The Musings of Chris Samuel

For those of us who were lucky enough to be around in the UK academic community in the late 80’s and early 90’s there’s a nice reminder of just how, well, interesting things were in the paper “The Good Old Days: Networking in UK Academia 25 Years Ago” by Jim Reid (who was at Strathclyde then) from the 7th UK Network Operators’ Forum in 2007.

Those were the days when we had to think about obtaining RFC’s by email rather than FTP (no, there was no WWW in 1988) and waiting until 2am to play MIST at Essex, hoping not to get disconnected from JANET 15 minutes later because of the Aberystwyth Ethergate of Death.

*** TS RESET
*** TS RESET
*** TS RESET

00 00 Call Disconnected

For the past few weeks I’ve been reading “Codebreakers“, a collection of memoirs and essays by former staff at Bletchley Park, aka the Government Code and Cipher School (GCCS) War Station-X, Room 47 Foreign Office, etc. which worked throughout the war breaking enemy ciphers such as the German Enigma machine, the decrypts of which were called “Ultra“.

But today, via Bruce Scheiers blog, I’ve learnt that the trust that now runs BP has is facing financial problems as they receive no external funding and need cash to help preserve the buildings and the exhibits they restored after taking over the site in the 1990s.

The Bletchley Park Trust receives no external funding. It has been deemed ineligible for funding by the National Lottery, and turned down by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation because the Microsoft founder will only fund internet-based technology projects.

For the site that hosted the organisation that arguably saved the day in World War 2, not to mention being the birthplace of the first real computer, Colossus¹, it’s a sad predicament.

1. yes, I know it wasn’t Turing complete! [back]

In 1969 Bob Wilson (later the first director of Fermilab) was called before a hearing of the US Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy to answer questions about particle accelerators. In it Senator John Pastore demanded to know how such a device improved the security of America and Bob Wilsons response of “nothing at all” didn’t go down to well, and so he was prodded further.

His obituary from Cornell in January 2000 puts it like this:

“It has only to do,” Wilson told the lawmakers, “with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”

I have to concur.

The BBC Timewatch programme is covering the first excavation of Stonehenge since 1964 which started on March 31st and runs until April 11th. Their website has details of the background to the excavation, the experts that have organised it and daily video reports from the trenches (ahem).

For the first few days they’ve been going through the spoil from previous excavations which has been worthwhile in its own right, finding a hammer stone and a piece of beaker pottery that was missed before.

But now they’ve moved onto undisturbed layers so keep an eye on the site, it could get rather interesting!

I’ve not been able to get to blog for the last week, so I thought my first post would be in support of the Federal Governments apology (flash video) for their treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia (the text of the motion is here).

So whilst I am a (very) new Australian I recognise the fact that the people who came from the same island that gave me life were responsible for many of the wrongs visited upon indigenous people here, and for that I say sorry.

As a footnote, if you haven’t yet seen the complete footage of the “Welcome to Country” ceremony that preceded the opening of Parliament I suggest you do so soon, it appears it will expire from the ABC News website on the 11th March.

On a similar theme to Google offering to host open source scientific data, the US Library of Congress has announced on its blog¹ a project that has published over 3,000 photos from the LoC archives and seems to be going down a storm with Flickr users!

This is a pilot for what seems to be a larger Flickr initiative, which the LoC describes thus:

We’re also very excited that, as part of this pilot, Flickr has created a new publication model for publicly held photographic collections called “The Commons.” Flickr hopes—as do we—that the project will eventually capture the imagination and involvement of other public institutions, as well.

The LoC is also pretty sharp about the potential power of this, and how it may benefit themselves (and future generations), saying:

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

This potential is foreshadowed by the discovery of 3 previously misidentified images of Abraham Lincoln’s second commemoration by a user of their traditional archive!

A user of our Prints and Photographs Online Catalog raised questions about the images, which sent Library of Congress curator Carol Marie Johnson sleuthing. Careful comparisons to the only other two known images from that event and meticulous combing through records led her to this discovery. My point is that if we can uncover those kinds of treasures, thanks in part to our discerning Web users, imagine what might happen after setting loose hoards of eager photo fans at Flickr.

This is why preserving our information for future generations is such an important activity, and why projects such as the National Archives of Australia push to develop open source Digital Preservation software tools is vital to ensure that our descendants have a rich picture of their history as we have of our ancestors.

1. which is impressive in its own right, and appears to use WordPress too [back]

Some folks wonder why Christmas is on December 25^th given there is absolutely no clue in the bible, so here’s a handy passage from Professor Ron Hutton’s¹ excellent book “The Stations of the Sun” quoting the Scriptor Syrus, a Christian writer in the late 300’s CE:

It was a custom of the pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that day

Now 354 CE is the earliest calendar (that of Philocalus) which gives that date, but Prof. Hutton goes on to point out that the pagan festival that Syrus mentions was just 80 years old then, hardly an ancient practice. He says:

It had apparently been decreed only in 274 CE, by the emperor Aurelian, as a major holy day of a new and syncretic state cult with the sun as its official chief deity.

This in turn was built upon the older Syrian “Unconquered Sun” cult, which had its major festival in late summer. I suppose that last bit makes it almost appropriate for Australia.

1. Wikipedia entry [back]

Marshall Kirk McKusick and the “Unix Heritage Society” have released a 4 CD set that contains, amongst other treasures, a complete set of the various BSD UNIX releases ever done, from 1BSD through to 4.4BSD (both regular and “lite” (sic) versions).

The whole set costs just under USD $100..

The BBC is reporting a further step in the peace process in Northern Ireland:

The British Army’s emergency operation in Northern Ireland comes to an end at midnight on Tuesday after 38 years. Operation Banner is the Army’s longest continuous campaign in its history with more than 300,000 personnel serving and 763 directly killed by paramilitaries. A garrison of 5,000 troops will remain but security will be entirely the responsibility of the police.

Long may it stay that way!

Tuesday 31st July is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele in which over half a million soldiers from both sides died.

The BBC is reporting that the last known British survivor of the trenches is revisiting the scene of the battle to pay his respects.

Harry Patch, 109, from Somerset, made the trip to Belgium to recall his part in the Battle of Passchendaele which claimed 250,000 British casualties. He also went to pay homage to the tens of thousands of German soldiers who lost their lives. [...] During the fighting Mr Patch was badly wounded and three of his best friends were killed when a shell exploded just yards from where he was standing.

Half a million dead for 5 miles of ground in 99 days.