By Stephen Downes
June 30, 2003
Bloggers Gain Libel
Protection
Good news for bloggers and services
(such as universities) that host blogs: in a U.S. court,
they cannot be held liable for the truth of information
passed on through this medium. When you think about it, it
makes sense: "on blogs or e-mail lists, people aren't
necessarily selling anything, they're just engaging in
speech. That freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you were
held liable for every piece of information you cut, paste
and forward." Imagine what life would be like if you were
responsible for the truth of everything that was said or
repeated in your building. It would be absurd - and it
would also be absurd in blogspace. By Xeni Jardin, Wired
News, June 30, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Another Look at ELearning
Jay
Cross gets it. "Our era could well be called The Age of
Networks," he writes (long time OLDaily readers will know
that I declared the start of the Network Age to have begun
in April, 2002). "Humanity is awakening to
the realization that everything's connected. If something's
not a node, it's a connection. Each of us is enmeshed in
social, communications, information, and neural networks."
Cross traces some of the implications of this in learning:
"Learning enables us to enjoy relationships and knowledge.
Learning involves exploring new ground, making discoveries,
and clearing paths that let us go deeper. To learn is to
optimize one's networks." Exactly. Now we can begin to move
forward. By Jay Cross, Internet Time, June 29, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Open Source Prepares to Kiss EU Patent Ass
Goodbye
Every time I run an item from the
Register I get an unusual number of bouces from content
filters, and today's listing is no exception. But their ire
in this case is understandable as the European Parliament
is poised to align its copyright regime with that of the
United States. What this measure does, in essence, is to
relax the restrictions governing just what can be patented
- in the United States, this has resulted in the patenting
of computer processes and business methods (and peanut
butter sandwiches). By Kieren McCarthy, The Register, June
29, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
XML for Federation and Content Management
Services
This article doesn't go into a lot of
depth but it provides an overview and some links around the
idea of what are called 'federated services.' Think of a
federated service as a single service that is provided
through several sites. In a federated service, your logon
identity is typically passed from server to server as you
access different resources from each: in other words, the
different sites have a common understanding of who you are
and can coordinate their response. Though federation is
important in some cases - such as travel planning - it
creates a lot of overhead in others, and is not
recommended. By Unknown, Content Wire, June 26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
I Like Pie
The RSS community has
gone through a difficult weekend as Dave Winer pulled his
Scripting News site from the web for a few hours in order
to muster support against the new Echo initiative (the
name, once 'Pie', will change again because of conflicts).
In a response to Aaron Swartz (now apparently offline)
Winer decried this article, by Tim Bray, as "awful." The
article is an explanation for the need for the new
initiative, but while it touches technical and political
questions, I certainly don't see the offense detected by
Winer. For my own part, I remain neutral in this debate; I
will support both formats (or, more accurately, all five).
By Tim Bray, Antarctica, June 23, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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