Friday, May 27, 2005

Students blog after high school shuts paper. After a Georgia high school eliminated its student newspaper and journalism class because the paper highlighted negative stories, the student staff responded by posting their opinions and copies of the newspaper on a blog, Speaking Underground. "While we understand that the administration wants Pebblebrook portrayed in the best light possible, that does not give them the right to silence the voice of this school," the students wrote. "It shouldn't be a secret that we have students who bring guns on campus or that we have teen mothers trying to juggle family responsibilities and school." The students have posted PDFs of the newspaper and say, "We invite you to read BrookSpeak and decide for yourself how balanced the coverage was for news and feature stories by these first time student journalists." What do you think? Via CyberJournalist.net [unmediated] 12:38:45 PM    comment []

Analysis of the Witty Worm. Here's a very interesting analysis of the Witty Worm from March 2004. Among other things, the researchers found the initial infection point (patient 0). They also believe that the attack was, at least in part, a deliberate cyber-attack on the U.S. military; an army base was deliberately targeted in the worm's hotlist. [Schneier on Security] 12:38:23 PM    comment []

Good read. Rich Burridge has a deep review of Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 12:38:00 PM    comment []

Khamenei prefers the young and the restless. When Rafsanjani finally announced that he would run for the president, many in Tehran knew he had just left a private meeting with Khamanei, the Supreme Leader. This, to many, was a sign that Khamaeni not only had supported Rafsanjani's bid, but also had endorsed him as his favorite candidate. To me, however, it was a bit in conflict with what Khamenei had been saying for long, that the next president must be someone 'young and energetic' who can inject fresh blood to the executive parts of the regime. He one even went far to say that Rafsanjani was sitting... [Editor: Myself (English)] 12:37:51 PM    comment []

South African lessons: Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). One of the most interesting presentations at this fantastic conference was given by Eve Gray, of Eve Gray & Associates. Gray was asked to study the publishing strategy of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in South Africa. This research institution had a traditional strategy of publishing lots of research books, and selling them. Gray convinced them to change their strategy -- to give away all their research books for free online, and offer a high quality print-on-demand service for anyone who wants the paper version. The result: "the sales turnover of the publishing department has risen by 300%." As she concluded her presentation, "giving away books and lead to an increase in our book sales." There's much much more in her interesting analysis. She has generously offered it for downloading. Here's the press release. [Lessig Blog] 8:04:43 AM    comment []

iPod Shuffle hacks collected [bOing bOing] 8:04:20 AM    comment []

Web site helps those who fret about zombie threat. Worried about zombies? Internet users concerned about the number of virus-infected PCs ready to launch an attack over the Web can at least keep track of how afraid they should be, and satisfy their curiosity, by visiting CipherTrust's new ZombieMeter resource. [InfoWorld: Top News] 8:04:19 AM    comment []

Also from BNA, these better bits of News: D.C. CIRCUIT UPHOLDS DISMISSAL OF CHALLENGE TO URAA The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a challenge to the provisions in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act that brought certain works that remained copyrighted overseas but had entered the public domain in the US back into copyright in the United States. The appellants argued that it was unconstitutional for Congress to remove works from the public domain. Decision DOT-GR ADDS GREEK CHARACTERS TO DOMAIN NAMES Greeks will from July 4 for the first time be able to name their Internet sites with letters from the Greek alphabet, the country's telecommunications authorities (EETT) said. The EETT said the measure should contribute to strengthening the Greek Internet and give a new momentum to the use of new technologies in a country where not absolutely everyone knows the Latin alphabet. (Edited to embed urls.) 7:40:17 AM    comment []