Sunday, August 8, 2010
Isn't This What Orwell Predicted?
In the state of Maine, all high school and middle school teachers are issued a MacBook by the state department of education. This morning I was using mine (I alternate between it and another computer in my house) to check Twitter. Someone posted a link to an interesting ebook creation service called ePub Bud. I clicked the link, visited the ePub Bud homepage thought, "I could use this," and clicked the "create" link. Instead of being taken to the creation page on ePub Bud, I got this:
[Screenshot of web page denying access due to “Parental Controls” Bob]
I had seen that message before on other teachers' computers (it was actually a problem at a recent state conference), but it was the first time I had personally experienced it. Now I do have administrative rights to override this restriction, but most teachers in the state do not. What this tells me is the state doesn't trust its teachers to make good choices for themselves. Or am I just being paranoid? What do you think about the state's parental controls on the computers they want teachers to use?
Update: Thanks to Crystal Priest I now have some clarification on this issue. Apparently this filtering setting wasn't entirely intentional on the part of the D.O.E. or anyone else at the state level. The filtering problem arose with way the new image was constructed. You can read the details here. If you read the documentation you'll find this phrase which still reflects the issue I bring up in the post below: "the default behavior is to log all web page requests."
Great! Perhaps we can extend this to rate crimes from “Stone Cold Killer” all the way down to “Oops!”
Parole Board wants to forecast who will kill again
A year rarely goes by when the Pennsylvania parole board doesn't come under fire because someone it let out early has killed again.
… University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Berk believes his computers can succeed where members of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole have sometimes failed.
"This system can forecast which inmates will kill again," Berk said. "With the help of years of computer data, I can separate the really bad guys being released from the people who probably won't re-offend."
If images taken from hundreds of miles overhead was good, and images from a car driving by were even better, think how cool it will be to blanket the earth with drones that give you real-time video – perhaps you can even steer the drone to follow your favorite stalking victim!
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/08/2054200/Google-Testing-an-Airborne-Camera-Drone?from=rss
Google Testing an Airborne Camera Drone
Posted by kdawson on Sunday August 08, @05:13PM
"The Blogoscoped site carries news that Google has purchased a German 'Microdrone' for evaluation (here is the original German version). These devices can take off, fly a mission, and land automatically using GPS. They can carry night-vision cameras or even 'see-through-walls' Far IR cameras. Of course, the maker of these drones assures us that they cannot be a 'Big Brother in the sky' because that is 'verboten.' Is it just me, or is Google entering dangerous airspace here? It seems like the ruckus from a backyard-after-dark addition to Street View could completely overshadow the legal tussles Google has already encountered with its street-level photography."
Reader Jaymi clues us to another airborne effort a couple of Google employees are mounting with some help from NASA Ames: the NexusOne PhoneSat project — to determine if low-cost mobile phone components can withstand space travel.
Now this is interesting! If it works for Verizon, why not all the telecoms? After all, that way Google won't need to buy them to control them. Comments are valuable...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/08/08/1353239/What-Are-Google-and-Verizon-Up-To?from=rss
What Are Google and Verizon Up To?
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 08, @11:00AM
"Robert X. Cringley has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he contends that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon without actually compromising net neutrality, by beginning to co-locate some of their portable data centers with Verizon network hubs. 'With servers so close to users, Google could not only send its data faster but also avoid sending it over the Internet backbone that connects service providers and for which they all pay,' writes Cringley. 'This would save space for other traffic — and money for both Verizon and Google, as their backbone bills decline (wishful thinking, but theoretically possible). Net neutrality would be not only intact, but enhanced.' So why won't Google and Verizon admit what they're up to? 'If my guess is right, then I would think they're silent because it's a secret. They'd rather their competitors not know until a few hundred shipping containers are in place — and suddenly YouTube looks more like HBO.'"
Yes, they're early adopters, but I can't get several disturbing images out of my imagination. DUCK!
Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film
Interesting. Would he be saying this if he hadn't dropped out of Harvard? (Do we teach our students to believe the traditional ways are the only ways?)
Forget University — Use the Web For Education, Says Gates
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 08, @01:31PM
"Bill Gates attended the Techonomy conference earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future of education. He believes the Web is where people will be learning within a few years, not colleges and university. During his chat, he said, 'Five years from now [Geeks tend to use “Five years” when they have no real idea when something will be possible. Bob] on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.'"
Of course, the efficacy of online learning is still in question; some studies have shown a measurable benefit to being physically present in a classroom. Still, online education can clearly reach a much wider range of students. Reader nbauman sent in a related story about MIT's OpenCourseWare, which is finding success in unexpected ways: "50% of visitors self-identified as independent learners unaffiliated with a university." The article also mentions a situation in which a pair of Haitian natives used OCW to get the electrical engineering knowledge they needed to build solar-powered lights that have been deployed in many remote towns and villages.
(Related) All kinds of useful tools – and I only picked a couple them.
Random But Organized Thoughts (8-8-2010)
Tracking student tweets has been a thorn in my side for the last 10 weeks, so I thought 60 Tools to Track Tweets (via @rkiker) would be pretty useful. Although it’s an interesting list, only a couple of the items are particularly useful and there are some twitter tools that were (IMHO) surprisingly missing. In particular, I didn’t see TwapperKeeper on the list, which is the only way I know of to save up a collection of tweets from a particular hashtag in one place. Intriguing and odd: Qwitter (tells you who has unfollowed you), TwitterCharts (see when a user is most active so that you can better stalk them for conversation, here’s mine), TweetEffect (it’s supposed to tell you which tweets gained and which tweets lost you followers, however, I don’t think it’s very accurate based on my own stats). If you haven’t visited the browser-based twitter page in a while, I quite like this “who to follow” suggestion box on the right side. It’s got some great suggestions.
This is cool, a search engine that searches for mindmaps on a particular topic: http://www.mindmapsearch.org/ #
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