AOL's Chicken.

AOL's Chicken

Kevin's right that AOL/TW is the only company who has all of the pieces of the pie that could actually merge the entire convergence of entertainment, information and internet. This is exactly what I was talking about 8-9 years ago in my Convergence paper.  However it is not that the various units of AOL don't speak the same language-- the struggle is for control. This Control-Freak mentality runs so deep between the AOL and TW side that it will eventually send the company into a nosedive if Steve doesn't get them to realize they are on the same team now. I know Mayo  and several others in power understand it-- but the question is: Does the rest of the board and managment team see the bigger picture?

Doc says: "Give every journalist in the whole AOL/Time Warner organization a blog. Control nothing. Just let 'em go and let nature take its course." 

Hate to break the news to you Doc, but Case won't. Too many control freaks in the line of succession. Too many lawyers in Virginia who are clueless about the technology, who have created more rules and regulations than people can function intellegently. They too would never let him cut loose and give people the ability to speak. We tried to work with them before with the forums and communties. They do not even understand or respect the value of the volunteer peer-experts. We tried to show them the differences between the AOL and CompuServe cultures. It failed, as you know. Now they are telling us we should lose the library files of information we've amassed over the years. Hell they didn't understand the difference between the Netscape and AOL communties!

Now add to the mix the entertainment, television and publishing empire from TW. By nature these people are complete IP control-freaks. They look down upon the online divisions only as a vehicle to promote their productions and publications. The TW people are clueless while the keep producing more television, films and music, that AOL owns the IP to several products that can be used for peer-2-peer file sharing of all of these products! These are the very same products they are fighting us from the right to use.

[Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour]

I hate being on one side of the paradigm shift from others. It makes communication so hard.  11:56:08 PM    

Some people may question the ethics of what we are trying to do, but all we want to do is to make our dream come true

Scientists Hope to Recreate Mammoths [AP Science]

I don't question their ethics, I question their sanity. Here is the process they hope to take:

But they say their idea is fairly straightforward [~] by using retrieved DNA from to impregnate an elephant, they could produce a half-elephant, half-mammoth offspring. Over several generations, a creature genetically close to the prehistoric one could be created.

Several generations!! Look, in transgenic mice, where you really need to fix just 1 new gene in a mouse population, it can take 6 months to get the gene fixed in a population. This is in an animal with a gestation period of days; whose members reach sexual maturity in weeks. The elephants gestation time is 22 months!! And it takes 9-15 years to reach sexual maturity. These guys will never be alive when this gets accomplished, even if they do find usable sperm today (and assuming that the sperm from a mammoth CAN successfully fuse with an elephant egg.  11:51:55 PM    

Professors beware: College kids lying 70% of time [Reuters Health eLine]

Okay, I am confused, as I often am reading the Reuters Health eLine. Where does he get the 70% of the time they lie!. It notes a study that says 70% of the kids procrastinate. Then he collected a number of excuses, asking them when and who they would use them against. BUt I do not see how he determined that 70% of the time they actually use an excuse, it is a lie. I do not doubt that many students resort to a lie but this number seems sort of loose. And there are lots of creative ways to get them to complete the assignment. Punish the lie, but in ways that help the student learn rather than simply feel the punitive powers of authority. Be adaptive and move with the flow. Foe example, show concern and ask what they were sick with; what were the symptoms; how many days were they sick; did they have to go to a doctor; who was the doctor; were their parents worried; are they taking medication; when did they start feeling better; what other assignments did they miss; do they want you to talk with the other professors about this terrible illness; and many others. First, it is really hard to answer these questions quickly if you are lying. A real procrastinator looking for an excuse will not have thought out everything. If they are that smart, they would not need to use The Excuse. Even if they do have ready answers, they had better be able to cover their tracks. Because if I was lying, I would be really paranoid about giving any response to some of the questions. Why did he ask about my parents? Is he going to call them? How about the doctor? Other professors? I think it might be fun to play with them ;-) Plus, if they could document that they were sick for 2 days, I'd give them 2 days to finish the assignment. Other lies can be dealt with in similar fashion.  11:31:42 PM    

Controlling What Can't Be Controlled. Ray Ozzie on Nondiscretionary Controls: "But if everything can ultimately be liberated, then why bother trying to control it?" For some reason I'm reminded of the monk that wouldn't let go. Once you've sold me that product, sent me the email, given me the document... let it go. [Steven's Weblog]

I have a great Tommy Lasorda quote that fits.'I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.' Information and its control is just like this. It is a balance that the great managers, either in sport or any human endeavor, have been able to reach.  11:15:35 PM    

Chuck Goolsbee from Digital Forest, the ISP that hosts Mac Net Journal and my other business site for White Rabbit Publishing, posted an interesting note yesterday to the TidBITS Talk mailing list about the MPAA going after his business to shut down an individual user who is sharing "Simpsons" material through Gnutella while connected to Digital Forest.

