July 2010
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In Suit Over Faulty Computers, Window to Dell’s... →
After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.
Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components...
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Small Stores See Google as Ally in E-Book Market →
Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.
The...
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Bodleian pays high price for the shift away from... →
The Bodleian Library is facing a £400,000 bill from journal publishers as academics at the University of Oxford abandon print editions in favour of electronic access.
The charges have been incurred as a result of subscription cancellations at Oxford, as online access reduces the use of print journals across the institution.
As part of the bulk subscription packages negotiated with publishers,...
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“A big part of the experience of a physical object has to do with the...”
– Core77 speaks with Jonathan Ive on the design of the iPhone 4: Material Matters - Core77
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Computer program deciphers a dead language that... →
whisperoftheshot:
The lost language of Ugaritic was last spoken 3,500 years ago. It survives on just a few tablets, and linguists could only translate it with years of hard work and plenty of luck. A computer deciphered it in hours.
The computer program relies on a few basic assumptions in order to make intuitive guesses about the language’s structure. Most importantly, the lost language has...
June 2010
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“In the hectic, overloaded modern world of communication, those who want their...”
– Scientific [Mis]Communication § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM (via wildcat2030)
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FBI: Spies Hid Secret Messages on Public Websites →
The accused Russian spy network started using steganography as early as 2005, according to the Justice Department’s criminal complaint against the conspirators, unsealed yesterday in Manhattan. In 2005, law enforcement agents raided the home of one of the alleged spies. There, they found a set of password-protected disks and a piece of paper, marked with “alt,” “control,” “e,” and a string of 27...
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Private Colleges Hold Down Tuition Increases for... →
Private, nonprofit colleges increased published tuition and fees an average of 4.5 percent for the 2010-11 academic year, according to results from a new survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, or Naicu. That increase is in line with last year’s 4.3-percent increase, which was the lowest jump in 37 years.
» via The Chronicle of Higher Education...
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More IT means lower salaries for uneducated... →
If you don’t have enough education, information technology can have a negative impact on your salary, according to a research paper published this week. A study on the education level of workers in Hong Kong and the penetration of IT in their fields showed that IT can lead to higher salaries—but only for highly educated individuals. Contrary to previous research, scientists found that IT...
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Sharing Risk, Sharing Reward →
First, back-office information systems are not major differentiators between institutions; as Conrad puts it, “A faculty member, or a student, or a grant committee is not going to choose one university over another because of a great information system.” Second, tangible savings trumps an intangible rivalry when the budget is tight.
Third, Conrad’s counterpart at NC State happened to be one of...
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Inaccessible E-Readers May Run Afoul of the Law,... →
Feds to colleges: If you require students to use electronic-book readers that blind people can’t access, you may be running afoul of the law.
That was the message of a letter released to college presidents Tuesday by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice.
“It is unacceptable for universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to...
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“in the future the metric of success might not be whether a story appeared in a...”
– Nieman Reports | The Future of Storytelling: A Participatory Endeavor (via interestingsnippets)
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When anyone can be a published author →
austinkleon:
Great article. Bottom line: there will always be gatekeepers, and the more and more books that get published, the more readers will look to gatekeepers to tell them what to read.
we’ll still wind up with a literary marketplace in which a handful of blockbuster names capture most of the sales and attention, personal connections are milked for professional success, and relatively few...
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“Rumblefish is introducing a service that allows users to buy a license to a...”
– Rumblefish to Offer Music for YouTube Users - NYTimes.com (via interestingsnippets)
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“The seventh-grade guidance counselor says she can spend up to three-fourths of...”
– How Should Schools Handle Cyberbullying? - NYTimes.com (via interestingsnippets)
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“Through all the intellectual storms of history, teaching has remained, above...”
– Doug Brent (via visualturn)
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Step Too Far on Textbook Costs? →
With students, parents and politicians all frustrated by high textbook costs, recent years have seen many innovations as well as state and federal legislation. Much of the latter has focused on requirements that involve providing information so students and professors can make sound choices. So new laws or proposals call for publishers to provide details about how different editions of books...
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Man Bathing in Library Sink Shows His Dairy Air →
Darrell Bess likes to be around good books, has an appreciation for international foods and music, and believes in cleanliness. By most accounts, he seems like a man of refinement.
Yet Cincinnati police say that on Wednesday Bess, 52, was found bathing naked in a library restroom sink while in possession of four pounds of parmesan cheese and two stolen CD’s.
He was also in alleged...
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It's official: White House wants more spectrum for... →
The White House has thrown its weight behind the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to free up 500MHz of broadband for wireless spectrum. President Obama has signed a Presidential Memorandum committing the government to a “sustained effort” to find the licenses and re-purpose them over the next ten years. The National Economic Council’s Lawrence Summers is...
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Supreme Court: "business method" and software... →
This morning, the Supreme Court decided the long-running Bilski case (PDF) on business method patents—a case with broad applicability to software patents. As expected, the Court struck down the Bilski patent itself as an unpatentable “abstract idea”—but it also said that business method and software patents can be legitimate.
The case began when one Bernard Bilski tried to patent...
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Supreme Court rules against Christian group that... →
A university can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that bars gays and nonbelievers, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a case that pitted anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.
Such official recognition qualifies campus groups for funding and other benefits.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices upheld a U.S. appeals court ruling in favor of the University of...
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“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his...”
– Lao Tzu (via parkstepp) (via heartmindspirit) (via anotherword) (via wildcat2030)
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Mobile coupons help retailers track customers →
Originally from Las Vegas but traveling in Seattle? Sears might suggest you pick up an umbrella. Didn’t notice the two-for-one sale on rubber-band balls even though you had searched for them online earlier in the day? The office supply store might send you a message suggesting you turn back to aisle 10. So bored of turkey sandwiches that you haven’t gone to your regular lunch spot for...
