Code V.igoro.us

This is from a web comic, but it's a genius way to lay out the IP space. I particularly like the way you can see the outlines of the old classful divisions, and get a good feel for what portion has been allocated. I'm also amused that companies (like Google over on the left) are just specks.

Mrs. Zwicky gave a really excellent talk that balanced real research in education, in problem solving, and in systems administration. She teaches systems administration to Navy recruits for a defense contractor, in a tutoring setting. The talk addressed the common belief that problem solving skills are essentially innate and can't be taught. She discussed the problem-solving process in general, using lots of examples (well, "war stories") from systems admin. Finally, she talked about some of the techniques and skills needed to teach problem solving (or anything, really).

These techniques included scaffolding -- building the learners' conceptual understanding by presenting the right tasks, offering the right support, and convincing the learner to talk about the concepts, not just "what do I type". Also included was "spotting", which I assume comes from sports -- the idea here is to make sure that the learner doesn't suffer any horrible consequences from making mistakes.

So what better time to inagurate this blog than now, during the keynote to the LISA (Large Installation Systems Administration) conference. It's an interesting general talk about one of the many pressing non-technical issues in this community: DRM and restrictive licensing.