Chuck raises two great legal questions: Can he bill the MPAA for the time in taking action on its behalf? And will he be reimbursed for any lost revenue if he shuts down the offending user?

As a Digital Forest user, I worry about the invasion of privacy presented by this enforcement action, as well as about the economic costs of enforcement being passed down to those users who, like me, are not sharing copyright protected materials to the world through a Digital Forest account... [Mac Net Journal]

I love digital.forest (our immunoid.org site is hosted by them). I too worry about this and the possible effects of a calamity on other users. I do not want a 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it' scenario.  10:58:51 PM    

As Alien Invaders Proliferate, Conservationists Change Their Focus. On a human-dominated planet, it is only natural that wilderness and wildlife will be increasingly disrupted, hemmed in or exterminated. By Andrew C. Revkin and Carol Kaesuk Yoon. [New York Times: Science]

Look. Humans ARE natural. We are not some horrible abomination on the face iof the Earth. Nature is change. Sometimes faster. Sometimes slower. But, the processes many are owrried about are not always simply due to humans. They talk about the common reed or the gypsy moth. These may be due to a human-generated event, but if the reed had found its way to the US via another path, it still would have colonized marshes. Immigration by species may be more rapid because of humans, but the process is a 'natural' one. In my opinion, people are afraid that the changes are to rapid. Many believe that changes in allele frequency (so called microevolution) still takes a long time. I would argue that is not the case. That changing environments reveal large amounts of genetic variation, just waiting to take advantage of the new environment. Some species will die, others will thrive. As I disucssed in my 'Food For Thought' article, there appear to be biological processes that could increase biodiversity in unstable environments.We abhor the common reed, but from its viewpoint, this is a great boon. And, we also are begining to have the tools to make these transitions a little easier, increasing the chances that some very interesting and productive variations will be seen. Remember, nothing in Nature is stable and unchanging. Life on Earth has had a long time to learn how to deal with this. It is egotistical to believe that we humans are doing things to the Earth on a level that Nature has NEVER had to deal with. The life that we see on the planet today is here becasue its ancestors followed a basic disctum :Adapt or Die.  10:45:24 PM    

On an Altered Planet, New Diseases Emerge as Old Ones Re-emerge. West Nile may be just one infectious disease whose incidence and geographic range have expanded because of human activities. By Denise Grady. [New York Times: Science]

Okay, West Nile is new in the US but the problems of emerging diseases is not. Much of the speculation in this article is old hat. Many of the infectious diseases that we suffer from came from our modification of the environment. It may be that the measles, poxes, and other 'normal' diseases came from our domestication of animals. These viruses jumped species thousands of years ago, and we adapted. Influenza absolutely requires domesticated animal vectors. It seems what we are doing now is creating a more healthy environment for some organisms at the same time we are hurting others. That is nature. It is not pretty and it is dangerous. We like to think that we have civilized the world and made it safe for humans. Well, we have, but we can never remove all risk. Life adapts and routes around damage. We will always be faced with these sorts of outbreaks. WHat we have to remember is that we now have the tools to quickly attack them. Think what would have happened if HIV had been a problem even 50 years ago. We would not have had the tools to figure out what was the mechanism the virus used (the idea of reverse transcription of RNA to DNA violated the central dogma) much less found any sort of therapy. Humans are just as adaptable as any other organism. We will find a way around. See the previous article.  10:32:17 PM    

Forget Nature. Even Eden Is Engineered.. Scientists agree that choices made in the next decade are likely to determine the health of the environment well into the next century. By Andrew C. Revkin. [New York Times: Science]

This is so right on. I absolutely believe this quote: ' a group of top geographers, economists, engineers and other experts concludes that the same inventiveness that accelerated the human ascent can be harnessed to soften human impact.' We will survive. It will just take a society that can rapidly mobilze its resources to cambat an always hostile environment, even when the environment is one of our own creation.  10:31:42 PM    

Falling Forecasts of Short-Run Growth. David Wessel and Thomas Sims of the Wall Street Journal report on how the consensus forecasts of near-term economic growth worldwide are being cut back. Former Fed Governor Larry Meyer provides context: WSJ.com - Major Business News: ...In the U.S., the very slow growth in payrolls and the decelerating pace of wage gains threatens to pinch household income. Household wealth has been whacked by the weak stock market. And business investment spending is restrained by "a sense of pessimism and... [Semi-Daily Journal]

More depressing economic stuff. I really hope we are not headed towards a decade-long Japan style cycle. SO much for buy and hold.  10:14:14 PM    

