Half baked but crispy

Blue Sun? What an IBM acquisition of Sun means for software

However, Sun's software side of the acquisition ledger, especially by IBM, has been rather oddly overlooked, given that it will likely have major implications for software development and cloud computing for years. Sun's software holdings cover five primary areas - Java, Solaris, mySQL, Open Office, and Sun's recently acquired QLayer cloud infrastructure. Understanding how IBM could potentially ramp up (or destroy) each of these gives some interesting insight into the real value of IBM's potential software acquisitions.

 

 

Contributor Spotlight: Addison Berry

Addison "add1sun" Berry is the Drupal project's documentation team lead, as well as a developer, themer, cat herder, and generally awesome person. :)

I met Addi at the very first Lullabot workshop in Washington, DC in October 2006. Addi really stood out from the crowd with her obvious desire to help other people learn; if the person next to her looked bewildered about what was going on at the front of the room, she'd stop what she was working on and help them. She'd ask really great questions that would help frame difficult material in a way that new users could understand. And obviously, the good first impressions stuck; she's now helping to teach Lullabot workshops as part of the team. :)

A few months later as we were preparing Drupal 5 for release, I posted to the Drupal Dojo group about some "low-hanging fruit" code style clean-up patches that needed to be written. I tried to make the post as clear as possible what needed to be done, but wasn't ultimately sure if we'd get anyone to bite. Lo and behold within a week or so, this "add1sun" person had gone nuts and finished off about half of them. :) But rolling patches wasn't enough; she also created a how-to video to show other people what she'd learned, which remains one of our most invaluable resources for getting new contributors started.

While Addi was officially made the Drupal Documentation Team Lead back in October 2008, she had been coordinating larger documentation team efforts for quite some time before that. In Drupalcon Szeged, and again in Drupalcon DC, she helped identify a number of tasks for new folks to work on, and mobilized a small army to tackle tasks such as incorporating comments into documentation, filling in missing documentation gaps, and more. Addi excels at turning people who want to help but don't know where to start into completely immersed, rock-star contributors. And now that she has received funding from the Knight Foundation to make Drupal documentation rock, she'll be able to spread this message all over the world.

See the theme here? Addi rocks! ;)

What I think makes Addi's story even more remarkable is that she does not come from any kind of technical background; her educational background is in anthropology, and her job prior to Lullabot was stamping papers in a federal court. She taught herself HTML, CSS, PHP, and Drupal. She went up an enormous learning curve at a frenetic pace and has managed to turn herself into a superstar contributor in a very short period of time. She's a true symbol for everyone out there that anyone who puts their mind to it can not only overcome the Drupal learning curve, but can excel at bringing others up along with them as well.

You rock, Addi! :)

If you'd like, you can read more about Addi at Virginia DeBolt's interview on BlogHer.

read more

 

 

ADA Lovelace Day: Ms. Pacman

Well, as soon as Jeff McClurken told me about Ada Lovelace Day I knew I was in, I also knew who I wanted to blog about. It was really a no-brainer for me. Ms. Pacman….I love you! And if you think I’m being silly, please watch the video via Bitch Magazine—it offers a rather compelling argument about why Ms. Pacman may very well be one of the most important women excelling both in and through technology.

Now, after that, don’t you want to play a game of Ms. Pacman? I knew that you would!

 

 

Teaching Open Source

Many people first get involved with open source while they are students, but it's rarely as a result of their formal study. Professors, open source communities, institutions, and companies have been working on introducing open source community involvement into computer...

 

 

Today is Ada Lovelace Day

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Today, March 24th, is Ada Lovelace Day — an occasion to celebrate outstanding women in technology.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day 

• read the explanations
• sign the pledge, if you have not already done so
• publish a blog post (or podcast episode) celebrating a woman you admire for excelling in technology or science (alive or not, famouse or not, as long as you admire her! just tag it “ald09post”)
• add your post to the Ada Lovelace Day Collection, go and read what others have written
• tell all your friends about Ada Lovelace Day and invite them to participate! (maybe through Facebook?)

I’ll be publishing my post later in the day — I look forward to reading yours!

 

 

Remembering my old teacher on Ada Lovelace Day

The Diploma in Computer Science, originally the Diploma in Numerical Analysis and Automatic Computing, was the world’s first full-year taught qualification in the newly emerging discipline of computing when the Cambridge University’s Mathematical Laboratory, home of the EDSAC stored program digital computer, introduced it in 1953.

