Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, April 17, 2003

Collaborative editing for Mac OS X -- Comment()
Hydra is a collaborative editing tool for Mac OS X 10.2: "The idea of collaborative editing has been researched for years, with notable results. But now for the first time it has been implemented in a way you actually want to use: A sophisiticated technique allows all users to type anywhere in the text without locking parts of the text for other users, making Hydra just as easy to use as a traditional text editor. [...] Hydra is not just for developers. With its highly adjustable architecture it can become the central tool of your group activities. Imagine meetings with collaborative minute taking or writing your TV/film script or book together with your co-authors."

This product offers an interesting concept for collaboration with colleagues. One big problem for all such tools still remains: security. How to be open to collaborators and at the same time guarantee that no private information is transmitted or available for third parties?

What happens after the human genome? -- Comment()
FOS News writes: 'Now that sequencing the human genome is essentially complete, what's next? For Thomas Murray, director of the Hastings Center, there are a host of ethical questions to work through, including "what genome research can and should mean in the developing world and intellectual property issues that range from ownership of genes and tissues to free and open access to researchers' genome data.'

-- Comment()
It's a free, black market: "According to this article in today's Der Standard (in German), new details about the looting in Baghdad are slowly being revealed (and via Google News I found some other sources in English who seem to confirm this): Not only had the Pentagon been warned of the lootings well in advance, now the suspicion is growing that the US actively encouraged the lootings to take place to make sure a small group of wealthy US art collectors would get their hands on rare artefacts. Before the war, this group had lobbied the Bush administration to relax both U.S. law and the Iraqi regulations banning the export of that nation's antiquities, says Patty Gerstenblith, president of the Archaeological Institute of America." [The Aardvark Speaks]

-- Comment()
Will Genetic Engineering Kill Us? "Scientists are debating how genetic engineering and other technologies will reshape what it means to be human. Some see a devastating outcome, while others say life will carry on as always. Mark Baard reports from Boston." [Wired News]