The travels of Justin

Put in a big order for utopian-engineered peoplehole covers, Microsoft has designed a high school:

Students — who are called “learners” — use smart cards to register attendance, open their digital lockers and track calories they consume. They carry laptops, not books, and the entire campus has wireless Internet access.

Teachers, or “educators,” rather than using blackboards, have interactive “smart boards” that allow teachers to zoom in and out, write or draw, and even link to the Internet.

There’s no library, but an “interactive learning center” where information is all digital and a “multimedia specialist” will help out students.

Instead of a cafeteria, there’s a food court with restaurant-style seating. The performance center — where two sections rotate close to create a smaller space — replaces the typical auditorium.

-emphasis mine

Makes me think of those futuristic designs from the 60’s and 70’s of the “house of the 21^st century,” trying to depect what the futuristic mid-80s might look like with all those robots and gadgets.

It’s remarkable that that the only use of the word “obsolete” is refers to Gates’ depiction of the current education system. I guess those Associated Press reporters wouldn’t want to strain themselves with actual jounalism. It’s nice and all that Gates has funded and, through his company, supported an experiment that is interesting; however, does anyone wonder how quickly a school like this in mainstream use would become obsolete or at risk to hackers? If there was even a token question about such things you might assume this was not simply the regurgitation of an interesting press release.

And the language used… why can’t the coporation spare the workplace jargon? We know hotel customers are considered “guests” and Starbucks employees are “partners”; one might argue that whether a student is also “learner” rests on several factors, including the qualty of the educator.

“Learning is not just going to school,” said Shirley Grover, the school’s energetic principal who came from the American School in Milan, Italy. “Learning is equal to life.”

[...]

“Two things are quite intriguing — the willingness of the district and Microsoft to try something different,” Lynch said. He cautioned, however, that while trying new methods may be valuable “we have to be careful because you’re messing with kids’ lives.”

What is intriguing is that the real experiment has nothing to do with technology. Good luck to the students –err, I mean, learners.

I found this after a visit to http://canada.info-syn.com:

Telus is blocking access to a pro-union website that it argues “contains confidential proprietary information and that photographs on the site raise privacy and security issues for certain of its employees.” Michael Geist reminds us that internet service providers—especially Telus—have argued vocally to let the courts, not companies, decide what should and should not be blocked.

Telus says the website, www.voices-for-change.com, contains confidential corporate information while photos of Telus managers with captions like “pieces of scum” and “weasels” are offensive and potentially dangerous.

While I haven’t examined either blocked site, voices-for-change.com or telusscabs.ca, it wouldn’t shock me if the company did have a legitimate argument. Regardless, if the company honestly believed the material posted was in violation of Canadian law, a court injunction would force the website to be blocked by ALL internet service providers.

“We’re not apologizing for taking action for protecting our employees,” Telus vice-president of business solutions Bruce Okabe told 24 hours yesterday. “It would be morally negligent for us to tolerate this kind of behaviour.” [Ed. emphasis added]

By NOT bringing this matter to court and choosing to block the site for Telus subscribers only, Telus seems to be demonstrating a belief that their moral negligence is limited to their own subscribers while subscribers using Shaw, etc., do not provide a threat to the employees in question.

Reported at:

• 24 Hours Vancouver
• Boing Boing
• The Edmonton Sun

This is just a personal note.

I’m running an older version of Mandrake Linux on my computer, and I found this information for connecting mailto: links. In case I find this handy in the future, I’m blogging it for future reference and the rest of you can safely ignore it.

Mozilla Thunderbird Notes - Waikato Linux Users Group

Today is the first time in ages that I’ve looked at my site using Internet Explorer (I’m in the TRU computer lab) and I’m reminded why I dislike that browser. With Firefox, — regardless whether I’m on Windows, Linux, or Apple platforms — the icons for my weather widget on the main-page sidebar blend smoothly with the background colour. Internet Explorer can’t handle the transparency of the PNG images, thus the attractive drop shadow designed by the graphic artist doesn’t match the site. For a designer, this means that a change in the site colour scheme requires the designer also re-creates the graphics to match each scheme. Any business with a web presence will appreciate how IE removes the economy of scale as a minor tweak in design requires additional graphic production labour proportional to the size and complexity of the site.

I’m not sure whether I want to make the changes required to make the weather icon look as attractive under IE as it does under any modern browser, but I suppose I will (if I can find the time) since the majority of my visitors use that ancient and almost unavoidable relic of technology.

If you’re currently using Internet Explorer, consider making the quick and painless free upgrade to Firefox.

Since there doesn’t seem like much happening in domestic politics to write about these days (sarcasm intended), I think this is a pretty awesome development at Statscan. Now you can use Firefox live bookmarks, or — my favourite — Thunderbird’s RSS reader to keep up with Statscan’s publication, The Daily.

The Government of Canada Newsroom has also adopted RSS (look for the orange “XML” button in the left-column). The newsroom is an interesting source for “News releases, Warnings/Advisories, Media Advisories, Speeches, Reports”.

