Missed this last week: the Internet Society (ISOC) has handed out its annual Postel Award, which honours those who have made outstanding contributions to, broadly, the Internet.
The winner this year – awarded at the IETF meeting in Maastricht on Wed 28 Jul – was Chinese technologist Dr Jianping Wu (left). Dr Wu received the award for “the pioneering role he has played in advancing Internet technology, deployment, and education in China and Asia Pacific over the last twenty years”.
Dr Wu developed the China Education and Research Network (CERNET), the first Internet backbone network in China. It has since become the world’s largest national academic network. He has also been building a large-scale native IPv6 backbone in China. IPv6 is a crucial but complex expansion of the current Internet system and it is large-scale rollouts that are making it possible to shift the Internet onto these new networks. [click to continue…]
I posted the video of the United Nations’ representative Sha Zukang losing it about a week ago but forgot to stick up a blog post about it.
It was a remarkable thing: Egypt’s first lady had inserted her own agenda into the Internet Governance Forum’s schedule – which caused no end of problems as everything had to be reshuffled. But also her visit brought with it some over-the-top security precautions: no mobile phones; extra invites to be allowed into the building; restricted access; and – the big issue – everyone being locked down in the main room, unable to leave, while she wandered around in the “village” of booths outside.
Anyway, after the First Lady’s little segment about protecting kids online and a panel of “experts” forced to find some way of tying the IGF into the youth of today and protecting kids online — which was a complete waste of everyone’s time, to be frank — she wandered off but left everyone stuck in the main room.
Not everyone was happy about this. Many people wanted to just go to the toilet having been in the room for several hours. The UN’s head honcho – a very prickly Chinese man called Sha Zukang – was also unhappy as he had trouble getting back into the room to chair the next session on the future of the IGF itself.
As you can see from the video below, Sha was annoyed with the fact that lots of people were standing at the back waiting to be allowed to leave. But even when the situation was explained to him, he was already too wound up to care and came out with an extraordinary outburst.
Considering this has only been one or two minutes, it was really too much – and everyone commented as such. Of the many comments I heard at the back of the room, and that evening, the most common description of the short-fused Zukang was “prick”. The event also sparked a few UN old hands to recall other similar outbursts.
Anyway, here for your viewing pleasure is what happened:
I’ve always thought Eddie Izzard was supremely funny but I didn’t realise that he’d be a really nice bloke just to know and have a conversation with until today.
I embarked on some rather silly Twitter-following very early this morning (all sparked off by Stephen Fry tweeting about Trafigura) and ended up discovering that Eddie Izzard [...]
It makes me proud to be British when I see something as simultaneously wonderful and hilarious as a middle-aged woman brow-beating a government minister into changing government policy.
Joanna Lumley is a treasured British asset – a ludicrously posh but much-loved and fearless actress – and she has been spearheading a campaign against the government for its treatment of Nepalese “Gurkha” British Army fighters.
Just look at this video in which Lumley speaks and then stares at immigration minister Phil Woolas just daring him to contradict her. The finest traditions of a British Battleaxe. He cowers under her summary and then embarks on a droney, bureaucratic explanation of how it all works and why the government hasn’t just made a complete arse of itself. I think Woolas’ political career is over.
Interesting judgment from the United States Supreme Court earlier today: you cannot say the word “fuck” on TV. Well, you can, but you’ll be heavily fined by the FCC. The same goes for “shit”.
Unfortunately, we did not get a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore-style explanation (“a cock in the hands of Pinter”), as the Supreme Court chose to render fuck and shit as “the F- and S-Words”. Nonetheless, it decided that the FCC decision to remove the one-fuck-for-free rule on TV broadcasts on US networks was neither “arbitrary” nor “capricious”.
It’s not just these two words either – the FCC rules cover anything that denotes “sexual or excretory activity or organs”. Bono has yet to yell out that winning an award made his sphincter vibrate (it was Bono that created the new rules by saying it felt “fucking brilliant” when he won his Golden Globe a few years back) – it would be interesting to see how the FCC reacted to that.
Michael Smolens is the platinum guide for the revolution that is going on right now with video over the Internet. As the CEO of DotSub – a company which enables people to simply and easily transcribe and translate film online – he is on the cutting edge.
Which is why it is such a pleasure to talk to him: because he always has some video project or program on his mind that he tells you about, incredulous that you haven’t heard of it yet. So when Michael called me yesterday to tell me he’d be in Los Angeles in early February and did I fancy meeting up, I was delighted to hear about another extraordinary and inspiring use of film the likes of which make me want to pick up my camera right now and get filming.
I check it out online this morning and then also dug out some other recommendations he had made to me and then it occurred to me, buzzing with hope and energy, that it might not be a bad idea to share this knowledge with whoever reads my blog.
So here is a quick guide to the most inspiring films and movements around at the moment. Why be medicated with nonsense television when you can be uplifted and inspired with Net marvels?
Missed this last week: the Internet Society (ISOC) has handed out its annual Postel Award, which honours those who have made outstanding contributions to, broadly, the Internet.