OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
November 5, 2004

More on Blogging Referee Reports and Hacking Peer Review
Just to be clear - I am in the camp that believes that we should do away with prior-to-publication peer review. That said, Seb Paquet explores the concept of blogging peer reviews in this short item. As this item argues, "Because they are so busy, referees often do a lousy job of reviewing submitted papers, and they often get away with it because they act under the cover of anonymity."Seb links to a discussion on David Wiley's site, and one of the comentators there links to this article highlighting the difference between print and online publication. By Seb Paquet, Seb's Open Research , November 5, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

What Not to Say
The best part of this short post is in the comments, and specifically the first one. "Bloggers are not journalists in the same way that the guy I had a conversation with at lunch isn't. But that doesn't mean you should avoid lunch conversations in favor of professional, fact-checked journalism." By David Weinberger, Joho the Blog, November 5, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software
Interesting look at the problem of designing social software for groups (as opposed to for collections of individuals). Most of the discussion looks at means of addressing flaming - of course, my interest these days is in squelching spam. I am still not convinced that push technologies - such as emails, discussion boards, and the like - can withstand the influence of these pests. Sure, if you have a large enough group, like Wikipedia or Slashdot, you can stamp out abuse. But who has a group that size? By Clay Shirkey, November 5, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Perl 6 Grammars and Regular Expressions
Articles like this constitute a fun read for me, but unless you are one of the many developers awaiting Perl 6 you won't get a lot from it. For me, though, there's nothing like a good regular expression parser, the topic of this surface look at one of Perl 6's central features. The arrival of Perl 6 will be big news for a lot of people; the previous version was new in the mid-90s and has stood the test of time. By Teodor Zlatanov, IBM developerWorks, November 2, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Experiences from the Use of Skolelinux: Use of OpenSource Software at Four Norwegian Schools
The nice thing about open source is that you can adapt it to your own needs. Hence the emergence of Skolelinux, a Linux distribution for Norwegian schools. This article describes the deployment of the softare in four schools. Overall, "Skolelinux in a school environment is less expensive to acquire and operate than different Windows versions. The schools having picked Skolelinux are satisfied with the choice, and would do it again." Don't miss the links at the bottom of the article, including interviews with Knut Yrvin, Project Leader of Skolelinux. By Kirsten Haaland and Rishab Ghosh, European Communities 2004, November, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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