March 2012
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Constitutional showdown voided: Feds decrypt... →
Colorado federal authorities have decrypted a laptop seized from a bank-fraud defendant, mooting a judge’s order that the defendant unlock the hard drive so the government could use its contents as evidence against her.
The development ends a contentious legal showdown over whether forcing a defendant to decrypt a laptop is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self...
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Space station control codes on stolen NASA laptop →
A laptop stolen from NASA last year contained command codes used to control the International Space Station, an internal investigation has found.
The laptop, which was not encrypted, was among dozens of mobile devices lost or stolen in recent years that contained sensitive information, the space agency’s inspector general told Congress today in testimony highlighting NASA’s security...
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“Cyber will overtake terrorism as the persistent gnawing … kind of threat and...”
– DOD spending $500B on 6 preparations for cyber war | VentureBeat
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“Probably the biggest change is going to come from the changed definition of what...”
– Steven Johnson on the future of reading. (via explore-blog)
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If Schools Kill Creativity, Can Toys Bring It Back... →
Legos are one of the most popular toys of all time. According to TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir, who delivered a speech at the famed conference in Long Beach, California this week, there are more than 400 billion of the little blocks in the world, or 75 for every person on earth. The brilliance of Legos is that they are not a single toy, but a platform for creation with nearly endless possibilities,...
February 2012
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Colleges Err in Placing Many on Remedial Track,... →
Two new studies from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College have found that community colleges unnecessarily place tens of thousands of entering students in remedial classes — and that their placement decisions would be just as good if they relied on high school grade-point averages instead of standardized placement tests.
The studies address one of the...
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“But at the end of the day what has happened is that US law (in fact, Maryland...”
– Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities. » blog.easydns.org - Happenings and observations
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“There is a palpable concern among these experts,” Rainie puts it,...”
– Kids’ Cognition Is Changing—Education Will Have to Change With It - Megan Garber - Technology - The Atlantic
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Amazon Kindle Lending Library tops 100,000 titles →
Amazon.com has expanded to more than 100,000 titles the library of e-books available for borrowing at no extra charge by Amazon Kindle owners who subscribe to the company’s Amazon Prime subscription service.
The new total, announced in a news release this morning, represents a significant jump from the 5,000 titles available through the service when it launched in September. That meager...
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People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to... →
The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.
The...
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Police Arrest 25 Anonymous Hackers Across Four... →
Police in Latin America and Europe have apprehended 25 people believed to be members of Anonymous, the international group of hackers and “hacktivists,” according to Interpol.
The arrests were made in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain, as reported by the BBC. Authorities in those countries also seized 250 pieces of computer equipment and cellphones.
The 25 arrested are suspected to have...
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Google's New Privacy Policy May Violate EU Rules →
Google’s new privacy policy appears to violate the European Union’s data protection rules, France’s regulator said Tuesday, just two days before the new guidelines are set to come into force.
Google announced its new privacy policy with much fanfare last month. The rules, which are set to come into force on Thursday, regulate how the Web giant uses the enormous amounts of...
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Textbook Renter's Spinoff May Help College Stores... →
The company’s cloud-based service aggregates prices for new, used, and rented textbooks, giving university stores more negotiating power to find the best deals for their departments. Professors can use Rafter’s discovery tool to see what books their peers are using in courses at other institutions that use the system. And students can buy or rent their course materials through Rafter, choosing...
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“The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.”
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower (via ourpresidents)
Sometimes truth is both simple and obvious.
(via jameshupp)
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Major publisher bends under pressure from... →
In an apparent concession to thousands of academics who have rallied against its “exorbitantly high pricing,” the scholarly publishing juggernaut Reed Elsevier on Monday withdrew its support of the Research Works Act, a bill that would have preempted the government from mandating public access to federally funded research published by commercial publishers.
“While we continue to oppose...
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CIO role will eventually cease to exist, claim... →
The position of chief information officer could disappear from the business landscape within five years’ time, according to nearly one in five chief financial officers questioned in a snapshot survey.
Seventeen percent of the 203 CFOs who participated in the poll, part of a report released today by Getronics entitled ‘The Changing Role of the CFO’, said they believe the role of...
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“Part of Customer Development is understanding which customers make sense for...”
– A Great Way to Kill Your Startup: Listen to All Your Customers - Steve Blank - Business - The Atlantic
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Should 3-Year-Olds Learn Computer Programming? →
Can 3-year-olds learn enough computer programming to be able to build their own games or animate a story? That’s the theory behind Scratch Jr, an MIT project set to launch this summer that wants to teach preschoolers creativity, design thinking, and problem-solving through coding.
The project is an extension of Scratch, a downloadable programming tool that’s been available since...
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The $1,000 Genome, and the New Problem of Having... →
Scientists needed $3 billion and 13 years to sequence the three billion base pairs encoded in a single human genome—the first time. By 2011, eight years after that first project was completed, the cost of sequencing a human genome had fallen to $5,000, in a process that took just a few weeks. And in January, Jonathan Rothberg, a chemical engineer and the founder of the biotech company Ion...
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Harry Potter E-Books Will Be In Libraries →
J. K. Rowling’s Pottermore still has not officially launched, but the Harry Potter e-books and digital audiobooks sold exclusively through the site will also be available in public and school libraries, in a distribution agreement with OverDrive announced today.
