Learning Aloud

Should a company that sells an operating system also sell a product that protects against viruses taking advantage of flaws in that operating system? I guess it depends on your views of what the seller owes you in the first place and whether the user’s own mistakes are responsible for the difficulties that user experiences. Microsoft has announced an antivirus product. If one considers an antivirus product to be necessary to run a Windows machine, I suppose $50 a year is reasonable and in line with what you would pay for a Norton product.

A Wired News article reports a recent marker in the history of technology.  Telegrams are no more. I can’t say , as old as I am, that I ever sent or received a telegram. Now, I have missed out on the opportunity. Western Union continues and you can still transfer money.

Technorati’s Dave Sifry has posted another of his state of the blogosphere reports. There are some fascinating stats here on the popularity of blogs and the rate at which more and more individuals are creating their own blogs. 2.7 million individuals generate a post at least once a week and might be regarded as the number of active bloggers. Technorati advocates tagging to improve the opportunity of blog readers to locate relevant posts.

I have been listening to John Battelle’s book “The Search” at the same time I am working on my social bookmarking project. Sometimes I arrive at insights simply as a function of the ideas that happen to be active “in my head” at a given point in time and this may be one of those times. The question I am asking myself is “why would access to social bookmarking lists” be of any value when a Google search would allow me immediate access to sites in response to a specific question I might pose. How could the “short and general list” provided by someone else be useful?

Battelle describes a distinction between web recovery and web discovery (he may not be the originator of this distinction but I heard it first from his book). When I search as an example of web recovery, I assume there is a web resource that provides information relevant to a question I have and I simply use a search site as a way to recover that inforamtion. In contrast, web discovery implies an experience with intriguing information when one has no specific question in mind. For example, some commercial sites let you know that other customers who purchased the same product you just purchased also purchased certain other products. This technique works because the method presents you with relevant information you did not have a specific need to find. It creates a possibility when you were not searching for one.

Examining the bookmark lists of others with similar interests provides the opportunity to identify resources you were not looking for, but possibly resources of relevance nonetheless. Maybe it is a way to discover the questions you should be asking.

I am interested in the educational publishing industry and alternatives. In particular, the idea that open source books might be developed in a manner similar to the approach taken in developing open source software (e.g., open source books).

In general, I am skeptical, but I still find the idea intriguing. EdTechTalk is providing information on this topic and a recent resource includes a discussion with Danny Wool of the Wiki Textbook project. The interview is wide ranging and worth a listen. The discussion ranges beyond a discussion of books to include topics such as access, equity, teacher skills, etc.

Review earlier posts on EdTechTalk for additional posts on this issue.

Working with technology can be frustrating. Sometimes it seems things do not work like they should. Cindy brought my attention to a blog entry by David Warlich in which he describes his frustration in dealing with such issues. Sounds like you she said.

Sure enough I ran into what sounds like a similar problem today. I run web applications on inexpensive machines (old Macs I can pick up around the university) using open source software (apache, php, mysql). Sometimes, things just stop working. A problem with a complex environment built from multiple components is that one little thing can be changed in one of the components (or within the operating system of the host computer) and suddenly nothing works. The folks working on these individual components work on their individual pet projects and it is easy to see why “one little thing” can go wrong. No one is responsible for making certain all the pieces will continue to work together.

In this case, I think it was Apple’s fault. I upgraded to the newest operating system (10.4) on two of my machines several months ago. One machine stopped working and no matter what I did I could not get the web resources I had developed to work again. I went back to system 10.3 and the software worked. Today, the other 10.4 machine stopped working.This time I did a little more Internet research before moving the machine back to an earlier operating system and came across a blog entry that reported a problem very similar to my own. I tried the solution someone provided and the problem was fixed within 5 minutes. The first failure probably cost my 10 hours of frustration. This time the same problem was fixed within minutes. This Internet search stuff is pretty amazing.

Dave – if you happen to read this post, check out the link that I include above. Apple – I hope you did not mess up the verion of PHP you provide to better support the AppleServer solution you sell. Such tactics would really disappoint me (even if done within the context of better security). I must just keep telling myself – problem solving is fun, problem solving is fun.

Perhaps you are familiar with the latest Wikipedia.com controversy. Staffers working for Rep. Marty Meehan have altered a previously posted description of Representative Meehan. Wikipedia is “social software” and is based on the assumption (by my interpretation) that those with knowledge in an area will post information or upgrade the posts provided by others. The assumption has proven idealistic as those with competing views may see the same situation in different ways.

The situation described here is not exactly a difference in perspective. The issue in the Meehan situation is that the information removed by the staffers was a matter of public record and the staffers have altered the original post to portray their boss in a more positive (but not necessarily more accurate manner). Mr. Meehan did “in fact” make a campaign promise not to serve for more than eight years. Information provided by the Federal Election Commission indicates he has built a campaign fund of $4.8 million.

Perhaps an upgrade rather than an outright alteration would have been more honest. It would seem fair to include an additional comment indicating that politicians do change their minds. I am not certain how the fund raising issue should be clarified.

Evidently, altering wikipedia “information” on our elected officials has become a recent and common practice. What should we tell the kids about this type of thing? Note to politicians – this is not what they meant by the “hacker ethic.”

Related online article from Lowell Sun