Ed Bilodeau

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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, May 13, 2005

Reading this post over on Stephen's site made me think of the many other examples of waste in academia that I have encountered or heard of second-hand since starting at McGill back in 2001. Now, every organization suffers from some degree of inefficiency, but when you start to look at how academic research is carried out, esp on the publishing side, it is hard to believe the system continues to work at all.

I think that academia plays a critical role in providing an environment for individuals so gifted and so inclined to advance our understanding and make the world a better place. It pains me to think how many more people could be accommodated, how much more could be accomplished, if there wasn't so much waste built into the process (for reasons that have very little to do with the goals of academia, btw).