Laptop Composing If there’s one thing the Internet has taught us, it’s that new technology rarely destroys old ways of doing business. Similarly, the rise of virtual studios probably won’t mean the end of big-name producers who put together songs on two-inch tape using mixing boards the size of pool tables. And while more singers and rappers might be tempted to try producing their own tracks, Chad Hugo doesn’t recommend it. ‘‘Most artists should just worry about what they do best – the vocals,’’ he says. But even if the virtual studio doesn’t turn every recording artist into a producer, it has already turned at least one group of producers into recording artists. The globetrotting Neptunes recently used Pro Tools to add live instruments to some of the keyboard tracks they’d been working on, and the group’s debut album is due out early next year.

NSC Statistics - What are the Odds of Dying Odds of Death Due to Injury, United States, 1998

O'Reilly Network: 2002: The Carpetbaggers Go Home [Dec. 21, 2001] Webloggers aren't professional journalists; they don't adhere to the code of ethics that CNN et al are nominally bound by, and they often can't spell or string together a coherent sentence, let alone pen an inverted-pyramid story. Nevertheless, bloggers are collectively brilliant at ferreting out every little detail of a story, wearing its edges smooth with discussion, and spitting it out again. Further, bloggers are spread out across the Internet, mirroring, quoting, and linking back to one another, collectively forming a Distributed Provision of Service that is resistant to CNN-killing catastrophes like 9/11. Blogs are about 95 percent of the way to being full-fledged news-sources, and the difference between the bloggers of the world and CNN is a couple of percentiles and several billion dollars.

O'Reilly Network: 2002: The Carpetbaggers Go Home [Dec. 21, 2001] Engineers understand that the difference between 95 percent and 96 percent reliability is often infinite. Some problems are tractable within a certain tolerance, and asymptotic to infinity above that tolerance. The Internet is full of best-effort algorithms, timeout mechanisms, asynchronous communication, and stateless clients. This is the fault-tolerant realpolitik of a public network composed of uncoordinated actors with conflicting agendas

O'Reilly Network: I Remember USENET [Dec. 21, 2001] I made many friends and came to know many others, though 99 percent of them I had not met in the flesh. Indeed, there were people at my university whom I interacted with on the Net but rarely in the physical world. We all discovered quickly how easy it was to depersonalize people when communicating purely by writing. Perfectly reasonable people would get quickly involved in "flame wars" and use invectives they would never say to a person's face.

As these archives return to the world, I have to admit some trepidation. Reading my old words I am sometimes painfully informed of how naive, and sometimes plain wrong, the younger me could be.

O'Reilly Network: I Remember USENET [Dec. 21, 2001] And the network took over my life. I loved participating in it, and my favorite topic was the network itself. Many of us loved to discuss its future and its politics, for we knew in some way (though none of us knew fully) that this was the future of the world. I helped maintain groups and wrote tiny pieces of software to help the Net grow. Others contributed much more software, all of it free and all of it source code, years before the free software movement would take full form.

O'Reilly Network: I Remember USENET [Dec. 21, 2001] Anybody--at least anybody on a computer at a major company or university--could participate in a newsgroup, and they did. Many of the online trends and words, from emoticons to flaming, originated in USENET and the mailing lists. Similar experiences were happening on online services like CompuServe, and on a growing crowd of stand-alone BBS's around the world, but nothing was like USENET with its energetic and highly educated crowd.

Weblog Accessibility Why Should You Care?
The whole point of weblogs is to share knowledge, ideas, and some small amount of self promotion (or exhibitionism, depending on the blog). If you design your weblog so that a disabled user has a hard time reading your ideas and thoughts you are losing part of your audience and you are missing an opportunity to share your ideas with a wider circle. And it's just not fair. Why should someone have to suffer through your entire navigation menu or the names of all of your JPG files every time they load a page on your site? Why not design your site so that they can get right to your content and to the whole point of your site?

Unknown News - www.UnknownNews.net - The news you need, whether you know it or not. My love for America is not that cheap and easy. I'm not that kind of girl.

Patenting the alphabet:



SANTA CLARA, Calif. (Reuters) - Palm Inc. (news/quote) (PALM.O), the No. 1

handheld computer maker, on Friday said it would appeal a court ruling in

favor of Xerox Corp. (news/quote) (XRX.N) in a case over a patent for

handwriting recognition software.

``We assert that the Graffiti handwriting technology does not infringe the

Xerox patent and that Palm has strong arguments to support its defense,''

Eric Benhamou, Palm's chairman and chief executive said in a statement.

Xerox said on Thursday that it had won a patent infringement suit against

3Com Corp. (news/quote) (COMS.O) and Palm over the Graffiti product.

Xerox had sued U.S. Robotics, which was later acquired by 3Com, in April

1997, claiming that the handwriting recognition technology marketed as

Graffiti and used on Palm handheld devices infringed a patent Xerox

received in 1997.

Xerox said the technology was invented at its Palo Alto Research Center,

known as PARC.

``Palm will defend itself vigorously and does not intend for this

litigation to affect its business strategy or business model nor that of

its licensees,'' the Palm statement said.

Using E-Mail to Count Connections By conducting the study online, the researchers are limiting participants to people with e-mail, but Dr. Watts said he did not think that was a problem. "E-mail is no longer the preserve of the tech elite," he said.

Using E-Mail to Count Connections Although Dr. Milgram's theory has been accepted as applying worldwide, his famous results have not been replicated, nor have they been tested globally. Now a team of sociologists at Columbia University led by Duncan Watts, an assistant professor of sociology and author of "Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness," is trying to assess the six-degrees hypothesis on a large scale, using e- mail as the medium for building the chains.

Freenets Getting a New Lease on Life One of 10 founders of the nonprofit, Avrum Bluming, is an Encino physician specializing in the treatment of cancer. He said his group's project has been reinvigorated by the growing need for better connectivity for the poor. The LAFN charges $40 annually for an account, a figure that will rise to $50 next year. That's less than a quarter of what a commercial ISP would charge, and the fee is waived for those who can't afford it.

