Damn. I didn't want to appear to support the racist sites in any way at all, but:
I've been following the "Fight dem back!" blog for some time. On which he posts names and photos of accused racists, along with their histories, states/cities of residence and evidence of meetings that they attend. I can't recall him ever inciting violence, and the blog is being/.ed so I can't go back and check, but to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if someone found some examples which could be interpreted that way.
I find his blog interesting, which is why I've been following it for so long, and I don't object to what he's doing (indeed, I mostly support it - I certainly support why he is running it). And I'm not inclined to say that a direct comparison can be drawn between someone saying "go beat up X, because he's asian" and "Y has been inciting hatred". But it does make it a tad murkier if the good guys are engaging in some of the same behaviour as you are finding objectional when perfomed by the bad guys.
Fair enough. But I'm not suggesting that they apply Australian standards, or the standards of any country. Simply their own standards. Just because Australia (noting that I'm Australian) asks them to remove something, I don't see any particular reason why they should do so. But they, as a company, may have their own standards, and I would argue that applying those standards would by no means be the same as censorship. If they don't find the material to be sufficiently objectionable, by their own standards, then fair enough - they have every right to insist on a court order. But that doesn't mean that they can't act without one - and without being damned - should they choose to do so.
Paypal will suspend an account if that account is used to sell objectional material, which they define as including racial intolerance. And I know that they act on this, as I was involved in a situation where they did so. I don't see this as censorship, but as following their own principles and policies. They didn't stop the organisation from raising money, but from raising money using their servers.
Personally, I provide all my teaching materials in electronic formats. Mostly PDF. The assumption has been that (if I'm any good) it isn't the materials which people are coming for, but my ability to teach them. So even if someone else was to offer teaching with the same materials, people would still rather go to me. Or so I hope.:)
The problem is that I have yet to convince the administrators that this is the case. Fortunately, they see printing as being a cost they would rather avoid, so moving to electronic formats works for them by reducing their overall costs. But I'm at a university, and perhaps things are different elsewhere.
But Google don't have to condone censorship. They just have to say "not on my servers". Removing objectional material from something they own is perfectly acceptable, and is common with many other free online services.
This isn't the same thing as the China mess, as this would simply be Google acting as responsible a content provider. But I doubt it is a moral stance they're taking, so much as a legal one - they are probably uncomfortable (and rightly so) with the idea of being responsible for Blogger content.
I've been planning on doing something similar in a first year programming course I run. There are a number of reasons, some of which are quite academically oriented, but the two big ones are:
a) Stepwise refinement in algorithm design, which is something I really want to get the students to understand, can be illustrated easily if the action being refined is something that the students are already familiar with. Bubble sorts are ok, but picking up an object, putting it down somewhere else, and waving is better.
b) Back when I started programming, (which was a while ago now), making your computer say "Hello World" was wonderfully exciting. We wren't bored with computers, and weren't disappointed when two semesters of study still didn't mean that we could write our own version of Half Life II. But making a robot do something - even something fairly basic - is exciting, because it isn't something that we are bored with yet. I want programming to be exciting. Bubble sort routines may be worth learning (maybe) but they are never exciting.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to insist that students pick up a $500 robot to do the course, either. At the moment I'm demoing the robots to illustrate concepts, and in the future I'll try to build something that they can play with. But it doesn't need to be complex - it just needs a decent micro controller, 2-4 sensors, and some ability to move within and interact with the environment. Not at all unlike those linked to from the article.
I agree fully with this - my favourite camera is an old Mamiya twin lens medium format. The bellows means that I can focus on anything, and the huge negatives are great - they make for really clear enlargements, and they scan wonderfully. I have a Pentax MX and a digital as well, but I really love the Mamiya.
However - the film is harder to get, the lenses (with the Mamiya) are hard to get hold of, and developing them is not a job for the photoshop on the corner.
With SLRs, I always found it was best to find out what lenses I could get hold of in my range, and then pick a body that uses them. The camera body is really not much more than a light-proof box - quality glass is at least as important.
