February 24, 2003

One of the most common "complaints" I get from faculty is that it's hard to get students to use journal (or conference) literature in their research assignments. Well, Philip M. Davis has an idea to encourage students to look at alternate sources in information -- if instructors set minimum bibliographic guidelines, the situation improves significantly. Here's an article about Davis' research. Here's the original article in portal: Libraries and the Academy.

The great Kasparov vs. Deep Junior match ended rather anti-climactically in a draw. Here's some annotations of the games by one of Junior's programmers.

Has there ever been a worse idea that granting patents for software? Probably not, and Tim O'Reilly, in his usual sensible way, presents the case.

February 4, 2003

Here's a fun one: the Encyclopaedia Britannica people came up with a list of the top 100 inventions of all time. From VAS&ND.

February 3, 2003

Deep Junior and Garry Kasparov are tied at 2-2 with two games left. It's been pretty exciting!

Another interesting bioinformatics pioneer interview on the O'Reilly site, this time with Lincoln Stein.