,hl=en,siteUrl='http://0ldfox.blogspot.com/',authuser=0,security_token="v_SeT2Tv8vVdKRCcG9CCW-ZdIfQ:1429878696275"/> Old Fox KM Journal : April 2004

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Knowledge Management Think Tank Online Discussion Forums on Business, Information, Technology and Knowledge Management:

The Knowledge Management Think Tank


The Virtual Community of Practice of
Business, Information Technology and Knowledge Managers and Professionals
Recommended by Business Week, Fortune, Fast Company, Forbes, Wall Street Journal
[ Read and Follow Up ] [ Start New Discussion ]
[ Discussion Index ] [ Join the Network ]
[ KMNetwork: Knowledge Management Research and Practice ]
[ Book on Knowledge Management ] [ Articles on Knowledge Management ]
Archive "

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Legal Media Group - informing global counsel for over 15 years:

Google under fire for trade mark switch


Sam Mamudi, New York - 19 April 2004

Internet search engine Google said that it will no longer screen potential buyers' trade marked keywords ? a move that has angered parts of the trade mark community.

The decision opens the way for companies to buy keywords of their rivals' trade marks, which could leave Google legally liable if rights holders sue for trade mark infringement.

'It's a surprising policy,' said Barry Felder, partner at Brown Raysman. 'Google is creating a scenario whereby they could be held responsible for contributory infringement.'

Google denied that its actions would lead to trade mark infringement. . . .

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Glossaries/Forums - km: "Forums
Knowledge Management Forum
The Knowledge Management Forum is a place to share and discuss the theories, methods, and practices collectively called knowledge management.
@Brint.com Knowledge Management Think Tank
Very active discussion forum.
Paradigm Shift International
Resources and Forum for Agility, Change Proficiency, Knowledge Management, Continuing Education, Collaborative Learning, and Change Management
Teleos

"
CoP: an Introduction: "

Formal corporate structures may be good for allocating resources, making large decisions and aligning accountabilities but they are insufficient to the development, application and spread of knowledge. The informal nature of communities is much more conducive to learning, continually increasing mastery and development of new knowledge.
The idea of 'Communities of Practice' is taking hold in this time of increasing awareness of the value of knowledge. While the form of these has changed over the centuries, development of productive capacity has always taken place in communities of practice where the masters are at the core and those wanting to become masters form the community. In much earlier times, the only way to learn was as an apprentice, a 'junior member' of such a community.
The advancing levels of knowledge, education and communication in current times have given new life, form and meaning to this idea.
The particular feature of 'communities of practice' in corporations is that they are also 'communities of commitment'. That is, they are formed around shared commitments to have the knowledge and practice be applied, effective and produce results that forward the interests of the whole. The practices are focused on performance in co-operative ventures in a competitive environment.
These combinations of practice and commitment which are at the heart of 'Communities of Practice' allow for processes which are dramatically more effective than ordinary work practices. It is only when we feel we are members of a community, together and supporting each other in our endeavors, do we feel secure enough and comfortable enough to challenge and be challenged in ways that move things forward rapidly and can be counted on to produce results. Formal review processes, no matter how 'tough', can "
Government Computer News (GCN) daily news -- federal, state and local government technology; XML how-to: First of all, never cross your authors: "02/09/04; Vol. 23 No. 3

XML how-to: First of all, never cross your authors


By Patricia Daukantas
GCN Staff

Agencies that don’t already have an Extensible Markup Language evangelist should get one, advises Brand L. Niemann.

Why? Because the person tapped for the job can act as a guide to the burgeoning technology, said Niemann, an Environmental Protection Agency computer scientist and member of the CIO Council’s Emerging Technology Subcommittee.

Niemann also has headed the CIO Council’s XML Web Services Working Group through its existence. The effort has morphed into a series of quarterly government conferences on software component technology.

“The quicker we can define XML schemas and make them available to vendors to put into applications, the better we’ll all be,” said Owen Ambur, a Fish and Wildlife Service systems analyst and co-chairman of the CIO Council’s XML Working Group.

Agencies need three levels of applications for XML documents, Niemann said.

