When you connect to an internet site, many things happen. First, your request is sent to a domain name system service, which translate the friendly-looking http://www.sex.com into the much more computer-friendly 76.74.255.123, which is the address of the server you’re looking for. The server gets your request and sends a bunch of information back. All of this data is broken up into tiny packets which all take different routes through the mystical tubes, and are reassembled at the other end–your end. And, after just a couple of seconds of waiting, you’re looking at porn. Magic, huh? The thing is, though, we are running out of addresses. We can get about four billion addresses out of the current system, known as IPv4. The system intended to replace it, known as IPv6, however, puts paid to all that. It has, give or take, 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible addresses. How to visualise a number that large? Well, I gave it a go, using a trick first used in John Gribbin’s In Search Of Schrödinger’s Cat.
Archive for July 16th, 2009
The sublime and the enormous
Trending trends week two
Everything went a little crazy this week.
Who's reading this thing?
That enormous spike you see was generated by a recommendation from here. A few more clicked the next day and the day after. And what did they read?
I’m not a feminist, honest!
I was intrigued by some of the debate that has been going on lately about whether or not Richard Stallman is sexist after he made a joke at some conference. I wasn’t intrigued by the parts where people were arguing about whether or not he is actually sexist (of course he fucking isn’t you stupid fucking cretin), nor the speculation that any of the bickering has something to do with his thoughts on Mono (I’m not even going to try and explain what that’s all about), nor the debate about whether what he actually said was sexist to begin with (I mean, it could have been, but then I wasn’t there, although the guy who brought it all up seems like an utter cunt). I just realised that last sentence was horrible (I used too much parenthesis (sorry)). What did intrigue me, though, were some of the comments made by men and women alike who were quick to qualify their views on the subject at hand with statements such as, “I’m not a feminist, but…”, or on the other hand, “Feminism is getting really politically correct and annoying…” This seems more than a little odd, to me. These are arguments I see put forth whenever the rights of women are debated or talked about in some way. I was under the impression that the goal of feminism was equal rights. Am I missing something here? A quick glance at the Wikipedia article on the subject reveals that whilst there all sorts of tangents and philosophies surrounding it, that’s basically it. If you believe that women should have equal status to men, then you’re a feminist. So why do people seem so scared of admitting that they are feminists? And why do so many other people assume the entire feminist movement is only about ragging on men?
Any thoughts?
