grrr, i think my powerbook is broke again! today i put in a dvd, watched some of the office yesterday, was going for another britcom this evening and it took it didn't recognize it, would eject it until i rebuted and returned my new dvd with 4 concentric scratches on it, then i tried another dvd, and it wouldn't take it, then i tried a few cd's and nada, so i rebooted, zapped pram, etc. and same deal. it will begin to take the cd into the slot, pause, then eject it. this sort of sux cause i just got it back from apple last tuesday after the screen went out…. i'd like to actually use my tibook sometime, i really would…

I Saw the Light. As a historian, I am dismayed by the letters I see that proclaim that America was founded as a Christian nation. “America is not a Christian nation but rather a nation of mostly Christians. That was the intent of the Founders, to allow each of us the right under natural law, to decide matters of conscience for ourselves.” A new form of revisionism? [MetaFilter]

SIMILE: Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments. SIMILE: Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments
http://web.mit.edu/simile/www/

SIMILE is a joint project conducted by the W3C, HP, MIT Libraries, and MIT's Lab for Computer Science. SIMILE seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets, schemas, metadata, and services. A key challenge is that the collections which must inter-operate are often distributed across individual, community, and institutional stores. They seek to be able to provide end-user services by drawing upon the assets, schemas, and metadata held in such stores.

SIMILE will leverage and extend DSpace, enhancing its support for arbitrary schemas and metadata, primarily though the application of RDF and semantic web techniques. The project also aims to implement a digital asset dissemination architecture based upon web standards. The dissemination architecture will provide a mechanism to add useful “views” to a particular digital artifact (i.e. asset, schema, or metadata instance), and bind those views to consuming services. [Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker]

Craftsmanship and design in programming: “Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship (though it can be), it's design. Design is that nebulous area where you can add value faster than you add cost. The New York Times magazine has been raving about the iPod and how Apple is one of the few companies that knows how to use good design to add value. But I've talked enough about design, I want to talk about craftsmanship for a minute: what it is and how you recognize it.”
[Joel on Software] [Universal Rule]

On-line Forum About Virtual Universities. From ICT Net mailinglist:

An Invitation to participate in an Internet discussion forum on virtual universities and transnational education is made by UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). The forum will focus on policy.

The virtual university is one example of new developments in higher education and raises questions about trans-national education, online learning, access, flexibility, and so on. These developments surely challenge existing educational policies, demand revised or entirely new ones, and necessitate new approaches to planning and management. [Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

Logicampus – new open source CMS.

http://www.logicampus.com/

New open source CMS that was the result of a joint project between Tap Internet and Tarrant County College in Texas. The PHP-based system is quite full featured and will be quickly comprehensible by anyone who has used any of the more 'content-focused' style CMS.

Note I have added this to the ongoing list of open source course management systems, which has moved from its previous location. It can now be found as a wiki page at http://www.edtechpost.ca/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/
EdTechPost/OpenSourceCourseManagementSystems

[EdTechPost]

Call for submissions to a new refereed electronic journal, Fast Capitalism, which addresses the impact of information and communication technologies on self, society and culture in the 21st century. Bridging the social sciences and humanities, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary work. We anticipate posting our first number in summer or fall 2004. Please direct submissions to Ben Agger, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Box 19599, University of Texas at Arlington 76019 or to agger@uta.edu.