Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, February 17, 2003

Videoconferencing on the Mac (or Linux) -- Comment()
It seems that there aren't any good tools for videoconferencing outside the Windows world. I'm thinking about equipping my PowerBook with "mobile" videoconferencing gear (a camera and perhaps a microphone/headset). But it seems that nobody offers a product to connect to Windows-based videoconferencing tools. And the same seems to apply to Linux as well. Or am I wrong?

On Windows you have Netmeeting, and H.323-based videoconferencing at least works. But are there similar tools available for Mac OS X? I don't think so. Perhaps running Virtual PC on PowerBook would work? ;-)

Googling weblogs -- Comment()
Last week I submitted a column about weblogs to an IT magazine. There was an introductory sentence which reads in English as follows: "The author has a weblog which contains questions and answers, but only Google seems to be somewhat interested." Did I have inside information about Google and weblogs? No, I was just pointing out the referrals Google generates to most weblogs (which is often over 75% of the total number of referrals).

Universal Rule at position 100 -- Comment()
UserLand Site Report says that this weblog is at position 100 with 30,761 page reads since 10/7/2001 (actually, since August 19, 2002). Nice to know. I hope I don't start to take blogging too seriously now. So far this has been fun.

-- Comment()
Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time: "Google has grasped the distributed nature of the online world, and has seen that the real power of cyberspace is in what we create collectively. We are beginning to see that power brought to bear." [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Google buys Blogger! -- Comment()
Blogging Roller writes that Holy crap is right: "Dan Gillmore speculates that Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL will also be buying or building their own weblogging systems. Congratulations to Evan Williams and Pyra team. Five people supporting 1.1 million webloggers? Amazing."

When in doubt, don't kill people -- Comment()
Blogging Roller writes: "I listened to the U.N. deliberations in full yesterday and found myself agreeing with just about everything that was said by the French, the Brits, the Russians, and the U.S. That is how messed up I am. [...] I've been reading warbloggers, peacebloggers, peacebloggers turned warbloggers, the liberal media, the Moonie press, and even pseudo-bloggers ;-) My mind is a muddled mess."

-- Comment()
Universe on candid camera: "The sharp snapshots of the baby universe beamed from the heavens by NASA s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) recently have thrown new light on the birth of time and raised new questions on matter and gravity." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Feds Unveil Cyber-Security Plan: "With little fanfare, the White House Friday afternoon released the much debated National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which calls on industry to show unprecedented cooperation with goverment agencies..." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
IBM Opens Up PowerPC Licensing: "BM, in an effort to expand the use of its PowerPC processors, is opening up the licensing of the chip to enable third-parties to build products for it. " [Google Technology News]

Human face of Microsoft -- Comment()
Robert Scoble writes: "One thing I've noticed is that Microsoft does not have a human face other than Gates and Ballmer. Everything you see about Microsoft has been "approved" by PR/marketing professionals. That's the way it was supposed to have been done in the old days, but today, one little jerk like me can post something on his weblog and, within hours, have several thousand very important readers. Today, we need human stories to tell about Microsoft, and we need human connections so we know who to start a conversation with." [Jon's Radio]

-- Comment()
Tim O'Reilly At Last Week's Bioinformatics Conference: "Tim O'Reilly Explains Why He's Excited About Bioinformatics." (Several audio files.) [On Lisa Rein's Radar]

-- Comment()
Dave Stutz is a free man (Doc Searls' blog): "This is a serious development. Dave has been the bearded open source community insider at Microsoft for a long time: a good and honorable man who for years did an amazing job of bridging two worlds -- commercial and noncommercial, Microsoft and everybody else." [LWN.net]

-- Comment()
CNN transcript is cut a bit short: 'On Friday the 14th of February CNN.com presented a "transcript" of Hans Blix's presentation to the U.N. Security Council concerning the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq. Comparison with other transcripts, notably that presented by the BBC, reveals that a substantial section of the presentation was omitted in the CNN version. The missing text includes descriptions of important instances of Iraqi government cooperation and presents a relatively favourable picture of inspectors' access to scientists.' [kuro5hin.org]

Democracy or militocracy? -- Comment()
I'm still bothered by the war. This morning I started thinking that perhaps the war preparations are caused by a meme which has infected the American thinking. Perhaps USA is no longer a democracy, where this kind of planning needs public discussion. Instead, USA seems to be a militocracy: a society on war footing.

And Europe? We seem to have escaped this meme, so far. Thus, it is still unthinkable to discuss dividing the treasures of Iraq among the war coalition. But this kind of planning is accepted in a society on a war footing.

It seems that the world is still a big place. Europeans have a hard time accepting the American non-democratic decision processes. It seems that the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union have changed Europe and USA into different directions.

How USA turned into a militocracy is a mystery to me. Perhaps USA is a society tuned to war by the long period of cold war against Soviet Union and China. Thus, the militocracy was just waiting for the right impulses to surface and take control.

People and societies seem to base decisions on secondary factors. If the societies were thinking clearly, they would target the war against other targets, which kill millions of people yearly: tobacco, cars, and personal firearms. Not to speak about the lack of food or diseases in the developing countries. Why this never happens is a mystery. Perhaps this also explains why terrorists have an easy time in generating chaos. People are like elephants, terrified of mice.