Freenets Getting a New Lease on Life Ask Doris Dell of Woodland Hills what she can't live without and she answers without hesitation: "I'm retired, and the Internet is my whole life."

Dell's hobby is genealogy and she uses the Net to help track down family trees.

But it's not just a hobby for her. For Dell, and many others, the Internet is a connection to humanity, a way of reaching out to people who would otherwise be inaccessible. "The contacts I've made on the Internet have become very important to me. Like I said, it's a major part of my life." But Dell never would have made the connection without the Los Angeles Free-Net, which offers Internet access at a very low cost at www.lafn.org. "When I got started doing this, I couldn't have afforded anything more than $40 a year for Internet access. The people behind this are doing a wonderful thing."

For many Americans, an Internet connection has become a lifeline to the world, rivaling the telephone in importance. Roberta D. Godfrey of Culver City, who's also an LAFN user, said, "I do a tremendous amount of research on the Internet. The Internet is my comfort and a critical source of information. I wouldn't buy a thing without comparing specifications and prices online. Information obtained from the Internet improves life and the poor deserve the same access as the rich."

jmdl.com ARTICLES: The Rolling Stone Interview: Rolling Stone, July 26, 1979 There was a time when you and Laura Nyro were considered to be the two purveyors of female singer/songwriting. Now it's all but taken for granted that Laura Nyro wasn't "tough enough" to survive in the business. Do you think that your own survival has meant a certain toughness?

Gee, I don't know if that's the case. Inspiration can run out, you know. Laura Nyro made a choice that has tempted me on many occasions. And that was to lead an ordinary life. She married a carpenter, as I understand, and turned her back on it all. Which is brave and tough in its own way. Many, many times as a writer, I've come to a day where I say, "None of this has any meaning." If you maintain that point of view, if you hold onto it and possess it, that's it for you. There's a possibility that you can come firmly to that conclusion, as Rimbaud did, and give it up. I've always managed to move out of those pockets.

WebCT.com - Faculty Resource Center How to be
a Successful Distance Learning Student

Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" LESTER BANGS

That's because we are uncool! And

while women will always be a problem for

guys like us, most of the great art in

the world is about that very problem.

Good-looking people have no spine!

Their art never lasts! They get the

girls, but we're smarter.

Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" DENNIS HOPE (cont'd)

Because if you think Mick Jagger will

still be out there trying to be a rock

star at age fifty, you're sadly sadly

mistaken.

comparative analysis of online educational delivery applications This site is designed to help educators evaluate and select online delivery software. This site is produced by the Project Team of Bruce Landon of Douglas College, Randy Bruce, Kwantlen University College and Amanda Harby, Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology. The analysis describes and compares the most viable applications in use in Canada focusing on:
- technical specifications,
- instructional design values,
- tools and features,

- ease of use and accessibility,
- potential for collaboration,
- IMS metadata standards compliance,

21C Magazine - Transit Lounge

Partygoers Mocked By Catering Staff "Whenever people are forced to serve others, resentment and derision are inevitable," said Dr. Henry Janssen, a University of Georgia anthropologist. "This tradition dates back to Ancient Greece, where servants at grand Athenian feasts would sneak into the kitchen to put on short plays lampooning the foibles of their wealthy, gluttonous guests. As long as there are people who stuff their faces with mini-meatballs while wearing bad ties, there will be servers there to make fun of them."

frontwheeldrive : gareth branwyn interview What do you see as the most powerful tool in the media activist's arsenal?
Again, since the tools for effective DIY media have become so powerful and plentiful, I think your most potent tool is the message that you're trying to get out there. The more 'memetically viral' it is - the more creative and unique - the more it will cut through the sludge. Take weblogs, for example. There are now thousands of 'em. Most fade into the background noise, but those that are truly interesting, creative, well-written, rise to the top of blog portals, get repeatedly quoted on other weblogs, and spread rapidly through word-of-mouth.

'Rings' Plan: Grab Geeks So Masses Will Follow Though pleasing the hard-core Tolkien fans is important, their potential impact on the film's success is only initial. But even the mainstream marketing push carries a whiff of religious conversion. The film's official Web site — www.lordoftherings.net — looks innocent enough. Its home page is designed to introduce the story and movie to curious know-nothings. As as one delves deeper into the site, however, the details of Tolkiencraft pile up, by design.
"People click down into the site, and before they know it," Paddison said, "they turn geek."

'Rings' Plan: Grab Geeks So Masses Will Follow "The fans weren't driving the machine, but they were along for the ride," said Russell Schwartz, New Line's president of domestic marketing.

'Rings' Plan: Grab Geeks So Masses Will Follow "We reverse-marketed," Paddison said. "We had to get the fans first. They are our evangelists." He attended Comicon, the annual comic-book convention. He e-mailed Tolkien webmasters at 3 a.m., because that's when they're up trolling the Internet. He met with some. "I had a dialogue with a couple of vampires — at least, they thought they were," Paddison said. "We did not have dinner."

'Rings' Plan: Grab Geeks So Masses Will Follow The books have a near-religious following, and cult members zealously protect the franchise. They are smart and generally jaded about advertising and promotion. New Line worried that if it alienated that crowd, plans for its $200 million, three-movie series could be flamed by poisonous Internet postings.

sfbg.com "My instinct says not to give this information to the FBI," Rucker Jr. muses. "Thinking that Big Brother is right all the time is bad for our country, it's bad for people's rights, it's bad for people who want to live in little hellholes like this running their own computer companies."

Lurkers One day I'll round up all my lurkers

we'll have a newsgroup of our own

without all this flak from you morons

my lurkers will post round my throne.

Institutions and the Entrepreneurial Self

Phil Agre
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

Version of 19 December 2001.
9000 words.


