No one thought this was
intrusive/creepy/dangerous? OR no one thought at all.
"ProPublica's Lois Beckett
reports that the
Obama for America campaign's new mobile app is raising privacy
concerns with its Google map that
recognizes one's current location, marks nearby Democratic households
with small blue flags, and displays the first name, age and gender of
the voter or voters who live there (e.g.,'Lori C.,
58 F, Democrat'). Asked about the privacy aspects of the new app, a
spokesperson for the Obama campaign wrote that 'anyone familiar with
the political process in America knows this information about
registered voters is available and easily accessible to the public.'
Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain said the Obama app does represent
a significant shift. While voter data has been 'technically public,'
it is usually accessed only by political campaigns and companies that
sell consumer data. 'Much of our feelings around privacy are driven
by what you might call status-quo-ism,' Zittrain added, 'so many
people may feel that the app is creepy simply because it represents
something new.'" [Some worry
that it identifies “targets” Bob]
This could be interesting if it came to
the US...
"The Australian reports that
brands in Australia could be forced to abandon their social media
campaigns, after the Advertising Standards Bureau ruled that they
were responsible
for comments posted on their pages. According to the article,
the ASB is poised to release a report attacking Carlton & United
Breweries for derogatory comments posted on one of their official
Facebook pages, despite CUB monitoring and removing those comments
twice daily. Legal expert John Swinson commented on the decision,
saying 'You simply can no longer have two-way conversations with your
customers.'"
[From the article:
In a copy of the report obtained by
Media, the ASB said comments left by people on the social network
site constituted advertising, even though the company had not posted
them.
Along with “too big to fail” comes
“too big to manage?” I doubt it. More like too easy to pass the
buck.
August 05, 2012
Levy
Economics Institute - The Fix Is In—the Bank of England Did It!
The
Fix Is In—the Bank of England Did It!, Jan Kregal, Levy
Economics Institute of Bard College
- "As the results of the various official investigations spread, it becomes more and more apparent that a large majority of financial institutions engaged in fraudulent manipulation of the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) to their own advantage, and that bank management and regulators were unable to effectively monitor the activity of institutions because they were too big to manage and too big to regulate. However, instead of drawing the obvious conclusion—that structural changes are needed to reduce banks to a size that can be effectively regulated, as proposed on numerous occasions by the Levy Economics Institute—discussion in the media and political circles has turned to whether the problem was the result of the failure of central bank officials and government regulators to respond to repeated suggestions of manipulation, and to stop the fraudulent behavior. Just as the “hedging” losses at JPMorgan Chase have been characterized as the result of misbehavior on the part of some misguided individual traders, leaving top bank management without culpability, politicians and the media are now questioning whether government officials condoned, or even encouraged, manipulation of the LIBOR rate, virtually ignoring the banks’ blatant abuse of principles of good banking practice. Just as in the case of JPMorgan, the only response has been to remove the responsible individuals, rather than questioning the structure and size of the financial institutions that made managing and policing this activity so difficult. Again, the rotten apples have been removed without anyone noticing that it is the barrel that is the cause of the problem. But in the current scandal, the ad hominem culpability has been extended to central bank officials in the UK and the United States."
A tool for talking to my students.
The website not only allows users to
translate acronyms but also gives them the option to translate common
used Internet emoticons such as “XD”.
- Also read related article: 10
Online Slang Dictionaries To Learn Jargon & Street Language.
A tool for my students...
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Plag
Tracker is a service that students can use to check their essays
for possible plagiarism. To use the service students
simply copy and paste text into Plag Tracker. Plag
Tracker then scans it to find sentences and phrases that appear in
other works on the web. If Plag Tracker detects a possible incidence
of plagiarism, the link or links to the source is listed for
students.
Plag
Tracker does offer a "premium" service in addition to
the free plan. The premium plan allows users to upload documents
instead of copying and pasting text. The premium plan also promises
faster scan times, but I didn't shell out the $15 to test that claim.
Applications
for Education
The free version of Plag
Tracker could be a good tool for students to use before they turn
in a research report. Have students run their essays through it to
make sure they haven't accidentally plagiarized or improperly
paraphrased information they used in writing a report.
Click
here for eight other resources for preventing and detecting
plagiarism.
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