I want one! Of course, their first
reply may be “I can't open the pod bay door Dave.”
‘Siri,
Kill That Guy’: Drones Might Get Voice Controls
No doubt someone has to figure out how
those X-ray scanner work... OPT is “optional practical training ”
"In mid-May, the Department of
Homeland Security quietly
expanded a program that allows foreign science, technology,
engineering and math grads to work in the U.S. for 29 months without
a work visa. 'Attracting the best and brightest international talent
to our colleges and universities and enabling them to contribute to
their professional growth is an important part of our nation's
economic, scientific and technological competitiveness,' explained
DHS Chief Janet Napolitano. But last week, Senator Chuck Grassley
called
on the GAO to 'fully investigate' the student visa program,
citing reports of abuse and other concerns in his
letter. Now, Computerworld reports that the DHS STEM Visa
Extension Program continues to be dominated
by Stratford University and the University of Bridgeport (as it
was in
2010), prompting some tongues to wag. It is 'obvious to any
reasonable person that the schools producing most of the OPT students
are not prestigious research universities,' quipped policy analyst
Daniel Costa, 'which means that many of the OPT students across the
country are not in fact the "best and brightest."' While
conceding that top students can come from lesser-known schools,
'those will be the exception to the rule,' argued Costa, who
suggested the government should include performance metrics in the
OPT program, such as grades and university rankings."
Let's see if they get beyond the tip of
the iceberg...
By Dissent,
June 4, 2012
Patient
Privacy Rights and Georgetown University Law Center’sO’Neill
Institute for National and Global Health Law Host Event
Psychiatry
Patient’s Story Highlights Growing Threat to Privacy
WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS
WIRE)– When a lawyer named “Julie” sought psychiatric
treatment in Boston, she never imagined that the notes of sessions
with her therapist would be digitized and made available to thousands
of doctors and nurses—even dermatologists and podiatrists with no
conceivable need for such private records. But that is precisely
what happened. “Personal details that took me years to disclose
during therapy are being shared throughout my medical network,
against my will,” Julie says. “It’s destroyed my trust with my
doctors.”
Julie will tell
her story for the first time at the 2nd International Summit on the
Future of Health Privacy, to be held in Washington, DC, on June 6-7.
Sponsored by Patient Privacy Rights, the nation’s leading health
privacy watchdog, and Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill
Institute for National and Global Health Law, the Summit will explore
the often-alarming privacy implications of the
nation’s race to digitize patient medical records.
Read more about what promises to be an
exciting conference on PatientPrivacyRights.org.
Nothing special. Looking for that
“Let's do anything to get these guys” email.
BP
Demands Scientist Emails in Gulf Oil Spill Lawsuit
'cause we want to move all those
Saturday morning cartoon ads onto Facebook...
Facebook
may be working to bring in users under 13
Speculation
is flying that Facebook executives may be developing technology that
would enable kids under the age of 13 to join the site with parental
supervision.
Interest by Facebook in lowering the
minimum age to under 13 years old to join the world's most popular
social network was first
reported in the Wall Street Journal. The network is
reportedly testing ways to link a child's Facebook page to his or her
parents', along with tools that would enable parents to decide who
their children can "friend" and what apps they can use.
I hope this kind of article educates my
students who want to start their own “record label.” They are
not yet technophobic nor are the Luddites. Might be interesting to
see what they come up with...
E-Publishing
May Be Doing Everything Right, But We Can’t Ignore The Spectre Of
Piracy
I’m a full supporter of e-books,
e-book devices, and agree (mostly)
with this excellent WSJ assessment by Rob Reid of the the e-book
business. In short, Reid points out that 10 years
ago this month the music industry began prosecuting its users and
implementing draconian DRM to stave off an impending
piracy revolution. That was the year Napster closed shop and
pirates, however briefly, lived in a hostile environment. Since
then, the music industry has lost $7 billion in music sales. Their
war is lost and that sum, however paltry it looks, is pretty much the
new normal.
The e-book industry, on the other hand,
has been quick to embrace all things digital, creating a number of
great distribution channels thanks to strong partnerships with major
booksellers. As Reid notes, publishers embraced the
Kindle while music distributors saw everything as a threat.
(Related) Local
As an undergrad at the University of
Colorado in 2002, Nathan
Seidle blew some stuff up. When he searched the internet for
replacement parts for the electronic things he was working on, he
found himself frustrated at both the lack of parts available and by
the lack of pictures of the parts that were available.
Not normal. Releasing classified
technology gives analysts an accurate benchmark at a point in time.
Assuming a growth formula of 0.047% per year (completely arbitrary
you understand) it then becomes trivial to determine what current
surveillance satellite tech can do. Exceptions: 1) We found a way
to “jump up the curve” or 2) We don't care...
"The U.S. government's secret
space program has decided to give
NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the
Hubble Space Telescope. Designed for surveillance, the telescopes
from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy
missions and can now be used to study the heavens."
The latest from “Mr. Everything you
ever wanted to know about _____” OR What happens when you look
through ALL the results of a Google search.
June 04, 2012
New
on LLRX.com - Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources - An
Annotated Link Compilation
via LLRX.com
- Academic
and Scholar Search Engines and Sources - An Annotated Link
Compilation - This new guide by research guru Marcus
P. Zillman focuses on the latest and most significant academic
and scholar search engines and sources. With the addition of new and
pertinent information released online from every sector continually,
it is very easy to experience information overload. A real asset in
responding to the challenges of so much data is to apply techniques
to identify and locate significant, reliable academic and scholarly
information that resides in both the visible and invisible web. The
following selected academic and scholar search engines and sources
offer a wide range of actionable information retrieval and extraction
sources to help you accomplish your research goals.
I want my students to write their own
textbook. Something like this may be the tool to use.
Widbook
is a new service that is part multimedia book authoring tool and part
social network. On Widbook you can create a digital book that
contains text, images, and videos. Widbook is collaborative because
you can invite others to make contributions to your books. To use
Widbook you have to create a profile on the service. The books that
you create become a part of your profile. If you allow it, other
Widbook users can add content and or comments to your books.
Likewise, you can search for others' books and make contributions to
their books.
Widbook
allows you to create a virtual bookshelf of books that you create and
or find on Widbook.
One drawback to Widbook
in its beta current version is that your books can only be viewed on
Widbook right now. Hopefully, in the future they will allow embeds
on other sites.
Applications for Education
Widbook has the potential to be a good
web-based platform for students to use to construct multimedia
research papers. Widbook could also be a good platform for teachers
to use to create their own multimedia textbooks to use in their
classrooms.
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