For those who can't be bothered to go and read it/for when it gets Slashdotted:
What is it?
The Waypath Project is an attempt to network the weblog community, connecting weblogs that share common themes, ideas, and topics.
How does it work?
The Waypath Project's Related Weblog Navigation engine analyzes weblog entries to determine their core conceptual makeups, compares them with one another to find out how related they are, and presents you with its best guess as to what's related to your original input. This is done all automatically, using available technology.
Where does the data come from?
WP makes use of public weblog update lists, which it crawls several times each day. We use a custom spider to grab changed files from individual weblogs. We make our best effort to grab new weblog entries the same day their posted, depending on resource availability. Learn more about data selection here.
Why does quality vary?
What the Waypath Project is doing is not trivial. Sometimes Waypath results are amazingly on target, sometimes you can kind of see the thread that relates weblog entries, sometimes you're left scratching your head. We're constantly working to make results better, as time allows.
Why isn't WP open source?
The core of WP is based on a proprietary, commerical technology that Think Tank 23 has generously donated to this project. However, the tools developed by the Waypath Project will be released into the open source community as time allows.
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Why is this site so spartan?
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We now have a hugely prescriptive National Curriculum that dictates what must be taught and how many hours should be spent on certain subjects. All of this is coupled with enormous amounts of paperwork.
Agreed. I'm 14 (most of my year is already 15), and currently in my first year of GCSE study. When we chose our GCSEs, we only got 2 completely free choices; our compulsory subjects are:
English & Eng. Lit.
Science (physics, chem. and bio. - counts as 2GCSEs)
Maths
One language (french or german at my school)
Information tech. (half GCSE) - this course is complete and utter crap, and I really mean that; the teacher makes no attempt to teacher us anything anyway
Religious Ed. (half GCSE)
One 'technology' - food, textiles, woodwork, plastics etc.
Plus our 2 other GCSEs - free choic of history, geography, business, PE, and some niche subjects
We also have one lesson of Physical Education a week, to keep us fit;-) and PSE - Personnal and Social Education - where no-one does any work. Along these lines I can guess that the "citizenship" subject mentioned in the article will replace this - and again, no-one will pay attention or do any work. I mean, some people don't work in any subject, but, NO-ONE, not even me, works in PSE..
The result has been to narrow the subjects taught to UK kids as a whole, and to remove much of the flair with which some of these subjects were taught. Not surprisingly, we now have a teacher shortage as well.
news fresh in today from my school: a teacher who started at the beginning of the year is leaving already! We had a very high staff turnover last year...Many students at university are taking up the government offer of cash if they do teacher training... and then not becoming teachers.
"New Labour" here in the UK appear committed to mass-producing corporate drones with as little individuality as possible, and at the lowest possible cost - our Education services are woefully underfunded and stretched to the limits...... Our 10 year olds are being taught in classes of 36-37 kids. And our school is succesful, over-subscribed, and turning away applicants!
This is exactly the same at my high school, although the class sizes in the newer years number at about 30-32 - but this is still huge compared with most classes in my year - 27-29. The school is turning away applicants, though this is not surprising because everyone in Hull wants to goto Cottingham High - the schools inside Hull itself are utterly, utterly hopeless..
none of my teachers have been any good so far; it's perhaps a good thing I still have a while to get some.
The IT teachers have no idea, and have barely heard of Linux. The computers in the school are about as good as the one I have (read:crap) and have some of the worst software you can imagine.
Smigs
I use Jabber all the time, and although it is sometimes tempremental, it saves me system resources no end. What I'm really excited about is the JabberZilla client, and the ability to access IRC thorugh Jabber, saving yet more memory!
Smigs
When I see the TV pictures of the Russian Space Control Room, there are loads of banners of companies like Hewlett Packard and well I can't remember the others but what are they doing, sponsering a space station crash? It surely can't be good publicity ( "we helped Mir crash into the Pacific...")
Slashdot Mirror
For those who can't be bothered to go and read it/for when it gets Slashdotted:
Agreed. I'm 14 (most of my year is already 15), and currently in my first year of GCSE study. When we chose our GCSEs, we only got 2 completely free choices; our compulsory subjects are:
We also have one lesson of Physical Education a week, to keep us fit ;-) and PSE - Personnal and Social Education - where no-one does any work. Along these lines I can guess that the "citizenship" subject mentioned in the article will replace this - and again, no-one will pay attention or do any work. I mean, some people don't work in any subject, but, NO-ONE, not even me, works in PSE..
news fresh in today from my school: a teacher who started at the beginning of the year is leaving already! We had a very high staff turnover last year...Many students at university are taking up the government offer of cash if they do teacher training... and then not becoming teachers.
This is exactly the same at my high school, although the class sizes in the newer years number at about 30-32 - but this is still huge compared with most classes in my year - 27-29. The school is turning away applicants, though this is not surprising because everyone in Hull wants to goto Cottingham High - the schools inside Hull itself are utterly, utterly hopeless..
SmigsThey will try to enforce a ban on European sites, so that less content(imports) will come from abroad.
Kingston Communications is testing a technology like this that allows tv over an ADSL line, the "coming soon" page is at kitv.co.uk
none of my teachers have been any good so far; it's perhaps a good thing I still have a while to get some. The IT teachers have no idea, and have barely heard of Linux. The computers in the school are about as good as the one I have (read:crap) and have some of the worst software you can imagine. Smigs
I use Jabber all the time, and although it is sometimes tempremental, it saves me system resources no end. What I'm really excited about is the JabberZilla client, and the ability to access IRC thorugh Jabber, saving yet more memory! Smigs
When I see the TV pictures of the Russian Space Control Room, there are loads of banners of companies like Hewlett Packard and well I can't remember the others but what are they doing, sponsering a space station crash? It surely can't be good publicity ( "we helped Mir crash into the Pacific...")
Smigs