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Comment Re:Future of education (Score 2, Interesting) 161

In my opinion, education falls into one of two buckets: either you espouse to the Social Security mentality in which someone else is "solving the problem" or you are proactively engaged in "solving the problem" for yourself. It's unfortunate that at a societal level the evaluation of an individual's of education operates out of a black box not dissimilar to the evaluation of an individual's credit score. The solution isn't necessarily to make it easier to validate input/output from the black box. Rather, we can employ other methodologies for validating individual aptitude. The question is fundamentally about hiring. It is true that the process of studying and obtaining a degree from specific institutions for specific fields has a measurable, objective, and positive outcome for a limited number of students; however, this is by far the edge case. With limited exceptions, doctors, lawyers and politicians climb into careers without formal training and nationally accepted stamps of approval on degrees. But this is the edge. In reality, there is very little business value in even including a degree criteria for job positioning/hiring. It deters those who are qualified but do not hold a degree, and it does nothing to guarantee even a low bar for the work ethic, aptitude or drive of the applicant. Nothing matters more than the answers to these questions: "What do you know?", "How long have you known it?" and "How have you employed that knowledge?". While Stanford's experiment is great, it is no better than than the Khan Academy or any other resource which disseminates knowledge--and the output is the same: the individual's who devote themselves to the task of learning will derive benefit, but that outcome is wholly unquantifiable to employers evaluating applicants.

Comment Swamp Thing. (Score 1) 313

His genetic heritage "selected" him for survival. As millions of scientists simultaneously exposed themselves to vast arrays of chemicals in lab environments (with either no regard for common knowledge safety recommendations or that basic distrust of other scientists exhibiting the occasional evil laugh) and produced offspring; it was a matter of when, not if, Alex would be born. Naturally selected to survive both explosion and immersion in a primordial stew of chemicals, he then received the genetic code of the swamp "horizontally", as it were, thus simultaneously being the fittest and taking the fittest. I think Swamp Thing has a lesson for us all.

Comment Re:Hmmm.... (Score 1) 268

It stores a local copy of all your data on your primary computer and each computer you connect with it. For example, if I use laptop A to store file X, file X will always physically reside on laptop A; and when I store File Z on desktop B, that file is always backed up locally to that machine. They keep a full backup of all files on their central servers; and your files are essentially torrented into the cloud of all other users. It's as efficient a way that I've found so far to sync files between multiple computers and VMs. It would be nice to see it either open-sourced or available to install on an internal/private or alternate public network. For what it is, I think it works remarkably well. The legal issue of having unlicensed content from other users stored on your drive seems a bit overblown. From my understanding, which could be wrong, individuals couldn't be held responsible for files (and much more likely file fragments) which they did not seek out, solicit and about which they have no knowledge. I can't be charged for pirating movies if a pirate runs through the open doors of my house in his attempt to flee the law. The same rule *seems* like it ought to apply here: allowing open traffic across your device/network shouldn't implicate you in any crime should it be part of that traffic. Could be wrong. At the very least, services like Wuala drive innovation forward and make it easier for the next startup to get closer to target.
It's funny.  Laugh.

The Ridiculous LexisNexis Search that the Justice Department Used 589

jamie writes "The politicization of Bush's Justice Department, which this week was officially determined to be illegal, has a funny side too. Sometime in 2005-2006, White House Liaison Jan Williams attended a seminar on LexisNexis searches, and wrote one herself. When she left, she passed it on to her successor Monica Goodling in an email. Justin Mason, author of SpamAssassin, is skeptical about its accuracy:

[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

Needless to say, when asked about it, Williams first said she didn't remember ever seeing it, then said she'd used an edited version just once. LexisNexis records show she used it, as shown, 25 times." Note that 'sex!' appears twice in the query. Must be VERY important.

