DRM, privacy, the way the net is turning out to be!

Well, I have managed to correlate several – seemingly unrelated – things again to my own surprise. Think for a sec. about the way the unipolar governing of the world by — currently — the US, personal freedom/privacy, the power provided to the world by electronics and computing. I just watched Colossus: The Forbin Project, […]

DSL, connectivity, progress: things not happening in Greece

It is not the first time I am writing about my frustration with internet connectivity in Greece. In a country such as Greece, with more than 60% of its land being in the form of islands or mountainous terrain, making human communication and transportation difficult, one would think that advanced telecoms would be available to […]

Desktops of the future…

It was in 1990 that Microsoft released Windows 3.0, making the PC the dominant platform as it is today, by providing a cheap, easy to use environment for people to use and developers to program (without the horrible Apple royalties that had to be paid for Macintosh development at the time). Windows 3.0, as other […]

ADSL and broadband in Greece. How far behind are we?

I am in my room in Madrid in a hotel that provides free ADSL to each and every one of its rooms. I must admit I was impressed. Downloading files, checking email and surfing was generally a pleasure with transfer rates ranging between 16 – 55KB/s (something pretty impressive considering at least one other person […]

Ingmar Bergman Tribute at the NFT

I keep reminding myself of this, but end up not going; I've been saying I'll go since early January. Ah, time flies. Anyway, Bergman seems to be one of those directors that performed best in their earlier works. (Okay okay, that happens with most people, but that's not really what I meant) From the few movies of his I've seen, it is my impression that he would like to be much more profound and rebellious in his works, but was too restricted by the much more conservative society and movie making of the 50s, as opposed to the much more liberal and pleonastic society of the later decades and today. I can't seem to avoid relating his restrained, but magnificent filmmaking in the 'Smultronstället' (1957), as opposed to the explicit and (rather) pointless photography of, say, "Aus dem Leben der Marionetten" (1980). Well, hopefully I'll find something good in the NFT this week.

Robert Morris at Cambridge

Robert Morris Sr. (the father of Robert Morris Jr. who made the 'internet worm' back in late 1988), ex. lead scientist of the NSA, is speaking at a seminar in Cambridge this Tuesday entitled "The cryptographic role of the cleaning lady". You can get more info here I am definitely going. :) Update: The Morris seminar at Cambridge was quite interesting, but mostly from a 'historical' point of view. Nothing much on the 'cleaning lady' apart from a few (some well-known) stories here and there. Nothing much on anything really. A bit disappointed in that respect. But it was a nice trip out of London.