New York Times reports on the EU comments related to Microsoft business practices vs. openness:

"I know a smart business decision when I see one - choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed," Ms. Kroes told a conference in Brussels. "No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one."

Today my opinion piece on the role of science in society appeared in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. The title was changed but the text mostly as it was - however, I had a phone discussion with an editor who wanted some scientific terms changed to easier ones. In retrospect, it is interesting to note that the text also contains some advanced economic terms which the editor accepted as they were.

Norman Chonacky (and Greg Wilson) discuss the status of computational science in an interesting way in the
May/June issue of "Computing in Science and Engineering".
Can computational scientists can call their work "science"?

The writers say that currently
the "practices" on researchers in computational science are
far from good. Scientific work should be reproducible and
materials and instruments should have open and verifiable
provenance. In computational science this is not (always)
the case.

The writers point out that most departments feel that
the basic methodology and skills should be developed, but
in practice it is difficult to fix the problem.

As a key example, basic programming methodology
is often lacking: understandable coding, version tracking,
scripting languages, debuggers etc. We should develop the
skills so that "computational scientists [...] can modify
their programs continuously as their questions are answered."

I have been reading an article by Jonathan L. Zittrain on the so-called generative internet, that is the "capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers". The impact has been huge, and the growth and innovation has made it possible to engage in all kinds of new endeavors. However, there has been a backslash, trying to restrict innovation, the freedom of speech, and building new things on top of existing. I hope the generative capacity of the internet will survive, but it is far from certain.

These U-Haul graphics are great. A different way of making your vehicles memorable. Many of the illustrations contain science and mathematics topics.

Every once in a while you see a data matrix, which is a format for coding information into matrix barcodes. Below is the URL of this site in a data matrix. This may become popular with cameraphones.

Did you hear that W. Chan Kim will come to Finland to lecture on Blue Ocean Strategy? My review of the book, in Finnish translation, Sinisen meren strategia (W. Chan Kim ja Renée Mauborgne; Talentum, 2005) has generated some interest recently.

Calgary firm turns safflower into insulin: "In a breakthrough that could rival the discovery of insulin by Canadians Frederick Banting and Charles Best in 1921, a Calgary biotech company claims to have produced commercial quantities of human insulin from genetically modified safflower plants, a move that could change the economics of the diabetes market."

Scientists seek the secret of our success: "Scientists use Neanderthal DNA in the hope of discovering how modern humans developed cognitive power." [Guardian Unlimited]

Rekindling interest in science: "Science correspondent Richard Hollingham refuels his interest in the subject by sequencing his first DNA." [BBC News | World | UK Edition]