Slashdot | Linux to Replace Solaris at Duke
“At the end of the 2004-2005 academic year, the Sun Solaris computers available in public computing labs at Duke University will be replaced. The replacement computers in these spaces will be Dells, running a version of Centos 3.3 as supported by Linux@DUKE. Pragmatic and technical considerations have driven this change, as Linux continues to gain a greater userbase and more third-party commercial software is made available on the platform. Are other universities eliminating Solaris in favor of a Linux distribution?“
Open-Access Academic Journals: Where is Legal Academia?
Slashdot | Free/Open-Access Academic Journals Growing
“Wired News reports on the growing number of free/open-access academic journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 1527 journals. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is launching three new open-access journals this year: PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Public Access Policy is also part of the movement. The traditional academic journals aren’t happy, saying that it’s unethical to accept money for publishing. But the traditional journals face their own ethical dilemmas by accepting money from advertisers.“
The DOAJ listing for law journals is here. 10 American law schools list 14 titles. CLearly there is room for expansion here:)
Hackers Using BLogs to Launch Malware
Internet Week > blogs spewing worms, viruses, spyware > Hackers Use Blogs To Spread Worms, Keyloggers > April 13, 2005
“While end-users can do little beyond keep safe and smart practices in mind — don’t open attachments, don’t travel to questionable links within e-mail or instant messages — Hubbard said there was plenty blog hosting services could do.“They need to add some type of security on top,” he urged. “Anti-virus is a good start. And limit the type of files that can be uploaded, by, for example, restricting executables.”“
Article seems to be part of new trend that is pushing the ‘evil blog’ meme.
Law Professor Teaching Loads @ Top 25 Schools
Conglomerate Blog: Law Professor Teaching Loads
“When I entered academe just over a decade ago, almost every law school had a standard teaching load of four courses or 12 credit hours per year. In the past decade, the norm among top law schools has shifted to three courses or 10 credits per year. Although I had noticed that most of my friends were teaching lighter loads, I didn’t realize how pervasive the shift was until my Associate Dean asked me to gather information from top law schools as background for a debate about teaching loads here at Wisconsin.“
The results of an informal poll of teaching loads at the top 25 law schools reveals what we’ve probably known for a long time: loads are lighter at top tier schools. Now, I don’t know exactly what this means, but it would seem easy enough to equate lighter teaching loads with better legal education.
Did I say that out loud? Of course that’s not completely true. The higher tier schools attract better students, better firms hire their grads, etc. Faculty may argue that it is the lighter load that helps the most, but I think it is a real chicken and egg problem.
Finally, it is worth taking a look at the comments section if you follow the link, there are some good ideas there.