Things I Know I Know

Wired has an article on the MIT OpenCourseWare project--MIT Everyware:

When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. At a time when most enterprises were racing to profit from the Internet and universities were peddling every conceivable variant of distance learning, here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required.

So, who accesses the courses and what are their reasons? Lots of people all over the world for all the reasons there are:

OpenCourseWare's pilot run was wildly successful, drawing visitors from 210 countries and territories. In addition to students, the material appeals to countless educators at other universities. Zhivko Nedev, a computer science professor at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, turns to 6.170 material to help him prepare lectures for his programming course. "It is the best thing I have ever seen in computer science," he says. Ludmila Matiash, at the Kyiv Mohyla Business School in Ukraine, draws on OpenCourseWare to design educational and training programs. Kathy Mann, manager of the biology lab at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, uses Biology 7.012: Introduction to Biology to teach students how to create lab reports and record information from science experiments. "It's really well done," she says. "Why reinvent the wheel?" The Fulbright Economic Teaching Program at the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City makes its own content available online to any interested learners - and indicates on its site that it is taking a cue from OpenCourseWare. "Part of our stated mission is to be more than just a project at MIT," says Margulies, "to evolve into a movement, to help other universities develop a model."

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 10:11 PM | Permalink

Check out the Robert Anton Wilson For Governor website:

After refusing many pleas to run for governor, I have reconsidered and now enter the race as an unofficial write-in candidate. After all, why sh[oul]d I remain the ONLY nut in California who ain't running?

My party, the Guns and Dope Party, invites extremists of both right and left to unite behind the shared goals of:

--Get those pointy-headed Washin[g]ton bureaucrats off our backs and off our fronts too!
--guns for everybody who wants them; no guns for those who don't want them
--drugs for everybody who wants them; no drugs for those who don't want them
--freedom of choice, free love, free speech, free Internet and free beer
--California secession -- Keep the anti--gun and ant[i]-dope fanatics on the Eastern side of the Rockies
--Lotsa wild parties every night by gun-toting dopers
--Animal protection -- Support your right to keep and arm bears

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 09:58 PM | Permalink

A lot of blogs have already pointed to this weblog, Baghdad Burning, from a woman in Iraq, but I wanted to cite it as well, if only just for this passage:

The Myth: Iraqis, prior to occupation, lived in little beige tents set up on the sides of little dirt roads all over Baghdad. The men and boys would ride to school on their camels, donkeys and goats. These schools were larger versions of the home units and for every 100 students, there was one turban-wearing teacher who taught the boys rudimentary math (to count the flock) and reading. Girls and women sat at home, in black burkas, making bread and taking care of 10-12 children.

The Truth: Iraqis lived in houses with running water and electricity. Thousands of them own computers. Millions own VCRs and VCDs. Iraq has sophisticated bridges, recreational centers, clubs, restaurants, shops, universities, schools, etc. Iraqis love fast cars (especially German cars) and the Tigris is full of little motor boats that are used for everything from fishing to water-skiing.

I can't tell you how many people I've encountered who seem to have the impression that Iraq existed just one step above the stone age before we invaded and even that somehow invasion improved their technology level.

Posted by debco at 09:53 PM | Permalink

In Seabiscuit, the book, it's clear that Tom Smith the trainer is wondrous with horses because he pays attention, observes, tries things and learns from them. He's not bound by conventional training methods or even notions of how things 'ought' to be (as in, that horse ought to submit to me, it has to know who's boss). Tom Smith's approach was to look at the horse and figure out what was needed, not what would make him look good or how he could win. In Seabiscuit, the movie, the training was all about mystical Tom Smith and his mystical way with horses.

My theory is that the real work Tom Smith did doesn't play on television and in the movies because a great many people don't believe that this kind of approach is possible. They don't believe it can be done. The only explanation they have is magic. And it's okay in some way to concede that it's magic, to say that this man has a special rapport with animals that the rest of us can never understand because figuring that--it's this man, he's special--doesn't at all change the dominance, punishment-driven, I'm-the-boss approach to human-animal and even human-human relations that is culturally ingrained in us in ways we can't even see.

Books can show us something more complex because books have more time and books are occasionally written by the people who know how it really works or by women, some of whom don't seem to have as difficult a time believing that this kind of non-punishment, non-dominance training is real.

Here's how the book, Seabiscuit, describes Tom Smith and his style:

The most difficult quirk was Seabiscuit's behavior in the starting gate. Within its metal confines he raised holy hell, throwing himself around, exhausting the assistant starters, and reminding everyone of Hard Tack. To stop the colt's gate rages, Smith used a daring method. He led him out to the gate each morning, walked him inside it, and asked him to halt. Risking life and limb, Smith positioned himself directly in front of the horse, facing him. When Seabiscuit began banging around to get out, Smith held his ground, raised his hand, and tapped the horse firmly on the chest and shoulders until he stood still. When the horse stopped, so did Smith. When the horse moved, Smith tapped him again. Morning after morning, he was out at the gate with the horse, repeating the lesson. "You got to go at a horse slowly teaching him most anything," Smith explained later. "Easy, firm repetition does it." The effect was mesmerizing. The horse began to relax in the gate. "He caught on quick enough," said Smith. "He's wise as an old owl." Eventually, Smith was able to leave Seabiscuit standing in there for as long as ten minutes without the horse turning a hair.

