The Mac App Store has a few other benefits. Apps will be kept up to date, they be available later and if you have to reinstall your Mac. What’s not to love about the idea? I hope that Microsoft also bring out an App Store. Heck, I would love it.

The main reason that I’m keen is because I believe that people should be paid for their work. It is simple really – while I am a fan of Open Source Software, I’m also a fan of choice. If developers want to charge for their software, I think they should be able to have that opportunity. Afterall, most adults are in work and expect to be reasonably recompensed for that work. You don’t often find Open Source teachers, politicians or lawyers do you? Woohoo, I spent four years at university and got my degree and now I’m going to work for nothing?

That’s the reason that I do pay for a lot of the software that I use. I’ve paid for Apple and PC stuff. Commercial and shareware. I’ve also sometimes tipped a few dollars to people whose software is freely shared but who have a PayPal account for appreciative users. I also pay for a few of the websites/web apps that I use regularly. LastPass, Xmarks, MetaFilter, Flickr …

As the World Wide Web grew in popularity people got used to a model where everything could be found for free. I still have private clients who ask me how to find music and movies on the internet. When I point them to iTunes or the like they are incredulous because they already pay Xtra or Vodafone for the internet, and the other stuff is for free, right? This attitude extends beyond people who would never “illegally” download music or a movie. Many people sign up for websites and applications and then cry foul when the site changes the groundrules or worse, has the teremity to close.

“What about MY bookmarks? I have this many and I’ve had them there for all these years!” was the cry when it was leaked that Yahoo were looking to change Delicious.

“Have you paid for the service?” was my answer. And even then, does paying for something really give us any rights?

Nothing has changed. Webspace, bandwidth, customer service and support all cost money. Money that can’t always be recouped by advertisements. If a service appears free to use, someone is paying for it – and why should they subsidise your use?

If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. (MetaFilter user blue_beetle)

Think about it. You get what you pay for.

No related posts.

Over the weekend I discovered that the National Library of New Zealand had been trawling the net and bulk downloading harvesting,

every publicly accessible website that falls under the nz country code, as well as certain other websites that are owned by New Zealanders or legally considered New Zealand publications.

This is because

The internet is always changing, and uses a myriad of technologies, so it is impossible to make a perfect copy. Despite this, we are hoping to harvest 100 million URLs during October 2008, giving us a snapshot of the internet at that time. link

I also discovered that if I took the usual measure, to avoid being crawled and archived, by using a robots.txt file inside my website, the National Library would ignore my wishes right to object to outside crawling of my site and take it anyway “to enhance the likelihood of our being able to harvest as full a snapshot of the .nz domain as possible“.

That’s OK though because I know that the National Library has my best interests at heart and knows better than I do about the archiving of my website. They know that although I might consider my few pages of rants, raves and links to be temporary, my grandchildren will want to benefit from the crazy thoughts that I had way back in October 2008.

But what about the people who have developed applications which generate dynamic webpages based on entry data – I’ve seen countless webpages like this. The astute developer will have done the right thing and placed an anti crawl robots.txt file in their website to avoid crawlers doing huge damage to their server traffic. I know you can opt in to opt out of being crawled, but you have to have seen it at the right time, followed up the user agents, worked out what was happening and put in your request. I didn’t notice until it was a bit life. Hu hum, life got in my way.

I’m in two minds about this idea of the National Library archiving everything in the .nz webosphere. As much as anyone I want the stories collected and collated for the future, couldn’t they respect respect some of our wishes for autonomy over our material? I have no robots.txt file on any of my websites at the moment – although I do want the right as a relatively savvy citizen to have the option. As it happens, it appears the biggest internet archive site in the world agrees with me.

EDIT: Aha! A rewrite rule with a Rickroll. Nice. Very. Nice.

No related posts.

And what a fascinating interweb life I have led. The first Google Link finds my website and lists my contact information. There are some old listerv messages about technical issues that I had when I was trying to share our first broadband connection and some pages from when I was classroom teaching and even some nonsense from yet another bout of trying (unsuccessfully) to organise myself GTD style.

I found myself all over the usual social networking culprits. There are lots of pages about me in sites that I haven’t signed up for, judging by the information inside them they are frontends for various database leechers.

And then there is my writing. According to one blog, my

prose is the most beautiful I have ever read – almost a hymn to language.

and another fan of mine says

She writes so poetically and her stories are so sad; about isolation and betrayal. (Chefleur’s Caprice)

Unfortunately not everyone likes my writing quite as much as these two fans. Frewrious Spew said that a book I published in 2004 was rubbish. Jess, writing three years after I published that particular little potboiler, is a little kinder but still said my storyline was silly and that I needed to think less about being risque and more about the relationships I was writing about.

I could make a fairly substantial wager that most of my friends (both in real life and online) didn’t know that I was a writer and had several of my books published. I could also lay good odds on the fact that my Australian heritage would come as a surprise to most people who know me. When I found out it came as a surprise to me too.

