Tuesday, November 26, 2002

The e-mail scandal Brian Livingston, InfoWorld, 11/26/02 A NEW STUDY shows that 11.7 percent of messages that were requested by an e-mail subscriber never reached the recipient's inbox. Six percent were incorrectly routed to a junk mail folder, and 5.7 percent never arrived in any form. The problem is faulty spam filters put in place by major ISPs such as Earthlink, MSN, and AOL. In their attempts to reduce UBE (unsolicited bulk e-mail, or spam), these services appear to be whacking many messages people actually want. 10:09:10 AM

Perspective: The five biggest myths about Web services By Bob Sutor (IBM's director of Web services), Cnet, November 26, 2002, 4:00 AM PT Myth No. 5: Web services is the endgame -- the goal we're aiming toward. Fact: That makes as much sense as saying in the 1920s that a propeller-driven airplane that could get us across the Atlantic nonstop should be the goal of aviation. Sure it's fun to develop cool new technologies, but there needs to be business or societal value in their release to the public. The age of IT and the Internet is in its childhood; we have no idea what the kid's going to look like when it fully matures. 8:44:48 AM

The Lives and Death of Moore's Law by Ilkka Tuomi, FirstMonday, Volume 7, Number 11 - November 4th 2002 Abstract Moore's Law has been an important benchmark for developments in microelectronics and information processing for over three decades. During this time, its applications and interpretations have proliferated and expanded, often far beyond the validity of the original assumptions made by Moore. Technical considerations of optimal chip manufacturing costs have been expanded to processor performance, economics of computing, and social development. It is therefore useful to review the various interpretations of Moore's Law and empirical evidence that could support them. Such an analysis reveals that semiconductor technology has evolved during the last four decades under very special economic conditions. In particular, the rapid development of microelectronics implies that economic and social demand has played a limited role in this industry. Contrary to popular claims, it appears that the common versions of Moore's Law have not been valid during the last decades. As semiconductors are becoming important in economy and society, Moore's Law is now becoming an increasingly misleading predictor of future developments. 6:07:52 AM

Electronic ID card to start trials next year ATCI raises privacy issue Karnjana Karnjanatawe, Bangkok Post, 11/20/02 The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Ministry and the Registration Administration Bureau (RAB) will introduce the country's first ID card equipped with a chip to store personal data by next April, according to ICT Minister Dr Surapong Suebwonglee. He said the smart card would be only issued on request.... The smart card is expected to store information such as the card holder's name, address, date of birth, blood type and other vital medical information. RAB Director Surachai Srisarakham said government agencies would be able to select the information that would be stored. The card might also be integrated with an e-signature, a driving licence, job title, membership of any organisations or be used as an e-purse or e-passport in the future, he added.... 5:35:43 AM

The Censor and the Artist: A Murky Border. A conference on free expression and the arts at Columbia University last week focused on new limits on artistic freedom in a high-tech culture. By Emily Eakin. [New York Times: Technology] 5:04:31 AM

Free office space - but coffee's extra By Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe, 25/2002 The VP of engineering favors chai latte. The head of sales and marketing prefers caffe mocha. The president brings his own mug and has it filled with the coffee of the day. Every Monday evening, the three founders of FloSpace converge on a Starbucks at Arlington Center, sign onto the store's high-speed wireless network, and get down to business. They may not have their own office yet, but they do have a favorite table. 4:48:02 AM

Sprint rolls out IM service for embedded apps. Sprint is pushing a new instant messaging service that allows enterprises to embed applications within a buddy list. [Computerworld News] 4:47:39 AM

GSA: E-authentication Policy and Technology Forum. The US Government's General Services Administration has posted a number of presentations from last week's E-authentication Policy and Technology Forum. [Scott Loftesness] 4:40:30 AM

Boston Globe: Calling off the copyright war. Jonathan Zittrain. One is crystallized by Calvin Coolidge: ''The business of America is business.'' The other is captured by Thomas Jefferson: ''He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.'' [Tomalak's Realm] 4:36:36 AM

What is a "productivity application"? A New Kind of Productivity Application by Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Network Weblogs, Nov. 25, 2002 One of the off-the-cuff observations I made in the variant of my talk Watching the Alpha Geeks that I delivered at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference was that the iApps represent a new kind of productivity application. A number of people have asked for a written reference for that thought, so I thought I'd better blog it. The thought begins not with Apple, but with Doug Carlston, the founder of Broderbund Software. When I first met Doug, he was explaining Broderbund's business to me. He explained that they had three lines of business: games (like Myst), "edutainment" (like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego), and productivity applications (like Print Shop Pro.)" I asked, "Where does Family Tree Maker fit in?" "Oh, that's a productivity application. We consider a productivity application to be any application where the user's own data matters more to him than the data we provide." 4:26:43 AM