The first type lets users create documents without any kind of tagging. The second requires minimal tagging. The third includes advanced features for application developers and programmers. . . ."
Entopia - solutions for information discovery
Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog: "While there is a lot of talk these days about the Semantic Web being the crack-addled pipe dream of a few academic naifs, in reality it's a lot closer to realization than you might be thinking. Now I want to be clear about this point: I'm not suggesting that we stand on the brink of a fully achieved, widespread Semantic Web. I am suggesting that some of the major pieces of the puzzle are now or will soon be in place. OWL, along with RDF, upon which it builds, are two such very major pieces of the Semantic Web puzzle. "
The TEI Guidelines: "TEI P4
The Text
TEI P4 is the current version of the Guidelines, and should be cited as Sperberg-McQueen, C.M.. and Burnard, L. (eds.) (2002). TEI P4: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. Text Encoding Initiative Consortium. XML Version: Oxford, Providence, Charlottesville, Bergen). The chief objective of this revision was to implement proper XML support in the Guidelines, while ensuring that documents produced to earlier TEI specifications remained usable with the new version.
This version may be read online on the TEI website, and is also available in print: see the TEI Services page for details of how to purchase copies. You can also download the HTML version as a single archive for offline browsing; members may also download copies in PDF format.
Chapter 2 (the Gentle Introduction to XML) is available separately in XML, HTML, and PDF.
The Document Type Declaration"
RDF Primer: "Abstract
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a language for representing information about resources in the World Wide Web. This Primer is designed to provide the reader with the basic knowledge required to effectively use RDF. It introduces the basic concepts of RDF and describes its XML syntax. It describes how to define RDF vocabularies using the RDF Vocabulary Description Language, and gives an overview of some deployed RDF applications. It also describes the content and purpose of other RDF specification documents."

Monday, April 19, 2004

Metaphors from Student Essays


1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

3. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

4. McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

5. Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

6. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre

7. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

8. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

9. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

10. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

11. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

12. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

13. The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

14. The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.

15. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

16. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

17. The plan was simple, like my mate Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

18. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for while.

19. "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night.

20. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

21. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."

22. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.

24. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint.

25. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

26. It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

27. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.

28. She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.

29. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature raw burger.

30. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
RDFWeb and Friend of a Friend (FOAF) developer site: "RDFWeb: Friend of a Friend (FOAF) developer site

Welcome to RDFWeb's 'Friend of a Friend' (FOAF) project developer site. RDFWeb is an experimental linked information system, exploring some interconnected applications of the Semantic Web, beginning with the deployment of FOAF.
FOAF documents are, in essence, machine-readable home pages. The FOAF project homepage and technical specification have more details. See also the developer links in the sidebar this page. FOAF-related news, articles and discussion can be found here at rdfweb.org, as well as on the FOAF mailing list (rdfweb-dev), and in our IRC and Wiki forums. The www.foaf-project.org site is intended for FOAF users, while rdfweb.org is for people more involved in the project and the technology. If you have questions about FOAF that aren't answered in the FAQ, feel free to ask in irc or on rdfweb-dev.
FOAF Links "
WordNet: "WordNet? is an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets.
WordNet was developed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University under the direction of Professor George A. Miller (Principal Investigator). "
RDFWeb and Friend of a Friend (FOAF) developer site: "RDFWeb: Friend of a Friend (FOAF) developer site

Welcome to RDFWeb's 'Friend of a Friend' (FOAF) project developer site. RDFWeb is an experimental linked information system, exploring some interconnected applications of the Semantic Web, beginning with the deployment of FOAF.

FOAF documents are, in essence, machine-readable home pages. The FOAF project homepage and technical specification have more details. See also the developer links in the sidebar this page. FOAF-related news, articles and discussion can be found here at rdfweb.org, as well as on the FOAF mailing list (rdfweb-dev), and in our IRC and Wiki forums. The www.foaf-project.org site is intended for FOAF users, while rdfweb.org is for people more involved in the project and the technology. If you have questions about FOAF that aren't answered in the FAQ, feel free to ask in irc or on rdfweb-dev.
FOAF Links "
RDFWeb and Friend of a Friend (FOAF) developer site: "RDFWeb: Friend of a Friend (FOAF) developer site

Welcome to RDFWeb's 'Friend of a Friend' (FOAF) project developer site. RDFWeb is an experimental linked information system, exploring some interconnected applications of the Semantic Web, beginning with the deployment of FOAF.

