Ian Foster

Gracious City Living

Those of us who have lived in Chicago for more than a short time will appreciate the Gracious City Living Polka.

The S stands for?

My tongue-in-cheek post a while back on Web Fundamentalism generated lots of interesting traffic and pointers. At some point I must internalize and summarize it all, but for now I just read (some of) it. The best thing I've seen so far is Peter Lacey's The S stands for Simple, a hilarious and very relevant Socratic dialog.

Web 4.0

Web 2.0 was first a noun, then a conference. Next it was an adjective. Perhaps soon it will be a verb, adverb, or expletive. Regardless of its grammatical status, it already has an entry in the Devil's Dictionary:

Web 2.0 Proper noun. The name given to the social and technical sophistication and maturity that mark the— Oh, screw it. Money! Money money money! Money! The money’s back! Ha ha! Money!

It has inspired people to write about Science 2.0, Bubble 2.0, and many other 2.0s as well. (Also some cleverer definitions than those attempted by Tim O'Reilly: e.g., "Web 2.0 = chmod 777.")

Stairway to Heaven

Could it be that some people haven't heard Rolf Harris' stirring antipodean version (another sample and another) of Stairway to Heaven?

Bonjour America

I see that a wonderful video blog from France, Bonjour America, has started up again. It is sad to see that M. Vinvin has abandoned his ambition to meet Clint Eastwood. And he now has advertising. But still funny.

Web Fundamentalism

Given that it's Sunday, I will write about fundamentalism, a topic that, like the rapture, I find endlessly fascinating. Quoting Wikipedia:

Fundamentalism is a continuing historical phenomenon, characterized by a sense of embattled alienation in the midst of the surrounding culture, even where the culture may be nominally influenced by the adherents' religion. The term can also refer specifically to the belief that one's religious texts are infallible ...

Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about real religion, but rather about fundamentalism in computing. I first encountered this phenomenon in the 1980s, when I hung out with declarative programmers. (Imperative programs are evil! Declarative languages will overcome!) Since then, I've watched with interest as other true paths are progressively revealed and embraced by communities large and small.

Biostatistics and Epidemiology

In my new role as Director of the Computation Institute, I have got to know some statisticians. I'm learning  interesting things:

• statistics, despite its 19th Century name, is actually an intellectually rich and vibrant field of research, with much to contribute to how we deal with data;
• there are big differences between biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and other types of statistician; and
• statisticians have a sense of humor.

Web 1.0 Revisited

With all of the hype^H^H^H^H excitement around Web 2.0, and the upcoming Web 2.0 conference, it is good to see some people prepared to celebrate the accomplishments of Web 1.0, such as the underappreciated blink tag and the ever-useful <BR>.

1,000,000 Random Digits

From Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram:

The Rand Corporation published A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates back in 1955, when generating random numbers was hard. I have a copy of the original book; it's one of my library's prize possessions. I had no idea that the book was reprinted in 2002; it's available on Amazon. But even if you don't buy it, go to the Amazon page and read the user reviews. They're hysterical.

For example:

This book does not even come close to delivering on its promise of one million random digits. My expectations were high after reading the first sentence, which contained ten unique digits. However, the author seems to have exhasted his creativity in this initial burst, because the other 99.999% of the book is filler in which those same ten digits are shamelessly reused! If you are looking for a larger offering of numerals in various bases, I highly recommend "Peter Rabbit's ABC and 123."

Thanks to Frank Siebenlist for the pointer.

The Early Steam Internet

Wandering the farther reaches of the net, I came across the Institute of Internet History (IOIH). Having learned recently of Otlet's early work on hypertext, I should perhaps not have been surprised to learn of this little-known precursor to today's Internet, namely, Beardie's pioneering work in the 1840s on a steam-powered Internet.

As the IOIH recounts, "[T]oday's Internet has its roots in the huge silk and cotton mills which grew up in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution." Facing the need to control a growing number of industrial mills, Aldous B. Huxley proposed:

to record a single copy of each pattern on a stack of perforated rotating metal disks and then distribute the information contained on these disks via a series of pressure pulses through a system of steam pipes to each loom.

Then, in 1847, a brilliant engineer, E. H. Beardie (pictured):

presented a paper titled, "An International Industrial Network of Steam Gulleys and Mechanical Actuators" to the Royal Society of Industrialists. The paper described in some detail Beardie's vision for the phased building of a wide area network connecting mills.

This paper has apparently been lost, but the rest is history.