Although reviews of my column about how-to's were generally kind,
sociologists demurred from some of my generalizations about their
field's treatment of the relationship between the institution
and the self. The issue, you might recall, is the extent to which
institutions define us. Everybody occupies locations in several
institutions: professional, political, medical, educational, family,
religious, and so on. And every one of those institutions offers
us a personality: language, beliefs, habits, artefacts, interactional
style, and so on. The question is, do institutions completely
remake us in their image, or do we remain to some degree ourselves?
It is not an easy question, since it could mean several things.
Even if we know what the question means, it is not entirely clear
how we could know the answer. For example, we can study doctors and
conclude that they walk and talk exactly the way that the institution
of medicine wants them to, but that proves nothing until we determine
whether they had already believed in the institution and consciously
chose to acquire its ways. We would also have to confront the
fact that we are all shaped by numerous institutions: since no one
institution defines who we are, do we thereby transcend them all?
These are important questions for us now because of the tremendous
power of information technology to facilitate institutional change.
As institutions change, people change too. We need to know how we're
changing and what choice we have.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Machine Dreams It is always a dicey proposition to assert that one is living in an

historical epoch when one conceptual system is drawing to a close

and another rising to take its place; after all, even dish soaps are

frequently retailed as new and revolutionary.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Machine Dreams One can
always recognize a cyborg science by the glee with which it insinuates
such world-shattering questions as: Can a machine think? How is a
genome like a string of binary digits in a message? Can lifeforms
be patented? How is information like entropy? Can computer programs
be subject to biological evolution? How can physicists clarify the
apparently political decision of the targeting of nuclear weapons?
Can there be such a thing as a self-sufficient "information economy"?
And most disturbingly: What is it about you that makes 'you' really
you? Or is your vaunted individuality really an illusion?

This breaching of the ramparts between the Natural and the Social,
the Human and the Inhuman, may be the most characteristic attribute
of the cyborg sciences.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Machine Dreams The more correct definition
would acknowledge that a cyborg science is a complex set of beliefs,
of philosophical predispositions, mathematical preferences, pungent
metaphors, research practices, and (let us not forget) paradigmatic
things, all of which are then applied promiscuously to some more or
less discrete pre-existent subject matter or area.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Machine Dreams In a paper presented to an
Air Force sponsored conference in 1960, Clynes and Kline assayed the
possibilities of laboratory animals which were augmented in various
ways in the interest of directly engaging in feedback stabilization
and control of their metabolic environment. The inquiry attracted
the attention of NASA, which was worried about the effects of long
term exposure to weightlessness and artificial environments in space.
NASA then commissioned a Cyborg Study, which produced a report in May
1963, surveying all manner of technologies to render astronauts more
resilient to the rigors of space exploration, such as cardiovascular
modules, hypothermia drugs, artificial organs, and the like.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Machine Dreams So what is economics
really about these days? The New Modern Answer: The economic agent as
a processor of information.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Hierarchy and History in Simon's "Archit By initiating the empirical study of organizations, Simon
discovered the living, breathing human actors who lie at their
center. He saw something profound, that human agency and relationship
are the ground of all social order, no matter how imputedly rational
that order might be, and that human agency and relationship are
reciprocally dependent on social order as well. Democracy requires
hierarchies and markets, but more fundamentally it requires active
citizens who can take up a vantage point outside those institutions,
critically evaluating them and cooperatively participating in the
processes of social choice that shape them.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Hierarchy and History in Simon's "Archit Having
then set about looking for hierarchy in the world, he found it
everywhere. And so, in "The Architecture of Complexity", he proposed
it as a universal principle of the structure of complex things.

Topica Email List Directory 1. Tick, Tock and ya don't stop

Rap's beginnings were in an open space -- the "commons," if you will.
It arose out of seemingly nothing -- a network of sound that was
cobbled together. It did not cost anything. It was not owned by
anyone. It had tools associated with it -- with inventors behind those
tools -- sure. But "rap" was the interconnectedness of old and new,
audience and emcee, vinyl and the needle. Micro-communities, or as
non-anthropological types might call them, "block parties," were
forming around a music that was unlike other music. It jumped and
skipped -- dependent upon the spinning wheels of steel. It hipped and
hopped -- bringing joy to an unheard community, if only because
suddenly they were creating their own voices, their own celebrity,
their own media. All of this via a medium, the turntable, which had
been looked at from a slightly different angle: what if we didn't just
play the records, but manipulated them? The libraries of music opened
in a cacophonous chorus of linking. James Brown and Steely Dan --
united in the mist of a party. Gone forever when the booze ran out.

So too, blogging.

From my little brother:

TUESDAY "sixty-eight" ,"Disapear"



Sunny day real estate  - "pheurton skeurto"  "In Circles"  "the prophet" 



Alkaline Trio  "Exploding Boy"  



Dashboard Confessionals  "Screaming Infidelitys" 



some others band that are great 



Ani Defranco "pick your knose"



Me First and the Gimme Gimmes they do punk covers 



Flogging Molly there this irish folk band with a upbeat tempo 



Modest Mouse  :"Never ending Math equation"



other Emo bands: Hey mercedes, Hot rod Circuit, 



thanks enjoy maybe youll find some bands youll like

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Hierarchy and History in Simon's "Archit Simon's epochal 1968 lecture on "The Architecture of Complexity"
(published in 1969) attempted to draw together what he had learned
about the structure of complex systems, and we can look at this
lecture now with thirty years of hindsight as a study in the
historical conditions under which intellectual problems become
visible. Much as the early work of the cognitivist movement had been
framed as a response to the hegemony of behaviorism, "The Architecture
of Complexity" is framed as a response to general systems theory. It
was a complex response that operated on two levels.

