CODEC – NYLS CODEC Wortkshop Update
We’ll be getting together with about 40 faculty and administrators at New York Law School on April 22. The agenda is here. I’ll certainly be willing to talk about some CODEC features and Classcaster.
phpSurveyor
phpSurveyor
“PHP Surveyor is a set of PHP scripts that interact with MySQL to develop surveys, publish surveys and collect responses to surveys. Once a survey has been created it can be published as an online survey (displayed as single questions, group by group or all in one page) or you can use a dataentry system for administration of paper-based versions of the survey. PHP Surveyor can produced ‘branching’ surveys (set conditions on whether individual questions will display), can vary the look and feel of your survey through a templating system, and can provide basic statistical analysis of your survey results.“
SkypeIn, Other Features Announced
Skype for Windows Windows Version 1.2 Delivers User-Requested Portability and Personalization Enhancements
“Skype, the Global Internet Telephony Company, today announced the public beta launch of SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail, two new premium services available in the latest download versions of Skype software for Linux, MAC OS X, Pocket PC and Windows platforms. SkypeIn provides an affordable, flexible alternative to costly mobile phone roaming charges with SkypeIn personal numbers. SkypeIn customers can receive inbound calls to their Skype client from ordinary fixed telephones or mobile phones while they travel worldwide, providing seamless interconnectivity without having to pay costly roaming charges. Skype Voicemail enables users to manage incoming voicemail messages, making their Skype usage more ubiquitous.“
Chaos: Linux Distro for Instant Clustering
Wired News: Linux Distribution Tames Chaos
“Chaos, a Linux distribution developed by Australian Ian Latter, harnesses the unused processing power of networked PCs, creating a distributed supercomputer that can crack passwords at lightning speed.The program remotely boots Linux on a PC without touching the hard drive, leaving the “slave” PC’s operating system and data secure and untouched. Thirty PCs connected as a cluster create enough processing power to complete complex mathematical equations or high-level security tasks like password cracking that no individual PC could handle alone.“
IBM Seeks Firefox Talent
Slashdot | IBM to Hire Firefox Developers
“According to news.com, IBM has placed an employment ad for a developer who would be responsible for ‘enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM’s On Demand middleware stack.’ IBM might possibly be interested in FireFox integration with their Workplace software. The job is not for just anyone, however, as those who wish to apply for the job should have some cred with the Mozilla development community.“
Solaris Out, Linux In @ Duke
Slashdot | Linux to Replace Solaris at Duke
“At the end of the 2004-2005 academic year, the Sun Solaris computers available in public computing labs at Duke University will be replaced. The replacement computers in these spaces will be Dells, running a version of Centos 3.3 as supported by Linux@DUKE. Pragmatic and technical considerations have driven this change, as Linux continues to gain a greater userbase and more third-party commercial software is made available on the platform. Are other universities eliminating Solaris in favor of a Linux distribution?“
Open-Access Academic Journals: Where is Legal Academia?
Slashdot | Free/Open-Access Academic Journals Growing
“Wired News reports on the growing number of free/open-access academic journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 1527 journals. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is launching three new open-access journals this year: PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Public Access Policy is also part of the movement. The traditional academic journals aren’t happy, saying that it’s unethical to accept money for publishing. But the traditional journals face their own ethical dilemmas by accepting money from advertisers.“
The DOAJ listing for law journals is here. 10 American law schools list 14 titles. CLearly there is room for expansion here:)
Hackers Using BLogs to Launch Malware
Internet Week > blogs spewing worms, viruses, spyware > Hackers Use Blogs To Spread Worms, Keyloggers > April 13, 2005
“While end-users can do little beyond keep safe and smart practices in mind — don’t open attachments, don’t travel to questionable links within e-mail or instant messages — Hubbard said there was plenty blog hosting services could do.“They need to add some type of security on top,” he urged. “Anti-virus is a good start. And limit the type of files that can be uploaded, by, for example, restricting executables.”“
Article seems to be part of new trend that is pushing the ‘evil blog’ meme.
Law Professor Teaching Loads @ Top 25 Schools
Conglomerate Blog: Law Professor Teaching Loads
“When I entered academe just over a decade ago, almost every law school had a standard teaching load of four courses or 12 credit hours per year. In the past decade, the norm among top law schools has shifted to three courses or 10 credits per year. Although I had noticed that most of my friends were teaching lighter loads, I didn’t realize how pervasive the shift was until my Associate Dean asked me to gather information from top law schools as background for a debate about teaching loads here at Wisconsin.“
The results of an informal poll of teaching loads at the top 25 law schools reveals what we’ve probably known for a long time: loads are lighter at top tier schools. Now, I don’t know exactly what this means, but it would seem easy enough to equate lighter teaching loads with better legal education.
Did I say that out loud? Of course that’s not completely true. The higher tier schools attract better students, better firms hire their grads, etc. Faculty may argue that it is the lighter load that helps the most, but I think it is a real chicken and egg problem.
Finally, it is worth taking a look at the comments section if you follow the link, there are some good ideas there.
Acrophobia: A Networked PDF Soft Printer
“Acrophobia is a Linux-based network PDF printer. Acrophobia appears as a standard network printer. Any jobs printed to the Acrophobia ‘printer’ are converted to PDF and sent via e-mail back to the originating user.Acrophobia is a project of the Open Source Software Peer Group of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA – formerly LawNet) , an association of legal technology professionals. This project was created in order to demonstrate the usefulness of open source technology within the law-firm environment.“
ILTA is like teknoids for law firm/department technology types. There are things to learn here…