Deena Larsen and Gavin Inglis just brought this interesting bit of hypertext to my attention. It is well worth going through a few times to see what happens, there are several different ends that i've seen….

Results of ICANN meeting in Tunisia. last Friday (31 October), ICANN finished a week of meetings in Carthage, Tunisia. The results were announced on their website, along with the agenda and some of the conference presentations. Among the decisions reached: A timetable for introducing domain names… [InternetPolicy.net]

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Vint and Alejandro, both standard bearers and interesting choices.

More on the Million Book Project. The slides and audio of Gloriana St. Clair's public lecture on The Million Book Project (OCLC, October 24) are now online. (Thanks to ResourceShelf.) [Open Access News]

Where is the real security problem?. Ian Grigg: Ladies and Gentlemen, there you have it. The Internet Threat Model (ITM), in a nutshell.

But, every sumbitch is trying to hack into our machine, everyone has a virus scanner, a firewall,
etc etc. I'm sure we've all shared that weird feeling when we install a new firewall that notifies when your machine is being port scanned?
A new machine can be put on a totally new IP, and almost immediately, ports are being scanned…. [Epeus' epigone]

Free WiFi in “Austin Wireless City”.

The Austin (Texas) American-Statesman published a front-page story today on the proliferation of WiFi hotspots locally. The same issue includes a map of 51 local hotspots. The article focuses on Austin Wireless City, a community wireless project. led by Richard MacKinnon of Less Networks. While an industry analyst is skeptical of free WiFi, hot spots just keep appearing. Austin Wireless City's goal is to facilitate a pervasive wireless quilt for Austin. The city also has an evolving wireless cluster of over 80 companies organized through the Austin Wireless Alliance, and a major wireless study under way called Wireless Future, led by the local University of Texas-affiliated think tank, IC². Wireless Future will publish a substantial wireless report, and is organizing a conference for March 2004.

[Smart Mobs]

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/photos/cellar/cellar.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/photos/cellar2/cellar2.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/photos/halloween/halloween.html

nothing that great, some more of my horrid unedited photography, have fun.

More on the Digital Promise Project. The October 15 issue of RLG DigiNews has an interview with Anne Murphy of the DDP. Excerpt, quoting Anny Murphy: “As a result of our studies, we propose that one of the main objectives of the Digital Opportunity [Investment] Trust [DO IT] be to assist in the digitization of the collections of universities, museums, libraries, and cultural institutions –Americaâs heritage is stored there. DO IT will help to digitize these collections and to set standards to conserve born-digital materials, ensuring their accessibility to all.” [Open Access News]

From Monolithic to Grid. 3 Nov 2003: How did we get from there to here? The history of computing is marked by ages. In each age, the basic design of how we work with computers changes. Many people probably think we're in the brave new Internet age at this time, but considering the nature of computing, we're likely just at an intermediary stage. We're just now peeking into the next age — the age of the truly distributed computing system –he coming of the grid. [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]

Course Development Wars: A Content Expert's Cry for Help.

“You’ve changed the entire meaning and intent of my course!” I blurted out the words and then regreted it as Kendra, the instructional designer looked at me in shock
[Xplana]

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hyperspecialization, the redisciplinization of higher-education, fordism, and post-fordism, the fascism of informationalism, all of that feeds into the situation where education is removed, or inserted, from the processes of higher education, being replaced more or less by method.

Alex thinks that formalism allows for creativity, i agree. In this case though, i don't see it as really a formalization as much as the enveloping of a system and delimiting of what have been for 30 to 150 years certain disciplinary conventions that encourage certain modes of thought, which i will call critical and exploratory. But i think Alex is on to something too with the formalism allowing creativity, HTML for instance is a great example of that, though I've looked at his syllabi on the web and didn't see them following any of the paradigms mentioned in the article;)

Research Writing.

“In teaching research writing, I begin with a bibliographic essay – a narratio of the chain of thought that a student must later insert their critique. I require that they avoid having a thesis until they understand the evidence. Then, as a thesis emerges into an argumentative paper, they must attract the attention of an audience (exordium), provide a logically consistent argument (argumentio), anticipate counter-arguments (refutatio), and suggest a course of action based on their thesis and the evidence. Writing first works to change ourselves, then it works to change others.”(this Public Address > Pragmatic and Semantic Structures)

:: note :: . . . a wonderful clear statement . . .too many students suffer under pre-ordained structure . . . this emerging thesis is the work of creative energy . . . ['if' ..]

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this is useful, i'll have to remember it when i restrucure my courses.