I think it's just Clippy the friendly neighborhood Microsoft Office assistant getting the Redmond boys back for canning him in 2001.
That bastard paperclip seemed kinda sketchy when he first broke onto the scene back in '97 or so. It's only feasible that he somehow snuck onto the last megabyte of data on the Windows XP master CD and decided to cause mayhem by fscking around with the users who bitched about him so much.
Despite the proliferation of tech toys and work devices in people's lives, the gap between the tech-savvy and the techno- confused keeps growing, a monumental failure of our arrogant and elitist tech industries. It's hard to recall any industry which has so abused, neglected and exploited its customers and survived.
Come on, Jon.
Don't blame us for the fact that the tech sector moves so quickly. Sure, some of us are elitist, but the occasional RTFM isn't the source of all this trouble.
Everyone knows that if the automobile industry evolved at the same pace as computers have, we could drive from New York to California for like fifty cents and get there in an hour or something (this was some quote from some intangible study from some book I've read, I don't remember exactly).
So please, before you blame the kernel hackers and the hardware guys and the OO coders for the fact that the typical American has to use AOL to navigate the Internet or else they'd be totally freakin' screwed because there's a huge tech info gap between the 'in the know' and the 'not in the konw' folks, reconsider. It's hard for ALL OF US to keep up with how quickly things are changing these days, not just the average middle class American.
Palminfocenter has the scoop on the PEG-NR70, a thin, folding, half VGA, built-in digital camera picture taking, MP3 playing powerhouse. Nothing I can say except wow.
Is this really what people want?
I'm not trying to flame here, but I personally would much prefer a small MP3 player that I could take with me on a jog or to the gym (or use in a business situation if necessary).
As for the digital cam feature -- again, I would rather have a more versitile and quite frankly, better quality, digital camera with 3.3 megapixels or something. I can't get to the specs page for this particular PDA (it's/.ed) but I can only imagine that it's no more than 1.3 megapixels.
Perhaps I'm out of the loop, but is the PDA as a tech Swiss Army knife practical (aside from the "gee-wiz" factor and showing it off to your friends, of course)?
I can understand if you don't feel that the new movies compare to the originals. You have the right to your own opinion, and if you're just simply not impressed or captivated by the trailers or new films, fine.
But put yourself in Lucas' shoes for a minute. Here is a guy who, a couple of decades ago, created something legendary and almost mythical for a generation of movie-goers and sci-fi fans.
He's then charged with the task of one-up'ing his own past greatness with a few new movies. He must create dazzling effects that are better than anything being done with the multi-million dollar movies of current day, and he must make a good story out of it.
In the meantime, he has to worry about impressing the first generation of fans who saw the original films as well as captivating a whole new generation of youngsters with the Star Wars tale.
I guess you could kind of compare it to Michael Jordan's return(s) to the NBA after his initial retirement. People understand that he's not the limber acrobat from 20 years ago, yet it's almost as though they're dissappointed when he doesn't jump from half-court and dunk the ball.
But, the "wise" basketball fan still appreciates him for all that he's given to the game and for the people he's influenced in the process. It should be the same for Lucas.
...software piracy among college students dropped between the 1996-97 school year and the 2000-01 school year. One reason cited is that software makers have found 'creative' ways to entice students to purchase software.
creative
1. Setting up bogus honeypot websites like Amazon and CDNow in order to steal credit card numbers.
2. Hiring cute college girls to seduce rich undergrads into buying tons of software
3. Sending one new copy of their product to boxes #1-8430 of every college in Pennsylvania on a monthly basis. If they don't stamp the card with "CANCEL" and send it back within 16 hours, send them a bill for the software. If they don't pay the bill for the software within 36 hours, send them more software along with an overdue notice. Repeat.
4. See SSSCA;-)
India's new i-Grid follows a long line of previously successfull Apple products, the i-Pod and the i-Mac being two of them.
When reached for comment, Apple's visionary Steve Jobs stated that his engineers "would worry about the technical difficulties" associated with such a large distributed system after they "dealt with the more important stuff first, like what fluorescent color to make the transparent wires and stuff".
I honestly feel that we need better teachers in order to decrease this troubling violence that we see and hear in the news so often these days.
What we as a country should strive for is a nation of parents that expect public school teachers who get paid slightly more than garbage men to properly raise their children. After all, school is where a child should get their ideals and ethics. School isn't just for learning scholastic-related things or interacting with peers of your own age; school is an institution that should make chicken salad (an amazing education) out of chicken shit (tax cuts limiting teacher salaries, school budgets, etc.).
We need to stop blaming videogames for producing such evil and disobedient little brats and put the blame where it belongs -- on the teachers.
*Someone get a mop to wipe all my sarcasm off the floor*
Obvious to those of us who play GTA3 regularly but still manage to overcome the urge to plough over pedestrains on the way to work in the morning, but good to see someone high up showing some sense.
