Exporting Jobs? Who, Us?. India's Business Standard reported in January that the US Republican Party would be outsourcing fund-raising to call centers in India … [istori/log]

is this surprising?

Ted Agres reports in today's issue of TheScientist …. Ted Agres reports in today's issue of TheScientist that the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has launched a top-to-bottom assessment of the way the U.S. funds science. It is soliciting comments from the public, due by September 22. The goal is to improve the “efficiency, effectiveness and accountability” of U.S. science funding. (PS: All three of these criteria invite comments that advocate open access. OA supports efficency because it costs less, effectiveness because it makes research results more widely accessible and useful, and accountability because it directs funds only to essential expenses whose amount is comparatively easy to demonstrate and justify. Please consider sending comments to the OSTP.) [Open Access News]

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this is the type of situation where one might be able to push for equitable distribution of science funding. this is the sort of political decision that will either perpetuate the status quo, or allow some minor transformations that might account for information technology. i think we could also ask them to consider the relationship between information technology and the future of science, which seems to be a priority to me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forward. 1
Introduction. 2
Informational Warfare Model 7
    Command Layer 9
    Communications Layer 9
    Agent Layer 10
    Functional Layer 10
    Facilitators Layer 10
    Vulnerabilities Layer 10
    Inherent Layer Characteristics. 11
    Layer Design Idealisms. 12
    Effectiveness Measurements. 12
....
Cyber-Pandemonium.. 101
Conclusion. 103

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I've not read it, but for 100 or so pages, you can be sure that it hold the complete knowledge of this are, of this i am sure, like every other 100 page pamphlet, nothing but complete truth:) yes, it might be good.

Bio-ADIT 2004 SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

The First International Workshop on Biologically Inspired
Approaches to Advanced Information Technology

January 29 - 30, 2004

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland

Website: http://lslwww.epfl.ch/bio-adit2004/

Sponsored by
- Osaka University Forum,
- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, and
- The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of
 The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
 Technology (MEXT), Japan, under the Program Title
 "Opening Up New Information Technologies for Building
 Networked Symbiosis Environment

Biologically inspired approaches have already proved successful
in achieving major breakthroughs in a wide variety of problems
in information technology (IT). A more recent trend is to
explore the applicability of bio-inspired approaches to the
development of self-organizing, evolving, adaptive and
autonomous information technologies, which will meet the
requirements of next-generation information systems, such as
diversity, scalability, robustness, and resilience. These new
technologies will become a base on which to build a networked
symbiotic environment for pleasant, symbiotic society of human
beings in the 21st century.

Bio-ADIT 2004 will be the first international workshop to
present original research results in the field of bio-inspired
approaches to advanced information technologies. It will also
serve to foster the connection between biological paradigms
and solutions to building the next-generation information
systems.

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go to the website for the rest:)

Grid Computing is evolving from the merely sharing of distributed
resources for large computational tasks to the developing of Grid
as a service-oriented architecture for transparent and reliable
distributed system integration. The paradigm of Grid computing complements
the current approach of Semantic Web and Web Services by providing an
infrastructure to handle large-scale distributed enterprise information
systems.
.....

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lots more info on the website

SAT math and verbal scores hit highs. I'm sorry to say this, and it is not just generational envy, but I just can't believe this. You would have to try very hard to convince me that these results aren't due to the 'dumbing down' of the SATs. – SWL [EdTechPost]

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it should be noted that the bar has been lowered on the sat, not by making it easier or harder, but by lowering the number of questions that you need to get right in order to get a perfect score, there have been statistical 'corrections' that have allowed students to get higher scores, this is at least part of the explanation.

Pinup Profs; or, The 'Airbrushed Fantasy' of the College Brochure. 1. They are all located in New England in the fall. That includes colleges in New Mexico and above the Arctic Circle, where hundreds of multicolored deciduous trees are shipped by FedEx during this yearlong season…. 5. Their faculty members… [Invisible Adjunct]

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i don't think this is any different than its always been, is it. Of course some schools also show labs, but only the nicest labs:) and I've yet to actually find the labs occasionally shown in some schools, and when i do they look different usually…

The professor has left their context. George wonders if the notion that his students will find and read his blog will influence his writing, and decides probably not. Agreed. It's on the other end that there may be more impact. I still have skewed notions of… [weezBlog]

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the context of no context. most of my students only know me through my online personae, which is usually 'socratic questioner' 'guide on the side', etc. and don't know me as any other role, never met me in my office, etc. and the ones that do come to my office are usually quite surprised about how my office is, which is 'lived in' in the least interesting sense of the word. so they worry about that stack of paper that is sitting in the chair and whether they should move it, looking longingly at the chair, etc. like it is some place to sit instead of a wheeled file cabinet that it obviously is in my interpretive flexibile approach to the world. but yes, students expect you to be something you probably aren't just like they expect people on tv to be like the characters they play, will learning other things about those people change their opinion, yes, is that a good thing, probably yes.

Borrowers pile up debt to pay off bills. Money: Nearly one in four people are turning to loans and credit cards to meet day-to-day living costs, new research says. [Guardian Unlimited]

the same thing is happening in the U.S., and I can't imagine the future for the economy as a boon given the average debtloads of individual. I've aimed to be debt free here in a few years, and I'm going to attempt to stay that way. However, when i walk through squires and see a kid with a credit card and magazine ordering new tires for his car because his student loan came in, i become somewhat disenchanted about people's economic decision making. I know i made my mistakes.

i have not been able to find out what this feast is on the web, any ideas? oh today's the day, seems like a good day to celebrate, and apparently this is the celebration of the day, but what is it?

i found it on my jubilee saints calendar from autonomedia.org