I currently use a Pentax MX for my simple manual SLR. It's a nice camera - not as good as the LX, but cheaper, and Pentax tends to be fairly priced. And it is better than the K1000, which is still a solid and reliable camera. With the Pentax I was able to get some good lenses - an excellent 85mm, good 50mm, and 100mm & 200mm lenses, without spending much. Other brands may be better, but if you are selective in what you buy I find that you can come out really well with Pentax, and take very nice photos. Oh, and Pentax have continued with the same mount, even on their latest cameras, so I can, if I want, stick one of my manual lenses on their top automatic SLR body and it will still work. This isn't necessarily the case with other brands.
Some years ago I was doing my Masters thesis on this topic. I figured one day I could be a leading campainer for computer rights.:) The basis of the issue is fairly simple - if you can break down mental functions to computational functions, then unless you belive in something as abstract as a soul, what is the moral difference between a person, a dog, a fish, and a rock? Is it just specisism, or is there something special about mental processes that means it doesn't matter how they are created, or in what form?
My approach at the time was to look at animal ethics - in animal ethics being "human" is not considered necessary for moral value. My prefered approach was Tom Regan's "Subject of a life" criterion. The short version was that if an individual could experience life - feel pain, etc - then there was an argument for saying it had moral value. How much moral value, of course, is a separate issue. In this case, if a computer can be said to experience life (aka be conscious in some way) then it too must have moral value. An alternative approach was to do something like Peter Singer, and argue that certain things - such as the meeting of desires - are good. Therefore if computers have desires their desires should be taken into account when making ethical decisions. But I never really liked Singer's approach. It leads to too many counter-intuitive situations.
Sometimes I miss studying philosophy. It was pointless, but fun.
I tried a few, but have currently resorted to just using SimpleMU. Perhaps this is because I MOO, rather than MUD, so I don't need much beyond a semi-decent telnet client. But it works ok, for what it does. I use Savitar on the the Mac, which is also simple but effective.
However, I guess most people would be after extra functionality.
I collect old computers.:) I have about 90 of the things - my favourites are the Apple Lisa, the Apple///+, the OSI Challenger 4P and the Microbee. But what disappointed me about the article is that it focused on money - collecting anything is, in my experience, rarely about money, at least for the majority of those who collect. My collection is about the recording history of something I love - like many geeks, I grew up with these computers, and either had one (occasionally) or desperatly wanted one (often). So when I see a Commodore 64sx for $5 I buy it (or rather, I bought it) - not because it may one day be worth anything, but that it means something to me and I want to preserve the history.
Well, that and I like to play Paradroid still.:) The problem is storage. I keep hoping that one day someone in Australia will finally start a computer museum, and then my collection will finally have a decent home.
The problem with this concept of the Digital Divide is that it is too much like providing trucks without also providing things to carry in them. Sure, providing IT infrastructure is a good thing, but it is meaningless without a job for that infrastructure to perform. I agree that the pat answer "focus on food and poverty first" is an oversimplification, but what concerns me more is what value they get out of the IT should they be provided with it.
An example: I gather, and I'm not a doctor, that there are some easy methods of curing dystentry. Nevertheless, people still die from it. This is presumably because they don't have access to information about how to cure it. So, if we provide them with a computer hooked up to the internet, will a small village in Ethiopia suddenly cure the problem? They can, but only if they a) think to look online, b) know how to find it, c) find the information in a format that is useful to them, and d) are able to trust that information. Can they do that at the moment? Possibly, but I doubt they can easily.
And yes, I'm aware that the content will follow the infrastructure. But the question remains - if we want to get information to people, are we better off focusing on high-end IT solutions, such as WiFi, or on low-end solutions, like the provision of pedal-radios with skilled medical advice on the other end? I would be inclined to figure out what kinds of information are required, and look for the simplest and best methods of getting that information to the people who need it, before we start looking at bridging the digital divide.
btw, I am aware of good work currently being conducted (including by people whom I work with) into what role IT can play in developing countries. It isn't as if the IT world is ignorant of this issue. And it is even mentioned in the article. But the tendancy is still to focus on high-end solutions to problems that I believe should (IMHO), at least initially, be handled in a manner that better suits the situation.
