Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

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The Cost of Email Interruption: "The time it takes the average employee to recover from an email interrupt and to return to their work at the same work rate at which they left it, is on average 64 seconds." (PDF file)

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Presentations from the Linux Summit 2003 in Finland: "Selected presentations from the Linux Summit 2003 can be downloaded from this page. Some material from the Linux training courses is also available."

An e-mail worm on the loose in Finland -- Comment()
I have received today a couple of dozen e-mail messages containing the following text:

See the attached file for details

There seems to be a .pif file included in some of the messages:

An attachment named 'movie0045.pif' was converted to 'possibly_dangerous_file_attachment' as it constituted a security hazard.

A colleague received over 400 messages in a short period of time.

Update: Apparently the e-mail messages are due to Sobig.F worm. The messages should be deleted at once if received.

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The GPL will win, claims law prof.: "Moglen took issue with our view that the GPL was upheld by a social contract. Nonsense, he says: the GPL has been carefully crafted to maximise the opportunities copyright holders enjoy under the Berne Convention." [The Register]

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Camera phone sales set to rocket: "More people than ever will want a mobile phone with attractive features like cameras for their Christmas present." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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Phoning in Photos for Posterity: "Realizing he was living a historic moment, Salinas took out his camera phone, snapped photos of people walking home and uploaded the pictures to a website hosted by textamerica. While most people, including Salinas, could not make cell phone calls that afternoon, they found that Web applications, which operate on different channels on the cellular network, worked normally."

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DNA computer plays Tic-Tac-Toe: "After years of hype surrounding DNA-based computing, the first game-playing DNA computer has been created by researchers at Columbia University and the University of New Mexico, New Scientist reports. It's not SpaceWar though (or the Game of Life, for that matter). In this game of DNA-powered Tic-Tac-Toe, the human player makes his or her mark by dropping DNA into 9 wells that make up the board. The one centimeter-square wells contain enzymes that form logic gates. A green biochemical glow reveals the computer's 'move.'" [Boing Boing Blog]

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Aggregators Attack Info Overload: "Internet news addicts are turning in droves to so-called aggregator services, which relieve information overload by condensing multiple sites into a single feed. By Ryan Singel" (Wired News via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Europeans are digital-snap happy: "Digital camera sales in Europe have been boosted by better lens resolution and budget cameras." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]