Mícheál Ó Foghlú's Weblog

Tim Bray on Communication

Tim Bray posts On Communication, a good read. I would add printing to the list of key communications technologies dating from maybe 1430 so making it 577 in Tim's table.

Notes from the Trenches on Agile Development with JRuby (in Oracle)

In this interesting post Rich Manalang describes the process of doing a short (6 week) JRuby project in Oracle blow by blow Oracle AppsLab's Mix, JRuby on Rails, Small Teams, Agile, and it's Effects on the World. This really captures the decision points and problems when working in an organisation used to larger more formal projects, amazing that they pulled it off and did some performance tuning in time!

Tim on the Net, the Web and the Graph of social inter-relations

When Tim blogs we listen, as he has a great way of simplifying complex arguments down to easily understandable metaphors, that just might change the world, again..... Giant Global Graph | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs

Semantic Web as a Shadow Web?

Ian Davis posted this useful comment on W3C semantic web activity and the value of keeping activity in the mainstream with many eyes to give feedback and updates on metadata Internet Alchemy: Is the Semantic Web Destined to be a Shadow?

Cisco IPJ - lots of good IPv6 discussions

The most recent issue of the Cisco IPJ (Internet Protocol Journal), that is available for free on-line, has a number of very interesting articles on IPv6.

First Geoff Huston, APNIC updates us with his view of the big picture on IPv4 depletion, and the slow pace of IPv6 roll out. He is right to point out that a continued dual-stack strategy, that many seem to favour, will continue to require IPv4 addresses, and will thus become untenable when the IPv4 addresses themselves run out. There isn't much time to deploy IPv6 everywhere, within the IPv4 depletion timescale.

Then Iljitsch van Beijnum gives his views on IPv4 address consumption, trying to focus not just on the /8 block allocations from IANA to the RIRs, but on the subsequent allocation by the RIRs to ISPs and others.

Then Leo Vegoda talks about the use of unregistered IPv4 address space: "Many organizations have chosen to use unregistered IPv4 addresses in their internal networks and, in some cases, network equipment or software providers have chosen to use unregistered IPv4 addresses in their products or services." He discusses the potential problems that could ensue.

On a separate, but related theme, that of security for IP networks, Kunjal Trivedi, Cisco Systems and Damien Holloway, Juniper Networks discuss secure multivendor networks.

This issue of the IPJ could thus be seen as the definitive one in terms of summarising the key issues of IPv4 depletion, and IPv6 deployment. We have 2 years before the /8 IANA pool runs out, and a further 12-18 months before the RIRs then cannot comply with requests for new IPv4 addresses. I suggest everyone who is interested in the future of the Internet as it is now (not some abstract new network we haven't thought of yet) read these papers and become conversant with the arguments, and then start deploying IPv6 as quickly as possible.

Håkon Wium Lie: How web fonts can change the face of the web

In an interesting ligtening talk at W3C TP this afternoon Håkon Wium Lie described "How web fonts can change the face of the web." He showed that there are very few fonts one can reliably assume are on a client machine. He then showed how CSS 2.0 can reference on-line server-side fonts that can be dynamically downloaded when a web page is viewed.

W3C TPAC Boston Nov 2007

I'm here in Cambridge MA, looking across at the Boston skyline from the other side of the Charles River at the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) TPAC (Technical Plenary/Advisory Committee) joint meeting.

It's a stimulating environment with lots of working groups reporting on their activities, and with parallel meetings before and afterwards to progress these working groups.

As usual I'm impressed by the quality if the on-line collaboration tools allowing people around the world to take part even if they aren't here physically.

Web technologies are effectively a universal layer for services allowing ligher wieight and heavier weight approaches to service/applications development for unbiquitous access from many types of devices with network connectivity.