Despite what some blogs, newspapers and even one year ten reading list say I am not the writer of The Bride Stripped Bare. The writer of that novel was unmasked as Nikki Gemmell – note the slight difference in speling between Nikki and Nicki?

It’s all a bit silly really and even a cursory check of facts would reveal that I am not a writer of the calibre of my sort of namesake. However, the people who wrote these blog posts, newspaper articles (actually it’s a blog post too) and put together the college reading list all made a simple spelling error. And, that error remains on the internet to be seen for years afterwards.

These errors get picked up my people who come looking for information. Sometimes it’s a child – who puts the wrong information into a school project. Other times it’s adults who don’t cross-check their facts and then make other more damning assumptions.

I am quite happy if people think that I am able to write poetic prose – hymns to language. But what if I wasn’t? And what about the other Nicki / Nikki Gemmell? She might not want to be confused with someone like me.

Related posts:

1. Stories
2. Internet Cafe

I have to be really careful here. During my work week I exchange hats on a regular basis. Some of the time I am teacher who wants access now … and then I am technician with lofty views about security … and then I am subverter – I want to get to XXX.co.nz because … I want to …

So who does own your school network? I thought about this question last week when a cluster school couldn’t access a Wikispace or a Zoho Creator database. Their inability to access these sites was only half of the problem though. They had to contact an external technican to have the sites removed from the filtering list.

The network is more than just the internet connection though. It’s also the school’s intranet and it’s also the individual computers and other gear. So who “owns” all of this? And what about the school’s website? Who does it all belong to?

I found this page of Ten Commandments from the Rotorua Education Centre and thought about the networks that I own / manage / work in / attempt to work in. It’s a fairly decent look at what expections a school IT person might have. It also looks at the expectations that a teacher might have about their school laptop. The problem is that the page misses out the other side of the issue. If you are going to use the network you need to be aware of the importance of looking after it. That means being sensitive about passwords and shared network spaces. It means being thoughtful about where you put your 13Gb video file (it’s true – I saw one on a server last week) and it means understanding about quotas (I saw a whole school network brought to a standstill last year when someone tried to synchronise 4Gb of photos and movies over a wireless connection because her son said she should!).

So what’s the answer? I think we need to stop thinking about school laptops and computers in terms of home machines. While they are similar beasts their function puts them in a different cage altogether. I think we need to look at using technicians with an educational background (easier said than done) and we need to think about giving more information to the very people who the network matters most to – the end user.

With this in mind, here’s a brilliant site to download a movie that could just help older kids and teachers understand a little bit more about the connected part of the network. Warriors of the Net is a few years old now (1999) but it does explain a bit about networks and how information is transported around the building and around the world.

No related posts.

http://www.dontclick.it/

No related posts.

A few months ago Woosh Wireless bought out QSI. Initially I thought this would be a good thing because I had a lot of time for Woosh as well. In the early days when we were trying to provision broadband into schools I set up some Auckland schools to use Woosh wireless for a fraction of the cost of ADSL. They even have some of my gushing words of praise on their website.

Earlier this year when we moved moved house we had an awful time getting back online. And sice we’ve been in this area we’ve had an awful time staying online. I have no idea whether it’s the line or Quicksilver but I do know that Quicksilver or Woosh as they are now, just aren’t interested in my business. If they were I wouldn’t have to sit for up to an hour to speak to a snarky customer service person.

So we’re going to the dark side. Back to Telecom. Full speed either way / 15GB of traffic Telecom. And if it turns out to be a line issue – they own the damn things and can deal with the issues. Fingers crossed.

Related posts:

1. Wireless

One that is still important, despite not being updated since 1995, is RFC 1855. This is one with a whole lot of guidelines about electronic communications. It’s a sort of Miss Manners guide to (n)ettiquette.

From the section on email,

• Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider, be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to place.
• Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.
• Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country has copyright laws.
• If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you’ve received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper attribution.
• Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one.
• A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these “flames”) even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get flamed and it’s prudent not to respond to flames.

Are these guidelines of any use? I think that they are and I think we can adopt them into our blogging philosophies as well. The interweb is not a free for all for educators.

No related posts.

“a “citizens’ compendium of everything,” is an experimental new wiki project. The project, started by a co-founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on that model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names.” from Citizendium Main Page

This is an interesting development in the evolution of the internet. The Wikipedia has been criticised for the way that its articles can be subverted by self-proclaimed experts and by those with barrows to push. It will be interesting to follow what happens with this new initiative.

Related posts:

1. Content Sharing

Internet users in New Plymouth and Auckland are the keenest in the world to find recipes for making bombs, according to a leading counter-terrorism expert.   – NZHerald

What does this mean? According to Australia’s Herald Sun Australians are also busy looking for bomb making recipes. The article expresses a lot of concern about potential terrorists getting their hands on the information required to make a bomb.

I would have thought that real terrorists would already have access to that kind of knowledge?

Related posts:

1. Copyright Craziness

Image from the amazing webcomic xkcd. Check it out!

Related posts:

1. Steal This Comic
2. Updating