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Cf. the Borges short story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". (Find it here.) Menard set out to rewrite "Don Quixote" word for word, in its entirety, for reasons that Borges manages to make almost convincing.

My favorite part of the keynote:

Gigantic screen behind Steve Job reads: "Open Source We think it's great"

"University College" is generally used as a catch-all for courses and programs that don't fit in other colleges/schools/departments/programs in a particular four-year university. For example, at my university there is the fairly traditional group of schools such as the College of Liberal Arts, and so on. We also have a University College which is where all the lower division core courses live. At some schools, the distance education programs are administered by their University College, so I guess that is what they are doing. But I agree the name still sounds cumbersome...

http://www.ktsw.swt.edu/mc3309/hearing. html

http://www.sfu.ca/sca/Manuals/ZAAP f/r/range.html

Ah... the web has a long memory, even though I do not. He's been consistent, at least (or at most).

[4/2/98] http://www.calinst.org/bulletins/bull 512i.htm
he suggested that the U.S. should expand copyrights to match the extended copyrights of European nations; continue its fight against worldwide piracy; and, expand intellectual property right protection by enacting the WIPO copyright treaties agreed to in Geneva in 1996 (see article below). He also stressed the necessity of other countries enacting and enforcing similar penalties for copyright infringements

[04/03/1997]http://www.star.so.swt.edu/97/04/ 03/040397n3.html
As a war pilot, scholar, White House special assistant, movie industry leader and author, Valenti has worn many hats throughout his career
...
He received his bachelor's degree in business from the University of Houston in 1946 and his M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1948. In 1952 Valenti co-founded Weekley and Valenti, the advertising/political consulting agency, which was in charge of coordinating the media during President John Kennedy's and Vice President Lyndon Johnson's visit to Texas in 1963
...
Valenti was in the motorcade in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated, and within one hour of the shooting was hired as the special assistant to newly inaugurated President Johnson
...

[Mar. 14, 1997]http://www.mediacentral.com/Magazines/MediaDa ily/OldArchives/199703/1997031405.html
"Sen. Lieberman believes if you say 'V, S and L,' nirvana has arrived," Valenti said, adding that such a content rating "winds up lumping The Three Stooges in the same category as "Natural Born Killers." However, Valenti on Feb. 27 told a Senate committee hearing that he was not opposed to some changes in the system. "I've changed my mind," he said at the hearing. "I'm not inflexible."

[1992-1997(?)]http://iitf.doc.gov/members/valenti. html
Apparently, he was on "The President's Information Infrastructure Task Force." This site has not been updated in a while: "Use Netscape 1.1, IE 2.0, or CyberDog in 8 bit color" Cyberdog? Heh.

[1-28-98]http://www.twsu.edu/~news/insi de/1-28-98/forum1.html
Valenti will explore the relationships among free speech, censorship and personal responsibility in "Lights, Camera, Rhetoric! Who has control of television and movie violence?" on Monday, Feb. 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the Metropolitan Complex
No stranger to controversy, Valenti's first movie content battle came just weeks after becoming president of the MPAA in 1966 with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and its frank language. Other controversies followed, along with a Supreme Court decision that stated cities had the power to prevent the exposure of children to books and films which could not be denied to adults.
Those events led Valenti to announce in 1968 a new voluntary movie rating system, which has been revised occasionally to reflect changes in the movie audience.
In 1996, Valenti helped create a similar, and controversial, rating system for television.

