Anyone willing to bet that the RIAA
takedown team (AKA: The FBI) will break into the Patriot locker room
just before kickoff and lead Brady away in handcuffs?
Tom
Brady: I watched last year's Super Bowl on illegal site
Here are his reported words: "Last
year I was rehabbing my foot in Costa Rica, watching the game on an
illegal Super Bowl Web site. And now I'm actually playing in the
game. So, it's pretty cool."
(Related)
Super
Bowl: Where to watch online, and more
For the first time ever, the Super Bowl
will be officially live-streamed online this year.
Viewers will be able to watch the
Giants battle the Patriots on their PCs, laptops, and even their cell
phones.
- NBCSports.com will broadcast the entire game for free beginning with pregame activity at 2 p.m. ET and kickoff at 6:30 p.m. ET. Viewers will be able to choose from four unique camera angles, as well as pause and rewind the stream, and connect to social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
- NFL.com will also show the entire Super Bowl 2012 game live for free.
My take: Europe is moving from
Oligopoly to Democracy while the US is doing the reverse. Power to
the Peasants!
Should
Personal Data Be Personal?
February 4, 2012 by Dissent
Somini Sengupta writes:
…. Every
European country has a privacy law, as do Canada, Australia and many
Latin American countries. The United States remains a holdout: We
have separate laws that protect our health records and financial
information, and even one that keeps private what movies we rent.
But there is no law that spells out the control and use of online
data.
It would be
tempting to say that history and culture on this side of the Atlantic
make privacy a non-issue. That’s not exactly the case. Privacy
has always mattered in American law and to American sensibilities,
but in a different way.
Read more in The
New York Times.
[From the article:
Europe has come to the conclusion that
none of the companies can be trusted,” said Simon Davies, the
director of the London-based nonprofit Privacy International. “The
European Commission is responding to public demand. There is a
growing mood of despondency about the privacy issue.”
Or, you could create a “saintly”
Facebook persona – one with pictures of you and Mother Teresa, the
Pope, Bill Gates and anyone else you can PhotoShop...
Caveat Emptor
!
IL:
Bill would ban employers asking for personal passwords
February 4, 2012 by Dissent
WJBC reports:
Businesses may
soon be banned from requiring potential employees to divulge their
social media passwords, for sites such as Facebook and Twitter,
during the hiring process.
State Rep. La
Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) said getting access to an applicant’s
account not only gives employers access to personal social
information but sometimes sensitive banking information as well. The
bill’s opponents simply don’t understand, he said.
Read more on WJBC.
Maybe now you'll take that course on
Game Theory?
"Ken Gaebler discusses a new
way of hiring called 'employment simulations,' which are gaining
popularity among high-tech firms that are seeking data from
prospective employees that you can't get from sit-down interviews.
In a typical employment simulation, candidates
participate in online 'video games' that leverage
simulation
software to determine how well candidates perform in actual job
situations. ' There are no questions about
your former work experience and office habits.
There's simply a computer game. If you win,
you get the job. If you lose, game over.' As one
example, call
centers are very amenable to simulations because the work
environment (a series of computer programs and databases) is
relatively easy to replicate and the tasks that make up job
performance are easy to measure (data entry speed and accuracy,
customer service, multitasking, etc). Other employment simulation
programs have been written for healthcare, insurance, retail sales,
financial services, hospitality and travel, manufacturing and
automotive, and telecom and utilities. But skeptics say employment
simulators and other computer-based hiring models have some
drawbacks. 'Like any technology, the effectiveness of employment
simulations is limited to the quality of the software and its
accessibility to users,' says Gaebler."
So tell us how you really feel...
Storm over climate change among weather
forecasters
You don't need a weatherman to know
which way the wind blows.
But weather forecasters, many of whom
see climate change as a natural, cyclical phenomenon, are split over
whether they have a responsibility to educate their viewers on the
link between human activity and the change in the Earth's climates.
Only 19
percent of U.S. meteorologists saw human influences as the sole
driver of climate change in a 2011 survey. And some, like the
Weather
Channel's founder John Coleman are vocal in their opposition.
"It is the greatest scam in
history," wrote Coleman, one of the first meteorologists to
publicly express doubts about climate change, on his blog in 2007.
"I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global
Warming; it is a SCAM."
(Related) What would these state do if
the response was “It's a scam?” (There are so few facts cited,
it is hard to determine why they are bothering with this survey.)
Three
States to Require Insurers to Disclose Climate-Change Response Plans
Odds & Ends. ...well, I find it
interesting.
The Chicago
Public Schools lifted its ban on YouTube this
week, allowing teachers and staff access to the video-sharing
website. Let's hope other districts follow!
… The Digital Public
Library of America released the first build
of some of the proposed platform infrastructure. The source code,
APIs and documentation are available. Hack away, folks. This is our
digital public library under construction.
… The Madison (WI) School District
will be buying some 1400 iPads,
using money that it's received from a state settlement against
Microsoft. While we can chuckle at that irony, I suppose,
the Wisconsin
State Journal story describing the purchase contains this rather
unfortunate note: "The state doesn't track how many districts
are using tablet technology or other 21st century learning tools."
Well, thank goodness that iPads are magic, so they'll "just
work"!
… The Pew Internet and
American Life Project is always uncovering interesting
tidbits about our digital habits. In its latest
study, it has found that many teens are migrating to Twitter and
away from Facebook. Why? In part, it's so they can follow their
favorite celebrities. But one of the major reasons: better privacy
controls, the ability to use pseudonyms and restrict their accounts,
and a chance to get away from their parents who are on Facebook.
… The Saylor
Foundation announced the first round of winners for its
Open Textbook Challenge, its competition to create open source
textbooks. The three new titles: Elementary Linear Algebra;
Linear Algebra; and Computer Networking: Principles,
Protocols and Practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment