Ed Bilodeau

This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Friday, December 31, 2004

Purge : In preparing for our next move in May, Nathalie and I spent some time this week going through the boxes we had in storage to see if there was anything we could throw out.

We ended up throwing out 15 banker-boxes worth of stuff (about 60% of what we had in storage). That included a lot of my D&D and RGP stuff. All I kept were my basic set, my 1st edition books (DMG, PG, UA, MM, MM2, FF), a few modules (bought and made), my dice and my figurines. The rest (about 2-3 boxes worth) was thrown out. At first, I was going to try to sell the stuff on ebay, but I don't have the time for that. Nor do I know anyone nearby who would want it. So out it goes. It was a lot easier then I thought it would be.
Secrets of Firefox 1.0 :
[It's] fascinating to find that many powerful capabilities of Firefox 1.0 are still difficult to find and little known. For example, typing the following strings into Firefox's Address Bar (which the new browser calls the Location Bar) and pressing Enter brings up a wide variety of novel applets
The Power of the Media : Why have people, corporations, and governments responded in such great numbers to the disaster in South Asia? What is it about this disaster that has motivated so many to help? There are millions of people dying and suffering each day that do not get this kind of attention or help. Why not? In some cases, the suffering has been brought on by natural disasters. In others, the suffering is of our own making and entirely preventable, were it not for the complexities of politics, economics, and human relations. And yet so little is done to prevent or help the people affected. Why?

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Update : I haven't been spending much time online, hence the lack of activity on this site. I'm back to work on Monday, at which point I expect regular posting to resume.

Friday, December 24, 2004

BlogWalkChicago : Because of my earlier decision to boycott travel to the U.S., I have had to turn down the gracious (and unexpected) invitation I received to BlogWalk Chicago. It was a very difficult decision to make.

More information on the US-VISIT program is available on the DHS web site: click here.
The Graphing Calculator Story : The interesting story behind the graphing calculator that shipped with the first PowerPC Macs. If I remember correctly from when I was trying to sell said machines, that piece of software was about the only demoable thing on the computer. It was greatly appreciated, although they were still an incredibly hard sell.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

More backstory behind the "Sputnik crisis" : Corante's Outsourcing blog has posted an article describing how the US in fact was ready and able to have been the first in space at the time that the Soviets launched Sputnik in the 1950. They also note that it was not the launch of Sputnik that caused alarm, but rather the explosion of the US Vanguard rocket on the pad that caused political and public opinion to sway towards the position that the US was scientifically and technologically behind the Soviets.
Some light reading : I picked up a few magazines today to read over my vacation: 2600, Mother Jones, and Shambhala Sun. Although shopkeeper commented on the 'strange' selection, it doesn't seem that strange at all to me.
Jonathon Delacour: Ticket to Macland : I'm always interested in hearing stories from people who have made the switch, if only because I still see a Mac somewhere in my future. Jonathon covers all the major reasons I can think of, although the points relating to Windows XP's instability are, IMHO, off the mark.

We've all heard of nightmare situations people have run into with their computers, both Windows machines and Macs. For every Windows horror story, you can probably find an equivalent story for the Mac. However, since there are many, many, many more Windows users then there are Mac users, and Windows is running on all-sorts-of-only-god-knows-what machines, yeah, I would expect there to be more Windows people overall who have run into big problems. The Mac systems, built on a stack that is, for the most part, closed and proprietary, don't have that problem.

One thing that Jonathon doesn't mention is the influence the Apple brand had on his decision. Although he appears to have been the target of a fair amount of peer pressure, I don't know to what degree this affected Jonathon's decision. But when talking about the decision to switch platforms, to ignore the power of Apple's brand is a mistake. Apple's brand is incredibly powerful. It connects with people on a deep, emotional level. That had to affect their decision-making process, so that it is no longer a case of making a rational, business-case for buying a Mac. In my case, put be in front of two systems, one PC and one Mac, with approximately the same specs. Right away, I know I can easily live with the PC, but I want the Mac.

