http://www.13wmaz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=75276&catid=28
Student Says School Official Mistook Candy For Pill
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Pennsylvania student who accuses his high school of spying on him with a webcam says the controversy started when an official mistook a piece of candy for a pill.
Blake Robbins claims the school turned on a webcam on his school-issued laptop while the computer was inside his Penn Valley home.
He told KYW-TV Friday that a school official described him in his room and "said she thought that I was selling drugs."
Robbins said he was holding a Mike and Ike candy.
Reality check: We have been pointing to technology use by other countries and point out that we both import and export these technologies.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023564.html
February 20, 2010
Democracy, Civil Liberties and the Internet - Challenges to Freedom Abound
WSJ: The Digital Dictatorship Evgeny Morozov on the myth of the techno-utopia. - "It's fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom... For example, while the American public is actively engaged in a rich and provocative debate about the Internet's impact on our own society—asking how new technologies affect our privacy or how they change the way we read and think—we gloss over such subtleties when talking about the Internet's role in authoritarian countries."
Every company outsources, some send the work outside the country (offshoring) and some don't know where they send the work (Cloud Computing)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023567.html
February 20, 2010
Contractor UK - Half of IT firms plan to offshore jobs
News release: "Almost half of IT companies plan to relocate jobs abroad, making the technology industry the UK’s likeliest private sector employer to build-out operations offshore. In a survey of more than 700 employers, India emerged as the preferred overseas destination for the 10 per cent of respondents looking to export jobs from the UK. Out of those UK employers with offshore intentions, less than a fifth were manufacturers, while almost half (44 per cent) were in the Computing and IT sector. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, co-authors of the survey, said such jobs outsourcing represented “a medium-term concern” for the UK economy."
This is likely to be done (ad hoc) for all controversial cases. Could it be done by one central entity?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023565.html
February 20, 2010
The Public Index Tracks and Discusses Google Book Search Settlement
Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this annotated public interest resource: "The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full, careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for people from all points of view to learn from each other about the settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate."
For my Small Business Management students. “If at first you don't succeed...”
Jimmy Wales' Theory of Failure
Posted by Soulskill on Saturday February 20, @09:15AM
Hugh Pickens writes
"The Tampa Tribune reports that Jimmy Wales recently spoke at the TEDx conference in Tampa about the three big failures he had before he started Wikipedia, and what he learned from them. In 1996 Wales started an Internet service to connect downtown lunchers with area restaurants. 'The result was failure,' says Wales. 'In 1996, restaurant owners looked at me like I was from Mars.' Next Wales started a search engine company called 3Apes. In three months, it was taken over by Chinese hackers and the project failed. Third was an online encyclopedia called Nupedia, a free encyclopedia created by paid experts. Wales spent $250,000 for writers to make 12 articles, and it failed. Finally, Wales had a 'really dumb idea,' a free encyclopedia written by anyone who wanted to contribute. That became Wikipedia, which is now one of the top 10 most-popular Web sites in the world. This leads to Wales' theories of failure: fail faster — if a project is doomed, shut it down quickly; don't tie your ego to any one project — if it stumbles, you'll be unable to move forward; real entrepreneurs fail; fail a lot but enjoy yourself along the way; if you handle these things well, 'you will succeed.'"
What happens when the teacher has math anxiety? I get students who are convinced math is impossibly hard!
Math Anxiety Affects Skills As Basic As Counting
Posted by timothy on Saturday February 20, @05:29PM
thirty-seven writes
"According to four Canadian psychologists, a study they have conducted shows that math anxiety, 'the feeling of fear and dread of performing mathematical calculations,' can negatively affect mathematical tasks much simpler and more basic than previously thought. In the study, participants were asked to count black squares on a white screen. The number of squares shown ranged from one to nine and participants were given as much time as they wanted before answering. When the number of squares was in the subitizing range (one to four), both math-anxious and non-math-anxious participants performed equally well, but when the number of squares was in the counting range (five to nine), the math-anxious group took longer and were less accurate. The University of Waterloo's news release about the study includes this interesting note: 'Previous studies have shown that a weakness in basic math abilities has a greater negative effect on employment opportunities than reading difficulties [do].'"
(Related) Because we've had the odd Criminal Justice student that doesn't believe cops need math...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023566.html
February 20, 2010
Univ. of California Scientists Model Crime Pattern Formation in Urban Areas
Science NOW - The Mathematics of Clumpy Crime: "Even in a sprawling city like Los Angeles, crime still clumps together. Mathematical models of burglars presented...at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW) show that these so-called crime hot spots form when previous crimes attract more criminals to a neighborhood. [That explains Washington D.C.!!! Bob] By understanding how these blobs form, researchers hope to help police departments break them up."
"Funded by the Human Social Dynamics Program at NSF, the UC Mathematical and Simulation Modeling of Crime Project centers on theoretical, methodological and empirical work to develop analytical and computational models of crime pattern formation. Crime mapping forms a key feature of current approaches to understanding offender behavior and is a tool used increasingly by police departments and policy makers for strategic crime prevention. However, despite the availability of sophisticated digital mapping and analysis tools there is a substantial gap in our understanding of how low-level behaviors of offenders lead to aggregate crime patterns such as crime hot spots. Thus, for example, we are unable to specify exactly why directed police action at crime hot spots sometimes leads to displacement of crime in space but, surprisingly, often can also lead to hot spot dissipation and a real reduction in crime incidences. Agent-based modeling offers a potential avenue for developing a quantitative understanding of crime hot spot formation built from the bottom-up around offender behavior. Agent-based models are not only more consistent with the scale of decisions that offenders actually take, but they also open the door to the development of custom statistics that are designed to answer specific behavioral questions less tractable in general statistical models."
For the Digital Design students...
Pxleyes
Computer Graphics artists who love to compete with others to show off their skills can do it at Pxleyes. They have photoshop contests, photography contests, 3D contests and drawing contests… for all skill levels. Best of all, competing is 100% free, and they have some great prizes in the higher level contests. On top of that, they have free tutorials and videos for practically every program related to computer graphics.
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