned. Daniel Day Lewis's acting was also first rate, as was much of the rest of the cast.

On matters less technical. Lately I've spent a lot of time thinking about Tibet. I've never actually been there, but I came pretty close in the summer of 2002. Events in and around Tibet are, to put things mildly, upsetting. Frankly, and I am going to say something that I know some of my readers will have strong objections to, I think the civilized world ought to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. Quite possibly the lamest argument against a boycott, by an athlete in the letters to the editor of the paper a few days ago, was that the Olympics are about sport and Tibet is politics. First anyone who disputes the claim that sport is political is so out to lunch I don't even want to argue with them. About the only thing I know of that is more political than sport is oil. No matter it was Jesse Owens whipping the Germans in Berlin in '36, or the Black Power salute of the '68 games in Mexico city. And don't even get me started on the quadrennial selection of future sites of the games, the Olympics are so political they can, and often do, leave politicians blushing. If the Olympics are about peoples of the World coming together in the spirit of peace and fraternity, like the Israeli athletes in Munich, then putting the Olympics in Beijing is an insult to the intelligence of all people, everywhere. Besides, sending athletes to Beijing to breath the air there is, foolish at best.

I believe that the government of China is a two sided entity, one side we can call it the George Bush side, wants to show off how advanced it is, the greatness of the Chinese space program, the Olympics, the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010, the maglev from Pudong Airport to Shanghai and so on. The other side, the Dick Chenney part of the communist party was evident in Tien-An-Men Square in 1989 and is visible today in Tibet. Personally I will continue to voice my opposition to the 2008 Olympics and I can only hope that athletes out there consider that by going to Beijing they are silent in the face of tyranny. Tyranny does not require our support, simply our silence.