confused of calcutta

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Entries from February 2007

Blinky and me

February 27th, 2007 · 7 Comments · Four pillars

I started this blog a year ago today. Seems a long time ago. Is that good? No idea. You tell me.
Last night, I re-read About This Blog and The Kernel For This Blog, just to see what I’d learnt as a result of doing this.
I’ve learnt a lot. Particularly about Identity, about Intellectual Property Management [...]

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Geeks and Suits

February 27th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Four pillars

The Shape of Things To Come? I hope not.

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Fraunhofer Lines

February 26th, 2007 · 6 Comments · DRM and IPR, Patents

Wikipedia defines Fraunhofer lines thus:
In physics and optics, the Fraunhofer lines are a set of spectral lines named for the German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826). The lines were originally observed as dark features (absorption lines) in the optical spectrum of the Sun.
The English chemist William Hyde Wollaston was in 1802 the first person to [...]

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Taking action against Patent Spam

February 23rd, 2007 · 5 Comments · Four pillars

I’ve written about it before, how the patent process is fast approaching spam levels. We now have offensive patents (offensive in more ways than intended), defensive patents, speculative patents, frivolous patents, even downright fraudulent ones.
The New Scientist informed me that:
100 patents are issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office every working hour, overstretching staff [...]

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The Gates and Jobs YouTube Series

February 21st, 2007 · No Comments · Four pillars

You’ve probably seen a number of these at one time or the other. But this one is special, it is really worth watching. Check out this link.
There will come a time when nobody watches ads any more, except the ones they choose to. Which may be time- and place- shifted anyway.
What they will watch [...]

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Connected, not channelled

February 21st, 2007 · 3 Comments · Four pillars

Those of you who’ve made the time to read the kernel for this blog will be familiar with the phrase “connected not channelled”….. that’s what came to mind when I read John Battelle’s fascinating interview of Michael Wesch of That Video fame.
Here are the quotes I really identified with:
For me, cultural anthropology is a continuous [...]

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UnGoogleAble Cricket Questions

February 21st, 2007 · 23 Comments · Cricket

An old friend of mine, David Butler, while commenting on a recent cricket-related post, asked:
Can you name the batsman who played only one first class innings, scored a double century and never batted in a first class match again?
I had no idea. It didn’t strike me as a question that was easily GoogleAble, so I [...]

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Agile enterprises

February 20th, 2007 · No Comments · Four pillars

James McGovern asks How Come Enterprise Architects Don’t Embrace Agilism?
It’s a question that’s troubled me for many years now; it belongs to the same class of question as How Come Everyone Hates Architecture Groups But Wants To Hire The Architects and How Come Enterprise Architects Hate Bus Architectures?
Five reasons:

The dinosaur power of the silo, be [...]

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“Can” versus “Should”

February 16th, 2007 · 5 Comments · Four pillars

The latest issue of The Economist has an interesting leader called “The end of the cash era”. One of the themes picked up by the article is the power of anonymity, the anonymity inherent in cash. Elsewhere in the article, the writer speaks of the current tendency to trade privacy for some form of [...]

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Agile contracts versus covenants

February 15th, 2007 · 6 Comments · Four pillars

The blogosphere delights me. I think it’s wonderful, the way things can emerge as a result of different perspectives and experience and ideas acting on the same “theme”. Let’s take a simple for-example:
A short while ago I was musing over a classic problem to do with Agile: the traditional human desire for predictability, how that [...]

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