The $100 laptop: What went wrong - MSN Money

The $100 laptop: What went wrong - MSN Money: "I personally would love to see these laptops save the world, as some people have suggested they might. But those holding that opinion tend to view the world from the window of a five-star hotel.
In fact, this is a massive exercise in futility. And it's a shame."

No, not the happiest of Thanksgiving Day posts...but since technically it's not Turkey Day anymore, here it is! Besides, this is on target with a, ummmm...'discussion' I was having with Astro while we were out of town at a conference. Afraid I was on the same side largely as this writer Dvorak. I too think there are lots of other, better ways to spend the time, brainpower, chartible giving, and money that is going into this $100 PC project. Things that can make a more lasting difference in these developing countries. And how do you get around the fact that in most of these places the infrastructure is so poor? How does it help a village with no electricity, no running water, no reliable communication means to have laptops? Laptops that can only talk to each other (maybe!) and not to any greater network (because...well, see the point about 'no electricity'!)??

Techdirt: Will Digital Archiving Difficulties Wipe Out Important Elements Of Our History?

Techdirt: Will Digital Archiving Difficulties Wipe Out Important Elements Of Our History?em>
Even if you can store the data perfectly forever, without the right applications, it's meaningless. Matt Sullivan writes in with yet another article on the topic, this time from Popular Mechanics, that suggests we could be facing a "digital ice age" as plenty of data from this era of history are lost to bad archiving capabilities.

(Original article noted above is from Dec, 2006 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.)

Well....yes. D'uh, I guess in a way. See, this issue apparently is now getting play in the slightly more popular press (I hedge and hate to take out the qualifier of "slightly" since PM is not exactly TIME or Newsweek in terms of its scope or readership...but is obviously vastly further reaching than all the academic stuff). And it's a known and researched topic in the archival, library and information science fields for quite some time. Apparently we've just been preaching to the choir and talking amongst ourselves until now. And even now, it's probably not someone from one of those disciplines doing the writing here. But he does reference some of the most famous examples of digital data obsolescence-- including the Navy's Aircraft Carrier, Nimitz.

Perhaps moral of this story/rant is to do research that has practical applications, work with practitioners on the research, and then get results published in both academic publications (cause I gotta go out and work on tenure someday, somehow) and more popular ones, outside my own field.

HA! So there...

I do NOT have an accent, and according to this, not the one I have sometimes been accused of having, and which I swear I don't.
See, that makes no sense in an online world without audio, and with a blogger trying to stay anonymous! But trust me when I say that when people ask me where I'm "from" (and that's a loaded question with no easy answer) and if I give them my birthplace, they then go "oh, of course, I thought you had a southern accent".
Well...dammit...I don't! And I've never lived anywhere where strong southern accents are the norm.
Hmmmph. Take the quiz yourself.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Boston
The Northeast
Philadelphia
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Meme mania

Followed a link from Elle, ABD to Seeking Academia for a different post, and then while reading, came across this one on one-word answer meme.Seeking Academia: The one word meme is harder than I thought it would be Came from elsewhere.
Fascinating. May have to do this...ok, WILL do this..
...feeling like channeling Yoda..."there is no try, only do"

So thanks, for yet another diversion, and reason I'm not asleep. Cool reason...but sleepy nonetheless.


· Yourself: enigma
· Your partner: steady
· Your hair: cinnamon
· Your Mother: collector
· Your Father: reticent
· Your Favorite Item: laptop
· Your dream last night: convoluted
· Your Favorite Drink: bourbon
· Your Dream Car: fast
· Your Dream Home: island
· The Room You Are In: study
· Your Ex: distant
· Your fear: rejection
· Where you Want to be in Ten Years? respected
· Who you hung out with last night: classmate
· What You're Not: disloyal
· Muffins: blueberry
· One of Your Wish List Items: motorcycle
· Time: 1995
· The Last Thing You Did: quiz
· What You Are Wearing: black
· Your favorite weather: nippy
· Your Favorite Book?: repeated
· Last thing you ate?: steak
· Your Life: bumblebee
· Your mood: sleepy
· Your Best Friends: soul
· What are you thinking about right now?: time
· Your car: sexy
· What are you doing at the moment: this
· Your summer: open
· Relationship status: stationary
· What is on your tv?: sports
· What is the weather like: unpredictable
· When is the last time you laughed: tonight

Comments on changes to/in ALA

Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » ALA through my eyes: One year later

Blogger had vented a year ago about why not to join, or re-up with ALA (American Library Association) and wondered if things were ever going to change. She now thinks things have changed enough that she will indeed re-up. Nice summary in post about changes ALA has made, what they mean.

