] Within three years, most bank machines that dispense cash
] will run on the Windows operating system, according to a
] study published last week.

Doh!

Wired News: Windows to Power ATMs in 2005

] A Papua New Guinean soldier has been charged with the
] manslaughter of his baby son, who police said on Friday
] had died several months after the man stabbed his
] pregnant wife with an HIV-infected syringe.

Jesus H. Christ, those email "hoaxes" we used to get in college were REAL!

Seriously, though, i can't think of a punishment sufficient for such an action. It's shit like this that undermines my faith in humanity.

IOL : Soldier stabs pregnant wife with HIV needle

]] What happens when digital video recorders give viewers
]] control of the TV schedule, the content, and the ads? The
]] whole world is watching.
]
]Great article. Too bad the 'old' Wired magazine would've published ]this in 2000.

the last page was especially interesting to me. Seems like TiVo grew on the word of mouth of a smallish group of techo-savvy folks with an immediate comprehension of the kinds of freedoms a TiVo could offer. The question now is, what did you exchange for those freedoms?

as for the rest of the article, i can't wait until TV is a la carte... it's what i've been wanting for damn near a decade. For fucks sake, if the only shows i care about are Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Dead Like Me, Enterprise and Scrubs, i should get to buy them piecemeal. I'd even go for a seasonal subscription to individual shows if the pricing was right. This all shouldn't be that hard, technologically speaking...

The Fast-Forward, On-Demand, Network-Smashing Future of Television

H2G2 entry for l33t sp34k.

BBC - h2g2 - An Explanation of l33t Speak

] Deborah Seiler, Diebold's West Coast sales
] representative, said Diebold engineers may have published
] the results as part of a test - possibly days, weeks or
] months after the county primary, regardless of the time
] stamp. She said a system of checks and balances
] safeguards Diebold's 33,000 voting machines nationwide
] from fraud.
]
] "These activists don't understand what they're looking
] at," Seiler said.

wow, diebold just called us all a bunch of fucking morons. good job guys.

Excite News

Well, Clark's in the mix. Anyone feel like 10 candidates is overkill? I mean, i guess in reality it's only like, 5 or 6, but still... oi.

Just for fun, i decided to link to the ueber conservative Washington Dispatch today.

I think you'll find it's incicive wit and honest discourse a refreshing change from the lies the liberal media's been telling you.

Says mr Rairden :
] Clark will use his years of experience and the Clinton
] spin machine to make quiet reserved misstatements and
] position changes while claiming he is a “straight talker.”
] Clark will have a very short time to rise to the top, and I
] believe he will.

woo! hot damn!

and :
] That will pit one loud obnoxious anti-Bush liberal against
] a slick talking, quiet four-star fibbing anti-Bush liberal
] backed by the Clintonistas.

yeah! those damn fucking asshole clintons!

(for those that don't know me, I'm pretty sarcastic. And pretty liberal too.)

The Washington Dispatch - Opinion

] TeraScale SneakerNet

hah!

this guy has some interesting points on disk storage.

i think we're getting to a point where user interaction with the disk will be minimal anyway, so i'm not sure access time will be so critical in the future, which underscores Gray's point. When, instead of going to your "Documents/Work/Reports/09/03/" folder and opening a file, you just tell your knowledge management agent that you want your september reports, the underlying data access model becomes less relevant. If it takes a bit longer for the agent to find it and put it RAM, so what. Just means the agent has to be smart about how *it* stores an manages data (probly with a large dbase), which is it's job anyway.

A Conversation with Jim Gray

Orson Scott Card eloquently summarizes the issues at hand...

Art Watch - September 7, 2003 - MP3s Are Not the Devil - The Ornery American

you're a female cashier or a corporate officer at Wal-Mart, age 18 and over, and you're not afraid to shed your inhibitions in front of the camera, Playboy wants you.

Playboy wants Wal-Mart women

mandrake wrote:
] I would be interested in knowing how many people are "lifting"
] this material and how many people are quoting this material as
] sources and citing the source... because I know I've done
] this quite often, particularly when it comes to research
] papers that are available online, etc. I would assume that a
] considerable amount of people use similar tactics.

I don't think they are concerned about quotations. The internet is certainly a valuable research tool and I think schools try to reinforce that by training kids to use it. The thing is that its really easy to take something and just cut and paste it directly into your paper. People did this back in the old days with their library, but it wasn't as easy. You had to type everything in. Today its click, click, print... I've seen people do it.

Ultimately, having a lot of student papers online is a good thing, as long as you've got a way to filter the correct ones from the poor ones. Its an information resource, and as the papers are usually short it fits with the typical net attention span. Maybe we ought to turn the coin over here and consider that maybe paper writing is obsolete...

Paper writing is basically about teaching people to express themselves effectively. Maybe an email discussion board related to the topics of the course would be just as effective...

The reason that profs need papers to assess student knowledge on a subject is because they are still running everything on a very simple, old fashioned, mass lecture and assess system. Its been demonstrated that people learn much more effectively when they are personally engaged in the process. For example, instead of having all of the students write a paper on the same topic, why not have them go out and research a subject, assemble a coherent understanding, and report back to the rest of the class. Have discussion and debate. Force people to defend their positions in public. In such a case it doesn't really matter if they cut/pasted the paper. They still have to understand what it means to be able to talk about it intelligently... Furthermore, if they are forced to have an opinion, then they will be driven to understand that opinion well.

Ultimately, in this age, thinking is better then knowing. Information is easily available to you if you need it, so having it in your head for easy regurgitation isn't as important as being able to apply it in a meaningful way. Stop measuring what students know and start measuring how students think.

RE: Beyond File-Sharing, a Nation of Copiers