Radio and New Developments

Playlist: Interview: KGO radio's Karel At least, it's not condescending. Like the part about looking at what younger people are doing and following those trends. Some interesting things are happening with younger generations. The world's changing, as always.

Merci!

Comme le dit le proverbe arabe: «Remercie ta femme une fois par jour. Si elle ne sait pas pourquoi, toi, tu le sais.»

Open Source Beer

Beer Recipe Under Creative Commons Speaking of "free as in beer" and "free as in speech," this one was mentioned on the HomeBrew Digest tonight. Yes, beer and geekness go together well. And, for this homebrewer, it's a good way to wrap up ramblings about Creative Commons, academic freedom, and references. Well, as good as any. Linking to a site describing the probability of seeing a man with a paddle and a jar of Tremclad hitchhiking on the highway would only have been mildly more entertaining. Musing about the effects of a warm bath with sea salt and cayenne pepper would have been slightly more confusing. Ranting about how underused "Twéla" is as an official first name in Quebec would have been too specific. And not posting anything would have been irrational. ;-)

Marshall Sahlins and Open Publishing

Creative Commons: Education Interview with Sahlins on "Prickly Paradigm Press" which publishes pamphlets under Creative Commons licences. Sahlins isn't necessarily known to mince words and he seems to like controversy. In this case, though, it's mostly a well-articulated version of views that appear to be quite common in academia. Two excerpts:

My position is that once we're even, it can go free. None of our authors and none of our publishers and certainly not me, above all, are in this business for gain. I mean, I write a lot of things for academic journals for which I never see a penny. And I've written books that I do see a penny for, but it's literally about a penny for an hour of hard labor. None of us is making a living off of this. Most of us feel that our ideas for the most part come from other people, and it's certainly the case that we want them to be disseminated among other people. So free distribution seems to me correct. The only constraint I put on it is this one that I would like to be able to break even so that we can continue to function.

You know, this seems to run counter to the old "I've worked a lot on this (album, software, book) so I think I deserve money for its use by you, the lowly listener/user/reader."

I truly support the idea of the free dissemination of intellectual information, and that I truly lament the various forms of copyrights and patents that are being put on so-called intellectual property. I also lament the collusion of universities in licensing the results of scientific research, and thus violating the project of the free dissemination of knowledge that is their reason for existence. So I consider it an important act to release these books under a Creative Commons type of license. I’m happy, and also a little proud, to do so.

More polemic and underlining a real issue with contemporary academia. Some research institutions aren't so much about creating the ideal context for reflection, thoughtful communication, or innovative ideas, but markets for intellectual property. This could be expected from "R&D" groups in corporate contexts but the contemporary university is becoming less and less of the place where ideas and knowledge are thriving. It's probably one of the most pernicious problems in the whole Publish or Perish scheme. Well, along with the academic version of payola, the dramatically rising costs of academic publishing, the abuses on author rights, the reliance on publication prestige instead of usefulness, the new barriers to dissemination of ideas, the effects of publish-oriented profs on the teaching role of universities, the diminishing advantages of the tenure-track system, the tendency not to replace retiring faculty, the view of tenure as sinecure, the linear ranking of universities, the reliance on test scores, the obligation for faculty to "produce" even while exploring new possibilities... P. or P.? Nah! P2P? Sure! Now, if it were possible to convince academic departments that relying on the old model of academic publishing is detrimental to academia as a whole and that there should be better factors of academic success, we'd be on the way to a much better academic situation overall. Ah, well...

