judith meskill - soc.media.rocks

clay shirky twittered about wordle.com this morning and so i thought i'd give it a try.

i used: straighter edges, horizontal, 'lucida sans', and the 'heat' color palette ... i think i like it ...

The Dictionary of Critical Sociology-- - T - defines Technology as:
Technology: Social knowledge objectified in the form of machines and routines. Any system for the transformation of natural material into cultural goods and services. In systems theory, a means of segregating entropy.

vnunet.com :: Microsoft buys business intelligence firm By Robert Jaques [29-04-2004]
 
Redmond to incorporate BI from ActiveViews into SQL Server Reporting Services
 
Microsoft is to extend its business intelligence (BI) platform by acquiring ActiveViews, a privately held company based in Utah.
 
ActiveViews provides an ad hoc reporting system that integrates with Microsoft .Net and SQL Server Reporting Services to allow users to access and manipulate complex corporate data.
 
The ActiveViews system is designed to present a business view of the data an end user is interested in examining. Users are presented with a window into the database to explore information, modify existing reports and build new reports in a web-based environment.
 
Microsoft said that, based on feedback from customers, it will incorporate ActiveViews' functionality into the business intelligence capabilities of SQL Server.
 
Microsoft business intelligence general manager Bill Baker said in a statement: "There is a significant amount of data out there and an increasing need for every employee to have access to that data to make decisions.
 
"By incorporating the technology provided by ActiveViews, SQL Server Reporting Services will help users access information more quickly and efficiently."

Remember my August 23rd post - 'PowerPoint corrupts absolutely'? Well according to Ex-Talking Head dAviD ByRNe, PowerPoint has other uses. Rachel Konrad writes for the Associated Press on David Byrne's utilization of PowerPoint in - 'Ex-Talking Head Makes PowerPoint Art.'
David Byrne produced a book/DVD titled 'E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information)' in which he originally intended to spoof PowerPoint but ultimately wound up morphing the 'malevolent marketing' tool we all 'love to hate' into an 'artistic medium.'
Byrne, a fan of Tufte's, and Edward Tufte seem to be on different sides of the PowerPoint argument, but are they really?

Rajesh Jain blogged the The 2003 OSDir.com Editor's Choice Awards in Open Source - I added the 'links' and the 'Best of Platform' category.
Summary:
 
Best Application in...
Java: Eclipse Perl: MovableType Python: BitTorrent PHP: PHP XML: Jabber
Best Applications:
Instant Messaging: Gaim Email: SpamAssassin (Double Winner) Overall Desktop App: OpenOffice Database: MySQL Web: Tiki
Best of Platform:
Linux: openMosix and EtherBoot Mac & Windows: OpenOffice

Boardwatch: Syndesis Struts at OSS Event
...DALLAS - Syndesis, the company that brings networks to life globally, is proud to showcase its proven success in delivering bottom-line value for Telecom Italia and other lean operators at the upcoming TeleManagement World conference.
TM Forum Operational Excellence Award
TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) will present its first ever Operational Excellence Award to Telecom Italia during the opening ceremony of TeleManagement World on November 11. This Award, which highlights Syndesis' integral role in Telecom Italia's recently-deployed company-wide DSL flow-through provisioning system, recognizes the significant business benefits achieved by Telecom Italia through the implementation of an OSS/BSS solution using the TM Forum's Next Generation Operations System and Software (NGOSS) approach. Syndesis, Granite, Micromuse and TIBCO provided solutions to Telecom Italia, with Syndesis providing a NetProvision-based solution for inter-domain service activation of new convergent services.
 
Business Benefits of NGOSS
NGOSS are hailed as the future for service providers to enable the rapid and efficient delivery of new services. Mark Nicholson, CTO and Vice President of Product Management for Syndesis, joins Saverio Orlando of Telecom Italia, the chief technology officers of Granite and Micromuse, and the GM of TIBCO to talk about how an integrated approach to NGOSS design has been achieved in a real-life environment. The discussion, "NGOSS Compliance: A Step-By-Step Approach to Business Benefits", takes place on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 from 10:30am - 12:00pm.

Showcasing Operational Excellence
Syndesis will be available in Booth #75 to demonstrate why Telecom Italia - and numerous other Tier 1 service providers - have chosen carrier-class solutions from Syndesis...

