Here we have a classic case of denial, prominently displayed in a recent letter to the editor of Network Computing magazine.

"I agree that globalization of the IT profession is 'fruitless to resist.' I am educating my 19-year-old son about globalization and its effects.

The result? My son has changed his mind about pursuing a degree in MIS/CS. He is now looking for a career that he will not only find fulfilling, but also be in control of and able to hold on to!"

He misses the point entirely. At the beginning, I thought he really had it, but then he completely lost it at the end.

There is a certain naïveté in the notion that this phenomenon is somehow unique to the "IT profession" (whatever that is). That he still believes there exist jobs that are both worth having and amenable to being "held on to" is clear evidence of his denial.

Would you care to venture a guess as to the industry in which the letter writer works? You'll have to follow the link to find out. I found this last tidbit particularly telling, yet also sad.

I am inclined to go digging through the dead-tree archives of Atlantic Monthly and The Economist in search of equivalent letters to the editor from the late nineteenth century.

I could also post a link to a copy of Shirley Bassey singing "History Repeating", but I suspect that mentioning two songs from Decksandrumsandrockandroll in one day could risk making this weblog appear to be repeating itself.

Get Out of IT

One finding is that social networks embedded into systems do not match individuals’ perceptions of their personal social network. This finding and others raise issues for the use of social networks in groupware. Based on the evaluation results, several design considerations are discussed.

This paper by David McDonald appears in the proceedings of the ACM 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Recommending Collaboration with Social Networks: A Comparative Evaluation [PDF]

For example, a display magically presents a personalized advertisement, the most relevant video feed, or the desired page from a secret government document. Such capability requires more than an abundance of networked displays, devices, and sensors; it relies implicitly on recommendation systems that either directly serve the end user or provide critical services to some other application.

This article appears in the October 2003 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. The author is David McDonald of the University of Washington.

Ubiquitous Recommendation Systems | IEEE Computer, October 2003

Quentin Tarantino and Neal Stephenson are birds of a feather.

Both are passionate about their work and conduct extensive research on the subject matter. The artists' latest efforts have been criticized for being overloaded with details -- some might say trivia -- that demonstrate their mastery of the literature. Their works are laced with references within references, including many so obscure that few in the audience are likely even to detect all of them, let alone trace them back to the source.

Each of these works is so large, so grand, so packed with detail, that the marketplace is unable to accommodate it all at one time. And so a story is broken into pieces, with the releases spaced apart in time, that the audience might take advantage of the intermission to savor the tasty bits of the first course while waiting in eager anticipation of the next.

Channeling Propellerheads on Kill Bill and Quicksilver

According to Education Weekly, it takes approximately 15,500 hours to teach the average K-12 curriculum. But there are only about 9,000 hours of classroom instructional time available.

Lack of Teachers, Lack of Time

This is the first National Academies report to deal specifically with national security and the life sciences.

You can download a free pre-publication copy of this report in PDF.

Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism

Uma Thurman stars in Quentin Tarantino's fourth film venture, Kill Bill. Thurman plays a character known as the Bride, a pregnant assassin who is shot by her boss, Bill (David Carradine), on her wedding day, leaving herself and the wedding guests lying for dead. She survives and after being in a coma for five years, she wakes to seek revenge on her co-workers and boss who had attacked her. She sets out to strike down her once fellow assassins, leaving Bill for last.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Read all about Kill Bill, Volume 1.

Salon didn't care for it. CNN calls it "bloody well done", saying that asking a viewer to talk about the film brought "a pleasured gurgling sound as if he were Homer Simpson viewing a box of doughnuts." They also say that if the audience reacts the way the critics have, the movie will be as big as "The Matrix."

The Washington Post's Desson Howe says: He has emerged from years of silence, this Quentin Tarantino. But judging by "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," the first of a two-part pop epic, he hasn't lost a trick.

NYT's AO Scott notes that the rated-R film, which he calls "above all, an exercise in style", also "has shootings, stabbings, beatings, beheadings, disembowelings, amputations, mutilations, eye-gougings, slicings, choppings, bitings and a spanking. Also some naughty words."

Kill Bill, Volume 1 - Reviews and More | Google News

This article provides a (very!) brief history of copyright and its philosophy in order to show that the publishers' simple view is inaccurate, and suggests that understanding copyright's nature is the first step to solve the problems of copyright in the modern world.

Copyright and authors | First Monday

This NRC publication is a product of the Committee on Aeronautics Research and Technology for Vision 2050.

You can download a free, pre-publication copy of this book in PDF.

From the preface:

In the past few years, the current status and future vision of the US air transportation system have been examined in numerous studies. ... What is needed now is vigorous action to refine and achieve the broadly held future vision of an air transportation system ... Achieving this vision will not be easy.

This committee concluded that US visions and goals consistently overlook several key items:
· a clear set of guiding principles;
· a description of the overall process for developing and achieving a widely endorsed long-term vision for the air transportation system;
· a strategy for overcoming transitional issues;
· consumer satisfaction;
· primacy of the US aeronautics industry.

Why settle for TCP Wrappers when you can rewrite the whole kernel?

Securing the Future of US Air Transportation