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Oscar's Art Books, an independent bookstore that has been operating for 24 years in Vancouver is shutting down. Chain bookstores were once thought to be the biggest threat to small, independent bookstores, but it appears the rise of e-books, not Chapters or Indigo is behind the demise of Oscar's Art Books. Appparently this is not the first bookstore to close the down due to people preferring e-books. What started this? Local bookstores are already competing with chain bookstores, but now, they have new threats that they have to face. If more and more people are turning to e-books, there may be possibility that printed will become a rare thing. There has been a lot of debates of printed vs. ebooks, by the looks of it, e-book is winning.

"The motivation for my own authorial decision to turn my back on traditional publishers was both psychological and entrepreneurial. The psychological was purely personal. I am a Depression baby. My father was hard hit during the Depression and it was difficult for him to get and hold a job. He was always at the mercy of others, and I vowed early on never to be beholden to others to make my living. Controlling my own destiny has always been one of my principal obsessions."

Ricochet is an independent Canadian news service. "Ricochet is crowdfunded media serving the public interest" For $25 you can become a member--membership fees help pay for writers. Launch is set for this fall--$83,000 has been raised to support their writers.

Una de las características fundamentales, que ha permitido el crecimiento exponencial de la red mundial de información, es que ha sido una plataforma abierta, lo que ha dependido de tres factores esenciales: "1) unlimited links from any part of the Web to any other; 2) open technical standards as the basis for continued growth of innovation applications, and; 3) separation of network layers, enabling independent innovation for network transport, routing and information applications" (Berners Lee, 2007).

"The current crisis, the deepest and longest in the history of capitalism, has opened a debate around the world about what appears, more clearly with each passing day, to be the simultaneous destruction of the two principal institutions of social and economic life: the State and the market. Never in living memory has the economic system been so universally questioned. On the other hand, never before have technical capacities been so powerful, and, more importantly, so accessible to people and small organizations. In fact, never before have so many small businesses taken part in the world market. Nearly free [gratis] P2P communication technologies let them create the largest commercial networks in history. The emergence of free software (which, by itself, represents the largest-ever transfer of value to the economic periphery) empowered them with unexpected independence. Millions of small businesses around the world, especially in Asia, were able to coordinate among themselves this way and hone their products just as new markets were opening up to them. It's "globalization of the small." It's not a marginal phenomenon: never before have so many people around the world gotten out of poverty."

The Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG) has been established as a new organization led by the private sector in conjunction with, but independent of the Federal Government. As a key stakeholder and active participant in the Identity Ecosystem, the government has funded Trusted Federal Systems, Inc., through a competitive grant, to provide technical, administrative and operational support for the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group. IDESG is an open collaboration charged with realizing the goals of NSTIC: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (http://www.nist.gov/nstic), helping individuals and organizations utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice and innovation.

The inventor of the world wide web believes an online "Magna Carta" is needed to protect and enshrine the independence of the medium he created and the rights of its users worldwide. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the Guardian the web had come under increasing attack from governments and corporate influence and that new rules were needed to protect the "open, neutral" system.

"Just as important as learning these helpful tools, however, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. Reminding us of where society is most vulnerable to those, Sagan writes: In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions.He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones - many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - with examples of each in action"

The 20 fallacies: "ad hominem - Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously) argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia - but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out) argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous - perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives) appeal to ignorance - the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist - and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - each in their own way enjoined to

Wonderful post, Kim! These are great guidelines alongside which to test ideas.

Module 9

This is a great platform to share and publish research. Graduate and undergraduate students, independent researchers, faculty members, alumni, etc. can create their own account, publish their papers, exchange ideas and news, ask for an advice, track own and others papers and posts, and more. It provides open access to all published materials. It is a very useful website. I am a member and I recommend to check it out.

This is a inspiring resource for all the students. They acquire a chance to show their ability and work.

eLife is a unique collaboration between funders and practitioners of research to communicate influential discoveries in the life and biomedical sciences in the most effective way. eLife began following a workshop at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2010, where attending scientists concluded that there was a need for a model of academic publishing that better suited the needs of their community. In eLife a team of highly regarded, experienced and actively practicing scientists ensures fair, swift and transparent editorial decisions followed by rapid online publication. The editorial team are editorially independent of the funders. They rely on their scientific expertise and active research experience to identify the best papers, make scientifically based judgements and exercise leadership in steering these papers through peer review. The entire content of the journal is freely available for all to read and reproduce for unrestricted use.

Very interesting project. I spent some time exploring some of the papers. They do seem to be opening up the peer review process slightly be publishing a "decision letter" and "author response" with each paper. I also appreciate the seeming attempt to include data publication in the publication of the paper. Though it does seem to me that some of the papers don't have enough data accompanying them, so I wonder what their data publication policy is.

Open culture in a different sense. Help in Pakistan offered to anyone, independent of culture, religion, gender or age. Crown funded. Even the poorest of the poor give. However, they tend not to accept donations from foreign agencies...

In everyday life we are learning continually from each other. Whatever the situation, most of us draw on the knowledge, skills and experience of our friends and colleagues. Within any educational setting learners naturally engage in informal peer learning to make sense of their course, test their ideas and share their concerns.

Peer learning is engaging, and researches say that people learns most effectively when they are interacting with each other. It creates this network of knowledge when you share and connect with people, it not only benefits the individual, but benefits everyone as a whole. It also relieves the pressure of University funding with teachers having to teach such a large class, which affects the quality of learning as well. With peer learning, students engage with one another, and will eventually find the correct answer. It is not independent learning, this is interdependent learning.

Thank you for your share. I think this is a great article that introduces the potential of peer learning in higher education from the teacher's perspective. I agree that connected learning does a great job in promoting student's interactivity, creativity, motivation and interest in learning a particular topic with peers. In addition, peer learning provides learners with opportunities to collaborate and learn a subject together, which might maximize the productivity if used in a correct way. Peers and collaborative learners can do their own research separately, and meet together to discuss and express different opinions on the issue, which can inspire student's deep thinking. However, peer learning and collaborative learning is not always superior to individual work, or contributing to the learning result of every individual. Sometimes it might decrease the learning productivity if the group members or peer partners over reply on others in the group without doing much themselves, or if they didn't communicate well. Thus it's important to practice students learning ability and teacher's facilitating ability in peer learning or collaborative learning.

"Social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), microblogging services (e.g. Twitter), and content sharing sites (e.g. YouTube and Flickr) have introduced the opportunity for wide scale, online social participation. Visibility of national and international priorities such as public health, political unrest, disaster relief, and climate change has increased, yet we know little about the benefits and possible costs of engaging in social activism via social media. "

This article reminds me to the activism of a Spanish councellor to promote activism through social net against the independence of Cataluña in Spain: http://www.elmundo.es/cronica/2014/10/12/54390135ca474179608b4571.html