Of course, I'm always open to being convinced otherwise.
I teach in an MIS degree at an Australian university. One of our ongoing tasks (although a minor one in my case, as I primarily teach coding) is to form arrangements with industry to give students real-world experience at developing information systems - a number of subjects are heavily project-based, so we need a lot of projects to provide our students with the design and implementation experience that they need.
It occurs to me that perhaps, rather than looking to industry, we should be looking to these sorts of projects. It wouldn't be a complete replacement for industry experience, as the issues will often be different, but I'm sure the students would gain a lot from this.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure that OpenChallenge is the right system for this sort of project development. Are there other groups which could co-ordinate these sorts of projects?
I've noticed that LCD screens have been appearing all through the department in which I teach - administrators, who constantly argue that there is no money for us to spend buying equipment for teaching and research, seem to have a great love of LCD monitors, in spite of the increased cost. As I'm still happy with CRTs (for the reasons outlined in the above posts) I was curious as to why. Most of the people I asked said that it was because they took up less desk space.
I had to laugh - all of these people, spending hundreds of extra dollars on LCD monitors in order to save desk space, keep putting the monitors on top of their desktop computer cases.:) Thus saving no space whatsoever over a CRT. And thus I conclude - as per normal in a university, the major reason why people buy LCDs is image. As they certainly aren't performing any of the other professed roles. If just one person moved their case under the desk or something I'd be happy - but no, not one did.
... depending, of course, on the content. There is an ongoing problem with finding quality research on the web - it's there, but as everyone knows it is hard to find amongst the "non-quality" stuff, and what is accessible has to be publically accessible for search engines to index it. The article said:
According to the site, Yahoo plans to charge consumers between $1 and $4 to retrieve files from a specialized database of some 25 million research documents culled from 7,100 publications, including academic periodicals.
A specialised database means that it would be a very different thing, I suspect, than the type of general web database offered by Google - especially if the content is not publically accessible on the web. Different material than Google, and presumably "filtered".
I do wonder though - how would this differ from the existing CD Databases which most (if not all) university libraries have of journal articles? Would it be bigger? Or is the issue that it is cheap enough for the general public to be useful without the universities subsidising your access? Or would it have different material? I assume the latter, as I figure it would combine free online materials with journal articles and work from other pulications.
Mind you, I wouldn't pay for it. I use google for general stuff, and journal databases for the rest. I don't think I need a third alternative. I suspect that most students are the same, so unless they plan to offer a subscription service to universities, I wonder if there will be enough of a target demographic for tehre to be a point.
True. The paper I was focusing on was interested in the effect on bandwidth if existing content moved offshore, and found that the content was already on overseas servers. I don't think the report looked at Australians owning content hosted offshore, and this would be open to court action, but I don't know what percentage of people own content offshore, as opposed to making money from referrals. I woud be curious to know what power the police would have over the hosts, though, as a take-down order might not work no-matter who owns the content.
Dumb law, though. Although I can't see any chance of it being removed no matter who is in power in the foreseeable future.
... is worried that displaying the URLs will show how ineffective it has been on this?
The censorship laws were a joke when first proposed - a joke that could damage Australian content providers, but which could have little or no impact on Australian's access to illegal materials. At the recent ACIS 2001 conference, a paper was give (full text available as pdf) arguing that the whole thing was pointless as far as pornographic sites were concerned, as they were all offshore already (due, in part, to expansive hosting on Australian servers) and therefore outside of Australia's juristiction.
I can only think of two good reasons for not releasing this material - they fear that examination of the material will show that many of the sites should not have been blacklisted (as per peacefire's work), or that they fear it will show how ineffective the legislation is.:)
I'll give you that. I always presumed that, as it was the World Science Fiction Society that governed them, that they would therefore be genre specific. But, according to their consititution, they include fantasy.
