Brains working towards machine consciousness

 This is my transfer report. I can’t claim to be overly happy with it, but there are constraints on size, and although I haven’t actually exploited them to the full, giving a full treatment of the content of the subject areas would require several times the limit.  This is largely unchanged since the last time it was submitted, with a new section on Digital Identity replacing an old one, now included in the appendices, on bio-acoustic signal analysis. 

 My Godson is two years old.  He can, after a fashion, clothe himself.  He actively searches out new experiences, and tries to learn how to do things.  If he can't figure something out, and if he reckons he won't get into trouble for trying to do whatever it is he is focussing on, he will ask for help.  He doesn't expect, in general, to be spoon-fed, and shows a definite preference for us to respect his independence.

Many undergraduates on the other hand...

 I don't know whether anything will come of the actual project, in this case, but the idea came up of an open source application to make it simple for teachers (or other staff) to be able to 'aggregate' reports from subject teachers for a particular pupil or student.  

 I've just been reading Cory Doctorow's talk about the copyright treaty negotiations which have led directly or indirectly to France's new laws and the proposed one in the UK which not only introduces the "3 strikes rule" but also seems to me to authorise large media corporations to essentially grab the copyright of works for themselves.

Sadly, given the way we are governed, I doubt there is anything short of an armed revolution which would stop this from getting passed into law.

I have been told that some staff at UK HE institutions are creating fake IDs on Facebook and 'friending' students in order to be able to check up on their behaviour.  Now, this is only 'hearsay' - I haven't seen any hard evidence, but I was told by one student that they had been emailed by a member of staff to tell them that fake IDs were being used.

I have a couple of problems with this, apart from the issue of supposedly responsible adults creating IDs on a social network and actively trying to 'friend' their students...

 Thanks to @shirleyearley for her blog post reminding me about the competition.  I think I might be a bit unusual in this, so it will be interesting to see other entries!

 First of all, I want to say I like Lulu.  It provides good quality printed books, which seem to be at a perfectly reasonable price, to me.  The process of creating a project, uploading a 'manuscript' and designing the cover is all pretty straightforward - usually.  The books arrive quickly when ordered.

However, recently I have run into two different problems with the site.  That in itself is not all that annoying, these things happen.  The quality of the customer support, however, is getting beyond a joke.

Dear Labour Party,

 In the always-beta Web2.0 world, there is a tendency for sites to never be finished.  But the same is true in the world of commercial software, where it is in the owners commercial interest (allegedly) to have a release schedule which provides new functionality over time, requiring upgrades and new investment in the software.

 I blame @DaveOWhite and @FrancesBell for this line of thought, although it had occurred to me some time ago (during the CCK08 course, if not before).