Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Cloned Opinions -- Comment()
Today appeared my net column titled Cloned Opinions (in Finnish, Kloonattuja mielipiteitä). When writing the text, especially helpful was the document Fight Back Against Killer Astroturf, which lists quite a few cases of 'Letters to the Editor expressing support for the Bush agenda'.

-- Comment()
Wired: "A voracious worm that spread over the weekend appears to be under control. Meanwhile, conspiracy fans are having a field day trying to guess who released it and why." [Scripting News]

-- Comment()
t e c h n o c u l t u r e writes: "John Naughton has some great links to both his recent Observer column on the scourge of Powerpoint in the corporate world and to related links, one of which is to this wonderful version of the Gettysburg Address -- if Abe Lincoln had used Powerpoint."

Earlier in Learning by PowerPoint I wrote: "I believe that Learning by PowerPoint will be increasingly common, and generate increasingly worse results. Those students who have personal access to more experienced colleagues will probably do all right...". There is also a great PowerPoint Anthology of Literature.

-- Comment()
Small is Beautiful: "I've been working on a book called Small is Beautiful: The Unix Philosophy, to be serialized in Tekka. It's been a lot of fun. [...] It's a book I think needs writing. It discusses the Unix model of small one-task tools, simple human-readable formats, etc. not just listing the requirements, but arguing for them in a tight and witty style." [Aaron Swartz: The Weblog]

-- Comment()
Apple Moves Boldly Forward: "Open source has opened a crack, even if it's just a small one, in Microsoft's grip on computing. So far, Apple's taken advantage of it with BSD, Samba, KHTML, X11 and more. Now let's see if Apple's willing to up the ante enough to make things truly interesting." (eWeek via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

Web of blogs -- Comment()
JD's New Media Musings: "The main piece, Web of blogs, is here. For the sidebar, Blogs blur line with journalism, Julie interviews me, Dan Gillmor, Rebecca Blood and Paul Boutin. A second sidebar looks at Financial potential of blogs uncertain."

-- Comment()
The New Security Threat: Lawyers: "What's the security problem you fear most? Is it viruses, trojans or computer crackers? How about lawyers? Recently, I've touched base with a number of folks in the computer security business, and when discussing potential security threats for the coming year, I got an answer I wasn't expecting -- but probably should have been." [osOpinion]

-- Comment()
Google Dance: "You may not know it, but as I type, Google is dancing. And I'm not talking about the 'Google Dance' held by Google that includes human beings getting their groove on. I am talking about the period of time days before Google finalizes the update to its indexes. Never heard of the Google Dance? It's an interesting event that happens (roughly) once a month and causes quite a stir in some web circles with frustrated, ecstatic, and confused people coming together at WebmasterWorld to talk about the Google Dance." [kuro5hin.org]

-- Comment()
Web worm mars MS security push anniversary: "The computer worm that exploited a flaw in Microsoft's database software to cripple global networks turned out to be an unwelcome if unintended anniversary for the No. 1 software maker's effort to make its programs more secure." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
IBM gets down to business with Grids: "The initiatives target potential customers in precise niche markets where grid technology is being embraced by early adopters. For each niche, IBM has put together a complete offering, including open source software technologies, its hardware and middleware, and products from dominant third party grid computing experts who have been in this market longer than Big Blue. " [The Register]

Lessig vs. Lessing -- Comment()
I found out that I had missprinted the name Lessig in the title of my book review of The Future of Ideas (the missprint was Lessing). I'm too embarrassed to say who noticed the error. Fortunately the name was correct in the book review which was printed in the magazine. Perhaps the missprint was due to a mistyped Control-N command in Emacs while editing the review.

I must say that I have run into the same phenomenon. In fact, I wrote earlier:

When I first started to get my texts published, I was eager for feedback. But typically nothing happened. Nobody commented, and nobody gave any indication of reading the text. Later on, I might get indirect feedback, of the following kind: "I heard X saying that she wants to keep subscribing to the magazine because that Haatainen [sic!] writes there."

But I must emphasise that I didn't make the missprint (Lessig vs. Lessing) on purpose, as a Finn might be thought to do:

By the way, it may be a singularly Finnish trait that when giving positive feedback we tend to insult the recipient a bit. This way the recipient feels that you didn't offer you encouragement only because you wanted to be polite.

Note: Several readers noticed that the word misprint was misspelled as missprint in the above text. To remind myself that I'm fallible (and not a good speller), I'm leaving the text as it is.

Issues of drug discovery -- Comment()
I was yesterday in a seminar on drug discovery. The presentations were fine and provoking. However, the discussion tended to get stuck in the same topics again and again: financing, expertise, and intellectual property rights. These are important issues, especially for a small country like Finland. We don't afford to make many mistakes. And because drug discovery is a relatively new field in Finland, we have to overcome some obstacles which have already been tackled in other countries.