RefWorks, Reference Software

RefWorks A "Personal Web-based Database and Bibliography Creator" Apparently, people at IU South Bend asked several users for comments about different tools and ended up with RefWorks. Can see why. In terms of ease-of-use, it's very good. And it has many interesting features, including some that aren't found in the typical dedicated desktop applications. I must admit, I'm rather impressed with their rate of release. They seem to follow the typical open-source model of "release early, release often." In fact, although it's proprietary/closed-source/commercially-distributed (through CSA) and not necessarily inexpensive/free-as-beer, it's almost open-sourcesque in its approach. At least, much more so than Thomson/ISI products. Funnily enough, CSA integrates with Endnote (made by ISI) better than ISI products do. ;) Of course, there are several good bibliography solutions around. A cool open-source one is BibDesk. Originally meant for BibTeX data, it now does much more and serves as a cool solution to autofile PDF versions of academic articles (realising part of the dream of an "iTunes for academic papers"). What's neat about RefWorks is that it can be shared. Not only is it possible to make any number of accounts for specific projects (very cool solution for classes) but it has a specific tool for reference sharing. Didn't use it yet but the rest of the program is good enough that RefShare can't be all bad. Well, this is getting into a pseudo-review, which would be much more difficult to do. One thing that's rather impressive for an online system is that it accepted a submission of tens of thousands of references from an Endnote file without complaining too much (apart from server delays). So they don't seem to have a limit in the number of references. Which leads us to an interesting point on reference software. [Start rambling...] A given item, say a reference to a journal article, will be present in many people's reference lists. Most of the data should be standardized for all occurrences of that item: author name, publication date, complete title... Some things are added by the user: date accessed, comments, reading notes... In good database design, RefWorks should only keep one copy of that item (with the standardized information) and have links to that item in people's lists. The customized info could probably be streamlined and will probably not amount to a lot of data. Now, there's an interesting side-effect of this as common references should in fact be standardized. One of the most nonsensical things with online reference databases is that you might have "Smith-Black, John D.," "Smith, J.," "John Daniel Black-Smith," and "Black, J.D.S." referring to the same person. Many programs have ways to standardize references locally but the power is there to have, once and for all, one standardized author ID with all associated info. Sure, the output might still end up as "Smith, J." in some bib formats. But at least the information would be kept. And there could be author pages with a lot of info, from institutional affiliation to publication lists and professional highlights. The main advantage of having a centralised system is that changes could be applied globally (as in "across the system") as opposed to customised by each user. Authors could register themselves and add pertinent information. Readers could send comments to authors (if allowed explicitly). Copies of some publications could be linked directly. Comments by many users could linked to a given publication. Think of the opportunities for collaboration! And the simple time-saving advantage of having, once and for all, the correct, "official" capitalization of the title. One important point: reading notes. Bibliographies are great. The maximal information needed for a given item in a bibliography would seem quite minimal (author(s), date(s), title(s)...). Presentation/format became an important issue because some publications are quite strict in their opinion that theirs is the "correct" way to display a reference. Yet there's much more that can be done with a database of academic references. Yes, including reading notes. Maybe it's just a personal thing but active reading implies some type of note-taking, IMHO. Doesn't need to be very elaborate and a lot of it can be cryptic. But it's truly incredible to see how useful it can be to have a file containing all reading notes (with metadata) from one pass over a given text. With simple search technology, looking for all things you've read that made you think of a specific concept can be unbelievably efficient in bringing ideas together. Nothing really fancy. Just a list of matches for a keyword. Basic database stuff. But, oh so good! Again, it might be personal. What I tend to is to create a file for a given text I read and write notes with associated page numbers. Sometimes, it's more about a stream of consciousness started by a quote. Sometimes, it's the equivalent of underlining, for future use. And, sometimes, it's just a reminder of what's said in the text. This type of active reading is incredibly long but the effects can be amazing. Of course, we all use different systems. It'd just be nice to have a way to integrate these practices with reference software. And to PDAs, of course! And PDFs! The dream: you read an article in PDF format on your PDA, you "enter" your reading notes directly in the PDF, and they're linked to your reference software. You could even share some of these notes with colleagues along with the PDF file. Oh, sure, many people prefer to do their readings offline and few people have the inclination to type the notes they scribble in the margins. But for those of us who do most of our reading online, there could/should be ways to make life so much easier. Technologically, it should be quite easy to do. [...Stop rambling. Well, for now, at least.]

Google, Keywords, Lawsuits

Google ensnared in a war of words A few interesting things to note.

• Google may not have been extremely careful in the legal issues associated with some of its practices, which seems a bit awkward.
• We're talking about Big Money here. In the context of Big Money Google's good overall reputation and relatively careless practices seem somewhat more surprising.
• French opposition to Google may take the typical legalistic approach found in the US.
• There's still a type of culture-shock between the geek-friendly Google and luxury markets such as the ones mentioned in this piece.

User: Friendly

Hello World! I'm your friendly user!

Freedom Fighters

Freedom Fighters: Fighting freedom wherever they find it.

suoni per il popolo

suoni per il popolo Un festival de musique très cool qui commence bientôt. Cool music festival coming up soon.

R�éaliser le Qué�bec de demain! - Les deux grands dé�fis que le Qué�bec a entrepris de relever

Réaliser le Québec de demain! - Les deux grands défis que le Québec a entrepris de relever:

• réduire nos dépenses;
• éliminer les inefficacités dans le fonctionnement de l'État;
• conjuguer les ressources publiques avec celles du secteur privé;
• rétablir l'équilibre fiscal avec Ottawa.

