India, Pakistan and GE - Friedman. Thomas Friedman has an interesting viewpoint on how the IT industry staved off a possible war between India and Pakistan. He writes: Two months ago India and Pakistan appeared headed for a nuclear war. Colin Powell, the U.S. secretary of state and a former general, played a key role in [E M E R G I C . o r g]

My mother told me about this article. One reason I like open trade is that it does more for peace than most anything. With free and open trade, lots of people make money off of peace. During war, only a few do.  11:22:32 PM    

Joint Venture Clones Cattle With Human Antibodies. Scientists reported yesterday that they had produced cloned calves that made human antibodies in their blood. By Andrew Pollack. [New York Times: Science]

Okay, not the best article. It was not clear through most of it just what they had done. Getting cattle that make a specific human antibody is fine, but we are a long way from having animals larger than mice that can recreate the entire repertoire of human antibodies without contaminating them with bovine ones. And I do not think that antibodies would be able to transmit a prion disease. But, unless purification processes are extra stringent, there is a possibility of the bovine serum having some. I would be much more worried about the fact that the process had to go through mice, hamsters, etc. Quite a complex protocol to get a few cows that make some human antibodies. They will have to simplify it somehow.  11:14:48 PM    

News & Record: "Howard Coble obviously means well. But a bi-partisan bill he is co-sponsoring to combat Internet burglars effectively could make the entertainment industry judge, jury and executioner of alleged cybercriminals and would permit them unfettered access into anyone's home computer." [Scripting News]

Yeah. I want Disney to be able to crash my computer simply because they can. What is our government thinking (yeah, I know it is not really OUR government. We did not pay for it. The media companies did).  11:08:32 PM    

Today is ...

1837: Birth of Sadi Carnot, engineer who developed some of the foundational principles in thermodynamics.
1909: The ship "Arapahoe" was the first to use the international distress signal S.O.S.
1877: Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars, calledd Phobos and Deimos

[David Harris' Science News]

I even knew about 2 of these.  11:04:31 PM    

The intranet is not a coporate brochure damnit!.

Collaborative working using an intranet. Many of the dot.com magazines have perished, but Fast Company seems to keep going, though I admit I look at... [Intranet Focus Blog]

» Good pickup on how so many companies still have a narrow view of what an intranet can be.  A good intranet is an information ecosystem and not just a magazine site for the corporate communications team.

The questionnaire mentioned looks interesting too.  It is geared towards large companies and seeks to determine:

• the potential value from developing a collaborative organization in your company.
• the current behavioral obstacles in your organization.
• the extent of collaborative levers currently in place in your company.

however I'm sure that many of it's questions could be usefully tailored to fit other situations.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

So many intranets are just updated newsletters and are often run by Communications, not the employees. Many have substantial protocols to be followed before anything can be posted. So, obviously, anything that is changing rapidly has a hard time making it to the intranet and is usually dealt with by e-mail. What a waste!  10:59:53 PM    

New Data Confirm Amazingly Strong Productivity Trend. Usually reliable sources report that as the preliminary estimates of productivity growth were reported over the past year, Alan Greenspan was dumbfounded. "I don't believe it," he is supposed to have said. "You just can't get such high productivity growth in a recession. It will be revised down." And I don't know anybody who didn't agree, to some degree at least. Well, the revisions are in, and the productivity growth trend is a little bit weaker, but only a little... [Semi-Daily Journal]

Still a little early to exclaim too loudly. If productivity gains raise unemployment, it may not be a good sign. But if the economy grows, this could be wonderful  10:52:02 PM