Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, February 16, 2004

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Do TeliaSonera forward their customers' private email correspondence to echelon@sonera.inet.fi? "[P]eople who had sent email through TeliaSonera reported that their messages did not make it to the recipients, but were instead returned together with error messages."

A songbird sings -- Comment()
Listen to this songbird (flash format) interpreting a classic.

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Wash up! The dirty science of bacteria: "That soap scum that forms on the shower curtain? It's really a biofilm loaded with more than a billion bacteria per cubic inch. The moving belt on an escalator? When you put your hand there, you're dipping into a puddle of bacteria left by all those who went before."

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Xgrid Shown Off At eTech: "One of the most interesting, and most Apple-related sessions at Emerging Tech so far has been a presentation on Apple's Xgrid."

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Experts Warn of Microsoft 'Monoculture': 'Dan Geer lost his job, but gained his audience. The very idea that got the computer security expert fired has sparked serious debate in information technology. The idea, borrowed from biology, is that Microsoft Corp. has nurtured a software "monoculture" that threatens global computer security.'

Good reading -- Comment()
I re-read during the weekend two books by first-rate humorists: Too Soon to Tell by Calvin Trillin and Dating Your Mom by Ian Frazier. Both books are written by a virtuoso, although the styles are different. Ian Frazier reminds of the stories by Woody Allen - the texts are logical but completely crazy. Trillin, on the other hand, is always sane, and delivers a sense of well-being.

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Bruce Schneier writes in CRYPTO-GRAM: 'Last month the Supreme Court let stand the Justice Department's right to secretly arrest non-citizen residents. Combined with the government's power to designate foreign prisoners of war as "enemy combatants" in order to ignore international treaties regulating their incarceration, and their power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without charge or access to an attorney, the United States is looking more and more like a police state.'

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Amazon Glitch Unmasks War of Reviewers: "Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: the company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews on the United States site under signatures like "a reader from New York." [...] The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan a book - when they think no one is watching." [Privacy Digest]