Status-Q

It's been a while since Oxford, Cambridge and some other key UK universities have been adequately funded to provide the quality of education for which they are famous. The tuition fees charged to UK students are set by the government and are very low by international standards, which is a good thing, but the top-up provided by the state doesn't come close to covering the costs, even though the overall costs per student of Oxford and Cambridge are tiny when compared, for example, to Harvard, Stanford and Yale.

The Labour government has a dilemma: it can't be seen to be subsidising heavily what are still thought by many to be toffs' universities (despite the positive discrimination in favour of state schools in recent years). But neither do they want Oxbridge to 'go private' and become even more exclusive, though I think this must be inevitable in the long term.

This Times article talks about plans at Oxford to reduce the number of UK students in favour of more international ones, who can be charged higher prices.

The concept of paying for excellence is so far off anybody's political map these days that it's not worth discussing...

Joel Spolsky writes a lot of good stuff on his Joel on Software site. If you're a programmer, or even vaguely interested, and are bamboozled by this Unicode stuff and wish it would all just go away and be ASCII, like in the good old days, then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. But there's a gentle introduction in The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Dan Gillmor encourages newspapers to open their archives and raise revenue from advertising rather than an entry charge. If people can search the archives, the advertising could be targetted. I agree - this is a much better model, though I don't see the trend being in that direction at present.

I've recently turned on the website for Exbiblio, our current project. It doesn't tell you much yet, but watch this space...

...is to do with managing your to-do list:

It's easy to be motivated to do the high-priority items.
The art of organisation is motivating yourself to do the low-priority ones.

Of course, rather than listening to my advice, you'd do better to get David Allen's book, "Getting things done". I recommend the audio version. I listened to this in the car while commuting and found it much easier than finding the time to read the book.

From the Cambridge Weekly News job section today:

Would you like to help develop the community waste sector in the east of England?

I always enjoy my regular trips to Seattle, and the more time I spend there, the more I like it. Too many visitors only get to see the city centre, which is pleasant enough but most of it is not, I think, noticably different from, say, Denver. The great thing about Seattle is the surroundings; the islands, the amount of water, the spectacular mountains within a couple of hours' drive. And the variety of interesting places for, and ways of, consuming caffeine.

But I'm always glad to be back home in the UK. Increasingly so, as time goes on. This may be a natural side-effect of getting older. It's certainly not a general value judgement. The more I get to know parts of America, and certain Americans more specifically, the more I like them. Yes, it's easy to find people and places who fit the brash, stereotyped view of America that we so often have in Europe. But I'm also aware of a respect, a courtesy, a gentility, in very many Americans which is getting ever harder to find in the UK. The subtle differences between countries are often much more interesting than the things that strike you on first visit.

There's no doubt in my mind, though, about which country I'd rather live in. As I flew in to Heathrow yesterday, we came in on my favourite flight path, which goes right over the centre of London and affords spectacular views of the Thames, the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge etc. It wasn't that view that made my heart skip a beat and showed me how glad I was to be back, though. It was shortly before, when I looked out of the window and saw the patchwork of irregular, small, odd-shaped fields with tree-lined public footpaths between them. I don't know where it was. Warwickshire, probably. But it sure as hell ain't America.

Apple's not the only one introducing a 'Mini' - Google Mini is a smaller version of their very expensive search appliance; the new model costing just $5000.

A hint: If you're experimenting with iPhoto, and you want to make sure your old library is preserved, just rename the folder before starting up iPhoto. It will then tell you it can't find the library and offer to use a different folder or to create a fresh new library

This is a great blog for anyone interested in inventions or patents or both. Thanks to David Orange for the link.