Educators Flocking to Finland, Land of Literate Children

Grok Headline matches for Educators Flocking to Finland, Land of Literate Children

From Finland, the land of the original

From Finland, the land of the original 12/26/2003 07:54 PM
Rare Exports, Inc. They deliver the extremely rare original Finnish product to nearly 150 countries every Christmas, exclusively. It's a big download (the small version is 35.5 MB) but that's nothing compared to the patience these hunters must have to catch their prey. [NSFW, via MonkeyFilter.]

Feral Children (wild children, wolf
children, nios salvajes, enfants
sauvages, loups, wilde Kinder, bambini
selvaggi, crianas selvagens, Aveyron,
Truffaut, Romulus, Remus, Kamala, Amala,
Mowgli, Tarzan)

Feral Children (wild children, wolf
children, nios salvajes, enfants
sauvages, loups, wilde Kinder, bambini
selvaggi, crianas selvagens, Aveyron,
Truffaut, Romulus, Remus, Kamala, Amala,
Mowgli, Tarzan) 12/14/2003 07:32 PM
Feral Children - (wild children, wolf children, feral child, nios salvajes, selvticos, enfants sauvages, enfants loups, wolfskind, bambini selvaggi, crianas selvagens)

feralchildren.com/en/index.php
track this site | 4 links

EFF suing on JibJab's behalf for "This
Land is Your Land" parody

EFF suing on JibJab's behalf for "This
Land is Your Land" parody 08/02/2004 03:02 AM
EFF has taken things one step further with JibJab and their endangered political parody of This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie's copyright holder has threatened to sue them for their work).

We're bringing the fight to Guthrie's rightsholders, and suing on JibJab's behalf, "to defend JibJab's fair use and free speech rights."

Check out Donna's excellent and heavily linked post for more. Link

Viewers flocking to pay TV films

Viewers flocking to pay TV films 06/07/2004 09:16 AM
More than 100 million homes world-wide now buy on demand movies, says a technology report.

Students Still Flocking Toward
E-Commerce

Students Still Flocking Toward
E-Commerce 12/31/2003 07:20 PM
AP via Newsday Dec 31 2003 6:11PM ET

Literate Programming in XML

Literate Programming in XML 12/18/2002 12:08 PM
At XML 2002 Norm Walsh has presented his implementation of Literate Programming in XML, available as part of his DocBook stylesheets.

Verbal, if not literate.

Verbal, if not literate. 09/10/2004 05:51 AM
Sure, it's just more Bush-bashing, but it's gussied up durn pretty. Philip Gourevitch on Bushspeak.

He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.

EFF defending creators of This Land is
Your Land parody

EFF defending creators of This Land is
Your Land parody 07/29/2004 06:53 AM
I'm proud to relate that EFF is representing Jib Jab, the creators of the wonderful "This Land is Your Land" Flash parody that aroused the ire of the holder of Woody Guthrie's copyrights and resulted in a threatened lawuit. Here's a little bit of my cow-orker Fred von Lohmann's letter to the copyright-holder's lawyers.

In your July 23 letter, you contend that "This Land" offers no "satirical comment" on the Guthrie original. You are mistaken.

While your view of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" as being predominantly about "the beauty of the American landscape" and "the disenfranchisement of the underclass" is interesting, most Americans think of the song as an iconic expression of the ideal of national unity. Jib Jab's parody addresses, among other things, the lack of national unity that characterizes our current political climate (ending with the optimistic hope that unity might be rediscovered). In short, "This Land" explores exactly the same themes as the Guthrie original, using the parodic device of contrast and juxtaposition to comment on the original. See Abilene Music v. Sony Music Entertainment, 320 F .Supp.2d 84, 90-91 (S.D.N.Y. 2003) (emphasizing the role of contrast and juxtaposition as parodic devices). The parodic comment takes on an additional dimension of irony when viewed in light of the often omitted closing stanzas of Guthrie's original.

556k PDF Link

Open source, flocking UAVs for hobbyists

Open source, flocking UAVs for hobbyists 01/09/2004 09:56 PM
Autopilot is an open-source firmmare for autonomous model aircraft:

We're building a system for autonomous aerial vehicles for the hobbiest. The entire design and all software is available as Free Software, licensed under the GPL. The goal is to produce a do-it-yourself autopilot kit that anyone can build and fly.