In any case, I'm looking forward to reading about Jonathon's transition to the new platform. Given the effort he has put into documenting his decision to switch, I know he will not disappoint!

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

LIS Faculty Wish List :
The LIS faculty at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa lost teaching and research materials in the devastating flood that hit Hamilton Library on October 30, 2004. Below you will find the names of individual faculty members, the materials they are seeking, and their contact information. If you can provide any of the resources they are seeking, please contact them directly. Thank you for your assistance.
Desktop Sidebar : Emulates the Sidebar feature that is supposed to be in Longhorn. I played with an earlier version, and found that I didn't really have the extra screen real-estate to dedicate to the app (I am usually working on my laptop, which maxes out at 1024x768). The applets in this version may be more useful/stable in this version, though. I'm going to keep it in mind as I reflect on my work practices and my work environment over the next few weeks.
AquaXP.com : Folks who are really dedicated to getting Windows XP to work just like MacOS.
BBS: The Documentary : Although I was never a big BBS user, this looks very interesting.
MS Internet Explorer Developer Center : Last week, Microsoft relaunched their IE developer resource site. Unless you are a web developer who is planning on spending their entire career as an intranet developer for a company who has standardized on Firefox as their corporate browser, you need to spend some time on this site.
Eric Meyer: Don't Care About Market Share :
Look, I’ll make this very simple for everyone. If you’re trying to figure out what browsers to support (or not) in terms of layout consistency on a given site, then the answer is very easy. Whatever the site’s access logs tell you. End. Of.Story!
It is very reassuring to hear this kind of sensible advice from one of the web's leading developers. As much as I appreciate the need to sometimes think in more idealistic terms, practical issues like this cannot be forgotten.
aaron@flickr.com : Aaron's got a new gig! Congrats! :)

Monday, December 20, 2004

Some time off from work and studies : BTW, I'm on vacation from work and studies until January 3. Posts will probably be less frequent here as I will be spending much less time online. Not no time, but a lot, lot less.

The last three days, while technically part of our vacation, involved enough running around, visiting, and shopping that we haven't had much chance until this evening to truly relax.

Tomorrow, we plan on doing nothing.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Tech Question: Hard Drive Types : I haven't done any reseach on this yet (just about to start), but I thought I would post the question here anyway.

This evening I was asked to help fix a boot problem with a 286. The CMOS memory seems to have gone, so you need to manually specify the system config. Fairly straightforward (mono graphics, 1MB RAM, etc, 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drives, etc). I wasn't able to get the hard drive config right. I actually stepped through all 47 available options, but I couldn't get it to work. I figure I did something wrong.

I'm wondering if there is a way to determine the drive type without removing it from the PC (which, judging by the quick look I took inside the case, wasn't going to be that easy to do). I have no manuals, no start up disks. The only piece of information I have are the hand-written results of a chkdsk command that was run in 1989: it lists the drive's capacity as 21,309,440 available bytes. I figure there is a formula for converting cylinders, heads, and sectors into available bytes, and that I can work backwards. At the same time, trying to solve a four-variable problem with only one equation... well, I've forgotten most of the advanced math I did, but something tells me I may be SOL.

Even if I don't fix the problem, I figure I might learn a few interesting things in the process!
Anne Galloway: Efficiency and innovation :
New 'Batman Begins' trailer : If this doesn't raise your expectations...

