In the August 10th, 2006 issue of Financial Times [1](*), Patti Waldmeir wrote a column about a new book [2] she recently read. In this book, Sunstein start from a 1973 citation from F. Hayek, a liberal philosopher and economist: Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge by all and … civilisation rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. ...
Like computer hackers who cooperate in developing and using tools to understand and manipulate the inner workings of computer software, researchers are developing sophisticated biological methods that will allow them to crack the function of the genome. Daniel Evanko shortly writes about two methods to probe the function of the genome: cDNA sequencing and microarray hybridization. It’s in Nature Methods 3, 495 (2006): abstract - full text (a post just to show that biologists are also hacking their stuff)
In the June/July 2006 issue of Scientific Computing World, there is an interesting article about Andre Geim, director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology. Do you remember the levitating frog? It’s him (he even got an Ig Nobel prize for it). Do you remember the “gecko tape” ? It’s also his actual group! So, in this article, they wrote about Prof. Andre Geim story, from his early school days near the Black Sea and in Moscow to the various labs he visited and worked with in the past few years. Although he works in nanotechnology, some of his quotes can easily be applied to biological sciences (where I am not doing “mainstream” experiments like stem cells, genomics, fMRI, etc.) … ...
This week-end, I attended a scientific meeting and, although the content of the presentations were often interesting, they also often lacked attractiveness. This reminded me two videos I stored, some time ago, on my hard disk. Sébastien Lorion called them “refreshing”. And, for me, not only these presentations look beautiful, they also talk about an interesting topic: who are you on the internet ? In the first presentation (a keynote at OSCON 2005), Dick Hardt talk about what is identity and how do we prove who we are, in the online world. ...
In this blog, Andy Dornan takes us from a simple demonstration of Lenovo laptops new “abilities” to the fact that the real owner of documents with DRM is the software company and not the owner/creator of the document. You can create a document and claim ownership on it with DRM systems. Unless you can open it with or export it to a software coming from another company, you’ll be dependent on one company to open your document. Imagine you create a text file and protect it with sofware X. If you cannot open it in another text processor/editor and that the maker of X decides that you cannot open your document anymore (for whatever reason: you live in a dangerous “terrorist” country, your name sounds too different, you didn’t pay your monthly fee on time, etc.), your are stuck. ...
This last week-end, a Dutch-written Belgian newspaper wrote that the Minister of the Interior, Patrick Dewael, is planning a special electronic ID card for foreigners in Belgium. If this become reality, every foreigner in Belgium will have an e-ID with his/her biometric data inside, even if he/she is officially living in Belgium, with a regular permit to live, work, etc. Of course, this project is aimed at illegal foreigners (btw, have a look at his other “brilliant” idea: heavily punish those who are helping illegal foreigners to obtain asylum, regular papers, etc.). Thus it seems there will be two versions of this card. Their official reason is “better control”. ...
There is a story on how Steve Jobs prepares his talks for Apple’s keynotes in the Guardian Unlimited. Well, it doesn’t say much about the preparation in itself. But I can feel the stress Mike Evangelist is experiencing: he had to talk in front of hundreds of people, in front of his boss and present software not yet finished. And I thought I had stress before my presentations … Of course, there is another reading of this article. OK, Apple is a small technology company. But it developped a good sense of communication. When you are buying an ipod, your are not only buying a portable music player (btw including imprisoning DRM): you are also buying a feeling (of hype, of having the last gadget, …). When you are buying a Mac computer, it’s also a feeling of being part of “another” community, … Apple cultivated this feeling since the beginning with slogans like “Think Different”. And, of course, this article, the book Mr Evangelist is trying to write, … even this post on this blog, they all participate in the “buzz” around Apple keynotes. Finally, if this noise (*) wasn’t there, Apple will only be another computer-selling company. ...
An article in the French newspaper Le Monde presents Quaero ( to seek, in Latin) as the future “European Google”. Comments on this article are divided between supporters of this alternative and denigrors that predict another bureaucratic, bloated, ineffective project. My point here is not to argue pro or against this project. But I would like to dwell on American databases and search engines that serve the entire world. When you need to look at some information on the internet (mainly, the web), I am sure you are using (American) tools like Google, Yahoo! or Altavista. In the life sciences domain, we have a wonderful database, PubMed, a service of the (American) National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations of biomedical articles. When you are preparing a presentation or an experiment on a subject, it’s a great tool to do the bibliography. ...
I was reading a presentation on the Belgian electronic identity card (PDF 150 kb, in French, by a friend). Compared to the old, analogic card, this new card has an electronic chip on it. This chip contains some information that are already visible to any human eye on the surface of this card and more information (like a photo, your address, digital certificates, …). I stopped on the 5th slide where it’s said that this new " e-ID" will allow someone to be identified, to authenticate (what?) and to fill in on-line administrative papers. ...
Some days ago, IDC published a study carried out on behalf of the BSA (Business Software Alliance). In this study, they promised the creation of 4 000 new jobs and the addition of 2.6 billion US$ to the economical growth in Belgium if software piracy is reduced by 10% between 2006 and 2009. For France, it is a promise of 30 000 new jobs and an addition of 13.7 billion US$ to the economical growth! ...