What the hell are you talking about? It's well-documented that no murders or school violence took place before Magnavox created the first videogame system thirty years ago.
Rather than relying on HTML codes to design web pages and embedding Flash as one component, Macromedia wants Flash to be used to design the entirety of a site [for all sites on the Internet]. Pre-built components, such as scrollbars and buttons, are included to allow designers to write everything using the new Flash product[to entice coders to use the Flash development environment].
Dude, 1996 called. Microsoft wants their business strategy back.
Yeah, but don't they already know that Microsoft owns the Web now? In fact, I heard from Matt Drudge that Microsoft representatives are currently in talks with Tim Berners-Lee and other high-ranking W3C officials to rename it the Microsoft Slave Network.
Open Knowledge and Open Source Initiatives: An Interview with MIT's Phil Long by Steven W. Gilbert and Phillip Long
Phil Long is currently the senior strategist for the Academic Computing Enterprise at MIT. He has been termed a "compassionate pioneer" for his work initiating new projects, new ideas, and new w ays of doing things, while demonstrating compassion through his willingness and commitment to help his colleagues move along in the same direction. Now at MIT, Long is working on several important initiatives in open source software and open courseware development.
The open source software development approach makes the source code of software freely and easily available to almost anyone. Ideally, under the open source approach, a large community of capable individuals contributes to improvements in that source code, while a quality control system manages the interactions. This interview focuses on two initiatives at MIT that are working to apply the open source approach to produce the practices, tools, and content necessary for higher education.
Steve Gilbert [SG]: Can you tell us about your work in open source software development?
Phil Long [PL]: We have two major projects underway at MIT. The first is OKI , the Open Knowledge Initiative. OKI was developed to support faculty who were trying to do more sophisticated and creative things with online education, but who were becoming increasingly frustrated with the available tools and products. Stanford University had been dealing with a similar circumstance and coming to a similar conclusion (for example, see their recent announcement regarding their adoption of the CourseWork system). We began conversations about developing something modular and fundamentally open-source that would allow for smooth integration of a learning management system into a variety of different existing enterprise systems on campuses, so that we could work on it as a community. The intention was to build an open-source architecture for online delivery of material, initially using a browser as the anticipated user interface, though we do not want to be dependent exclusively on Web technologies.
The OKI architectural design is both layered and flexible. It is layered in the sense that services required by learning modules should be provided to the designer without necessitating that s/he reinvent them. By services, I'm referring to basic needs such as authentication, authorization or logging user input. It is flexible in that the instructional designer can chose to incorporate whatever functions they wish, and omit those they don't want. This is different from courseware vendors who have approached the problem by designing a suite of integrated functions for presenting content, managing class lists, quizzing, etc. A faculty member might want to have just a simulation engine and discussion list, and the instructional designer should be able to provide just that.
OKI was originally conceived of as a project with MIT taking the lead, partnering with Stanford and looking for a third institution to join the team. We were overwhelmed by the community interest and the offers to contribute to the effort. In response, and in consultation with the Mellon Foundation, we have broadened the participation in the development of OKI to eleven institutions. We are expecting our partners not only to contribute to the design of the system, but to build tools to broaden the functionality of the learning management system. We are also getting advice from our OKI advisory committee of academic technology leaders from around the US and England. I should note that we are also working closely with other efforts, including IMS and the ADL-CoLab project.
The second major initiative in teaching and learning online is the OpenCourseWare initiative (OCW). The idea behind the OCW is to provide the content of MIT education to anyone anywhere in the world for use, reuse, modification, or enhancement. It is meant to be free to stimulate other institutions nationally and internationally to improve themselves, and by extension, us. OCW reflects the value proposition we have about what is important about an MIT education--namely, that an MIT education is fundamentally about putting excellent students together with excellent faculty supported by strong resources. The learning materials that students use and faculty create to support teaching are important, but secondary to the equation. As such, the content can be shared freely without jeopardizing the real value of learning at MIT. This decision is a result of community discussions among MIT faculty regarding MIT's approach to online instruction and content. The infrastructure used to deliver this content is the focus of OKI; the content itself is province of OCW.
SG: MIT has been careful to make it clear that making this material freely available does not mean that MIT courses are available online. Many people, however, do not seem to have grasped this point.
PL: People send e-mails asking, "How can I take the OpenCourseWare class to get my degree?" OpenCourseWare is not an online teaching environment; it is the opportunity to have faculty at MIT present their view of good teaching material, the sequencing of teaching material, good problem sets, and appropriate types of activities. It is a representation of content and sequencing and thoughtful selection and juxtaposition of materials. It is an exposure to a public audience of the decisions and processes that faculty members go through to come to the point of having a collection of resources and materials to use when teaching a particular course.
SG: Suppose in a couple of years the Open Knowledge Initiative has been successful in developing the tools and materials that you have described for us. Could somebody at another institution then start using those tools and materials from the OpenCourseWare initiative and say, "I've got the tools that were developed for and by MIT people, I've got the content for and by MIT people, so I'm really offering what amounts to an MIT course"?
PL: We do hope our material will be freely used by anybody and everybody. But we are approaching the distribution of this material in a measured manner. We have not yet finished developing the source code for the Open Knowledge Initiative, beyond pieces of it and a test environment that acts as a proof of concept for some of the design. These elements do not make an MIT education. An MIT education requires a combination of the content in conjunction with a faculty member and the critical element, the students, mixed together in an environment that supports inquiry and provides first-rate facilities to support the pursuit of knowledge. I would say that some variation of this would be true of any institution. The faculty's choice of materials and their choice of delivery vehicles for those materials are important but insufficient in fully defining what it is to get an education at the university.
SG: And at the individual course level?
PL: We want to develop innovative pedagogical tools that allow for exploration of disciplines and specific content in ways that we have not had before. But how it's used, when it's used, and the choice of learning objectives must be determined by the faculty. An example of an innovative pedagogical tool might be something that guides a student through creating and expanding a reflective record of their coursework. This is sometimes referred to as a student portfolio.
SG: Is the budget of the OpenCourseWare initiation available, so that other institutions can see what is involved financially in this project?
PL: The preliminary budget for OCW called for an initial level of $11 million. The goal of this early phase is to investigate the processes that will be required for successful production of the final OCW Web site. The development team will be working with faculty to design a set of draft templates for OCW course materials to accommodate the diverse range of courses and teaching styles offered at MIT. A major goal is to develop preliminary production processes for converting faculty-generated source materials into OCW-compatible formats. In the OCW format, we've estimated the cost at about 100 million dollars for 2,000 courses. And we anticipate that it is about a six- to seven-year project. There is also the intent to refresh the courses over this period; the refresh cycle is about every three to four years. Our primary goals for the OCW site are to have 100 courses up by September of 2002, 250 released by March of 2003, and 500 by September of 2003. The original $11 million was generously provided by the Mellon Foundation, along with the Hewlett Foundation.
SG: Is there a plan for engaging or identifying the needs of schools that are less well-endowed than research institutions, such as community colleges or small liberal arts colleges?
PL: We certainly are interested in this, and we have an obligation to our Mellon colleagues to pay careful attention to small liberal arts institutions and the kinds of tools that will be useful and valuable to them. We have internal discussions underway with respect to how we can address the community college sector. In the early stages our scope is limited to getting the architectural specifications out and, by the nature of the requirement, engaging in the pragmatic research and development to accomplish this.
SG: Any closing remarks?
PL: I ask people to continue to look at the OCW and OKI Web sites, and to ask us questions and share ideas. In addition, we have articles in EDUCAUSE Review, "New Horizons: Building 'Open' Frameworks for Education" (Long, Kumar, Vijay, & Merriman, 2001), and Syllabus, "OpenCourseWare: Simple Idea, Profound Implications" (Long, 2002), that might also be helpful. Let us know about relevant presentations at conferences. What we are trying to do is build for the future, yet the natural and appropriate tendency is also to describe what we are doing today. If there are examples of tools and applications that people have built in their own institutions, having an understanding of those would be very helpful to us.
[Editor's note: This article is modified from a TLT Group Webcast conducted October 2, 2001.]
References
Long, P. D. (2002, January) OpenCourseWare: Simple idea, profound implications. Syllabus. Retrieved February 5, 2002, from http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.a sp?id=5913
Long, P. D., Kumar, M. S. Vijay, & Merriman, J. (2001). New horizons: Building "open" frameworks for education. EDUCAUSE Review, 36(6), 80-81. Retrieved November 26, 2001, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0169.pdf
With all this talk about digital rights, etc., I feel the need to rant. OK...
I can't wait until the record companies are out of the picture. It's possible these days to create music from your own home and record it onto CDs with the same quality as you'll find on the latest Britney Spears album at Wal-Mart.
I foresee a time when instead of music artists getting paid somewhere between five and seven cents for every CD sold, they distribute them for five dollars and actually get about 90% of that money.
Music sharing will be as legal as email and will be entirely peer to peer, with the reliance of one central server a thing of the past.
Artists will release 30 songs onto their website every year, and their fans will choose the 10-15 that make it onto their official album.
Concerts will continue to be popular, and once Ticketmaster is out of the picture, ticket prices will drop to between $10 and $30.
Creative, groundbreaking music will be appropriately lauded and redundant bubblegum pop will be laughed at.
*bump* Oops, looks like I fell asleep. Wow, that was some dream...
