Ten Reasons Why

Rep. Rick Boucher (D. – VA) wrote an editorial for News.com yesterday [link via Metafilter] on how fair use — the provision of copyright law provides for limited use of copyrighted materials for purposes such as education, scholarship, journalism, etc — is under attack by the DMCA:

“Given the breadth of the DMCA, the fair-use rights of the public at large also are at risk. From the college student who photocopies a page from a library book or prints an article from a newspaper’s Web site for use in writing a report, to the newspaper reporter excerpting materials from a document for a story, to the typical television viewer who records a broadcast program for viewing at a later time, we all depend on the ability to make limited copies of copyrighted material without having to pay a fee or obtain prior approval of the copyright owner.”

I’ve written about Boucher before here. He’s one of the few Congressmen who has taken the time to actually understand the implications of regulating the Internet and not just knee-jerk respond to scare tactics from the RIAA or anti-porn activists. Everybody re-locate to southwest Virginia and vote for Boucher.

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“Colleges and large corporations are starting to collaborate on the creation of online graduate-degree programs that meet specific needs of the companies. The programs are created from existing graduate degrees, except the course content is altered so that the students learn by working on real projects for their company.” [from the Chronicle of Higher Education]
This was predicted in Stan Davis’ excellent 1995 book . Basically, Davis argues that as the amount of knowledge increases (and the usable life of that knowledge decreases), the demand for education increases. Over history, as the demand for education has increased, different segments of society has stepped up to be the primary education provider. As a new segment takes over, the previous segment becomes a niche player in the expanded market. The church provided education until the industrial revolution, when increased demand for skilled workers mean the state became the primary education provider (and the church a niche education provider). The state could manage this as long as education was K-12 plus maybe a few years of college. As we move into the information age where knowledge has to be renewed, the corporate sector will pick up much of the responsibility, and K12 + higher ed will become a smaller part of the education one receives over a lifetime.
Interesting book. Well worth a read.

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“[W]hen it comes to putting our courses on the Web, or using new software programs as part of our instruction, or participating in chat rooms with our students, we can cry academic freedom and simply refuse. We have tenure, and we don’t have to if we don’t want to….But our students don’t give a hoot about our history, our traditions, our culture, or our paranoias. Already, they want to know why our syllabuses aren’t on the World Wide Web. In five years — or sooner — they’re going to assume that all our courses will be online, in their entirety, complete with streaming audio and video. No, not as a substitute for face-to-face classroom interaction, but as another option in a flexible menu of ways that they can access information.” [link via Educare]
Great essay.

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I took a peek at my site stats this afternoon and was surprised to see a little spike in hits. Odd, since I hadn’t posted much at all in the last several days.
A quick check of the referral logs showed me what’s going on. Apparently, I was the most recent person to blog Ev’s announcement of Blogger Pro. By chance that happened to be the #1 topic on Blogdex…meaning my address is right at the top of the list of sources.
So, all you browsers coming over from Blogdex: hey there! Welcome! Stick around and read some stuff awhile. Bookmark me. Come back.
heh. :-)

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Okay, so a little digging this morning, and I figured out you can manage to use Radio to publish via FTP to another site without also publishing to the default radio.weblogs.com site. That’s one complaint down.
I’m still leaning way toward sticking with Blogger, primarily for the post-from-anywhere capability which simply ain’t possible with Radio (minus a persistent, static IP connection for your desktop machine).
Sixteen days left on the Radio trial period to figure out if it’s worth forty bucks.