RRE 2001/06: [RRE]Hierarchy and History in Simon's "Archit Hierarchy and History in Simon's "Architecture of Complexity"

Remembering Community Memory / The Berkeley beginning of online community Community Memory was born when a group of wild-eyed nerdish Berkeley types started thinking about information systems and community and how they fit together. Ken Colstad, Mark Szpakowski, Lee Felsenstein and Efrem Lipkin were friends and partners, computer-savvy types who wanted to create a simple little system that could function as a source of community information. When the foursome hooked up with a group called Resource One that had access to a mainframe computer, they knew they had the pieces in hand to create their baby.

Speech Phil Agre - OECD Forum on Electronic Commerce First-World Myopia:
The Invisible Context of Computing

Speech Phil Agre - OECD Forum on Electronic Commerce Here is the problem. We all know that computers are complex beasts. But for all of their internal complexity, computers are just as complicated in their embedding in the outside world. Yet the complexity of this embedding is largely invisible to the people who design computers, and to the people who make a living promoting their use. Call it first-world myopia: taking for granted the sprawling background of infrastructure, institutions, and information that make modern societies possible.

isen.com: Amara's Law -- SMART Letter #63 How Networking Advances Screwed Up the Economy

by Roxane Googin



[For the last two years Roxane Googin and I have

participated in a small early-September telecom conference.

In 2000 I wish I had listened to her with my wallet (in

addition to my ears). In 2001, her warnings extended to

the larger economy. I convinced publicity-shy Googin that

her message needed to reach beyond her community of

portfolio managers, that it needed to reach policy makers,

corporate strategists and other decision makers if we're to

avoid a Japan-style permacession and get the communications

revolution -- and economic growth -- back on track. Below

is what Googin said early last September -- David I]

isen.com: Amara's Law -- SMART Letter #63 How Networking Advances Screwed Up the Economy
by Roxane Googin

[For the last two years Roxane Googin and I have
participated in a small early-September telecom conference.
In 2000 I wish I had listened to her with my wallet (in
addition to my ears). In 2001, her warnings extended to
the larger economy. I convinced publicity-shy Googin that
her message needed to reach beyond her community of
portfolio managers, that it needed to reach policy makers,
corporate strategists and other decision makers if we're to
avoid a Japan-style permacession and get the communications
revolution -- and economic growth -- back on track. Below
is what Googin said early last September -- David I]

Internet Time A few key ideas appear to have led all these experienced people
astray, ideas that are closely interrelated and reinforce each other.
The most important was "Internet time." This was the perception that
product development and consumer acceptance were now occurring in a
fraction of the traditional time. Closely related to the concept of
Internet time was the idea of "first-mover advantage." Further
support for the dot-com craze was provided by several other notions,
such as "network effects," "increasing returns," "control of open
standards," and "standards lock-in." Of all these ideas, though,
Internet time was crucial. If indeed seven years of traditional
product cycles were now compressed to one year, then anything might
change in the blink of an eye. A company that could quickly establish
itself as a pet portal might be able to exploit the first mover
advantage. The world, propelled by network effects, increasing
returns, and lock-in, would fall into utter (and lucrative for the
start-up) dependence on it for anything remotely related to pets. In
that environment, any notion of due diligence gave ground to the
overwhelming compulsion to grab a piece of "the new California gold
rush."

Zinn

It is time that we scholars began to earn our keep in this world. Thanks to a gullible public, we have been honored, flattered, even paid, for producing the largest number of inconsequential studies in the history of civilization: tens of thousands of articles, books, monographs, millions of term papers; enough lectures to deafen the gods. Like politicians we have thrived on public innocence, with this difference: the politicians are paid

[end of page 499]

for caring, when they really don't; we are paid for not caring, when we really do.

Abu-Jamal Death Sentence Thrown Out Abu-Jamal exhausted the state appeals process two years ago, but a petition filed in September he argued that the defense had new evidence to clear him, including a confession by a man named Arnold Beverly. A judge ruled in November that she did not have jurisdiction, scuttling his hopes for another round of state court appeals.

In a 1999 affidavit, Beverly claimed he was hired by the mob to kill Faulkner because the officer had interfered with mob payoffs to police.

TeeVee - Home of The Vidiots

Steve Lutz makes his existence in San Diego. Steve Lutz has written 4 TeeVee articles and 1 station break. Steve Lutz works with computers an average of 600 hours a week. Steve Lutz can no longer relate to humans on any level. Steve Lutz hates himself and others. Please kill Steve Lutz

The Coldest Warrior (washingtonpost.com)

The revulsion felt at secret American schemes of assassination has given way to the fervent hope of some that our assassins will be more successful this time. A recent national poll revealed that one in three Americans is ready to sanction torture in the interrogation of terrorism suspects. Once again, the good we do and the evil we are capable of glide within the same tight orbit.

The Coldest Warrior (washingtonpost.com) Gottlieb had destroyed the MK-ULTRA files just before retiring. The records might be 'misunderstood,' he had said.

The Coldest Warrior (washingtonpost.com)

The two got into Devlin's Peugeot 403 and drove to a safe house. Devlin turned up the volume on a radio while Gottlieb delivered his instructions. What Gottlieb said left Devlin dumbfounded: Devlin was to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, a charismatic leftist leader. 'Jesus Christ!' Devlin thought. He had long worried about Soviet efforts to gain a foothold in the Congo and had lobbied to get rid of Lumumba. But this was not what he had in mind.

Small wireless ISPs turn profits

For wireless ISPs, small is beautiful - Tech News - CNET.com "The other guys look at my stuff and all they see is that one of my radios is covered in bird crap," Schafer said. "But I'm making money--they're not."

The Access Guides and the Contradictions of Design The other day I picked up the 2001 edition of San Francisco Access and was shocked to discover that Richard Saul Wurman's original vision of the once-excellent Access Guides had been dramatically watered down. I find this symptomatic as well as tragic, so I want to explain the problem in depth. First I'll explain the Access Guides for those who haven't seen them, then I'll explain the new edition and what's wrong with it, and then I'll explain what I see as the big picture.

