Monday, December 06, 2004

The Cuban Biotech Revolution. Embargo or not, Fidel Castro's socialist paradise has quietly become a pharmaceutical powerhouse. (They're still working on the capitalism thing.) By Douglas Starr from Wired magazine. [Wired News] 10:55:19 PM    comment []

The Circuits Holiday Buying Guide. Our annual special issue devoted to electronic gifts for work and play, along with a guide to the world of online shopping. [NYT > Technology] 10:49:40 PM    comment []

New York Times Dumps on Philosophy Majors. Michael Weisberg (Philosophy, Penn) has called my attention to this recent article in The New York Times on the choice of college majors; a pertinent excerpt: In their recently published "College Majors Handbook With Real Career Paths and Payoffs" (Jist Publishing), three economists from Northeastern University in Boston try to quantify just how much students with a variety of majors can expect to earn in their careers. The authors concluded that choosing a major was more crucial to future financial success than the college attended. [Leiter Reports] 6:00:19 PM    comment []

Rappin' with Dick Gephardt. Though he never was quite able to score the nod for veep, the veteran Democratic congressman from Missouri is probably still in the running for at least one title: the least hip politician in modern history. All the same, on the eve of his retirement from Capitol Hill, Gephardt is suddenly sounding a wee bit less wooden. He spoke with Matt Bai of the Times Magazine, where he praised Bill Clinton -- whose ability to "connect emotionally" makes him "the most talented politician" Gephardt ever saw -- and then dropped some 411 regarding eBay, iPod and Eminem. [Salon.com] 5:55:35 PM    comment []

Flitter (Alf Eaton does it again). Alf Eaton has created a sort of musical browser which automatically displays related music. It's called Flitter. [unmediated] 5:55:05 PM    comment []

Here's another one of those iPod to auto stereo thingies. This one's called ''Neo iON'' if you're keeping track. 5:44:32 PM    comment []

In case you were wondering, being shrieked at for twenty mintues when you're trying to get inside and warm up has its affect, so I didn't start thinking about tomorrow's dinner until it was after 4, which is always dangerous on a Saturday, because a lot of businesses still observe the old 4pm closing time. So notes Ed Ward. 12:43:45 PM    comment []

PIERCING THE PEER-TO-PEER MYTHS, PART TWO, by Michael Geist, who says of it: My weekly Toronto Star Law Bytes column features part two of my examination of the financial impact of peer-to-peer music downloading on the Canadian music industry. Following part one, which demonstrated that recording industry loss claims are greatly exaggerated and that the P2P is only marginally responsible for sales declines, this column concludes that Canadian artists have not suffered financially, noting that lost royalties from diminished sales have been more than offset by the collection of nearly $120 million in private copying levies. (Geist's Numbers don't crunch against downloading was quoted in this space last week.) 9:43:20 AM    comment []

mi2g: Welcome to the FUD Factory, by Richard Forno. Everyone's favorite FUD Factory -- "security intelligence" company mi2g -- is at it again. This week, the firm posted a "news alert" sensationally entitled 'The rise of corporate hate sites - lies, damned lies and extortion'. While the topic of "corporate hate sites" is an interesting and even relevant one for today's day and age, it appears that the true goal of this mi2g "news alert" was to attack security pundit Rob Rosenberger's website Vmyths.Com for his analysis and commentary about security-related companies, including mi2g. (For those unaware, Rob is one of the few pundits who calls things as he sees them, and, while refreshing, that sometimes runs contrary to what companies want the public to know.) . . . For example, one glaring omission in this report is that while mi2g claims a growth in the number of "corporate hate sites" on the Internet, its report does not account for the explosive growth of websites of all sorts during that time (including, quite logically, "corporate hate sites") -- meaning that mi2g's scary statistics on the this allegedly-new "digital risk" are valid only within the vacuum that they're presented. Caveat reader! You can read the report if you like, but I'll save you some time -- according to mi2g, the real enemy in cyberspace isn't hackers, it's people whose opinions you disagree with. And that's quite evident when reading mi2g's statement: in its 14 paragraphs, there are 6 dedicated to attacking and attempting to discredit Rosenberger and Vmyths while implicitly begging the public for sympathy. Six out of 14. My proprietary BESPOAKE™ analysis shows that to be almost half of the entire document -- with that much attention, one would think mi2g wants to portray Rosenberger as the Fourth Horseman of the Internet. As I wrote back in 2002, let's not forget that mi2g started off as an e-business enabler focused on operating portal sites (such as Carlounge.Com and Lawlounge.Com) under the corporate motto "Bringing The Web To The World." Suddenly, in 1999 with the digital apocalypse of Y2K looming ahead, the firm morphed into an internet security company that "by integrating state-of-the-art software engineering technology with super computing capability is revolutionising the world of eCommerce and for the first time maximising the return from the internet whilst minimising the risk." From cars to cyberterrorism in only a few short years. PT Barnum would be proud. (Perhaps mi2g's new corporate motto should be "Bringing FUD to The World One News Release at a Time.") Also from the article, links to mi2g's statement, as well as to more info on mi2g and its history: inforwarrior.org (Forno's site) Vmyths (Rosenberger's site) attrition.org (noteworthy hacking, etc. news site) 8:43:08 AM    comment []