Reçu par la poste, dans un dépliant touffu et peu explicite. On peut quand même comprendre:

• couper dans les programmes sociaux;
• «rationaliser» la fonction publique;
• privatiser;
• quémander au fédéral.

Subtil?

Canadian Microbreweries in 1985

Designer beer - Selling Suds: The Beer Industry in Canada - CBC Archives Part of a series of archived clips on the beer industry in Canada. Relatively little has changed in the last 20 years for the macrobreweries (except for the fact that they've been bought or have merged). Microbreweries and brewpubs still have a long way to go in terms of market share but there's certainly more beer diversity now than there was in 1985. Also, awareness of craft beer seems to have increased quite a bit. Other clips are quite interesting too.

Monetizing Podcasts?

Playlist: Podcash: Follow the money For any idea/concept people may have, others are spending inordinate amounts of effort to link them to money. Of course, it doesn't solve any problem, but hey, we each have to fight on our own, right? Ah, well... This one is from Playlist (owned by Macworld and announced on the same site) about the possibility for transforming "podcasts" (downloadable blog-like radio shows) into either a revenue stream or at least a way to raise "brand awareness." At least, it's an honest way to put it. They're not hiding behind big principles. Just listened to Macworld's second podcast. Apologies to those involved but if that's the model they have in mind, there's a thing or two that they didn't get. Funny how "old media" (even relatively small tech-oriented outlets) are still clueless about the changes that are happening. Ah, well...

CRIA and Artists

Macworld: News: Canadian Court rejects appeal on tune swap suit

we will be able to act in the interest of artists

Oh, nice! Will they eventually ask actual artists? It's kind of interesting that an association which represents the recording industry (i.e., the people musicians have to deal with and protect against) uses "artist interest" as a motto. Oh no, it's not new. And the RIAA does it. But, in this case, it's just too funny.

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion All this talk about Evil Empires makes me hungry. Of course, this is a perspective in which everything is a constant fight. Let us to wars. Rebellion? Ah, well...

Google et l'Empire

Google et l'Europe Situation assez intéressante. Oui, il y va d'identité nationale et «continentale». Oui, la France et les États-Unis ont un rapport très particulier. Mais il y a plus. Les opinions que diverses personnes ont au sujet de Google sont assez intéressantes. Plusieurs ont déjà peur (à tort ou à raison) de l'influence que Google peut avoir sur le 'Net ou même sur la vie hors-ligne. L'article discute de l'aspect américain puisque Google est (au moins jusqu'à la construction du Googlunarplex) installé aux États-Unis. Mais il y a aussi, pour certains, la crainte d'une domination exclusive. Pour certains, Microsoft est "evil" (le Mal incarné). Leurs tactiques d'affaires ont visé à écraser les autres, ce que plusieurs tolèrent mal. Google bénéficie, jusqu'à présent, d'une réputation assez enviable auprès de la plupart des gens. Ses fondateurs semblent accorder beaucoup d'importance à la technologie pour elle-même. Leur moteur de recherche n'a pas été imposé par pur marketing, les gens ont commencé à l'utiliser quand il était en version bêta et l'ont apprécié pour diverses raisons. Un peu comme si le succès de Google n'avait pas été calculé. Comme si Google était "the geek next door" plutôt qu'une entreprise monstrueuse à la Microsoft. Une partie de la différence entre Google et Microsoft tient à la stratégie d'innovation que Google met de l'avant. Google a donc la possibilité de conserver la cote chez ses utilisateurs. En fait, ce doit être assez agréable de travailler là-bas. Mais l'opinion publique change vite...

Cinematic Analogy

Darth Vader, Bush, Republic, Empire Similar articles elsewhere. People often see parallels after a film has been seen or a book has been read. Usually, these parallels become meaningful in a specific context which may or may not have been the target of the author. With those ideas often comes the notion that such a text (movie, book, etc.), which can be interpreted differently by different people, has a richer significance than a similar item too directly tied to its original context. Here, Lucas draws on parallels between the period during which he first wrote "his story," and the current period of time, with political overtones. A type of self-analysis which goes well with the practice of having a "commentary" track on a DVD. Does it take something away from the text if the author spells what s/he saw in the work? Does it preclude other interpretations? It surely helps to spark rather intense discussions. Buzz, you say? As for the transformation of a Republic into an Empire, shouldn't this be the perfect time to look at history? Of course, history repeats itself only partly. Not like a circle, more like a spiral. Or a sine wave, going back to its origin each period. And even those analogies are overworked, but still. Shouldn't we re-read Plato's Republic? And rewatch Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) or even Denys Arcand's Le déclin de l'empire américain (1986)? Then again, maybe not. We've been there. We've revisited so many things. Maybe Sting wasn't so far off with lessons of history.