Apparently these users say they clicked the 'no thanks' button, but still received the advertised products.
I have a funny feeling that, as evil as AOL is, they wouldn't go THIS far.
I have another funny feeling that the individuals listed in the lawsuit all live in Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties in Florida;-)
Yeah, this guy's right about the traditional telephone companies not knowing a damn thing about providing Internet service.
In fact, my university decided to pay for a T3 line from a small local company rather than AT&T. We originally had an AT&T contract I believe, but their quality of service sucked and the Net connection was always going down.
The network admins started shopping around some more and I think decided to tear up their contract with AT&T before it was supposed to end.
I have a serious proposal. Rob, Hemos, Tim, Michael -- read this.
In lieu of paying you guys five bucks a week for life ($5/week * 52 weeks/year * 70 more years/lifetime = a shitload of money), I have a proposal: I'll be Slashdot's spelling and grammar guy, aka Executive Editor. Never again will there be a comment busting on CmdrTaco's confusing AM/PM or spelling "receive" incorrectly. Hell, if I could even avoid those huge annoying Flash(tm) ads by spellchecking the trolls' posts, I'd do it!
More from an idiot who browses Slashdot with IE and enjoys trolling the waters.
First off, I don't think you even read the fucking article. You spewed off several sentences worth of drivel immediately after the story was posted.
Eric states that "'The only way to explain Microsoft's decisions over the past couple of years is to say that they know their packaged software business is doomed'". So please tell me where he's implying that the company as a whole is going to go bankrupt. Can't find it? That's because he says NOTHING OF THE SORT.
He's merely saying that their software monopoly just isn't viable as PCs continue to drop in price. Just look at how far ahead hardware is of software these days, and it's not hard to imagine a dirt-cheap PC being able to run most any computer program ever written at a useable pace.
The only design that works contains the following:
[] A teal color scheme [] Black text on a white background [].Gif icons (a must: apply a drop-shadow filter with Gimp or Photoshop!) [] A plethora of spelling and grammatical errors; otherwise, it will look like some type of machine is running the site rather than a genuine dumb human being [] The ability to add users
[] At least 40% of all users must troll
[] Allow them to have a.sig to advertise their business/website [] Commenting capabilities
[] Comments must be rated as an integer value with 5 being the highest and -1 being the lowest. In special cases, incessantly naughty trolls can be bitchslapped into a -2 blackhole.
[] First post is life, the rest is just details [] Moderating capabilites
[] Posts may be moderated an infinite number of times. Even if every rating is used a handful of times on the same comment, it should be rated as whatever adjective the last moderator thought it deserved. [] Ultimate goal: build a large enough user base so that you can post links to sites you yourself hate on the front page and watch those sites' servers go up in smoke in a little under five minutes
Say the name MegaTokyo and most people, if they recognize it, think 'one of the best manga/comics on the net today. (ignoring the recent 'stick figure dom' days while Piro was moving).' But few people think about the social, economic and philosophic issues the authors' rants can delve into. This morning Piro put up a rather long 'rant' that's really a catching insight into why the dot-com world didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving.
Mr. Katz:
If you can't even post commentaries under your own identity anymore for fear of 200 comments blasting your credibility and cliched statements, I think it's time you pack your bags and leave.
Our government doesn't seem to give two sh*ts about monopolistic tech corporations. One word: Microsoft.
Apparently, the cool thing now is to cut taxes while spending record amounts on making our country powerful enough to take over the entire world, and possibly the whole Milky Way (just give them time).
I'm not sure how we as Americans can even sleep at night when we have someone with the sophistication of a 4th grader running our country (Duuuhhh-bya).
Unfortunately, I think it's going to be "long live Verizon et al".
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's just Clippy the friendly neighborhood Microsoft Office assistant getting the Redmond boys back for canning him in 2001.
That bastard paperclip seemed kinda sketchy when he first broke onto the scene back in '97 or so. It's only feasible that he somehow snuck onto the last megabyte of data on the Windows XP master CD and decided to cause mayhem by fscking around with the users who bitched about him so much.
monolithic - adj. Characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity
linux - n. An implementation of the Unix kernel originally written from scratch with no proprietary code
Despite the proliferation of tech toys and work devices in people's lives, the gap between the tech-savvy and the techno- confused keeps growing, a monumental failure of our arrogant and elitist tech industries. It's hard to recall any industry which has so abused, neglected and exploited its customers and survived.
Come on, Jon.
Don't blame us for the fact that the tech sector moves so quickly. Sure, some of us are elitist, but the occasional RTFM isn't the source of all this trouble.
Everyone knows that if the automobile industry evolved at the same pace as computers have, we could drive from New York to California for like fifty cents and get there in an hour or something (this was some quote from some intangible study from some book I've read, I don't remember exactly).