Our initial target is 60 sized model helicopters and less than $500 in parts. So far we've been very successful -- one of our 2.2 boards has hovered a Concept 60 for several minutes at a time under attitude command from the safety pilot. It isn't totally autonomous yet, but the demonstration has proven that the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and Kalman filter approach work well.

Link (Thanks, Ernie!)

Flocking CGI orcs are too smart to stand
and fight

Flocking CGI orcs are too smart to stand
and fight 12/15/2003 04:25 PM
Computer animators have been using cellular automata in their crowd scenes for ages, granting the dancers in the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Orcs in LotR the liberty to autonomously determine the fine details of their movement, creating realistic mob scenes that appear to contain a cast of thousands. The problem is, as the programming for the automata gets more sophisticated, they start to express non-linear behavior.

In the climax for The Return of the King, the animated forces of evil kept running away from their enemies.

"So each of these computerized soldiers is assessing the environment around them, drawing on a repertoire of military moves that have been taught them through motion capture - determining how they will combat the enemy, step over the terrain, deal with obstacles in front of them through their own intelligence - and there's 200,000 of them doing that..."

"For the first two years, the biggest problem we had was soldiers fleeing the field of battle," Taylor said.

"We could not make their computers stupid enough to not run away."

Link (Thanks, Yoz!)

Tourists Flocking Back to Bridges, Dams
(AP)

Tourists Flocking Back to Bridges, Dams
(AP) 06/10/2004 03:25 AM
AP - Tourists are flocking back to the nation's engineering marvels — the dams, bridges and other structures that had seen increased security and lightened visitor traffic since September 2001 — despite the fact that they're still potential terrorist targets.

Leo: Literate Editor with Outlines

Leo: Literate Editor with Outlines 10/29/2003 11:26 AM
Leo 4.0.4 released

America's Most Literate Cities

America's Most Literate Cities 12/08/2003 05:53 AM
America's Most Literate Cities
http://www.uww.edu/cities/

This study, compiled in summer 2003, pieces together a literacy profile of America's 64 largest cities, drawing from U.S. Census data, newspaper circulation rates, library resources, publishers and other public documents. The study, authored by University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor and education Professor Jack Miller, draws on statistics from five categories and 13 different measures of literacy to provide a ranking for all cities with a population of 250,000 or more. The Top 10:

1) Minneapolis, MN
2) Seattle, WA
3) Denver, CO
4) Atlanta, GA
5) San Francisco, CA
6) Pittsburgh, PA
7) Washington, DC
8) Louisville, KY
9) Portland, OR
10) Cincinnati, OH

"Minneapolis again ranked as most
literate city"

"Minneapolis again ranked as most
literate city" 08/04/2004 03:30 PM

Ranks of computer literate professionals
grow by 1,100

Ranks of computer literate professionals
grow by 1,100 08/08/2004 05:28 PM
Jordan Times Aug 8 2004 8:34PM GMT

Fur for iPods; a Bluetooth rifle; Mac
users are more literate

Fur for iPods; a Bluetooth rifle; Mac
users are more literate 08/06/2004 09:43 AM
Mac User Aug 6 2004 12:48PM GMT

pyWeb Literate Programming by slott on
2002/06/07

pyWeb Literate Programming by slott on
2002/06/07 06/10/2002 09:25 AM

Save The Children calls on release of
Iraqi children from jails.

Save The Children calls on release of
Iraqi children from jails. 07/08/2004 10:09 PM
Save The Children calls on release of Iraqi children from jails. This apparently in response to recent media reports on the abuse of children in Iraqi prisons. And it's not just Save the Children who is concerned, but UNICEF, Amnesty International, and the Red Cross. Infact, Congress has called for a special briefing tomorrow from the Pentagon on "confidential reports" from the Red Cross on prison conditions in Iraq. The Pentagon is closing the briefing to the public, however, and apparently thinks that even Congress shouldn't know the details of how we treat prisoners.
"It's something of a stretch of policy and procedures to give them to the Congress," Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita said.