Also on this topic is a post from someone I know (sorta) about the academic library side of things and changes in ALA--and what it takes to make ALA/ACRL better. Comment thread may be most interesting part.

Fave Children's Book

Saw this post from Catalogblog that says there's a 'viral posting' going around (is that like a meme?) in honor of Children's Book Week, to name your fave kids's book. I'm guessing they mean fave from your own childhood, and not one you teach with, or read to kids in a library or school, or to your own kids. But I also guess it could be one of those too...

I'm not sure I can narrow it down to one. Several come to mind. Much more readily right now since about a month or so ago I was out buying favorite kids' books for a friend's baby shower. (everyone was to bring one or two of their favorites to start the family/baby's library-- naturally, having that Lib Sci degree, I didn't stop at one...or two!)

So...here's a quick Fave Five:
Uncle Wiggly-- loved those escapades with him and Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. This is a suprisingly hard to find book in bookstores...at least in the brick-n-mortar world anyway. Original stories were written in 1920s I think, and re-released in 1970s, and again in the '80s. Some are in collections such as the one in the link, others are found separately.

Richard Scarry-- any...all! Love Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm... "Cars and Trucks and Things that Go", and the one with the story of the "Pie-rats".

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day--because sometimes days are just like that...still.

Amelia Bedelia-- love the puns, the word play. It's silly when you read as a kid, and still cracks me up as an adult, now reading to a new generation of kids.

The Little House series-- american classics. So many kids grew up learning to read with these books, and learning history and not even realizing it.

Well, that was a fun diversion. Everybody, go read a book. Better, go read a book to a child!

Wired News: A Sneak Peek at a Fractured Web

Wired News: A Sneak Peek at a Fractured Web: "Internet censorship is spreading and becoming more sophisticated across the planet, even as users develop savvier ways around it, according to early results in the first-ever comprehensive global survey of internet censorship."

Early release of data on big study from OpenNet Initiative looking at matters of cyberlaw, freedom of speech, and censorship of the web, on a global basis. Interesting points are countries that are less than forthright in their censorship tactics. The info age only comes to some of us, and the digital divide is global.

it's our job to bridge that gap...

InformationWeek Weblog: How Trustworthy Is The Web?

InformationWeek Weblog: How Trustworthy Is The Web?: "When I did a reality check last Friday on some Wikipedia data my daughter had dug up about an obscure early French explorer, I found something interesting. Curious to see how Wikipedia information jibed with that from other sites, I did a--what else?--Google search, only to find that most other sites had simply copied the Wikipedia entry. Word for word, in many cases. In short: even if eventually corrected, erroneous information put into Wikipedia had already been propagated throughout the Web. "

Trust. Big issue for me, particularly in my research. I'm also a strong proponent of Information Literacy development and work implementing it at every level of our education system. Big part of Info Lit is about teaching critical thinking skills, including evaluation of ALL types of resources. Naturally, this is a BIG concern for everything web-based. Scary world out there. Research coming out just points out the obvious-- people trust easily--probably too easily. Still assuming that if it's on the web, and if from some bigtime name site, it must be true, or accurate.
Oh boy....lot of work to do...