About 15 yars ago I was deeply involved in some control software running on a PDP-11. It was a safety system for railroads, and the work was so intense I started dreaming about it. One recurring dream I still remember to this day: I was working on my own brain, and I'd messed up the device driver for my eyelids. I couldn't open them. And of course that meant I couldn't fix the software because I couldn't open my eyes to see it.

-- 

Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC.	      "Cave cuniculos lagana ferentes"

what is the relationship between usability and aesthetics?

List Features

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=885115


An interesting article on digital pens. Personally, I don't like writing by hand, although software that would convert sketches to finished diagrams would be neato. Now all "they" have to do is put small gps units in the pens, so that everything you write and everywhere you go can be constantly tracked, monitored, and evaluated!

It's the virtual paper in this article that interests me:

"The Anoto pen is equipped with a camera that looks at the tip of the pen—not at the ink, but at a pattern of almost invisible dots, 0.1mm across, that are printed on special [expensive] paper. With 36 dots to a 2mm square, Anoto's developers have found a way to offset each dot slightly from its neighbours, so that each square on the paper is geometrically unique.

The implications of such a uniquely addressable surface means that a jotting pad imprinted with the Anoto pattern can have one area for making notes, another for ticking a box that says “Send this note as e-mail”, or still another saying “Send this note as a fax”. The system is being designed so that a Bluetooth wireless chip in the pen will transmit the information to a nearby base station or personal computer for processing, storage or transmission over the Internet. Above all, says the company, getting the information off the page has to be seamless and to create as little incremental effort as possible for the user. Otherwise, people may applaud the digital pen's novelty but find it just too fiddly to bother with."

So Anoto is creating, in essence, another virtual layer or space in addition to the internet. And you're locked into buying proprietary Anoto paper. As expensive and potentially divisive as proprietary pens and paper sound, it still piques the interest of my inner geek. Part of me likes the idea of every note I scribble being digitally archived and indexed. Of course, while cleaning out old files the other night I went through a folder of nothing but stuff written on scraps of paper and realized that much more than 90 percent of what I jot down is crap. (a variation on Sturgeon's law). And of course, my inner panopti-researcher wants to give digital pens to a first year writing class and track all of their composing.

From the article's conclusion:
-----------------------------------------------------
With children now learning to use computers before they even tackle handwriting, there is a danger that the pen might become an unnatural way to create text. There is also a risk that, in their rush to perfect the technology, digital-pen pushers may misunderstand why people use pen and paper in the first place.

In his musings on human-computer interactions, Professor Norman points out what every newspaper reporter and college student has long appreciated—that it is the act of taking notes that counts, not the notes themselves. “It focuses the mind, minimises the tendency to daydream, and forces the person to reflect upon the events being recorded so intensely that, at the conclusion of the event, the notes themselves can usually be discarded.” Whether digital pens will help people do that better or worse is something that has yet to be judged. But it will surely be an interesting experience finding out.
------------------------------------------------------

List News



Very cool palm database. Free.

Open Source and C&W The following is an exploration of the open source movement. It is not intended to convince those who are advocates of intellectual property to embrace open source principles. Rather it is targeted at those of like mind who might be willing to accept statements such as the following by Richard Stallman, the author of the GNU General Public License:

Publishers don't have 'an unquestionable natural right to own' and control software ... we have a right to question the type of society that copyright of software creates ... good software can be created under a different production model than one which involves corporate ownership and control (54).

Terrorist poetry!

UBL: We were at a camp of one of the brother¹s guards in Qandahar.

>This brother belonged to the majority of the group. He came close and told

>me that he saw, in a dream, a tall building in America, and in the same

>dream he saw Mukhtar teaching them

> how to play karate. At that point, I was worried that maybe the

>secret would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dream. So I

>closed the subject. I told him if he sees another dream, not to tell

>anybody, because people will be upset with him. (Another person¹s voice can

>be heard recounting his dream about two planes hitting a big building).

> UBL: They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the building, so I

>said to them: be patient.

> UBL: The difference between the first and the second plane hitting

>the towers was twenty minutes. And the difference between the first plane

>and the plane that hit the Pentagon was one hour.

> Shaykh: They (the Americans) were terrified thinking there was a

>coup.

> [Note: Ayman Al-Zawahri says first he commended UBL¹s awareness of

>what the media is saying. Then he says it was the first time for them

>(Americans) to feel danger coming at them.]

> UBL (reciting a poem):I witness that against the sharp blade

> They always faced difficulties and stood together...

> When the darkness comes upon us and we are bit by a

> Sharp tooth, I say...

> ³Our homes are flooded with blood and the tyrant

> Is freely wandering in our homes²...

> And from the battlefield vanished

> The brightness of swords and the horses...

> And over weeping sounds now

> We hear the beats of drums and rhythmŠ

> They are storming his forts

> And shouting: ³We will not stop our raids

> Until you free our lands²...

Collaboration and open source

The most problematic part of Free Software development seems to be the notion of forking which can occur when a subset of users and contributors decides to break from the maintainer and start their own project. I do not think I would try to emulate the fork in the classroom though I would consider the following possibilities:
if a group had a personality conflict or problem that was irreconcilable and was preventing work from happening I would permit or even recommend a change in group structure. (This would happen even in the Free Software model wasn't being used.)
if across several groups it was clear that divergent but not different opinions could be regrouped benefically. That is, if the diversity which is achieved by breaking students up into groups and making them work together wouldn't be removed by adjusting groups, rearrangement could occur. The benefits of putting students with like minds together would have to be substantial.
if more than one student requested a "fork" the maintainer-teacher group should address that as a problem with the assignment and correct it by revising the assignment, if possible.
The most common objections to collaboration are: first, one student does all the work, and the rest tag on her coattails and do nothing; second, some voices, especially historically underrepresented ones, can be left out. I think the "maintainer" concept can help with both these concerns. It foregrounds the process of collaborating and its power dynamic

I, Cringely | The Pulpit

Present Vision has lots of laws -- acres of rules and principles for getting from here to the answer. Sitting in their tiny apartments, the Russians had figured out that getting from here to there required passing through a number of steps that could be characterized -- a pedagogy. Rules can't be skipped or taken out of order, but by following them in the right order, important conclusions can be drawn. Present Vision is a navigation tool for organizational creativity.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK Martin draws a nasty little PPK pistol from his waist, and levels it at Grocer under the table-- but Grocer is already drawing his pistol down there, and there is an instant Mexican breakfast stand-off.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK PAUL

Ten years. What happened!?