Israel Says Children Enlist Children as
Suicide Bombers

Israel Says Children Enlist Children as
Suicide Bombers 06/12/2004 08:36 PM
As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grinds on, with many Palestinian militants now arrested or dead, the ranks are increasingly filled by eager youths, some in their middle to late teens.

Through Finland in Packets

Through Finland in Packets 06/17/2005 04:27 PM

« Crime scene jesus. »

Ever since the Washington Post started doing their 'Finland Journal' blog I've been thinking about saying something, but wanted to wait until they had finished the series and until I had enough time to think about what I wanted to say without sounding like one of the many wackjobs, both Finnish and American, whose comments ranged from explaining how to pronounce SOW-na to ranting about the Swedish Fascist oppression in Finland to bickering about nothing. Mostly I just found the commentary deeply depressing as monoculture was praised as the reason for all the good things in Finland and the reason for all the bad things in the US a bit more often than I found comfortable. I come from one of the most fucked up nations on the planet, but I'm awfully glad for the variety of people there since it is the greatest asset the US has in terms of creativity and innovation. Being a threat to this vaunted Finnish monoculture is not a fun place to be at times. Some expats just complain, some never do and the rest of us try to get on with life as best as we can and occasionally, cautiously, commiserate over beer and try to focus on the positive things as much as possible. One of the reasons I like my 'cookery' is that it's fun to explore the differences in cuisine, I'm reasonably good at it, it's something positive, and nobody hates the person who brings tasty treats for afternoon coffee. :)

There has been a lot of criticism among the foreigners, and even a Phinn, here about the series since visiting somewhere as a journalist on an official junket likely sponsored by the state vs. living here are two very different experiences and given the inevitable superficiality of the WP coverage, a lot of us were disappointed. One of the reasons that Finland is supposedly the "country that Americans know least about" is that aside from the usual Santa, sauna and sisu stories, very little else gets written in English about this country. I've taken to collecting books on travel to Finland, some more than 100 years old, and I could match the topics nearly 1:1 with the old travelogues to the Finland Journal coverage. In fact, I think I liked the bitchy and less fawning Mrs. Tweedie's Through Finland in Carts from 1898 much better as, in spite of her unsavoury British imperialism, she was a far more snarky and entertaining writer. But, again, same shit, different century. Surely, even the Finns must bore of this though the clichés are what keep the tourists coming. It's like the hackneyed 'pahk ya cah in Havahd Yahd' and Paul Revere legends of Boston. The Boston strangler, townies and Southie don't get a lot of press since they aren't exactly attractive to locals much less to tourists.

For the expats, there's precisely dick to prepare them for what awaits them making a life here. Trying to explain how Finland differs for residents as opposed to tourists to the newly arrived is a chore since you either sound bitter or are constantly doubting your own experience of everything in a miasma of cultural relativism and personal baggage. A lot of us come to live here because we have a spouse/SO, a spouse/SO who very likely does not have an objective view or an understanding of the difference between being Finnish and being not Finnish in Finland. I was in quite a sulk for a few weeks after I met an Aus-Fin couple who had moved here and, after two months, the Australian was escaping in defeat after being told repeatedly in interviews that her education credentials were worthless in Finland, the downside of an educational system regarded, and which regards itself, so highly. Her boyfriend seemed completely surprised by this and felt badly for not being a better judge of his own country. With the dearth of realistic information for those wanting to move here, many have no other choice than to trust their Finnish loved one which may or may not prove to be the best option. This seems to happen more often than not as expats don't often stay for more than a few years before giving up and heading back home, with or without the spouse/SO. I don't know if immigration actually keeps track of those who leave and why, but it would be interesting to see the average length of stay for expats as I expect it is generally very short. How many of the foreigners work for Nokia would also be an interesting statistic.

