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 Tuesday, August 27, 2002
K-Logs. The next generation desktop. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
America has been hurt by early standardization many times in the past. It is often the burden of an early adopter. The consumer TVs in Europe are niftier than in the US> This may be due to some of the aspects of their television system, which was adopted after ours. NTSC (funny acronym - Never The Same Color) was adopted as a standard because it came first (or almost so) making the transition to digital or more sophisticated methods difficult. Cell phones are similar. It may take some time until we have phones as nifty as Japan or Europe, because we locked into early standards. Heck, we still use English units while everyone else used metric. Talk about locking in an obsolete standard. But, our culture is nothing if not adaptable so we will survive. Japanese cars killed us but we won back the market. In the long run, it is better for everyone. 11:57:02 PM 
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Bulk of kids' liquid intake is hi-cal sodas, juices [Reuters Health eLine]
But wait, if kids only drink 12-18 ounces of soda a day, then they must drink less 24 to 36 ounces of liquid a day. Now, it is very likely that we do not need to consume 64 ounces of water a day, but I think teens do consume more than 36 ounces per day. So, some of these statistics are misleading. I wonder which ones? 11:09:11 PM
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Teen soft drink consumption often misstated [EurekAlert!]
According to their statistics, teenage girls have 1 12-ounce soft drink a day; boys about 1.6. That is about 120 to 200 calories a day. Not the huge number quoted by many news agencies. Of course, we do have to wonder who funded the research. The National Soft Drink Association also quotes the authors. This article states that USDA data in 1999 has boys drinking over 24 ounces a day and girls at 18 ounces. So has soft drink use gone down? Another article from February indicates that drinking a single soft drink a day increases you chances of being obese by 50%. However, they do not give any real indication of how this plays out in real numbers. Does it increase the chances from 2% to 3%? Or from 10% to 15%? Or from 40% to 60%? All increase the chance by 0% but have very different results in the real world. Personally, I think drinking lots of carbohydrates is not good. Our bodies, at least in some cases, do better with meets and nuts than with refined sugar or corn syrup. 11:00:47 PM
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Mayo Clinic discovers one more downside to alcoholism [EurekAlert!]
I wonder if some of these problems could be similar to the confusion seen after heart surgery. Following bypass surgery, a large fraction of the patients display confusion. The belief is that it might be due to micro-strokes caused by a disruption of the clotting pathways during and following surgery. Do other large organ transplantions also display periods of confusion? 10:44:50 PM
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Skepticism Toward the Skeptical Environmentalist. I cannot be the only economist who was disappointed by Bjorn Lomborg's column in the New York Times on Monday, August 26. Lomborg makes a number of good points: it is definitely the case that we are pumping enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to warm the earth; that many of our environmental problems are the diseases of poverty, early industrialization, and the absence of democracy; that the Kyoto Protocol would be hideously expensive; that it would... [Semi-Daily Journal]
Another extremely cogent article. I also agree that some of the ideas about global warming may be flawed but they might also horribly underestimate the effects. We are trying to work in a system that is also changing. But stating the Kyoto Protocol is too expensive without offering anything in its place is just wrong. If we could use the money better to help world poverty, fine, let's do it. Unfortunately, the same groups that want to reduce spending on global warming will probably also be against this sort of plan. For many, it is spending the money at all not what it is spent on.
I am a scientist, and as such, smugly confident that we will solve any problem we face. You do not get to be a scientist without the firm belief that you can solve problems eventually. Otherwise you find another profession. Science is too frustrating for a really pessimistic world view to take a firm hold. But any good scientist is their own best critic. You need to find the flaws in your argument and prepare for the possibility that you are wrong. Hey, you want to be the first to notice if there is a problem, not your competitors. So, Kyoto might be wrong but how and what should we do. Develop non-fossil fuel power sources. Find cheaper methods to provide health care to the poor countries of the world. There is a huge list. And you will be on the wrong side of history if you reply 'Do nothing' to everything on the list. 10:40:53 PM
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John Robb on using Radio as the next generation desktop [Yahoo! Groups: klogs] [Mathemagenic]
Some really good points about computing in emerging markets. They do get the benefit of our mistakes, particularly when we get locked into a standard. Similar things happened after WWII in TV. Our standard was the first but, in some ways, the European standard is better. We got locked in early. Europe has much niftier consumer model TVs. Same with cell phones. The best technology is not in the US because we got 'standardized' with early technology and could not easily move to a better standard. English vs. metric units. Another example. It may be that this lock-in does not kill us but it does slow us down. 10:17:48 PM
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McGee's Musings hereI find that creating knowledge is hard work. And, I've found that keeping a weblog is one absolutely essential tool for helping me catch ideas before they slip away and then working to develop them into something useful. [Mathemagenic]
I use this weblog, even if no one besides my mother reads it. It helps me keep found things found. 10:12:24 PM
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News.Com: Why telecoms back the pirate cause. Q&A with Sarah Deutsch, VP and associate general counsel at Verizon. The whole legislative attack came as a complete surprise to Verizon, because we had thought we had a long-term deal with the copyright community after spending three years negotiating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That was supposed to be the end of the war. [Tomalak's Realm]
