Category: Closed Course

GROKLAW
“One sweet day I’d like to do a Knoppix distro specialized for lawyers and law students. I would like to do it today, but there are some missing pieces.”

…but she doesn’t know it yet. CALIoppix, a special version of Knoppix for CALi members could easily do what she is thinking about. And it isn’t that hard.

Slashdot | Blogging For Paychecks
“When you hear about blogging, you’re most likely to hear about personal journals, self-expression and youngsters sharing their daily routines online. However, as Wall Street Journal notes, the word blogger can now frequently be seen in corporate job ads. Blogging jobs pay anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000 and frequently require writing copy for corporate Web sites and ability to promote on the Internet. A search for blogger and blogging on one of the job meta search engines yields several hundred open positions.“

Wherein the ‘blogger’ becomes yet another corporate flak. Corps are waking up to the fact that the tools for blogging are easy to use and provide a sort of instant ‘in’ that allows them access to a lot of eyeballs that other wise might be missed. Sooner or later Google will quit adding so much weight to blogs or get better at filtering amatuers from pros and the salaries will go down.

Wired News: Watch for Roadcasting Rage
“Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing an ad hoc networking system for cars that would allow any driver to broadcast music to any other vehicle within a 30-mile radius.“

Hmm, neat concept. I think Cory Doctorow came up with it in “Eastern Standard Tribe“, at least that’s where I ran across it. He even notes, back in October 2004, that enterprising iPodders where starting to do this sort of thing. Anyhow, I think it’s cool and I hope Cory gets the credit.

Slashdot | Publishers Protest Google Library Project
“A group of academic publishers is challenging Google Inc.’s plan to scan millions of library books into its Internet search engine index, highlighting fears that the ambitious project will violate copyrights and stifle future sales. In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday, the Association of American University Presses described the online search engine’s library project as a troubling financial threat to its membership — 125 nonprofit publishers of academic journals and scholarly books. The university presses depend on books sales and other licensing agreements for most of their revenue, making copyright protections essential to their survival.“

Google’s only response is to license the material, I think. That would be the only thing that would get support from these folks. There will be more of this as Google moves forward with this project.