MARTIN

I freaked out, joined the Army, worked for the government, and went into business for myself.... I'm a professional killer.



PAUL

Thank you.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK Remember no matter how impossible your problems feel. I've known people without a chance in the world. And all of a sudden, they have lives. Time allows miracles. Let yourself breathe, son.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK DR. OATMAN

I think what you fear Martin is domesticity. It's the greatest fear that men have who belong to Western Culture. It's centuries old. Like King Phillip, in the 11th or 12th century who decided one day that he was so bored with his dreary life at home with his wife he thought, "Well, wouldn't it be great if we hit the road and fought... oh... the Saracens." So he put the word out and was amazed when a million men signed up and all of them wanted to go and fight in distant lands and do terrible things to people rather than stay at home with their families.

Search Results Minnesota SU, Mankato

English, 230 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001

http://www.english.mnsu.edu

saveAssistant Professor of English

Assistant Professor, tenure-track, in English: Rhetoric and Composition starting August 19, 2002. Responsibilities include: teaching composition theory, pedagogy and related courses to MA/MFA students, introductory and advanced undergraduate writing courses, writing-intensive courses, and other courses in the candidate's specialty consistent with program needs. Applicant should be interested in and qualified to eventually assume training and mentoring roles with teaching assistants in a large undergraduate writing program. Load: 12 cr/semester (3 courses). Continuing research, advising and committee work expected. Required: doctorate in composition theory, completed by date of appointment; training and experience in college-level teaching of composition and in using technology for writing instruction. For full position description, see http://www.english.mnsu.edu. Send application letter, CV, and dossier (including transcripts and three letters of reference) to Harry Solo, Search Chair, 230 Armstrong Hall, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato, MN 56001 by January 7, 2002 (postmark deadline). AA/EOE. [R]

Guardian Unlimited Books | Special Reports | 'I still have overwhelming doubt about my ability'

Chris Ware lists all the things he can't do. He can't articulate off the cuff; he can't organise his thoughts into grammatical format; he can't transcend self-doubt. He can't do interviews and he can't understand why he is becoming a success. If he had to describe himself in one word, it would be "farce".

Gosh, my email drafts folder is generally chock full of things that I

started and stopped. I return to some few of them, but some will stay

there without ever becoming something more or something else. If

students *really* got to treat their drafts that way--not as things that

must be always be pummeled into final form, but as potentially useful

though sometimes happily abandoned explorations--maybe the whole

"drafting" thing would make more sense to them, and serve them better.



Kathy at C.O.D.

gladwell dot com / Smaller The shame of it, though, is that Harmon and Harper have never been properly celebrated for their accomplishment. Victor Mills is the famous one. When he died, he was given a Times obituary, in which he was called "the father of disposable diapers." When Carlyle Harmon died, seven months earlier, he got four hundred words in Utah's Deseret News, stressing his contributions to the Mormon Church. We tend to credit those who create an idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting that it is often only in the perfection of an idea that true progress occurs.

gladwell dot com / Smaller A typical insult arrives at a rate of seven millilitres a second, and might total seventy millilitres of fluid. The liner can clear that insult in less than twenty seconds. The core can hold three or more of those insults, with a chance of leakage in the single digits. The baby's skin will remain almost perfectly dry, and that is critical, because prolonged contact between the baby and the insult (in particular, ammonium hydroxide, a breakdown product of urine) is what causes diaper rash.

As we moved from one babbler group to the next, Zahavi was clearly happiest when he was being provocative. He argued, for instance, that a baby screaming for attention at the nest is actually blackmailing its parents, in effect saying, "Fox, fox, come and eat me. My parents don't care."



Perhaps this is why Joey, our two-year-old, runs out the front door and into the parking lot.

A List Apart: A Web Designer's Journey We all know the future is about web standards. And web standards are about the separation of style from content—presentation from structure—design from data.
We all know that there are browsers on the market right now that more or less completely support these web standards. IE5, Netscape 6, and Opera 5 offer CSS, HTML, and JavaScript/ECMAScript compliance solid enough to let us discard the clumsy methods of the past, and liberate the web from the bondage of HTML Design.

A List Apart: A Web Designer's Journey We all know the future is about web standards. And web standards are about the separation of style from content—presentation from structure—design from data.
We all know that there are browsers on the market right now that more or less completely support these web standards. IE5, Netscape 6, and Opera 5 offer CSS, HTML, and JavaScript/ECMAScript compliance solid enough to let us discard the clumsy methods of the past, and liberate the web from the bondage of HTML Design.

A List Apart: A Web Designer's Journey We complain about the WYSIWYG editors, but we write the same kind of code ourselves. When we don't know how to do something, instead of consulting the W3C or ECMA standards, we share hacks on mailing lists or across the cubicle. And when a browser comes out that actually supports standards, we complain about the way it breaks our HTML workarounds and browser-specific "DHTML."

This is a mighty stupid way to work. But it gets worse when we have to redesign. Unless we work with proprietary publishing systems (which have problems of their own), all that old content riddled with FONT tags and stuck inside table cells has to be poured into our new templates by hand—one page, one table cell, at a time.

Department of English, University of Louisville Check to see if your Athena account is active

Request a listserv for your class.