The question this raises is why do people leave? Finland is, in many ways, a lovely country, but why do expats frequently only stay for a short while? It's an important question, one few seem curious about or willing to discuss. The most frequent rebuttals to any criticism or merely mentioning that life here can be a challenge is that it's "the same everywhere" or that we can always just pack up and go home. Ironically, I would expect this sort of chiding from red state Americans. I think that this might be at the heart of much of our nebulous reasons for struggle here; that Finland is a young country, even by American standards, and with a long history of fighting off invading outsiders, Finland has developed a very, very strong streak of nationalism. What's wrong with nationalism? Well, after 9/11, I saw neighbours wanting to beat the shit out of the grocers down the street who had been there for over 20 years because suddenly they were those dark towel heads, "them", who flew into the WTC instead of the two brothers who had been selling them their groceries for decades. Nationalism separates as much as it binds and mostly it just makes people blind and monumentally stupid.

One of the first memorable experiences was while walking HB down Bulevardi about a week after arriving here and running into a smiling little old lady who wanted to pet him and started chatting me up. As soon as I started to say something the smile fell off her face which was replaced by a scowl full of scorn whereupon she screeched something, waved me off and stalked away in a huff. I was like, what the fuck just happened? This would be repeated quite a few times and, in spite of being able to rationalise the behaviour, first impressions tend to be difficult to change. I remain rather shy about being busted as a foreigner and still have a very difficult time daring to say anything to strangers. In the dog park, I'll stand around understanding everything the other dog owners are saying but don't join the conversation which has, on occasion, marked me as a foreigner just as much as saying something would have. :)

Generally, it's the small things, the day to day things, the very difficult to define things, that make life as an outsider here a daily struggle. Learning the language is the single largest hurdle in bridging the gap and becoming less of an alien, but after two years I'm still cautious, still shy, still neurotic about speaking it to the point of avoiding situations where I might have to say something to someone because I'm scared of being busted as an outsider. We all have little defensive tactics like this, depending on our individual hang-ups and struggles. One of my friends visited home a while back and she remarked in an email that she was in awe of how suddenly aware she was of how the little daily things in Finland make life so much more work than back in the realm of the friendly familiarity of home.

Some things, however, aren't so vague, but these are the things we don't talk about or quietly discuss amongst ourselves because they're either too depressing to dwell upon or tend to be met with vituperative attacks. There are things endemic to being an expat, a foreigner in a strange land, that often make you wonder if it's you, if you're not trying hard enough or if it's the culture that is responsible for the discontent and many things often do have simple explanations, if not simple solutions. I have lived elsewhere and, given the culture and the language barrier, Finland is a very challenging place to find a happy niche whether or not any Finns want to hear or acknowledge that. It's not a destination for the easily discouraged or the impatient.

Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to a couple with two adorable basset hounds who had just returned to Finland after 7 years abroad who remarked at how "international" Helsinki seemed nowadays. There are many words I'd use to describe Helsinki, most of them nice even, but international wouldn't be one of them. Being part of the EU while rejecting or reluctantly accepting some of the things that come with being part of the EU, like foreigners, doesn't make a place international any more than dining out at a Nepalese restaurant makes you a world traveller. This doesn't mean Finland should aspire to the problems of the Netherlands, but acknowledging the problems that exist here for foreigners might be something to consider since people do generally tend to stay in places that they feel welcome in and Finland, either intentionally or not, often gives outsiders the impression that we are either not welcome or just merely tolerated. If Finland doesn't want foreigners, it should really just pull out of the EU and close the borders.

So, I suppose the point of my rambling is that there are at least a few of us around who like it here and are trying with sincerity to learn the language, fit in and get along like everyone else but there are so many conflicting messages between what we read in the paper or hear from our spouses and what we actually experience at times that it makes it difficult to reconcile the disparity and still keep on trying. It's a struggle. It's like bloody musical chairs watching all the expats leave one by one.

The Weird Als of Finland

The Weird Als of Finland 06/30/2004 06:07 PM

Finland has a dance called the humppa, but it's spoken of with the same disdain that disco gets in the US these days. It's for the geezers. I have been told it is something like the German polka only without the lederhosen, which is good since I'm half German and, after a few Straßenfests where people jump around in lederhosen with buckets of beer in their hands barely able to stand up, much less dance, the costumes just don't really add much to the overall aesthetic. I had a biology professor, a Bavarian who was really into opera singing, show up for a lecture in lederhosen and dance a polka for us while we sat there speechless. Everyone thought he was nuts, but I just thought he was hopelessly homesick and I couldn't imagine him doing that dance without the full costume in his usually disheveled professor uniform. I have been spared, so far, the spectacle of drunk Finns hopping around much like drunk Germans to goofy music. So far.

