Sunday, March 25, 2012


I'm pretty sure the hacker wasn't Al Gore, everyone else is a suspect.
Skeptical Science hacked, private user details publicly posted online
March 24, 2012 by admin
John Cook has posted a breach alert over on Skeptical Science. It seems that hackers got the entire users’ database and have dumped it on unnamed sites on the Internet. So far, I’m not finding those sites, so I’m not sure what all the data types are. If anyone has additional info on this breach, please let me know.


It's always easier when you can skip the paperwork...
FBI Turns Back On 2,750 Of The 3,000 GPS Devices It Turned Off For Lack Of A Warrant
March 24, 2012 by Dissent
Mike Masnick writes:
In January, we wrote about the Supreme Court’s somewhat surprising ruling on GPS monitoring by law enforcement, in which it suggested (but didn’t fully say) that putting a GPS device on a car might need a warrant — a pretty easy process that the FBI just didn’t want to go through. Following this, we noted a report saying that the FBI scrambled to turn off 3,000 such devices that had been placed without a warrant.
However, in an NPR report about just how unhappy the FBI is about all of this, it notes that the FBI actually scrambled to file for warrants on most of those 3,000 devices, such that only 250 were permanently shut off. And yet it’s still complaining about this whole “getting a warrant” thing.
Read more on TechDirt.


Dozens and dozens of Privacy Assessments without a single serious problem! I'm so relieved...
March 23, 2012
DHS Privacy Office Limited Time Release of Privacy Impact Assessments
"Between December 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012 the Chief Privacy Officer of the DHS approved and published eleven Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) on the DHS Privacy Office Web site, under the link for Privacy Impact Assessments. These PIAs cover eleven separate DHS programs. Below is a short summary of those programs, indicating the DHS component responsible for the system, and the date on which the PIA was approved. Additional information can be found on the web site or by contacting the Privacy Office."


It's for the children! Beside, we know that teachers can't accurately take attendance...”
Et tu, Brazil? Brazilian schools microchip T-shirts to cut truancy
March 24, 2012 by Dissent
Schools in Brazil have started to place computer chips in school uniforms to keep track of pupils and reduce truancy.
Some 20,000 pupils in the north-eastern city of Vitoria da Conquista will have microchips embedded in their school T-shirts.
The parents will get a text message when their children arrive at school, or if they are late for classes.
Read more on BBC.

(Related) “We don't have a sense of humor and students have no rights.”


Perspective
March 23, 2012
The Web Is Dead? No. Experts expect apps and Web to converge in the cloud
Pew: The Web Is Dead? No. Experts expect apps and the Web to converge in the cloud; but many worry that simplicity for users will come at a price, Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University - Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, March 23, 2012
  • "According to estimates by Cisco, by 2016 there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in use globally. The world population is expected to be 7.3 billion in 2016, so that’s 1.4 devices per person on the planet. Smartphone traffic will grow to 50 times the size it is today by 2016. In fact, Cisco’s "Visual Networking Index,” released in February, reports there will be so much traffic generated between 2015 and 2016 by smartphones, tablets, and laptops that the amount of Internet data movement added for that year alone will be three times the estimated size of the entire mobile Internet in 2012."


With rumors of tanks in the streets, what could this mean? I have a very hard time understanding China.
"Reports from overseas (in Chinese) [Google translation] and Hong Kong-based Chinese media report that China appears to have unblocked several sensitive political keywords. Using Baidu.com, the country's leading search engine, users within the mainland border find, in Chinese, uncensored web page links and images using keywords like Tiananmen and 'June 4'. (Readers can click on the first one to view the images.) Given that the unblocking of these sensitive keywords comes one week after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao publicly denounced left-wing leader Bo Xilai's movement of 'striking down the ganster while reviving the red culture' as going down the path of Cultural Revolution, it could signal the silent start of a major political change."


Perspective I didn't even know there was a Computer Science Teachers Association. (Nor have I ever heard of “Scratch”)
What's the State of (CS Ed in) Your State?
The March issue of the CSTA Voice (see p. 4-5) includes a look at some state-by-state results from the 2011 National Secondary Computer Science Survey . As you might expect, if you compare the responses for any state to the national results (or compare one state to another), you'll find some interesting variations.
For example, students in introductory CS courses earn a wide variety of types of credit: "Technology (38%) and Computing (36%) are the most common types of credit given for introductory CS courses, followed by Business (25%), but 69% of Georgia schools allow Business credit, 52% of Virginia schools give Math credit, and 58% of Colorado schools give Elective credit for introductory CS courses."
… Colorado apparently has no CS endorsement, and decisions about teacher requirements for CS-related courses are apparently made at the local level. The only references to "computer science" or "computer programming" that I could find in any course or teacher standards on the Department of Education's website were in a list of 21st century skills for sixth and seventh grade Drama and Theatre Arts!.
… Why is Scratch the most commonly-taught programming language in introductory CS courses in Colorado (the only state for which that is true)?


For my students. “Non-profit” does not mean everyone works for free.
Nonprofit open source organizations booming
… According to the latest publicly available financial information, the Linux Foundation pulled in just over $9.6 million for their 2010 fiscal year, and after $9.1 million in expenses, generated $537,958 in positive cash flow for the year. In terms of direct salary, Executive Director Jim Zemlin topped out the list with $344,200. Factoring in other compensation, Zemlin brought home $362,904 before taxes in 2010.


The “Rodent Rights” people are gonna freak! (I'm thinking of adapting it to wake up my students...)
"Kurt Grandis took some cutting edge and open source AI tools, Python, an Arduino and a SuperSoaker and built the (almost) perfect squirrel hosing machine. The project involved Open Computer Vision (OpenCV), an a SVM learning procedure that he trained to tell the difference between a squirrel and a non-squirrel. After 'perfecting' the classifier the hardware came next — a SuperSoaker Mark I was used as the 'water cannon.' A pair of servos were used to aim the gun and a third to pull the trigger."


For my students Boy or Sell


NOW can we teach App programming?

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