Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Pushing weblogs -- Comment()
Last year I wrote a column for a Finnish IT magazine about weblogs in the enterprise. Today I submitted a new column for the same magazine, giving an overview of weblogs, and emphasizing the creation of networks and the different types of bloggers. I hope I'm able to raise the awareness of weblogs in Finland. The danger is that weblogs are seen as "just a new kind of web sites", when they are much more. But this may not be apparent to those just browsing the web pages of the weblogs.

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Finland tops in preventing newborn deaths: "Avoidable factors such as smoking in pregnancy or inadequate medical care may have contributed to almost half of all newborn deaths in Europe between 1993 and 1998, according to a new report. Finland and Sweden had the lowest proportion of deaths attributable to such factors and England the highest, according to the survey of 10 countries published in the February 7th issue of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology." [Reuters Health eLine]

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Moore's law formulator bets on 10 more years: 'Moore, 74, the creator of "Moore's Law," told a meeting of many of the world's preeminent chip designers that engineers must concentrate on overcoming power leakage and reducing heat levels as more and more circuits are crammed closer together. "No physical quantity can continue to change exponentially forever," he cautioned. "Your job is delaying forever." [...] The number of transistors on a single chip has grown 300 million-fold since Intel introduced its first microprocessor 35 years ago. That represents a performance increase of about 80 percent per year. [Moore] compared transistors to the number of ants crawling around the world. Meanwhile, the cost has dropped from $1 per transistor in 1968 to $1 per 50 million transistors now, he said.' [Ars Technica]

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Think about this for a second. The New York Times: "At next year's projected level, Washington will be spending nearly as much on ~~defense~~ weapons as the rest of the world combined." [via Boing Boing Blog > The Aardvark Speaks]

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Microsoft Applies For .NET Patent: "Microsoft has applied for a comprehensive patent on what appears to be the entire implementation of the .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) and the framework APIs. Microsoft's CLR is an implementation of the CLI (submitted to ECMA for standardization). Does this bode ill for the Mono project?" [Slashdot]

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Alternatives to copyright: "Why should we stick with copyright, when we could come up with something else that would work better for digital media? Lawrence Lessig is working on it." [WriteTheWeb]

Creating a Culture of Ideas -- Comment()
Ming the Mechanic points to Creating a Culture of Ideas: "Innovation is inefficient. More often than not, it is undisciplined, contrarian, and iconoclastic; and it nourishes itself with confusion and contradiction. [...] One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. [...] Our biggest challenge in stimulating a creative culture is finding ways to encourage multiple points of views. Many engineering deadlocks have been broken by people who are not engineers at all. This is simply because perspective is more important than IQ."

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Samsung DigiMax V4: "Samsung have announced their new DigiMax V4, it has a 4 megapixel CCD, a 3x zoom Schneider lens (equiv. 38mm-113mm), and is capable of using an astonishing 9 power sources including AA alkaline, AA lithium,..." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Whatever happened to the American left? "You can tell a lot about what is on a nation's mind from what is on its bookshelves. And in America that makes for sobering news. The top five non-fiction titles on the New York Times bestsellers list at the end of last month were: 1) Bush at War; 2) The Right Man (Bush's former speechwriter relives his first year in the White House); 3) Portrait of a Killer (Patricia Cornwell on Jack the Ripper); 4) The Savage Nation (A rightwing radio talk show host saves America from "the liberal assault on our borders, language and culture); and 5) Leadership, by former Republican New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani." [Guardian Unlimited]

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Fallout From Iraq Rift: NATO May Feel a Strain: "Disagreement between the U.S. and its allies threatens to undermine NATO itself at a time of questions about the alliance's future. By Steven R. Weisman." [Headlines From The NY Times]

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Lois McMaster Bujold. "There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

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Pentagon Moves to Revive Funding for Data Mining Program: "According to a Pentagon statement, the two boards, one internal and one external advisory committee, will oversee TIA..." [Google Technology News]