Category — General

Women offered taste of tech. A course to provide women with a basic understanding of computers is the latest scheme to try to lure more women to tech jobs. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

this is good news, but does it address the real problem, or what might be the real problem…

College Loans Rise, Swamping Dreams. As college tuition has climbed, so has the number of students who borrow to help pay for it. By Greg Winter. [New York Times: Education]

I'm still climbing out of this hole, but mine is not anywhere near as bad as many people pursuing ph.d's

This Is Dave Barry's Brain on Blog.

Darn – Dave Barry is finally blogging, but there's no RSS feed because he's on Blogspot. 

[The Shifted Librarian]

I like Dave Barry.

Open and free global registry of doctoral dissertations in progress.

OLDaily:

PhdData. Still being developed, PhdData intends to be an open and free global registry of doctoral dissertations in progress. By Daniel Vainstub, January 26, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

[Mathemagenic]

this, i think is a bad thing, a very bad thing. this is because it operates on the principle that your research should be entirely novel, and really, it hardly ever it, the best part of the dissertation is the building on the prior knowledges, not that this is what they really mean, but if you go there and look before you choose your topic, you will feel entirely wrong. a dissertation should be constructed from either your positions and passions or from the situated necessities of your department and committee. You should not feel that if someone else is doing a similar things that this impinges on your research at all, even if you have contradictory theses, that's even better. I mean this is about knowledge, so the project you understake has to be understood as furthering knowledge, if it compliments, contradicts, parallels, etc. that accomplishes the goal.

The Ecology of Open Source Software. A new paper on Open Source Software development. [Kieran Healy's Weblog]
I have a paper flying around called the network ecology of open source software. I'll be reading this paper.

Algorithmic and Generative Art. “GoogleSynth uses the Google Image Search thingy to randomly grab two images as the 'input' and 'target' images for the algorithm. Once it has two images it applies the algorithm with the parameters set by the user and produces a new image based on them. The results vary wildly, often the output is a total mess, but it creates some cool looking stuff now and then (depending on your definition of 'cool').” (For Windows and Mac OSX.) [MetaFilter]

this is neat….

toast me… i say you've got to toast me!. “i am arogon, son of alfred.” it's nothing shocking to hear that europe is being flooded with asian-made bootlegs of the two towers. but who would have thought the sub-titled translations would prove so hilariously incorrect and occasionally inappropriate? [MetaFilter]

if i were to buy one, it would be for the humor factor, and nothing else. I could see making a movie night out of that.

So there is this story over at yahoo from newsfactor. It is about tech certifications. I've frequently threatened to pursue such things, though I've avoided it in the end. In any case, they've discovered some somewhat interesting things. Such as people with certifications generally get paid a fair amount, though it is unclear about how much that is in any notable relation to their peers….. though they do have stats from magazines and providers that certainly substantiate their position.

Well I finally registered Radio, but not without a few problems. I couldn't get the registration to work with either linux or osx with mozilla or safari. This caused some delay, but not much. Last night, the kind people @ Radio sent me a method of registering which worked just fine.

Beautiful summary of track back applications. by Ben Hammersley… [BookBlog]

i wonder if is should implement such a system…