Request an Athena account

Common Folder

Download FTP Explorer

Web Research Evaluation Checklist (thanks Stacy

BLOGGER - Discuss



From what I understand, you can solve this by putting www.blogger.com in your list of "trusted servers."



BTW, the bookmarklet version still works.



Theoretically, one could create a right-click version that, instead of calling a URL from the Blogger server, as it does now, calls a local file that basically does what the bookmarklet does with javascript. I'm guessing the local file would be trusted and this wouldn't be a problem.



That's just a thought. I don't have time to do it right now, but if someone wants to hack it together and try it out, lemme know.



(You can change the URL the BlogThis! points to be searching your registry for "blogThis." I'm not going to say how you do that, because if you don't know, you probably shouldn't be in there. ;)

– Evan Williams [10/11/2001 3:14 PM]

3400 Syllabus, Spring 2000

 Computers and Email: It is assumed that you have a strong knowledge of computers, including how to navigate the Internet. If you do not, then you should either postpone taking the course or promptly take one of the remedial short courses offered by the University. You will be expected to have an Email account by the second week of the course.

CBBC Newsround | YOUR REPORTS | Exclusive Bill Gates interview . At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right but fortunately there are plenty that are coming.

MIT discovers that not all of their professors are ready to put their courses online. Gasp!

HERE'S TO THE MIDDLE AGES: AFGHANS KEEP IT SIMPLE The tribal system, so detrimental to building an effective multiethnic state, offers tremendous support to people struggling to survive in impossibly difficult times. My translator Jovid's rented adobe-walled box on the outskirts of town here, which would normally house six people, is currently home to 15. Three of them, an old man and his two children, are refugees from neaby Kunduz who walked here after an errant American bomb destroyed their neighborhood. Four more are distant relatives who moved in after four years of drought made farming impossible.

The rest are orphaned children, not even distantly related to Jovid's family. The orphans are from the neighborhood; their mothers starved to death after their fathers died in battle. There are few orphanages in Afghanistan; there's no need for them.

"Someone just takes them in," Jovid replied when I asked him what happens to most orphans. Just to be clear, Jovid's family is desperatly poor. Still, it would never occur to them not to feed a hungry person.

Viridian Note 00283: Geeks and Spooks Some time ago my friend and prominent industry journalist Steven Levy wrote this book in my hand here, which is called CRYPTO, and its subtitle is HOW CODE REBELS BEAT THE GOVERNMENT. That's a good snappy subtitle, it makes the ol' product jump right off the shelf. But code rebels did not in fact beat the government, unless you think that the National Bureau of Standards is the government.

The truer and sadder story of crypto was that the spooks and the geeks both beat the hell out of our democratic process, rendering lawyers, consumers, the Congress, the industry, and the Administration totally irrelevant, and leaving crypto as a blasted technical wasteland, in a kind of Afghan-style feud, where every single party was necessarily a crook, or a scofflaw, or a deceiver, or weirdly suspect, and there was no legitimacy, and no common ground, and still, today, no good method to assemble any.

East Timor.



US OK'd Indonesian '75 E.Timor Invasion - Documents ``It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly,'' Kissinger told Suharto, according to the document. ``We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we return.''

``We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned'' to Washington, Kissinger said, according to the

Norman The Technology should be invisible, hidden from sight.

Norman’s person-centered motto for the 21st Century:
“People propose, science studies, technology conforms.”

I found that different chapters of the book appealed to different aspects of my persona. As a researcher in human-computer interaction (HCI), the chapters by Bannon (a critique of traditional HCI and Human Factors design approaches) and Ehn and Kyng (a demonstration that much can be accomplished with very simple prototypes) interested me most. The political-activist in me found the chapters by Wynn (an argument that the assumptions implicit in traditional systems analysis are both elitist and wrong) and Bodker, Greenbaum, and Kyng (a description of preconditions for effective worker participation and management support) to be the most interesting. The introductory chapter by the editors (Greenbaum and Kyng) is a very informative and interesting introduction to participatory design; readers who read only that will learn a great deal.
As I read the book, I made a list of criticisms to include in this review. When I got to the last chapter, an epilogue by the editors, I found that it includes a self-critique that already says everything I was planning to say. To summarize:
No direct contribution from users: The target users of the book are system and application designers, yet few such userssother than the authorsswere involved in the design of the book. In particular, the book may be...
Too academic The authors are mostly researchers, with a fairly academic orientation. The typical application designer isn't. The book's extensive reference to philosophical and linguistic t

From Morgan Gresham's dissertation:

There is, however, a considerable catch to their positive comments. Often, in their ongoing conversations about the class and in their semester evaluations of the class, students remark, "I've learned a great deal about computers. My writing skills have not changed." As a writing instructor, obviously my concern is that the goals I hope technology will foster in my classes are being overshadowed by the technology itself. Despite my clear theoretical warrants for incorporating technology, and specifically online computer technology, a networked classroom that only allows students textual glimpses of the very graphics-oriented World Wide Web can shift students perceptions of the class emphasis from writing to coding. Because the technology applications are not seamless (consider, for example, the differences between a command-line FTP program versus a point-and-click FTP), the integration of technology does not seem seamless to students, and this apparent lack of seamlessness has a strong impact on students' perceptions of the classes. Although I work continually to create a pedagogically and theoretically sound class, students' frustrations with the technology often become expressions of frustrations with the class design. Indeed, in recent class discussions with students about the "failures"--machines that freeze up, lack of graphics, no Windows--of our technology, our focus in the conversation kept shifting from technology to the structure of the class. These students argue that the ideas for implementing technology are sound in theory but their applications- what is available for our machines particularly--in our lab belie the possibilities of technology. Nor is our university alone in its technological antiquity. The technology grants of the '80s that fueled the boom in computers in composition have given way to funding shortages (despite the scholarship heralding technology in writing), and many English departments are finding themselves with aging technology and little or no money for upgrading software, much less hardware.

