Posted by Martin Orr on
Friday, 17 February 2006 at 13:50
IP stands for the Internet Protocol, the system by which data on the Internet finds its destination. Every computer or other device connected to the Internet is given an IP address, a series of numbers which identify where the computer is. Whenever a message (called a packet) is sent from one computer to another, it is given to the IP system along with the address it has to be sent to, then passed from one router to another until it arrives. An important point is that IP doesn't care what is in the packet - that is determined by other systems, and it could be a part of an email, a Web page, a downloaded file or an action in an online game.
The Internet is not by any means the only system that needs to pass data between many different devices: for example the telephone network is a far older and almost completely separate system; on a much smaller scale, the different alarms in a building security system need to talk to each other. This is where the versatility of IP which I mentioned above comes into play: by using the existing IP network, people setting up a new communication system avoid needing their own cables and having to design a routing mechanism. You may have heard of VOIP (Voice-over-IP) which sends telephone calls through IP packets across the Internet. And one surprising place where IP is taking over is in controlling the heating systems in large buildings.
This isn't really what I sat down and intended to write, but hopefully it is helpful in explaining what IP is, and why you may hear people get excited about it.
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Martin
Tags
internet, phone, techexplain
Posted by Martin Orr on
Sunday, 05 February 2006 at 12:55
Well this week I had (as I think I mentioned previously) a busy Wednesday afternoon, with three supervisions, and a busy few days before that doing the work for them. David, one of the chaplains, asked me to do the prayers of intercession in the College Chapel for Candlemas on Thursday. (Candlemas is the festival of the presentation of Christ in the Temple, and involved more candles.) That meant both writing the prayers and reading them. We had a brief lesson on how to write them last Sunday. I was very nervous but it went well.
Last Sunday I went to the United Reform Church (what the Presbyterian Church in England merged to become). It was fairly similar to a progressive Presbyterian service at home; one interesting thing they did was to compose a "psalm" during the service by different people in the congregation suggesting a line of praise. There was also a fire drill following the benediction; I'm told that neither of these things happen every week.
This morning I went to a Lutheran Church. This surprised me because the liturgy were almost identical to a Catholic Mass, starting with Kyrie, Gloria, etc, and some people crossed themselves at each mention of the Trinity. However it was a very Protestant sermon, focussed tightly on the text and enthusiastically preached, and of course all the Catholic theology of the Eucharist was dropped. Also they replaced "holy catholic church" with "holy Christian church" in the creed.
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Martin
Tags
cambridge, chapel, emmanuel, lutheran, trinity
Posted by Martin Orr on
Saturday, 28 January 2006 at 13:08
There has not really been much happening so far this term. My first supervisions (except ones left over from last term) are not until Wednesday of next week. However I do have three on that Wednesday so I now have to start working hard - most of the supervisors wanted to supervise on Wednesdays. I am doing a second-year course, Groups, Rings and Modules, for which my supervisions are also on Wednesdays but on the other week (all the supervisions are once a fortnight).
On Wednesday, we returned from lectures to find several fire engines parked in front of Great Gate and porters directing you to use other entrances to the college. There were many more porters around Great Court directing people away from Great Gate. Someone was told that a suspicious package had been found. It emerged that when the mail was being sorted, acid had leaked from a letter and burned a porter's hand. The Cambridge Student reports that a man is now in custody.
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Martin
Tags
trinity, tripos
Posted by Martin Orr on
Wednesday, 25 January 2006 at 15:11
I want to muse about the difference between the Internet and the printing press. These may be compared on the grounds that they each led to a major reduction in the cost of distributing information, and consequently to a massive increase in the spread of information. This is certainly true, but I suggest that they affected the distribution of information in fundamentally different ways. Prior to the development of movable type in Europe in the 15th century, all written documents were in the form of manuscripts. Production and use of these was of course restricted to those who could read and write, but other than that anyone who possesed a manuscript could create a new copy at the same cost.
The dominance of printing changed this completely: copying a document required ownership of a press and skill in typesetting. This created the publisher, who possessed this equipment and was able to cheaply mass produce copies of a document.
In addition, each copy of a document was not enough to create a new copy: you had to create a master block of type to print from.
The use of electronic media on the other hand flattens the cost of copying. Any electronic copy of a document is equivalent, in that it can be used as the basis of a new copy without any alteration in quality, and the equipment for copying is readily available and in many cases the same as the equipment for using the document (literacy in the manuscript era; a computer today).
In conclusion, the rise of digital media and the Internet removes the need for the publisher; or perhaps it would be better to say that it turns everyone into a publisher. Of course publishers have not in fact disappeared from the Internet; this may be because we have not yet fully adjusted, or there may be other reasons for their continued existence.
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Martin
Tags
internet, ipr, printingpress
Posted by Martin Orr on
Thursday, 19 January 2006 at 08:26
Well I'm now back in Cambridge. Lectures start again today, and I have my first supervision (left over from last term). Between leaving Belfast on Wednesday and getting to Cambridge on Saturday, I spent several days staying with my aunt in Hove (near Brighton). During this time I rode up and down the south coast by railway, and visited Stonehenge, Salisbury, Chichester, Bosham, Portsmouth, Brighton and Fishbourne.
A few photos are at http://www.martinorr.name/2006/South
On Monday I went to visit our IOI guide, Beata. She and her friend Marzena are working in a cafe in Bracknell. They are both enjoying living in England and clearly it is financially worth coming here: the minimum wage is five times what it is in Poland, rent costs four times as much, food up to twice as much and other things are of comparable price. Marcin, a friend in college with Polish parents, reckons that the difference in prices is greater than that but that it would still be possible to save considerably more in the UK than in Poland.
Full Term started on Tuesday with a college test on last term's work. I came top out of the people who did the test, although one of the three Maths Directors of Studies did not get his students to take the test; and by an alphabetical coincidence that includes five of the seven former IMO team members (four UK, one Ireland, one Greece and one Vietnam) in the year.
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Martin
Tags
england, holiday, ioi, tripos