Book Reviews


[Day Permalink] Wednesday, October 16, 2002

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Jinn of Quality and Risk writes about user-centered design:
Peter Merholz and Nathan Shedroff: "Contrary to common wisdom, user-centered design is not a process, but a philosophy. User-centered design requires the inclusion of a product's end-users throughout the design process. The primary benefit of user-centered design is that, when performed well, it ensures that the product is useful, usable, and meaningful to the end-user. Also, many of the low-fidelity methods developed to accomplish user-centered design allow for shortened development cycles."


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The Zeroth Law of Unreliability: "Jerry Weinberg: If a system doesn't have to be reliable, it can meet any other objective." [via Tony Bowden] [Jinn of Quality and Risk]


[Item Permalink] Why to share knowledge -- Comment()
Jinn of Quality and Risk writes that Knowledge sharing is not based on altruism:
Couching knowledge sharing in terms of altruism, as some people do, is mistaken. [...] What is needed is a positive outlook, the desire to learn and teach, and long-term thinking. Positive people are excited about new knowledge and enjoy listening to or telling stories. Learning and teaching implies respect for knowledge and fellow human beings, and the awareness of one's own, constantly changing limits of knowledge. Finally, long-term thinking correlates with a focus on creating value, hence on seeking mutual profit.

Brent Ashley and Seblogging recommend enthusiasm, altruism, [and] optimism to support a culture of knowledge sharing but altruism is emphatically not what we need. Enthusiasm and optimism are correlated, but insufficient. We need people who see that it is in their own rational self-interest to work with others, because they value thinking and new ideas, as well as the power of shared knowledge and goals. It should be a deeply rooted and non-altruistic behaviour, even in a large, multinational company. I submit 3M as an inspiring, successful example. To recap: sacrifice is at the root of altruism, while self-interested value-creation is at the root of knowledge.


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Boing Boing and Sample the Web point to a new kind of journalism in Steal This Newspaper: Open Source Journalism in Spain. The following is an interesting way to distribute a newspaper: "Poynter.org's Eva Domínguez posted an item today about a free newspaper in Spain called 20 Minutos, with editions in Madrid and Barcelona. The paper just launched its website yesterday with an unusual approach to copyright considerations: the site will be free to read and free to copy, but 20 Minutos has also created its own license (based in part on Michael Stutz's copyleft-inspired license) that allows free duplication, distribution, reproduction, or adaption of content. Would-be copiers don't have to ask permission, but they are required to mention the content's source and origin."


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Other .Mac users seem to have trouble with the Apple service. .mac down: "I cannot connect to my .mac email, nor can I connect to iChat and when I try to go to the Apple .mac website [...] Anyone know how I go about getting a refund for this .crap service?" [Sample the Web]


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Is Linux Really Going To Rule the Desktop?: "The Linux operating system remains strong in the server market. When it comes to the desktop, though, Linux can claim less than 1 percent market share, according to 2001 figures. And much of the noise about Linux on the desktop has been overshadowed by support for Mac OS X as an alternative to Windows. Will Linux ever live up to its potential?" [osOpinion]


[Item Permalink] What is the semantic web? -- Comment()
I have browsed through quite a few articles about the semantic web, but to me they are too abstract and speculative. Thus I'll first concentrate on reviewing the basic technology and the available software packages. Perhaps my first article will be a review of the infrastrucuture, with some case studies. I'll first concentrate on RSS, RDF, and related technologies. I'm interested in practical applications for research-oriented communities. I'll look into applications in that area, if there are any.


[Item Permalink] Started up an Instant Outline -- Comment()
I'm planning to write an article or a series of articles about the technologies and appications of the semantic web. (XML, RDF, RSS, OPML, MathML, ChemML etc.) The articles will be written in Finnish (current plan), but I need to gather a lot of ideas and new material for this project first.

Thus, I started up an Instant Outline (OPML) for this project (this works only with Radio as far as I know). I'll collect material on this project to the outline. Perhaps this could be useful to someone else also.


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Boy Allegedly Aided Bomber Over Internet: "Police arrested a 17-year-old boy today for allegedly providing information about explosives over the Internet to the suspect in a deadly bombing at a suburban shopping mall." [Google World News]


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Saddam 'wins 100% of vote': "Iraqi officials say every single voter has backed President Saddam Hussein in a referendum on extending his rule for seven years." [BBC News | Front Page]


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Matt Croydon::postneo writes about "more genetic programming fun" at GAUL:

The Genetic Algorithm Utility Library (or, GAUL for short) is a flexible programming library designed to aid in the development of applications that require the use of genetic algorithms. It provides data structures and functions for handling and manipulation of the data required for a genetic algorithm. Additional stochastic algorithms are provided for comparison to the genetic algorithms. Much of the functionality is also available through a simple S-Lang interface.

The current primary aims of this project are to produce documentation, examples and test cases for this open-source release of GAUL. Several new features are also planned for GAUL including wrappers to enable its use with programming languages other than C. The open-source release of GAUL is currently not parallelised, however this will become a priority development target.


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The Fishbowl points to Writing: The Best of The Worst:
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory if not the reputation of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and the phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."


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The FuzzyBlog! wrote A Memo to Microsoft About The Microsoft Switch Campaign: "I'm disappointed in Microsoft.  Coming from a critic of Microsoft that's probably not a surprise but this latest tactic has surprised even me.  Microsoft needs to learn that as the industry leader, a different set of rules apply to you -- a higher standard.  One marketing person that I ran this by described your tactics as "Sophmoric" and I'd have to agree."


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'Brains in Bahrain': Kramnik Tries to Be a Viper: "One week ago the human world champion was bulldozing the computer, but now Deep Fritz, after today's victory, has evened the score at three points apiece. There are two games left and $1-million is at stake..." [Google Technology News]