(Spoof) Montreal on the Map

The Onion | Author Dismayed By Amazon Customers' Other Purchases The Onion rarely talks about Montreal. This time, it's about Yann Martel's perception of his readership.

Bien parler?

C'est plutôt dommage. Certaines personnes semblent encore croire qu'il y a des bonnes et des mauvaises façons de parler. Qu'une langue peut être d'une certaine qualité. Évidemment, la bonne langue, c'est la sienne propre. La langue mal parlée, c'est celle des autres. Classique! C'est quoi ça? Du «glossocentrisme» par parallèle à l'ethnocentrisme (prendre sa culture comme mieux que celle des autres)?

Pourtant, il est maintenant rare que les gens aient des propos aussi désobligeants à l'égard de la culture de l'autre. Pas que les gens ne se croient pas bien supérieurs aux autres. Mais sans doute à cause de la rectitude politique, les gens ne diront pas que la culture écossaise est bien mieux que la culture slovaque. Quoique...

Les gens condamnent des pratiques (culturelles ou linguistiques), en bloc, sans penser aux ramifications. Leur propre perspective est suffisante, ils ont tout compris. Peu importe les raisons qu'ils utilisent, s'ils sont opiniâtres, c'est qu'ils sont au-dessus de tout et de tous.

La critique, c'est bien, mais faut voir ce que ça cible. Cibler un discours spécifique, en dénoncer la nature fallacieuse, c'est la moindre des choses que nous puissions faire. Condamner un groupe de façon péremptoire parce qu'il s'exprime ou se comporte différemment de nous, c'est peut-être rassurant, mais c'est absurde et ça a des conséquences néfastes dans la communication entre individus de différents groupes. C'est encourager l'intolérance.

Oh, on ne parle pas de caricature. Une caricature efficace provient d'une compréhension profonde de certains comportements. Biaisée, bien sûr, mais profonde. Jouer sur les stéréotypes peut même aider à déconstruire ces stéréotypes. Mais énoncer des généralisations sur un groupe humain sans se rendre compte que ce ne sont que des stéréotypes, c'est une façon de renforcer des opinions trop rapides, des préconceptions.

Pour revenir au langage. La façon la plus facile de décrire la situation est de parler de perspectives «descriptive» et «prescriptive» sur la langue. La description linguistique, c'est ce que les spécialistes en sciences du langage font. Ils décrivent les caractéristiques spécifiques de diverses langues et diverses variétés de langues. Cette description est basée sur une compréhension du langage humain comme mode de communication.

Le mode «prescriptif», c'est le «disez pas 'disez', disez 'dites'» (citation réelle). Ça fonctionne très bien dans un contexte spécifique, ce que démontre la citation. En contexte plus formel, la variante «disez» est inappropriée de la même façon que le mot «néanmoins» est inapproprié dans une discussion informelle, du moins dans certaines communautés linguistiques. L'optique prescriptive sert généralement à renforcer les formes appropriées en contexte formel, les contextes informels disposant de leurs propres mécanismes de régulation.

Pour certains, il s'agit d'une distinction entre l'oral et l'écrit mais certaines formes orales (déclaration solenelle, poésie...) sont plus formelles que beaucoup de formes écrites et certaines formes écrites (messagerie directe sur le 'Net) sont plus informelles que beaucoup de formes orales.

Bien sûr, le degré de formalité n'est qu'une dimension parmi d'autres. Le type de langage utilisé par des brasseurs entre eux n'est pas plus ou moins informels que celui utilisé par deux chirurgiennes entre elles. Les deux sont valables en contexte. Mais ce sont des variétés très différentes.

Les locuteurs, surtout francophones, sont conditionnés (si!) par la notion de «niveau» de langue, qui sont généralement placés dans une hiérarchie et souvent considérés comme complètement distincts les uns des autres. Pourtant, le «niveau» scientifique est-il plus ou moins élevé que le «niveau» littéraire? Et n'y a-t-il pas de pont entre ces deux «niveaux» dans diverses productions langagières?

