Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

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"Replicant" theory emerges in US Astroturf scandal: 'A new theory emerged today to rebuff the "Astroturf" scandal that's the talk of the web. A week ago a weblogger who calls himself Atrios discovered that identical letters praising "the leadership of President Bush" had appeared in dozens of local American newspapers. [...] The identical letters appeared in 29 publications - including, oops - The Financial Times of London, England - and clearly suggested that a co-ordinated but entirely phony "grassroots" expression of support was swelling behind the President.' [The Register]

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IBM Jumps into LinuxWorld with a Bang: "IBM, one of the first firms to champion Linux as an enterprise platform, opened LinuxWorld New York Monday with a series of new offerings intended to extend the platform's reach into the financial services, insurance..." [Google Technology News]

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Watercolour challenge: "In his landscapes, Hockney stops bothering about what is and is not possible, and goes ahead anyway. In the portraits, he tries to wed the medium to a subject that it really cannot handle at any great depth. The portraits are irksome. But depth, in Hockney, is not really what one looks for, or expects. Accept that fact, forget the "greatest living artist" nonsense, and the water's lovely." [Guardian Unlimited]

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Jake's Radio 'Blog: "I missed this last week: Public policy analyst Iain Murray was fired for writing on his weblog." (via Lance)

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My crystal ball: "My crystal ball tells me that in 2003 someone will create a Safari-inspired (by which I mean also based on KHTML and having similar to Safari look and feel) browser for Windows. The idea is obvious to conceive, easy to implement and hard to resist. Someone will do it." [Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog]

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Slashdot: "Kevin Mitnick is getting back online and can start taking email tomorrow, January 21." [Scripting News] [ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]

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t e c h n o c u l t u r e writes: "This week, I promise a more complete picture on the Xwebs browser and the student who wrote it, 16 year old Adnan Osmani. I'll be talking to Adnan, and I have been talking to some of the judges and other people who saw the browser. [...] On the other hand, for those who doubt the ability of the student, one key judge told me that the judging panel asked that the browser be judged as if it were a university-level project -- and the computer science people said if it had been submitted by an undergraduate as a final year project it would be deserving of very high, and probably the highest, marks. This perhaps gives a better context in which to consider Adnan's achievement. The judges said this setting aside totally the speed claims for the browser, which they could not assess properly. So, the browser itself was judged without consideration of the possible speed gain elements and still was seen as clearly displaying extraordinary programming ability and very original work for a university-level student, much less for a 16 year old."

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Keep Windows Shut: "Microsoft's approach to making Windows "open source" for governments is a lose-lose proposition. The company should have just cut governments a super sweetheart deal and let it go at that." [Computerworld Linux News]

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As Linux Nips at Microsoft, Its Advocates Talk Numbers: "The evidence is now overwhelming that Linux, once a symbol of software's counterculture, has become a mainstream technology. The Linux World conference that begins in New York tomorrow promises to be a staid, corporate affair." [Google Technology News]