Odd that. I wonder if it was due to a historical lack of distinction between the two, or a deliberate decision to include both genres in the same award? At any rate, now I'll just have to go back to complaining about the quality of the winners, instead of their genres.:)
I used to actually respect the Hugo awards. I learnt better. Especially after last year - best novel: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Even ignoring questions about how good it is (although I have strong opinions about that) the fact is that it simply isn't Science Fiction. And "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as best Science Fiction movie? (Great film, though). If the Hugos mean anything, they should at least be given to work in the correct genre.
Off course, this year at least we know what the best movie will be - LotR. So the tradition of SF awards going to non-SF films will continue in all it's glory.:) Although there doesn't seem to be a lot of competition.
Well, as an MIS doctoral student, I am particularly unqualified to answer this. But I'll give it a shot anyway.:)
Information Systems, even without the "Management" in front, is, generally speaking, interested in the application of technology. It concerns how to apply systems (such as web sites, knowledge management systems, agent software, etc) to businesses and other organizations in order to improve the organization concerned. As a result, IS courses tend to teach some programming, web design, etc, some general systems theory (especially in postgrad work), along with buisness and management concerns. It produces an interesting mix, and although prejudiced it does seem to have value in the future. One advantage is that it tends to be good as a second degree or for postgrad study - so it might be worth considering after you complete another degree.
Keep in mind, though, that it is not so much about creating applications - more about applying existing concepts. So I doubt you'll learn much about software development.
CS, on the other hand, is all about programming. If you really feel you need a degree, but you wish to stay on your current career path, then perhaps CS would be a better choice. Then if you love study, you could use your CS degree to do part-time postgrad work in IS.
At any rate, IS in particular varies considerably according to the institution, as the field is still being defined, so it would be worth doing a fair bit of shopping around first.
The Open Archive initiative might be useful here. It is intended to escape the so-called "tyranny" of the published journals, but it might serve to undermine such groups. Basically, you self-archive your thesis/papers, using the meta tag system covered in the Santa Fe convention, and then make them available for free online. If you have copyright problems, the answer I was given was to archive the penultimate version. Further info is at http://www.openarchives.org/
I suspect that these organisations would die if they couldn't sell the papers, so by providing them free in a format which makes them easy to find we should be able to cut their legs out from under them. I'm not a great fan of the initiative as it stands, but this might be an actual use for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn. I didn't want to appear to support the racist sites in any way at all, but:
/.ed so I can't go back and check, but to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if someone found some examples which could be interpreted that way.
I've been following the "Fight dem back!" blog for some time. On which he posts names and photos of accused racists, along with their histories, states/cities of residence and evidence of meetings that they attend. I can't recall him ever inciting violence, and the blog is being
I find his blog interesting, which is why I've been following it for so long, and I don't object to what he's doing (indeed, I mostly support it - I certainly support why he is running it). And I'm not inclined to say that a direct comparison can be drawn between someone saying "go beat up X, because he's asian" and "Y has been inciting hatred". But it does make it a tad murkier if the good guys are engaging in some of the same behaviour as you are finding objectional when perfomed by the bad guys.
Fair enough. But I'm not suggesting that they apply Australian standards, or the standards of any country. Simply their own standards. Just because Australia (noting that I'm Australian) asks them to remove something, I don't see any particular reason why they should do so. But they, as a company, may have their own standards, and I would argue that applying those standards would by no means be the same as censorship. If they don't find the material to be sufficiently objectionable, by their own standards, then fair enough - they have every right to insist on a court order. But that doesn't mean that they can't act without one - and without being damned - should they choose to do so.
Paypal will suspend an account if that account is used to sell objectional material, which they define as including racial intolerance. And I know that they act on this, as I was involved in a situation where they did so. I don't see this as censorship, but as following their own principles and policies. They didn't stop the organisation from raising money, but from raising money using their servers.
Personally, I provide all my teaching materials in electronic formats. Mostly PDF. The assumption has been that (if I'm any good) it isn't the materials which people are coming for, but my ability to teach them. So even if someone else was to offer teaching with the same materials, people would still rather go to me. Or so I hope. :)
The problem is that I have yet to convince the administrators that this is the case. Fortunately, they see printing as being a cost they would rather avoid, so moving to electronic formats works for them by reducing their overall costs. But I'm at a university, and perhaps things are different elsewhere.
