The Real Getaway Tour. The Getaway is a game for the PS2 set in a realistically modelled representation of London. You'd have to be really bored to go and find all the locations in the game and re-create the missions for real, wouldn't you? [MetaFilter]

ok, granted, i don't like the getaway, it was a sucky game that did not rely on thought at all, just the ability to adequately handle the controller, that is a bad game to me. but this at leat makes something about it interesting.

May you rest in peace mazeone.

Mike Lea aka mazeone on #joiito took his own life on Friday. He worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He recently started hanging out on #joiito and was a pretty active participant in our community. I think he spent more time on #unixpunx. The #unixpunx site says that Vixnix talked to his sister who said to pass this on:

Mike's sister

I wish I could tell you differently, but it is true. He has been very depressed for such a long time. I went down there and stayed with him last weekend and he was just miserable. He did it this past Friday night. He was ready to go. And he's at peace now. I wish I knew what to say. I know you all will miss him, and I know that his irc friends meant a lot to him and he enjoyed talking with you all. He kept trying to get me to go on and meet all the people he enjoyed so much. I'm so glad you all were there for him. I wish it wasn't true either. Feel free to forward this to his irc friends and know that my heart is with you all in missing his wit and him.

mazeone, may you rest in peace…

this happens too often, i've met too many people on irc that chose this end, in #virtue, in #philosophy, in #philosophicus, and now, #joiito, i just don't understand it, there is always so much possibility in the world for this option to be real. may they all rest in peace.

Psst, wanna get a deal on software?

Educational versions of software sell at greatly reduced prices. They are exactly the same as the commercial versions! You're supposed to be a student to qualify for buying them, however gray market educational versions of software are freely available at many computer shows, no questions asked.

The savings can be major. For example, at a recent L.A. computer show the educational version of a popular high end program went for $250. The full commercial version goes for $900 and the upgrade is $450.

Educational software is available in full version only, with no upgrade version. This is because the price is already is so low it's pointless to also have an upgrade version.

[Politics in the Zeros]

the key bit here is that when using academic priced software, you cannot!!! use it for profit, the license is clear.

A public service announcement. Attention data archivists… CD-R's go bad. A dutch study indicates that most CD-Recordable discs become virtually unreadable 20 months after being written. [MetaFilter]

this is good to know

20, 000 Leagues Under. Iâm going to make a Jules Verne prediction for the future. In the next 10 to 15 years, many of the mid-level colleges are going close and reopen as cyber schools. The University of Phoenix has been very successful at… [Invisible Adjunct]

I am not that optimistic, i don't see them closing and opening anew. I see them being surpassed by people that already do cyberschooling very well, and thus eventually closing.

Ted Agres, The Costs of Commercializing Academic R …. Ted Agres, The Costs of Commercializing Academic Research, TheScientist, August 25, 2003. Excerpts: “The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allows US universities and research institutes to patent and commercialize discoveries financed with federal funds, may inadvertently hinder scientific research and impede innovation, scientists and legal experts say….Some legal experts contend that Bayh-Dole actually blocks scientific research when institutions claim ownership of fundamental discoveries and processes, such as new DNA sequences, protein structures, and disease pathways.” [Open Access News]

I think the real area where you see this stagnation originally is in information technology shortly after the act was passed. Has anyone seen any studies on the Bayh-Dole effects or is this one of those things that the Office of Technology Assessment was closed for, so no one would study it…

The Network is the Market. Tribe.net is a Craig's List meets Friendster style Social Networking Service that is just coming out of beta. What's different is the explicit transactional nature of the network, emphasis on tribal organization tools and how it relies on social capital… [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

so here is my thought on social networks from yesterday. by creating barriers to entry, effectively what social network systems on the internet are doing is creating the same social situation as the early internet where technological barriers kept communities small and thus encouraged more interaction amongst the people in them.

Yale Workers Plan Strike for the Opening of a New Semester. Thousands of Yale undergraduates will arrive on campus only to be greeted by an unwelcome but all-too-familiar sight: the ninth labor walkout at Yale in 35 years. By Steven Greenhouse. [New York Times: Education] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

I personally think that there is no better time to do this than the day the parents arrive.