Be humble

Microsoft has released (to the public) Internet Explorer 7 (beta 2 preview).  Those of stout heart and wishing to play on the bleeding edge of MS creations, can get it here.

A sub-note from MS indicates, ”Evaluation of Internet Explorer 7 should start now, but the software should not be used on production systems in mission-critical environments. Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview will only run on Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) systems, but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003.

The USRobotics USR9610 Speakerphone for Skype. It might look like a futuristic uncomfortable seat-cushion, but it’s actually a full duplex, USB speakerphone. Featuring echo-cancellation, volume controls and a mute button, the USR9610 helps you lose those dreaded headphones that muss your hair. $50 lets you Skype the night away without the cord sometime later this month.

Then we see NetGear getting into the game with this:

A new Skype WiFi phone that needs no PC; Skype, of course, comes pre-loaded since you don’t want to carry yet another phone just because you can. Just enter your Skype name and password and you’re set to call all of your Skype buds whenever you’re in range of some WiFi. What’s that, your peeps don’t have Skype? No prob since you can seamlessly use your SkypeIn or SkypeOut account just as well.

Contagious obesity? Identifying the human adenoviruses that may make us fat | Science Blog

* identify the viruses that cause human obesity
* devise a screening test to identify people who are infected
* develop a vaccine

Hmmmm, the development of a vaccine to makes us stay slim.  Now there is a place to invest.

It is noted in the January 31, 2006 edition of The Guardian that Prof. David Weale was called to a meeting with UPEI President Wade MacLauchlan, Dean of Arts Richard Kurial and representative of the Faculty Association, Prof. Bob O’Rourke.  I certainly have no understanding of how a University bureaucracy works, but the article leaves the impression that these three individuals were sitting in judgment of Prof. Weale’s behaviour.

I wonder if the Prof. Bob O’Rourke mentioned in the article, is the same Prof. Bob O’Rourke who was publicly and privately criticized for requiring his students to pay for membership in his publicly funded and privately owned company website?

This is hilarious (except for the outcome) - another final solution.

Damn Interesting » The Great Sheep Escape

Victor Hugo wrote that “No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”

January 2005

January 2006

Bigger is better, or so I have heard.  Hard drives people, hard drives!

The first computer I worked on did not have a hard drive.  Each program was started from a pile of punch cards and the output was data in printed from.  Even without a hard drive, the computer I learned on filled a small room.  The first desktop I owned did not have a hard drive.  It used a large floppy drive and was a huge improvment.  By todays measure, it was slow and clunky.  The first hard drive I recall was attached to an old IBM and was bigger than most desktop computers today.  I can’t recall how much storage capacity it had, but I doubt it was 10 megs.

Today I have a 160 GIG hard drive in my desktop and a 100G hard drive in my notebook.  Today, from Wester Digital we learn:

LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Jan. 26, 2006 - Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today announced it is shipping its new high-capacity 500 GB Serial ATA (SATA) WD Caviar® SE16 desktop-class hard drives. Providing a half terabyte of capacity for data-intensive applications such as graphic design, digital video editing, personal video recorders and advanced business computing, WD Caviar SE16 500 GB drives also deliver high 7,200 RPM performance with 300 MB/s transfer rate, 16 MB cache and Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

“The WD Caviar family of hard drives delivers the reliability and performance that customers expect from WD,” said Don Bennett, WD vice president and general manager of desktop storage. “The extreme capacity and high performance of this drive address a variety of demanding applications and expand WD’s portfolio of storage products. From 6 to 500 GB, WD offers a diverse range of hard drives to meet our customers’ wide-ranging storage needs.”

That is a half-terrabyte folks, and you can get it today for $349.99.

If we cut through all the emotional and nonobjective rhetoric, the fact remains that David Weale has diminished the product that UPEI produces.  A University has a product, just like any other vendor, and from a customer’s perspective, the product is the graduating student.  Yeah, a product.  How is that product measured?  I suppose it could be measured by how smart a person is when they leave, but to that I would say, bullshit.  Depending on the chosen field of education, I am guessing that a meaningful measure of the product, is jobs.  Of course, jobs can cover a wide range of definitions, but getting to work in the area that you are educated in, might prove to be an objective way to measure a the product.

A real world example.  The last time I was involved in hiring a group of people, we had two requirements to make the short list.  The first was graduation from a university and the other was that the application speak both French and English.  The bilingual requirement was as a result of our doing a significant portion of our business in Quebec.  The university requirement was not because we thought university graduates are smarter, but rather it showed a discipline - I.E. the ability to finish something that was started, despite the fact that it was viewed (from outside) as being a difficult task.

Yesterday we were considering the requirements for a new group of ‘hires’.  “Well, I guess we can remove the university requirement”, someone said, “they might have been in Weale’s class or the other classes he (Weale) referred to”.

David Weale has diminished the value of the product that his employers sells.  He should be dismissed.  Just as I would be dismissed if I willingly diminished the product that my employer sells.

Note that no one seems to be calling into question David Weale’s quality of instructing - that, by all reports is superb.  The quality of teaching, is not the point in what seems to have become a very polarized and overemotional debate.  Consider the pragmatic facts.

I have read.  I have listened.  I have an opinion, but for some reason I have been lazy of late.  I just knew someone would see things as I do and I could just link.  She does, she did and here it is:

A Glamor Girl Gone Bad: I am a nurse. Next week - a vet

I have an opinion on Weale-Gate. I’ll deliver it now, before I hand the university my money and next week become a full fledged registered nurse

Struggling for a caption.  Intriguing that the publisher of a newspaper would feel the need to explain that the facial expression to the right is a smile. 

Is this because the publisher assumes a level of stupidity of its readers, or is it because one can never be sure what facial expression our new Prime Minister (designate) is exhibiting?