But Google don't have to condone censorship. They just have to say "not on my servers". Removing objectional material from something they own is perfectly acceptable, and is common with many other free online services.
This isn't the same thing as the China mess, as this would simply be Google acting as responsible a content provider. But I doubt it is a moral stance they're taking, so much as a legal one - they are probably uncomfortable (and rightly so) with the idea of being responsible for Blogger content.
I've been planning on doing something similar in a first year programming course I run. There are a number of reasons, some of which are quite academically oriented, but the two big ones are:
a) Stepwise refinement in algorithm design, which is something I really want to get the students to understand, can be illustrated easily if the action being refined is something that the students are already familiar with. Bubble sorts are ok, but picking up an object, putting it down somewhere else, and waving is better.
b) Back when I started programming, (which was a while ago now), making your computer say "Hello World" was wonderfully exciting. We wren't bored with computers, and weren't disappointed when two semesters of study still didn't mean that we could write our own version of Half Life II. But making a robot do something - even something fairly basic - is exciting, because it isn't something that we are bored with yet. I want programming to be exciting. Bubble sort routines may be worth learning (maybe) but they are never exciting.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to insist that students pick up a $500 robot to do the course, either. At the moment I'm demoing the robots to illustrate concepts, and in the future I'll try to build something that they can play with. But it doesn't need to be complex - it just needs a decent micro controller, 2-4 sensors, and some ability to move within and interact with the environment. Not at all unlike those linked to from the article.
I agree fully with this - my favourite camera is an old Mamiya twin lens medium format. The bellows means that I can focus on anything, and the huge negatives are great - they make for really clear enlargements, and they scan wonderfully. I have a Pentax MX and a digital as well, but I really love the Mamiya.
However - the film is harder to get, the lenses (with the Mamiya) are hard to get hold of, and developing them is not a job for the photoshop on the corner.
With SLRs, I always found it was best to find out what lenses I could get hold of in my range, and then pick a body that uses them. The camera body is really not much more than a light-proof box - quality glass is at least as important.
I currently use a Pentax MX for my simple manual SLR. It's a nice camera - not as good as the LX, but cheaper, and Pentax tends to be fairly priced. And it is better than the K1000, which is still a solid and reliable camera. With the Pentax I was able to get some good lenses - an excellent 85mm, good 50mm, and 100mm & 200mm lenses, without spending much. Other brands may be better, but if you are selective in what you buy I find that you can come out really well with Pentax, and take very nice photos. Oh, and Pentax have continued with the same mount, even on their latest cameras, so I can, if I want, stick one of my manual lenses on their top automatic SLR body and it will still work. This isn't necessarily the case with other brands.
Some years ago I was doing my Masters thesis on this topic. I figured one day I could be a leading campainer for computer rights. :) The basis of the issue is fairly simple - if you can break down mental functions to computational functions, then unless you belive in something as abstract as a soul, what is the moral difference between a person, a dog, a fish, and a rock? Is it just specisism, or is there something special about mental processes that means it doesn't matter how they are created, or in what form?
My approach at the time was to look at animal ethics - in animal ethics being "human" is not considered necessary for moral value. My prefered approach was Tom Regan's "Subject of a life" criterion. The short version was that if an individual could experience life - feel pain, etc - then there was an argument for saying it had moral value. How much moral value, of course, is a separate issue. In this case, if a computer can be said to experience life (aka be conscious in some way) then it too must have moral value. An alternative approach was to do something like Peter Singer, and argue that certain things - such as the meeting of desires - are good. Therefore if computers have desires their desires should be taken into account when making ethical decisions. But I never really liked Singer's approach. It leads to too many counter-intuitive situations.
Sometimes I miss studying philosophy. It was pointless, but fun.
I tried a few, but have currently resorted to just using SimpleMU. Perhaps this is because I MOO, rather than MUD, so I don't need much beyond a semi-decent telnet client. But it works ok, for what it does. I use Savitar on the the Mac, which is also simple but effective.
However, I guess most people would be after extra functionality.