Ce sont des principes de base, très simples. Certains de ceux qui gueulent contre la langue des autres et qui croient «bien parler» auraient avantage à les comprendre avant d'imposer leur vision du langage aux autres. Ils se comportent parfois comme quelqu'un qui parlerait d'équipement informatique en parlant de la qualité des «bits» que tel ordinateur peut transférer. L'analogie se poursuit même un peu plus puisque les mots du langage humain, comme les «mots» en informatique, servent à la transmission d'information et dépendent tous deux d'encodage et de décodage. D'ailleurs, l'informatique a largement été influencée par la linguistique. Et vice-versa.

Quoi qu'il en soit, l'idée c'est que les unités linguistiques (tout comme les «bits») n'ont aucune valeur absolue. Les gens peuvent leur assigner des valeurs (j'ai le droit de trouver 10010101 plus beau que 11000111) mais la référence d'une unité dépend d'un contexte spécifique («il y a 10 types de gens: ceux qui comprennent le binaire et ceux qui ne le comprennent pas»).

Marina Yaguello a publié un livre très facile d'accès qui peut aider les gens à comprendre ce genre de question: Catalogue des idées reçues sur la langue. Il est disponible à la FNAC et sur Amazon.fr mais semble épuisé chez Renaud-Bray et sur Amazon.com.

Naive on Economy

To follow on naive ideas about economy...

I tend to pick on the recording industry and others. In my mind, the RIAA and other big organizations are just too greedy. Not that smaller organizations are devoid of greed, but smaller organizations have more reasonable aims and less of an impact. There's been a lot of "mergers and acquisitions" in a number of industries (including those I care most about: music, publishing, beer, computers). International conglomerates and other merged entities aren't inherently evil. But they're quite dangerous. Many of them are just not doing their job.

I do care about the fact that corporations are pretty lousy at "listening to what people want." Creating needs can be an effective way to achieve short-sighted goals but it's not a way to help society as a whole.

One ad for Salon Premium describes the impact of media convergence as "everybody thinking the same way." The message is interesting but Salon doesn't seem to move in the opposite direction which would be to allow free (as in speech) movement of information, "readers" being allowed to compose their own image of reality based on different feeds (yes, I'm thinking about RSS/Atom as an interesting alternative). On the 'Net, it matters fairly little if a "piece" comes from from the NYT, AFP, or a corporate press release. Those publications have ceased to be guarantees of "trustworthy information." The concept of information itself is slowly transforming, in the minds of several people. Not necessarily that it's closer to Shannon and Weaver's model, with associated notions of entropy, but not everyone thinks of "bits of information" as being valuable on their own.

People are now able to look at different pieces of information, eventually trusting themselves in the final analysis, to contribute to a broad understanding of the world. They understand that knowledge isn't just accumulated information. And they exercise critical thinking. Yes, there's such a thing beyond the buzzword. Hopefully, journalists, marketers, financiers, and politicians will give <bold>people</bold> (Actual Human Beings) more ways to exercise this type of thinking.

It might just be an extension of the relationship between Gutenberg and Reformation: devotees are now allowed to read the texts and don't depend on a higher authority to determine the "value of information" presented to them.

Does this all make sense? In my head it does. At least, the little voice says that it all makes sense... ;-)

(Spoof) Fictionology

The Onion | Scientology Losing Ground To New Fictionology As is often the case with The Onion ("America's Finest News Source"), this piece is an insightful take at a social trend. The basic idea is that of a "mythical belief system free from the cumbersome scientific method." The target is Scientology, but the idea is far-reaching. Interestingly enough, when I was describing the difference between science and belief systems (the only "belief" shared by scientists is that the scientific method can provide appropriate results), a student asked about Scientology which, unlike science, is in fact a belief system. One could include "Intelligent Design" as a similar system: based on beliefs but adopting some aspects of the scientific method. Lamarck, Buffon, and others have proposed similar ideas, with or without a base in belief. In fact, even Descartes's Discours de la méthode attempts to prove beliefs using a scientific method. At least, that's what I remember (I was 13 or 14 at the time I read it, for fun).

Future of Radio?

