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Touted as having some of the most sophisticated firewalls in the world, China has become a country which is notorious for censoring the Internet. greatfirewallofchina.org lets you check if you can pass China’s strict IP monitors.

Check if your website is blocked in China

“The web is like a white sheet that we’re holding up,” Sir Timothy Berners-Lee told a Congressional subcommittee this morning. “And all these different systems are projecting onto it.” That universality—the ability for disparate hardware, software, and languages to coexist in the same medium—has been one of the drivers of the Web’s massive growth in the last decade, along with the availability of open and royalty-free standards that make such universality possible.

But, much like Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, Berners-Lee recognizes that with great power comes great responsibility. Every important tool allows people to do both good and bad things, and the worldwide Internet community has seen plenty of both as the web has empowered both individual hackers and humanitarians in new ways. As Congress considers regulations to crack down on such ills as copyright violations, Berners-Lee encourages them to first make it easy for people who want to do the right thing to be able to do so.

Passing laws, filing lawsuits, and tying up the court system is one way to deal with copyright issues, for instance, and such tools have their place. But the first item of business for lawmakers and standards-makers is to make it simple for people to do the right thing. Berners-Lee gave the example of better metadata for media files, arguing that such technology ought to make it simple to discover the licensing terms for any piece of media just by looking at the file.

Berners-Lee was in Washington to testify before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, chaired by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). As the subcommittee kicks off its two-year session, it first wanted to hear from the creator of the web to understand what made the web so successful in the first place. It also wanted Berners-Lee’s thoughts about where the Web was headed, which led to the comic scene of Berners-Lee try to explain the “semantic web” and the W3C “mobile web initiative” to a group of middle-aged representatives while interruped by the insistent buzz of a House roll call announcement.

In their statements before testimony began, the assembled representatives laid out their concerns: child pornography, network neutrality, the future evolution of the Web, and whether the Web was being used as an excuse for more offline media consolidation. Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) sounded less than thrilled with some of the doom-and-gloom scenarios put before the committee in the past, telling Berners-Lee that the Web has become “the scapegoat of everyone who comes before this committee these days.”

In recapping the Web’s brief history, Berners-Lee opened his testimony by describing the three essential features of the Web as he saw them: universality, open standards, and the separation of layers. All three points were variations on a single theme: open standards for general protocols allow for others to build astonishing innovations atop the foundation. To illustrate his point, he talked about the controvery surrounding the rival Gopher protocol after the University of Minnesota began to license its own implementation, and users began to wonder if the university would seek a royalty from all implementations at some point down the road.

The future

In the future, Berners-Lee “hopes” (he’s not a fan of prediction) that two low-level developments will unleash a new flood of creativity. The first is the “semantic web,” a model in which data can be linked, extracted, and reused across systems, even when those systems have not encountered such data before. While the Web works well with documents at the moment, it has not proved so adept at handling data formats; semantic web technology should help with the problem. This idea, which has been around for years at the W3C, has yet to make any significant headway.

Secondly, the rise of small, Internet-capable devices will bring connectivity to more people, especially in poor areas of the globe. Because the screens on such devices are so small, Berners-Lee described his vision of wireless integration with large displays. The idea here is that the mobile devices will function a bit like headless computers; personal data and applications can be carried around in one’s pocket, then accessed and used at any location that provides a screen.

Berners-Lee did not call for any specific policy initiatives from Congress. He did exhort them, in response to a question from Joe Barton (R-TX), to remember that other committees just like this one were meeting in countries around the world and trying to work out difficult issues of applying local laws to globally-accessible servers. The implied request seemed to be that Congress not assume that it needs to control the actions and laws of other countries, even when those laws allow Internet activity illegal in the US. Whether that request will be honored remains to be seen.

Courtesy of Arstechnica

Business Logs, who are part of the 9rules network announce the ‘Best in Web Interfaces awards’.

The list compiled by Mike Rundle details his favourite websites in terms of design and usability. Refreshingly, not all of the sites are Web 2.0 concoctions with massive buttons, colour gradients and heaps of white space!

Check it out

PortableApps.com have a range of resources for you to download direct to your pen drive. You simply plug them in to any computer and run them direct from your USB.

I found the Firefox program especially useful when I was in University. You can get games and music and media software as well.

Portable Apps

Workplace smoking bans may be good for workers’ health, but could open the back door to hackers.

In a recent social engineering test undertaken by UK-based security consultancy NTA Monitor, a tester was able to easily gain access to a corporate building through a back door that was left open for smokers. Once inside, the penetration tester was able to easily bluff his way into a meeting room, claiming the IT department had sent him. Even without a pass, he gained access unchallenged and was then able to connect his laptop to the firm’s VoIP network via a telephone connection point.

NTA Monitor technical director Roy Hills comments: “It used to be that companies ‘left the back door open’ in terms of internet security. Now they are literally leaving their buildings open to accommodate smokers.

“Once inside a corporate building, an attacker can use social methods on employees to gain access to restricted areas and information unless a rigid staff pass system is in place,” he added.

Smoking will be banned in all indoor public spaces in the UK in July 2007. In many other European countries, such as Spain, workplace smoking restrictions have already been applied.