I collect old computers. :) I have about 90 of the things - my favourites are the Apple Lisa, the Apple ///+, the OSI Challenger 4P and the Microbee. But what disappointed me about the article is that it focused on money - collecting anything is, in my experience, rarely about money, at least for the majority of those who collect. My collection is about the recording history of something I love - like many geeks, I grew up with these computers, and either had one (occasionally) or desperatly wanted one (often). So when I see a Commodore 64sx for $5 I buy it (or rather, I bought it) - not because it may one day be worth anything, but that it means something to me and I want to preserve the history.
:) The problem is storage. I keep hoping that one day someone in Australia will finally start a computer museum, and then my collection will finally have a decent home.
Well, that and I like to play Paradroid still.
The problem with this concept of the Digital Divide is that it is too much like providing trucks without also providing things to carry in them. Sure, providing IT infrastructure is a good thing, but it is meaningless without a job for that infrastructure to perform. I agree that the pat answer "focus on food and poverty first" is an oversimplification, but what concerns me more is what value they get out of the IT should they be provided with it.
An example: I gather, and I'm not a doctor, that there are some easy methods of curing dystentry. Nevertheless, people still die from it. This is presumably because they don't have access to information about how to cure it. So, if we provide them with a computer hooked up to the internet, will a small village in Ethiopia suddenly cure the problem? They can, but only if they a) think to look online, b) know how to find it, c) find the information in a format that is useful to them, and d) are able to trust that information. Can they do that at the moment? Possibly, but I doubt they can easily.
And yes, I'm aware that the content will follow the infrastructure. But the question remains - if we want to get information to people, are we better off focusing on high-end IT solutions, such as WiFi, or on low-end solutions, like the provision of pedal-radios with skilled medical advice on the other end? I would be inclined to figure out what kinds of information are required, and look for the simplest and best methods of getting that information to the people who need it, before we start looking at bridging the digital divide.
btw, I am aware of good work currently being conducted (including by people whom I work with) into what role IT can play in developing countries. It isn't as if the IT world is ignorant of this issue. And it is even mentioned in the article. But the tendancy is still to focus on high-end solutions to problems that I believe should (IMHO), at least initially, be handled in a manner that better suits the situation.
Of course, I'm always open to being convinced otherwise.
I teach in an MIS degree at an Australian university. One of our ongoing tasks (although a minor one in my case, as I primarily teach coding) is to form arrangements with industry to give students real-world experience at developing information systems - a number of subjects are heavily project-based, so we need a lot of projects to provide our students with the design and implementation experience that they need.
It occurs to me that perhaps, rather than looking to industry, we should be looking to these sorts of projects. It wouldn't be a complete replacement for industry experience, as the issues will often be different, but I'm sure the students would gain a lot from this.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure that OpenChallenge is the right system for this sort of project development. Are there other groups which could co-ordinate these sorts of projects?
I've noticed that LCD screens have been appearing all through the department in which I teach - administrators, who constantly argue that there is no money for us to spend buying equipment for teaching and research, seem to have a great love of LCD monitors, in spite of the increased cost. As I'm still happy with CRTs (for the reasons outlined in the above posts) I was curious as to why. Most of the people I asked said that it was because they took up less desk space.
:) Thus saving no space whatsoever over a CRT. And thus I conclude - as per normal in a university, the major reason why people buy LCDs is image. As they certainly aren't performing any of the other professed roles. If just one person moved their case under the desk or something I'd be happy - but no, not one did.
I had to laugh - all of these people, spending hundreds of extra dollars on LCD monitors in order to save desk space, keep putting the monitors on top of their desktop computer cases.
A specialised database means that it would be a very different thing, I suspect, than the type of general web database offered by Google - especially if the content is not publically accessible on the web. Different material than Google, and presumably "filtered".
I do wonder though - how would this differ from the existing CD Databases which most (if not all) university libraries have of journal articles? Would it be bigger? Or is the issue that it is cheap enough for the general public to be useful without the universities subsidising your access? Or would it have different material? I assume the latter, as I figure it would combine free online materials with journal articles and work from other pulications.
