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Category: Web/Tech

  • Administrivia – 25mar12

    George Rebane Dear Readers, I have returned from a two week sojourn to warmer climes.  Great times, many insights, and good conversations with new people, but lousy connectivity in the RV parks where we parked our little trailer – reliable wi-fi seems to be climbing the same slow ladder of availability that phones experienced a…

  • America’s Technical Talent Slide vs TechForum

    George Rebane The fraction of technical workers in America stopped increasing in 2000, and actually decreased until 2006 when it seemed to flatten out.  Now that fraction has started going down again.  All during this time foreign-born scientists and engineers have been making up more and more of this meager workforce, working in professions that…

  • A new barrier to growth

    [This is the submitted form of my regular Union column that was published in the newspaper’s 11feb12 print and online editions.] George Rebane “Engineers in the European Union are free to work anywhere in the 27 member states, but recognition of their professional qualifications is often a stumbling block.”  So starts ‘Passport to Engineering’ in…

  • Singularity Signposts – Telemedicine on the slow track

    George Rebane The European Space Agency is working on a medical AI called CAMDASS (Computer Assisted Medical Diagnosis and Surgery System).  It has a unique augmented reality user interface (UI) that would allow future astronauts to diagnose and treat complex medical cases when they are in space, and especially when they are at distances that…

  • Administrivia – TypePad is sick

    George Rebane Dear Readers – TypePad, the server of RR, is beset with many problems as it has now made some of them known to its subscribers.  They promise that they are diligently working to bring things back to normal.  We shall see. In the interval, some readers notice that there is no comment box…

  • ‘Minority Rules’ or Why Bloggers Blog

    George Rebane Rensselaer Polytechnic researchers have discovered a dynamic network model that explains how a minority opinion can become a majority opinion when certain tipping point parameters are exceeded.  In the internet age this process has also been labeled ‘going viral’, and many of us have seen and studied its technical properties.  The RP researchers…

  • The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers

    George Rebane [This piece is the first of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, ‘The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers’, ‘Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues’,  ‘More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures’, ‘Employment and Income Inequality’.] The shortage of native technical talent in America has…

  • Scattershots – 20dec2010 (updated 21dec2010)

    George Rebane FCC commissioner Robert McDowell concludes his 20dec2010 WSJ piece on ‘net neutrality’ with – “On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The darkest day of the year may end up marking the beginning of…

  • ‘The 70 Online Databases that Define Our Planet’

    George Rebane Well, maybe not, but here’s a compendium of databases and knowledge engines from the MIT Technology Review which everyone should consider putting into their online reference folder.  Enjoy.

  • ‘You Are Not a Gadget’

    George Rebane Thus argues secular humanist author, musician, and self-educated techie Jaron Lanier.  His cleverly titled book came out earlier this year, and I received it as a birthday present from old friends in soCal who are of a similar philosophical vein.  The book is a fascinating cobble of various articles and pieces Lanier has written…

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