Daily Archives: August 1, 2006

Back to the Future: The Suez Crisis

Posted on by

The Economist publishes a timely look back at the Suez Crisis:

The Suez crisis, as the events of the following months came to be called, marked the humiliating end of imperial influence for two European countries, Britain and France. It cost the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, his job and, by showing up the shortcomings of the Fourth Republic in France, hastened the arrival of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle. It made unambiguous, even to the most nostalgic blimps, America’s supremacy over its Western allies. It thereby strengthened the resolve of many Europeans to create what is now the European Union. It promoted pan-Arab nationalism and completed the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute into an Israeli-Arab one. And it provided a distraction that encouraged the Soviet Union to put down an uprising in Hungary in the same year.

Fixed Gear Bikes Illegal in Portland

Posted on by

Cory Doctorow:

An Oregon judge has ruled that fixed-gear bicycles — which use the rider’s leg-power to brake them — are illegal, and must be outfitted with traditional lever/caliper brakes. The cyclist who was ticketed for the offense fought it in traffic court, and was represented by a pretty sharp attorney, judging from the partial transcript here. It seems obvious that “fixies” should be lawful, since they can satisfy the statutory requirement that bikes be “equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement. strong enough to skid tire.” Nevertheless, the judge ruled against the cyclist — I hope she appeals.

Gopher

Posted on by

Kottke on Gopher:

Gopher, developed in 1991 at the University of Minnesota, is a text-only, hierarchical document search and retrieval protocol that was supplanted by the more flexible WWW in the mid-1990s. Some servers running this old protocol are still alive, however. The WELL, an online discussion board and community that started back in 1985, is still running a Gopher server. If you’ve got a recent version of Firefox, you can check it out in its original Gopher-y state at gopher://gopher.well.com/ or with any web browser at http://gopher.well.com:70/.

I remember using Gopher (and being quite impressed by it) in the early 1990’s via a UW supplied dialup internet account.

This was before the growth of local ISP’s (Internet Service Providers). The UW told non faculty/students/staff to move on once the internet started to take off (1994?).