Crimson Crux

That is, if the deal between Verisign and ICANN pushes through.

Under the deal, Verisign will drop lawsuits filed against the Internet regulatory body in exchange for the power to increase .com prices by 7% a year starting in 2007. According to the CBR Online article, current domain price stands at $6, but if Verisign took advantage of the price hike every year, we would end up paying $12 by 2012!

So unless you foresee a wage hike in your country in the next few years, then maybe it’s time to buy that .com domain you’ve always wanted. (Though you’d still have to renew it, and with a price increase every year…damn.) Or at least, fervently pray that this nightmare of a deal between Big Internet Company and Big Internet Body crumbles.If you’re lamenting this impending development (as I am), feel slightly comforted by the thought that we’re not alone — already, the proposed deal is coming under heavy flak, both from consumers and small registrars. You can read the whole story here.

IT employees will do good to avoid companies offering cubicles as workplaces, according to the ACM Technews/Sys-Con Media (France) article, “When to Leave Your First IT Job”.

A bad work environment (i.e. “cubicle farms”) is a clear warning sign for you to leave the job. As the article says:

“Working in cubicles is the sure sign that you’re not working for a successful company. If the company will not or can not spend the money to create offices for its knowledge workers, so they can get into the zone, the odds of it creating a successful software product and capitalizing on it are about the same as you becoming a millionaire by going to Las Vegas…”

Well, the above scenario might not apply to Philippine IT companies, but it’s still worth thinking about if you’re a present IT employee or one who’s looking to land an IT job.

Rising in South Korea is New Songdo, which ACM Technews describes as an “ubiquitous city where data is shared by all key information systems, and where residences, office buildings, and streets have built-in computers”. Sounds pretty much like a techie’s haven, though of course ’shared data’ reeks of citizen privacy issues.

According to the article:

“…A smart-card house key will be the starting point of U-life: The key can be used to access public transit, process transactions, borrow free materials, etc…New Songdo residents [are foreseen to enjoy] universal wireless access to their digital content and property, video on demand, and videoconferencing calls with neighbors.”

Wow. I believe “U-life” here pertains to Ubiquitous-Life, the lifestyle for the New Songdo “U-City”.

You can read a New York Times article here, though you”ll need to have an account to view it. (Don’t worry, registration is free.)

Also, here’s a Google search on New Songdo, for those who are really interested and don’t mind doing a little bit of research.

A glorious day!

Borrowed from a friend’s email:

Firefox Surpasses 100 Million Downloads!

October 19, 2005, (Mountain View, CA). The Mozilla Corp. extends 100 million “Thank you’s” to Firefox community members for reigniting innovation on the Web. As the browser’s first anniversary approaches this November, Firefox adoption numbers have exceeded expectations with more than 100 million downloads since Firefox’s introduction in 2004.

Firefox’s download success is a direct result of the collaborative efforts of thousands of contributors worldwide. Their work developing and fine-tuning the Firefox browser ensures the best Web experience available. Volunteer extension developers further enrich Firefox’s capabilities by enabling users to customize and enhance their browser and truly take back the Web.

Mozilla also congratulates the members of the Spread Firefox community for their success in reigniting the Web by driving the popularity of the browser. Their global grassroots efforts have set a new standard for software marketing and played a significant role in helping Firefox to achieve this amazing milestone. Stay tuned as the Spread Firefox community launches an even more innovative campaign for the upcoming Firefox 1.5 release later this Fall.

Get Firefox now!

I quote from a TechnologyReview.com article:

“In a report for the National Science Foundation in 2000, the Carnegie Mellon researchers showed that freshmen in CS1 who used Alice [a program to teach programming through a game framework] average a B grade, while those in the control group who didn’t use Alice averaged a C.

Furthermore, retention rates — the proportion of students using Alice in CS1 who moved on to CS2 — rose from 47 percent to 88 percent.”

Several universities around the world are also using gaming-related courses to reverse the alarming slide in computer science enrollees.

I wonder when will UP Diliman’s DCS have a course on gaming or gaming development. Closest to such a course might be CS 176 (Computer Graphics) and CS 174 (Mobile Computing — mobile phone games, anyone?). Here’s a confession: as an avid gamer in high school, I took BS Computer Science because I wanted to create my own games.