Light Reading :: Japan's HOTnet Picks Juniper
...SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Juniper Networks, Inc. today announced that Japanese service provider, Hokkaido Telecommunications Network Co. (HOTnet), is transforming its regional wide area network to a 10-Gigabit Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) architecture based on routing platforms from Juniper Networks. HOTnet will launch a range of sophisticated revenue-generating services, including QoS-controlled Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN services, and is developing an MPLS-based Internet Exchange (IX) using Juniper Networks M-, T- and E-series platforms.
"Our vision is for a network infrastructure that seamlessly connects from the core to the edge and delivers reliable and highly scalable services," said Satoshi Baba, manager IT Expert and Technical Planning for HOTnet. "Juniper Networks routing platforms are enabling this evolution. For example, the M-series platform's hardware-based MPLS functionality and robust QoS facilities provide for a wide range of network services and an easy transition from our legacy dedicated services to new L2 and L3 services."

A member of the PowerNets Japan group of 10 power companies, HOTnet was an early leader in its market with its Gigabit Ethernet LAN to LAN (L2L) service. The new MPLS network will meet growing demand for highly reliable services, especially from users relying on mission-critical business networks.

HOTnet is also using the M-series as a high-performance IX routing platform. It has also replaced its legacy broadband aggregation equipment with Juniper Networks E-series platform, planning to leverage its capabilities to provide voice over IP (VoIP), content distribution and other highly customized services. In addition, Juniper Networks T-series high-density routing platform has been selected to provide the high reliability and scalability essential to HOTnet's MPLS backbone and to serve as the basis of a possible network enhancement to GMPLS.

"HOTnet is recognized across Japan as a market leader in the deployment of advanced network services," said Masanori Osuga, vice president, Japan, Juniper Networks. "We are excited about the potential of the new HOTnet MPLS network using best-in-class Juniper Networks solutions to provide the next generation of advanced commercial IP services to business and residential users of Hokkaido."...

Light Reading :: Kompella Backs BGP by Marguerite Reardon, Senior Editor
 
...WASHINGTON, D.C. - Kireeti Kompella, Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR - message board), is on a mission to set the record straight on Border Gateway Protocol.
Today, during the MPLS 2003 conference, he gave a presentation urging his colleagues to take another look at BGP as the signaling and setup protocol for VPLS, rather than extending Label Distribution Protocol (LDP).
 
Virtual Private LAN Service or VPLS is an emerging standard that creates a point-to-multipoint Ethernet network using Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) . The biggest technological debate in the working group is over which signaling protocol to use: BGP or LDP (see VPLS Standard Debated ). Both camps have their zealots, and for awhile it looked as if the LDP draft, co-written by Kireeti's brother Vach, was taking the lead (see Kompella vs Kompella ). But the tide seems to be turning.
 
Kireeti Kompella says that BGP already does many things that carriers want a VPLS network to be able to do, like auto-discovery and provisioning. These are things that would have to be added to LDP.

 

 
"BGP has some flaws," he admits. "You have to tweak this or that. But it's a much more pragmatic approach than building a new, solve-everything protocol."
 
He also seeks to dispel what he feels are misconceptions about BGP -- in particular, that BGP is overloaded and that the protocol is trying to do too much.

"The whole premise of multiservice is to put multiple services on one box," Kompella says. "It will use the same amount of CPU and memory whether you're running six protocols or one."
 
"I think carriers might be more comfortable with this BGP overload issue if they knew that routing processes like this were implemented in a resilient way -- using totally isolated memory areas, for instance", says Geoff Bennett, chief technologist of Heavy Reading, Light Reading's market research division. "Right now, if BGP goes down, it takes a lot of functions with it and tends to take a long time to recover. Graceful restart will help, but better code would help a lot more."

Many large long-distance carriers are very interested in BGP signaling because they're already running BGP in their networks, Kompella says. What's more, many of them are already offering Layer 3 VPN services, so it makes sense to use the same signaling protocol for their Layer 2 VPNs as they would use for their Layer 3 VPNs.

Loa Andersson, co-founder of the consultancy, TLA-group and chair of the Layer 2 virtual private network (VPN) working group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), says that he hopes both protocols will be a part of the final draft.
 
"There's no reason not to progress both approaches," he says. "BGP is used in deployments where carriers are already using BGP routers. And LDP is used in networks already doing Layer 2 point-to-point VPNs."
 
While the standard is still a long way from being finalized, many vendors have already put their money behind LDP signaling. In fact, that's one reason Isocore, which is sponsoring the conference, chose to use LDP signaling in its live VPLS network demonstration. Boxes from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board), Extreme Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR - message board), and Alcatel SA (NYSE: ALA - message board; Paris: CGEP:PA) are providing wireless Internet connectivity to attendees at the MPLS 2003 conference via a VPLS network.

"I really wanted to be able to test both LDP and BGP VPLS signaling," says Rajiv Papneja, manager of validation and product evaluation for Isocore. "But it made more sense to just run LDP, since I%u2019ve been testing it for a year. I know it's stable, and there were vendors able to donate products."
 