One of the strongest critiques of technology in the classroom is access, a critique that is becoming increasing difficult to answer. As LaMesa captures in the following quotation, students come to the university in particular expecting access to new technologies. Using outdated technology subsequently problematizes these students' relationships with both the university and the technology:



The only thing that I could possibly add (being, not so much now than at the beginning of the term, computer illiterate) is that these older systems add to the frustration of learning about web sites, listservs, HTML, and FTP. If the purpose of attending a university is to become educated on things like technology, why are students not given the proper equipment on which to learn. So often classes like these are a student's only opportunity to become enlightened about computer technology. How unfortunate it is not to offer them the best. --LaMesa, English 309-30

These students' goals for creating interesting and readable web sites get sublimated into the dominant discourse of technology. These students believe newer technology is necessarily better technology because their exposure to new technology is limited. It is much more difficult to critique that to which you do not have access, and provided only tangential access to newer technologies--occasional fifty-minute trips to the library, for instance--students tend to mythologize the powers of the new machines.

My point here is not to blame the technology available to my classes for students' various interpretations of class goals, a conflation that happens all too often when instructors see the technology available in labs such as ours. Such a simplification of the complex issues of access and pedagogy silences the multiplicity of discourses that CMC fosters. Rather, I want to suggest how the different features of this particular frontier play out together and how a close theory-practice relationship enables us to see those individual features of the computerized landscape more clearly. In short, the tensions that instructors and students feel in cases of mixed older and new technologies provide opportunities, not merely drawbacks, for greater understanding of the systematic workings of technology.

IT Goals for Liberal Arts Students > Assessment > Technology Across the Curriculum || College of Arts and Sciences, George Mason University Advanced level (selected examples):
Understand the difference between a flat file and a relational database.
Set up a relational database (e.g. define fields, add labels, and enter data), using two or three tables.
Construct a query for a simple relational database.
Design and generate several kinds of standard reports from a relational database.
Transfer data among different databases including data definitions and formatting.
Design and implement forms for data entry.

mgkimsal:  random thought - 

mgkimsal:  why is it that virus writers invariably can't spell or write 

           worth a dime?

mgkimsal:  do they think that by putting in bad spelling/grammar more people  

           will think it's 'real'?

mgkimsal:  I swear, the first time someone puts together a *real* virus - 

           something that can generically put together random yet coherent and 

           real sounding email messages - we'll be in for a real treat.

camworld2: i still think a virus that deletes Outlook and installs Eudora 

           would be great

mgkimsal:  no argument here

camworld2: think about it, a PROACTIVE virus that does good

mgkimsal:  actually, we were just talking about this here

mgkimsal:  one of the things diehard Outlook fans like is the 

           calendar/appointment thing

mgkimsal:  if you wrote a virus that simply moved people's appointments around, 

           without drawing attention to itself, you'd do more damage than 

           anyone could imagine

mgkimsal:  don't have it replicate 50,000 times per hour

mgkimsal:  just now and then

mgkimsal:  and silently change Bob's appointment from 1:00pm to 9:30am

mgkimsal:  he'll drive somewhere when he shouldn't be, etc.

camworld2: ha ha

mgkimsal:  I'm too evil...

camworld2: insert2

BLOGGER - How to create a BlogThis! bookmarklet

BLOGGER - How to create a BlogThis! bookmarklet To delete this, you'll need to use regedit. As always, be very careful with registry edits, you can greatly harm your computer's operating system if you do this wrong. In order to enter regedit, go to the start menu and choose "Run...". Type in "regedit" (this will start the registry editor). Expand directories until you've reached

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200112/msg00018.html



Bruce STerling!

BBspot - Linux Kernel Delayed by Microsoft's Army of Evil Monkeys Linux Kernel Delayed By Microsoft's Army of Evil Monkeys

Why is it your pager never goes off when you're in a really boring meeting? Technology can be cruel.

CRN: Cover Story The flat economy, rising software costs, shrinking technology budgets, and Microsoft's licensing and pricing gambles with Windows XP and .Net services have many SMB customers clamoring to solution providers for inexpensive alternatives. Although Linux's corporate inroads have primarily been on the server front and questions remain about the profitability of a Linux-powered desktop, a select few solution providers are already closing deals and reaping rewards from selling Linux-based solutions.

thinkingBytes Technology - Products



Synchronize thinkdb with MS access. Cool. Expensive.

One of the possible points of intervention is the design of computer classrooms and the configuration of available tools. Much more likely and possible than designing software directly.

Wow. I want one of these:



(from Techrhet)

I second CeeJ's choice of the Sony Mavica. At school, we've used the one's

that record to floppy disk with great success (and they are pretty easy to

learn, if you're going to teach others how to use a d. camera). Also, we just

bought the Mavica that burns to mini-disc (instead of the 3.5 floppy). It

takes MPEG movies (with sound), has a focusable lens, zoom, and also does the

requisite still shots in small or large filesizes (up to 2078xsomething, or

close to that). It usually runs around $1000, but i found it online for as

little as $650. And you can get CD-RWs, so you can use the same media over

and over. And those little discs hold a *bunch* of pictures. I've taken as

many as 50 stills and at least 20 minutes of video and have run out of

battery power before I've run out of disk space.

El Presidente wants to take Gates to court for XP crash Lawyers?

President: "Yes, I have spoken this evening with 2 legal advisors, who are already putting together the case. If my PC is repaired, ok, but if my archive is destroyed I will start an international court case against Microsoft. In the tribunal we will be able to enjoy ourselves, I'm almost hoping they won't be able to fix it!"

El Presidente wants to take Gates to court for XP crash Do you surf the Net?
President:"Of course, but with great care. On line you have to have precise objectives, otherwise it is like a drug. Maybe worse. For this reason I prohibit kids from the Net. It is better that they should read a good book."