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Matthew Trump’s Should-I-Buy-Radio Weblog: “My latest puzzle is about wrapping my mind around what I call ‘the Radio Paradigm.’ What I mean by that is the idea of Radio as both a weblogging server/tool and a community of users with Radio weblogs.”
Bingo. Matthew hit the nail on the head. That’s one thing that’s been bugging me about Radio 8, too.
There’s a lot I like about Radio, but I really have zero interest in having a blog hosted at http://radio.weblogs.com/0100634/. However, if I want to use Radio, I must host my blog on weblogs.com at that screwy number address. I can additionally mirror that blog at other sites, e.g. I’m using the Manilla-Blogger Bridge Tool to make sure everything is also posted to my real blog, Ten Reasons Why. I could also FTP the content to another site, but, as far as I have been able to discern, there’s no way to turn off the weblogs.com site. I don’t like the idea of my audience being split. I don’t want to have two mirror blogs. But to use Radio 8, I’m forced into either having two mirrored blogs or hosting my blog solely on weblogs.com.
Personally, I think I’d probably be more likely to pay UserLand $40 for Radio once my trial period runs out if it was not tied to a hosted site. Not sure of UserLand’s intent here. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason any of the functionality couldn’t also work on any other site (I’ll have to test the FTP option to confirm this), so by giving an option to not use the weblogs.com hosted site, UserLand could save themselves support, money, bandwidth, etc.
The other issue for me is that though UserLand CEO Dave Winer touts web services a lot, Radio is ultimately a desktop application. If you don’t have a machine that has an always-on internet connection (e.g. can operate as a true web server), then you’re tied to that one desktop machine. So it installs a web server on your desktop machine. Big deal, I can install IIS for free. The webserver isn’t the big deal, it’s the content management that adds the value. I’m someone who works and writes from two or three different machines, none of which have a persistent internet connection (for various reasons). I need a content management tool that is entirely online(Blogger? The upcoming Blogger Pro? Manila?), not tied to a particular desktop machine. That’s where Radio really breaks down. I’ve asked, and apparently there’s no way to use Radio 8 from multiple machines unless the machine it’s installed on has a persistent internet connection. Absent that, UserLand’s Radio 8 becomes significantly less useful for this user.

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AlterSlash, “the unofficial SlashDot digest,” compiles the headlines and articles from slashdot, plus the top five rated replies for each article. [link via Metafilter] Okay, I admit it — I love this. Slashdot has good stuff, but I never have the time to slog through the amount of info generated there. Alterslash distills it nicely. I like the graphs, too. Mmmmm….graphy goodness. :-)

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Yesterday, sometime while I was in a plane from North Carolina to DC, Ev released Blogger Pro.

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From the Chronicle: Designer of Free Course-Management Software Asks, What Makes a Good Web Site? This is an interview with one of the project leads on the OKI project. The Open Knowledge Initiative [OKI] is a project out of the Massachusets Institute of Technology that is building an open source architecture for educational technology applications.
The Chronicle article is kind of a lame interview, though. For a much more productive interview see the web seminar conducted by Steve Gilbert of the TLT Group with Phil Long of OKI. You can view it at http://lecture.horizonlive.com. (You’ll need to download the HorizonLive applet, have RealPlayer, log in, go to the Lobby and look for the Phil Long archived interview. Not an easy process, I know.)
Many people seem to suffer from the misconception that OKI is building a course management system. [link via SiT] From my understanding, they most definitely are not doing that.
The OKI project is building the platform that those kind of apps — open source or commercial — can run on top of or in conjunction with. As it says on their project page, “The core deliverable is an architecture and application programming interface (API) specification that supports learning management systems and educational tool development. Its architecture will create a set of services upon which learning tool developers can base their work.” They’re building the architecture for the tools, not necessarily the tools themselves.

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Grrrrrrr! Some nitwit designed eight work carrels in the lounge at the Charlotte airport with phones equipped with data ports…but no power outlets. What’s the point?!? And it’s not like the wiring wasn’t there. Each carrel has two wall sconce lighting fixtures eighteen inches above the work surface. Someone just needs to run the extra few inches of wiring to install power outlets.
Killed the battery on the DC-Charlotte flight, and now I can’t get a dial-up for lack of a power outlet anywhere near a phone jack. Cripes, that’s annoying.

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