Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008: A 2001 Reverie for Me

I suppose my story isn’t unlike many of my generation.

I would’ve been about six years old. My Dad took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Back in those days (1968), growing up in Merton Park, UK, seeing a movie at a theatre was a big deal.

And of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t just any movie. It changed the game – for the industry and for me personally. 

First off, I clearly owe a debt of gratitude to my Dad for taking me. For by this simple act, by today’s standards anyway, I experienced a compelling tour-de-force of a movie that would have a lifelong impact.

Back then, it was all about the sights and sounds – the sun rising and space stations spinning to music.

Such was my introduction to classical music and the big-screen genius of Stanley Kubrick.

In time, of course, I would appreciate much more. And although I never did realize my childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut , I suppose that the AI typified by sentient machines such as 2001’s Hal has ultimately influenced my ongoing interests in knowledge representation.

What triggered this reverie?

Yesterday’s passing of Arthur C. Clarke.

Given the importance of such early impressions, and in addition to the gratitude I owe my Dad, I must also thank Clarke and Kubrick.

No doubt it’s time to dust off the book and DVD versions of 2001 and enjoy a little more nostalgia.

Browser Wars Revisited: Safari vs. Firefox?

Seemingly not to be out-done by all the buzz surrounding Firefox 3, Apple today (March 18, 2008) released version 3.1 of its Safari Web browser.
Apparently, we’ll love Safari because:

• It’s fast – Up to 3x Firefox 2 on page loads and 4.5x on JavaScript execution. And although that’s impressive, performance is definitely coming across as one of Firefox 3’s core competencies. It’d be interesting to run the same tests with Safari 3.1 and even Firefox 3 Beta 4.
• The UI – Of course. However, this is another area where Firefox 3 has made significant headway. Even on a Mac, Firefox 3’s UI is also elegant and clean. (For an amusing take on the Apple UI paradigm, have a look at this Eric Burke cartoon. I’m not sure how Burke would represent the Mozilla UI … However, one thing’s for sure, it’s become a lot more elegant and cleaner over the years.)
• Find – The Firefox 3 implementation looks remarkably like Safari’s.
• Resizable text areas – Excellent. Not sure if Firefox 3 has this.

Safari 3.1 also presents a twofold irony with respect to Web standards:

1. You need to do a little digging (page 8 of the Safari Product Overview) to determine what is meant by Web standards support. And once you do, you’ll learn that it relates to CSS, HTML 5 and SVG. Of these, “HTML 5 offline storage support” has the potential to be most interesting, as Google is analogously demonstrating with Google Gears. So, it’s ironic you need to dig for something that has such value.
2. In it’s support of HTML 5, we have a commercial entity (Apple) leading the way in terms of implementing standards. This is refreshing in general, and in particular in Apple’s case, as traditional expectations would have the Open Source implementations (e.g., Firefox) ahead in this regard. To quote Alanis Morissette: “Isn’t it ironic… don’t you think?”

When you factor in support for Windows, and apparently frequent releases, it’s no wonder that Safari is gaining momentum at the expense of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox.
And not that I’ve been following developments with IE, but one has to wonder, if we are to re-visit the IE vs. Netscape browser wars of yesteryear, might the combatants this time be Apple Safari 3.x and Mozilla Firefox 3.x?
One can only hope!