Friday, December 17, 2004

Skype : This is probably a bad idea, but I'm on Skype now. I'm thinking that it might be useful for doing interviews on Fully Situated.
elearnspace: eportfolios :
Discovery Wings --> Military Channel :
Done : 50 pages, 12,000 words. My Ph.D. coursework is done.
The Role of RSS in Science Publishing: Syndication and Annotation on the Web :
[RSS] can more generally be interpreted as a kind of network connector—or glue technology—between disparate applications. Syndication and annotation are the order of the day and are beginning to herald a new immediacy in communications and information provision. This paper describes the growing uptake of RSS within science publishing as seen from Nature Publishing Group's (NPG)
Anne Galloway: Deleuzian networks of control :
This type of control is particularly insidious because there is no panopticon. Control is diffuse and we can't locate - or fix - responsibility and accountability long enough to affect change. And it's particularly dangerous because it allows each of us to play the victim of an imaginary structure.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Final stretch : Tonight, this paper gets done. It has to get done. It is actually going better then I expected. I may take that back when I'm still futzing it with at 1 am...
Plone :
Plone is an out-of-the-box ready content management system that is built on the powerful and free Zope Application server. It requires minimal effort to set up, is deeply flexible, and provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for project groups, communities and intranets.
Interacting with Computers : Participating in civil society: the case of networked communities :
Abstract: A community computer network facilitates civic participation by providing pervasive local resources online and by connecting people to local communication and discussion channels, public and non-profit organization leaders and members, and many other civic resources. We present findings from longitudinal data (two rounds between 2001 and 2002) of a stratified random survey of 100 households in a mature community network, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV). We offer exploratory and confirmatory analyses, including a ‘civic effects’ model, that show demographic characteristics (education, age) and psychological factors (extroversion) explain staying informed, collective efficacy, group membership, activism, and using the Internet for civic and political purposes. The model further explains differences in respondents' involvement in local issues once they go online. Informed activists with multiple group memberships become more involved in local issues once going online, whereas informed non-activists become less involved once online. Our study suggests that in order to play a constructive role in creating a more civil society, community networks should explicitly pursue strategies that encourage community activism. One way to do this, given the strong role of association membership in activism, is for ISPs to offer bundled standard Internet applications at low cost to non-profit community groups (e.g. email for leadership, online discussion for members, web space). Community networks should also promote and support the use by local groups of innovative tools for non-experts, such as easy collaborative web-based tools for information production and collaboration.
Full article available to subscribers only.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

NYTimes: Modest Now, Russian Outsourcing Has Big Hopes :
Mr. Sukharev has tracked the Russian outsourcing boom of the last two years, one he hopes will mirror the success of India's technology parks and outsourcing. He has little fear of the backlash in the United States against offshoring.

[...]

"I had a meeting recently with the U.S. deputy secretary of commerce, and he said offshoring is good for the United States," he said. "I think it's bad for small groups of people who suffer a lot, particularly outsourcing of white-collar jobs. But the Democrats made it a major campaign pillar, which was simply populist. The world is too simply about globalization now. Outsourcing is unstoppable."
BBC: US Missile defence shield test fails :
"The first test in almost two years of the planned multi-billion dollar US anti-missile shield has failed."

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Fully Situated: Episode 3 : Busy as hell, but not so busy that I could take some time out of my lunch hour today to record this week's episode. Enjoy!

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Paper update : I've managed to finish dumping the 100+ pages of typed notes into my paper outline. It is amazing how much a looming deadline improves one's ability to make relevancy assessments!

I've also put together the list of books I need to get from the library tomorrow to recheck a few notes and follow up on citations I've come across. That small list (of 5 books and 4-5 articles) is the very, very tip of what I need to look up and work into my paper this week. I also need to write the paper. I also know now that I am going to get killed pulling together the bibliography (will I ever learn?).

Anyhoo, all that wouldn't be so bad, except that I'm scheduled to help out with inperson registration for the whole week, so I can only work on my paper up to 9:30am, over lunch, and at night. So that's my timecrunch. You never know: the extra pressure might help me focus even more!
E-Commerce lectures : Jonathan Briggs over at Kingston University has just wrapped up posting outlines from his series of lectures on e-commerce. Recommended.
Instructional Design Models : Nice summary of the various design models. I am definately going to have to refer back to this more then once (via EduResources). See also the relevant Wikipedia page on IR models.
Book: Essential Skills for Agile Development : Free PDF download. The idea of user stories looks like something I need to bring into my class. I think it may help students to understand the level at which they need to be thinking about the requirements they are developing.
Construx: Software Engineering Resources :
"The ... Construx Knowledge Areas (CKAs) ... are Construx's way of organizing the software engineering universe. The CKAs are based on the SWEBOK knowledge areas."
Free registration required.
Icepick.com - A wired house : Alex van Es has his house in the Netherlands fully monitored and wired. Toilet flushes? Music played? Items thrown in the trash? When does his cat eat? Neat proof of concept.
NYTimes: The Last Time You Used Algebra Was... : The argument often surfaces, not only regarding math but a lot of the other subjects taught in school: why did I bother to learn X if I never needed to know it?

