Book Reviews


[Day Permalink] Friday, October 18, 2002

[Item Permalink]  -- Comment()
E-mail spam: "Every user of the Internet knows the frustration of an inbox clogged with unwanted correspondence from vendors of porn, cheap loans and anatomical enlargements. More recently, there has been a new frustration: anti-spamming filters that rebuff genuine correspondence. According to Mr Banister, false positives can account for up to 30% of the spam identified by some filters." [Privacy Digest]


[Item Permalink] Fixing Radio desktop website on Mac OS X 10.2 -- Comment()
I started to use the discussion group for getting help on Radio. One problem at least was quickly solved: the desktop website stopped responding on my iBook running Mac OS X 10.2.

The solution was provided by Andy Frangen: "This seems to be a known problem for those of us running Jaguar. Go get my keepWebServerUp tool, install it and all your problems will go away."

Thanks! Radio is now much nicer to use.


[Item Permalink]  -- Comment()
I made another small modification to the map page of this weblog. Now the page lists 300 latest titled postings. Perhaps that is too much. On the other hand, that amount of data shouldn't eat too much bandwidth.


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I noticed that one of my channels had been selected to the Syndic8.com feeds. Too bad that I just changed the name of the channel into 'Semantic Web'. Recently approved feeds from Syndic8.com: "Universal Rule Manager / Juha Haataja: Radio. How I Started to Like Radio."


[Item Permalink] Liking the iPod a lot -- Comment()
I am now using the 20 GB iPod from Apple. This mp3 player was extremely easy to set up and use with my iBook. All the music fitted in, with 1.3 GB to spare. It took about 36 minutes to transfer the 3700 or some tracks from my iBook to the iPod.

The sound quality is good with the ear plugs. Have to try plugging the iPod to the stereo tomorrow (the family is sleeping now). This a seriously big jukebox full of music.

The belt clip and pouch are nice, and the small switch for sound and track control is very useful when the player is in the clip. The weight and size of the player are all right (it could be a little thinner). I like especially the solid-state ring for selecting the track and rotating through the menus. Perhaps this is the best hardware device Apple has ever produced?

All of the mp3's on my iBook (and now on my iPod) have been legally obtained. There are about 300 cd's in my bookshelf, and I have converted most of them into the mp3 format. I'm now thinking how much of the money spend on the cd's went to the media companies, and how little to the artists. That is stealing.


[Item Permalink] A week ago: Myyrmanni bombing -- Comment()
A week ago I witnessed the bombing at Myyrmanni shopping center. The motive for the bombing is still unknown, but the world slowly moves on. News of other and even more serious bombings elsewhere have appeared almost daily. This is the world we live in.


[Item Permalink] Testing iPod during the weekend -- Comment()
The iPod which I ordered from AppleStore is waiting at home. This weekend I have some time to try the mp3 player out. I have converted most of my cd collection to mp3 on my iBook, and now I have the possibility of transferring all that music to the iPod. The 20 GB model should have room all the mp3's I have on the iBook and some more besides.


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Some truth about copyright: "Making it a crime to circumvent an access control for legal purposes is unconscionable. It can prevent consumers from accessing purchased products on equipment of their choosing; it can prevent them from making backup copies of electronic media as insurance against data loss or corruption; it can prevent them from trading purchased digital media innocently, the way one might lend a book one has purchased to a friend." [The Register]


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Gecko feet in-hair-ently sticky: "Geckos have the ability to run straight up a polished glass wall with no more effort than they use when running straight up a rough tree trunk or upside down on a ceiling, and we finally know why: their feet bond on a molecular level to the surface using van der Waals forces, the weak electrostatic attraction between molecules. This hypothesis was first suggested in the 1960s, when a German researcher discovered that geckos stick better to surfaces with higher surface energy. When the electrons on an overall neutrally charged molecule move at random around the molecule, one end can be briefly more negative and the other more positive. In close proximity to other molecules, these charge fluctuations become synchronized and produce a steady electrostatic attraction between the molecules." [kuro5hin.org]


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Seb's Open Research quotes Teal Sunglasses on Weblog Communities:
I think bloggers ought to realize there's nothing really new under the sun -- and some of what they're inventing has existed in very similar forms for 70 years. Which isn't bad -- but I think it gives the community an opportunity to understand those predecessors and perhaps avoid some of the mistakes or problems.


[Item Permalink] Beginning Python for Bioinformatics -- Comment()
Matt Croydon::postneo points to OnLamp:

Bioinformatics, the use of computers in biological research, is the newest wrinkle on one of the oldest pursuits--trying to uncover the secret of life. While we may not know all of life's secrets, at the very least computers are helping us understand many of the biological processes that take place inside of living things. In fact, the use of computers in biological research has risen to such a degree that computer programming has now become an important and almost essential skill for today's biologists.


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Matt Croydon::postneo writes that Dave Winer released a beta version of RSS Explorer Tool:

From the RSS Explorer page you can view lists of subscriptions from other Radio users. Each channel or "feed" has a checkbox to the left of its name. If it's checked, you're already subscribed. You can choose to subscribe or unsubscribe by clicking on the Subscribe button to the right. To see a different list, choose a name from the popup menu, below, and click on the View button. [via Radio Dev]


[Item Permalink] Mapping a weblog -- Comment()
I made a map of this weblog using the Radio macros. On the map I have
  • a Google search form
  • pointers to the channels (categories) of this weblog
  • a list of longer texts
  • links to the most recent titled posts (currently 150 most recent)
  • links to ranking sites to follow the use and linking to this weblog
This page was rather easy to do, and especially I like the list of longer texts, which helps in finding older relevant postings.