June 2002
Thursday, 27 June 2002
The Semantic Argument Web: “normalization of metadata works real well in confined applications where the payoff is high, control is centralized and discipline can be enforced. In other words: not the Web.”
Doctors v. Geeks: “Once the human body is completely understood, it will cease to be the most complicated system we know of. Geeks will simulate it. That will by definition be a more complicated system. But it isn’t the case now and that is where the biggest dichotomy comes from between geeks and doctors. Doctors deal with a mostly unknown system with emergent behaviors. There are virtually no information systems complicated enough to exhibit emergent behaviors yet.”
War-Chalking: “Several laptops were broken in the fight, and one Wibo was taken to hospital for the removal of a PCMCIA Card. Residents of the casual cafe strip expressed some distress at the increase chalk markings that have appeared, and the rise of threatening looking white bespeckled males.”
Friday, 21 June 2002
Robot on the run: “I knew the robots interacted with each but didn’t expect to be personally greeted by one.”
Wednesday, 19 June 2002
Fresh fears over mobile phones: “The authors themselves are saying that this doesn’t mean that mobile phones are unsafe or the guidelines are wrong.”
Sunday, 16 June 2002
Patently Absurd: “You probably learned this technique for turning a line into a rectangle in seventh-grade geometry, and, doubtless, you believe it was devised by Euclid or some such 3,000-year-old thinker. Not according to the examiners of the USPTO, who awarded IBM a patent on the process.”
Tear down the wall: “people don’t realize, we have just rebuilt the operating system. And it is this .Net framework technology, the Common Language Runtime, the .Net framework classes. We are rebuilding everything on top of that. End to end, everything.”
Friday, 14 June 2002
Last night Derek dragged a few of us out to see Hell’s Belles, who were quite good. If you can imagine an all female AC/DC cover band, this is it. There are apparently a couple others floating around, as well.
Tuesday, 11 June 2002
Commentary: Boardroom Changes That Could Rebuild Trust: “Their recommendations pose a clear challenge to boards: Start thinking for yourselves. Among other things, the new rules would force the independent directors of every company listed on the exchange to meet regularly without management present.”
Lost city found off Indian coast: “The myths also state that a large city once stood here which was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day.”
Sunday, 9 June 2002
Waiting for the barbarians: “The contemporary American situation could be compared to that of Rome in the Late Empire period, and the factors involved in the process of decline in each case are pretty much the same: a steadily widening gap between rich and poor; declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organisational solutions to socioeconomic problems (in the US, dwindling funds for social security and medicare); rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness; and what might be called "spiritual death”: apathy, cynicism, political corruption, loss of public spirit, and the repackaging of cultural content (eg ‘democracy’) as slogans and formulas.“
Saturday, 8 June 2002
‘This Is War’: ”‘There is a thing in the computer called the CPU, the central processing unit, right?’ says Preston Padden, Disney’s chief Washington lobbyist. ‘All the bytes go through there, and we’re looking to come up with reasonably standardized watermark detection [that] can effectively read for watermarks on all the content coming through.’“
Friday, 7 June 2002
Explorers find lost Inca town in Peru: "There was no evidence of battle or looting and the Incas appeared to have simply withdrawn from the area after the death of Tupac Amaru.”
Saturday, 1 June 2002
King Midas’ Beguiling Domain: “Midas’ touch, in reality, only made objects shine like gold, as the result of an innovative metal-fusing technique that the Phrygians used in their bronze-making.”