Some interesting, sometimes disturbing comments by this famous IBM chief scientist and Prof. of Mathematics. Why the internet creates a two class society of jobs. Enjoy.

Go and read this beautiful book on the damaging effects of intellectual property rights on all of us. Zypriss and the EU are preparing the next steps to create even more monopolies in software and other areas. Read Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine blog to realize how badly the current system of copyrights and property rights is already abused. BTW David K.Levine also wrote a nice book on game theory, reputation etc.

Thanks to input from Roger Stampfli I was able to assemble a nice collection of papers and videos on the current crisis. It is actually quite frightening to realize how badly the bankers and brokers have been gambling and how badly the national banks are now reacting by printing ever more money. Being a fan of cybernetics it looks to me as if the abuse of the financial systems is now threatening the whole. This crisis could start the end of capitalism. But will it change back to a state-run bureaucracy that has already once shown that it does not work? Or will it change to something better?

Inspired by swarm intelligence, human centric computing and the general fear of all things social a short piece on why intelligence is socially based, what kind of role the Internet plays in fostering this type of intelligence and who the enemies are. Includes a discussion of Shirky's "here comes everybody".

A short obituary on Joe Weizenbaum. I used it to paint a picture of computer science that ranges from the happy days of naive adoption to the current time of total control. Who would have thought that things could ever get this bad?See how far human reason has lost against the power of control through computers.

Just a few thoughts and links on empirical validation of statements in software development, the philosophy of science and how to tackle the causality problem.

A few pieces on science managment, buzzwords needed for sponsoring etc. based on the book by Joachim Schummer. He explains how the nano concept made its way from popular culture and science fiction into mainstream science funding. Really nice, especially in connection with my latest research project...

Just a bunch of nice quotes I stumbled over recently.

Some ideas on the effects of smart meters, smart vehicle control and smart everything on our life. The paper shows what is behind the "it is good for the planet" attitude really lies: a method to micro-control our everyday life by setting the parameters for our self-optimizations. This is not about privacy of data. This is about the accumulation of everyday data to make individual prices and offers. Customers have nothing in their hands against this overwhelming economic power.

The paper shows also that computer science is unable to protect those customer data - and that nobody seems to really care about this defect.

Some reflections on the current state of IT. Is change management social engineering and manipulation? Is ITIL the Maxwell Demon for the enterprise? A few critical statements on control by information processing.

Some things just never cease to surprise me - especially all things business. SLAs are one of them. Does anybody REALLY believe in those instruments? Is it REALLY better to turn the relation between business and IT within a company into a legal minefield? Read about some fundamental doubts on this vision.

We - computer science and IT people - made some spectacular mistakes in the past. A short essay on those mistakes and the anti-pattern behind them. And a bit of speculation what the victims of the new business process modelling and management drive are going to be. Turns out that the economy croud ain't any better in their promises...

Some rather pessimistic thoughts on a world under total surveillance the level of societies and under total control on the level of companies. What will work be like when the current process driven approach persists? Doesn't anybody notice how motivation and the quality of work suffers? Is it OK to do all this data capturing just because we can?

Timesheets are important for software management - a myth according to some studies. How much do software developers differ with respect to productivity and quality? Read on.

No, I haven't moved to the business camp. I just took the chance to attend the excellent talk Monika Josi from Novartis Animal Health gave on the topic of "implementing SOX at Novartis". Here is what I've learnt - and what I still don't know...

The media coverage of the latest Isreali war by google news convinced me that the only way to get a politically correct search engine will be to make it a distributed one.

This is what I thought for a long time about Isreal and its wars against people. It got triggered by a friend fleeing Lebanon with his familie and who is now worrying about his parents in the south of Lebanon.

The recent drop in the rate of women starting at the university in computer science and media came as quite a surprise to most of us. And it runs counter to the big success women seem to have in this area. Just recently three of my female students finished their thesis. All thesis work done was excellent and well received by the companies where the work was performed.