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it assumes that from an early point in their lives, we can know exactly what knowledge and skills a child will or will not need in their lives to come. While it is true that, for example, a lot of us grow up to never need to use the math we learned in school, learning math has enabled many of us to go on to work in the sciences, etc, etc. The same can be said for any other topic.

The point I'm getting at is that the educational system should provide all students with the widest range of opportunities for their future lives. A student who doesn't learn math, biology, music, english, etc... well, they'll never know what kind of lives they could have had, since they would have been frozen out of so many options from early on.

Of course, if your goal is to produce a subservient, dependent population who are able to do little more then perform minor, machine-like tasks within heavily automated, de-skilled jobs, well, you really don't need to be too concerned whether John Q. Public learns math in school. No, your kids will learn plenty of math at their private school, and they'll tell John Q. Public what to do. They'll do the math for him.
Update : Snow outside, but we're staying in. I've got to make some major headway on my paper if I am going to have any chance of getting it done by Friday.

I've also, as you can see, may a few small changes to the layout of the site. Added a third link column to the sites and resources I regularly use, cleaned up the post title/comments part of each post (love CSS!). Thinking about how I could use this site differently. A work in progress.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

NYTimes: The Enlightened M.B.A. :
"Harvard Business School has just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Initiative on Social Enterprise, a program that aims to prepare M.B.A.'s like Mr. Kuziev and Mr. Kanalosh to manage nonprofit enterprises, oversee philanthropic activities or start scrappy companies that attack social ills."
NYTimes: Mystery Cloaks Couple's Firing as Risks to U.S. :
"They have been told they were fired for national security reasons that remain secret. When their lawyer requested the documents used to justify the action, he was told none existed. When he asked for copies of the agency's policies relating to the background checks, he received a generic personnel handbook."
CBC News: Workers criticized as Montreal sidewalks stay icy : I'm glad to see this getting some press. The situation is same on the South Shore, although it could be the same union involved in both situations. If the employees are disobeying the essential services law, I hope they charged and prosecuted.
Integration Patterns :
"This guide is the third patterns release in the pattern & practices series from Microsoft. Building on the application patterns presented in Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET, this guide applies patterns to solve integration problems within the enterprise."

Friday, December 10, 2004

Recently in delicious : NOMADWorld Products - MuVo Slim
Identifont - Free fonts
Proggy Programming Fonts at Forever Geek
webarch.pdf
Writing PhD dissertation
Joel on Software - Monday, December 06, 2004
IEEE Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC'05)
Good Experience - Tips on Moderating Listening Labs

(This could/should also be taken as evidence for people's inability to provide informative [title]s on their documents)
New appointment : I've been appointed Coordinator of E-Commerce Programs at the Centre for Continuing Education. I've actually known about this for a few months, and have been doing the work for even longer. This week it was annouced within the Centre, so I can finally post the news here.

Although the position partially a formalization of work I've already been doing, it is actually more then that. Within an organization this size, having a formal position is everything. Along with the responsibility, I now also have the authority to get things done. Not ultimate authority, mind you, but enought to be able to hopefully get some momentum behind some of the project I have in mind.

Currently, we have two e-commerce programs: a 5-course Graduate Certificate in E-Commerce (for students with a BCom) and a concentration within the 10-course Diploma in Management (for students who have Bachelor's degree other then a BCom). Its a small program, and our enrollments have been lower since the dot-com bust. Of course, lack of active promotion of the program may also be the cause. That's going to change!