So please, before you blame the kernel hackers and the hardware guys and the OO coders for the fact that the typical American has to use AOL to navigate the Internet or else they'd be totally freakin' screwed because there's a huge tech info gap between the 'in the know' and the 'not in the konw' folks, reconsider. It's hard for ALL OF US to keep up with how quickly things are changing these days, not just the average middle class American.
monolithic - adj. Characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity; Linux - n. An implementation of the Unix kernel originally written from scratch with no proprietary code
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-03 -04&res=l
:: Beware the Penguins (doobie doobie do...)
monolinux.com
Palminfocenter has the scoop on the PEG-NR70, a thin, folding, half VGA, built-in digital camera picture taking, MP3 playing powerhouse. Nothing I can say except wow.
/.ed) but I can only imagine that it's no more than 1.3 megapixels.
:: We Kill Trolls. We Worship Penguins.
Is this really what people want?
I'm not trying to flame here, but I personally would much prefer a small MP3 player that I could take with me on a jog or to the gym (or use in a business situation if necessary).
As for the digital cam feature -- again, I would rather have a more versitile and quite frankly, better quality, digital camera with 3.3 megapixels or something. I can't get to the specs page for this particular PDA (it's
Perhaps I'm out of the loop, but is the PDA as a tech Swiss Army knife practical (aside from the "gee-wiz" factor and showing it off to your friends, of course)?
monolinux.com
I can understand if you don't feel that the new movies compare to the originals. You have the right to your own opinion, and if you're just simply not impressed or captivated by the trailers or new films, fine.
:: Beware The Penguins!
But put yourself in Lucas' shoes for a minute. Here is a guy who, a couple of decades ago, created something legendary and almost mythical for a generation of movie-goers and sci-fi fans.
He's then charged with the task of one-up'ing his own past greatness with a few new movies. He must create dazzling effects that are better than anything being done with the multi-million dollar movies of current day, and he must make a good story out of it.
In the meantime, he has to worry about impressing the first generation of fans who saw the original films as well as captivating a whole new generation of youngsters with the Star Wars tale.
I guess you could kind of compare it to Michael Jordan's return(s) to the NBA after his initial retirement. People understand that he's not the limber acrobat from 20 years ago, yet it's almost as though they're dissappointed when he doesn't jump from half-court and dunk the ball.
But, the "wise" basketball fan still appreciates him for all that he's given to the game and for the people he's influenced in the process. It should be the same for Lucas.
monolinux.com
...software piracy among college students dropped between the 1996-97 school year and the 2000-01 school year. One reason cited is that software makers have found 'creative' ways to entice students to purchase software.
;-)
:: One Website To Rule Them All
creative
1. Setting up bogus honeypot websites like Amazon and CDNow in order to steal credit card numbers.
2. Hiring cute college girls to seduce rich undergrads into buying tons of software
3. Sending one new copy of their product to boxes #1-8430 of every college in Pennsylvania on a monthly basis. If they don't stamp the card with "CANCEL" and send it back within 16 hours, send them a bill for the software. If they don't pay the bill for the software within 36 hours, send them more software along with an overdue notice. Repeat.
4. See SSSCA
monolinux.com
India's new i-Grid follows a long line of previously successfull Apple products, the i-Pod and the i-Mac being two of them.
:: GNUs For Nerds. Flawless Grammar.
When reached for comment, Apple's visionary Steve Jobs stated that his engineers "would worry about the technical difficulties" associated with such a large distributed system after they "dealt with the more important stuff first, like what fluorescent color to make the transparent wires and stuff".
monolinux.com
I honestly feel that we need better teachers in order to decrease this troubling violence that we see and hear in the news so often these days.
:: One Platform To Rule Them All
What we as a country should strive for is a nation of parents that expect public school teachers who get paid slightly more than garbage men to properly raise their children. After all, school is where a child should get their ideals and ethics. School isn't just for learning scholastic-related things or interacting with peers of your own age; school is an institution that should make chicken salad (an amazing education) out of chicken shit (tax cuts limiting teacher salaries, school budgets, etc.).
We need to stop blaming videogames for producing such evil and disobedient little brats and put the blame where it belongs -- on the teachers.
*Someone get a mop to wipe all my sarcasm off the floor*
monolinux.com
Obvious to those of us who play GTA3 regularly but still manage to overcome the urge to plough over pedestrains on the way to work in the morning, but good to see someone high up showing some sense.
What the hell are you talking about? It's well-documented that no murders or school violence took place before Magnavox created the first videogame system thirty years ago.
Rather than relying on HTML codes to design web pages and embedding Flash as one component, Macromedia wants Flash to be used to design the entirety of a site [for all sites on the Internet]. Pre-built components, such as scrollbars and buttons, are included to allow designers to write everything using the new Flash product[to entice coders to use the Flash development environment].