While we were off at the lake for Juhannus, my ear picked up something that sounded a lot like Viva Las Vegas but....not. I was informed that it was a group called Eläkeläiset [the pensioners] who are the humppa song gods in Finland and, well, everywhere else people like to humppa. I fried a few neurons just thinking about an Elvis tune done in humpaa/polka time. I can't describe their music except to say that they are the Weird Al Yankovics of Finland. Sample the Peljätty Humppa [2.2mb] and try to guess the song they are covering and be very, very afraid. It's like Ethyl Merman singing a disco version of No Business like Show Business [yes, she really did...], as it's so bad that it transcends the badness and is irresistibly brilliant. I must have more of their music. The guys actually have a regular band, Kumikameli, but I can't really tell the difference between the samples on that web site and the humppa music so it may be just a nuance only a Finn can hear. :) The lyrics are very clever and, unsurprisingly, the music is popular with the polka loving Germans. There even seems to be an OpenBSD-Humppa connection which does help explain a few things about OpenBSD. Weird Al has done a polka album so perhaps it is time he teamed up with Eläkeläiset and did a humppa album. Disturbing thought. *zot* There went another neuron.

Wireless Finland

Wireless Finland 03/06/2004 01:55 AM

The Helsingin Sanomat ran an article in the paper earlier this week about the growing number of wireless access points in Helsinki and around Finland. The article included a nice map noting the locations which I scanned in and offer here in a small ~60k jpg and a large ~240k jpg. It seems that most of the current hot spots are catering to the business traveller judging from the number of hotels and business centers listed. There are a few cafes and a movie theatre or two listed though and my hope is that it finds sufficient interest to keep spreading. I've had wireless at home for years now and find it luxurious to sit on the couch with my laptop even now. I'd really like to see WiFi in public libraries in addition to more coffee shops since students would benefit a lot from being able to use their own computer while doing research or homework.

There are two companies offering WiFi; Sonera and DNA. DNA seems to be geared more towards the local geeks and ala carte folks while Sonera is mainly in the hotel and business traveller market. Sonera Homerun doesn't appear to have a pricing structure on the net. The DNA WLAN service has three different price plans which range from €5 per month with a per minute fee to €90 for those with a serious porn habit and large downloads.

Until mobile phones get much more sophisticated displays, surfing the net or reading email with them more than occasionally isn't as attractive as having a small laptop and WiFi in convenient spots around town. WiFi really means WIreless FInland. :)

Dan Gillmor in Finland

Dan Gillmor in Finland 03/14/2005 06:21 PM
For anyone who's been following the late journalism-debate, the Man Himself, i.e. Dan Gillmor is coming to Finland. Please join him in an open session at Korjaamo, Helsinki, Tuesday, 12 April at 18:00. I'll certainly try to be there.

Ja sama suomeksi: Dan Gillmor, toimittaja-bloggaaja, joka on puhunut pitkään kansalaisjournalismin puolesta, on tulossa puhumaan avoimeen keskustelutilaisuuteen Helsingissä, Korjaamolla, tiistaina 12. huhtikuuta kello 18.00. Tervetuloa!

(Via Jyri.)

Part 3G Networks In Finland

Part 3G Networks In Finland 04/19/2004 07:03 AM
3G Apr 19 2004 11:08AM GMT

Finland OKs 3G Network Sharing

Finland OKs 3G Network Sharing 04/16/2004 06:11 AM
Unstrung.com Apr 16 2004 10:21AM GMT

Finland no comprende computers

Finland no comprende computers 06/06/2005 12:11 AM
Schizo-J anne asks why Finland is lagging behind in WLAN deployments. There are roughly three free WiFi hotspots in Helsinki, a major difference to our neighbour Tallinn, which has open WiFi almost everywhere in the city center. Well, the Finnish cities of Oulu, Turku, and Lahti have already started lacing themselves with WLAN networks, and the Lappeenranta University of Technology WLAN network is to my understanding also spreading into the city, so the situation is not really that bad.