Anyway, I think I'll stop there before I get ahead of myself. More news will follow in this space. Ideas, suggestions, comments, as always, are welcome.
Coffee good : I was up way past my bed time last night working on a paper, and let me tell you, the coffee this morning tastes sooo very good.

I can't believe I used to regularly stay up to 1am and then go into work the next day. Mind you, back then I was more likely to be playing Starcraft then working on a paper.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Cold, Wet, Icy : Yesterday we got some freezing rain, which, thanks to abnormally warm temperatures (~2-5°C) last night and this morning, is thawing more then freezing. Memories of the ice storm...

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

IBM Sells PC Unit to China's Lenovo :
Lenovo will take ownership of IBM "Think" trademark family, including its ThinkPad notebook brand and its ThinkCenter desktop line.
This marks the end of an era. I know nothing about Lenovo, but seeing as how they are hiring 10,000 IBM'ers as part of the deal, I'm assuming that the Thinkpad design and manufacturing groups will be more or less intact. Not sure if I can say the same for the brand.
Humans are the cause of global warming :
"The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect."
This important and powerful finding is lessened only slightly by the fact that the US does not have a good track record when it comes to acknowledging or accepting inconvenient findings.

You have to wonder, though, if we can't get action and policy change in the light of such graphic, immediate, and powerful evidence as exists around the US invasion of Iraq, how will we ever get action on issues that requires a long-term view?
Halo 2 RSS Excel Workbook : This is a great example of what can happen when you just go ahead and provide the data in a standard format, and let other people figure out cool things to do with it.
InfoWorld: Instant collaboration from Intranets.com :
Pricing ranges from $59.95 per month for five seats to the corporate rate of $2,500 per month for 500 users. As expected, there’s no ramp-up time, nor any IT involvement, making the service ideal for ad hoc project teams. As administrator, in less than a minute I created user accounts and notified individual participants, who could immediately access the site...
I'm sure that for a large organization mired in IT bureaucracy, a department being able to set up an intranet for $2500 a month makes a lot of sense. The amount is also low enough to probably get through without needing higher-level authorization. I wonder how many of Intranets.com's clients fit this profile?
Fully Situated: Episode 2 : Simplified the recording process, so the mix is a bit rougher, but lots of fun to do. Enjoy!

Monday, December 06, 2004

Coming soon: E-Commerce Wiki : The link above points to the hosting space I've been given at McGill to set up my e-commerce wiki. My plan is to try to work with the other lecturers and eventually our students to build an information resource that can be shared by all (instead of developing these separately in each of our closed WebCT sites). My plan is to get those interested parties to begin work on it in the spring, and promote it to students in Fall 2005.

Before then, I have to figure out how to get the darn thing set up. I've decided to use MediaWiki, which is supposed to be installable by mortals. I'll try to document my trials and tribulations here for those who dare follow.

I'll also be sharing my experiences with the IT group here at McGill, along with the relevant committees and user groups. I also plan on giving an open talk on the subject on the site is up and running. Should be fun!

One thing I've learned so far: while it may be really hard to get a new technology integrated into the common infrastructure of the Univeristy, it is relatively easy to get support to run an experiment!
mtl3p: The million-dollar question :
"Something keeps directing me to wonder if this question of "not enough time" is a common-sense answer that we are using because the real issue is more problematic?"

Sunday, December 05, 2004

IBM looking to ditch PC *and* Thinkpads : I wasn't too interested in the story that surfaced last week about IBM wanting to get rid of its PC business, until I read this post that points out that the Thinkpads are rumored to be on the block as well. What isn't clear is if they are getting out of manufacturing them themselves, or if they are getting rid of the them altogether. Not that I plan on buying another laptop anytime soon, but it would be a shame to see such a solid product disappear.

