I just ran across a great cgi:perl script for running anonymous proxies. Its called CGIProxy. An easy way to find it around the net is to google: nph-proxy. Also, here is a link to the home page for the beta version: CGIProxy Beta.
So, I can finally start getting my systems ready for my upcoming deployment. Today, Fedora 8 was released to the masses. It took me a good 15 minutes to find an FTP server that had actually sync’d (ftp.fi.muni.cz). I was actually surprised to find it still had bandwidth. As the morning has progressed, the mirrors have progressively become bogged down. Sucks for them! I got my copy! I hate to leech but I can’t use bittorrent at work so I guess that is my only option.
My goal is to get a steamlined Fedora 8 install setup with all the perf tweaks I can. This is going to be my home away from home while I am gone so I want to get it setup as nice as I can. I am going to try putting a lot of software on it so I can evaluate the many applications I have never had the chance to.
It’s time to burn a DVD. I’ll be writing about Fedora 8 a lot so stay tuned if you are interested. BTW, the hardware I am running it on is a Dell D610 w/ 1.5GB RAM and a 200GB 7200RPM disk. Nothin’ too out of the ordinary.
I was on my daily (actually, more like hourly) visit to slashdot and was amazed when I came across a story mentioning a school I had attended. The story was on the use of Wikipedia as a means for students to submit their research papers. This is one of those things that seems so obvious. Yet, this is the first time I have heard of it. What happens to normal term papers? They get graded, returned to the student and thrown in the recycle bin. If only more educators would embrace open sharing of knowledge and ideas, these type of ideas would be mainstream. There is a real hatred in academia of wikipedia, especially as a source. It always stuck me as odd. The whole premise of what wikipedia is and why it has become a staple in internet society seems to be much of what educators preach. Yet, they seem to scowl at the mention of wikipedia.
A lot of the comments left on Slashdot had some great ideas for educators.
- Have students update wikipedia articles with citations and corrections
- Have students submit articles for peer review by thousands instead of just classmates
- Have students expand on stubs or missing information in articles
The interesting piece of this all is that academia is already required to publish much of their students work in journals. However, journals do not offer the freedoms that wikipedia does. Wikipedia separates rich from poor, haves from have nots. It allows anybody with internet access a portal for finding solid, general information about a subject. It cites references for further research.
My personal belief is that the distaste for wikipedia in academia is not because the information is not factual or inaccurate. It is because students (and people in general) have a hard time deciphering fact from fiction. It takes a certain amount of effort to actually look at something and decide whether the information can be taken for fact or should be looked into further. This is just the same for journals though.
Teachers should spend more time teaching common sense… If that is possible.