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“‘At this moment,’ the letter says, ‘we are facing our biggest challenge ever....”
– ASCAP Declares War on Free Culture
In its ongoing march toward complete irrelevance, ASCAP calls on its members to fight the free culture movement, including voluntary licenses like Creative Commons.
(via shawnyeager)
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IT Jobs Offer Growth, But Women Are Bailing Out →
Technology jobs are predicted to grow at a faster rate than all other jobs in the professional sector, up to 22 percent over the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compensation is also good. In 2008, women in tech made an average salary of $70,370, according to Dice Holdings, an Urbandale, Iowa-based company that specializes in recruiting and career development in...
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“As civilization has advanced, education has become increasingly important—and...”
– The End of Education (via xixidu) (via wildcat2030)
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Google releases 500 scans of Ancient Greek and... →
I’m pleased to announce that Google Books is now assisting this work by sharing high-resolution digital scans of over 500 volumes of Ancient Greek and Latin, dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. (Of course, downloadable versions of over a million volumes in all fields are available from books.google.com, in a more compressed form.) Jon Orwant and I created this collection...
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Porn Sites Set to Get .XXX Domain Name Option →
ICANN, the organization that oversees domain names and registrations for the Internet, plans to approve the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) for adult websites.
According to multiple reports, ICANN officials told people at a public meeting in Brussels that it intends to allow adult businesses to register .xxx domains, which have been the subject of controversy for several years. An ICANN attorney...
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You Don’t Want ISPs to Innovate →
There’s a complicated fight in D.C. right now over how the FCC classifies broadband services, so it can regain the power to impose some basic rules on the industry.
Free-market groups and the industry are banging the table, arguing against the consequences — saying that the FCC is trying to regulate the internet and will kill innovation.
Here’s the simple truth: You don’t want your ISP to...
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The Biggest Challenge in Education →
“It is estimated that 90 percent of brain development occurs in the first three years of a child’s life. Children that are unprepared for kindergarten have a 10 percent chance of being able to read in the first grade. If you cannot read at grade level in the first grade, you have a 12 percent chance of reading at grade level in the fourth grade. And if you can’t read at grade level in the fourth...
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Study: Face-to-Face Meetings Breed More Trust Than... →
It’s possible that instead of fostering real friendships off-line, e-mail and social networking may take the place of them — and the distance inherent in screen-only interactions may breed feelings of isolation or a tendency to care less about other people. After all, if you don’t feel like dealing with a friend’s problem online, all you have to do is log off.
The problem is,...
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'Augmented Reality' on Smartphones Brings Teaching... →
At the University of New Mexico, some students in second-year Spanish classes become detectives. They travel to Los Griegos, an Albuquerque neighborhood 15 minutes northwest of the campus, on a mission: Clear the names of four families accused of conspiring to murder a local resident.
It’s a fictional murder mystery, and instead of guns and badges, the students are armed with iPod Touches,...
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Google Docs creates expectations CIOs can't meet,... →
“I talked to one CIO who said, ‘look, my biggest competitor is Google,’” Whitehurst said.
The unnamed CIO works for what Whitehurst described as a “big industrial logistics company.” A few months ago the CIO was asked by the chief marketing officer to provide a way for marketing employees around the world to share and build documents together, and perform...
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Technology firms 'more trusted than traditional... →
American researchers also found that people now trusted the technology heavyweights more than social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
According to the new study, the majority of people rated online privacy as one of their major concerns when using the internet after both Google and Facebook were hit by rows over people’s private details being disclosed on the web.
The study,...
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The Classroom Still Matters →
In recent years, many colleges and universities have shifted towards internet-based learning, posting everything from assignments to lectures online. The results of a randomized experiment at a major research institution (analyzed in a new paper by David N. Figlio, Mark Rush, and Lu Yin) caution against a wholesale transformation. The authors found “modest evidence that live-only instruction...
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“It is easy to envision the massive mills of Manchester and think that the...”
– Thinkers And Tinkerers (via publicknowledge)
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First RIAA File Sharing Trial Morphs Into... →
The nation’s first file sharing copyright infringement trial has morphed into a legal Groundhog Day.
In a bid to avoid a third trial — after two mistrials — the Minnesota federal judge presiding over the 4-year-old Jammie Thomas-Rasset case wants the Recording Industry Association of American and the defendant to negotiate a settlement.
But, as Thomas-Rasset’s attorney, Joe Sibley, said in a...
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YouTube wins case against Viacom →
Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with...
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Rolling Stone’s late start on McChrystal costs it... →
Rolling Stone has been widely criticized, and even made fun of outright, for sitting on Michael Hastings’ blockbuster profile of Stanley McChrystal, “The Runaway General.” The magazine’s logic: Create buzz (they sent promotional copies of the story to a variety of news outlets) and then enjoy the fruits of success at the newsstand. Instead, the story made its way across the web anyway. Politico...
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News giants: limit free riders from rewriting... →
Just a day after Google and Twitter called the legal concept of “hot news” obsolete, the major news heavyweights have collectively thrown their hat into the ring in support of the nebulous restriction.
The Associated Press, New York Times, Time, Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, Advance Publications, and others submitted their own amicus brief in the ongoing legal case between...
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“technologists are waking up to the benefits of minimalism, thanks to two things:...”
– Technology and complexity: In praise of techno-austerity | The Economist (via interestingsnippets)
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“Human nature has a tendency to Admire Complexity and Reward Simplicity”
– Ben Huh
found via Buster Benson
(via msg)
(via hiten) 