Rough Drafts

Nicholas Carr says IT has become a commodity utility. Michael Schrage says IT still matters, because it’s all in how you deploy it.

Pat Gelsinger wants Intel technology to touch every last human being on the planet.

By all accounts, Linux is doggedly continuing its march toward respectability and, perhaps, even boredom. Like a motorcycle-riding, leathers-wearing, tattooed CPA, Linux has a whiff of youthful danger and rebelliousness about it, despite being, in its daily work, rather dull.

Robert X. Cringely has an intriguing idea for a music business he calls “Son of Napster,” or Snapster for short.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday that the Children

According to Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, “the world produces 1-2 exabytes (i.e. 1-2 billion gigabytes) of unique information per year, of which only 0.003 per cent is in printed form.” This article talks about efforts (by DSpace and other initiatives) to store up some of

Kazaa and Altnet are creating a secure P2P network [http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1011827.html] that will operate in parallel with the public Kazaa network — and will pay users to host files on the new network.

The Internet is like a huge library with all the books dumped on the floor. What’s the origin of this once-useful phrase? This page [http://info.org.il/english/books_on_the_floor.html] has an interesting discussion.

Technology companies are waking up to the opportunities opened by the music industry’s steadfast refusal to embrace online distribution of music files.

Here’s a nontechnical introduction to RSS [http://www.faganfinder.com/search/rss.shtml] from Michael Fagan. For a more technical introduction to RSS, see Mark Pilgrim’s explanation [http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html].

On a whim, I decided to pit MSN’s online version of the Encarta “encyclopedia” (part of MSN Learning and Research) against the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia available through Bartleby. The differences couldn’t be more stark.