Vacation

Will be back on Nov 11, 2007. See ya!

What if... this was your last lecture?

This has been picked up already in the blogosphere and on news sites, here, in the New York Times, or here.... But anyway.
The concept of the 'last lecture' is meant for professors to really think about what they would like to tell in their last lecture. A few 'last lectures' already have been given. A really powerful concept, isn't it? Forget all the humbug and daily routines: you have just so little time to deliver your last lecture. It better be good!
Recently, professor Randy Pausch really gave his last lecture. This wasn't just an exercise for him, since he has pancreatic cancer and only has a few months left to live. Just take a look at the video for a few minutes: it is really impressive. The video is brought to us under a Creative Commons license ("The video and transcript will technically be under a "creative commons" license, which will be a legal way of saying that you may use them for non-commercial purposes, so long as you don't alter them, and you give attribution. Please bear with me; figuring out that legal stuff is secondary to my other priorities.")
Update: there is also a great video by Pausch on time management (made in 1998, without Powerpoint....).

[Dutch] Leerling geschorst voor computerkraak?

Door Bloglines blijf ik op de hoogte van het laatste nieuws, ook uit de regio. Zo lees ik in de TC Tubantia dat er is ingebroken op een 'schoolcomputer'.
Het bericht is niet erg helder, vind ik. Maar in ieder geval is de jongen geschorst vanwege zijn daden. Volgens mij had hij goed gebruik gemaakt van 'social engineering'. En hij vond een bestand dat niet op de desbetreffende computer had mogen staan, volgens de systeembeheerder....
Vraagje: Zou de systeembeheerder ook geschorst zijn?
Ik vind dat deze jongen gekoesterd moet worden. Hij toont feilloos de zwaktes aan van de procedures.
Was het niet zo dat computerkrakers een gouden toekomst bij (computer)beveiligingsbedrijven hebben (of hadden)? Of dat de beste dief ook een hele goede rechercheur zou kunnen zijn?

YouTube: just do it!

UC Berkeley is one of the most innovative universities in the world, in my opinion. They don't debate endlessly, but they just move forward in deploying the newest technologies. They have their own channel on iTunes, and most recently they have launched on YouTube.
Check out their press release from last week, titled Campus launches YouTube channel : "BERKELEY – Further expanding public access to its intellectual riches through the most popular Web destinations, the University of California, Berkeley, announced today (Wednesday, Oct. 3) that it is making entire course lectures and special events available, free of charge, on YouTube."