The Obamas Watch the Women’s World Cup
[Via Daring Fireball]
Even the President of the United States needs two remote controls. Looks like an iPad next to his chair, a MacBook Pro under the First Lady’s feet, and a Flip camera next to the remotes.
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Always nice to see that even the elite have to deal with multiple remotes. And eating of the coffee table as they watch TV.
Apple’s victory over HTC may set high royalty precedent for Android devices
[Via AppleInsider]
Apple’s initial legal victory over rival HTC in a patent infringement suit could pave the way for Apple to collect high royalties from devices running Google Android, according to one analysis.
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Getting a high royalty payment – say $5 per handset – could be quite lucrative, as Microsoft has shown. It also means that using the free Android OS is not free. This would hamper the use of this OS and make MS seem more worthwhile.
I don’t really expect Apple to want to prevent HTC from being sold in the US. They just want some cash at a level to make others rather settle than to fight. It would be ironic is Apple, along with MS, got a piece of every Android sold.
by Mattastic!
Cheaters
[Via DrugMonkey]
It’s an old story for the teaching professors in the audience, I realize. But this story made me profoundly sad. I mean WTF? I never, ever thought seriously about cheating on class work in my rather lengthy schooling career. Not to get a desired grade, not to make up for laziness or excessive weekend behavior, not for any reason.
Well, I suppose we know where the scientific data fakers come from. This population of undergrads which thinks cheating is a-ok.
Go read that bit and tell me it doesn’t make you sad….
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People may argue that this is worse with MBA students than with scientists (I’d certainly hope that scientists cheating would be a little smarter than some of these students) but while technology makes it easier to plagiarize, it also makes it easier to catch.
What is disturbing here, though, is that there are incentives in place to not only continue the cheating but for the professor to ignore that cheating.
That should be unacceptable but is probably another sign of how broken most of our institutions of higher learning are.
I did like the view that the professor took –with so much rampant cheating it was up to him to find a solution. He changed assignments in such a way as to preclude cheating and added oral presentations, with the grades being determined in part by their peers. Here the students who did not cheat helped police those that did.
He found creative ways to reduce cheating by making it ineffective or unpalatable. As he wrote:
In other words, my theory is: Cheating (on a systematic level) happens because students try to get an edge over their peers/competitors. Even top-notch students cheat, in order to ensure a perfect grade. Fighting cheating is not something that professors can do well in the long run, and it is counterproductive by itself. By channeling this competitive energy into creative activities, in which you cannot cheat, everyone is better off.
Well done.
An Innocent Man Gets His Freedom
[Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]
The ESPN Espy awards the other day gave the Arthur Ashe courage award to a man named Dewey Bozella, who spent 30 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit before he finally won his freedom. It’s an incredible story that really has little to do with sports, but it has a lot to do with what is wrong with our criminal justice system.
A couple years ago I interviewed a Michigan man who had spent more than 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. It was very difficult for me to keep my voice steady as I talked to him with my eyes welled up with tears. His daughter was 2 when he went to prison and almost 30 when he got out. He missed her entire life. The whole story was absolutely heartbreaking.
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Our Founding Fathers knew it was better to let a guilty person go free than to send an innocent person to jail.
We seem to have forgotten that in these cases where prosecutorial discretion goes awry. Part of why our judicial system seems broken.
Because if an innocent person can be railroaded into prison for 30 years, or possibly put to death, then the possibility exists that I can also, even if innocent, simply because those in power decide to.
We now have a higher percentage of our population incarcerated than any other country. We have 4% of the population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. Almost 1 in every 100 people in the US is behind bars.
Inkject-Printed Antenna Gathers Ambient Energy from TV Transmissions
[Via 80beats]
Georgia Tech researcher Manos Tentzeris holding
up one of his inkjet-printed antennas.What’s the News: With all of the electronics cluttering our daily lives, the air is abuzz with ambient electromagnetic energy from sources like cell phone networks, radio and television transmitters, and satellite communications systems. Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have devised a simple, cheap way to harness that wasted energy: capturing it with inkjet-printed antennas and storing it in batteries.
How the Heck:
Electrical engineer Manos Tentzeris and his team created an ink mixture containing nanoparticles of silver, which, as a conductor, is useful for building circuits. Using an inkjet printer, they printed radio frequency components and circuits onto paper and flexible plastic. The printed antennas receive a wide range of frequencies—100 MHz to 60 GHz (that is, all the way from FM radio to radar). The researchers installed the antennas in miniature devices that collect the energy, convert it to DC power, and store it in …
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I wonder if we would have to pay the TV/radio stations for providing the power?
Bee-wearing competition
[Via Boing Boing]
Beekeeper Lv Kongjiang, 20, stands with bees covering his body on a weighing scale during a bee-wearing competition held last week in China. Competing against fellow beekeeper Wang Dalin in Shaoyang, Hunan province, the two wore only shorts and bees; Wang won the competition after attracting 57 lbs of bees on his body in 60 minutes, while Lv had 50 lbs, local media reported. Photo Reuters/China Daily
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The Depression had its flagpole sitters. We have our bee-wearers.
by borman818
The Media Equation: Troubles That Money Can’t Dispel
[Via NYT > NYTimes.com Home]
The willingness of the News Corporation to spend millions in settlement costs to make problems go away provides a useful window into its larger culture.
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Some interesting material about court cases here in the US. This one stood out (my bold):
In 2009, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called Floorgraphics went to trial, accusing News America of, wait for it, hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system.
The complaint stated that the breach was traced to an I.P. address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly.
Much of the lawsuit was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistle-blower. After a few days of testimony, the News Corporation had heard enough.
The suit that Floorgraphics brought claimed that the information stolen from the hacked computers was used to spread false and misleading information. Floorgraphics settled for about $30 million and then News America bought the company. Floorgraphics has sales of $1 million.
I thought hacking into computer systems was a federal criminal offense. I wonder why there was no criminal investigation?
News America made a mistake here since it did go to trial and there were some interesting testimony from whistleblowers until News America shut the trial down.
They settled another case recently for half a billion dollars, one dealing with their uncompetitive business practices.
That amount was equal to the total annual earnings of all of their news and information divisions.
They have already lost in federal court on hacking charges stemming from another subsidiary, so I would not be surprised to hear about more instances. It seems to be part of their culture.
Often, being a cutthroat business on the way up means that there is little to cry about on the way down. We shall see how far down this goes.
SpreadingScience
Sustainable Path Foundation Idea Club
