links for 2010-02-07

Republicans say Dems are in the pocket of the trial lawyers. I note this line: "The Tea Party movement is growing up," said Judson Phillips, a Nashville-based criminal defense lawyer who organized the National Tea Party Convention.

New research takes a close look at what happened when one institution, Brigham Young University, experimented with granting free access to the content of some of its distance-education courses. The study examined the cost of opening up those materials and the impact their publication had on paid enrollments, a concern for institutions worried that giving away free courses could cannibalize their ranks of paying students.

The data suggest they needn’t worry. Opening the courses “provided neither a large positive marketing effect that boosted enrollments nor a large negative free-rider impact decreasing enrollments,” wrote Justin K. Johansen, who conducted the study... “Really, the OpenCourseWare ended up serving as an advertising tool.” ... But Johansen cautions that the limited length of the pilot study meant that a “statistically significant” measure of the impact of opening the classes on paid enrollment “was not possible.” DOESN'T THE LAST LINE MAKE THE POINT OF THE STORY MOOT?

THE DEFINITIVE TAKE ON BLOGGING FROM THE HIGH PEAK OFF THE BLOGOSPHERE: A blog, for those who don't know, is a journal or log that appears on a Web site. It is written on line, read on line, and updated on line. It's there for anyone with an Internet connection to see and (in many cases) comment on. The entries, or posts, are organized in reverse chronological order, like a pile of unread mail, with the newest posts on top and the older stuff on the bottom. Some blogs resemble on-line magazines, complete with graphics, sidebars, and captioned photos. Others just have the name of the blog at the top and the dated entries under it. You can find blogs by doing a regular Google search for the blog name (if you know it) or by doing a Google Blog search using keywords....