[July 16, 1998]http://www.internetnews.com/i wlive/summer98/key4.html
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association Of America, took on the persona of a fire-breathing, circuit-riding preacher as he talked about digital copyright protection to the afternoon keynote audience today at Summer Internet World.
...
"The only way to protect works [of intellectual property] and to guarantee their future is to employ technology to protect them whenever they go on the Internet," he pronounced. "If Congress confers legal status on any machine whose mission is to commit copyright burglary, we're in trouble."
Valenti's jeremiad was inspired by proposed U.S. legislation being revised later the same afternoon in Washington. The bill would implement an international treaty--the World Intellectual Property Organization treaty, signed by more than 80 countries in October 1996--extending copyright protections to digital works, such as digitized movies, software, and the contents of Web sites. Each country must pass enabling legislation for the treaty if its existing laws don't already cover the treaty's provisions.
In its original version the U.S. bill would have criminalized the manufacture of any device that could be used to circumvent copyright--for example, software to decrypt an encrypted movie--but this provision has been opposed by hardware and software makers who don't want to be responsible for every possible use to which their products could be put. They have proposed criminalizing the act of copyright violation rather than the manufacture of the equipment, but the motion picture industry and recording industries oppose this strategy as being too difficult to enforce.
"We don't want to ban VCRs," Valenti said. "The only folks who have cause for concern are the makers of black boxes, which are nothing more than stealing machines." The film industry fears unleashing the ability to copy movies on DVD, since such technology could produce unlimited copies with no degradation in quality, removing any intrinsic incentive to purchase a commercial DVD rather than a pirated one.
Valenti cut his remarks short so that he could fly to Washington to attend congressional meeting involving the WIPO legislation, saying that when he accepted the invitation to speak several months ago, he didn't know the bill would be revised the same day.
Valenti wasn't exactly preaching to the converted, however. In a panel discussion put together to fill the rest of his speaking time, speakers pointed out that the Motion Picture Association of America's approach to the WIPO legislation could make it a criminal offense to commit such everyday acts as setting a Web browser to refuse cookies, if they were being used as part of a copyright protection scheme. Moreover, even manufacturing a browser that is able to refuse cookies would become a crime.
"Jack doesn't want these laws to be so sweeping, but Washington doesn't always get it right," said Jason Catlett, founder of Junkbusters, a company dedicated to stopping the spread of Internet junk mail.
"I run a Web site, and I think that people who violate copyrights should all go to hell, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions," said David Fiedler, editor of the Mecklermedia site Webdeveloper.com. "This legislation might make your computer illegal because if programmed correctly it could be used to circumvent copyright." He also pointed out that the Motion Picture Association of America had in fact sought to ban VCRs and video rental when they were first introduced.

[December 12, 1996]http://www.cme.org/press2.html
"The age-based system that Valenti's group is proposing is inadequate and will not be helpful to parents," explained Kathryn Montgomery, CME President. "The ratings group has chosen to ignore the recommendations of academic experts, parents, child advocacy groups, and professional organizations to develop a usable ratings system that can work with the V-chip," Montgomery added. "Instead, they have purposely devised a system that will not tell parents whether a program contains violence, sex, or offensive language."

[April 25, 1966]http://www. resignation.com/historicaldocs/letters/04251966_va lenti.html
The economic commitments to my growing family cause me to regretfully submit my resignation as Special Assistant to the President, effective May 15.
(reply:) Dear Jack:
It has been a very long day.

[Tuesday, 19 May, 1998]http://www.chl.ca/Cannes98/may19_pirac y.html
CANNES, France -- The film industry is making progress in its war against piracy, but digital copying is posing a new and "cancerous problem," the head of the U.S. film association said Tuesday.
Recent raids, including the seizure of 8 million videos in Hong Kong, show progress is being made against pirates who cost the U.S. industry up to $5 billion a year, said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
...
"In digital, the 1,000th copy is pure and pristine as the first copy. So digital presents a cancerous problem," Valenti said.
His trade group is spending about $50 million annually to fight piracy, including employing ex-FBI agents to bolster other countries' efforts.
"What we're trying to do in China is get market access," he said. Hollywood is limited to 10 films a year in the world's most populous nation.
Valenti said he'll try again with a trip in the fall.
The carrot for the Chinese?
"We'd like to invest with Chinese partners in state-of-the-art cinema," he said. "We are looking forward to a partnership relationship with China."

[September 28, 1995]http://ww w.economicclub.org/Pages/archive-old/abstracts/arc h-valenti0.htm
Currently, a good many public officials have certified that the so-called "popular culture"-defined as movies, television, and musical recordings-is the prime villain in what they perceive to be the clanging of the last ding-dong of doom for this society, the source bed of much of our ills. TV is a powerful medium, but there are deadly combustibles in the community, more noxious than any movie or TV program, and violence has been on the decline in movies and television for the past decade. A restoration of the homely" standards by which ordinary Americans have so long and through so much turmoil sustained their values, maintained their families, and guarded their country--not rating systems and censorship--is the only means for solving American social ills.

