Dick Sblog

There’s an interesting post on the profy blog, “Computers Without Borders: Cloud Computing and Political Manipulation” looks at the implications of political control of the developing ‘cloud’, the network of networks that is increasingly providing the opportunity to deliver services down the wire, rather than off a local drive or server. Political control of the [...]

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I’ve just caught up with the vIII of Howie DiBlasi’s YouTube video, ‘Did you know?‘ (I’m a bit slow here, it was released last year). I don’t think it’s as good a presentation as the earlier one but it reinforces some key points. Here are a couple:
“this year 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 10power18) of unique [...]

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“Despite regular complaints about standards of literacy and numeracy, it is the so-called soft-skills that are at the top of the organisations list of concerns regarding the lack of skills of new employees joining from school, college or university. 66per cent of respondent organisations feel that new employees lack both communication/interpersonal skills and management/leadership skills [...]

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It’s nice to know that you’re not alone in your thinking.
I’ve written here before about the prospect of applications being delivered down the wire, rather than served locally. This model offers a number of advantages – you pay for the software as and when you use it, not regardless of how often you use it, [...]

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There’s an interesting blog, with comments, on the Guardian site,  which started last Wednesday. This kicked off with a comment about a comment made by Bill Thompson  on the BBC site saying that kids need to understand about security risks and schools should teach this understanding. What followed included some discussion about the curriculum meaning [...]

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From two recent postings on the eGov monitor :
On the media and climate change:
The Royal Society openly blames the media, “ It has become fashionable in some parts of the UK media to portray the scientific evidence that has been collected about climate change and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities as [...]

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Yesterday’s Observer newspaper (01 July 2007) ran a major article looking at why we seem content to be so ignorant of science. It made sobering reading, particularly in view of the challenges facing us through effects climate change. The fact that we are facing unforeseen problems was really driven home to me when I watched [...]

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Check out the recently published Rocard Report on Science Education.
Michell Rocard was invited by the European Commission to set up a group of experts to look at the state of science eduction in the light of the EU-wide decline in young peoples’ interest in the study of key sciences and mathematics.  Their starting point was [...]

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On the upside – according to new research, the UK is ranked first in Europe for IT user skills and above the average in IT ’specialist’ skills. According to the Commission’s research, one in four of the UK’s total workforce has IT user skills, compared with an EU average of just over one in [...]

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Two articles caught my eye last week. One, was a critique of our target-driven management culture (’Make a decision? We’re two dumbed-down’, Simon Caulkin, Observer Business & Media, 27.05.07). I quote, “… targets are a classic substitute for the hard work and thought needed to understand real demand and how to organise work to satisfy [...]

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