But Yakov Rekhter, another Distinguished Engineer at Juniper and the father of BGP, says that these debates are irrelevant.

"You know what they say about the pudding," he says. " 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating.' In the end, the market will decide."
 
"Yakov is absolutely right about the market deciding; that's the classic IETF approach," says Heavy Reading's Bennett. "The problem is that vendors end up dissipating resources in developing and supporting both mechanisms until the market really does give a clear indication. It took CR-LDP a couple of years or more to die, and that's a lot of wasted effort. But, like it or not, that's the way the IETF does things." ...

Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Tellabs Proves IP/MPLS Data Expertise at Industry's First IP-Optical Integration Technology Demonstration
...NAPERVILLE, Ill., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tellabs' expertise in IP/MPLS data services was proven at the Isocore Internetworking Lab's industry-first IP-optical integration test featuring IP services delivered over an optical core. This test, which included the new Tellabs(R) 8820 multi-service switch router, the Tellabs(R) 5500 NGX-S transport switch and the Tellabs(TM) MetroWatch element manager's GMPLS software, demonstrated an IP/MPLS application delivered over a fully-dynamic, intelligent optical core that was built using a GMPLS control plane with routing. By using a single control plane to integrate an IP/MPLS application with an existing optical infrastructure, carriers will be able to simplify provisioning of network connections, increase network efficiency by allocating capacity on demand and significantly reduce the operational costs of optical networks.
"Tellabs is demonstrating for service providers our expertise in IP/MPLS data services and optical networking interoperability," said Greg Nulty, senior vice president of technology planning for Tellabs. "During Isocore's industry-first IP-optical integration test, Tellabs showed how Layer 1 through Layer 3 networking, multi-vendor interoperability and dynamic network signalling protocols can help our customers save money."
 
During the Isocore testing, the Tellabs 8820 multi-service switch router uniquely combined the functionality of an edge router, ATM multi-service switch, Frame Relay switch and Ethernet edge switch into one compact platform. Designed to provide carriers with tremendous flexibility to cost-effectively address several data service applications with minimal investment, the Tellabs 8820 multi-service switch router seamlessly interoperated and enabled three MPLS-based applications during the Isocore multi-vendor testing:
-- Layer 2 virtual private network (VPN) application using the Internet
Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Martini draft, which defines point-to-
point MPLS connections that support virtual local networks or frame
relay/ATM;
-- Layer 3 VPN application using the IETF's RFC-2547bis specification,
which enables IP/MPLS-based IP VPNs to help carriers offer new, high-
quality IP services over their network; and
-- Virtual Private LAN services (VPLS) application using the IETF's VPLS-
over-MPLS draft, which enables carriers to offer point-to-point or
point-to-multi-point WAN extensions of customers' LAN-based Ethernet
networks at costs lower than other WAN-based alternatives.
 
The Tellabs 5500 NGX-S transport switch, a multi-bandwidth management system that helps carriers reduce their capital expenses by integrating wideband, broadband and Ethernet-over-SONET into a single compact, scalable platform, supported the Isocore test. The Tellabs 5500 NGX-S transport switch provided interoperability with four other vendors' equipment and established information flows through the core SONET infrastructure.
 
The Tellabs MetroWatch element manager's GMPLS software enabled the first- ever interworking between the IETF's GMPLS and ITU's OIF-UNI specifications for signalling between the IP routing network and optical transport network.
 
"There were several significant achievements in this testing, including running IP/MPLS applications over a dynamically configured optical transport network, evaluation of the two basic architectural models for the IP optical control integration, namely the peer and the overlay models and their interworking," said Dr. Bijan Jabbari of Isocore. "Tellabs was a key participant in this testing and helped facilitate the interworking between these two architectures."
 
The Tellabs equipment that was part of this integration test will be showcased in a live interoperability demonstration at the Isocore headquarters in McLean, Va., on Oct. 29, 2003, following the MPLS 2003 International Conference. During the conference, Andrew G. Malis, research fellow for the Tellabs Advanced Data Products group, will present "MPLS Beyond Service Provider Cores" on Oct. 28, 2003, at 4:45 p.m. In addition, Tellabs representatives will be available at the MPLS 2003 International Conference in booth 104.
 
The goal of Isocore's Internetworking Lab is to advance internetworking through technology validation and product verification and to promote development and rapid deployment of innovative networking technologies. For more information about the Isocore's Internetworking Lab visit isocore.com .
 
Tellabs (Nasdaq: TLAB) provides innovative data switching and bandwidth management solutions to help carriers around the world move communications traffic efficiently, effectively and profitably. The world communicates through Tellabs(TM); more than two-thirds of telephone calls and Internet sessions in several countries, including the United States, flows through Tellabs equipment. Tellabs customers include many of the world's largest and strongest carriers. Tellabs experts design, develop, deploy and support our solutions throughout telecommunications networks in more than 100 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit tellabs.com...

