the clicked and the read | issue 19980517

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Warren Buffett on tech stocks
Google, a better way to search
NT versus UNIX
No more ads while surfing
Expectations of privacy
CD ROM Decay
Perl Debugger

Warren Buffett on tech stocks

You are not going to find Microsoft[1] in a 7-11[2], nor will you find Buffett owning Bill's stock[3]. Stick with what you know.

[4]"If I taught a class," says financial wizard Warren Buffett, "on my final exam I would take an Internet company and ask 'How much is this company worth?' Anyone who would answer, I would flunk." Buffet says he admires Bill Gates, but doesn't invest in Microsoft or other high tech firms. It isn't a vote of no confidence in things Internet, but Buffet's lack of knowledge of things technical. He knows he'll make money investing in Coca-Cola and Disney, so he sticks with them. For Buffet, the blue chips he knows are no-brainer investments.

[1] Microsoft <http://www.microsoft.com>
[2] 7-11 <http://www.seveneleven.com>
[3] M$ stock <http://biz.yahoo.com/p/m/msft.html>
[4] Credit Wired <http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/12098.html>
[ ] Keep up with Warren's picks at Buffet Watch <http://www.buffetwatch.com>. Maintained by the author of Buffettology <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0684837137/padraicrenaghan/> Mary Buffett (Warren's ex-daughter-in-law.)
[ ] Read the words of the wise man in the Berkshire Hathaway <http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/> annual reports.

Google, a better way to search

The academic community has finally started putting it's mind to work on creating a better search engine for the Internet. Though this demo only catalogs 25 million pages, Google[5] will probably give you better results than other current offerings. Pulls together the best of Yahoo's[6] selectiveness and Altavista's[7] breadth by returning pages based on their PageRank[8] which is a measure of a page's importance to a topic based on how often and how other pages link to it. Duh, why didn't I think of that?[9]

[5] Google Search Engine <http://google.stanford.edu>
[6] Yahoo <http://www.yahoo.com>
[7] Altavista <http://www.altavista.digital.com>
[8] Google - How it Works <http://google.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html>
[9] Relayed by Red Rock Eater mailing list <http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html>

NT versus UNIX

[10]Unix on Intel; early results of NT vs. Unix; the ability to offer NT services on a more reliable Unix server; colleges turning out a legacy of Unix-loving IT professionals -- these reasons (and more) make Unix a well-honed carving tool for shaping the direction of NT.
But at what cost?[9]

[10] Credit NC World <http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncw-04-1998/ncw-04-nextten.html>
[ ] Windows NT <http://www.microsoft.com/windows/>
[ ] UNIX <http://www.unix.org>

No more ads while surfing

Stop annoying ads, animations, music, javascript, cookies, from taking control of your browser without shutting down all images. How is this done? Intermute[11] sits between your browser and the Internet (technically a proxy server) and filters out whatever you don't want.[9]

[11] Inter Mute <http://www.intermute.com/>

Expectations of Privacy

[12] E-mail Privacy Discussed by Virginia Supreme Court Justice Kinser Virginia Supreme Court justice says courts need to catch up on e-mail privacy issues. Justice Cynthia Kinser was the keynote speaker at a bar association luncheon in Norton Friday. by Mike Still.

NORTON -- Attorney-client privilege becomes problematic when e-mail communication is involved, state Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Kinser told an audience of Southwest Virginia attorneys recently. Kinser, the keynote speaker for the Wise County and Norton Bar Associations' Law Day luncheon Friday, said laughingly she was invited to speak about law and technology by association secretary and Wise County Circuit Court Clerk J. Jack Kennedy but could not match "the guru" -- a reference to Kennedy's technology efforts in his office.

"(E-mail) is a wonderful development for attorneys, another weapon in the arsenal for better representation of your clients,'' Kinser told the association. But she also cautioned that Internet communications can be easily intercepted under a variety of conditions, and that poses problems for confidential attorney-client communications.

The American court system has not kept up with advances in communications technology as it relates to the attorney-client relationship, Kinser noted. Although the New York City police began wiretaps on lawyers' telegraph messages as long ago as the 1890s, the U.S. Supreme Court did not recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in a telephone conversation until 1967 in Katz vs. United States.

"That just goes to show that, as courts, we are behind," Kinser said.

In researching her speech, Kinser said she and her clerk could find no clear-cut case law on reasonable expectation of privacy of e-mail communications between attorney and client, although a 1995 military court martial decision contained the aside that the defendant had more of an expectation than if he was using a cordless telephone or multiple-line phone.

And a 1997 court case noted that cellular telephones and e-mail are not very secure, Kinser said, although the expectation of privacy still is there. But a case involving a child pornographer and an electronic chat room found no such expectation for obvious reasons, she added.

While Virginia's courts have not addressed the privacy issue in depth, Kinser said attorneys and clients may improve their position in case a confidential communication is revealed by adding software security measures, adding confidentiality disclaimers to e-mail messages, or using on-line services such as America Online that are not open to the general public like the Internet. Those steps would help demonstrate intent and expectation of privacy if a message was brought into a court case.

"I just hope that you will look at what you're doing, be aware of potential hazards, and take measures to protect that confidentiality,'' Kinser said.

Norton attorney Elsey Harris said a variety of recent incidents have shown that technological developments in intercepting and identifying e-mail messages would remove any expectation of privacy for the attorney and client.

"The bottom line is ... that's why we, the courts, have to keep up with technology,'' Kinser said.

"The bottom line is, if you're going to communicate with your client, don't do it with e-mail,'' Wise County Circuit Court Judge J. Robert Stump said.

"If you don't take steps, you'll be hampered in using the latest technology," Kinser said.

[12] Times-News Article <http://www.timesnews.net/index.cgi?CONTEXT=story&BISKIT=8845614634882&id=4315&category=5>
[ ] Wise County and the City of Norton Circuit Court <http://www.courtbar.org>

CD ROM Decay

DATA STORAGE: FROM DIGITS TO DUST Surprise, computerized data can decay before you know it By Marcia Stepanek in New York

Up to 20% of the information carefully collected on Jet Propulsion Laboratory computers during NASA's 1976 Viking mission to Mars has been lost. Some POW and MIA records and casualty counts from the Vietnam War, stored on Defense Dept. computers, can no longer be read. And at Pennsylvania State University, all but 14 of some 3,000 computer files containing student records and school history are no longer accessible because of missing or outmoded software.

The Information Age is creating a digital dilemma. For years, computer scientists told us that digital 1s and 0s could last forever. But now, we're discovering that the media we're using to carry our precious information on into the future are turning out to be far from eternal so fragile, in fact, that some might not last through the decade. More is at risk than government and corporate records. The danger extends to cultural legacies: new music, early drafts of literature, and academic works originate in digital form without hard copies.

'Digital information lasts forever, or five years whichever comes first,' says Jeff Rothenberg, senior computer scientist at RAND Corp.

Forget forever. Under less-than-optimal storage conditions, digital tapes and disks, including CD-ROMs and optical drives, might deteriorate about as fast as newsprint in 5 to 10 years. Tests by the National Media Lab, a St. Paul (Minn.)-based government and industry consortium, show that tapes might preserve data for a decade, depending on storage conditions. Disks whether CD-ROMs used for games or the type used by some companies to store pension plans may become unreadable in five years.

For consumers, the biggest worry is CD-ROMs. Unlike paper records, CD-ROMs often don't show decay until it's too late. Experts are just beginning to realize that stray magnetic fields, oxidation, humidity, and material decay can quickly erase the information stored on them.

[13] Relayed by nettime mailing list <http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/info.html>

Perl Debugger

If you develop Perl under Windows, this is a must have - a graphical debugger [14] from the folks at ActiveState [15] who also happen to maintain the Windows port of the latest version of Perl.