Article from theregister.co.uk

Capable of processing 1 trillion calculations a second, Intel’s latest test chip, when used commercially, will revolutionise computing

Computing took a leap forward when chipmakers started putting more than one core—or central brain—on a single chip. It was a way to make machines work harder even as they consumed less power. Just wait until a single chip can sport 80 cores.

The wait won’t be long. Chipmaking giant Intel (INTC) on Feb. 11 said it has successfully produced just such a chip, the size of a fingernail, capable of processing a mind-boggling 1 trillion calculations a second. The chip, which Intel claims is the fastest ever made, could start being used commercially in “in five years, if not sooner,” Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner says.

Warp Speed

Rattner has reason to crow. The massive processing power each chip would provide will dramatically change the way consumers and businesses work and play. Financial analysis that takes days to perform in back offices could be done in seconds at a trader’s terminal on Wall Street. Real-time physics calculations could let consumers create on-the-fly games that make even the cutting-edge motion-control techniques in Nintendo’s Wii game console seem like child’s play.

The test chip also demonstrates chipmakers’ ability to continue to increase dramatically the number of processors placed on a tiny sliver of silicon. Just 10 years ago, a cluster of supercomputers capable of processing the same amount of calculations took up more than 2,000 square feet and consumed a half-megawatt of electricity.

The new Intel chip, which does not yet use the standard x86 architecture common to most PCs and servers, consumes an average 62 watts of energy—less than some chips on the market today. It also takes a novel approach of stacking memory in three dimensions directly on top of the chip, creating an architecture that would transfer information at lightning speed.

Parallel Computing

Other chipmakers also are hard at work pursuing ways to make chips work harder while sipping power. Rivals, including AMD (AMD) and IBM (IBM), have been pursuing so-called parallel computing, which breaks up huge tasks into pieces, enabling them to be managed by different parts of a chip. With one such chip, multiple streams of high-definition video could zip around the home, while a beleaguered business could assemble Sarbanes-Oxley paperwork in minutes.

AMD in 2006 purchased graphics chipmaker ATI. The company says a new platform, code-named “Fusion,” combines a central processor with graphics processors to either lower the cost of buying such items separately or increase floating-point calculations dramatically.

Analysts say the Intel announcement signals chipmakers are on the right track. “This is putting the proof-point out there that their road maps are on the right track,” says Jim McGregor, principal analyst at researcher In-Stat.

Software Lags Behind

The main stumbling block to widespread acceptance of such chips, however, is the difficulty in writing software to take advantage of multiple cores. Even as Intel and AMD race to deliver quad-core chips in the next few months, software developers continue to struggle to write threaded applications to take advantage of just two cores. Intel’s Rattner suggests the chipmaker made the announcement of the new chip early to get software developers thinking about massively multicore chips. “If we just go two, four, eight cores, we’ll never get there [with software],” he says.

Even so, the jump in processing power could tax the resources even of Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), and other operating system providers, analysts say. Current operating systems are designed for more linear tasks, and are less efficient at allocating resources and power requirements.

Still, the new chips would require working much more closely with the hardware makers, which could give Intel or another first mover a massive advantage. And as much as anything, the announcement demonstrates that the processor race has plenty of room to run.

Courtesy of Business Week

Learn to spot the warning signs in time, you know you’re becoming a design geek when:

1. 1. You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD
2. 2. You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under.
3. 3. You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.
4. 4. Seing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure
5. 5. You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.
6. 6. You organise your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.
7. 7. You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn’t come.
8. 8. You’re up ’til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.
9. 9. The hottest dream you ever had was “Trace contour… Find Edges… Pinch… Extrude… Smudge Stick… Motion Blur…. Sprayed Strokes…”
10. 10. You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.
11. 11. Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.
12. 12. The preschool teacher complains your child won’t color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.
13. 13. Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash – and you’re running OSX.
14. 14. You deliberately butcher your perfectly cross browser compatible site in IE by placing a “Too Cool for IE” banner on it.
15. 15. You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin.
16. 16. You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because “it’s the only one where the lower-case g is just right…”
17. 17. Looking at a menu make you go “hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic” rather than “mmmm, lunch!”
18. 18. And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture…
19. 19. You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.
20. 20. Apple+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.
21. 21. You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed.
22. 22. You refer to your privates as “the Magic Wand”.
23. 23. You actually understand this post and pass it on to your friends

Courtesy of Crestock

We’ve all seen the one way mirrors in police interogation scenes but Japanese scientists have developed mirror/window that can be turned on at the flick of a switch

The windows could be used to reduce energy costs by reflecting heat in the summer and allowing the suns rays to pass through during winter.

Flicking the switch on antire office block would be an interesting site!

Billboard adds simply won’t do for Korea marketing companies. Car and Fashion companies are using entire buildings to advertise their products with fantastic results. Huge buildings have been transformed into 3D works of art and are lighting up the Korean skyline.

Building Marketing

The concierge shopping cart integrates a touch screen LCD monitor with wi fi access to your shopping trolley.

Still in the concept stage the device could keep a running talley of items in your cart and reduce stressful checkout times

Going one further, RFID could calculate the price and automatically bill your account and skip the checkout process all together.