But Janne is right to ask this. Finland is not really very innovative in this area at the moment, partly because it's not seen as very important. A lot of Finland's technological and financial innovation is currently poured towards the 3G (aka WCDMA, aka UMTS) development and deployment. While technologically it offers a similar solution to WLAN, and Finns are doing pretty well in mobile phone usage (though nowhere near the top), there is one key difference that people tend to ignore when talking about these things.

Freedom to innovate.

In order for you to develop a fancy new 3G app, you need to talk to and appease operators, cell phone manufacturers, and all sorts of different companies that are in the so-called "value chain". Everybody wants their small piece of it, and you end up thinking about things like "brand dilution" and "quality of service" and "code signing". All this creates quite a lot of energy, and it does not guarantee that you will create a good app - it just means that you are really good at presenting your case, and it does make sense to a lot of people. Even if you wanted to just build a simple SMS-based service, you would need quite a lot of investment of at least time, if not capital, to interface with the network: you need the PC with a bunch of cell phones attached. Or buy a platform from an operator.

Open WLAN, however, means that you can start to innovate at very, very low costs. Web space is cheap, PHP can be done by anyone, and startup costs are minimal. All you need is the idea, and the tools and the knowledge are mostly there already. Granted, you can also run a browser-based application on a 3G phone, no problem, but this always is at cost to the user: the browser-based UI is not optimal for a small device. And developing an optimized GUI for a mobile device is difficult and sometimes nerve-wrecking.

You can split the space in two ways: you can concentrate on innovating vertically : building entire solutions from the low bits to the end application. Or you can innovate horizontally - build platforms which allow other people to innovate and build upon.

3G or WLAN.

It's just like "Nokia or Linux".

I'm not saying Nokia wasn't a success, obviously it was (and is). But I do believe that in the future, it's more probable to see a new Linux-like success story than a Nokia-like success story coming from Finland. Which is why supporting platforms for free innovation would be so important.

Explosion in Finland: 7 Dead

Explosion in Finland: 7 Dead 10/15/2002 07:15 AM
Explosion in Finland: 7 Dead From Yahoo News via Google News: A bomb ripped through a one of Finland's largest shopping malls, killing seven people, injuring 59 others and stunning a nation unaccustomed to violence. Government officials didn't rule ... [ More ] Good lord. What's going on in the world. Snipers in the U.S. and a bomber in Finland ....

W3C Offices Expand to Finland

W3C Offices Expand to Finland 09/06/2002 04:44 AM
6 September 2002: W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the W3C Finnish Office in Tampere, Finland, hosted by the Digital Media Institute of the Tampere University of Technology. Tarja Systä is Office Manager, and Ossi Nykänen is coordinator. The opening ceremony takes place 11 October in Tampere. Read about W3C Offices. (News archive)

Nokia phone explodes in Finland

Nokia phone explodes in Finland 11/06/2003 11:14 AM
Counterfeit battery to blame

Larry Lessig to speak in Finland

Larry Lessig to speak in Finland 05/21/2004 06:54 AM
(Via Jyri). Toimitus suosittelee, ja kiroilee kun ei itse pääse paikalle.

KUTSU

Avoin luento ja keskustelutilaisuus
Professor Lawrence Lessig Helsingissä
"The Future of Copyright, Culture and Creativity"
Maanantaina 24.5. klo 17.30
Kulttuuritehdas Korjaamo, Töölönkatu 51 b

Tervetuloa avoimeen keskustelutilaisuuteen Professori Lawrence Lessigin kanssa Helsingissä maantantaina 24.5. klo 17.30 Korjaamolla, Töölönkatu 51b. Professori Lessig on yksi maailman tunnetuimpia ajattelijoita, kirjoittajia ja luennoitsijoita digitaalisen kulttuurin, median ja tekijänoikeuksien kehityksestä. Nyt suomalaisella yleisöllä on ainutlaatuinen mahdollisuus kuulla ja haastaa kansainvälistä vaikuttajaa. Teemana on "The Future of Copyright, Culture and Creativity."

