By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Martin LaMonica[Edit][Delete]: Sun Picks GPL License for Java Code, Zdnet [Edit][Delete]ZDNet [Edit][Delete] November 13, 2006
Sun has finally agreed to license Java under GPL, the open source license used by Linux. This doesn't change my views about Java, which I still think is ridiculously over-engineered. But it means that maybe some decent Java applications will be written. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Arthur Sale[Edit][Delete]: The Patchwork Mandate, School of Computing, Australia [Edit][Delete] November 13, 2006
I still find this the most amazing this: "In the absence of mandates, every encouragement policy known to Man fails to convince more than 15% to 20% of researchers to invest the 5 minutes of time needed to deposit their publications." Hence the author's recommendation that, in the absence of an institutional mandate, advocates should seek departmental mandates - the 'patchwork' mandate. Reasonable enough. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Graham Wegner[Edit][Delete]: Networks Of Expertise, Teaching Generation Z [Edit][Delete] November 9, 2006
Discussion of the concept of community in relation to some of the recent discussions of groups and networks. A community is one of those things that can go either way, in my view - it can be a network of people living in the same place or doing the same thing, or it can become a group, define boundaries, and stress sameness and leadership. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bryan Alexander[Edit][Delete]: Wikipedia delenda est, Infocult [Edit][Delete] November 7, 2006
A reflection of some of the recent angst being expressed in the edublogosphere and a restatement of the conviction that the criticisms of this new technology are not well founded. "Networked learning, in all its informatic splendor and complexity, is certainly a dire threat to the deeply- and extensively rooted pedagogical practices of higher education... Further, it's a threat that's partly irrational. I don't mean to dismiss the anxieties - far from it - but to emphasize that Web 2.0, networked learning, etc. are simply not treated seriously... Forces beyond the professorite conspire to keep the discussions rare and poor, from the Chronicle's classic 'internet: threat or menace?'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jenny Levine[Edit][Delete]: Add To [A Whole Lot of] Any, Shifted Librarian [Edit][Delete] November 7, 2006
Something else that needs to be fixed. You had to know, once one aggregator created a proprietary 'add to' link, they all had to. So what do we need? A way to declare an aggregator account. Oh, wait, a personal identity system could do that, something like this. So where is this system. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave Pollard[Edit][Delete]: Malcolm Gladwell on Neural Networks That 'Solve' Complex Problems, How to Save the World [Edit][Delete]How To Save The World [Edit][Delete]How To Save the World [Edit][Delete] October 20, 2006
Some light discussion with some interesting examples on the use of neural networks to solve problems. Pollard describes their use to predict the success of popular songs and movies. While this is typical of the current use of neural networks, it is pobably a bit much to expect specific recommendations - such as "how to design a health care system." They don't work that way. The phenomenon described part way through the article - 'clustering' - is the result of a separate analyis. And it is very much a gloss to say, 'change this variable and you get the result you want'. More...