FOAF documents are, in essence, machine-readable home pages. The FOAF project homepage and technical specification have more details. See also the developer links in the sidebar this page. FOAF-related news, articles and discussion can be found here at rdfweb.org, as well as on the FOAF mailing list (rdfweb-dev), and in our IRC and Wiki forums. The www.foaf-project.org site is intended for FOAF users, while rdfweb.org is for people more involved in the project and the technology. If you have questions about FOAF that aren't answered in the FAQ, feel free to ask in irc or on rdfweb-dev.
FOAF Links "

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

SIMILE Project: "SIMILE : Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments
What is SIMILE? Demonstrator Position Papers Presentations SIMILE Background Project Documents History System OSCOM 3 Meeting Notes W3C Links HP Labs Links Haystack DSpace OAIS
What is SIMILE?
SIMILE is concerned with dealing with heterogeneous metadata
Demonstrator
2003-12-2 Demonstrator Script Mark Butler, Kevin Smathers, Mick Bass [ PDF | HTML ]
Position Papers
2003-11-14 W3C Eric Miller
2003-11-14 Haystack team David Karger
2003-11-14 HP team Mark Butler, Mick Bass, Andy Seaborne, Robert Tansley, Kevin Smathers
2003-11-14 MIT Libraries MacKenzie Smith
2003-11-14 Technical Architecture Mark Butler
Presentations"
Soople; easy search in Google. Advanced calculator
Soople-easy expert search-

Soople is an early English dialect, which means 'to soften, make supple'.

That's exactly what I envisioned for this site ; a site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers. Initially I made this site for my mother, who, though computer-savvy, still didn't know about all the possibilities Google offers. This site is therefore meant for all those who are not yet familiar with all the functions and required syntaxes. This way Soople enables an 'easy expert search'!

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

blonde joke


On the first day of their honeymoon, the blonde bride slipped
into a sexy but sweet nightie and, with great anticipation, crawled into bed,
only to find that her new Catholic husband had settled down on the couch.
When she asked him why he was apparently not going to make love
to her, he replied, "Because it's Lent."
Almost in tears, she remarked, "Well, that is the most ridiculous
thing I have ever heard! Who did you lend it to and for how long?"

Sunday, April 11, 2004

Knowledge management is about desire
November 19,  2001 issue of New Thinking

Knowledge management is about desire


By Gerry McGovern

The reduction in time to market for products and services has been a key driver for successful organizations. The success of knowledge management can be measured in relation to how it contributes to the right idea being developed into the right product at the right time at the right cost.

Knowledge is a critical asset for modern organizations. Yet knowledge management is a discipline that is little understood. Managers believe in the theory but few have come to grips with how to actually manage knowledge in a productive manner.

McKinsey recently published a survey entitled 'Creating a knowledge culture.' It focused on knowledge management practices in some 40 companies on a global basis. The study was carried out between 1995 and 1998 and had two key findings:

- Companies that fully embraced knowledge management reduced the time it took for order generation and fulfillment by 15 percent during the survey period, as against a 1.6 percent reduction for those who had less developed knowledge management strategies.

- Product development time was reduced by 4.6 percent, as against a reduction of 0.7 percent.

McKinsey summarized its findings as follows: "Successful companies build a corporate environment that fosters a desire for knowledge among their employees and that ensures its continual application, distribution, and creation."

If you want to be successful at knowledge management you must do three things:

1. Foster a desire within people to gather knowledge

2. Foster a desire within people to create knowledge

3. Foster a desire within people to share knowledge

Organizations who fail at knowledge management tend to:

1. See knowledge as something that primarily flows from the top down

2. Implement technology solutions and wait

3. Fail to address human attitudes which see hoarding knowledge as a route to power

There are two essential ways knowledge can be transferred:

1. By person-to-person interactions

2. By people reading, viewing or listening to content

Historically, the primary way knowledge was transferred was by people getting together. The Internet, however, is a direct response to the need to offer alternative ways by which knowledge can be efficiently transferred. (Its interactive elements also facilitate new ways by which people can 'get together.')

When we use email and the Web we are attempting to transfer information with the objective of creating knowledge in the mind of the person who receives our communication. The increased use of email and the Web reflect a significant shift in how we communicate knowledge. We are becoming more formal. Today, information gets written down a lot more than it did ten years ago. It's called publishing. (Also known as content management.)

