[technest] URL top up

[Andrew Kirkpatrick]

Hi all,

Here's some links that were mentioned in passing this evening.

Nice abacus. They didn't make them like they now do. Or something.

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/resurgence-of-the-abacus/


Perhaps more importantly, if you have some time to sink, is Eben
Moglen's keynote at F2C2012 as discussed at the pub:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2VHf5vpBy8

Choice (if long) quote:

‎"Those of you old enough to remember when fighting public key
encryption tooth and nail was the United States Government's policy
will remember how hard they fought to prohibit $3.8 trillion dollars
worth of electronic commerce from coming into existence in the world.
We were [labelled as] proponents of nuclear terrorism and paedophilia
in the early 1990s, and all the money they earned in campaign
donations, private equity profits and all the rest of it is owing to
the globalisation of commerce we made possible, with the technology
they wanted to send our clients to jail for making.

That demonstrates neatly, I think, to the next generation of policy
makers how thoroughly their adherence to the received wisdom is likely
to contribute to the death spiral they now fear they're going to get
into. And it should embolden us to point out once again that the way
innovation really happens is that you provide young people with
opportunities to create on an infrastructure which allows them to hack
the real world and share the results."

Cheers,
Andy