20 February 2003

Good News on DIY Stocks Man scared by government, will suffocate in house before surrendering to Saddam On the "Perhaps this is going too far" front: Paul West of Winstead, Conn., wrapped his house in plastic sheeting and duct tape after government warnings blasted through the media scared the wits out of him. [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing] 1:59:59 PM     Fun graphs Kevin Marks' interpretation of the blog power law Following on Clay Shirkey's recent essay on power laws, Kevin Marks has assembled an interesting analysis that explores the sample biases in Clay's analysis and summarizes: So what conclusions can we draw from all these graphs? 20 Weblog links do follow a power law 21 This saturates less quickly than other media, due to low barriers to entry 22 Therefore the many lightly linked weblogs outnumber the few heavily linked ones [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing] 1:55:05 PM     Myth Today Healthcare Myths (In no particular order) *Healthcare is just like any other business *Dealing with patients is the same as CRM for customers *Healthcare is NOT a business (ha! a dichotomy!) *Cost is not an object *There is one standard of care *Universal healthcare is free *Incremental change is the only way to improve the system Some near truisms *"If you build it they will come" *Quality of care is 90% perception *Managed care didn't fix things as promised *Informed patients are healthier *Preventive medicine saves money...just not fast enough for most organizations *There is no such thing as an expert on the entire healthcare system I will elaborate later... [K.C.'s Weblog] 1:45:52 PM     FUSION WESTERNISLES LAUNCH IN LINUX CENTRE, NESS We had a superb inaugural meeting of Fusion Western Isles in the Ness Linux Centre last night. Thanks to Malcolm Macsween, Donnie and Angela for organizing such a great event. And thanks too to Bruce Morrison and our guest speaker David Mackenzie for an absolutely spellbinding trawl through the key technology trends of our times. David is a recently retired director of IBM and he's on a immensely exciting mission to make the Highlands and Islands the new Austin.  Jim Hunter of HIE also talks of the potential of the new Seattle, mostly because the Pacific Northwest is as wet as the Atlantic Northwest! A mission overall that many of us have been pursuing for a wee while and one that now really looks like its got momentum. Technology and mountains! And beaches, cliffs, sailing. And a cinema hopefully!! And a wonderful pub on the UHI Lews Castle Collge campus. You can't have a University or a high-tech sector without a great hangout!! This of course applies to Inverness too - use that big river Ness more effectively people!! Y' need a 6th Street, a Temple Bar. BTW check out Richard Florida on what distinguishes the new technology growth areas worldwide: amentity, diversity and tolerance are absolutely key ... and you need a great university too. 12:19:01 PM

© Copyright 2003 Neil Finlayson. Last update: 28/02/2003; 14:14:28.