This is shaping behavior, pure and simple. It involves knowing what you want at the end and helping the horse gradually get a picture of what that end is, working it in pieces that finally come together. It's not about force or dominance or punishment, though it is about sticking to goals and working within a frame that accommodates what you're trying to achieve and about 'listening' to the horse and learning to communicate.

It's mystical in the sense of not-scientific, but it's not mysterious or unknowable and it particularly and importantly is not because Tom Smith is unique in some way that precludes anyone else from ever achieving what he did. Seabiscuit, the horse, was nearly driven into failed obscurity by force/punishment training. He was the luckiest horse alive, the day Tom Smith became his trainer.

Posted by debco at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here is the critical thing to know about desktop computer support: No one likes it--it's stressful, it's difficult and hardly anyone ever calls support when they're happy. Support is not progressive, growth-oriented, or even particularly challenging for the support person--once you've dealt with a couple thousand people and answered a couple thousand questions, it's all pretty much the same no matter how many new computers and new programs come along. Everyone who does support has other things they're interested in doing in addition to support. People use ';well, I don't like to do support'; as an excuse to dump support on someone else. But that's what it amounts to--an excuse--because nobody likes to do support.

Economists use game theory to model strategic interactions among economic agents. I'm not a big fan of game theory because it values a certain heartless rationalism over acting like a human being, but I was recently introduced to the Stag Hunt game and I think it has something to say to the 'I don't like to do support'; crowd.

Stag Hunt is set up as follows:

Two hunters can either jointly hunt a stag (an adult deer and rather large meal) or individually hunt a rabbit (tasty, but substantially less filling). Hunting stags is quite challenging and requires mutual cooperation. If either hunts a stag alone, the chance of success is minimal. Hunting stags is most beneficial for society but requires a lot of trust among its members (gametheory.net)

Let's consider that for our purposes, hunting stags equates (more or less) to doing support. And support is big--bigger, really, than anyone or any group of people can handle because support is a black hole that sucks in all the resources nearby; support is never finished, but it can be managed. The 'rabbits' are the more tempting, more interesting, vastly more 'fun' projects that could be done (and are done in the space between support demands). If we all work in support, we can not only all keep it manageable, but there will be space and time for all of us to work on other things.

But, if all the people who feel it's necessary to say they hate support and must do something else (as opposed to the people who hate support but do it anyway because it has to be done), go off hunting rabbits full-time because, after all, they don’t like doing support, then those left behind not only won't have the chance to do anything but support any longer but they won't be able to manage support anymore either (having lost a bunch of people who used to do support, but now do 'other things'). The support people who remain are punished in several ways, really. First, they now are doing more support than before; second, support overall is not being done as well, which reflects on them, not on the people who have 'left' to do other things; and, finally, there is much less time to do anything except support--no 'rabbits' for them.

Support as a Stag Hunt says several things. First, cooperation provides benefits to all--support gets done and everyone has time for other projects. Lack of cooperation benefits some at a high level--those who claim they don't like support and then do something else benefit from not doing support and from doing projects they like better. Those who stick with their original commitment are punished because they have more support to do, their reputation goes down and they never or rarely or much less often get to do projects that are not support. In this scenario, the 'rational' person would shove all support issues onto someone else because as long as you're not the last person left, it works out pretty well.

It's not a perfect fit to game theory (nothing is). It operates most like this when support is spread over a number of people but no one or several people are strictly titled 'support' people (though I have also seen it happen when people are hired for support, but gradually move over to doing 'other' things because they are 'talented' and like the other things better anyway). But here's the bottom line for me. Don't ever tell me that I have to do something and you don't because 'you don't like support'. At least be honest enough to admit--'I'm handing this off to you because I'm a selfish schlub and I can get away with it.'

Posted by debco at 08:48 PM | Permalink

There's an interesting post and follow-up discussion at Lawrence Lessig's blog about the WIPO, open source, and the level of ignorancec many people have about intellectual property.

...the astonishing part is the justification for the US opposing the meeting. According to the Post, Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said “that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights.” As she is quoted as saying, “To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO.”

