Posts from — May 2003

dac papers available. All the DAC papers are now freely available online, says the conference blog. (Oh what a relief to be able to type in links fast with the slashes and angle brackets in the familiar places on my Norwegian keyboard.)… [jill/txt]

nifty, more free knowledge and commentary

Accidents Do Happen.

If you're not an Accidental Systems Librarian, perhaps you're an Accidental Webmaster. I'm sure one of your many hats is accidental…. [via beSpacific]

[The Shifted Librarian]

this is a handy looking book

Weapons Destroyed. Don Rumsfeld takes a new line and argues that the Iraqi government may have destroyed its WMD arsenal before the war began. Well, I suppose that's a possibility, but I don't see how he can rule out the much more… [Matthew Yglesias]

there would still be evidence of their destruction and of their production, you can't erase everything….

Closing up holes.

A couple weeks ago, I figured it was only a matter of time before iTunes disabled Internet sharing. That was quick.

[A Whole Lotta Nothing]

grrr, i wonder why they did this, it was a great feature…..

Consumer Report on Computers. The most reliable computer you can buy is… June's Consumer Reports surveyed 39,000 readers and…dare I say it? That not said, how reliable are reliability reports? [MetaFilter]

ok, apple wins, and I've had alot of experience with apples, and they are great computers with great service, and I've needed alot of repairs of late for some reason… grrr, one laptop is in the shop again, yes, the one that was in the shop the beginning of the month:(

Command-Line Email. 27 May 2003: O'Reilly tells us about the history ofemail.”Email's mode of transmission is based on 7-bit ASCII. In other words, early Internet communication was only 128 characters – specifically numbers and letters – that we use in English. Hence no Icelandic, Chinese, Hebrew or Greek, to name a few languages. Also, there were no pictures, or sound clips. The only messages sent were English text.” [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]

ahh yes, the good days of email when things were clean and simple without html or attachments….

We don't need no stinkin' Geneva Convention. We don't need no stinkin' Geneva Convention – US plans death camp – plans to turn Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray into a death camp are in the works. [MetaFilter]

umm, no, this should not happen. They should be brought to the U.S. for the regular round of criminal proceedings.

BOFH cops a virus. Episode 10 Bring the tranquiliser gun [The Register]

new bofh, woo hooo!

Gaming as a Solution for Computer Science Woes.

The New York Times ran an article this past week that discussed the changing times for computer majors. The boom of the 90's ended in a bust, and further layoffs and dim forecasts by the technology industry have caused many students to reconsider the profitability of a degree in computer science.

 At Carnegie Mellon University, applications to the School of Computer Science for next fall are down 36 percent from their peak in 2001; applications to Virginia Tech's computer science department have declined 40 percent since 2001. At M.I.T., renowned for its computer science curriculum, 20 percent fewer freshmen declared electrical engineering and computer science as their central focus this spring than did in 2001 or 2002.

[Xplana]

ZIPPP, SLASH, CUT. Two years ago we put forth proposals that would have brought Computer Game Studies to Virginia Tech in a big way, but for a variety of reasons the Institution basically said NO WAY, it's not RESEARCH, even though the proposals demonstrated that it was clearly research and that it would be highly beneficial to the University in a BIG MONEY sort of way….

Because of this, I don't think that Games are going to save any computer science department, one problem is that Games aren't built on the back of computer scientists. Some of the innovation in games comes from there, but the really great games come from people with a broad background and interests in the humanities and social science, interests in HUMANS, not in computers. The IGDA curriculum that i commented on and now exists on their website is illustrative of this, computer games is much broader than computer science. Given the funding structures and student interests in 'normal' computer science. I can see where they could be in a pickle for a while, not just here, but elsewhere.

So anyway, I suppose this is the same case other places…. I see the places that are working on computer games and those are places that break disciplines and break paradigms, many universities in the U.S. are less likely to do that, I think.

behind the razzle dazzle. That the debate over the higher education institutions in Australia is conducted in very utilitarian terms should come as no suprise, since Australia's public philosophy is utilitarian one. Currently, the key issue in the debate is the private/public funding of the university. The funding issue mostly ignores any consideration of the impact of the corporatisation of the liberal university that we find here. And what is rarely spoken about is the connection between the university as an ethical institution in civil society and the broadening of liberal democracy. Consider this response to Brendan Nelson's proposed reforms to higher education. Davidson makes two points. First: “Behind the razzle-dazzle, with the promise of an injection of an additional billion dollars of taxpayer funds, is a scheme for creating a two-tier system that will intensify the competition for a place in the top tier based on family wealth and, hence, ease the competitive… [philosophy.com]

This is an excellent and interesting analysis of events… But lets realize that australia has always had two classes of universities, they had the technical universities as second class citizens for a long time, then suddenly, technical capacity was prioritized and i wonder what happened next….