I recently had the honor of meeting Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet. Some feel that the world wide web and the internet are synonymous, this is not the case.

The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Simply put, internet is how the computers physically communicates with one another and the web is a collection of documents and how they communicate with their storehouses (servers) and end users.


I attended a conference where Dr. Cerf addressed the Media. The room was filled with about 600 people who had come to hear the Internet Evangelist's sermon. Even at the age of 64 Vint Cerf is as perky as ever. He started with explaining what the internet is and how it began.

United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was the first in the world to experience the world of the internet. The networked computers in the facility was called ARPANET. It was Cerf's initiative to get the internet out into the market as a commercial tool and here are we today, all networked and interconnected.

Had he not taken this initiative, there would be no blogs, no emails etc etc, you get the drift. By commercializing the Internet, we have one of the largest interconnected networks in the world. But why stop there? Dr. Cerf talked about connecting the entire Universe using this technology.

He explained that the bots in Mars are not able to transfer data as quickly and efficiently as possible. It takes approximately 20 minutes to get data from Mars. As the bots move to the far side of the planet the connection between the bots and the satellites is lost and this leads to time lag and delay in acquiring data.

Dr. Cerf is overseeing a project by NASA which will help receive InterPlaNET or interplanetary internet. This will help us get the information we require from the Red planet quicker to Earth. Colonization may not be too far.

A few things kept running through my head during the conference and I am grateful that some of the audience brought out those questions.

The first thing that strikes me about Dr. Cerf is the unlikely resemblance he has to the Architect in the Matrix. When asked whether he was approached by the makers of the movie to have a character like him, he said no but he was really excited to understand how the world looks at him.


It is amazing how abuse prevalent anywhere and everywhere. You see that internet is now a center for abuse through a variety of different ways. The internet is the reflection of society, you can't change the mirror, but to change the reflection you must change the society. The power of the web is in our hands, it should make us feel responsible for what has been endowed to us.

Here is some urban legend that might interest you guys "Surfing the net" originated from the first data sent over the internet by Vint Cerf during his time at the DARPA. Phonetically it can be written as "Cerfing the net"! Here is something that'll get you thinking ....

I was awed and still am awed after meeting him. It is unbelievable, the humility and brilliance this man possesses. He has the power to say that what he created changed the world as we know it.

I found this short interview with Dr. Vint Cerf on Youtube, which might be interesting to you guys. Check it out.

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You will be forgiven for thinking that the Bugatti Veyron is not aerodynamic in contrast to some of the cars that look like they can reach the moon. But not if you don't drool knowing what this machine can do.



Highlights:

1) Faster than any F1 car has ever gone
2) Covers 1 football field distance in 1 second at top speed 407.5 Km/hr
3) Comes with a boot, airconditioning and airbags unlike the F1s
4) According to Jeremy Clarkson, the host of Top Gear, in a speed race, if the McLaren F1 were allowed to reach 120 mph before the Bugatti started, the Bugatti would still be the first to reach 200 mph.
5) Tyres last for 15 minutes at full throttle but the fuel tank empties before that in 12 minutes
6) Has 10 heat radiators in lieu of 1 in most commercial vehicles
7) Its all yours for £840,000 while the production cost is estimated at £5 million per vehicle



The car is not without its share of criticism.

Gordon Murray, designer of the McLaren F1 (which at the time of creation was billed as the fastest production car ever built) said the following about the Bugatti Veyron in UK auto magazine evo during its development period:

"The most pointless exercise on the planet has got to be this four-wheel-drive 1000 horsepower Bugatti. I think it’s incredibly childish this thing people have about just one element—top speed or standing kilometre or 0-60. It’s about as narrow minded as you can get as a car designer to pick on one element. It’s like saying we’re going to beat the original Mini because we’re going to make a car 10 mph faster on its top speed—but it's two foot longer and 200 kilos heavier. That’s not car designing—that just reeks of a company who are paranoid."[citation needed]



Say what Mr. Murray, its incredible what this machine can do with all that weight and deceiving aerodynamics. This is engineering at one of its bests and pushed to the limits and saying otherwise will put one on the road to perdition.

Watch and hear the car reach the record speed:

Now I wait for the Car that will beat this one.

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Babelfish is an online language translation service from altavista. It is the most popular and the oldest language translation service on the web.

To translate a block of text, just type into the text box in your language and choose the source and target languages and click translate. Alternatively, if you want to translate a webpage, just put the link into the text box and click the translate button. That is as simple as language translation gets.

There is also an option to embed the language translator into your website for people who do not understand the language of your website. Check the link for more details.

Now for the fun part. Altavista named its language translator Babelfish drawing inspiration from its first reference in the book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Following are Babelfish's introductory paragraphs from the book:

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.



Now it is a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof for the non-existence of god.

The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist', says god, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.'

'But', says man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear', says god, 'I hadn't thought of that', and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy', says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps it Up for God.

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

On a serious note, has communication and removal of language barriers led to more wars? Communication technology sure changed the world and made it a smaller place, but did it make the world any safer?

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