If Lois Boland said this, then she should be asked to resign. The level of ignorance built into that statement is astonishing, and the idea that a government official of her level would be so ignorant is an embarrassment. First, and most obviously, open-source software is based in intellectual-property rights. It can’t exist (and free software can’t have its effect) without it. Second, the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should be to promote the right balance of intellectual-property rights, not simply to promote intellectual property rights. And finally, if an intellectual property right holder wants to “disclaim” or “waive” her rights, what business is it of WIPOs? Why should WIPO oppose a copyright or patent rights holder’s choice to do with his or her rights what he or she wants?

In other words, intellectual property is not just an opportunity for those with money to make more money. It is a complex issue that pays lip service, at least, to the importance of creativity and innovation in the advance of civilization.

Posted by debco at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Proving that there are small pockets of sanity left in this country, a judge refused to grant Fox News an injunction against Al Franken for using the phrase 'fair and balanced' in his new book:

Saying "This is an easy case," a federal judge ruled Friday against Fox News in its lawsuit asserting that a book by liberal satirist Al Franken violates its trademarked slogan, "fair and balanced."

One wonders what they were thinking when they brought this suit in the first place.

Posted by debco at 06:52 AM | Permalink

God was my co-pilot
but then we crashed in the mountains
and I had to eat him

Posted by debco at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Washington Post lays out the shakiness of the evidence for an imminent threat from Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq (and, remember, this is what we were told--an imminent threat--not a WMD program):

The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied:

• Bush and others often alleged that President Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, but did not disclose that the known work of the scientists was largely benign. Iraq's three top gas centrifuge experts, for example, ran a copper factory, an operation to extract graphite from oil and a mechanical engineering design center at Rashidiya.

• The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 cited new construction at facilities once associated with Iraq's nuclear program, but analysts had no reliable information at the time about what was happening under the roofs. By February, a month before the war, U.S. government specialists on the ground in Iraq had seen for themselves that there were no forbidden activities at the sites.

..and so on.

The Kansas City Star breaks down Colin Powell's UN Security Council speech last February:

Powell said that "classified" documents found at a nuclear scientist's Baghdad home were "dramatic confirmation" of intelligence saying prohibited items were concealed this way.

U.N. inspectors later said the documents were old and irrelevant -- some administrative material, some from a failed and well-known uranium-enrichment program of the 1980s.

...

Powell noted Iraq had declared that it produced 8,500 liters of the biological agent anthrax before 1991, but U.N. inspectors estimated it could have made up to 25,000 liters. None has been "verifiably accounted for," he said.

No anthrax has been reported found.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, in a confidential report last September that has recently been disclosed, said that although it thought Iraq had biological weapons, it did not know their nature, amounts or condition.

Three weeks before the invasion, an Iraqi report of scientific soil sampling supported the regime's contention that it had destroyed its anthrax stocks at a known site, the U.N. inspection agency said May 30. Iraq also presented a list of witnesses to verify amounts, the agency said.

It was too late for inspectors to interview them; the war soon began.

Posted by debco at 10:39 AM | Permalink

The Shifted Librarian quotes Senator Norm Coleman on his call for an investigation of the RIAA's subpeona extravaganza:

"The chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations Thursday began an inquiry into the music industry's crackdown against online music swappers, calling the campaign 'excessive.'

'Theft is theft, but in this country we don't cut off your arm or fingers for stealing,' said Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who was a rock roadie in the 1960s....

In the conference call, Coleman acknowledged that he used to download music from Napster, the file-sharing service that a federal judge shut down for violating music copyrights.

'I must confess, I downloaded Napster, and then Napster was found to be the wrong thing,' he said. 'I stopped.' "

First, I applaud the Senator for asking questions about just what's going on here and what exactly is being done.

But I'm also blogging this because I want to stop supporting, even tacitly, the notion that copyright infringement is 'theft.' It is not. It is infringement, an important difference and one that needs to be made over and over and often. This is all about money and power. It isn't about losing something or damaging something or having something taken that you can never get back. Copyright infringement does none of those things. It can be serious. It can result in loss of income, though we ought always to ask (and in particular in the context of the music industry) whether the loss is significant or substantial. Often, though, it isn't about not making a living, but rather not making all the money it's possible to make--quite a different thing. In all the high emotinoal rhetoric the RIAA puts out there's a lot of obscurity about whether sales are down due to copyright infringement or not and whether people who download also buy significant amounts of music (and whether they'd buy more or less if they couldn't download and share anymore).

Pretending intellectual property is the same as real property doesn't make it so. Acknowledging that the public has rights in the issue as well as the creators and the licensors of the creation is not saying that creators of intellectual property shouldn't have some significant right to profit from their creativity. It's saying that future creativity and innovation are also important.

Posted by debco at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In another round of the RIAAs new marketing plan of increasing record sales by jailing customers, Pac Bell has filed suit against the RIAA saying that "the subpoenas served against it by the Recording Industry Association of America are overly broad in scope and should have been issued from a California district court, not the District of Columbia. The complaint also seeks a jury trial to have the constitutional issues addressed."

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 10:32 AM | Permalink