Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, January 24, 2003

Doc's diagnosis -- Comment()
Lessig Blog writes: 'Doc has a brilliant and absolutely correct diagnosis at the American Open Technology Consortium website about how we lost in Eldred. Copyright is understood to be a form of simple property. The battle in Eldred thus sounded like a battle for and against property. On such a simple scale, it was clear how the majority of the Court would vote. Not because they are conservative, but because they are Americans. We have a (generally sensible) pro-property bias in this culture that makes it extremely hard for people to think critically about the most complicated form of property out there -- what most call "intellectual property." To question property of any form makes you a communist. Yet this is precisely our problem: To make it clear that we are pro-copyright without being extremists either way.'

Searching for you on Google -- Comment()
Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Weblog writes: 'Google loves me. Of course, every blogger's dream is to become the number one "me" on Google. Last time I was playing this game (which was a few months ago) I was fairly high for my full name and depressingly far away for parts of my name. But today's a surprise: I'm the first one Krzysztof Kowalczyk, first Kowalczyk and third Krzysztof. So let me bask in the glow of this newly acquired Google glory.'

Perhaps looking up your own name is the most popular search on Google? (For some reason these searches don't sum up to the list of the most popular search queries...)

But I admit, I did this also, and found that I'm doing all right. Searching for Juha Haataja: nine of the top 10 results point to me. For Juha I'm not in the top 10, but for Haataja three of the top 10 point to me (including the first one).

-- Comment()
Senate Kills Funding for Pentagon Data Mining Program: "The US Senate Thursday decided on a voice vote to stop all funding for the controversial Defense Department program known as Total Information Awareness (TIA) until the Pentagon can prove to Congress the program does not violate the privacy..." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Are Linux Users Infringing on SCO's Property? "A move by software company SCO Group that hints at possible legal action against companies that use Linux (or may have incorporated some of it into their products) has grabbed the attention of IT execs..." [Google Technology News]

Invitation to review books -- Comment()
In November, 2002, I wrote here about reviewing books:

During the last four years I have reviewed about 60 books in the Tietoyhteys magazine, where I have been editing the book review column. Most of the reviews have been written by me, although I have been fortunate to find a couple of colleagues interested in reviewing books. Writing a book review is never a straightforward task, but it can be very rewarding. Writing a review forces you to ask: Did I understand what the writer intended to say? Often you find that you didn't.

This was slightly wrong, as I have written only 53 book reviews, of which I have now posted 51 here (in Finnish). Due to copyright reasons I'll skip the missing two reviews.

I must say that I'm proud of having written the reviews, although a few of them are not so well written as I now would like. Some of the reviews are quite short, due to the space constraints on the pages of the magazine. Perhaps longer reviews would have been better, and less of them. In any case, reading these books taught me a lot. Sometimes people don't believe that you can learn anything from books. I believe I learned a lot. And I also learned to write about a few new topics.

Posting the quote above in November generated one contact. I now have a new reviewer of books, and his first review was good indeed. The review will appear in the first issue of the Tietoyhteys magazine as the 'main review', which gets the most notice.

I'm still looking for new reviewers, and new books to review. If you know Finnish, have a good taste with books, and believe that you can write about them, please contact me. Or if you publish quality books about science or technology, you are invited to offer the books for review.

I'm posting the list of book reviews here for all to see, organized by the year they appeared.

2003

Digital Typography Using LaTeX (Syropoulos, Tsolomitis ja Sofroniou; Springer, 2003)

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998