This is great — especially if you have a propensity to be well-read in obscure news and trends. At least it shows both the trend of mainstream adoption of a fantastic technology (that only sounds complicated), and that the IT people working for the Canadian federal government gather no moss.

On the heels of Blockbuster’s “end of late fees”, comes an implementation of credit/debit system for libraries. The problems are questions of privacy, civil liberties, and even financial liability for unreturned materials.

From the civil liberty perspective, the Patriot Act in the USA allows authorities to keep an eye on what you are reading without the need for a warrant. If anyone tells you that your account is, or has been, watched, that person can go to prison. Here’s an exerpt of this article that catches the thust of the idea:

You’ve seen anonymous cash cards already; you may even have received them before. They’re better known as gift cards. Using the same principle, libraries can issue a borrower card that uses cash, rather than personal ID information, as collateral. Here’s an example: If a privacy-minded user deposits $20 to get an anonymous library card, she can check out The Terror State without identifying herself. Her account balance is temporarily reduced by $15, and when the library checks the CD back in (in good condition), her balance is restored to its original value.

(Hat tip: Slashdot)

Oops! My mistake. It’s another nasty Windows virus.

Linux isn’t what I’d call perfect, but I almost feel sorry for Windows users when I read stuff like that.

I’m frankly a little surprised it took this long, but the Edmonton Sun reports that Shaw Cablesystems has finally expanded its cable offering to include telephone service — in Edmonton only. Their serivce uses a technology called VOIP which, if you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re going to hear a lot about as time goes on.

VOIP uses the internet to bypass the traditional phone network within subscribers allowing Shaw to cut out phone companies, like Telus; of course, the Shaw phone service does allow subscribers to phone people using traditional phone networks. Companies like Vonage Canada already provide similar services in major centres in Canada, but Shaw is demonstrating a huge shift from being a traditional cable/internet provider to a communications service provider.

Watch for Telus to eventually offer TV through its high-speed internet connections to compete with cable companies. I’m aware Telus has been running some limited trials, but has yet to offer it as a mainstream service.

The only thing that I don’t get is why Shaw is charging $55 per month for the new phone service. Vonage’s basic plan is $20, and includes an incredible amount of services. Vonage requires you to already have a high-speed connection, but the article does not specify whether Shaw’s $55 price includes high-speed internet access (currently priced at $40). If you know why Shaw is priced so high please leave a comment.

Wordpress, the free software that I use to manage this site, just released a new version. After all these months, I still feel bad that I’ve never bothered to customize the design, considering I’ve been building websites since 1999. Oh well, at this moment in time, I’d rather focus on more important pursuits.

My most recent online work has been some reconstruction of the Economics Department website here at TRU. It’s not exciting, and I was restricted to the ancient templates provided, but at least I could make the site just a tad more accessible, clean up the code, and give you, the user, control over text-size. In a few months, UCC will become Thompson Rivers University and they will launch a redesigned site. It is supposed to use a content management system that will allow departments to make changes to their site without having to learn code, or use any special software. I have some ideas for the redesign, but I need to wait until my life settles down before I bite into more than I can chew. My guess is that the current site was designed around 2001, and the school has grown a lot since. All in all, this is a great school and it’s too bad that the website does not entirely reflect a modern, growing university. It’ll all come in time.

I’ve been at university for six months and I absolutly love it. Anyone who labels it a ‘lesser’ school, because it’s new, or not in a ‘major’ city centre, is really missing out. TRU’s size means it may not have the breadth of programs offered at a school like SFU or UBC, but the programs it does offer are great. Anyone I’ve ever spoken to about other, more established, universities have said they really appreciate the personal attention you can get from your instructors. While some professors at other schools try to offload their work on teachers assistants, the TRU teachers are very accessible to us; my math teacher has even complained that not enough students drop by her office for extra help. Even those students worried about student loans will benefit from the lower tuition than other BC schools, and the lower cost of living in Kamloops — bottom line, is that you can graduate with less debt… and who can complain about that? I haven’t decided whether I will finish my degree here, but I assure anyone considering this school that my decision will be based on factors unrelated to the quality of education.

It’s come to my attention that Kamloops Indymedia has been under attack by hackers. I have no problem admitting that I don’t particularly like the extreme left views usually represented, but I strongly support freedom of speech. In recent years, I’ve really come to appreciate how the internet allows us to take an author to task when there is strong disagreement; certainly, reading the work of others has allowed me to challenge my own views. On the other hand, understanding the premises — even if fundamentally flawed — that are used to support or oppose a particular viewpoint provides clear arms those who disagree.

I believe that one of the causes for the extreme left views at Indymedia, is the lack of alternate writing submitted. I could be wrong, it could be editorial policy, but I have always seen the idea of independent media as being very similar to blogging — take independent views, and publish them. The simple concept of putting the power of publishing into the hands of the community doesn’t seem to politically suggest left or right wing views, only that news can be disseminated in a new way.

I’m sure that the community will find a way to keep Kamloops Indymedia alive. One can only hope the low-life’s behind the attacks will get their just desserts.