Android: The death of a thousand cuts

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.

Using technology to cheat and to catch cheaters

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.

Sending innoent people to prison

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.

Printing antennas to get power

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?

OMG. Wearing over 50 lbs of bees!

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.

News Corporation: using money to hide criminal behavior?

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.

Cherrypicking and noise; some more tools of the denialist

by Olgierd Pstrykotwórca

Trend and Noise
[Via Open Mind]

A commenter recently linked to a post by Steve Goddard claiming that “GISS Shows No Warming Over The Last Decade.” Goddard shows this graph: and thinks that establishes his claim. So I asked the reader, Suppose I characterize the global … Continue reading →

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Quote mining is one tool and here is the other – cherrypicking of data.

Let’s pose a thought experiment. Suppose there is something that is increasing every year at a set rate – say 1. But there is inherent noise in the data of ± 2. How many years will it take to see the trend above the noise? Well, one or two would not be enough for the tend to overwhelm the yearly noise.

That is what is answered in this post. Invariably, denialists actually chose a time period that is simply too short to separate signal from noise, so they can pretend that there is really no signal.

So, when someone picks an arbitrary date, be a little skeptical, particularly when they are trying to deny the consensus of most other researchers.

In this post, he shows that in a statistical sense, the temperatures of the last decade do not fall below the longterm trend. They fall within the expected error range based on the inherent noise of global temperatures.The fluctuation in yearly temperatures simply hides the trend, as would be expected over such a short period of time.

Looking at 30 years and the trend is obvious above the noise.

Push for greater use of generics

by e-MagineArt.com

Research shows generic medications are changing the economics of treating chronically ill patients
[Via EurekAlert! - Policy and Ethics]

(Brigham and Women’s Hospital) A study released today in the July issue of Health Affairs concludes that preventive health care is considerably less costly than previous industry estimates, because earlier studies projected financial impact based on costs of branded medications. Today, the cost to consumers and the health care system are significantly lower because generics are broadly available for most chronic diseases, the researchers said.

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There have been lots of studies to figure out the monetary impact of chronic diseases when using certain drugs. But this has been done using branded drugs. Gerenics result in much lower costs.

So, for example, glucose control of cardiovascular patients is $48,000 using the brand name but only about $1,000 with generics, a cost reduction of 98%.

The home of the buckyball could create a more efficeint future

‘Amplified’ nanotubes may power the future
[Via EurekAlert! - Biology]

(Rice University) Rice University scientists have achieved a pivotal breakthrough in the development of a cable that will make an efficient electric grid of the future possible. Armchair quantum wire (AQW) will be a weave of metallic nanotubes that can carry electricity with negligible loss over long distances. It will be an ideal replacement for the nation’s copper-based grid, which leaks electricity at an estimated 5 percent per 100 miles of transmission.

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Having gone to graduate school at Rice University as this work was being produced, it is great to see Rice is still doing wonderful things.

Now if they can only get these things to market in time to make a difference.

All students should read the Eighth Day of Creation

Horace Judson (1931 – 2011)
[Via Sandwalk]

Horace Freeland Judson died on May 6, 2011. He is best known as the author of The Eighth Day of Creation first published in 1979 and later re-published in an expanded edition in 1996. This is a “must-read” book for all students of biochemistry and molecular biology.

Mark Ptashne has published an obituary in PLoS Biology [Horace Judson (1931 - 2011)]. Ptashne raises an issue that should be of concern to all biological scientists; namely, the fact that modern molecular biologists seem to be completely unaware of the history of their field and of all the fundamental work done with bacteria and bacteriophage. This was a problem that Judson tried hard to rectify before it was too late but it’s beginning to look like he was not successful.
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I read this when it first came out and just marveled at how it not only made the science intriguing but also how interesting the researchers who did the work were.

Anyone who wants to understand where we have come from, in order to know where we are going, should read this book.

More in depth about “bath salts”

Bath salts (MDPV and mephedrone) in The New York Times
[Via PLoS Blogs]

I wrote in February about a type of legal high product known as “bath salts.” Unlike synthetic marijuana “incense” or “potpourri” products, the active compound in bath salts is a type of stimulant called MDPV (methylenedixypyrovalerone).

On the frontpage of today’s Sunday edition of The New York Times, Abby Goodnough and Katie Zezmia have an article highlighting the medical issues surrounding bath salt products. Of greatest concern to law enforcement and medical personnel is that some users behave in a violent manner that is unresponsive to typical sedatives or even being Tasered.

I’ve reposted below my essay on bath salts as their active compound was being legislated to illegal status in the state of North Carolina. Therein I’ve provided some background on MDPV.

