Stocking Stuffer: “Now available: the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth. Tabke of contents below the fold. Note the heavy representation of UMD folk: in addition to Susan’s leadership in co-editing the volume, I…”

(Via Matthew G. Kirschenbaum.)

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several good reads in it though. from Matt to my colleague Charles, to Anja, and others, it is a solid and thorough volume.

Library or Tower?: “Matt K. has started a bit of a debate over on his site about the significance of Google’s recent foray into digital libraries. Many have lauded this move as a gigantic leap forward for us thinking (and, potentially, non-thinking) humans…”

(Via Things as They Are.?.)

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library or tower or…. ocean…. or market.

Kevin Kelly — Cool Tools: “Modest Needs, a minuscule non-profit, grants modest (under $200) one-time cash gifts to those who require just a little help to get them through a tough time. A need, if honored, is granted within 72 hours, with no strings attached. Modest Needs does this with commendable efficiency via the web (it’s not hard to be broke and still get online), heart-warming sympathy (every request is read by a volunteer), and impressive reach (220 requests granted this year, or 7% of the million dollars sought for). “

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this is the type of thing that we need more of in the u.s.

Battelle Argues that Google Is Mutating: “

Search guru John Battelle thinks Google has just undergone a major mutation, but I’m not so sure I agree. Here’s his case:

John Battelle’s Searchblog: Print Implications: Google As Builder

—snip—

Now Google has in effect become a subcontractor to libraries who will be deciding what to put on line from their collections. It’s still the library’s decision, Google is just providing technical help (and getting paid for it, I’d imagine?).

As Battelle notes ‘Google has announced that the results will be included in the index, not separated out in a vertical book search engine.’ There is an issue as to how the stuff is ranked at first, although Google Scholar gives us some hints. Over time, it gets linked to like everything else and it seems to me the problem shrinks, no?

“

tp://www.discourse.net/”>Discourse.net.)

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they key problem to me is that google will eventually de-hierarchize traditional assumptions about what is knowledge, what is ‘good’ information, what should be read, and what should be scanned, etc. if slashdot is on the same plane as a peer-reviewed academic journal, then, i think there will be some issues to resolve in the educational infrastructure, moreso than we have now.

Computer Stupidities: Operating Systems: ” The interview seemed to be going well up to this point, with the guy seeming to understand most of the stuff I was throwing out (even the stuff I wasn’t too sure about myself) until I happened to mention that the DG workstation, along with all the other workstations and servers in our office (save the NT server, of course) ran DG/UX 5.4R3.10:

Me: ‘Yeah, and this thing runs DG/UX 5.4R3.10.’

Him: ‘What’s that?’

He stares blankly. My heart sinks.

Him: ‘So does that run as a thread under NT?’

Me: ‘No. It’s an OS. It just runs by itself.’

Him: ‘Oh oh, so you start up NT, then–’

Me: ‘No. UNIX. It’s an operating system. It runs by itself, not under NT.’v

He stares blankly. So much for this prospective employee.”

(Via .)

funnies

INSIDE JoongAng Daily: “‘We received a tip that Mr. Song was confined and killed by his followers because they wanted to experience eternal life and resurrection,’ a police representative said. ‘We are investigating whether this was caused by a group of devotees who were into this new pseudo-religion.’
“

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just because you have faith, doesn’t mean what you have faith in…. is true.