copy this blog

danah boyd: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-swartz.html

Timothy Burke: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/15/essay-role-academe-tragedy-aaron-swartzs-death

Barbara Fister: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/if-lives-depended-it

Scott Jaschik: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/14/academe-reacts-aaron-swartzs-suicide

David Karpf: http://www.shoutingloudly.com/2013/01/14/remembering-aaron-swartz/

Matt Stoller: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/aaron-swartzs-politics.html

Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/an_incredible_soul_lawrence_lessig_remembers

MIT: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/13/3873352/mit-announces-internal-investigation-into-its-role-in-aaron-swartz

Remember Aaron: http://www.rememberaaronsw.com/

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/academics-memorialize-aaron-swartz-with-open-access-uploads/54171

Cory Doctorow: http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html

James Grimmelmann: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2013/01/12/aaron_swartz_was_26

Brewster Kahle: http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-open-world-rip/

Jeff Kramer: http://www.jeffkramer.com/2013/01/12/remembering-aaron-swartz/

Lawrence Lessig: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully

John Schwartz: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Christopher Jon Springman: http://www.theknockoffeconomy.com/r-i-p-aaron-swartz/

Alex Stamos: http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz

Got a comment on an old post from Bob Beattie at Michigan.
http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/blog/?p=146

Although he used the problems I referred to in quotes (I’m not sure why), he states that the IBM workplace forms are working well on the Macs. I haven’t assisted anyone who’s used that version yet, but I’m sure Mac users will be happy about that. I’m still not thrilled with the government’s past support for Mac and Linux operating systems, but at least people should be able to get grant applications in properly.

I was appalled when Grants.gov, the U.S.’s site for academics and others to apply for Federal grants, implemented and mandated the use of a Windows-only client. Who thought that was a good idea? Who checked for possible problems before mandating it?

It was painful last year, and it hasn’t greatly improved this year. At least now they’re acknowledging that there are problems with that approach, sort of. They’re providing a Citrix server for Mac and Unix users to connect to in order to start a Windows session to apply for grants. However, it’s slow and has been described to me as a nightmare to go through. It only allows a limited number of connections, and you have to save very often or you could get knocked off and lose all of your data. They’re switching to Adobe forms by April 2007 in order to support Mac and Unix users as well. (Still not ideal in my mind, but a great deal better than what is currently available.)

They are also touting IBM’s early release of a Mac version of Workplace. IBM has created and is providing this early relase (read: buggy), but it doesn’t support large documents (> 40 MB, which you’d better believe we have in grants), it’s not accessible at all and we’re warned of crashes and loss of data. Right now we’re checking out a Windows laptopto our faculty because of all of the problems associated with applying for grants on the platforms that some of our professors actually prefer. This situation is ridiculous.

Kayla, Lori, Patrick, Quinn, Sam, and I spoke at Educause about scaling the course we’ve all taught, INF 312 Information in Cyberspace. When developing my section, I wrote a bit about some of the privacy concerns we had. Then I had to include copyright. Then I had to at least mention accessibility. Finally we lumped them into “legal concerns.” It’s not the largest part of the section I talk about. But it’s the part that keeps on slightly expanding. There’s a lot to say there.

There are some serious legal concerns that appear when you move a class online, and some of these aren’t immediately obvious. I’ll write about them a bit more when I make sure that this blog is working correctly. ^_^