Tilaisuuden järjestää Aula. Aula on avoin verkosto, joka tukee ajatusten vaihtoa poikki rajojen.

Tätä kutsua voi lähettää sähköisesti eteenpäin kaikille kiinnostuneille.

* * *

INVITATION

You are invited to an open discussion with Professor Lawrence Lessig on Monday 24.5. at 17.30 at Korjaamo, Töölönkatu 51 b in Helsinki. Professor Lessig will speak on "The Future of Copyright, Culture and Creativity" followed by a discussion with the audience. The event will be held in English and is free and open to the public.

The event is organized by Aula. Aula is an open network that promotes the exchange of ideas across boundaries.

Please forward this invitation to anyone you feel would be interested in attending.

About the speaker

Lawrence Lessig (http://www.lessig.org/) is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Lessig was also a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

More recently, Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Lessig was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, law and high technology, Internet regulation, comparative constitutional law, and the law of cyberspace. His book, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace, was published by Basic Books, and The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, is available from Random House. His most recent book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, is now available online at http://www.free-culture.cc and from Penguin Press.

Professor Lessig chairs the Creative Commons project (http://creativecommons.org/faq). Professor Lessig is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a board member of the Center for the Public Domain, and a Commission Member of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture and Community at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Commercial bl0gs entering Finland

Commercial bl0gs entering Finland 04/08/2005 06:39 PM
My my, what an interesting week this has been: First, Blogilista goes commercial, and now Pirkka-magazine has launched a number of commercial blogs. The Finnish blogosphere reacts with violent distrust and confusion.

I see no problem. These are clearly blogs, simply because th e only meaningful definition for the world blog is based on form, not content. They're not lying about their affiliation. They publish polished content. In fact, I find it wonderful that a media publisher dares to go and try and embrace the new media. They even publish Atom feeds for all blogs! Way!

However, entering the blogosphere may be more difficult than just dumping Movabletype on your magazine web site: people will look at these blogs. They will discuss. They will find crap on them (if there's any). They will write about it. And it's difficult to ignore them, if you want to keep your credibility. Other bloggers will call your bullshit - and very likely, someone in that bunch is at least equal in writing skills and more knowledgeable on the subject than you. And they know it.

Now the question is how much integrity Pirkka wants to have: do they just want to publish news articles in a blog format - or do they really want to go full out and really try to embrace the dialogue that comes with the format?

You see, whatever else blogs may be, they work best as a personal media. You need to let people write with their own voice, not just copying material from others - even if you have all the rights to do so. It's the power and bane of the format; a personal touch creates reader loyalty, but it also means that you have to get involved in your writing - "laittaa itsensä likoon", as the Finns say. And that is not easy.

Welcome to the crowd! I'm happy you're here, anyway. People will grumble, but there's always room for one more in the jacuzzi.

(A quick hint to Pirkka writers: Read http://www.corporateblogging .info/, and Scoble's Corporat e Blogging Manifesto. Understand. Internalize. And stop posting articles from one person under the name of another... That simply takes away credibility from the author.)

(And a quick other hint to people who complain about these being on blogilista.fi: get a clue. Really. Would you stop using a phone book simply because it contains company phone numbers, or stop using Google because it's *gasp* a profit-making company? That's exactly what Blogilista.fi is - an index of blogs, nothing more. It ain't your personal blogospheric community where people live happily and go to the woods to get undressed and hug each other in a blogoslavic überbliss. If you don't like the direction they're taking, learn to use RSS and site feeds, and make your own personal bloglist.

Blogging in Finland is finally growing up. The hype around blogging will cease in a year or two, and hopefully we then can better understand what the media is and what one can do with it. And then we can get back to the really important thing: writing. Writing about your dog, or your political views, or celebrity divorces, or company products, or food, or your sex life, or whatever pleases you. Some bloggers will gain prestige; some bloggers will become influential; some bloggers will make many people laugh; some bloggers will make many people weep. Some will be completely ignored. Most will just for

...