At the time EDSAC was being used by mathematicians, engineers and even biochemists to carry out ground-breaking work that required more computational power than even a legion of dedicated graduate students could provide, and it was felt appropriate to offer formal training in the principles of programming as well as the specifics of writing code for the valve-based monster that occupied most of a large room in the centre of Cambridge.

The Diploma is no more, having fallen victim to the reshaping of post-graduate qualifications that has taken place over the last few years, and was conferred for the last time in 2008, but when I arrived to begin the course in the autumn of 1983 it was thriving, a space in which those in possession of maths ‘A’ level (or equivalent) and a first degree could be inducted into the arcana of the computing world.

We covered databases with Ken Moody, graphics with Neil Wiseman, programming languages with Martin Richards, artificial intelligence with Bill Clocksin, operating systems with Roger Needham - and information science and natural language processing with Karen Spärck Jones who is the woman in technology I’d like to draw to your attention on Ada Lovelace Day.

My first degree was in philosophy and psychology, so I had a natural affinity with the material she covered, and I was impressed from the very start by her ability to convey these complex topics to a disparate bunch of beginners drawn from many disciplines.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Karen and Roger Needham were married, two lives dedicated to the academic discipline of computer science and to pushing forward the capabilities of digital technologies. Her work on information retrieval underpins modern search engines, while the field of natural language processing owes much to her research in the area.

I also didn’t know that she too had read philosophy at Cambridge before moving into computing, or that she had worked at the Cambridge Language Research Unit with Margaret Masterman, a student of Wittgenstein’s, but these shared intellectual roots may explain something of her importance to me as a teacher in that formative year.

I completed the Diploma and went to work for a small software house in Cambridge, writing as a freelance for various publications. Eventually I was writing for The Guardian and working for PIPEX, one of the UK’s first ISPs, and in the mid ‘90s the two tracks came together when I set up The Guardian’s New Media Lab, making use of my computing skills and my journalistic background as managing editor, chief programmer and systems administrator for the first Guardian website.  She continued her academic work, and was eventually given a personal chair as Professor of Computers and Information.

Our paths crossed from time to time over the years, including the occasions when I was working in the library at the Computer Lab and at the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of EDSAC which she organised in 1999, and we would say hello but I was not in her circle of friends. She was sometimes around when I visited Wolfson College, where she was a Fellow, to hang out with my fellow hack John Naughton, so we’d share a few words. I saw Roger more often in my capacity as a journalist and friend of the labs - you never get Cambridge’s claws out entirely.

Karen died of cancer two years ago, and I was privileged to be asked to write her obituary for The Times. I had written Roger’s in 2003, so it seemed fitting.  Writing the obituary of someone who has inspired you is hard, because there’s always the danger that your sentiment will lead you to overstate the significance of their achievement.  With Karen Spärck Jones there was no danger of that.

In 2007 she was the first woman to be awarded the Lovelace Medal by the British Computer Society, so it seems appropriate that I should write about her on Ada Lovelace Day.

Karen Spärck Jones, computer scientist, was born on August 26, 1935. She died of cancer on April 4, 2007, aged 71. You can read her obituary in The Times, and if you find yourself at Wolfson College, Cambridge, you can browse through her personal library on the shelves in the Karen Spärck Jones room, just beside the porter’s lodge.

This is an ALD09post for Ada Lovelace Day. Find out more at:

http://findingada.com

http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay

http://twitter.com/FindingAda

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=47550446005

 

 

Universities as copyright warriors

mollyali >

To follow up on my last past and clarify a few points.

I wasn't arguing that universities should ignore copyright because they think they're special, or that they should advocate wholesale piracy. Rather it was that universities are in a privileged position. They can fight on behalf of the general populace.

In oppressive regimes it is often universities who form the opposition. They are the harbour for free thought and legitimate protest. It is the students and academics who fight on behalf of higher ideals. Copyright and the large organisations who seek to enforce it can be seen as the oppressive regime of the creative net. So in a digital society, the role of the university should be to take a stand against this form of tyranny.