[02/07/96]http://www.house.gov/judiciary/461.htm
But what we do know is this binary numbers future is coming. It will have large impact, as well as both sublime and dislocating effect, on millions of Americans. It is the mandate of the Congress to peer beyond the veil, to make sensible and required judgments about how to make absolutely sure that America's grandest trade asset, its intellectual property, is protected in an era of technology so magical it verges on fantasy.
...
This committee knows full well the broad global sweep of American intellectual property which in 1994 produced over $45 billion in international sales, and is that rarity, a producer of surplus balance of trade, a phrase seldom heard in the corridors of the Congress. These creative works are the jewels in America's trade crown. To protect these delicate products in cyberspace is of transcendent importance. For if you cannot protect what you own, you own nothing.

[03/26/99]http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/14 _1/199903/t4151392.htm
President Kim Dae-jung yesterday told visiting U.S. commerce secretary that Korea will maintain the controversial screen quota system which limits imports of foreign movies into Korea, in defiance of U.S. demands for film market liberalization.
...
He made the remark as Jack Valenti, head of the American Film Producers Association, suggested that Seoul scrap the system, saying Korea is the only Asian country which maintains a quota.

The peer review process is, I think, very effective at picking out the good from the bad. Even if one wants to put all ones journals on the internet, you would still want peer review. Actually, the main reason is more self serving, in that you get a lot more credit for publishing in peer reviewed journals, and you need to publish if you want promotion, tenure, or salary raises.

That being said, the main problem with paper journals is that subscription costs are very high. Actually, in many cases a lot higher than one would think the costs are. There has been a lot of noise about this in the math community.

So switching to internet journals seems like a good idea. In fact, a several established journals are also putting their stuff on the internet, for example, the American Math Society, and those journals published by Springer Verlag. However, you still have to pay the subscription costs. (Springer Verlag's are particularly high.)

Recently, there have been new, internet only, journals. Two that I know of are The Electronic Journal of Probability, and The Electronic Journal of Differential Equations. But I know that there are a lot more. These still employ peer review to look at papers, and have the same standards as regular journals.

If you just want to put your paper on the internet for anyone to look at, there is the Mathematics Archive, which anyone can contribute to. (Actually, it is part of a much larger archive where there are physics papers, etc.) Many many mathematicians, including many prominant ones, put there papers there, as well as sending their papers to journals. This is really a preprint archive.

And of course, you can always make your own web page and put your papers there, just as I have at http://math.missouri.edu/~stephen/prep rints/. Actually, many mathematicians do this.

In the end, I think that this open source idea of publishing is important to reduce costs of publishing. But I don't think that we should get rid of peer review.

Your comments, while valid, also seem to prove a point about America which perhaps you did not intend to prove.

After WWII, America rejoiced, reveled and otherwise felt good about itself. We were told that we could have anything we wanted, but as the Great Depression taught us, we would have to work to get those things we wanted. This did not bother Americans, those two great tragedies seemed to have an important effect on this mode of thinking.

Now jump forward to present. The geeks, nerds, and other social outcasts in high school are idealists (mostly, and I know because I'm proud to be one.) We've read countless books where in the end, it is the smartest person who is our hero, because he uses his ability to determine the best route to thwart his oppressors. These are propagandist stories, judging simply from when in history they were written, and also by whom they were written. Yet they still hold true to some case.

The geeks, nerds, and outcasts have worked to put learning (gasp) as the focus of our schooling, and yet now our American Dream is failing. The truths that were instilled from our parents and grandparents that if we work hard enough, everything will be provided seems to be fading. Why is this? Because rewards and vicarious living through the talented athletes, popular people and otherwise "in group" has become prevalent.

Now to get to your point about the difference between Ethiopian, Kosovar, and geek. It is true that the tragedies happening elsewhere in the world are far more disturbing and shocking, and it is true that their victims are mostly unable to speak up. Yet, Kosovars and anti-Milosevic Serbs ARE speaking up online. So are the geek class. Why?

The answer is simple. Our ideal is dissolving, and we as a class are finding ourselves under fire by all sides. So, we USE our voice which our class created to speak up against the atrocities (I use that word with as much fervor as I would describing the helplessness to stop tragedy anywhere) performed by our oppressors.