Despite this profound shift in how knowledge is created within commercial organizations, the role of publishing is little understood. Look inside the intranets of most organizations today and you will find a chaotic approach to publishing. Time, money, effort and knowledge are being wasted in such information dumps.

The right knowledge can make us all more productive. A professional publishing strategy is a proven way of transferring knowledge. Desire, and not technology, should be the foundation of such a strategy: the desire to create, find and share knowledge.

The McKinsey Quarterly:

Learning to grow again



Companies should ask three critical questions as they shift from cost-cutting to expansion mode.

Ian Davis
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 Number 1

If 2004 proves to be a year of recovery, then the challenges faced by management will be very different from those of the past few years. In recession, most companies know what they need to do: cut costs. But in recovery, corporate muscles that have gone unexercised must be flexed anew. In preparation, boards and top managers would do well to ask three basic questions.

What is success?

In earlier eras, the success of a company was judged by a mixture of measures, including its fundamental economic performance, its reputation with customers and employees, its stock price, and its responsibility to society at large. That changed in the 1980s and 1990s. Academic theory, the takeover boom, and shareholder activism led to a focus on share-holder value, all too often measured through the narrow prism of short-term movements in stock prices. This raises troubling questions as companies look to manage the next era of growth while avoiding the pitfalls of the last.

First, are we rewarding and punishing management teams for something over which they have relatively little control? Research suggests that the relationship between a company’s fundamental economic performance and share price over the near term is loose at best. Factors outside management’s control, such as investor sentiment and overall market conditions, can have a major impact on share prices. Did all those CEOs really deserve to get rich from the rising tide of the 1990s? Likewise, some strong management teams have doubtless been punished unfairly during the downturn.

Second, how do we reconcile the different time frames of shareholders and management? The average stock is held for less than a year by institutional investors and for even shorter periods by hedge funds. Yet the investments managers make, and the payoffs from their decisions and strategies, occur over much longer periods. There needs to be closer alignment and understanding not just of objectives and expectations but of timing too. We should ask whether a more multidimensional definition of success is required. Management should be evaluated on what it can control—the fundamental economic performance of the business and the institutional strength of the organization. It should set financial and nonfinancial goals and assess risks with an eye toward the long-term total value of the enterprise. A more balanced view of success, and the time over which it is measured, would ultimately serve shareholders (and society) better by encouraging more innovation and growth.

How can we nurture talent?

The world is not short of capital looking for opportunities. As recovery comes, the scarce resource for most companies will not be capital, but talent.

Many management teams thought they could win the war for talent during the 1990s boom by throwing stock options and perks at their employees and letting employees wear jeans to work on Fridays. When the downturn came, there was an abrupt shift from "we value talent" to "you are a disposable cost." The options evaporated, the perks were withdrawn, and the layoffs came swiftly—in some cases, brutally. This tore the social fabric of many firms and left employees cynical. Trust will have to be earned again and a new compact forged between companies and employees.

Employees recognize that it is unlikely they will have the "jobs for life" of their parents’ generation, but managers also need to recognize that the requirements of the most coveted employees are evolving. Money is important, as always. But people increasingly seek meaning, social connection, and identity from their work.

The best companies will create jobs and roles where employees feel they have some control over what they do, where professional relationships are valued, where more than lip service is paid to the work-life balance, and where there is a real belief in the social and ethical responsibility of the employer. The companies that translate these principles into concrete practices and build the social and knowledge capital of the organization will establish a source of competitive advantage not easily displaced.

What is the role of business in society?

During the 1990s boom, business was viewed generally not just as a source of wealth creation but also as the engine of growth and jobs around the world—a positive force. With the crash came scandal, backlash, and a loss of faith. The pressures are coming not just from rock-throwing protesters but also from the mainstream media, politicians, and well-organized nongovernmental organizations.

Some of these criticisms are clearly valid. Market economies depend on integrity to function; companies should adhere to the values and norms of the communities in which they operate, as the great majority of businesses do. The drive for growth need not be at odds with environmental and other societal concerns. Defensiveness, however, only provides ammunition to the rock throwers. Business leaders should demonstrate more confidence in their moral position as creators of wealth, opportunity, and rising living standards and should work proactively to build trust between their organizations and society at large.


------------------------------------------------------------------

These three questions ought to be high on management’s strategic agendas. By grappling with these issues more thoroughly than happened in the previous cycle of boom and bust, businesses can generate more durable growth.