A really enlightening article. It is really cool to watch huge corproations stomp around and scream at each other. The telecoms thooght they had made a compromise with the copyright coporations with the benighted DMCA. But, noooo (as John Belushi would say). Now the copyright coporations want more. They want the ability to bring down a node on the Internet, one possible controlled by a telecom, simply because Disney 'thinks' someone might be passing copyrighted material. If they damage a load of computers and hardware in the meantime, and find nothing, Oh well. On to the next node. Won't it be a great world? 10:10:31 PM
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By the way. If you haven't set up a Web Service using Radio yet (and want to geek out for a bit), here is a simple tutorial on how to do it (DIY Web Services). BTW, this is going to be huge in a couple years. The ability to publish and consume Web Services within a desktop Web app is going to remake the Internet. Mark my words. It is a tsanami in the making. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
I had not done this at work, since I was trying to get Radio and RCS up and running at Immunex. Now, maybe I will try it, since I have so much free time. 9:56:34 PM
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"Yes, and....". Son-in-law and intergenerational theater advocate Tom was pretty much insistent on our playing the game "Yes, and..." during our week at Esalen. The game, which I found on a website called "Sheer Idiocy," goes like this:Yes, and. [ DeepFUN Weblog] [Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog]
>EM?My son would really like this game. We will give it a try. 9:51:10 PM
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The new UK copyright statute has been made public .... The new UK copyright statute has been made public for a two month comment period. In the August 21 London Times, David Rowan reports on its repressive features. "The law, among other things, will redefine 'fair dealing' ['fair use' in the US] involving intellectual property [~] giving copyright owners new powers to limit what can be quoted in academic reviews, and potentially restricting the electronic information the public can access through libraries, and it will let copyright holders track the use of their data online. Some copyright breaches will also now become criminal rather than civil offences [~] such as any attempts to protect yourself from this third-party surveillance while online." [FOS News]
Luckily for us, the Constitution defines the limits of copyright and provide us with such things as libraries, fair use and the eventual transition of copyrighted material to the public sector. Well, it used to. 9:49:33 PM
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Quote from Judge Damon Keith, 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals. If you can not frame your argument in cogent terms, it is usually wrong. A blanket claim that the executive branch can determine, without juducial review, that every deportation hearing can proceed in private, in particular 'no visitors, no family and no press.' Only the defendeant and the prosecutors. A really nice decision. 2:48:29 PM
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U.S. eyes biotech exports. San Francisco Chronicle Aug 27 2002 0:47AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]
A very interesting article. While a '12 Monkeys' scenario is not out of the question, it is also not very likely, while the positive effects of biotech CAN be measured. Are we going to try to keep it all for ourselves, under the guise of terrorism? Not possible and sure to tick off the rest of the world. The 'problem' with globalization is that it brings all countries under a feedback system that capitalism and democracy provide. At least it is a problem if our own government tries to ignore these effects on itself. It can not tell a Swiss company that owns an American one to do things that we would not ask an American company to do. If we want to lead, we need to play by the same rules as everyone else. Not because we want to but because we have to. If the British had done this, and not ticked off the Colonies so much, we might still be a member of the Commonwealth (Not likely but it is a good image ;-) 9:34:29 AM
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Alfred North Whitehead. "The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy." [Quotes of the Day]
Erica Jong. "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." [Quotes of the Day]
unknown. "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons." [Quotes of the Day]
Okay, I have the same reference that says this came from Popular Mechanics, March 1949. Anyone know for sure? I just wish Popular Mechanics was online back to 1949. 9:24:31 AM
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Cell Sanity Arrives in Schools. States that once passed laws banning the use of cell phones and pagers in schools are reversing themselves, a move that reflects concerns about safety and the reality that handhelds are ubiquitous. By Dustin Goot. [Wired News]
Man, a 10 day suspension for having a cell phone on school property. WOW. As a Parent I would be incensed. I would want my child to be able to contact me. And it appears that in California, the changes were driven from the kids. Those in the legislature just do not have a clue. Or, they are rapidly gaining one. I believe that the next few years will see them change also, or they will no longer be in government. As we figure out how to deal with some of the changes, more sanity will appear. And it will not require a whole new generation to accomplish this. The world changes way too fast. I can't live without a cell phone or email, yet neither existed in any usable sense less that 15 years ago. 9:08:48 AM
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Jaguar release catapults Apple sales. It's a company record. Consumers snap up more than 100,000 copies of the OS X 10.2 operating system the first weekend it went on sale, Apple says. [CNET News.com]
I wonder of MS will still complain that not enough people are moving to Mac OS X. 100,000 times $129 is a ton of money for one weekend. This is the version of OS X that I have been waiting for. I'll be converting my computers and/or buying a couple of new ones soon. My wife is getting a business started so I get to help set up her compuetr system. 9:00:27 AM
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Well, another beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest. If it was like this all the time, we'd be Los Angeles. Now, at least I can get to my CV online. I'm finishing up the editing of my white paper on information glut in the biotech industry and how to deal with it. So much of this is still true. I just need to get someone to recognize it and give me a job implementing it;-) 8:53:33 AM
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