The need for speed.

That’s what it ALL comes down to. When I sit down to my computer, I HAVE TO HAVE speed. Otherwise, I get irritable. I get DYSPEPTIC. Surly. Peevish. Yes friends dare I say- irascible. Well hold on to your megabytes, this just in, help is on the way!

The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said. 

And I thought my DSL connection was sweet. Ha!

The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates. Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high.

Technology is on the move like never before.

…Free!  A look at how the psychology of Abundance is changing the web, and our lives, forever.

Technorati Tags: web, digital media

MakeUseOf.com has to be one of the best download sites on the web. Worth checking out, worth keeping handy.

Assuming this post isn’t blocked by my ISP, I’m hoping LJiCers are as disturbed by Comcast blocking Internet traffic as I am. I don’t mind Comcast blocking some file sharing programs. I just want to be told that your doing it.

I’ve used BitTorrent at times. And, because I have Comcast, I’ve wondered why BitTorrent was so slow. Now I know. Wish I had known before. At least then I could have worked around it to get my illegal software. Just joking. Really….I’ll be right back. I hear a knock at the door…Wha? No! It was a joke! Stop that! Don’t erase my hard dri…

I’m currently reading The Search, by John Batelle. (You can find it at Liberty Recommends in the right sidebar.) It’s not just a history of the rise of Google and other search engines, but a look at how internet Searching has changed our culture over the past ten years. Great book so far, but reading a book on the history of the internet is like reading ancient history. It’s filled with outdated words like GoTo, WebCrawler, and even Gopher. Yet, I used all of those at one time or another. After all, it was only ten to 15 years ago.

One of the key figures in the history of Search is Bill Gross, founder of GoTo/Overture, IdeaLabs, Magellan and a dozen other startups. His current startup is Snap.com. Having tried it for just a few minutes, I’m already hooked. It’s now a part of my home tabs in Firefox. The snap News feature is far superior to GoogleNews, and the WebSearch feature seems to bring back far more relevant links than Google, at least so far. Check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think.