Mostly Random Technology Bytes

Today is the 25th anniversary of TCP/IP, which a standard abstract model for network and computer communications. TCP/IP was originally developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - which is an agency of the United StatesDepartment of Defense) and has proved highly influential on the structure of the Internet. For more detailed information, there is, as you might expect, a wikipedia article on TCP/IP.

That’s all very interesting to us geeks, but does anybody outside of geekdom care? Well they do now: Google’s home page displays a customized version of the company logo to celebrate the event. Mouse over the logo displays “Happy New Year & 25 years of TCP/IP”, and if you click it, Google does a search for January 1 tcp/ip.

A few days ago, I wrote an article about the contaminated fuel problem in the UK, speculating that the cause might be silicon. Well, it was silicon and the story has faded from the TV news… but there’s still plenty to say about it: What happens to motorists whose cars were damaged? Who pays for the repairs? How come garages are putting the price of petrol up as a result of this problem^*? Rather than just forget about it, or let it take over my blog, I’ve thrown up a quick new site ContaminatedFuel.com, intended to follow the ongoing story. Hopefully it will be of some help, or failing that, at least some consolation, to those motorists whose cars suffered damage.

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^*Yes I know, laws of economics, supply and demand, blah, blah, blah-de-blah-blah, etc. But just because there is an economic explanation, doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.

One of the great mysteries of the modern world is the Fermi paradox (Well, "great" might be a slight exaggeration, I personally don’t stay up nights worrying about it - and I doubt too many people do). The short version of the Fermi paradox is basically "Where are they?", with the "they" referring to extraterrestrial civilizations.

To put it another way, there are 250 billion (2.5 X 10¹¹) stars in the Milky Way, and 70 sextillion (7X10²²) stars in the visible universe. 70 sextillion is an unimaginably huge number. And the point is that even if intelligent life is exceedingly rare, some of the stars ought to contain extraterrestrial civilizations. But no extraterrestrial civilizations have been detected.

There are lots of theories that attempt to explain the Fermi Paradox, and many of these are used in science-fiction stories. But here’s a short-film, hosted at YouTube, about a very different one, based on a Terry Bisson short-story.

For some more serious (but still lots of fun) science-fiction stories about the Fermi Paradox - as well as many other interesting ideas - I recommend Stephen Baxter’s Manifold books.