New Architect: Wireless, Defenseless. To work, the public mobile Internet has to be open, letting people join and drop out at will. This means that public wireless communication will be vulnerable to sniffing, so there's no longer any excuse for failing to use end-to-end encryption for email, Web, and login protocols. [Tomalak's Realm]

Lincoln Stein is one of my idols in the field of bioinformatics. Our ability to examine the huge amount of data from the human genome project and other sequencing efforts would have taken a lot longer without Lincoln. I'm going to take his advice and bulletproof my wireless access, although since it is a dila-up and is not always on, it does already have some safe features ;-) Broadband, with its always on connection, would pose more of a problem.  10:06:06 PM    

New Enbrel production in early 2003

Amgen to ramp up production of Enbrel. Daily News Aug 24 2002 1:25PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Everyone seems to be cautious but this is a wonderful drug. No one mentions that to take Remicade you have to continue taking methotrexare, a really nasty drug. And the fact that Enbrel has a shorter halflife, requiring it to be taken more often is a GOOD thing. The major side effect from all of these anti-TNF therapeutics is the risk of infection (TNF is a very important molecule in the bodies fight against invaders. But it is also a major cause of rheumatoid arthritis. All these drugs attack RA by targeting TNF). For any of these drugs, if you develop an infection, you have to stop taking the drug. If you are taking Enbrel, the drug is flushed out in a couple of days, lowering the chances that the infection you have can become really dangerous. But Remicade and the other anti-TNR antibodies have a long halflife, meaning that significant levels of the drug can still be in the body after a few weeks, potentiially jeopardizing the body's ability to mount an effective response to infection. If I had to take one of these drugs, I would want to take the one that could be taken by itself and, more importantly, could allow my body to more quickly fight off the effects of an infection. That would be Enbrel.  9:41:37 PM    

Pigs and transplantation

Advance in cloning propels biotech firm. International Herald Tribune Aug 24 2002 8:31PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

This has a huge potential for transplants, but there is still the possibility of porcine retroviruses being carried along. It could be nasty for a pig virus to jump species. But, then, I am sure that the adaptive human spirit would find a way around this problem. Meanwhile thousands of people that would die could live. A certainty against a possibility. Hard to call??  9:31:43 PM    

Why subject experts are not necessarily good trainers.

.... I guess, there are more reasons, but I'd like to focus on one of them: why subject matter experts are not good in creating training.

The misguided logic of the Paulette Principle is this: If you are good at what you do, you must be able to teach others to do it. Training designed by subject matter experts spells disaster in one of two ways: (1) Basic information is left out because the subject matter expert does not recognize what basic means anymore, or (2) the subject matter expert is so hot on their topic that every possible nuance of the topic is included in the training.

It illustrates my idea about differences between teaching and knowledge sharing. Even if someone wants to share knowledge, it's not necessary that he can help others to learn. [Mathemagenic]

This would explain why so many university professors can't teach very well.

[Seb's Open Research]

I love to share knowledge and I can teacj others. It is something I that really love to do. I just need to figure out how to do it in a creative, adaptive environments, since our schools are usually anything BUT this.  12:56:08 AM    

Tom Lehrer. "I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up." [Quotes of the Day]

I love Tom Lehrer. My parents had 2 of his self-published albums that I just wore out. The Elements, Lobachevsky, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. What a wonderfully creative man.  12:52:39 AM    

Requirement for Caspase-2 in Stress-Induced Apoptosis Before Mitochondrial Permeabilization
Patrice Lassus, Ximena Opitz-Araya, and Yuri Lazebnik
Science Aug 23 2002: 1352-1354. [Abstract] [Full Text] [Supporting Online Material]   [Science] Distinct Modes of Signal Recognition Particle Interaction with the Ribosome
Martin R. Pool, Joachim Stumm, Tudor A. Fulga, Irmgard Sinning, and Bernhard Dobberstein
Science Aug 23 2002: 1345-1348. [Abstract] [Full Text] [Supporting Online Material]   [Science] Sexual Selection, Temperature, and the Lion's Mane
Peyton M. West and Craig Packer
Science Aug 23 2002: 1339-1343. [Abstract] [Full Text] [Supporting Online Material]   [Science] Mechanisms of Adaptation in a Predator-Prey Arms Race: TTX-Resistant Sodium Channels
Shana Geffeney, Edmund D. Brodie Jr., Peter C. Ruben, and Edmund D. Brodie III
Science Aug 23 2002: 1336-1339. [Abstract] [Full Text] [Supporting Online Material]   [Science] Structure of the Extracellular Region of HER3 Reveals an Interdomain Tether
Hyun-Soo Cho and Daniel J. Leahy
Science Aug 23 2002: 1330-1333. Published online August 1, 2002; 10.1126/science.1074611 (Science ExpressReports) [Abstract] [Full Text] [Supporting Online Material]   [Science] Whole-Genome Shotgun Assembly and Analysis of the Genome of Fugu rubripes
Samuel Aparicio, Jarrod Chapman, Elia Stupka, Nik Putnam, Jer-ming Chia, Paramvir Dehal, Alan Christoffels, Sam Rash, Shawn Hoon, Arian Smit, Maarten D. Sollewijn Gelpke, Jared Roach, Tania Oh, Isaac Y. Ho, Marie Wong, Chris Detter, Frans Verhoef, Paul Predki, Alice Tay, Susan Lucas, Paul Richardson, Sarah F. Smith, Melody S. Clark, Yvonne J. K. Edwards, Norman Doggett, Andrey Zharkikh, Sean V. Tavtigian, Dmitry Pruss, Mary Barnstead, Cheryl Evans, Holly Baden, Justin Powell, Gustavo Glusman, Lee Rowen, Leroy Hood, Y. H. Tan, Greg Elgar, Trevor Hawkins, Byrappa Venkatesh, Daniel Rokhsar, and Sydney Brenner
Science Aug 23 2002: 1301-1310. Published online July 25, 2002; 10.1126/science.1072104 (Science ExpressResearch Articles ) [Abstract] [Full Text] [Supporting Online Material] [Notes and Corrections]   [Science]

