Book Reviews


[Day Permalink] Tuesday, September 3, 2002

[Item Permalink] Intellectual Property -- Comment()
Intellectual Property Duties: "William Blake didn't stop writing in 1818. It just looks that way because his antejerusalem manuscripts were destroyed after his death and before his most fervent admirers were born." [via http://boingboing.net/]


[Item Permalink]  -- Comment()
Blog Drone writes: "Tom had bought a bottle of vodka while we were in line so we brought that back up to his room with some juice from the soda machine. Being given a revelation from god while we were talking on the phone-one that she felt a strong urge to pass on to me. Getting here a different way would mean almost certainly being a different person :-( You will almost certainly fail to live up to these ideals so you will be acutely disappointed in yourself. And you will most certainly never be so crass as to physically threaten me with your crude little toys. But he will be in southern california next weekend when im there and that could most certainly be amusing. This was when i was living in southern california and my mom was still married to my real father. When i was living in nice the entire postal system went on strike? That means that while i was living in my moms house i bought an average of 150 comics a year... That means that i only have 2 12 books left to read this semester. It breaks me to be so far from him but i only have a month left then we will have each other :-(

Yes it was an awful thing to do but she probably didnt mean it to embarass me. I think her coming was definitely a positive thing she awakened a lot in me even if it was painful at first and thats probably why it was so :0 I think i need to apologize to u for not being overly happy when i got off the phone with u last nighti was feeling a bit of my jealousy issues coming up. Okay let me think about what i need to do so that i can sort it out in my head and be all organized and stuff ;) As the days passed i began to think about what she had said. But it is done and i am glad even on the days when my love of you is so consuming i cannot eat. I been before but it is different when you got nice places to stay and eat and all that :* I have ready the story of b and my ishmael before but i want to get all his books in hardcover.

I dont want to get all traditional on you or anything. I dont want to fight i dont want to cause trouble all i ask is a little love and a little peace. But i dont want to hate her because i used to not hate her. I dont want to ignore breast cancer until someone i love dies from it or even worse i get it. I dont want to be a 30 year old woman in a wheel chair wrearing a diaper because i pee my pants ;-) Life value and mortality i dont want to be miserably living and blind to what society has created like the other robots of the world.

We have two but i dont want to use the other one. I dont want to watch something that will make me cry and then make me angry. I enjoy first-run episodes of the practice generally but i dont want to watch them in reruns :-( I could use the practice. Wondering if i could use your idea of using the last sentence of each entry as its tittle.

Time for bed, -- Catty"


[Item Permalink] Blog Drone -- Comment()
Blog Drone generates random blog entries with smileys put in. Nice work, nonsense. ;-) [via http://boingboing.net/]


[Item Permalink] Learning by PowerPoint -- Comment()
Of PowerPoint and Pointlessness: "The number of teachers using PowerPoint presentations in class is on the rise. This raises a question among education theorists: What is the point? By Joanna Glasner." [Wired News]

I still remember those days when the lecturer wrote his notes on the blackboard from memory, and proved complicated theorems before the classroom without any aids to the memory. Is this gone? And is it a bad thing?

I believe that Learning by PowerPoint will be increasingly common, and generate increasingly worse results. Those students who have personal access to more experienced colleagues will probably do all right, but those who only have access to the PowerPoint presentations and similar things will not learn much about studying the world.


[Item Permalink] Mac OS X: open and closed -- Comment()
Saving Money With Open Source. "Apple is the first vendor to bet the farm on BSD. By making Darwin the core of OS X, Apple has made the biggest corporate commitment to OSS so far." (The Star via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

It is interesting to note that also the Open Source part of Mac OS X gets attention. However, most of the attraction to the system is caused by the graphical user interface, the iApps, and all those nice little tools Apple has packaged with the system. So, Mac OS X is a mixture of open and closed, and this seems to work quite well. I hope that also "pure" Open Source versions of Mac OS X software will be developed.


[Item Permalink] Experiencing Jaguar -- Comment()
Good Reasons To Upgrade To OS X 10.2: "I almost hate to say it, because I too was bothered by Apple's pricing policy, but after using 10.2 for a couple of weeks, I'm sold: If you use Mac OS X, upgrading to 10.2 is a worthwhile investment." (San Francisco Chronicle via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

Today I finally finished my one-page article about Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2), including two screen captures. My experiences are quite similar to the experiences above. However, I have been a very satisfied user of Mail for some time now, and the new spam filter seems to work much better than I expected.

However, I do think that the pricing of Jaguar is a bit steep for those who have been early adopters of the system. But at least you have to option of the five-machine family license.


[Item Permalink] DRM, right-wing politics, and socialism -- Comment()
Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the right-wing politics are on friendly terms. Perhaps "right" means a different thing here than it used to mean.

Extremely RDM-ruled commercial world and the socialist system have much in common: the notion of "who owns ideas". In the DRM world only non-owned ideas are free; in the socialist system only state-owned ideas were free.


[Item Permalink] Radio trial halfway through -- Comment()
Today I received an email reminder from Radio: I have 15 days of the trial period left. I'm not yet sure I'll continue using Radio.