Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, November 11, 2002

-- Comment()
Imaging Resource post Sigma SD9 review: "Dave Etchells over at Imaging Resource has today posted his review of Sigma's SD9 digital SLR which is the first digital camera to use the revolutionary Foveon X3 sensor." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

-- Comment()
Jinn of Quality and Risk quotes Eric Raymond on the identity of science-fiction: Science fiction, as a literature, embraces the possibility of radical transformations of the human condition brought about through knowledge. Technological immortality, star drives, cyborging — all these SFnal tropes are situated within a knowable universe, one in which scientific inquiry is both the precondition and the principal instrument of creating new futures. ... At bottom, the central assumption of SF is that applied science is our best hope of transcending the major tragedies and minor irritants to which we are all heir. Even when scientists and engineers are not the visible heroes of the story, they are the invisible heroes that make the story notionally possible in the first place, the creators of possibility, the people who liberate the future to become a different place than the present.

Revelatory blogging -- Comment()
I have submitted my next column for the MikroPC magazine. The theme is blogging, from the perspective of "the IT enterprise vs. the individual". That is, what happens when someone reveals the wrongdoings of his company on his personal weblog?

It will be interesting to see if I get any feedback. For the last regular column I got the comment: "This time you decided to get wild." This time I'm not so wild, but there is some hard stuff included. I also got some feedback of my Myyrmanni column printed in the magazine: I was asked what kind of device the iPod is in use. I was happy to tell about my positive experiences with the mp3 player by Apple.

The MikroPC magazine asked me to forecast developments in information technology during the next year. This kind of writing is always difficult to start. However, after getting started you will often get more results than you expected. Last year I also wrote "a vision column" for the magazine. This turned out well, since I finally wrote enough material for two subsequent columns for the magazine. If I have the time to do the same amount of thinking, the same explosion of ideas might happen again.

Perception is reality -- Comment()
Sam Ruby points to Steven Noels: "On the Internet, no-one knows if you are a dog was one of these quotes people were often referring to during the early years of the web, and the funny thing is, with all these weblogs and personal homepages, with people seemingly exposing their most intimate thoughts to the larger community, this expression still stands. Even worse: I suspect people are actively making use of it. They know they can post their perception of the reality and influence the common perception that way."

Physics hoax and Postmodernism -- Comment()
I posted yesterday a quote on Theoretical Physics Breakthrough or Hoax: "the problem of distinguishing sense from nonsense goes beyond the Bogdanovs, say some physicists, who worry that far too much junk goes past the referees who vet articles for the scientific journals and the examiners who approve Ph.D's." I just remembered that there is a postmodernism generator, which produces research papers you could try submitting to sociology journals. These papers are a challenge for anyone trying to distinguish sense from nonsense.

Further changes in the weblog template -- Comment()
I made additional changes to the weblog template, tweaking fonts, colors and dimensions. Now this site is based on validated CSS. I like blue color, so I just had to include it in the template. I'm not sure that the result is prettier than the previous version, but I like it.

-- Comment()
Another quote from New Microsoft Open Source Analysis, Deconstructed: "Microsoft is going after open source. Make no mistake about this. I believe the primary method will be to launch patent lawsuits, and that this war will start fairly soon. Microsoft has explicitly threatened to do this, and I don't know how the open-source community can respond." (On Dan Gillmor's eJournal.) [News Is Free: Popular Items]

-- Comment()
Living Without Microsoft writes: ""Shared Source" does not mean "Open Source". Microsoft's "shared source" programme is noticeably different from true Open Source. The OSI has an interesting white paper called Shared Source: A Dangerous Virus."

-- Comment()
Living Without Microsoft writes: "The case for Linux.... A very informative article by Dan Kegel, which links to many other good sources, talks about Linux & Unix deployment in a wide variety of areas."

-- Comment()
Canon PowerShot S45 review. "Our exclusive review of Canon's new PowerShot S45, the update to their successful S40. The updated S45 is Canon's response to new entrants to the four megapixel sub-compact market." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

-- Comment()
Are Tablets Worth Resurrecting? "For those who have had to battle countless problems using Windows CE -- from system incompatibility to its inability to run your favorite applications -- the announcement of Windows XP for tablet PCs is as welcome as turkey on Thanksgiving. But is it the notebook replacement we've all been looking for? Probably not." [osOpinion]

-- Comment()
Are Macs Virus-Proof?: "Unlike previous incarnations of the Mac OS, Apple's OS X is based on the Unix platform, whose code base has been around for more than three decades. While Unix underpinnings have made Apple's OS more powerful and stable, they also have made it more susceptible to viruses and worms." [osOpinion]