Yes, it is a shame that Ethiopians cannot speak up, but it speaks of their upbringing (not to say that their upbringing is the Right Thing) which has made them helpless. And without meeting Maslow's pyramid of having the necessary things to feel good about yourself, these people are forced to accept their plight. It is most definitely not the Right Thing.

Geeks in America are on a higher rung of the pyramid, and are in the position to move higher by fighting for what is Right. However, no one ever condoned killing, slaughtering, or massacring your oppressors. That is a war crime by Geneva standards. (I find the Geneva guidelines for war to be silly. I know that they protect basic human rights, but to imagine that we have rules for war is outright absurd. I guess "Not all is fair in War.")

I guess my point is that it's not about "keeping up with the Joneses" or even "being the Joneses", it is about reward for work done. That is what we believe. I'm fairly certain that you will not find another person in our "social class" that feels otherwise.

Finally, I'm making another shameless plug for escape from your situation to all high school students that feel oppressed. In Texas, there are at least two programs which allow students to leave high school after their sophomore year. One is Texas Academy for Leadership in the Humanities at Lamar University in Beaumont. The other is the Texas Academy for Math and Science at University of North Texas. I went to TALH my senior year, (it's charter year) and I am currently planning our 5-year (since the beginning) reunion. My best friend was my roommate there (and we're going to be roommates again), and my fiance also attended. The rest of the charter class are people I would consider my closest friends ever. My advice is to research whether there is a program like these in your home state.

It was a reward for my intelligence, but also provided a new challenge. Isn't this what we're all after anyways, challenges?

I'm always glad to help anyone learn more about these programs, as I consider TALH (and somewhat Texas Governor's Honors Program) to be the life-changing experiences that have shaped me.

PsychoSpunk

I want to thank Jon for continuing his coverage of this horror. And I want to thank everyone for writing about their experiences. I wrote in yesterday with a post about helping these kids at the boiling point to escape. I went to a program called the Texas Academy for Leadership in the Humanities @ Lamar U. in Beaumont. You can go to Lamar's homepage and look in the directories for information. There is also a news item that talks about the Academy on their site under the news dated Jan. 24, 1999.

I've received a couple of emails since posting, and welcome all because I think that the Academy changed my life in the most positive way possible. Send me one if you want to know how to escape the Hellmouth.

Mike Ford

Yeah, it may sound strange but I wish that right now I was still in high school. That way I could effectively fuck with the administrators minds.

I was the "popular loner" in high school, a term that it took me years to create, but none to recognize. I was in all the "nerd classes" and I loved them, but even more importantly so were many of the "preps, jocks (shocking, huh?), and other popular people." I got lucky, as I was held with esteem by classmates for my intelligence. But then again, I didn't have a real girlfriend until I left high school. It is a stark dichotomy, and I imagine had I written my first poem this month rather than in '92, my english teacher would have sent me for counseling.

What hasn't been written is the other "escape plans" that students have available to them. My sophomore year, I was selected to attend the "Texas Governor's Honors Program" (btw if you're a TGHPer from '93 or later, send me a line at this email) and it was a pure joy that changed my life forever. A year later, I left for college before graduation at a program held at the same school as TGHP called the Texas Academy for Leadership in the Humanities. (That link goes to our reunion planning page for those of you academy kids who run across it.)

Texas has two such programs, TAMS @ UNT and the Academy @ Lamar-Beaumont. It let me leave an atmosphere that was stifling to go to a program where I was not alone in my desire for REAL EDUCATION! Unfortunately, public schools don't promote these opportunities because they would lose federal aid if they did. The government gives money for attendance, that's why these programs are hard to find. They exist, probably in abundance, but they are hush-hush.

I urge anyone who is a high school student who is a geek, nerd, dork, or "popular loner" to investigate these types of programs. Invest in your future and your pleasure. And for those older geeks with kids, help them if they don't fit in. I know I'm preaching to the choir because I imagine that parents who love learning support their children, I know mine do.

Please for the sake of everyone, do the Right Thing and give these kids what they really need, and that is not counseling, it's respect.

Mike Ford