:: All Linux, No Ads
Dude, 1996 called. Microsoft wants their business strategy back.
monolinux.com
Yeah, but don't they already know that Microsoft owns the Web now? In fact, I heard from Matt Drudge that Microsoft representatives are currently in talks with Tim Berners-Lee and other high-ranking W3C officials to rename it the Microsoft Slave Network.
:: Latest Headlines
monolinux.com
Open Knowledge and Open Source Initiatives:
a sp?id=5913
f
An Interview with MIT's Phil Long
by Steven W. Gilbert and Phillip Long
Phil Long is currently the senior strategist for the Academic Computing Enterprise at MIT. He has been termed a "compassionate pioneer" for his work initiating new projects, new ideas, and new w
ays of doing things, while demonstrating compassion through his willingness and commitment to help his colleagues move along in the same direction. Now at MIT, Long is working on several important initiatives in open source software and open courseware development.
The open source software development approach makes the source code of software freely and easily available to almost anyone. Ideally, under the open source approach, a large community of capable individuals contributes to improvements in that source code, while a quality control system manages the interactions. This interview focuses on two initiatives at MIT that are working to apply the open source approach to produce the practices, tools, and content necessary for higher education.
Steve Gilbert [SG]: Can you tell us about your work in open source software development?
Phil Long [PL]: We have two major projects underway at MIT. The first is OKI , the Open Knowledge Initiative. OKI was developed to support faculty who were trying to do more sophisticated and creative things with online education, but who were becoming increasingly frustrated with the available tools and products. Stanford University had been dealing with a similar circumstance and coming to a similar conclusion (for example, see their recent announcement regarding their adoption of the CourseWork system). We began conversations about developing something modular and fundamentally open-source that would allow for smooth integration of a learning management system into a variety of different existing enterprise systems on campuses, so that we could work on it as a community. The intention was to build an open-source architecture for online delivery of material, initially using a browser as the anticipated user interface, though we do not want to be dependent exclusively on Web technologies.
The OKI architectural design is both layered and flexible. It is layered in the sense that services required by learning modules should be provided to the designer without necessitating that s/he reinvent them. By services, I'm referring to basic needs such as authentication, authorization or logging user input. It is flexible in that the instructional designer can chose to incorporate whatever functions they wish, and omit those they don't want. This is different from courseware vendors who have approached the problem by designing a suite of integrated functions for presenting content, managing class lists, quizzing, etc. A faculty member might want to have just a simulation engine and discussion list, and the instructional designer should be able to provide just that.
OKI was originally conceived of as a project with MIT taking the lead, partnering with Stanford and looking for a third institution to join the team. We were overwhelmed by the community interest and the offers to contribute to the effort. In response, and in consultation with the Mellon Foundation, we have broadened the participation in the development of OKI to eleven institutions. We are expecting our partners not only to contribute to the design of the system, but to build tools to broaden the functionality of the learning management system. We are also getting advice from our OKI advisory committee of academic technology leaders from around the US and England. I should note that we are also working closely with other efforts, including IMS and the ADL-CoLab project.
The second major initiative in teaching and learning online is the OpenCourseWare initiative (OCW). The idea behind the OCW is to provide the content of MIT education to anyone anywhere in the world for use, reuse, modification, or enhancement. It is meant to be free to stimulate other institutions nationally and internationally to improve themselves, and by extension, us. OCW reflects the value proposition we have about what is important about an MIT education--namely, that an MIT education is fundamentally about putting excellent students together with excellent faculty supported by strong resources. The learning materials that students use and faculty create to support teaching are important, but secondary to the equation. As such, the content can be shared freely without jeopardizing the real value of learning at MIT. This decision is a result of community discussions among MIT faculty regarding MIT's approach to online instruction and content. The infrastructure used to deliver this content is the focus of OKI; the content itself is province of OCW.
SG: MIT has been careful to make it clear that making this material freely available does not mean that MIT courses are available online. Many people, however, do not seem to have grasped this point.
PL: People send e-mails asking, "How can I take the OpenCourseWare class to get my degree?" OpenCourseWare is not an online teaching environment; it is the opportunity to have faculty at MIT present their view of good teaching material, the sequencing of teaching material, good problem sets, and appropriate types of activities. It is a representation of content and sequencing and thoughtful selection and juxtaposition of materials. It is an exposure to a public audience of the decisions and processes that faculty members go through to come to the point of having a collection of resources and materials to use when teaching a particular course.
SG: Suppose in a couple of years the Open Knowledge Initiative has been successful in developing the tools and materials that you have described for us. Could somebody at another institution then start using those tools and materials from the OpenCourseWare initiative and say, "I've got the tools that were developed for and by MIT people, I've got the content for and by MIT people, so I'm really offering what amounts to an MIT course"?
