Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Credit Reporting After talking about this most of the day at work today, this caught my eye. I'll probably take the seminar. 7 Naked Truths of Credit Reporting. You can achieve perfect credit. We can help. Get a free sneak peak at our new seminar. [The Motley Fool] 8:45:55 PM    comment []

Medical Software HealthEngage Depression released for OS X [MacCentral] 8:41:20 PM    comment []

RFID RFID Journal: Michelin Embeds RFID Tags in Tires. I wonder if you can blow these things like Qeng Ho localizers. [Hack the Planet] 8:39:49 PM    comment []

Dustin Slade The following reminded me of some work I've had done by a great practicioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine Dustin Slade. Healing Magnets: Not Just for New-Age Hippies Anymore. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a relatively new medical procedure which induces electrical current in the brain using powerful electromagnets placed near the scalp. TMS has been clinically shown to aid in the relief of drug-resistant depression - without memory loss or other side-effects associated with ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy). In locations where it is available, researchers are now recommending TMS before a course of ECT is pursued. TMS is already being routinely administered to patients in many countries throughout the world, with the notable exception of the US, where the FDA has yet to approve it for ordinary use. Interestingly, TMS has also been noted to improve working memory, speed up problem solving, and sharpen attention. Alternatively, it can induce blindness, alter speech-patterns, and even disrupt memory, and all this without direct physical contact with the patient. TMS might even be used as a truth-extractor, someday. [kuro5hin.org] 7:45:14 PM    comment []

Eldred The Third Way. I started posting Going Deep here, but then decided to put it where it belongs: in the AOTC blog. I'm kinda working out my thinking on the Eldred Issue while I work on a longer piece about the subject for Linux Journal. Briefly, I suggest that the most important angle on Eldred isn't legal or political, but rather metaphorical. That's the battle we're really losing. And winning it won't be easy. Semi-related: this collection of papers from the Conference on the Public Domain is full of good and useful stuff. But they're all .PDFs. Why not expose them to the public domain as HTML? More on Eldred: A Mickey Mouse Ruling, by Chris Sprigman in Findlaw's Writ. His bottom line: With Eldred , the case that ours is an era of conservative judicial activism [~] in which law is trampled by conservative politics even on the Supreme Court [~] only gets stronger. [Later...] Here's a response from Brent Ashley. And now another in (in the affirmative) from Larry Lessig. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 5:34:52 AM    comment []

Tuesday Discussion Corner. These Two Items Appeared Next to Each Other in My Aggregator Today. IM as Tool for Collaborative Working "iWire notes in reviewing a study of instant messaging in the workplace that the main use of IM was 'complex work discussions'. There are some methodological difficulties with the study (the software studied was new and about half of users worked at AT & T). But leaving that aside I can't help thinking that if true this heavy use of IM for work is Not A Good Thing. If work-related electronically-mediated conversation moves from email to IM, an important "record trail" may be lost. Email can be filed into folders by subject, keyword searched etc. IM in most systems simply disappears once it is typed unless one or the other party saves the transcript. If businesses do implement IM, it may therefore be important to include some kind of automatic logging function as well as monitoring it for legal reasons if needed." [Blog.org] Is There a Place for IM in the Legal Profession? "Marty Schwimmer announces today Trademark Lawyers Are Standing By to Take Your IM:  'You will notice a link to the left which say 'Instant Message Us Now.'  [T]he IT department hooked it up as part of an experiment with the use of instant messaging in providing legal information.  Our IM address is schwimmerlegal....'  Any other lawyers out there using IM?  Come on, don't be afraid to admit it." [Ernie the Attorney] [The Shifted Librarian] 5:28:02 AM    comment []

And your suprised by this for what reason? Cable Rates Keep Going and Going and Going [Up]..... Cable Viewers Get Whacked with Another Big Increase "You are going to have to pay more for 'The Sopranos.' And 'Trading Spaces,' that's going to cost you more, too.... Cable TV costs throughout Chicago--and the country--are shooting up. It's the seventh time in as many years that rates have gone up. Cable viewers in the Chicago area with AT&T can expect to pay 6 percent more for their cable starting this month. That's following a double-digit increase last year in some parts of the Chicago area. RCN, the other large cable provider in the area, announced its rate hike last summer, up to 12 percent in some areas. In all, the average national basic cable bill now stands at about $34.52 a month, up 45 percent since cable was deregulated in 1996. Cable prices have far outpaced most increases in the entertainment industry. Recreation costs increased 1.1 percent in 2002, according to prices tracked by the Consumer Price Index. 'The Bush administration has closed its eyes to the price-gouging of cable monopolies,' said Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union, a consumer advocate watchdog group. "It is doing nothing to put a lid on cable rates or boost competition that would drive down prices.... But next year may be different. Critics of cable companies will soon have an advocate in a high place. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has lobbied against higher cable rates and this month took over as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. The committee oversees the cable industry, and McCain already has said cable costs are high on his agenda.... 'Consumers have a right to know why cable rates continue to climb faster than the rate of inflation,' McCain wrote to the Federal Communications Commission and to the GAO. 'These statistics are becoming all too familiar for consumers. They continue to endure rate increases that outstrip, by many multitudes, the price increases of other consumer goods and services.' Laura Lepley has bare-bones cable in the Lake View apartment she shares with a roommate. 'I get upset whenever anyone raises the price on me without improving quality of the product,' the 22-year-old said. 'Or at the very least they could throw in a few more movie channels.' " [Chicago Sun-Times] Or fewer commercials.... [The Shifted Librarian] 5:25:53 AM    comment []

Safari We're using this on occasion. Its fast and cool. Still it has it's faults for me to be using it daily and to abandon all the other browsers. Safari tops 1 million downloads [MacCentral] 5:23:00 AM    comment []