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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Site created 30 May 1999. Home page URL http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/flipsock/
| sneedle flipsock |
22 october 2004: filled with naughty laughter |
flipsockgrrl @ gmail .com |
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This week:
.edu"Officials of Maryland's public university system will unveil a plan this week to save more than US$26 million next fiscal year to help stave off what the system's chancellor has called a potential fiscal crisis of rising costs and declining state support... The savings plan... includes measures to reduce the time for students to graduate. One such proposal would make more classes available each year by requiring faculty members to teach more courses." Four schools in the University of North Carolina system will participate in a pilot program that allows them to download music, movies and other copyrighted material on the Internet for free. Begun in 1990, The Campus Computing Project is the largest continuing study of the role of information technology in American higher education. The results of the 2004 survey have been published, and show increased funding for academic computing at 41.2 per cent of private universities and 31.9 per cent of public universities. Just over half the respondents think open-source software will become increasingly important on campus. "Critics of college rankings say [American] universities aren't like their sports teams. You cannot settle who is best with head-to-head competition on the playing field. But in a new paper, a group of economists and statisticians begs to differ. They lay out a system that ranks colleges on how they perform in one kind of head-to-head competition they contend says a lot about a school and can be measured: the battle for students who are admitted to several colleges." 21 October 2004 | top of page ScienceHaving "a cool, super-tiny phone in a product lineup serves as a kind of trophy for manufacturers to show off their technological prowess, even though the miniature marvel's appeal is limited to a niche group of techno-fetishists who want the least money can buy. Nevertheless, today's mobile phones... have become about as tiny as human anatomy allows. Does that mean miniaturisation is coming to an end? For the phones themselves, the answer is probably yes. For the components inside the phone, the answer is definitely no." On Earth today... the story so far, in counters that track births, deaths, expenditure, health statistics and various other interesting numbers. (thanks, Katherine) Crash-test dummies, crashing in aeroplanes (requires Quicktime). "In the laboratories of the Council for Science and Industrial Research, or CSIR, South African researchers are honing techniques for turning genetically engineered tobacco and other crops into factories for producing drugs for HIV and tuberculosis. With a bit of genetic engineering, [Dr Blessed] Okole says, plants' cellular machinery can be tweaked to produce antibodies on a large scale and far more cheaply than conventional drug-manufacturing methods allow." The improbably named Heath Row asks, "Want some more information about the science behind the recent study on how brand affinity can affect brain activity? Last week, Samuel McClure and his colleagues published a paper in the science journal Neuron. In 'Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks,' the authors show how brand affinity can trump a blind taste test -- people who preferred Pepsi over Coke would change their response when they learned which option was Coke: Their brand knowledge flipped a switch in their head." As a robot becomes "more humanlike in its appearance and motion the emotional response from a human being to robot will become increasingly positive and empathetic, until a point is reached at which the response suddenly becomes strongly repulsive." Welcome to the Uncanny Valley. 21 October 2004 | top of page Cluetrain"How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb? None. There’s nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness." Oh, and do please take some advice about wine from The John Cleese. How to evade the tyranny of email and be generally more productive at work, even in an open-plan office. Truth in politics: comedian Jon Stewart caused a stir with his appearance in a live broadcast of CNN's "Crossfire" program [transcript]. MTV reports that he "accused the mainstream media--and his hosts in particular--of being soft and failing to do their duty as journalists to keep politicians and the political process honest... In an era when the media is increasingly fragmented and viewers can surround themselves with programming that falls right in line with their own views, be they on the right or the left, Stewart's blast seemed especially on point." Wave your mouse across the line graph and watch how the economists react. (requires Shockwave) You've heard about 'business process analysis' and 'process improvement'. These reasonably simple and straightforward articles introduce the concepts and explain in broad terms how to do it. A Brown University study of digital government finds the 198 nations are making steady progress at putting services and information online, but movement forward has been slowed because of budget, bureaucratic, and institutional factors. Taiwan and Singapore lead the table, followed by the United States, Canada, Monaco, China and in sixth place Australia (down from fourth last year). Annual reports for 2000 to 2003 are available for comparison. OffshoreExecutive.com: creating shareholder value through corporate restructuring. 