By Stephen Downes
November 17, 2003
Weblog Spam
I have tried to
convince bloggers that push-style APIs (such as ping,
trackback, and the like) are the wrong way to go, without
much success. Some early spam seemed to vindicate me, but
then came the anti-spam manifesto and a new blacklist.
Round one for the bloggers, right? No. I agree
wholeheartedly with Mark Pilgrim: "No offense to Jay or all
the people who have contributed to the list so far, but how
quaint! I mean really. Savor this moment, folks. You can
tell your children stories of how, back in the early days
of weblogging, you could print out the entire spam
blacklist on a single sheet of paper. Maybe with two or
three columns and a smallish font, but still. Boy, those
were the days. And they won’t last. They absolutely won’t
last." There's a simple logic here, one which the blog
technologists ignored: you have to choose your
content. That's why blogs were (are) so great: you could
subscribe to a blog and get the great content without the
garbage. But as soon as you let in the unsolicited content,
spam arrives. As Pilgrim says, "It’s all been done. It’s
all been done before, and it was completely all-consuming,
and it still didn’t work." By Mark Pilgrim, Dive Into
Mark, November 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Cornell and Other University Libraries to
Cancel Elsevier Titles
More on the cancellation
of subscriptions to Elsevier journals as purchasers react
to increasing prices and an unresponsive publisher.
Consider this comment out of Harvard. "Under Elsevier's
current pricing, the cost of online access steeply
increases in response to any cancellations at all; thus we
will have to cancel a significant number of titles in order
to achieve any cost reductions. By changing our own buying
practices, we also hope that we can influence the dynamics
of the way that online journals are being sold." By Paula
J. Hane, Information Today, November 17, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
We Are the Problem: We Are Selling Snake
Oil
Well. "Training does not work. eLearning
does not work. Blending Learning does not work. Knowledge
Management does not work. Yet we collectively reify our
denial and project the root of the problem out to an
external institutional framework. We are the source of the
problem because we are selling snake oil. It doesn’t work
but there is still plenty of money in it." So begins this
wonderful rant on the Learning Circuits blog by Sam Adkins,
who then backs up his comments. Some good comments follow.
And yet... it's not all snake oil, is it? This isn't
snake oil, is it? By Sam Adkins, Learning Circuits Blog,
November 16, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
EDUCAUSE Review
Congratulations to
the EDUCAUSE Review for coming out with an HTML version
alongside the usual PDF! As I am in a hotel room in
Dartmouth (Nova Scotia) today, the fast load was really
appreciated. It looks great in Firebird, too. By Various
Authors, November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Muscles, Aches, and Pains of Open
Source
People often talk about the dangers of
depending on open source. This article begins by describing
the risks a university takes with commercial software - "We
are watching our providers fail, merge, and be acquired...
Microsoft challenges us in other ways. We struggle with its
licensing offerings. We struggle with the security of its
applications." Fair enough, but how does a university
participate in the development of open source applications,
which typically involves sharing with other institutions? "
Maintenance and support have neither the glamour nor the
defined end points. They're not as much fun, and they last
forever." Who will, asks the author, "furnish the muscles,
the aches, and the pains?" By Annie Stunden, EDUCAUSE
Review, November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Copyright: What Makes a Use
"Fair"?
Short but quality discussion of the
concept of "fair use" as it has developed under law and
jurisprudence in the U.S. keying on the four major
characters: whether the use was commercial or not, whether
the work was fact-based or fanciful, how much of the
original work was used, and whether there a significant
change to the original. By June M. Besek, EDUCAUSE Review,
November, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Privacilla Criticizes Anti-Commercial Screed
Against RFID Tags
Don't they realize, that when
you start attacking critics of a technology as
'scare-mongers' that most people (including me) conclude
that maybe there is something to worry about? After all,
when the personal attacks start, it's because the reasoned
defense has in some way failed (it's kind of like those
radio broadcasts that begin, "Do not be alarmed. The
government is in complete control."). So pencil me into the
ranks of the 'scare-mongers' regarding RFID tags, those
little transmitters inserted into clothing and other goods.
Consider: "Under any scenario, there just isn't going to be
post-sale data-collection about the movement of canned
peaches." Oh no? Then how will they track down the
contaminated cans? I am happy to be indifferent about RFID,
but not until their defenders tell us the real story. By
Press Release, Privacilla, November 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
'Dodgy-dossier Syndrome' Rife in the
Workplace
I'm of two minds when it comes to
citing sources. On the one hand, I think it's often useless
- I once saw an academic paper provide a reference for the
observation that the internet is growing. And it's often
overdone, more akin to name-dropping than serious
discourse. On the other hand, as this article emphasizes,
it's important to track sources for important information
or examples, so that otjer people can judge the original
for themselves and avoid what in this article is 'dodgy
research'. I have different standards of references for
different works, but generally, if I depend on an external
source to make a point, I cite it, and if I'm simply
restating something that could stand on its own or is a
metter of opinion, I don't. By Matt Loney, ZD Net UK,
November 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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