Macworld: Editors' Notes: iPods killed the radio star Some comments on the influence the iPod (and other music devices) have on radio programming. The overall history of music broadcasting is pretty interesting and recent music devices certainly have their role to play in the current changes. Who knows, maybe the old "payola" system will soon be a thing of the past? There's a few deeper issues, I think. One is that the notion of shuffled playlists isn't itself very new, as it was done on CD players and was especially powerful with CD changers. But the large number of tracks which can fit in the playlist of one of the recent devices makes the shuffle mode much more impressive on those devices than on CD changers. Not to mention that one usually selects specific tracks for a playlist as opposed to CDs which might include different tracks that we don't really want to hear. So, in a way, the main change isn't so much with the shuffle mode but with large selective playlists/libraries. There's something more, though. A radio station's strength, according to some, is that professional DJs choose the tracks to broadcast. At least, that's the impression they're trying to give. In fact, Microsoft recently had a campaign touting music devices on which you can listen to FM radio because you can "Let a professional make your next playlist." Now, whether or not people want FM radio on their music device is another issue, but touting it as "a key feature" on devices which are meant to hold the listener's favourite tracks seems a bit clueless. Ah, well... Still. The status of a good radio DJ is clearly changing. Some people may still love them, trust them, cherish them, worship them but other people have traded those professional human DJs with their own playlists. There are other issues with today's radio, as mentioned in this tongue-in-cheek piece about the Microsoft campain. Much of it is filled with ads, has way too commercial music, and may be outright annoying. Personally, I almost never listen to any radio station unless there's something specifically interesting. I did participate in a couple of radio shows but I tend to prefer being "proactive" with the music I listen to (or with the news I read). Call it foolish pride, but I don't necessarily like to be told what I should listen to. "Push" technologies are an interesting concept when you can actually select what you want to be pushed to you. And it shouldn't be pushed down your throat... In the end, I wonder what role radio broadcasting will play in the future. One thing that can be neat is a customized broadcast à la "podcast." Eventually, it could be done in real time, wirelessly, from one music device to the next. Like jack sharing. If the recording industry were to see the light (yeah, right), this could be transformed into a viable mean of distribution with compensation to artists. As it stands, the radio doesn't really help artists yet it's backed and pushed by the recording industry. Since radio is sooo, like, you know, 20th Century, maybe musicians should invest more in other methods of broadcast and distribution...

Independent Publishing, Internet Economy

Still thinking about this review of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Such an in-depth review would be a rare sight in a typical magazine, for many reasons. To make things even more impressive, Mac OS X 10.4 was released only a few days ago. It could take months for the typical magazine to release such a report. And the magazine itself would cost at least $5 and include many irrelevant articles. As we all know, part of the power of the 'Net (and the Web specifically, in this case) is to enable different types of publishing. It's neither new nor surprising. But it's still impressive. In this case, Ars Technica uses Google ads as well as paid subscriptions, which carry some advantages (such as a PDF version of an article in 21 parts!). Again, neither new nor surprising. But if it works (and it seems like AT is doing well enough), it's a better model than the model used by some publications which annoy their readers with constant reminders that they should subscribe or watch ads, or can only access content for a limited amount of time... On the 'Net, simple economic models may work. Not that they necessarily will. But what's needed wasn't the tulipbulb.com "e-commerce" model. Just a principle of targeted added-value. Dead simple. Everybody knows it. But some people are still fighting an old war with older weapons. A similar situation with music. Apparently (should verify this at one point), the whole worldwide recording industry is worth a mere 30 billion USD. Nothing to sneeze at, of course, but incredibly small as compared to so many other industries, including advertising. There was something about ringtones becoming a 3 billion USD industry. It probably didn't happen but that would have meant 10% of the recording industry. There's something incredibly absurd about this, especially given the fact that ringtones are probably bought online and can probably use MP3s. In many ways, a ringtone is much less than the equivalent file on a CD yet it may be bought even if the CD is available. Doesn't this seem strange to anyone else? Yes, I know exactly how naive this all sounds...

Ars Technica on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger A very elaborate review of the latest version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Some geeky details, a bit opinionated at times, but always thoughtful and not that hard to read.

Hooooom!

Four Singing Horses / Quatre chevaux chantant Click on each horse. Cliquez sur chaque cheval.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Recently, a friend from Switzerland invited me to join his LinkedIn network. I joined in but didn't add any contact. Another friend, graduating MBA from the University of Notre-Dame, was talking about LinkedIn with fellow MBA graduates and I decided to flesh out my network a bit. Not that I might benefit directly from this type of contact but I like to put people in touch and the very concept of a social network is quite important for me. Un ami m'a invité dernièrement et je me suis inscrit. Plus tard, un autre ami en parlait lors d'une discussion avec des collègues d'université. J'ai donc pensé agrandir mon cercle de connaissance. Pas que j'aie vraiment besoin de ce type de contact mais j'aime bien mettre les gens en contact et le principe de réseau social est assez important pour moi.