Happy holidays, everyone!

I would appreciate assistance uploading my text for the pre conference CCCC workshop. Thank you in advance, Mary.

Here's an update on my earlier post about the Austin teacher who confiscated her students' linux distros: Character-Assasinations-Ain't-Us. The author here seems to want to mend the damage and soften up the rhetoric from the Linux community towards this ignorant teacher. Here's a snip:

London South Bank University is now offering a 3 year program (BA) in Social Technology. Here's the description: "This is an innovative course in a new and rapidly developing area of modern society that will give you the opportunity for in-depth study of the implications and applications of modern technologies. The focus is on people’s use of technology rather than technology for its own sake."

Anyone know of a commensurate undergraduate degree in the U.S.?

Here's a truly bizarre site I found today via Google: Pub Games Rings. It appears to be a site generated for the sole purpose of boosting its own Google rank (or at least the rank of the many sites it links to), but what's interesting here is the almost pastiche-like quality to the thing. Isn't this poetry?

reindeer old fashioned glasses buffalo wings and onion rings dining rooms

It's at least as good as a Captain Beefheart album. :)

For readers of Kairosnews who are interested in adult literacy or related fields: please consider applying for the position listed below. If this is not your field, please feel free to forward the message to anyone you think might be interested.

Thanks,

Rob Milde

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Here's one that's bound to get your blood boiling: Teacher confiscates Linux CDs, claims no software is free. I'd hate to be on the receiving end of this middle school teacher's email queue today. I love this quote from her email:

At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline.

This is the first semester I've used Google Docs. I'm quite excited about it, because participants in my courses are getting more and better feedback. OTOH, they are all PhD and Postdoc, and used to using EndNote, which Google Docs unforunately does not support (it strips the notes). GD also doesn't support some of the common visual formats, which is fair enough. Some journals don't either.

Lessig has posted a request for Creative Commons users to complete a questionnaire regarding the term "noncommercial."

If you are a CC user, take a few minutes and complete the survey.

BTW: I've always been bothered by CC's definition of noncommercial use because it attempts to define the character of the use (through the use of the term "commercial advantage") rather than just making it about free access to the work. I don't care at all if a for-profit entity uses my work as long as they are not charging for access to it and it is clearly licensed. For those that are interested, here's the relevant paragraph from the legal code of one of the licenses:

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.