It is also hard to believe that IBM can't make money off their Thinkpads, given the large premium you end up paying. If they really are money loosers for IBM, maybe they should get out of that business.
AquaXP.com : Coverage of MacOS emulation on Windows XP.
del.icio.us/tag/browserwars : Interesting. At some point, I need to put together a setup that would allow me to take advantage of this more 'social' aspect of delicious.
Sony VAIO type M desktop : Very nice for a home PC, although the mouse really should be wireless . Pretty sure its a Japan-only product as well. (via Joshua Davis's site)
James Black: :
"In the culture I grew up in you did your work and you did not put your arm around it to stop other people from looking—you took the earliest possible opportunity to make knowledge available."
James Black, winner of the Nobel prize for medicine
Daily Telegraph, December 1995

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Mathemagenic: Blogging as breathing or how to find time for blogging? :
"I can afford spending quite a lot of time blogging only because it's so integrated with my regular activities that it's not an add-on anymore."
I guess my problem is that I still haven't been able to integrate my blogging into my work, my teaching, or my research. I don't use the web much for locating information: journals, books... that's where the information is. Yes, the bibliographic databases are online, but not easily bloggable, and of little use to people who do not have access to the tools.

As for writing, my blog remains a 'write-once' medium. The value for me is in articulating the idea, but I rarely go back over what I wrote. When I'm working on papers, I tend to load a lot of stuff into my brain, wait a bit too long, and then just start writing. I haven't learnt how to write a paper as a collection of blog posts. Its just not how my brain works.

I envy those like Lilia who are able to get more out of their blogging. I want to be able to do more. But it still hasn't happened. for me. Nice idea, though.
Update : Things are still fairly busy here, but in a mostly good way. I've finally started making some real progress on my paper on s/w engineering education. A month or so late, but better then never. My breakthrough was probably due to the lunch that I had this week with Erik van Bekkum. Our conversation brought up a lot of ideas for me, and led to a big "ah-ha" moment for my own research, which at the same time seemed to bring this paper into focus. Today I put together the first good outlines, so I feeling better about the possibility of getting the paper done for Dec 17.

In other news, I'm in the process of correcting my student's final projects. Those have to be done and the paperwork in by Thursday, so that will be a big priority for the coming week.

I'm also hoping to have some good work news to annouce this week, but I've been waiting for months for this 'something' to happen, so I'm not going to hold my breath!

And I want to put out Episode 2 of Fully Situated. I won't be able to spend anywhere near as much time as I did on Episode 1, so here to hoping that most of my time on Episode 1 was dealing with the learning curve, and that Episode 2 production will be much easier and quicker.
Reminder : Links w/o commentary are posted to: del.icio.us/ebilodeau

Friday, December 03, 2004

YulAcademics : Slowly growing list of academic bloggers here in Montreal. I'm one of the six academic bloggers at McGill.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Ed Bilodeau's Space : I tried playing around with the MSN Spaces Beta, but the admin side is so slow that I can't be bothered right now. It does look impressive, certain good enough for a lot of people.

I'm pretty sure we'll see some pretty tight integration between future versions of Windows and the standard apps (messenger, media player, IE, etc) that will make it even more convienent for people to use.

I guess that would complete MSN's end-run around AOL to "become the Internet". I think both Apple and MS will be successful in creating that same kind of environment for their users, where there will be little need for most users to consider alternatives. There will always be those that will want more/different.

Anyway, MSN Spaces looks impressive and worth watching.
Alex Halavais: Students are from Mars :
"So after an hour of talking about Kant and Bentham and Rawls—and tying this back to some professional ethical dilemmas from my own experience—I turned to the topic of plagiarism, and what was an appropriate way to deal with it.

I was blown away by the response. In retrospect, I don’t know why. Students seemed to think that a warning or a slap on the wrist was an appropriate way to deal with plagiarism. Why?"
MSN Messenger Beta : I've been getting back into a few pieces of MS software: Windows media Player, MSN Messenger, etc. Add in WindowsBlinds with the Royale/Media Centre skin, and its like a whole new OS. Sticking with Firefox, however.