As an academic, particularly one at the Open University, I need never worry about copyright. I am lucky - there is an excellent rights department who will negotiate on my behalf, chase up rights, manage complicated clearance, and so on. It isn't that these people the world over aren't doing a good job -  it's they're doing too good a job. They are playing the copyright game which is perpetuating control.

So here is what I'm not saying: We can break any copyright we like and say 'it's okay we're educators.' I am not suggesting universities should encourage piracy, but they should be doing everything they can to encourage new forms of expression, creativity and communication. Also I think creators should be rewarded for their work - but let's be clear, rights are owned by large companies who buy them up purely as a revenue stream. This has little to do with rewarding the artists. See my last point below on how we might legitimately reward artists while still encouraging remixing.

Here's what I am saying: Universities can take a stand at an institutional and professional level to help change the landscape. They are in a unique position to do so as they both create content and perform the social good of education. They possess both a stick and carrot.

Now individuals can take a stance but it is at the institutional level that change really happens. This is what the Cape Town Declaration was trying to achieve. Here are some actions they could take, ranging from the relatively mundane to the revolutionary:

• Promote open publishing - academics should be encouraged to work on, and publish in open journals, or open forms of publishing
• Recognise open work - the promotions and rewards criteria should explicitly reward 'open' work by academics 
• Release archive content - the Open University is different from many universities in that it has a large archive of broadcast material. It is working hard to a) digitise this and b) get rights clearance. The latter is a nightmare - any use of music, anytime a third party image or clip is used, or someone is interviewed we have to get clearance all over again, because the initial clearance didn't include open, online release. A very brave move by the OU (and even better, the BBC) would be just to release all this material and effectively put down the challenge 'we think releasing this for education is in the public interest, if rights owners want to challenge that then let's have this debate publicly'. While they may not have the same type of archive, many universities will have an archive of sorts. Releasing this content will force the copyright issue.
• Use open content as default - try and use open, freely accessible content. This will force rights owners to make their content available, otherwise it won't be seen. The suitability of content for its teaching purpose is the priority, but the starting point should be to use open content.
• Legitimise the mashup - by making remixing and the mashup a form of output that is recognised in assessment, universities will go a long way to making it a legitimate form of expression, and thus pushing the rights issue further.
• Make creative commons a default - open licences such as creative commons should be the default mode of operation for all universities in terms of academic output, and student material. There will be exceptions (eg research with a commercial or sensitive nature), but this is about changing the default settings.
• Use material we find online (eg YouTube clips) and not worry about clearance - playing the 'has every second of this clip been rights cleared, otherwise we can't use it' game undermines the value of the remix, and plays into the hands of rights owners.
• Teach and encourage attribution and reference - one of the cornerstones of academia is correct attribution. In the video below Lessing talks about extremism on both sides of the rights debate. As well as fighting against the oppression by rights, universities have a role in education on the other side. Making attribution a core skill we recognise is one way of doing this.
• Developing new models - it seems to me that we have a rather blanket response from rights owners. If we want people to respect rights at all then we have to make it easy for them. Negotiating for rights clearance with a large multinational is not going to work for an individual. But, if there was a simple 'pay to use' scheme then a lot (not all, but enough) of people would use it. For example, when I wanted to use 'Anarchy in the UK' for my edupunk video, I'm not going to track down clearance, but if there was an iTunes type rights use store, and it was a set, iTunes type price (got to be less than £1), then I'd use it. Universities could surely help in developing a responsible model such as this.

Here is Lessig, making most of these points much better at TED (via Mark Morley):

 

 

Groupthink

AJCann Sigh, Just had a really depressing final session with year 3 virology class.

AJCann They've been writing blog posts since January, complaining bitterly "too hard".

AJCann Do they read others posts? "No". Should I use a wiki instead? "No, it's not 'fair' ". Sigh. Give up?

psychemedia @AJCann writing blog posts is hard if it's not what you just do anyway; part of killer app of blogging for me is it's my searchable notebook

AJCann @psychemedia That's why I wanted them to read each others posts. They don't :-(

wmjohn @AJCann feeling and understanding your pain. :)

AJBell @AJCann are they complaining *because* its so different from the previous 2.5 years of coursework they've been put through?

psychemedia @AJCann another prob is: must they go online to just do the blogging? If you have to turn on PC just for that task, it'll always be a chore?

