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| compos mentis. Concision. Media. Clarity. Memes. Context. Melange. Confluence. Mishmash. Conflation. Mellifluous. Conviviality. Miscellany. Confelicity. Milieu. Cogent. Minty. Concoction. |
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A New Company Tries to Sort the Web's Chaos |
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| Topic: Software Development |
6:09 am EST, Oct 27, 2002 |
At a time when the valley's digerati are bemoaning a technology industry recession and the death of innovation, Mr. Hawken's Grokker software, which is intended to allow personal-computer users to visually make sense of collections of thousands or hundreds of thousands of text documents, is creating a buzz. The software is attracting significant interest from large corporations and universities. At the conference, Groxis employees began taking orders after people told the company that they were willing to pay for the program, which had not yet been released; 200 copies were sold that weekend. John Markoff on Grokker. Apparently, there are people willing to pay for things on the Internet. A New Company Tries to Sort the Web's Chaos |
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| Topic: Movies |
10:44 pm EDT, Oct 26, 2002 |
Romance and suspense in Paris, as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Who can she trust? Watch the original and classic "Charade" instead of seeing the new remake "The Truth About Charlie". It's Technicolor in Paris ... plus, Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant beat Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton any day ... Charade (1963) |
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America Still Unprepared -- America Still in Danger [PDF] |
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| Topic: Current Events |
11:09 pm EDT, Oct 24, 2002 |
A year after 9/11, America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil, concludes a blue-ribbon panel led by former Senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart-co-chairs of the now famous Commission on National Security that warned of such a terrorist attack three years ago. ... If the nation does not respond more urgently to address its vulnerabilities, the Task Force warns, the next attack could result in even greater casualties and widespread disruption to our lives and economy. America Still Unprepared -- America Still in Danger [PDF] |
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End to 3 Weeks of Terror for the Capital Region |
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| Topic: Current Events |
10:54 pm EDT, Oct 24, 2002 |
A harrowing three-week ordeal came to an end today as police officers arrested two suspects in the sniper shooting spree that left 10 people dead, three wounded and the capital region terrified. The two suspects, identified in a cross-country stroke of basic detective work, were not immediately charged with homicide as detectives interrogated them into the night. But investigators confirmed that the car in which they were arrested early this morning contained the weapon used in the killings, a high-powered, .223-caliber telescopic assault rifle. End to 3 Weeks of Terror for the Capital Region |
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British Concern to Help US Track Terrorists |
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| Topic: Surveillance |
10:17 am EDT, Oct 23, 2002 |
Autonomy, a British developer of sophisticated information retrieval software, plans to announce on Monday that it has been chosen to provide an analysis system to help the United States government track suspected terrorists. This is a John Markoff article from Monday's NYT. Autonomy is the maker of Kenjin, a now-defunct product that was basically a Windows version of the Remembrance Agent for emacs on Unix. The company won a GSA contract to support the future Department of Homeland Security. (Even agencies that don't yet exist are giving away money!) British Concern to Help US Track Terrorists |
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'The Blank Slate': The Evolutionary War |
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| Topic: Science |
10:45 am EDT, Oct 12, 2002 |
In "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature," Steven Pinker -- a psychologist at MIT and author of several popular books on cognition and linguistics -- attempts to shatter contemporary versions of the blank slate. To this polemical task he brings an arsenal of scientific research, acute analysis and pugnacious attitude. Bubbling beneath an affable charm, strong passions, apparently simmering since graduate school, give some of his arguments a bitter aftertaste. A University of Chicago professor reviews Steven Pinker's latest book for The New York Times. 'The Blank Slate': The Evolutionary War |
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Public Comment on DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause [PDF] |
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| Topic: Intellectual Property |
10:23 am EDT, Oct 12, 2002 |
The Copyright Office is seeking public comment on adverse impacts of the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. "For a limited time only" -- you have approximately two months to submit your written comments. This notice requests written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works. Public Comment on DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause [PDF] |
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Lucent to Cut 10,000 Jobs as Its Losses Keep Mounting |
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| Topic: Telecom Industry |
9:53 am EDT, Oct 12, 2002 |
Lucent announced plans to cut an additional 10,000 jobs and forecast a larger-than-expected quarterly loss, signaling that its problems are far from over. Down to 35,000 employees, from 123,000 two years ago. Taking a $4B charge. Nine consecutive quarterly losses. Stock down 90% on the year. $8.2B in outstanding debt. Serious doubts remain about Lucent's goal of attaining profitability and remaining relatively intact. Jeff Kagan: "Lucent is already a memory as the company is a shadow of its former self, and it may not be quite done shrinking yet." Lucent to Cut 10,000 Jobs as Its Losses Keep Mounting |
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| Topic: Intellectual Property |
9:48 am EDT, Oct 12, 2002 |
I am not the only one digitizing music. Without breaking any law, I could just as easily have gone on the Web to download the songs I had bought in the same digital format, thanks to the prior work of many other music lovers. So far music listeners around the world have digitized more than 850,000 albums and 10 million songs of all musical genres. Fans have already converted almost all music ever recorded. Kevin Kelly has written an op-ed piece about the Eldred v. Ashcroft case in the New York Times. Can you guess which side of the debate he favors? Making My Own Music |
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| Topic: Technology |
7:34 pm EDT, Oct 8, 2002 |
Johan de Kleer talks about knowledge tracking, smart matter and other new developments in AI. Johan de Kleer: Manager of the Systems and Practices Laboratory, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Widely published in the areas of qualitative physics, model-based reasoning, truth maintenance systems, and knowledge representation. An ACM Fellow. ... There is a renewed surge of interest in understanding and representing the content of collections of documents. As each new document comes in, we want to be able to identify the relation of the new material to what was previously collected. We call this "knowledge tracking." Knowledge fusion: creating "the perfect document" in response to your query by fusing the meanings of parts of other documents. ... We're moving into a world where there's going to be billions of sensors each with a small bit of computation and a limited amount of energy. How can we handle such a large scale-up? This is the Internet on steroids. ... It goes way beyond the mechanisms that currently run the Internet because there will be so many more nodes ... ... it's a whole new wave. ... The whole network simply adapts. ... I try to explain the context ... ... the next generation will have a deeper appreciation and ability to use technology ... The biggest change that happened at PARC over time has been the shift from technology to content. The other big shift is importance of the social in everything. "This is a cool algorithm, but will people actually use it?" ... One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ... ... At that point, as far as I'm concerned, they're hired. Inside PARC |
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