Things to read.  12:43:56 AM    

BBC: "Millions of people using Microsoft's Office and Internet Explorer programs are at risk from security holes that could allow malicious hackers to change files on their computers." [Scripting News]

Glad the Microsoft finally made security a big issue. Sounds like this could be a problem for as long as Office has been out, at least since macros were added. And we are just NOW finding out. Glad I use a Mac (A paranoid person would say that this is probably some way for MS to catch software pirates) ;-)  12:30:05 AM    

Mitochondria can be inherited from both parents [New Scientist]

Paternal transmission of mitochondria has been proposed before. This is the first notice of a real transmission in humans. Any sort of transmission of paternal mitochondria could have a real effect on many of the studies looking at human evolution. The idea of a genetic 'Eve' comes from studying mitochondrial DNA, assuming that it comes only from the femal line. Even a small 'contamination' from the male side could have big ramifications on the possible length of time for the mitochondrial DNA to change. I am sure there are a lot of models being revisted.  12:21:35 AM    

E-mail to weblog posting - sorry if it goes wrong

Great, "OLW" comments on the same article about learning communities "cit"OK, most people are going to regard this as a pretty good article about online learning communities, and it is a pretty good article. But it embodies some important errors found in the state of the art. The article correctly identifies the need for online learning communities as a means of capturing the informal or tacit knowledge that circulates within an organization or group. But then, like most accounts of online learning communities, it describes a fairly structured or formal approach to their creation, so much so that the resulting product would resemble a classroom much more than a community. Take a look at the "people approaches" described in the article, where clearly defined roles, "including the instructor, subgroups, group leaders or facilitators" are recommended, for example. Or look at the "process approach" where community leaders should create "guidelines for online and offline etiquette and obtain agreement on the behavior that will lead to successful group and individual learning outcomes." Now I ask, does that resemble how tacit knowledge is shared in the workplace or even at school? Not even close. I think there are two major things to remember, things that dictate a very different approach than is recommended here. First, informal learning is informal, so don't try to structure it with roles and behaviours. Second, informal learning is not separate, but rather, integrated into day-to-day activities. The learning is a part of and a natural outgrowth of other activities. Putting it into a nice formalized box somewhere separate from everything else simply ruins it."citc" Something to add to my question about "can we support informal learning". Supporting often means formallising,,, [Mathemagenic]

The stupid network is best. Make it simple. Let the adaptive nature of a stupid network, whether people or software, find an efficient way to transfer and knowledge. Defining a process for this will not work. As stated in the Innovator's Dilemma, a process is designed to repeat success. Creation of knowledge comes from serendipity, adaptation, novelty. These can not be repeated. The conditions can be fostered, that is all. You then have to let humans create.  12:06:51 AM    

Came via SynapShots: Learning How to Ask Powerful, Probing Questions [Mathemagenic]

One of the things that I have found in the best scientists is the ability to ask powerful questions, even when confronted with information for the first time. While not all scientists follow the precepts detailed here, I think that many try to. Removing the various innate bias is one of these. Because science is an attempt to describe the natural world, simply stating "because I believe it is so" is not enough. You have to have some proof and a logical argument to even get heard. And others will try to find a flaw in it. It may be because of this combination of hypothesis, proof and attack that many scientists have a hard time commmunicating with the public, particularly in areas where the government intrudes. Many politicians build their careers using the innate bias detailed in this article. Often scientists and politicians just tal;k at one another, with little true information flow.  12:03:15 AM