AJCann @psychemedia They're pretty hardwired to Bb so I don't think that's a huge problem.

ffolliet @AJCann group think. it (+you) r wasted on them. ur not going2change them sadly. that doesn't negate rest of ur good work

sleslie @AJCann following @psychemedia's idea, is there an activity you could assign that would cause them to refer back to own work, see the value?

AJCann @sleslie Such as ? Interested...

sleslie @AJCann not sure, don't know your full context, thinking out loud. But bloggers see value when they start to weave together own collection

AJ Cann @AJBell Yes, in part, also because it requires critical thinking.

AJBell @AJCann should not all coursework involve critical thinking?

AJCann @AJBell You've been there - did it?

AJCann @ffolliet OK, so how do I get from there to a strategy?

amcunningham @AJCann are you asking them to blog just for the sake of it... ie it is assessed? or can they gain something else from it?

AJCann @amcunningham It is assessed or they wouldn't do it. The idea is that they gain subject knowledge (and hopefully analytical skills).

amcunningham @AJCann let the assessment not be the blog but a document in which they can reference other students blogs. then blog is means not end?

AJCann @amcunningham Err, I could see that developing into a Mexican stand-off. Any examples of where that's been done successfully?

ffolliet @AJCann mine is purely a ministry of encouragement...

amcunningham @AJCann well, no! but that's how i use discussion boards and it works. funny to read 'you've made my reference list!' on the boards

AJCann @amcunningham I used to use discussion boards, but it degenerated into highly strategic gameplaying rather than thinking about virology.

AJBell @AJCann you marked it.

amcunningham @AJCann but did you assess participation or learning from them? i say students have to compare experience of family they are visiting with other families. they can do this through other students accounts in bb discussion forum or through patient forums. some don't do this at all in the past so lose credit for that part. but work is submitted in monday so hoping for higher hit rate this year.

AJCann @AJBell You did the discussion board or the wikipedia exercise?

AJCann So if it's all about alignment (eg of expectations), should I ask them "Tell me what you learned this week?" How would I mark the "answers"?

amcunningham @AJCann that's a good one. i decided that 500w reflection would only get formative feedback this year. other 3000 words will determine mark.

AJCann @amcunningham Very varied participation rates for formative across different disciplines. We're trapped on an assessment treadmill.

nogbad @AJCann I think you (we?) need to "align" those expectations upwards, i.e. yours stay still and we bring the others to meet them.

AJCann @nogbad Difficult transition - easy to go in the other direction!

AJBell @AJCann wiki exercise - but I disliked it because I don't like the wikipedia concept

 

 

Greenfoot and BlueJ are now Open Source

Finally: It has happened. For a long time, we have resisted open sourcing BlueJ or Greenfoot, but we have now changed our mind.
As of today, both BlueJ and Greenfoot are open source.

In the past, I have argued against it. And some people today, of course, pointed out today that this it a 180 degree turnaround. And, yes, in some way, it is. Well, you can cut the “some way” qualification. It is. But I won’t explain the reasoning tonight.

I am currently at the SIGCSE 2009 conference in Chattanooga, and it is about 1am. We had the 3rd BlueJ / Greenfoot Day today, and a Greenfoot workshop in the evening. Then a few well deserved drinks, and now it is much too late for detailed reasoning.

So wait for the explanation tomorrow. In the meantime, download the sources and have fun!

An interesting discussion over at slashdot that was cross-posted to "The Efficient Academic" Google group. I use LaTeX for my own exam papers (word is just too painful), and I would still use LaTeX if I was to write a paper for publication in Automatica or the IEEE. I might even consider it for a textbook if I ever got around to writing one. But I have to admit that I would fight shy of recommending it to my research students. For most of my academic courses, and for collaboration, my first choice would be a wiki. Unfortunately, though powerful, Mediawiki has an enormous learning curve. Not quite as steep as LaTeX perhaps ... but steep enough. That said, simpler alternatives like Dokiwiki, are just not powerful enough for academic and scientific writing.

Interesting Discussion on Academic Collaboration Writing and LaTeX

Although I disagree that LaTeX is the academic writing language I do
agree that it is showing its age. There is any interesting at Slashdot
[link]
that asks people to suggest alternatives to LaTeX for collaborative
academic writing. One person proposed MediaWiki. Anyone?

[link to original | source: The Efficient Academic Google Group | published: 2 days ago | shared via feedly]