By now, it’s practically a mantra that the biggest problem with corporate IT security is the employees themselves. However, we usually assume that’s due to ignorant users or poorly enforced policies. Not so for a chunk of the US working population—according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 12 percent admitted to knowingly violating IT policy in order to get work done.

» via ars technica

The students in Michael Dubson’s physics class at the University of Colorado fell silent as a multiple choice question flashed on a screen, sending them scrambling for small white devices on their desks.

Within seconds, a monitor on Dubson’s desk told him that 92 percent of the class had correctly answered the question on kinetic energy, a sign that they grasped the concept.

Clickers — not unlike gadgets used on television game shows — first appeared in college classrooms over a decade ago and have since spread to just about every college and university in the country thanks to cheaper and better technology.

» via MSNBC

The state of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the United States has seen some unflattering appraisals in recent years, and deservedly so. In early February, the House of Representatives heard testimony on undergraduate and graduate education. The message from the panel, which included experts from academia, STEM-based industries, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), was clear: the problems in STEM education are well-known, and it‘s time to take action.

Both the hearing’s charter and its chair, Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), pointed out the obvious problem in higher education: students start out interested, but the STEM programs are driving them away. As the National Academies described in its 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, successful STEM education is not just an academic pursuit—it’s a necessity for competing in the knowledge-based economy that the United States had a key role in creating.

The potential for action comes thanks to the fact that the America COMPETES Act of 2007 is up for reauthorization. Its initial focus was on STEM education at the K-12 levels, but efforts at the undergraduate and graduate levels are needed to retain students to fill the jobs left vacant as baby boomers retire.

» via ars technica

emergentfutures:

A mobile workforce survey found that the majority of Blackberry-carrying employees would trade their devices in for an iPhone, if only their companies supported it. Likewise, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed employees said they would prefer to be issued a smartphone instead of a notebook computer.

techspotlight:

From RWW:

According to Gartner, the worldwide market for mobile devices with touchscreens will grow over 97% this year. Last year, consumers bought 184 million devices with touchscreens. Gartner predicts that this market will surpass 362 million units this year. By 2013, Gartner predicts, touchscreen mobile devices will account for 80% of all sales in North America and Europe. Once the domain of high-end devices, touchscreen are now finding their ways into midrange phones and a growing number of consumers now expects all of their screens to be touch-enabled.

In the process of requesting iPad application startups, Y Combinator made an interesting argument as to why the iPad is important:

Most people think the important thing about the iPad is its form factor: that it’s fundamentally a tablet computer. We think Apple has bigger ambitions. We think the iPad is meant to be a Windows killer. Or more precisely, a Windows transcender. We think Apple foresees a future in which the iPad is the default way people do what they now do with computers (and some other new things).

Programmers may never want a computer they don’t control, but ordinary people just want something cheap that works. And that’s how the iPad will seem to them. Many will never make a conscious decision to switch. They’ll get an iPad as well, then find they use their Windows machine less and less. When it dies they won’t replace it.

That’s right, or at least that’s Apple’s longterm strategy with these post-PC devices. Jobs believes that the future is in mobile, non-PC computing devices, and Apple wants to own this market. The PC’s reign is over.

» via TightWind

In the countries studied, televisions made up the largest chunk of the e-waste stream by weight. China alone tossed more than one million tons of televisions in 2007. The 11 countries in the report also threw out more than a million tons of refrigerators and close to 700,000 tons of personal computers.

Those numbers are expected to rise. The report predicts that the number of computers tossed in India will increase 500 percent between 2007 and 2020. By 2020, the number of computers thrown out in South Africa and China will be up 200 to 400 percent. Trashed mobile phones will increase by 7-fold in China and 18-fold in India, while television e-waste in those countries may double.

» via Live Science

With Emily Howell, Cope is, once again, challenging the assumptions of artists and philosophers, exposing revered composers as unknowing plagiarists and opening the door to a world of creative machines good enough to compete with human artists. But even Cope still wonders whether his decades of innovative, thought-provoking research have brought him any closer to his ultimate goal: composing an immortal, life-changing piece of music.

» via Miller-McCune

Back in the dark ages of personal computing, if you wanted to look through the programs on your machine and, say, open a Microsoft Word document from the floppy drive, you would need to type a list of arcane commands that went something like this:

DIR *.EXE

MSWORD.EXE A:\REPORT.DOC

In an effort to win over less technical users, both Apple and Microsoft dumped that command-line interface for personal computers more than two decades ago, replacing it with visual icons for files, folders and applications. Over the years, they added animations and search technology and other features to make navigating a Mac or Windows PC even easier.

Yet all of the gloss and glitter doesn’t hide the fact that both operating systems are still pretty geeky and difficult for many computer users to navigate. I frequently get calls from family members asking why the font size on their Web browser suddenly changed or where they should look for the photos they have just downloaded from their digital camera.

I never get that kind of call about Apple’s iPhone.

» via The New York Times

Decades before TiVo became a verb, I started down the path of better living through tape delay. From March Madness to midseason Mets games to my masochistic relationship with the New York Jets, I flat-out prefer to watch on delay. While the rest of you are spending three-plus hours slogging through an NFL game, I’m polishing it off in a tidy one hour and 45 minutes. Not to mention that I’m taking in the action after having spent the day frolicking with my wife and kids. Yes, time-shifting strengthens the American family.

» via Slate

Apple COO Tim Cook answered a round of questions during the annual Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference Tuesday and ended up discussing various aspects of Apple’s business. A major thread throughout Cook’s talk was the fact that Apple thinks of itself as a “mobile devices company,” echoing Steve Jobs’ comments at the recent iPad introduction that Apple competes with the likes of Nokia and Sony when it comes to revenue.

» via ars technica

I was interested in writing an academic piece on the general perception of weeds in early America. To undertake this research, I accessed an on-line database of several hundred thousand documents from roughly 1640-1850. (Note: my university cannot afford this particular database, so I’ve gained access through the account of a close friend who works at an institution with ivy on the walls.) Within an hour, I‘d found and printed out more than 74 documents (out of 187 found) with references to “weeds”—my chosen search term. Making matters even more convenient, the term was highlighted, thus obviating the need for me to read the full text.

Given the range of documents that came up, it’s safe to say that—had this powerhouse of a search engine not done the digging for me—it would have taken decades for me to find these obscure references to weeds, most of which are buried in documents living in a vault under some research library in Boston or Philadelphia (I live in Texas).

This experience is becoming increasingly common for those of us who work in the humanities and social sciences. And while I think there are many downsides to relying too heavily, or exclusively, on this form of research, there’s no doubt that it allows the engaged scholar to pursue questions in a much more streamlined (and inexpensive) manner. Which brings me to my question—one that I ask with some trepidation in light of the recent shootings at a University of Alabama faculty meeting: Should publishing requirements for tenure go up for scholars in the humanities and social sciences?

» via Freakonomics