20 August 2002

ISOC may run Dot Org Domain INFORMATION WORLD.com -- It appears that ISOC will run the .org domain. The Web's governing body has issued a report recommending the Internet Society over 10 other competitors vying to run the .org domain when VeriSign relinquishes it in January.

Irish Computing Students Declining TIPPERARY INSTITUTE -- Just like it says in on the front page of The Irish Times, college students are shunning computer courses.Some say that's because of mounting job losses in the tech sector. Others argue that only computer lovers should take college computing courses or that student expectations have changed.

Blocking RIAA from the Internet INFORMATION WAVE.net -- Information Wave Technologies is blocking the RIAA from its network. Earlier this year, the RIAA announced its new plan to access computers without owner's consent for the sake of protecting its assets. Information Wave believes this policy puts its customers at risk of unintentional damage, corporate espionage, and invasion of privacy.

Start with a Mobile Phone, then Add a PDA NYT -- Industry analysts see evidence that Apple is contemplating what inside the company is being called an "iPhone." Among the evidence, they say, is recent behind-the-scenes wrangling between Palm and Apple over linking Palm's own devices to Apple's new operating system — apparently with little cooperation on Apple's part.

DVD Region Encoding Collapsing SLASHDOT.org -- It looks like DVD region encoding is on the verge of collapse. A Slashdot reader writes: "It seems like the infamous Region Encoding system used by DVD manufacturers to prevent us buying disks from overseas is about to collapse - due to widespread flaunting of the system.

Spam Cop Squashes Weblogger Edward Felten -- Recently lost his Internet account, claiming that his ISP cancelled it because of a single erroneous complaint filed by SpamCop about a mailing list posting that mentioned his new weblog. Workbench says "SpamCop is just a tool that makes it convenient for people to report and complain about spam. It doesn't force ISPs to be stupid."

The Robber Barons in Ireland Gerry McGovern -- Reflecting on dotcon matters, Gerry McGovern told Newscan "I was part of the whole Dot Com rollercoaster. As I watch the wheels come off the stock market, I can't say I'm surprised. Many of us lived an illusion. Everything was about change, speed and innovation. We got lots of change alright. What we didn't bet on was that the change, instead of ushering in a 21st Century economy, actually created a 19th Century robber baron climate."

Faces: Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson -- "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Bookshelf: The Eiffel Tower EIFEL -- I walked under the Eiffel tower this summer, thinking it looked out of place in Paris. I also learned that nothing like the Eiffel Tower had ever been built. It was twice as high as the dome of St. Peter's in Rome or the Great Pyramid of Giza. It's three times as high as the spire of Dublin, In contrast to such older monuments, Eiffel's tower was raised in a matter of months, with a small labor force, at slight cost.the creation and the creator. After graduation from the College of Art and Manufacturing in 1855, Eiffel began to specialize in metal construction, especially bridges. He directed the erection of an iron bridge at Bordeaux in 1858, followed by several others. In 1867 he designed the lofty, arched Gallery of Machines for that year's Paris Exhibition, and in 1877 he bridged the Douro River at Oporto, Portugal, with a 525-foot steel arch, which he followed with an even greater arch of the same type, the 540-foot span Garabit viaduct over the Truyère River in southern France, for many years the highest bridge in the world, 400 feet over the stream. In 1884, Eiffel designed the wrought-iron pylon inside Frederic Bartholdi's Statue Of Liberty in New York Harbor and the next year began work on the cupola of the Nice observatory. He later became interested in aerodynamics and wrote "The Resistance of the Air" (1913). The Eiffel Tower was an immense tower of exposed latticework supports made of iron built to celebrate the science and engineering achievements of its age. The 984-foot structure consists of two visibly distinct parts, a base composed of a platform resting on four separate supports (called pylons or bents) and, above this, a slender tower created as the bents taper upward, rising above a second platform to merge in a unified column. The curve of the base pylons was precisely calculated so that the bending and shearing forces of the wind were progressively transformed into forces of compression, which the bents could withstand more effectively. The superskyscrapers erected since 1960 are constructed in much the same way. [NewsScan to Go]

Hypermedia and the Semantic Web Van Ossenbruggen -- I read a quick overview of state-of-the-art in Semantic Web technology, the key relationships with traditional hypermedia research, and a comprehensive reference list to various sets of literature (hypertext, Web and Semantic Web). Jacco Van Ossenbruggen's research agenda describes open issues in the development of the Semantic Web from the perspective of hypermedia research.