Notes:

Ian Davis is McKinsey’s managing director. This article originally appeared in The Economist’s annual publication The World in 2004, dated November 20, 2003, and is reprinted here by permission.
McKinsey Quarterly: Creating a knowledge culture: Article at a glance

Creating a knowledge culture


Ask a group of senior executives if they regard knowledge management as very important to the success of a company. Most will enthusiastically say that they do—a response befitting one of the trendiest topics in management circles. Yet thinking that knowledge management is crucial and knowing what to do about it are very different. A McKinsey survey of 40 companies in Europe, Japan, and the United States showed that many executives think that knowledge management begins and ends with building sophisticated information technology systems.

The take-away
Effective knowledge management goes beyond information technology or special, one-time efforts. Successful companies (as reckoned by financial and other performance indicators) set ambitious goals for product development and process innovation and provide a range of financial and nonfinancial incentives for employees who share knowledge with colleagues.

The full text of this article is available only to our Premium Members. To read it, you may enroll now. Become a Premium Member."
RDF Made Easy:

Divine Metadata for the Web


People who have thought about these problems, including many librarians and webmasters, generally agree that the Web urgently needs metadata. What would it look like? If the Web had an all-powerful Grand Organizing Directorate (at www.GOD.org), it would think up a set of lookup fields such as Author, Title, Date, Subject, and so on. The Directorate, being, after all, GOD, would simply decree that all Web pages start using this divine Metadata, and that would be that. Of course there would be some details such as how the Web sites ought to package up and interchange the metadata, and we all know that the Devil is in the details, but GOD can lick the Devil any day.

In fact, there is no www.GOD.org. For this reason, there is no chance that everyone will agree to start using the same metadata facilities. If libraries, which have existed for hundreds of years, can't agree on a single standard, there's not much chance that the Web will.

Does this mean that there is no chance for metadata? That everyone is going to have to build their own lookup keys and values and software, and that we're going to be stuck using dumb, brute force robots forever?
No. As we observed with our three search scenarios, metadata operations have an awful lot in common, even when the metadata is different. RDF is an effort to identify these common threads and provide a way for Web architects to use them to provide useful Web metadata without divine intervention.
http://www.eleganthack.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/138
taxonomies made easier

Ten taxonomy myths is such an pleasently written article, it brings taxonomies in reach.

"Myth #1: A taxonomy can only be expressed as a hierarchical list of topics.


The implication of our definition is that every company will use multiple, interacting organization schemes (taxonomies). Some will be very concrete and may even be "invisible" except to computer programs (e.g. product codes). Others will be abstract, designed primarily for use by human beings (e.g. a list of topics on a departmental Web site)."

This is an exellent observation. Often I've seen arguments over which classification scheme to use, as if there is one ideal that all users can understand and meets all needs. But often the better answer is use several schemes. A CD site can have music type, artist and chronological classification schemes all mixed and matched-- and often do. Why shouldn't other sites support different user needs and mental models with multiple interacting schemes?
Warfel, Todd. “Modeling Organization – Methods for Increasing a System’s Findability,” Message First Corp., 2001.http://messagefirst.com/downloads/ModelingOrganization.pdf


Todd Warfel is a Principal User Experience Architect at MessageFirst in upstate NY. With over 10 years of experience practicing user research, information architecture, interaction/interface design, and usability his work has produced several industry firsts and patented products. His work has included projects for Fortune 500 firms, government agencies, and educational institutions, including Adobe, Albertsons, Apple, AT&T Wireless, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Cornell University, Dell, EDS, Macromedia, Palm, and Philips Electronics. In 1996, Todd developed DIVE©, a proprietary process for improving products’ ease-of-use. The DIVE process has been used across more than a hundred products, many of which are industry firsts.

Todd is currently working on a PhD in Information Science at Cornell University and has a B.A in English and Cognitive Psychology from Ball State University.
Amishrobot: International Man Of Leisure: "International Man Of Leisure"

No current openings.
elegant hack
BLog on Information Architecture, Web usabilty, etc.


Friday, April 09, 2004

Boxes and Arrows: About Boxes and Arrows



Boxes and Arrows is the definitive source for the complex task of bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape. There are various titles and professions associated with this undertaking--information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design--but when we looked at the work that we were actually doing, we found a "community of practice" with similarities in outlook and approach that far outweighed our differences.