PL: We do hope our material will be freely used by anybody and everybody. But we are approaching the distribution of this material in a measured manner. We have not yet finished developing the source code for the Open Knowledge Initiative, beyond pieces of it and a test environment that acts as a proof of concept for some of the design. These elements do not make an MIT education. An MIT education requires a combination of the content in conjunction with a faculty member and the critical element, the students, mixed together in an environment that supports inquiry and provides first-rate facilities to support the pursuit of knowledge. I would say that some variation of this would be true of any institution. The faculty's choice of materials and their choice of delivery vehicles for those materials are important but insufficient in fully defining what it is to get an education at the university.
SG: And at the individual course level?
PL: We want to develop innovative pedagogical tools that allow for exploration of disciplines and specific content in ways that we have not had before. But how it's used, when it's used, and the choice of learning objectives must be determined by the faculty. An example of an innovative pedagogical tool might be something that guides a student through creating and expanding a reflective record of their coursework. This is sometimes referred to as a student portfolio.
SG: Is the budget of the OpenCourseWare initiation available, so that other institutions can see what is involved financially in this project?
PL: The preliminary budget for OCW called for an initial level of $11 million. The goal of this early phase is to investigate the processes that will be required for successful production of the final OCW Web site. The development team will be working with faculty to design a set of draft templates for OCW course materials to accommodate the diverse range of courses and teaching styles offered at MIT. A major goal is to develop preliminary production processes for converting faculty-generated source materials into OCW-compatible formats. In the OCW format, we've estimated the cost at about 100 million dollars for 2,000 courses. And we anticipate that it is about a six- to seven-year project. There is also the intent to refresh the courses over this period; the refresh cycle is about every three to four years. Our primary goals for the OCW site are to have 100 courses up by September of 2002, 250 released by March of 2003, and 500 by September of 2003. The original $11 million was generously provided by the Mellon Foundation, along with the Hewlett Foundation.
SG: Is there a plan for engaging or identifying the needs of schools that are less well-endowed than research institutions, such as community colleges or small liberal arts colleges?
PL: We certainly are interested in this, and we have an obligation to our Mellon colleagues to pay careful attention to small liberal arts institutions and the kinds of tools that will be useful and valuable to them. We have internal discussions underway with respect to how we can address the community college sector. In the early stages our scope is limited to getting the architectural specifications out and, by the nature of the requirement, engaging in the pragmatic research and development to accomplish this.
SG: Any closing remarks?
PL: I ask people to continue to look at the OCW and OKI Web sites, and to ask us questions and share ideas. In addition, we have articles in EDUCAUSE Review, "New Horizons: Building 'Open' Frameworks for Education" (Long, Kumar, Vijay, & Merriman, 2001), and Syllabus, "OpenCourseWare: Simple Idea, Profound Implications" (Long, 2002), that might also be helpful. Let us know about relevant presentations at conferences. What we are trying to do is build for the future, yet the natural and appropriate tendency is also to describe what we are doing today. If there are examples of tools and applications that people have built in their own institutions, having an understanding of those would be very helpful to us.
[Editor's note: This article is modified from a TLT Group Webcast conducted October 2, 2001.]
References
Long, P. D. (2002, January) OpenCourseWare: Simple idea, profound implications. Syllabus. Retrieved February 5, 2002, from http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.
Long, P. D., Kumar, M. S. Vijay, & Merriman, J. (2001). New horizons: Building "open" frameworks for education. EDUCAUSE Review, 36(6), 80-81. Retrieved November 26, 2001, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0169.pd
MONOLINUX.com
With all this talk about digital rights, etc., I feel the need to rant. OK...
:: GNUs For Nerds. Flawless Grammar.
I can't wait until the record companies are out of the picture. It's possible these days to create music from your own home and record it onto CDs with the same quality as you'll find on the latest Britney Spears album at Wal-Mart.
I foresee a time when instead of music artists getting paid somewhere between five and seven cents for every CD sold, they distribute them for five dollars and actually get about 90% of that money.
Music sharing will be as legal as email and will be entirely peer to peer, with the reliance of one central server a thing of the past.
Artists will release 30 songs onto their website every year, and their fans will choose the 10-15 that make it onto their official album.
Concerts will continue to be popular, and once Ticketmaster is out of the picture, ticket prices will drop to between $10 and $30.
Creative, groundbreaking music will be appropriately lauded and redundant bubblegum pop will be laughed at.
*bump* Oops, looks like I fell asleep. Wow, that was some dream...
EricKrout.com Is Back In Action
Apparently these users say they clicked the 'no thanks' button, but still received the advertised products.
;-)
:: GNUws For Nerds. Flawless Grammar.
