Kottke reviews The Corporation and asks whether companies fit the DSM IV criteria for psychopathy? (And answers yes.)
Archive for January, 2004
Chicago Manual of Style - Q & A - One Space or Two? answers one. Which is correct, to my mind. I’ve been fighting an uphill battle about this in every company I’ve worked in. The main arguments are around inefficiency and error likelihood.
11 Trends to Watch in 2004 actually has some data to back up the selected trends.
Lie-detector glasses offer peek at future of security. Based on technology that is 96% accurate in detecting love. I don’t believe it. I will no doubt be proven wrong.
Slashdot has a thread on Currency Detection Discovered in More Products. This relates to the announcement that Photoshop won’t edit some currency images to prevent counterfeiting. This type of control is now being found in printer drivers as well. I can’t see how this can have any effect at all: there will always be products that don’t have such protections (OSS for example) and the counterfeiters can’t be that stupid! All it does is prevent idle copying at work. Which is, like, totally the major issue confronting governments.
Personal FYI: Analytica is Jonza’s current work.
The Register has a nice article on the Google / email rumours. In summary: sort out your search, then worry about other ways of making money.
LaCie - Big Disc 500Gb looks like a good solution for backup for a small company like ours. No offsite option, but that’s what CDs / DVDs are for. Our tape system works horribly if at all, so we’re looking for something sensible. Thanks to Joel for the pointer.
Memory upgrades from Crucial.com says that even 512Mb upgrade is only £70 all in, so I should get the less chunky box (see previous post), ‘cos screen size isn’t that important to me. NB I’ve used Crucial before - they’re very good.
Options for a new laptop for work:
Reasonably chunky IBM (IBM ThinkPad R40 2722 - Pentium M 1.4 GHz - RAM 512 MB - HD 40 GB - CD-RW / DVD-ROM combo - Mdm - LAN EN, Fast EN, 802.11b - Win XP Pro - 15" TFT) around £1340. Bigger screen, double memory, heavier (just).
Less chunky IBM (IBM ThinkPad R40 2722 - Pentium M 1.3 GHz - RAM 256 MB - HD 40 GB - CD-RW / DVD-ROM combo - Mdm - LAN EN, Fast EN, 802.11b - Win XP Pro - 14.1" TFT - TopSeller) around £930
Camera Phones Help Buyers Beware by reading barcodes and returning consumer information. Epinions on the fly. I like it. Unlike the article, I can easily see me googling for products while in store if they are suitably expensive and I needed them right then. This might be a function of the Treo’s screen size / Blazer’s excellent rewriting of web pages.
Wired notes that Music Gadgets Get Smaller, Sexier. I really don’t like the look of the Dell box they recommend.
NASA Is Not Altering Mars Colors. An explanation this long has to be right, right?
E-Government Savvy Kiwi Integrate RSS for news. They’re using RSS v1.0 somewhat bizarrely.
The Massachusetts Public Sector Open Source Initiative is exactly what we’re trying to do with LAWs.
The e-GIF compliance service is hosted at NCC. Interesting.
Two anglican links: The bible in 50 words (sounds like rap - I wonder if someone will set it to music?) and what Christian theologian are you. I’m Calvin, apparently.
Mensa Workout for the competitive among you. To be done after PRINCE2 exams, I think.
tripwonker is a nice way of messing with your head, just in case work isn’t doing it for you.