Boxes and Arrows is a peer-written journal dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of this community, through the sharing of exemplary technique, innovation and informed opinion.

Boxes and Arrows strives to provoke thinking among our peers, to push the limits of the accepted boundaries of these practices and to challenge the status quo by teaching new or better techniques that translate into results for our companies, our clients and our comrades.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Yes they have been around the block, but they are classics


These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.
________________________________
Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July 15.
Q: What year?
A: Every year..
______________________________________
Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________
Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget? Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
_____________________________________
Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
_____________________________________
Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.
______________________________________
Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________
Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
A: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
___________________________________
Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
_____________________________________
Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
______________________________________
Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
______________________________________
Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?
______________________________________
Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________
Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?
______________________________________
Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________
Q: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
______________________________________
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr.. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
______________________________________
Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
______________________________________
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere


.





"I like this, Edwards. You've come up with more solutions than we have problems."

Cartoon by Dave Carpenter
Copyright 2004, Harvard Business Review
How to find the IP address of a Westlaw Printer on a Westlaw printer.

From the LCD menu on the printer;
Click right 3 times - to utilities menu
Click Select
Click right twice - to print net setup
Click Select

IP address is the number listed after the address under the TCP/IP heading.

Monday, April 05, 2004

Dagospia.com - 24/02/2004 - CASETTA BIANCA ? I COCCI DELLA CIA DI CLINTON LI RACCOGLIE BUSH ? GUAI PER GLI AMICI PETROLIERI DI CHENEY ? GQ E LA STRANA COPPIA KYLIE-RUMSFELD ? MONICA DIFENDE LA FALSA AMANTE DI KERRY?: "? GQ SCHERZA. CHI HA DETTO: 'DEVO AVERE UN UOMO! DEVO AVERE UN UOMO!', DONALD RUMSFELD O KYLIE MINOGUE?
In un tono pi? scherzoso, il numero di GQ in edicola negli Stati Uniti, si diverte a mettere insieme due celebrit? che ben poco hanno in comune: La cantante Kylie Minogue e il ministro della difesa Donald Rumsfeld.
L?improbabile coppia ? riunita per un giochino del genere: ?Chi l?ha detto? Kylie o Rummy?

Provate anche voi:
1. 'Guardatemi! Non sono dolce ed amabile?'
2. 'Questa ? un?ottima domanda, e se potessi rispondere, lo farei.'
3. 'Devo avere un uomo! Devo avere un uomo!'
4. 'Questo tipo di reazione negative, non sembra venire dal popolo, ma dai media, perch? sono annoiati.'
5. 'Ogni tanto, mentre faccio qualcosa, mi ritrovo a pensare: Ma che diavolo sto facendo qui?'
(Risposte: 1) Rummy 2) Kylie 3) Rummy 4) Kylie 5) Rummy) "

free access


In celebration of National Library Week (April 18-24), Gale is offering free access to its databases. So, if you haven't used them in a while, here's a perfect opportunity to take them for a test drive. Details are available at http://www.gale.com/nlw.

Sunday, April 04, 2004

The Best of British - The American's guide to speaking British...

Great site!
III. RUSSIAN MINING COMPANY BUYS INTO AMERICAN COMPANY

Russian Mining company Norilsk paid $1.2 billion in cash for a 20% stake in GOLD FIELDS (GFI, $13.13, up 0.69), which is held by ANGLO AMERICAN (AAUK, $25.27, up 1.77). Anglo American said it would pick up $480 million on the deal, which it plans to use to finance gold mining efforts and to pay down debt in South Africa. Gold Fields is the #4 Gold Miner in the world. It's interesting to see such a large purchase from a Russian company, and illustrative of how high gold prices are helping producers worldwide.

Friday, April 02, 2004

http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/research/google/google-reactions-final.pdf
Viv?simo - Clustered search on: "Because PubMed alone is not enough.
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www.KMWorld.com: "KMWorld's 100 Companies that Matter
in Knowledge Management 2004

By Hugh McKellar
KMWorld editor in chief The Faces of Knowledge Management
ith the drumbeat of consolidation growing ever louder since we first put this list together in 2000, you?d think identifying a hundred companies that matter in knowledge management would be increasingly easier to assemble, right? Heck, it simply follows that with fewer companies to choose from, it would be simpler to pick 100, right? Not at all. "