By Stephen Downes
May 29, 2003
Read Before You Cite!
This is
pretty funny. From the abstract: "We report a method of
estimating what percentage of people who cited a paper had
actually read it. The method is based on a stochastic
modeling of the citation process that explains empirical
studies of misprint distributions in citations (which we
show follows a Zipf law). Our estimate is only about 20% of
citers read the original." Though I can't claim to have
followed the mathematics, I did read this paper before
listing it here. By M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury,
December 3, 2002
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Universitas 21 Global - World-Class
E-University Opens for Student Registration
It
has been a long time coming, but Universitas 21 Global has
finally opened its doors to its first student
registratrions. For those of you who may have forgotten,
Universitas 21 Global is a joint venture between Thomson
Learning and a consortium of 16 universities (click on the
[Research] button and follow the links for years of OLDaily
coverage of Universitas 21 and Thomson Corporation).
"Universitas 21 Global expects to enroll 800 students at
this initial registration (an MBA program) and projects to
grow six-fold to about 5,000 students by 2004. Most of
these registrations are expected to be from the Asia
Pacific region." By Press Release, Business Wire, May 28,
2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Drafting COL's next Three-year
Plan
The Commonwealth of Learning has a new
three year plan and would like your input. The plan, in a
nutshell, involves a shift in focus from projects to
programmes, or in other words, a shift from specific works
to capacity building. The plan includes four major areas of
emphasis: the facilitation of policies for distance
learning, the development of distance learning systems, the
application of distance learning, and responding to
members' requests. By Various Authors, Commonwealth of
Learning, May, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Major Internet Standards Group Working On
Fast Plan To Can Spam
This brief article
describes the Anti-Spam Research Group's plans to combat
the growing nuisance. The plan is significant because, as
the article points out, "The ASRG has the prestige to get
its proposals put in place." One major initiative: enabling
technology that makes it diffocult to send emails with
false email addresses. This alone would be a major boon,
since it would allow countermeasures to be taken against
known spammers. Other rpoposals include trusted sender
technology, reputation systems, spam reporting systems, and
more. By Mitch Wagner, Internet Week, May 25, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Safety Patrol Readied for
Dot-Kids
As the .kids.us domain is set up,
establishing a 'safe zone' for kids - "designed to be free
of pornography, hate speech, gambling, discount tobacco
sales and other content deemed inappropriate for young
audiences" - it becomes appropriate to ask about what kids
should be protected from. I have long maintained that some
of the content most harmful to kids never falls under the
usual hit lists such as the one above. McDonald's
commercials, cartoons featuring toys or products,
commercial Christmas buy-me advertising, pro-war and
militaristic content - all of these I consider more
dangerous to children than the usual suspects. Creating a
safe zone is a very political act, and a failure to
recognize the value statements inherent in such an act is
to allow, under the guise of 'protection,' the creation of
a kids-only propaganda zone. By David McGuire, Washington
Post, May 28, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
SMBmeta
Now I have touted this
plan several times in different offices: get businesses to
adopt a metadata format describing themselves. Have each
business maintain such a file just as it maintains a web
site. Generate up to date business information and
statistics merely by harvesting these files. The advantage
to business is that they need update their information only
once, and it is then available to any government agency or
potential customer: no more forms to fill. The advantage on
the other side is dynamic and current information. For some
reason my suggestion never really resonated with listeners,
who continue to do it the old data-input way. Well. Some
people get it. The author of this document, for example,
which describes small business metadata and provides tools
to help business create their own files. By Dan Bricklin,
Interland, May, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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