Gates Dismissive of $100 Laptop [1] ….:

My take is that it may be both a publicity stunt and also a good project. Because, of course, the support issues wouldn’t go away if every child were given a $1000 laptop, would they? Nor would anyone sit there cranking the $1000 laptop; they’d stare at it as it rested inert for want of a power outlet. The whole plan is that it isn’t a gadget but a readily adaptable network node.

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Readily adaptable network node… but without any support network, educational infrastructure or else, what we basically end up with is a commodity and as someone said to me at wsis… You can burn it to keep warm or you can take the plastic to make a roof for your hut, or you can disassemble it for parts for your neighbors, but if you don’t know how to use it, you aren’t going to be computing with it.

I use bookends, and it is great for this. it has a notes category and i keep many of my notes in that, much the same way that you mention. But bookends is mac only. http://www.sonnysoftware.com/ . I am happy to trade endnote xml files produced from bookends with other people’s files if they have them available. The search tool of bookends is quite amazingly adept, it has both regex and sql capacities. Bookends also plugs into word and other word processors, such as the one that I use, which is Mellel at http://www.redlers.com/ . I also have just started using copywrite to write too, because it has the option of full screen mode writing http://www.bartastechnologies.com/ . Bookends works fine with copywrite.

Alternatively you can use my online reference tool. http://referencetool.tmttlt.com/ The more people that use it, the faster I will probably upgrade it’s capacities. The referencetool that is online now is mainly just wikindx3, but It does precisely what you seem to want. I’ve been working on a parallel project for some time now that might be released in the fall that does the same thing, only differently, but it will be data compatible with wikindx3 , so no one will lose any data.

The other thing that I use, but not really for references, but for quote and paper/pdf management is devonthink. Steven Johnson shows how he uses it at http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html

I use it differently. I download or print every document to pdf that i deem appropriate, currently around 11000 different pdfs, I make sure that they are all full text pdfs, and then devonthink makes them searchable. Devonthink is basically what i chose to replace any Desktop Search tool, such as apple’s native spotlight, which failed miserably on full text phrase search in pdfs.

so.. I have another step in process, in comparison to yours, which is to put almost everything into devonthink as a whole. Then I put the citations and specific notes into bookends, and I occasionally export my bookends database to wikindx3/referencetool.

bookends + referenceminer http://www.sonnysoftware.com/
referencetool/wikindx3 http://referencetool.tmttlt.com/
devonthink http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.php
copywrite http://www.bartastechnologies.com/
mellel http://www.redlers.com/

Hope that helps

Alternatives to Endnote and CiteULike?:
I’ve just posted a question about useful alternatives to research citation manager tools such as Endnote or CiteULike to the AoIR mailing-list, and I thought I’d repeat it here as well. My approach to research is to store key quotations from a source alongside the bibliographic reference, but none of the standard tools I have come across seem to do this particularly effectively (e.g. in Endnote, the best available workaround appears to be to create an additional field for quotes in the bibliographic record, but this is clunky and doesn’t work very well with multiple quotes stored against the same record).

Gates Dismissive of $100 Laptop [1]:

Many technology leaders have praised a nonprofit effort supported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a $100 laptop for schoolchildren in the developing world. But Bill Gates is not among the project’s fans. Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect, was dismissive of the project in remarks at an event for govenment leaders yesterday. If you’re going to give computers to the poor, he said, “geez, get a decent computer, where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing” while you use it. (The proposed $100 laptop includes a hand crank so that the device can be used even when no power outlet is available.) “I’ve yet to meet who’s going to buy the $100 thing. But it’s great, you know, the more computers the better.”

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I talked to quite a few people at wsis about this when i was there and I have to agree with Bill, this is not a great or even good project. What it has become is one huge publicity stunt, which isn’t uncommon for MIT. Nonetheless, the foundational idea of one laptop per child is fine…. It is the implementation that is a problem. They want to distribute these without support, basically cargo cult computing. here’s some gadgets, have fun… has never worked to develop the world.

whatsonwhen.com – Procession of the Unmarried Women:

Husbandless women eager to tie the knot seek assistance at this annual devotional procession in Palestrina, held in honour of St Anthony of Padua.Admittedly, the practice of segregating all single women in the village, dressing them in white robes and getting them to walk in line through the city praying to the patron of spinsters for a husband has been phased out somewhat lately. But the procession still takes place, on the evening of 12 June, the day before the feast day of the saint.

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it is amazing what some people do in the name of a cultural event.

Helen Thomas Makes a Preemptive Attack:

Q Does the President know that he’s in violation of international law when he advocates preemptive war? The U.N. Charter, Geneva, Nuremberg. We violate international law when we advocate attacking a country that did not attack us.

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I would just disagree with your assessment. First of all, preemption is a longstanding principle of American foreign –

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It is against international law and has been for some time.

The Australian: Muzzling of science [ 08mar06 ]:

The censorship against which more and more leading Australian scientists are speaking out is both overt and covert. It exists in managerial directives not to communicate, to comment or otherwise share information and scientific conclusions with the public. It exists in the reprimand, the bullying, the sidelining, the punishment and the actual dismissal of those who dare to transgress. This is not supposition; it is on the public record.

But it also exists in self-censorship. Step out of line and your paper won’t be published, you won’t get the next grant, you’ll be passed over for promotion, you’ll be made redundant. Nothing is ever said, just a veiled threat and the rest left to the victim’s imagination. And in science it’s hard to find another job that isn’t in a taxi.

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another great tragedy proceeding as normal….