 

For more information on another prominent compound in bath salts (and “plant food” legal highs), mephedrone or 4-MMC, please see this post from my neuropharmacology colleague DrugMonkey.

The following post appeared originally on 19 February 2011, under the title, “NC legislators aim to clean up “bath salt” omission,” at my Terra Sigillata blog on the CENtral Science network.

3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) – the most common compound found in “bath salts”

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This provides some more details about what the active ingredient in these bath salts is and what it can do.

Terrifying new drug causing real problems for emergency rooms

An Alarming New Stimulant, Sold Legally in Many States.
[Via Dave Winer's linkblog feed]

An Alarming New Stimulant, Sold Legally in Many States.

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This is one time government regulation is needed and needed now. These bath salts should not be allowed on the market anywhere in the US and only a Federal response could do that.

Looks like Android may have lots of IP trouble on its hands.

Apple vs. Google: Inside an Android patent violation
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

Steve Jobs claimed that Google “stole” this Apple innovation. Last week, the ITC agreed.

When an iPhone receives a message that contains a phone number or an address — e-mail, Web or street — those bits of data are automatically highlighted, underlined and turned into clickable links.

Click on the phone number, and the iPhone asks if you want to dial it. Click on the Web address, and it opens in Safari. Click on the street address, and Maps will display it.

Any Android phone will do the same.

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Ms must be very happy because they are the only ones that will license a mobile operating system and back it in court. They claim theirs is unencumbered by patent issues and that if there are any court cases, MS will deal with them.

In contrast, Google does not seem to be helping the hardware makers in these battles.

And these are only 2 of the 10 patents Apple says are being unfairly copied. No wonder Apple needs more lawyers.

How Amazon can ruin your life – close your account

Who Ate My Amazon Account?
[Via The Consumerist]

Some nefarious, unauthorized person “may have” accessed Joseph’s Amazon account. If you’re thinking, “So what? it’s just an e-commerce account,” note that he not only owns a Kindle and many annotated books for it, but has also now lost his purchase history and his wish list. Sure, Amazon has offered him a gift card to re-purchase the books he lost, but he’s not really keen to trust the company again.

I received an e-mail from Amazon last week stating that someone “may” have accessed my account unlawfully and consequently they have decided to permanently close my account.

I have been a Amazon customer for the last 8 years, was an amazon prime member and have spent thousand of dollars with the company in the last couple years alone, (I have also never returned any item purchased from them or had any sort of other dispute or complaint to their customer service) yet when I asked them to do me the courtesy of explaining why they shut down my account since I am convinced it’s a mistake on their part not actual fraud they have refused to speak to me and keep sending me the same form e-mail asking me to simply open a new account with them and keep shopping….

The only problem, is that losing your amazon account after 8 years of purchases is not that simple, not only I have I permanently lost all my order history, shipping address for tons of friends and family and my 5 page wish list neither of which I have a record of anywhere else, but I soon discovered that it also meant losing hundreds of dollars of Kindle books I have purchased from them. Amazon’s solution to that is just to offer me a gift card for the amount I spent on Kindle books so I can repurchase them all individually on the new account I’m supposed to open with them.

But as I have the nasty habit of heavily highlighting, bookmarking and annotating all the books I read, it means that they just trashed the countless hours I spent reading and taking notes in my books!

As a service provider, I find it ludicrous that a company would be allowed to erase the content of a product they have sold you without ever checking in with you first, or even making an attempt to an apology and rectification.

So before you start replacing the hard copy of all your favorite books with Kindle versions like I foolishly did, keep in mind that Amazon apparently has the right to delete them all without as much as a warning or an apology.

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I’ve got a ton of contacts, a long wish list and all the purchase history. But I have not gone towards ebooks since I can not own the book.

Here we see that Amazon controls the books. Anything you add or highlight , or even the book, can be taken away at Amazon’s decision or whim.

Not worth it to me.

I am so glad I live in the Pacific NW

After Story on Monster Heat Wave, NBC Asks “What Explains This?” The Answer: “We’re Stuck in a Summer Pattern”!
[Via Climate Progress]

U.S. bakes under extreme heat, half of population under heat advisory or warning

Temperature at 6 feet above the surface for July 12, 2011 at 5 p.m. ET

The media loves to report on stories about how public concern about global warming is waning — even if the polling data doesn’t support that view.

Ahh, but when it comes to actually connecting the dots between extreme weather we’re now experiencing and global warming, well, that story is apparently too hot to handle — even when the data does support that view.

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Not a typical summer. And then there is this prediction for Sunday.

 

Heat index forecast for Sunday. (NOAA)

The only part of the US that looks nice – outside of the mountains, is the Pacific Coast.