Category — General

Who knew you could cheat at chess? – Yahoo! News:
NEW DELHI, Dec 27 (Reuters Life!) – An Indian chess player
has been banned for 10 years for cheating after he was caught
using his mobile phone’s wireless device to win games, chess
officials said on Wednesday

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If they cheat at chess…… the can cheat at anything… and people frequently do. If you set up a system to reward the people who take advantages… then people take advantages that break rules.

The five-things-you-didn’t-know-about-me meme:
Michael tagged me with this.

1. I was a Military Policeman in the Washington D.C. National Guard, primarily because when I transferred there from Pennsylvania, I was too junior to be in the Intelligence battalion of the reserves. I joined the reserves to help pay for college when i was 17. I passed the Rights of Passage training in the 29th infantry division, in the 3/116th infantry brigade, light infantry. It is a remnant of the Stonewall Brigade. This unit is currently known as the “Bedford Boys” for their service on Omaha beach and recently returned from Afghanistan. I know my way around everything from a 9mm pistol to an m2 machine gun, was at one time or another a dragon gunner, a machine gunner, a radio man, a grenadier, and a team leader.

2. I attended 3 different High Schools in northern pennsylvania, with 3 different sets of requirements and still graduated on time… though barely. I drove a chevette that my grandfather gave me.

3. I attended American University for one semester before I attended Virginia Tech.

4. I worked as a canvasser one summer for U.S. PIRG, door to door… I was never fired, not because I outperformed other people though. In fact, I have never been fired from any job

5. I’ve been in 2 car accidents, never as the driver, but in each… I’ve broken the knuckle of my ring finger of my right hand. Everything else was bumps and bruises. I am occasionally a nervous rider in cars.

since michael tagged me, I’ll tag Shane, Clevergirl, Jason, Jean, Sarah, and Suw

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Barney Cam 2006 (QT):

The barney cam, the only thing that this president actually gets right

The Rejection of D-Space: Selecting Theses Database Software at the University of Calgary Archives:
This article by Lisa Atkinson of the University of Calgary Archives describes their decision to abandon DSpace for their ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) platform. Richard Jones of Imperial College London has prepared a rebuttal to Lisa’s criticisms.

Update (2006-12-19): The University of Calgary has reevaluated DSpace and is intending to use it as an ETD platform.
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I teach dspace, despite its myriad of issues, to my students. I will be combining it with Digital Curation this spring I think. It should be fun.

It’s a Cool Yule (Log):
For many years, growing up in New York, the Yule Log on WPIX-TV (now a CW station) was a Christmas tradition. We didn’t have a fireplace and this was the next best thing. Begun in 1966 at the New York television station by Fred Thrower, general manager of the station, as a gift to his viewers. It started as a three-hour broadcast on Christmas Eve, lasting four years until the tape wore out and had to be replaced. In later years it was reduced to two hours and then moved in Christmas morning. Finally in 1989, the Yule Log was canceled. In 2001, to help a recovering city, the Yule Log returned to the airways and is now also living on the web.
http://www.theyulelog.com/htmls/flashwelcome.html

Mass Digitization for art libraries and special collections:
The Alfred P. Sloan foundation has granted $1 million to the Internet Archive for digitization in 5 US institutions to boost the materials available in the Open Content Alliance (OCA).
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This is great news

Library takes novel approach to romance – Yahoo! News:
CANBERRA (Reuters) – A 150-year old Australian public
library has a new true-romance section after introducing
speed-dating nights for lovers of classic texts.
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libraries are part of the community…

Mirror gives Italian village its place in the sun – Yahoo! News:
A village in the Italian Alps is finally
basking in winter sunlight thanks to a giant mirror installed
on a mountain top to reflect the sun’s rays into the main
square.

Viganella, with a population of less than 200, lies in a
valley so steep that each year from November 11 to February 2
it hardly receives any sunshine.

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and man said…. Let there be light, and there was.

Not Your Average Photos:
Things you don’t see every day…

Donald Vance, American POW.:
The NYT has a remarkable story about a 29-year-old American working for an Iraqi contractor who became an FBI informant against them, only to have the FBI arrest him for working for the company. He was held as a POW (in the same prison holding Saddam Hussein) and abused for 97 days, denied an attorney, denied a phone call for two weeks, and “tried” before a group of military officials whose identities were kept secret. Even after the military admitted that they were holding him without cause it took 18 days to release him. Do you feel any safer now that we allow our government to do this to us?

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I do not feel good about this mistreatment of american’s by our military and government. I think this is exemplary of what humans should not do to each other, not just what humans should not do to fellow citizens. Habeus corpus is not just for Americans, it is about the fundamental equality and dignity of the human being. Waldo’s example of the NYT is just evidence of what happens when ‘warfare’ becomes ‘profit’. Those who question the relation of capital to war become enemies. That to me, is wrong.