I have a funny feeling that, as evil as AOL is, they wouldn't go THIS far.
I have another funny feeling that the individuals listed in the lawsuit all live in Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties in Florida
EricKrout.com Is Back In Action
Yeah, this guy's right about the traditional telephone companies not knowing a damn thing about providing Internet service.
:: GNUws For Nerds. Flawless Grammar.
In fact, my university decided to pay for a T3 line from a small local company rather than AT&T. We originally had an AT&T contract I believe, but their quality of service sucked and the Net connection was always going down.
The network admins started shopping around some more and I think decided to tear up their contract with AT&T before it was supposed to end.
EricKrout.com Is Back In Action
I have a serious proposal. Rob, Hemos, Tim, Michael -- read this.
In lieu of paying you guys five bucks a week for life ($5/week * 52 weeks/year * 70 more years/lifetime = a shitload of money), I have a proposal: I'll be Slashdot's spelling and grammar guy, aka Executive Editor. Never again will there be a comment busting on CmdrTaco's confusing AM/PM or spelling "receive" incorrectly. Hell, if I could even avoid those huge annoying Flash(tm) ads by spellchecking the trolls' posts, I'd do it!
;-)
First non-subscriber post!
Let the non-subscriber bashing commence!
I'll take the hit. This kinda thing doesn't happen every day. :-/
*gasp*
What kind of applications are you two lovebirds using in the bedroom?!
;-)
Oh lord.
More from an idiot who browses Slashdot with IE and enjoys trolling the waters.
First off, I don't think you even read the fucking article. You spewed off several sentences worth of drivel immediately after the story was posted.
Eric states that "'The only way to explain Microsoft's decisions over the past couple of years is to say that they know their packaged software business is doomed'". So please tell me where he's implying that the company as a whole is going to go bankrupt. Can't find it? That's because he says NOTHING OF THE SORT.
He's merely saying that their software monopoly just isn't viable as PCs continue to drop in price. Just look at how far ahead hardware is of software these days, and it's not hard to imagine a dirt-cheap PC being able to run most any computer program ever written at a useable pace.
The only design that works contains the following:
.Gif icons (a must: apply a drop-shadow filter with Gimp or Photoshop!) .sig to advertise their business/website
/.!
[] A teal color scheme
[] Black text on a white background
[]
[] A plethora of spelling and grammatical errors; otherwise, it will look like some type of machine is running the site rather than a genuine dumb human being
[] The ability to add users
[] At least 40% of all users must troll
[] Allow them to have a
[] Commenting capabilities
[] Comments must be rated as an integer value with 5 being the highest and -1 being the lowest. In special cases, incessantly naughty trolls can be bitchslapped into a -2 blackhole.
[] First post is life, the rest is just details
[] Moderating capabilites
[] Posts may be moderated an infinite number of times. Even if every rating is used a handful of times on the same comment, it should be rated as whatever adjective the last moderator thought it deserved.
[] Ultimate goal: build a large enough user base so that you can post links to sites you yourself hate on the front page and watch those sites' servers go up in smoke in a little under five minutes
This is meant as a joke. I love
:-)
Say the name MegaTokyo and most people, if they recognize it, think 'one of the best manga/comics on the net today. (ignoring the recent 'stick figure dom' days while Piro was moving).' But few people think about the social, economic and philosophic issues the authors' rants can delve into. This morning Piro put up a rather long 'rant' that's really a catching insight into why the dot-com world didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving.
Mr. Katz:
If you can't even post commentaries under your own identity anymore for fear of 200 comments blasting your credibility and cliched statements, I think it's time you pack your bags and leave.
Sincerely,
Slashdot Users, #2 - #570,000
;-)
Let's be serious, folks.
Our government doesn't seem to give two sh*ts about monopolistic tech corporations. One word: Microsoft.
Apparently, the cool thing now is to cut taxes while spending record amounts on making our country powerful enough to take over the entire world, and possibly the whole Milky Way (just give them time).
I'm not sure how we as Americans can even sleep at night when we have someone with the sophistication of a 4th grader running our country (Duuuhhh-bya).
Unfortunately, I think it's going to be "long live Verizon et al".
Cute, but inaccurate.
Accompanying that particular post by the editor is a timestamp showing "Posted by mellogear 02/24/2002 | 07:27 AM".
The 24th was Sunday, so he posted that yesterday morning, many hours this story was added to Slashdot's front page.
:-D
for all those faulty IBM hard disk drives, perhaps.
:-/
Built like a huge tilted record player, it can spin at up to 30 km/h. Any takers?
Couldn't we somehow merge all those screwed-up IBM Death^H^H^HskStar drives into a pseudo Beowulf cluster that would spin that fast?
Of course, I wouldn't want to be skiing on it when a few drives totally die
EricKrout.com officially endorses Ximian GNOME