Category: NewsFeed

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Linux Heads to the CO

Based on today’s announcement, Stratus customers will soon be able to choose 64-bit RHEL AS 4 on three new T Series server models: the T40 CO, T40 AC, and the T65 AC. The T40 CO is a carrier-grade server engineered to meet NEBS Level 3 standards in central office environments. This server is based on two-way SMP 3.2GHz Xeon processors. The T40 AC and T65 AC servers are non-NEBS models described as being suitable for “next generation services” or “enterprise telephony applications.” The T65 uses dual-core Xeon 2.8GHz processors.

NewsForge | Stratus plus Red Hat AS 4: Lots of nines

HP is also installing a version of Debian in its carrier grade telecomm devices.  Seems Linux is making some real headway into this market.

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Blogged with Flock

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Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Ars Technica Weighs In.

The question of banning laptops in class: it’s academic, silly – Great piece. The author sees the problem: unfettered net access in the classroom. All of the dust up about laptops in the classroom has the distraction of net access at its core. After rushing to throw wifi into every nook and crany for no real reason, America’s institutions of higher education are looking to curtail that access. Faculty are definitely pushing back about student wireless access in the classroom, epsecially since there are no killer apps that require such access.

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RDBMS? We Don’t Need No Stinking RDBMS!

O’Reilly Radar > Database War Stories #2: bloglines and memeorandum – In the second part of a series, we learn that bloglines and memeorandum rely on flat files, not database systems, to manage the vast amounts of data they are accumulating.  This is pretty interesting and points out somethng that can be easily over looked: use the tools that are right for the job.  If you are designing a system, do it with an open mind and look for the most efficient tools to accomplish your goals.  Don’t shoe horn a project into a specific set of tools just becuase its the flavor of the month or what you know best.

 

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Online Courses Required in Michigan. What About Law Schools?

This morning Jennifer M. Granholm, the governor of Michigan, signed a bill that will require all high-school students in the state to take at least one course online before they can graduate. This is apparently the first such requirement in the nation.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Michigan Requires Online Attendance

The thinking behind this is that students are likely to see online education and traing in college and the workforce so this prepare them for that eventuality.  This is a reasonable assumption as the use of online educational resources spreads.  What I wonder about is law schools.  In the nearly 4 years since the ABA added standards for distance education (approved August 2002) very few schools have added DE courses to their cirriculum.  Why doesn’t every ABA accredited law have at least one course offered using DE?  I can think of any reason beyond some sort of academic inertia.  Certainly every law school, especially every CALI member school, has the tools available to put one 2 or 3 credit, upper level course online and offer it to their own students.   Of  course it may be that all this is happening in a space I don’t see.

 

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Thomson Acquires ePublisher

Atomic Dog was notable in the publishing world because it gave away online versions of textbooks with its paper products — a strategy to blend paper and electronic products.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Thomson Learning Buys Atomic Dog

In another ebook move by Thomson, Foundation Press is using Zinio technology to make electronic versions of law casebooks available to professors for them to review.  Looks like the ebook arena is heating up.
 

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Where’s My Pod?

A study done by Bridge Data suggests what many of us already suspected: Podcasting is popular, but it has little to do with the "pods," that is, the iPods and other portable players for which "Podcasting" was supposedly born. The study concluded that 80 percent of podcasts are either listened to and/or watched on a PC, or simply deleted.

Podcasts don’t cast into the Pod

Interesting article raises a good question: what is a podcast? and why is it a podcast?  Results of the CALI mid-semester podcasting survey of Classcaster users turned up much the same with 3/4 of students listening to podcasts of course materials on their PCs and not on portable MP3 devices.   So everyone buys into the Apple marketing of iPods everywhere, but in reality it’s jsut regular old computer users listening while they work or surf. 

 

 

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Launching learnthelaw.org

After a few months of work we’re going to launch www.learnthelaw.org as a site where pre-law students can purchase a one year subscription to the 1L CALI Lessons.  The site is live now and announcements will be going out on Monday morning.  For $50 pre-law students will have one year of access to the very same material that 1Ls across the country use to learn property, torts, contracts, legal writing and more.  We will also be adding more information about going to law school and such that is of interest to pre-law students.

For the technically inclined, Learnthelaw.org is powered by Drupal using a couple of Paypal modules and a bit of custom coding to interface with the CALI Web API. Using Drupal allowed us to develop and delpoy the site in weeks instead of the 6 months to a year we would typically spend custom building something.