Atair Aerospace Becomes the First
Company in the World to Demonstrate
Flocking and Swarming Capabilities on
Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Atair Aerospace Becomes the First
Company in the World to Demonstrate
Flocking and Swarming Capabilities on
Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles 03/31/2005 03:03 AM
For the first time in history, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have flown using flocking and swarming algorithms. “Flocking and Swarming” are two words used interchangeably to refer to modeled flight that is biologically inspired by the flight of flocking birds and swarming insects. [PRWEB Mar 31, 2005]

Articles for Educators

Articles for Educators 04/19/2005 06:23 AM



Articles for Educators
http://www.articlesforeduc ators.com/

Articles For Educators is a free resource offered by Virtu Software. On this website, teachers will find lesson plans, field trip ideas, tips and tricks for the classroom written by educators. Visitors can browse the directory of articles by subject or search for a specific topic. This section highlights Mathematics lesson plans written by math teachers and is organized into the following main sections: Competition, Fun with Numbers, and Miscellaneous. Membership, which is free, provides educators access to post articles, comment on other articles, or discuss subjects in the community forum. The website does include a few advertisements, but they do not overwhelm the website and its creator, a software developer who is also active in Christian ministry, also includes several Christian education links. This will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2005 Internet MiniGuide.[From The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2005. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

Educators use Internet as tool

Educators use Internet as tool 02/07/2005 01:49 AM
Pe.com - Sun Feb 6, 10:30 am GMT

The Ultimate Portal for Educators

The Ultimate Portal for Educators 11/10/2003 10:51 PM
The Ultimate Portal for Educators
http://www.tea chers-connect.net/edres/portal.htm

The Ultimate Porta; for Educators including Content Area Assets, Teacher Internet Assets, Multimedia Assets, Raw Material Search Engines, Web Page Design, and Copyright.

Educators pan web copyright proposal

Educators pan web copyright proposal 09/22/2004 05:14 PM
CBC Sep 22 2004 7:26PM GMT

Finland telecoms: Nokia unveils handheld
internet tablet

Finland telecoms: Nokia unveils handheld
internet tablet 06/24/2005 03:06 PM
Ebusinessforum.com - Fri Jun 24, 12:15 pm GMT

Illinois Educators Conference Blog

Illinois Educators Conference Blog 03/14/2005 06:22 PM

What in the World is IceCasting?

“IceCasting is an experiment in MobCasting, an idea that Andy Carvin has been exploring lately. The Illinois Technology Conference for Educators (IL-TCE) will be held in St. Charles from March 1 through March 4 and I thought this might be an interesting way to extend the learning.

Everyone loves attending conferences. There's something about being surrounded by your colleagues and being exposed to new ideas at every turn that really just gets people jazzed up about technology, teaching, and education in general. This blog is a way to capture that feeling and share it with other people. It's a place to capture those ideas that you just can't wait to take back to your school, or make you think differently about the way you're doing things now.

If you experienced something at ICE and want to share it with people, there's two ways that you can do so. Send an email to teach42.icecasting@blogge r.com, and the entire text of the email will be instantly posted here. You can also attach photos to the emails if you'd like to! If you'd like to leave an audio comment, simply call 1-661-716-BLOG (2564), use 555-555-5555 for the login and then enter 2005 as your pincode. Leave a message and your audio comment will be posted directly to the blog!

So in between sessions, if you feel inspired, pick up your cell phone and give the number a call. Share what you've seen or heard that inspired you with everyone else. Please feel free to pass this information on to anyone else attending the conference.

If you happen to use Flickr, then tag your ICE photos with ICE2005. I'll be adding a feed to the sidebar that will grab all of our communal photos that way.” [IceCasting]

Steve Dembo seems to be doing all of the heavy lifting at this point (text and audio), but it’s certainly a great idea. Keep up the great work, Steve!

To my great regret, I won’t be able to attend the Computers in Libraries conference this year, so I’m going to have to attend via the blogs. Thank heavens for non-complex, navel-gazing conference bloggers!

Educators Tune Into Computer Power

Educators Tune Into Computer Power 03/19/2003 10:23 PM
The "computers in the classroom" revolution that stalled in the 1990s finally has arrived. (The Arizona Republic via MyAppleMenu)
Grok Description matches for Educators Flocking to Finland, Land of Literate Children
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Educators Flocking to Finland, Land of Literate Children

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