ABC News: Berners-Lee, MIT Developing 'Web Science' Field

ABC News: Berners-Lee, MIT Developing 'Web Science' Field: "Nov. 2 Thursday morning, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT and the University of Southampton announced The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), basically a group designed to set a research agenda for understanding the scientific, technical and social challenges underlying the growth of the Web.
WSRI will be headquartered at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT and at the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton. Initial plans call for joint research projects, workshops and student/faculty exchanges between the two institutions. "

Initiative with Tim Berners-Lee's name attached, as well a folks from the W3C. Talk about 'going beyond computer science'...but seems to ignore that much work is already beign done in this area by Information Science discipline. Once again, academics, pundits, journalists, those in the main-stream, all seem to think the only folks who can study, build, research and improve on computer-based technology must be the computer scientists, or software engineers. If you want to get serious about computing, technology and in the information age we live in , try concentrating first and foremost on the USERS!! The LIS field has a pretty damn long history in this area, as well as extensive experience in technology, and in playing nicely with other disciplines. Maybe you should look into it...

DigInit :: digital initiatives

DigInit :: digital initiatives: "So, I’ll be attending and presenting at Internet Librarian later this week which has got me thinking about the circles we, librarians, travel. It seems we’re awfully comfortable talking to each other and that’s a good thing in small doses. But, we have to ask ourselves, “Who is listening?”"

Intro to a piece from this blogger, who is very heavily into digital library work, especially the back-end, code side of things it would appear. Next bit goes on to quote several online pieces about "need for modern libraries", responses, call for change in the library world--at many levels. Not so much a new thread, but always intersting to see more takes on it, get more ideas on what to actually "DO" about it.

CogSci Librarian

CogSci Librarian: "Heard another *terrific* TED Talks podcast (and no, I have NO affiliation with Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) at all -- I should be so lucky!) about the value of choice in our lives. From the TED Blog: 'Barry Schwartz is a sociology professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice. In this talk, he persuasively explains how and why the abundance of choice in modern society is actually making us miserable.' "

I'm pretty sure I was already aware of the book, and have read other exceprts. But this is a nice reminder, a tie-in with current coursework, and a way to link to this blog so I can find it later.
Hmmm...thoughts on memory...more relation to coursework. I have a harder and harder time remembering things these days...or, more precisely, I have issues with "recall" and not so much with "recognition".
But in true grad student, supreme nerd fashion, I turned my fitful memory, and my forgetfullness about things like, oh say, my ASSIGNMENT, into a creative, well receive essay. TA-DA!! Ha!

Reassigned Time: Mentoring

Reassigned Time: Mentoring: "I've been thinking a lot about mentoring lately, in no small part because so many people have been posting about it lately. (I'm sure there are links I'm missing, too, but those are the ones that immediately jump to mind. Edited to add: Here's another link that I think participates in this conversation that seems to be cropping up all around.) Oh, and I also read something about mentoring on the CHE forums in the context of junior faculty needing mentors."

Off on a new tangent..."mentoring".

worthwhile one. ought to add all the links from this Dr Crazy, and others. Good advice for the down road, career planning, getting ready to hit job market. Course I'm a ways off from there, but better to start worrying...I mean planning...now.

And this blog changed addresses, was supposed to be a link up there about mentoring, but it got lost in the move apparently. But ProfGrrrrl is worth following none the less. Like her style, wit, frequency of posts, brevity at times.

The last embedded link from the blog on mentoring, seems to refer to a story from a grad student who 'got stuck' with their advisor. Glad that's not me, glad to have Advocate. But am worried b/c I heard that at least one of the Newbies we just got (and there are TOO many of 'em given small size of college, not enough faculty, note enough resources, not enough structure...need I go on?!) has been given Advocate as advisor to start with. Major mismatch. MAJOR. Nothing in common. Why did the College do that to either of them? And now this Newbie doesn't think terribly much of Advocate, and I hate that gossip or bad mouthing is going on about Advocate, when it's not her fault she was assigned someone whose background, interests, research topics, and everything else are a total mismatch.

AAARRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHH.

Yes, yes...being overly defensisve and protective here no doubt. But considering the luck I've had with advisors, even my great ones, and the overall issues within dept. at Metro U...I do NOT need any more hassles, hurdles or the like. And I see any hassles of Advocate as becoming potential hassles of me. Grrrrrr....