Category — General

Thoughts from my first day of work. 1. I miss my iBook.

2. But I also missed Homesite. For my purposes, BBEdit is usable, but
HomeSite kicks its ass all over the place.

3. Where to start with Outlook. I got so used to the many fantastic features
of Entourage that Outlook (at least the version I'm using here) is almost
unusable.

4. Why is the CTRL key all the way over there?

5. But damn, this Pentium 4 is fast. The iBook is downr… [kottke.org]

mmmm, homesite, if i was still using windows, i would be using homesite, which i still think is one of the best basic training aids for web systems design and programming. if you think that ctrl key is far, try a SUN keyboard, gack! the transition takes me a second or two every time…. Now my new mac has more keys than my pc keyboards, which is problematic also. why can't everyone just stay with the old ibm mechanical keyboards, nice click, nice feel, all is good.

Koïchiro Matsuura, the Director-General of UNESCO, …. Koïchiro Matsuura, the Director-General of UNESCO, spoke at the recent Paris conference on Open Access. He has now put a summary of his UNESCO remarks online. Excerpt: “The new economic and technological environment is raising concerns about the erosion of access to certain information and knowledge whose free sharing facilitated scientific research and education in past decades.” [FOS News]

it didn't facilitate it. It provided for it. Without the free access to scientific information you should as well throw the whole concept of science away, remember Robert K. Merton's norms of science, communism of knowledge is central to the project. No one should own scientific knowledge, people should own the tertiary products of knowledge. Sometimes people think that I am too hardline on this topic, but come on knowledge is our business, we generate and provide knowledge to the world as scholars, without that, we should as well just go private.

Computers, Freedom, Privacy. I'm off to New York for the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, one of the most important gatherings of… [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

if you can go, you should go, this conference has a fine reputation.

Colin Steele, Phoenix rising: new models for the r …. Colin Steele, Phoenix rising: new models for the research monograph? A preprint in the ANU E-Press Archive, forthcoming from Learned Publishing, 16, 2 (2003) pp. 111-122. Abstract: “There is significant evidence that traditional university presses are continuing to face financial crises. Outlets for research monographs are drying up, print runs are being reduced and monograph costs are increasing. The combination of the digital networked environment and open-archive initiatives may, however, provide the opportunity, through institutional repositories, to rethink the role and nature of the distribution of research monographs in a university setting. The adoption of new models, untrammelled by the structures of the past, while still retaining editorial and refereeing standards, could revolutionize the access and distribution patterns of research knowledge within university frameworks. Ultimate success will depend, however on programmes of scholarly advocacy in scholarly communication with the academic author as both creator and as consumer.” [FOS News]

while we didn't say this first, we did say something very similar in a presentation that i made in 2000 about the possibilities for online academic publishing.

this is the type of thing that sunshine laws in the u.s. should provide. i want everything the president says to anyone public knowledge now, unless it is directly related to national security, and that should be vetted by appointees by a senate committee.

Since the EU Council decided in May 2001 to provid …. Since the EU Council decided in May 2001 to provide open access to its non-classified meeting papers, the public has been taking advantage of the opportunity. “The number of requests for access to EU Council of Ministers documents has doubled to 2,394 since the entry into force of the legislation and 80 per cent of these demands have resulted in full disclosure.” Some member states, like Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and some press organizations, like Reuters, think the EU policy should go further to open up the process of its decision-making and educate the public about its deliberations. (Thanks to QuickLinks.) [FOS News]

New RFC Adds “Evil Bit” [Slashdot]

this is clearly a necessary addition to any networking protocol, though it needs to be supplemented with the competency bit, because there is nothing so wrong as the incompetent, evil packet….

CSS Examples and Commentary.

Tantek Celik has recently released some useful CSS examples (with accompanying commentary) under a Creative Commons attribution license.

Check out Tantek's reasoning for the move.

[Creative Commons: weblog]

you know i see all this work on css, and i do so little with it. I really have to check out css, as it is clear that my life without it is incomplete., not to mention that recently I've been demonstrating less than fab web design sense… as is evidenced by the design of this blog, or lack of it, well honestly, this design is a weak hack and that is about it, nothing new there.

More on scientific self-censorship….The staff of …. More on scientific self-censorship….The staff of The Why Files has written a balanced and detailed article, Perils of Publication, on the risks of censoring, and not censoring, scientific journal articles in an age of terrorism. The article is based on interviews with Martin Blume, Eugene Garfield, Paul Ginsparg, and Raymond Zilinskas. (Thanks to LII.org.) [FOS News]

it might be time to consider once again the role of science in free society.

Michael Fraser has written a very useful Quick Gui …. Michael Fraser has written a very useful Quick Guide to Eprints for the Oxford University Computing Services web site. For readers new to the concept, this guide is just the right length. Apart from the clear introduction, Fraser also gives a bit of news: “Over the next few months a pilot eprints repository will be developed in Oxford together with policies and support.” [FOS News]

interesting, i suspect more and more universities will be going in this direction.

Survey shows increasing business interest in Open Source software. According to The Register, “A report on business attitudes to open source software published this week indicates steady progress in the UK, with a growing number of CIOs seeing OSS as a means to tackle Total Cost of Ownership, and indications that it is being used in more sophisticated roles. The study, conducted by Trend Consulting on behalf of OpenForum Europe and published this week in the IoD's Director magazine, reveals growing confidence in open source, and notes that avoidance of lock-in is as much a driver as TCO. ..”. [Living Without Microsoft]

this is good, but we need more info