Education

Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads 511

jyosim writes "A site called Textbook Torrents is among the many sites popping up offering free downloads of expensive textbooks using BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. With the average cost of textbooks going up every year, and with some books costing more than $100, some experts say that piracy will only increase." Having just completed graduate school, I can attest that quite a few books are in that more-than-$100 range, and that they're heavy besides. But the big-name textbook publishers are much less interested than I am in open textbooks, even if MIT has demonstrated that open courseware is feasible, and Stanford and other schools have put quite a bit of material on iTunes.
Image

World Anti-Doping Agency to Study Viagra's Effects in Athletes 2

It seems that some athletes are turning to the little blue pill to get a competitive edge. Authorities say Viagra has gained a following among certain athletes in the hopes that it will give them a performance boost. Some preliminary studies have shown that cyclists taking Viagra improved their performances by up to 40 percent but more research has to be done. Whether or not Viagra will make you stronger or faster still seems to be up for debate, what is certain however is its devastating effects on hurdle running.
Biotech

UK Approves Human-Pig Embryo Stem-Cell Harvest 139

An anonymous reader writes "British biologists have received government approval to create the world's first human stem cells from hybrid embryos, part pig, part human. The Warwick Medical School team, led by Justin St. John of the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, was granted the country's third animal-human embryo license from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which goes into effect today (July 1)." The above link requires (free) registration; the Telegraph's coverage does not.
Government

White House Refused To Open Unwelcome EPA E-Mail 497

epfreed writes "The White House lost a case in the Supreme Court about the need for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. So the EPA made new rule. And now the NYTimes reports that the White House did not want to get these new rules from the EPA about greenhouse gases. So they did not open the email."
Google

Google Sued for $1B Over Outlook Migration Tool 332

A two-count lawsuit filed by Chicago company LimitNone alleges that Google misappropriated trade secrets and violated Illinois' consumer fraud laws when it developed "Google Email Uploader" which competes with LimitNone's "gMove" application. "Google claims its core philosophy is 'Don't be evil' but, simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them — and then stole our technology,'" said Ray Glassman, CEO of LimitNone, in a prepared statement. The lawsuit was filed by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company's online advertising system.
Government

Dodd, Feingold To Try and Filibuster Immunity Bill 368

shma writes "This morning the senate has a scheduled cloture vote to cut off debate on the FISA bill which grants retroactive immunity to telecoms who engaged in warrantless wiretapping. Senators Russ Feingold and Christopher Dodd have pledged to try and filibuster the bill, but require the vote of 40 senators to keep the filibuster alive. The article states that a similar 'threatened filibuster failed in February, when the Senate passed a measure that granted amnesty and largely legalized the President's secret warrantless wiretapping programs.' Should they lose the cloture vote, the bill is all but assured of passing. A proposed amendment stripping the immunity provision from the bill is also expected to fail."
Privacy

Senate Hearing On Laptop Seizures At US Border 526

suitablegirl writes "As we have discussed, Customs and Border Patrol is allowed to seize and download data from laptops or electronic devices of Americans returning from abroad. At a Senate hearing tomorrow, privacy advocates and industry groups will urge the lawmakers to take action to protect the data and privacy of Americans not guilty of anything besides wanting to go home."
Toys

Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History 266

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has an exclusive video and feature of one of the most heavily guarded secrets in Lego: the security vault where they store all the Lego sets ever created, new in their boxes. 4,720 sets from 1953 to 2008. Really amazing stuff and a trip down memory lane to every person who has played with the magic bricks. All combined, the collection must be worth millions, not only because of the collector value, but also because Lego uses it as a safeguard in copyright and patent cases."
SuSE

OpenSUSE's EULAs vs. Free Software Ideals 59

Anonymous Coward Maximus writes with some interesting (and disheartening) bits found in recent EULAs from SUSE: "Apparently the Beta came/comes with an interesting EULA discussed in this Planète Béranger article that just makes me think where is this whole Novell/Microsoft ridiculousness going to end? One quote from the EULA to whet your appetite: 'The Software may contain an automatic disabling mechanism that prevents its use after a certain period of time, so You should back up Your system and take other measures to prevent any loss of files or data.' Hmmm... Here is the full Beta 3 EULA for you to dissect. Note that the final release has a different EULA that doesn't look that scary, but still mentions things like 'You acquire only a license to use the Software' and such." Personally, I find the "Benchmark Testing" section (under GENERAL TERMS in the final release's EULA) to be pretty irksome.

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