1154899
submission
peter303 writes:
The Wall Street Journal suggests the Justice Department has begun an anti-trust investigation of Google's large lead in online advertising profits as being monopolistic. I wonder who may have complained to the Justice Department :-) Google joins a long list of super-successful IT predecessors- AT&T, IBM, and MicroSoft- who have undergone this scrutiny. Perhaps this story has contributed to large recent drops in the GOOG stock price.
773963
submission
peter303 writes:
In the latest round of generation bashing, Mark Bauerlein wrote The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30). Mark's thesis is that new digital devices instead of enhancing student intelligence and education, they degrade them. He reviews a large number of studies that young people are anti-intellectual, rarely read, and rarely attend fine arts events. He blames this on young spending an average of six hours a day on "screen devices"- cellphones, video games, internet, television, etc.- in entertainment and gossip and not intellectual pursuit.
I thought it was an interesting thesis, but not a new phase of American culture. Americans have always been accused of anti-intellectualism. GenY's boomer parents were derided for spending too much time in front of television. What this book does is modernize this complaint to the current generation, and cite a mind-numbing number of studies supporting it.
15455
submission
peter303 writes:
The recently activated Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a photo of the the Mars Opportunity Rover with enough detail to see its platform and and camera tower. In the previous best picture from the Mars Global Surveyor (from the same manufacturer Malin Space Science) could only resolve the rovers as a four pixel splotch. This give hope of solving the mystery of the failed Beagle landing which has only been guessed at in the Surveyer low resolution photo.
