Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Saturday, September 28, 2002

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Apple extends .Mac sign-up deadline: "Mac users who have not converted their free iTools accounts to paid .Mac subscriptions have a little more time to consider whether to make the switch." [CNET News.com]

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Sally Ride Toys With Engineering: "The first American woman in space has a new mission: Get more girls interested in science and engineering. To that end, Sally Ride is sponsoring a toy design competition for middle-schoolers. By Katie Dean." [Wired News]

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Overview of the BSDs: "A good informative article about the various BSD OSs, their legacy, philosophy and importance..." [Slashdot]

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John Robb's Radio Weblog writes: "Michael DeMaria over at Network Computing wants weblogs to have topical lists of posts. ... There are obviously two ways find posts contain a specific topic:

1) Use a search engine.

2) Use a metadata tool like LiveTopics by Matt Mower."

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VNC, No Longer Orphaned: "... new developments to everyone's favorite piece of remote-managment software, VNC. ... A company called RealVNC has been formed, sporting the original coders from the AT&T lab, and aiming to 'act as the focal point for open source VNC.'" [Slashdot]

Review of Finnish biotechnology -- Comment()
Today I and two of my colleagues were interviewed by an international expert panel on biotechnology. The experts are writing a report on the status and prospects of Finnish biotechnology. The survey report will be published in December.

The review was on Saturday, so I had to work during the weekend, which I don't really like to do. Also, I was contacted this morning to ask if the interview could happen two hours earlier. Thus I had a very busy morning.

The interview took less than an hour, and was very friendly and polite. The experts are really prominent names from Europe and USA, so we were a bit tense before the meeting. Everything went well, we were asked quite a few questions, and many of our views and suggestions seemed to be well received by the panel.

But we have to wait for the final report to see what is the verdict of the panel: how well has Finland managed to do in biotechnology compared with other countries?

Making a backup -- Comment()
I am currently making a backup of my iBook. I have a pocket-size external FireWire hard disk, and transferring about 20 GB of backup data takes about half an hour. This is an easy way to make backups, but sometimes I forget to do it anyway. I have tried to make backups weekly, but now I have lapsed for three weeks.

The 30 GB drive is made by SmartDisk, and I am very satisfied with it. The backup data takes about 20 GB of disk space, and the rest of the drive is available for transferring files or for storing temporary data. The transfer speed of FireWire is good, even though this small drive is not the fastest available. And the drive doesn't need a power cord, which is also convenient.

I have FireWire cables both at home and at work, so I don't need to carry the cables with the drive. I use the drive for moving files between home and work when I don't want to carry the iBook with me.