Articles read on 25 November 2003

Crypto-Gram Newsletter of 15 November 2003

"I don’t believe that airplane hijacking is a thing of the past, but when the next plane gets taken over it will be because a group of hijackers figured out a clever new weapon that we haven’t thought of, and not because they snuck some small pointy objects through security."

The Big Here and Long Now, by Brian Eno

"The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you’re in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes. It’s ironic that, at a time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows."

The End of the Modern Era, by Vaclav Havel

"The end of Communism is, first and foremost, a message to the human race. It is a message we have not yet fully deciphered and comprehended. In its deepest sense, the end of Communism has brought a major era in human history to an end. It has brought an end not just to the 19th and 20th centuries, but to the modern age as a whole."

OpenOffice.org : Using it with Style

"We will examine how the styles work within OpenOffice.org and how they can be used to make your job easier when it comes to word processing."

KDE, Mac Os X, Windows: What can we learn (copy or improve) from them?
http://www.gnome.org/~fherrera/bof-conclusions.pdf (PDF)

Howard Rheingold: Smart Mobs

"Smart mobs use mobile media and computer networks to organize collective actions, from swarms of techo-savvy youth in urban Asia and Scandinavia to citizen revolts on the streets of Seattle, Manila, and Caracas. Wireless community networks, webloggers, buyers and sellers on eBay are early indicators of smart mobs that will emerge in the coming decade. Communication and computing technologies capable of amplifying human cooperation already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks."

Problems with the Book of Mormon

"Written by a former believer in the book of Mormon, this article reveals serious objective weaknesses in any truth claims concerning the Book of Mormon."