Category Archives: technology

Energy, the Environment, and What We Can Do

John Baez gave a Google Tech Talk on the issue. The slides include links to more detailed arguments and his home page also links to the Azimuth Project wiki is collecting information and ideas from a larger group of participants.

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Selfish Blogger Syndrome

The Selfish Blogger. Well that could certainly be me! So I’ll stick to form and post my thoughts here rather than in Tony Bates‘s comment stream. I have not been following #Change11 except through the blogs of people I found … Continue reading

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No Liability for Linking

Michael Geist – Supreme Court of Canada Stands Up for the Internet: No Liability for Linking. Well, duh! In one sense it’s amazing how this could ever have been an issue, but on the other hand publishing a link/reference to something … Continue reading

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Sustainable Energy Choices

Barry Brooks at ‘BraveNewClimate’ has made a brave effort at summing up the need for nuclear power as part of the CO2-free mix in a brief video, but parts of it still felt to me like “industry propaganda” – to the … Continue reading

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Retail Internet Pricing – Without Slogans

All sides in the debate on “Usage Based Billing” are off base. The issue is quite complicated and not helped by the use of simplistic slogans which often either ask for the impossible or run counter to the interests of … Continue reading

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UBB – How Should Cost and Price be Linked?

Michael Geist is concerned because internet service providers do not match price of service at all levels to its actual cost. But when a commodity is in short supply, selling at the cost price will lead to shortages. (In the … Continue reading

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Anti-Nuclear Inflation

I was disappointed to see Geoff Olson’s citation  of a totally bogus figure for the number of deaths due to Chernobyl in his anti-nuclear panic piece in the Vancouver Courier on Friday. The particular figure, which he quoted fourth hand … Continue reading

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no analytics, :-)   ;   no conversation, :-(

The blog blog analytics issue means little to me as I am here mainly to clarify my own thoughts rather than to find an audience, but D’Arcy Norman’s comment that “distributed blog conversation has basically vanished” disappoints me (especially in the … Continue reading

Posted in social issues, web | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Flex in a Week video training | Adobe Developer Connection

I was using Flash back at the end of the second millennium when it was still called ‘FutureSplash’ (and was identified by the visionaries at CodeMonkey as a “Plugin that Sucks”). Now it is often buggy and crash-prone and Apple … Continue reading

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Many Views on UBB

Michael Geist provides some useful links to opinions about the “Usage-Based Billing” issue, and has just expanded on his own view, as has also Teksavvy’s Rocky Gaudrault.(More here, here, and here.) My take on all this is that it is … Continue reading

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More MOOCs

Massively Open On-Line Courses allow large numbers of people to participate at varying levels of commitment in a process of shared learning. Part of the openness aspect is that there are many avenues of participation and rather than relying on … Continue reading

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Stop The Meter?

I’d like to hear more of what someone like Stephen Downes or Michael Geist thinks about this. (Both have reported the campaign but not really made a clear statement of their own reasons for doing so favourably.) To me, the … Continue reading

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Denis Dutton

For several years now, Arts&Letters Daily has been my favourite source of on-line stimulation. Sadly, its founding editor, Denis Dutton, died on December 28.

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What is Wrong with Web-based Networking

Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us, Ning’s recent abandonment of its free service, and the end of Bloglines are just the most recent examples of why it seems dangerous to rely on proprietary solutions to the problem of data storage for web-based networking … Continue reading

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PLENK2010

Over the last three months I spent a considerable amount of time following the #PLENK2010 Massive Open OnLine Course organized by Dave Cormier, Stephen Downes, Rita Kop, and George Siemens.

Posted in education, web | 5 Comments

One Bandwidth Rate for ALL Content

The concern expressed here, and here and here, is much more valid than that about usage-based billing. It is not the possibility of having to pay for bandwidth that is problematic, but that of being charged differential rates depending on … Continue reading

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The Inheritors of What?

A new book by Eric Kaufmann entitled Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century is

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Letter to Tony Clement

Here’s what I wrote re Net Neutrality and Usage-Based Billing: The public internet has provided a wonderful stimulus to the economic and cultural life of our country and the entire world. But that stimulus depends on its equal accessibility to … Continue reading

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What’s Wrong With Usage-Based Billing?

OpenMedia.ca wants to Stop The Meter On Your Internet Use. But if all kinds of bandwidth were charged at the same rate (so that the carriers couldn’t favour one type of content, such as cable tv over another, such as … Continue reading

Posted in social issues, web | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Personal Knowledge Management

The #PLENK2010 topic for  discussion in Week 8 is PKM.

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