The mainland Chinese government is well aware of both the Internet's importance as a tool for international commerce and it's ability to spread information critical of the regime. Amnesty International has released a detailed analysis of state control of the Internet in China. Particularly disturbing is the degree to which state censorship relies on hardware and software supplied by Western companies.

Even multi-billion dollar businesses start with just one or two customers. Entrepreneur.com offers suggestions on finding your first customers.

Anyone can send a cease and desist letter declaring that the recipient is infringing a copyright or trademark and telling them to stop. In fact, many corporations employ whole teams of lawyers who do nothing else. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse points out that many such letters target perfectly legitimate expression.

I've known about the site for a while, but this New York Times article (free registration required) reminded me about it.

Singapore-based foundry Chartered Semiconductor has itself gone in search of foundry capacity. The company signed a capacity-sharing and process development agreement with IBM. Among other things, the agreement allows Chartered to use capacity at IBM's 300-mm fab in East Fishkill, NY, delaying the start of its own 300-mm Fab 7.

Yes, I know this is the last blog in the world to not have a blogroll, but I have one now, over there on the right side. It may not work if your browser is javascript-deprived.

A group of scientists at Microsoft argue that attempts to prevent file-sharing simply won't work. All known or anticipated content protection schemes are crackable, and cracking information can diffuse just as quickly as the shared files themselves. Worse, rigorous content protection actually makes protected copies less useful and therefore less desirable than unprotected copies.

(Link by way of The Register, which also includes a short summary of the paper.)

I've found an interesting new blog toy. Give it a link to either your own blog or something else that you're reading, and it will recommend other sites that might interest you. I'm not sure I quite follow how it works, but its recommendations are interesting so far.

There's lots of interesting art out there on the web. Portage offers links to quite a bit of it, from photos of blues clubs to electron microscopy of dust mites. Eclectic and interesting.

Digital Pearl Harbor? Electronic Armageddon? Scary words, except that government systems have been working on security for decades and have actually gotten pretty good at it. The private sector has holes, but defacing a web site is not the same as taking control of a dam or bringing down a power grid. Unfortunately, the administration's cyberterrorism strategy overhypes the threat, focuses the most effort on systems that need it the least--military installations--and shies away from any attempt to push the private sector to get its act together.

Harrumph. Atomz, my search engine provider, neglected to tell me that my account was about to expire. They just silently turned off my account, and the search function for the site with it. I am extremely annoyed.

The search engine is back up, at least temporarily, though it looks a little funny. I haven't yet restored the results template because I'm still thinking about whether I want to give these clowns any more money. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Almost five years ago, I changed jobs in part because my former company not only couldn't seem to support remote access to e-mail, but didn't seem to understand why an employee might want remote access. It seems that not much has changed since then, with companies still reluctant to allow remote LAN access because they don't see the need and don't trust the security.

If employees can't reach the corporate LAN when they travel, one of two things will happen. The employees could simply delay whatever work they need the files for, meaning they'll come back to a huge pile of work and resentment from their co-workers and be less willing to travel the next time. Or, the employees could simply copy the files they need to their laptops, creating both an even bigger security nightmare and a potential data integrity problem.

If employees can't reach the corporate LAN from home, then they can't work from home. Managers don't score any points by forcing employees to drag themselves to the office in a blizzard for no good reason other than vague "security concerns."

Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel is a fascinating look at why human society evolved the way it did. Why did Europe colonize the Americas instead of the other way around? China certainly had the technology to colonize Europe, why didn't it?

Recently, in a lecture at the Museum of Natural History in New York, Diamond extended his analysis to questions of business structure and industrial organization. Why are some industrialized countries, and some industries within those countries, more productive and innovative than others?

(Link by way of Metafilter.)

Believe it or not, I do write about subjects other than thin film technology every now and then. Recently, an essay about writing motivation appeared in Vision, the Forward Motion community e-zine.

Do you have kids in public schools? Do you pay taxes to support public schools? Then you might want to read Susan Ohanian's latest rant about standarized testing. While she clearly has an agenda, she also makes an important point. Is "intense kindergarten instruction" really a reasonable solution to the problems facing American education? Or is it abusive to force five year olds to become achievers?

I hate it when that happens. I found a bad link from almost a month ago when I was looking at my server logs this morning. Stupid editor mistake, leaving the "http" out of the link tag. I guess that's why I check the logs, huh?

Anyway, if you find anything that isn't working, please leave a comment or send email. This site isn't drowning in readers, but there are more of you than there are of me. Thanks!

I spent most of last week writing about technology developments in organic semiconductors, which is one chapter in a market study on printable organic semiconductors. My brain hurts. I didn't realize how much solid state physics I've forgotten. That chapter was probably the most difficult, though. Now I'm on to market analysis. The study will be available in the Bookstore once it's published, probably in early 2003.

To decompress, I spent a chunk of yesterday reading Derek Powazek's book, Design for Community. It's about the how and, more importantly, why of adding community features to a web site. The most important point he's made so far is that a functioning community will surprise the owner in good and bad ways, and that trying to prevent surprises will kill the community feeling. Too many corporate forum owners crack down if anyone says uncomplimentary things about them, even though an atmosphere that allows criticism is exactly what separates a community from a marketing vehicle.

I haven't gotten to Powazek's chapters on email lists and weblogs yet. Those are both interesting because they allow a community that's larger than a single site.

Start the weekend early, with some stunning aerial photos of San Francisco and environs. Taken from a kite, they offer much more detail than most photos taken from airplanes.

(Link by way of Metafilter, which also has pointers to several related sites.)

In a welcome respite from all the gloom and doom we've been reading lately, Hal Plotkin suggests that the technology gap alone is enough to drive a tech sector recovery. A new killer app isn't necessary if more companies deploy the business improvement tools that already exist.

(Link by way of Techdirt)

Analysts are issuing rosy forecasts for 2003, but equipment manufacturers aren't believing them. Both Entegris and Applied Materials announced layoffs this week, suggesting that any recovery lies beyond their internal forecast horizons.

Quantum encryption is more than a theoretical concept, according to Magiq Technologies. The company claims it will ship an uncrackable point-to-point encryption system based on quantum methods early next year.

Two new groups of visitors appeared in my server logs this week. The first group comes from what looks like a Swedish discussion forum. The second group comes from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Welcome! I hope you find what you're looking for.

As WorldCom's woes continue, with the revelation that it may need to restate even more of its apparently fictitious earnings, it's worth remembering that there are heroes in this mess, too. Internal auditors Cynthia Cooper, Gene Morse, and Scott Sullivan were instrumental in bringing down the house of cards (Wall Street Journal link, paid subscribers only). At least a few people remember what integrity means.

If you're in the United States, today is Election Day. Don't forget to vote!

If you're not sure where your polling place is, a Google search on "election" and the name of your jurisdiction will find resources that can help.

There's a long but interesting article at Policy Review Online about the implications of cognitive research for educational policy. It argues that classroom research which does not provide a theoretical explanation for its results is bad science and will lead to bad policy.

"The nation needs both groups — basic researchers and school-level researchers, acting in concert to begin a tradition of hard theoretical effort at the most profound and intricate level. Without greater theoretical sophistication we are unlikely to achieve greater practical results."