Fortunately, our student organization, UP ACM, has two Special Interest Groups (SIGs) related to gaming — the Gaming Guild and the Graphics SIG. I really hope the SIG Heads present more exciting and informative projects for the second semester.

This article reports on a certain Harvardian’s belief in “Homo digitas“, the next step on the evolutionary ladder for the Homo sapiens species.

If you come to think about it, just how much information does your brain process day in and day out? If you’re reading this blog, then chances are you’ve spent a considerable number of brain cells in absorbing, organizing, and judging the veracity of gigabytes of data from the Net, usually on the fly.

As a student, for years I’ve mused about one challenge facing people of our times — to learn the world’s past and present knowledge, which has been expanding with each new day, year, decade. Every generation learns the knowledge of their predecessors, adds to it, and passes it to the next generation.

Admit it — even just once you had thought that “I’m smarter than my parents; I know more things than they do.” If your computer scientist dad had to learn the basics of algorithms and operating systems in college, you now have to learn all of that plus pervasive computing and complex network protocols. (Might be an exaggeration, but you get my drift.) We have to learn the basics — be it about science, humanities, and the arts — and then progress to more complex topics.

And indeed, it might be true that each generation of humans is smarter than its predecessor. The same article states, “A New Zealand researcher named Jim Flynn discovered in the 1980s that the average IQ test scores were ticking up by three points–a full standard deviation–every decade since the beginning of the 1900s.”

Which might mean that when my (future) son boasts to me, “Hey Dad, I’m waaay smarter than you are!”, I’d just have to smile and accept the truth.

Scanning my old ACM Technews articles, I came across a mid-September item on the approval of a new World Wide Web domain, .cat (sites that promote the Catalan language and culture). A decision on whether or not to approve the controversial .xxx domain was deferred, as was the case for the .asia domain.

If you’d ask me, I’d prefer to just have a site under either .com or .net domains, and maybe .ph. As if I can afford it. Anyway, most people love to have choices, and ICANN, the ‘big brother’ of Internet addressing, has got a lot of those to offer.

Presently, there are over 260 domain names, a number that’s going to balloon as people find more and more ‘genres’ to chop up the Internet into. Most familiar of these are the ‘generic’ domains — .com (commerce), .edu (educational institutions), .org (organizations), .net (network providers), .gov (US Federal Gov’t). Other generic domains include .int (international entities), .mil (US military), .biz (businesses), .info (information), .mobi (mobile services), and .name (you guessed it right — people’s names). Throw in the country domains (.ph, .us, .ch) and you’ve got a veritable domain paradise.

Of course, there are no draconian rules on who’s allowed to get this and that domain. Except of course for the .gov and .mil domains, everything else might be considered fair game. Chances are you’ve visited a personal site (yes, cheesy stories on high school crushes and all) under a .com domain, or a business enterprise under a .org guise.

(Photo courtesy of www.macworld.com)
Specs: Linux OS, 500 Mhz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel, Wi-Fi and Cellphone-enabled, USB-capable

Reading last Saturday’s issue of Business World, I came across an article on a 100$ laptop being developed in the MIT Media Lab. Yep, that’s right. One hundred US dollars. Barely 6000 Philippine pesos. And I thought a Php 30K laptop was dirt-cheap.

Anyway, the said laptop isn’t meant for commercial distribution — it’s meant to educate children in developing nations. It doesn’t take a genius nor a saint to appreciate the nobility of this pursuit. In UP ACM’s essay for its winning bid for Outstanding Community Service, I wrote:

[In] a Third World country such as the Philippines…some of the more expensive physical resources, i.e., computers, are luxuries. These tangible assets must give way to an intangible one — knowledge. In our country, knowledge is of the utmost value — it has no price tag, but it is priceless. It does not crash, it does not break down, and it will serve you for life. Practicality dictates that in lieu of supplying people with computers, we must educate them about these machines.

With the advent of these 100$ laptops, basic computer know-how for children is fused with day-in, day-out hands-on practice. That’s a powerhouse combination.

To know more about the 100$ laptop, drop by MIT Media Lab’s official website for the project. Kudos to these brilliant researchers!