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The Open Source Initiative just published its Halloween XI. The Halloween documents started from an internal memo issued by Microsoft in 1998. This was the very first time Microsoft noticed the Linux threat. Back then, they were relatively calm about it but made the following statement: Loosely…
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Yuhong’s new blog talks about leadership. She quite accurately points out that in research, as in all creative work, leadership is a very important quality. I’ve struggled myself with the concept while I was filling out funding applications (yes, I’m still working on funding). People ask you…
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This morning, I went out and decided to do some research on the city where I live from a creative class point of view. I found two reports. One by Richard Florida himself on Canadian cities. The report was paid for by Ontario, but it looks objective. Second of all, I found a report by the…
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Let complexity be thy guide
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Stephen wrote an article: Whither the Semantic Web. We agree so much that you’d think I steal my good ideas from him (I do). Semantic Web researchers need to realize that the Semantic Web is happening now. But it isn’t happening where they think. My blog, my entire web site, is described using…
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The following page points to some research on the impact of latency on gamers and, in particular, on recent research involving Unreal Tournament:The Effects of Loss and Latency on User Performance in Unreal Tournament 2003. I think this is an absolutely great way to attract students: do research on…
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Got any non-reusable Learning Object?
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Here’s an interesting post by viral-learning about Learning Object reuse. One of the defining factor for Learning Objects ought to be reusability, you’d think. However, Downes once correctly pointed out to me that reusability is not really a defining factor… indeed, can you point out to a…
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Here’s a cool project: OpenTextBook. When I was at Acadia, we often wondered why students had to pay CAN$80 for a Calculus textbook when it was obvious that all such textbooks are the same, they have to be, and all of the content has been known for quite some time. What are we paying publisher…
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Sun´s employee can blog without asking permission
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Interesting commentary by 17th century on the One room syndrome. Many Ph.D.s have lived through this and know the feeling. You have to sit at your chair, in the same damn room day after day after day. You can imagine that what you’ll produce will be like a movie that people will pay to see……
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Interesting post on slashdot on Google’s Ph.D. Advantage. It would appear that: Google’s willingness to let every employee spend 20% of his or her time on an independent project is a compelling motivator and that they estimate that Google has as many Ph.D.’s working for it as Microsoft,…
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I like Tim Bray. He gave us so many great things and I’m sure he will help Sun. I’ve learned through OLDaily that Sun’s employees can now blog without asking permission. This is quite clear: if you want to comment on today’s technology or on your daily work, go right ahead. You don’t need…
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Critical Mass started an interesting debate: are teachers underpaid? The argument why they should be paid more seems a bit on the weak side: they have great job security, relatively good benefits like a summer off, and comparatively decent pay. My mother works 30 something hours a week, she has her…
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Funding application blues
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When I was a student, I got fairly lucky in funding applications: as an undergraduate student, I got the C.D Howe Memorial scholarship which explains why I have $0 in student debt. Then as a graduate student, I had my own funding all the way till I got my Ph.D. It was nice. Then, things got…
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There is a special issue of JIME on Semantic Web for Education (as in “Learning Objects”). I picked it up from Downes‘ in one recent post. Not only is the issue interesting, from what I could tell, it is a journal that gets it. First of all, reviews are on-line, for all to see. Don’t get me…
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I’ve wasted a considerable amount of time in the last two days upgrading my RSS aggregate so that it will have better support for atom feeds. I use the feedparser library. One thing that gets to me is how unintuitive unicode is under Python. For example, the following is a…
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Two links that are very invaluable to researchers who want to know how to succeed… How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia HOW TO ENSURE RAPID SUCCESS IN A CAREER IN SCIENCE The second one was found by Seb.
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Selling your services as a scientific paper writer?