Mind you, I wouldn't pay for it. I use google for general stuff, and journal databases for the rest. I don't think I need a third alternative. I suspect that most students are the same, so unless they plan to offer a subscription service to universities, I wonder if there will be enough of a target demographic for tehre to be a point.
True. The paper I was focusing on was interested in the effect on bandwidth if existing content moved offshore, and found that the content was already on overseas servers. I don't think the report looked at Australians owning content hosted offshore, and this would be open to court action, but I don't know what percentage of people own content offshore, as opposed to making money from referrals. I woud be curious to know what power the police would have over the hosts, though, as a take-down order might not work no-matter who owns the content.
Dumb law, though. Although I can't see any chance of it being removed no matter who is in power in the foreseeable future.
... is worried that displaying the URLs will show how ineffective it has been on this?
:)
The censorship laws were a joke when first proposed - a joke that could damage Australian content providers, but which could have little or no impact on Australian's access to illegal materials. At the recent ACIS 2001 conference, a paper was give (full text available as pdf) arguing that the whole thing was pointless as far as pornographic sites were concerned, as they were all offshore already (due, in part, to expansive hosting on Australian servers) and therefore outside of Australia's juristiction.
I can only think of two good reasons for not releasing this material - they fear that examination of the material will show that many of the sites should not have been blacklisted (as per peacefire's work), or that they fear it will show how ineffective the legislation is.
I'll give you that. I always presumed that, as it was the World Science Fiction Society that governed them, that they would therefore be genre specific. But, according to their consititution, they include fantasy.
:)
Odd that. I wonder if it was due to a historical lack of distinction between the two, or a deliberate decision to include both genres in the same award? At any rate, now I'll just have to go back to complaining about the quality of the winners, instead of their genres.
I used to actually respect the Hugo awards. I learnt better. Especially after last year - best novel: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Even ignoring questions about how good it is (although I have strong opinions about that) the fact is that it simply isn't Science Fiction. And "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as best Science Fiction movie? (Great film, though). If the Hugos mean anything, they should at least be given to work in the correct genre.
:) Although there doesn't seem to be a lot of competition.
Off course, this year at least we know what the best movie will be - LotR. So the tradition of SF awards going to non-SF films will continue in all it's glory.
Well, as an MIS doctoral student, I am particularly unqualified to answer this. But I'll give it a shot anyway. :)
Information Systems, even without the "Management" in front, is, generally speaking, interested in the application of technology. It concerns how to apply systems (such as web sites, knowledge management systems, agent software, etc) to businesses and other organizations in order to improve the organization concerned. As a result, IS courses tend to teach some programming, web design, etc, some general systems theory (especially in postgrad work), along with buisness and management concerns. It produces an interesting mix, and although prejudiced it does seem to have value in the future. One advantage is that it tends to be good as a second degree or for postgrad study - so it might be worth considering after you complete another degree.
Keep in mind, though, that it is not so much about creating applications - more about applying existing concepts. So I doubt you'll learn much about software development.
CS, on the other hand, is all about programming. If you really feel you need a degree, but you wish to stay on your current career path, then perhaps CS would be a better choice. Then if you love study, you could use your CS degree to do part-time postgrad work in IS.
At any rate, IS in particular varies considerably according to the institution, as the field is still being defined, so it would be worth doing a fair bit of shopping around first.
I don't know about the US, but over here in Australia Flinders University has already been offering a Bachelor of Science in Nanotechnology (Honours) Degree. I don't know how popular it has been, but it seems that Australia may be ahead of the US in this one.
Hi!
The Open Archive initiative might be useful here. It is intended to escape the so-called "tyranny" of the published journals, but it might serve to undermine such groups. Basically, you self-archive your thesis/papers, using the meta tag system covered in the Santa Fe convention, and then make them available for free online. If you have copyright problems, the answer I was given was to archive the penultimate version. Further info is at http://www.openarchives.org/
I suspect that these organisations would die if they couldn't sell the papers, so by providing them free in a format which makes them easy to find we should be able to cut their legs out from under them. I'm not a great fan of the initiative as it stands, but this might be an actual use for it.