Discover: Built-In Spam. Steven Johnson. Software designers are quietly integrating commercial transactions into ordinary applications. Before too long your spreadsheet may start selling you stock tips, and for the low, low price of $1.50, your word processor might offer to clean up that last paragraph you wrote. [Tomalak's Realm] Gack, one more reason for open […]

Tyranny of structurelessness. 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness' by Jo Freeman should be compulsory reading for any libertarians, funky-businessmen, self-organisation enthusiasts, hippies, entrepreneurial gurus,… [iWire]

New politics. Two articles from the Washington Post today, Haliburton making nearly $2 billion from war in Iraq and Bush holds Federal employee pay raise to 2 percent. [vanderwal.net Off the Top] I wonder whether Haliburton will pay any taxes on that 2 billion, because i know federal employees will pay taxes on their 2 […]

Perens: IT Pros Must Lobby for Open Source. 27 Aug 2003: Open-source pioneer and evangelist Bruce Perens urges IT managers to lobby for the protection of open-source software from the infringing threat of software patents and legal liability.Read the short interview [RootPrompt.org — Nothing but Unix]

Blasted!. Ouch. The Cornell College ResNet system, which connects students to the internet and the college network has been slammed with the W32/Lovsan.worm (MSBlaster) virus. This means that students will be disconnected from the network (and internet access) until things are… [Eat Your Vegetables] —- i expected this to happen at many more campuses, all […]

Selecting Fast. This is a programming war story with a moral that I think is is important for those who care about their code running fast… [ongoing] the perception of speed is like the perception of magic.

A Bastard of a late night call-out. Episode 18 But I need help now… [The Register]

How gas prices got so highThere are lots of reasons for rising prices, says MSN Crude oil prices have stayed higher than expected, in part because it's taken longer to get Iraq back on line. In addition, about 300,000 to 400,000 barrels daily of Nigerian oil production are curtailed because of local political turmoil. At […]

Exporting Jobs? Who, Us?. India's Business Standard reported in January that the US Republican Party would be outsourcing fund-raising to call centers in India … [istori/log] is this surprising?

Ted Agres reports in today's issue of TheScientist …. Ted Agres reports in today's issue of TheScientist that the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has launched a top-to-bottom assessment of the way the U.S. funds science. It is soliciting comments from the public, due by September 22. The goal is to improve […]