21 October 2004 | top of page Web and 'netNotes of a recent talk by Donald Norman about who owns user experience. Spam traffic declined 7 per cent after Hurricane Ivan hit Florida. Jon Husband tried the 'social networking' systems like Friend of A Friend and LinkedIn, but found them "too cold, linear and frankly, one-dimensional." Instead, he's taken up blogging and found "the online process that mimics how we converse and engage in the real 3D world". "Whether or not you want to be an advocate, we are all part of something bigger. While we debate our issues of importance, struggle to learn, grow, or just keep up, we are participating in social change. After all, the Web is a human creation." The use of new technologies and the Internet tends to bring more jobs. The quality of work conditions is low. These are some of the realities and concerns that the International Labour Office shows in its report "The Future of Work and Quality in the Information Society: the media, culture, graphical sector." Bruce Sterling, 1996: "Even paperback books have a far longer lifespan than computers. It’s a humble thing, a book, but the interface doesn’t change and they don’t need software upgrades and new operating systems. A five dollar paperback book will dance on the grave of a five thousand dollar computer." Donna Maurer on the pros, cons and nuances of card-sorting. Peter Merholz says the biggest obstacle to good user-experience design is "poor organisational structure... small, multidisciplinary teams create the best products... UCD can’t work as a silo department—it must be a company-wide approach. Instead of hiring UCD specialists, develop multidisciplinary teams in which every member is familiar with UCD principles." 21 October 2004 | top of page Arts and lettersOver-used SF cliches: a handy list to help you avoid the potholes in the road to creating your world-famous novel. The collector of this list, John, has several other lists for your delectation: The Things I Will do if I am Ever the Hero, The Things I Will do if I am Ever the Sidekick, The Things I Will do if I am Ever the True Love, The Evil Henchman's Guide, Survival Guide for Innocent Bystanders... This is possibly the nerdiest site I've seen all year. Nevertheless, it will be of intense interest to a select and highly-credentialled group of librarians. Here's the creator's summary: "I'm launching this site in the interests of starting conversations about the way in which book details--author, title, subject, and even page count--are collected, sold, disseminated, updated, broken, and misused." Ah, the importance of proof-reading: a Miami mural artist has been persuaded to correct 11 errors on her latest work of public art for a library. The ghosts of Eistein, Shakespere and Gaugan will be relieved. The inestimable Adrian Mole is back, with weapons of mass destruction:
Taste Of Africa is development worker Yvette Lopez's diary of life in the Republic of Somaliland. This small, poor country declared its independence from Somalia in 1991, and has not yet been formally recognised by the international community (however you may define that). I love Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana novels, and Yvette Lopez's diary holds similar fascinations. (via JOHO) U2 have done a deal with Apple: soon you'll be able to buy a customised iPod with the band's new album preloaded on it. U2 plans a world tour in 2005, including a visit to Australia. (via BoingBoing) Ben Folds observes, "you don't just age to 25, 30, 40 years old--and all of a sudden you know everything. It's that perspective that bridges any kind of generation gap you could have in rock-and-roll music. As I'm saying it, I think it's kind of monumental. I don't know that anyone's ever done that before--actually said, 'I'm 73 years old, and I cannot get my shit together.' That's cool!" That's William Shatner's new album, and it's surprisingly listenable. Review of "The Last Starfighter: the musical", now playing at the Storm Theatre, off Broadway, in New York. (via BoingBoing) Stephen King has finally finished the Gunslinger SF/fantasy/horror series he started writing as a teenager. "This series contains (lots) more verbiage than the Bible and Kapital combined, and says much, much less than either... And it is marvellously enjoyable," says Cory Doctorow. Free audio books: fiction and non-fiction, plus kids' books, in MP3 format. Neal Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's community of IT people. He had lots to say about writers and patronage, "similarities between the singularity prediction and the apocalypse of St John the Divine", new ways of publishing as a business, fighting with William Gibson and the joy of OSX. Download some MP3 songs for Halloween: Albert DeSalvo's "Strangler In The Night", The Hamburger Brothers' "Omar The Vampire" and a medley by Boris Karloff and Friends of "Ha Ha Ha/The Bride Of Frankenstein" are among the highlights. (via BoingBoing) 21 October 2004 | top of page SportAn Ali G clone introduces the US election campaign (requires Flash and sound). Harry Shearer says it's just hard work. Lots of hard work. (requires an MP3 player of some sort; I like iTunes) I was going to link to a couple of Dave Barry's recent, hilarious columns in the Miami Herald. But the Miami Herald thinks it's smart to make you register and agree to be marketed at before you're allowed the privilege of reading their newspaper. So forgeddit. History of the universe in seven snoozes (requires Flash/Shockwave). "It fills you with naughty laughter to know you did this and other people have no idea what happened," says one user of the TV-B-Gone, "a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first." "Friday marks the 66th anniversary of the photocopier and to this day, only 17 office workers have learned how to replace the toner cartridge." 21 October 2004 | top of page |
2004 flipsocks:17 Dec: the
sock has flipped
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subscribe, contribute or comment by e-mailing flipsockgrrl @ gmail .com |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Site created 30 May 1999. Home page URL http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/flipsock/ |