OverDrive, the largest distributor of digital materials to libraries, is also providing the sales platform for paid e-book sales on...
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Ship's anchor slows down East African web... →
East Africa’s high-speed internet access has been severely disrupted after a ship dropped its anchor onto fibre-optic cables off Kenya’s coast.
The ship was waiting to enter Mombasa - one of Africa’s busiest ports - when it anchored in a restricted area.
It could take up to 14 days to repair, cable owners The East African Marine Systems (Teams) told the BBC.
This is one of...
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What You Need To Know About The Senate... →
The Senate is currently debating a key piece of cybersecurity legislation which could change the way American tech firms operate. It is impossible to understate the need for the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2012—the United States, in the midst of a historic surge in online crime and espionage, has decided to act to reduce the problem. However, critics argue that the Cybersecurity Act is...
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Amazon & Google Getting Impatient With Book... →
All is not well in the e-book market. Amazon and Google have each scaled back some e-book programs in the past week because business was weaker than expected. Both e-book sellers are having trouble doing business with publishers.
Amazon has pulled more than 4,000 books from its e-shelves after publishers wouldn’t budge for lower prices. Google is cutting off partners in its e-book...
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Google-Trained Minds Can't Deal with Terrible... →
College and university librarians are concerned about students’ search skills, and no wonder:
At Illinois Wesleyan University, “The majority of students — of all levels — exhibited significant difficulties that ranged across nearly every aspect of the search process,” according to researchers there. They tended to overuse Google and misuse scholarly databases. They...
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“Reduce teaching to intellect, and it becomes a cold abstraction; reduce it to...”
– Parker Palmer (via azspot)
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“As the literary scholar Norman Foerster once put it, the American college has...”
– College at Risk - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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“Instead we have today the democratization of criticism, represented by customer...”
– The Work of a Critic - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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“Maybe the best we can hope for in the near future is a public conversation...”
– RIAA (sort of) responds to SOPA critics, says copyright “offers little real protection”
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“Facebook already has more data than they are leveraging,” said Rebecca Lieb, an...”
– For Facebook, Risk and Riches in User Data - NYTimes.com
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Symantec: New ZeuS botnet no longer needs central... →
Cybercriminals are using a modified version of the ZeuS computer Trojan that no longer relies on command and control (C&C) servers for receiving instructions, according to Symantec security researchers.
ZeuS is very popular in the cybercriminal world because it’s capable of stealing a wide variety of information, documents and login credentials from infected systems. For many years it...
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Science: too many connections weakens networks →
When it comes to connecting networks or other systems together, it is best to have many, but not too many, connections, mathematicians have found.
Administrators and network engineers have long assumed that the more connections they insert between multiple networks the more resilient the communications between these networks will be. The Internet, for example, derives much of its resiliency from...
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Secret Renaissance Letter Reveals Plan to Save... →
A newly discovered document, written by one of Europe’s most famous philosophers, Thomas Hobbes, reveals a plan that, if successful, could have turned the tide of one of England’s bloodiest wars.
In the words of Hobbes, the plan would prevent the “ruine of the English nation.” The document was written during the height of the English civil war, a series of conflicts...
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Los Angeles Times To Add Paywall →
It’s been a big week in newspapers starting to charge for content. First it was Gannett; now the Los Angeles Times will launch a metered paywall on Monday, March 5.
The paper announced the changes today. Website visitors will be able to read 15 stories per month for free before the paywall kicks in. They will be charged an introductory rate of 99 cents for the first four weeks; thereafter, the...
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“You know what’s great about the YC network? It gives the benefit of being part...”
– Paul Graham: Why Y Combinator Replaces The Traditional Corporation | Fast Company
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“The surest way to boost college affordability is to make certain that students...”
– 5 Ways to Make College Much More Affordable for All Americans - Adam Cota, Andre Dua, and Martha Laboissiere - Business - The Atlantic
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“It’s not clear what today’s eager 23-year-old will do in 5 or 10 years when she...”
– Why Are Harvard Graduates in the Mailroom? - NYTimes.com
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“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old,...”
– Socrates (via psychotherapy)
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New Census Data Show Minority Gains in Degree... →
From 2001 to 2011, the number of Hispanics 25 and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher rose by 80 percent, the figures show. Among blacks, the increase was 47 percent, and among non-Hispanic whites, it was 24 percent.
The bureau first reported last April that Americans who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher now make up 30 percent of the population, a figure that may bode well for...
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“Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was...”
– Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel prize in literature (1872-1970)
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Facebook Posts Can Offer Clues of Depression →
For adolescents, Facebook and other social media have created an irresistible forum for online sharing and oversharing, so much so that endless mood-of-the-moment updates have inspired a snickering retort on T-shirts and posters: “Face your problems, don’t Facebook them.”
But specialists in adolescent medicine and mental health experts say that dark postings should not be hastily dismissed...
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“The amen corner will nod its assent, but the question remains: how much is a...”
– So how much is a fair price to pay for an e-book? | Digital Media - CNET News
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“We cannot draw up a business model that accounts for the wholesale theft of our...”
– MPAA’s Chris Dodd Extends SOPA Olive Branch to Silicon Valley | The Wrap Movies
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“Every time society advances, it faces challenges from those people economically...”
– Are books and the internet about to merge? | Books | guardian.co.uk (via wildcat2030) 