Wired News: Mac Supercomputer: Fast, Cheap By Leander Kahney
...The brand new "Big Mac" supercomputer at Virginia Tech could be the second most powerful supercomputer on the planet, according to preliminary numbers.
Early benchmarks of Virginia Tech's brand new supercomputer -- which is strung together from 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s -- may vault the machine into second place in the rankings of the worlds' fastest supercomputers, second only to Japan's monstrously big and expensive Earth Simulator.
 
The Big Mac's final score on the Linpack Benchmark won't be officially revealed until Nov. 17, when the rankings of the TOP 500 Supercomputer sites are made known at the International Supercomputer Conference...

Yesterday my Movable Type installation stopped working - all of my cgi scripts were failing - but in the end I hardly missed a beat in my weblog (meanwhile, my heart was doing flip flops as the situation seemed to become less fixable by the hour!)
I recently upgraded to Apple's Mac OS X (10.2.6) and I have been in the process of upgrading all of my old stalwart software solutions. To make a long story short, my FTP client turned all of my ASCII mode files into binary mode files and Movable Type (MT) did not like that one bit. I attempted to restore my weblog service files for hours, following the MT troubleshooting recommendations, to no avail.
I finally gave up trying to fix it myself and sent an email to my web hosting service, Tiger Technologies. They responded within the hour! They told me that they had a tape backup that they had run just hours before my system took a turn for the worst.
Tiger Technologies has the most excellent level of technical support via email that I have encountered in a web hosting service, or, for that matter, any technical service. Within hours of my initial plea they had, with surgical precision, completely restored my files to a fully operational state and they had also managed to tweeze out posts that I had assumed would be lost in the transition.
 
In this age of dwindling technical support Tiger Technologies stands out as a shining beacon of service. This is the only service provider relationship in which I have been able to successfully rely solely on email support. Tiger Tech Rocks!

cogdogblog requests a social network experiment. ...Echo this blog, pass it on, write about it, move the news around the net... It is time to march up to the Network Associates, Virus Detective, Norton et al and say... Stop sending rejected emails back to the innocent...

San Francisco Chronicle / Molly Joel Coye: Bringing hospitals the latest technology "Dr. Molly Joel Coye has the tough task of keeping hospitals abreast of the latest technological advances, even though many are struggling to make ends meet...
As a member of the Institute of Medicine, Coye was also behind two highly publicized reports that shook up the medical establishment. The first, in 1999, reported that as many as 98,000 Americans a year die from preventable medical errors. A follow-up report in 2001 found that it took an average of 17 years for new research knowledge to become incorporated into standard practice."
 
Quote: "Sometimes technology can create a problem, then answer it."

Are we shifting our focus from Knowledge Management to Learning, or from Knowledge Management to Knowledge Work, and/or is Knowledge Work Learning?
David Buchan's post, cited below, on "learning rather than knowledge management," inspired me to seek sage Google Sets suggestions.
As an experiment I loaded "Learning" and "Knowledge Management" into Google Sets as two seed items to hopefully form a larger set. However, Google Sets returned zero additional results.
I then input "Learning", once again, and "Knowledge Work". This search yielded abundant results, including the following:

Learning, Knowledge work, Teaching, Listening, Organizations, memory, Research, perception, Problem Solving, Fun, Reasoning, communication, Planning, Psychological, attention
 
When I seeded a new set search with: "Knowledge Work" and "Knowledge Management" Google Sets returned the following items:
 
Knowledge Work, Knowledge Management, Articulation work, Institutional reflexivity
I think Jim McGee is spot on when he writes about "shifting attention from knowledge management to knowledge work. It may not sound like a big difference, but I believe it will prove to be a crucial shift in perspective."
Learning - it's not me alone Maybe it is just my listening but more and more of the people I read daily are talking about learning rather than knowledge management. A colleague and I predicted this 18 months ago as we spoke of knowledge management being a smaller part of the whole learning piece. - David Buchan
More information from O'Reilly Network on Google Sets "Google sets is a way to browse the web's implicit ontology. What you do is simple: you enter some terms which you already think of as instances of some class. Google then returns you what it thinks are the other instances of that class."

Chemie.DE News: Wiley InterScience Launches New Interface
"Eileen Dolan, Vice President, Wiley InterScience, today announced the launch of a new Wiley InterScience interface. The sophisticated new interface is the result of a comprehensive redesign of the site's underlying information architecture and its graphical interface. Wiley InterScience is the online service of John Wiley & Sons, Inc."