"US gets ready to blow its economy away," by Christopher Booker, London Telegraph, August 17, 2008 ---
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/17/do1708.xml

After years when America was vilified for not taking "global warming' seriously, it was a shock to find how "environmentalism" is now threatening to transform what is still the largest and richest economy in the world.

Both candidates favour a version of the proposed "cap and trade" scheme to slash US greenhouse gas emissions to 63 per cent below 2005 levels, at an estimated cost by 2030 of more than $600 billion a year - representing a cumulative loss to the US economy, within 22 years, of $4.8 trillion.

Although America is still dependent on coal for around half its electricity, with reserves estimated as likely to last 200 years, state after state is proposing to ban new coal-fired power stations.

Environmental groups, with powerful political support, are now lobbying equally fiercely against natural gas or any new nuclear power plants.

Most dramatic of all are the implications of a Supreme Court judgment in the case of Massachussets v the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which ruled by a single vote that the EPA must treat any greenhouse gases as "pollution", to be regulated under America's Clean Air Act.

The EPA is thus mandated to impose drastic new limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from pretty well any source, not just industry and transport but schools, hospitals, even lawn mowers.

The implications are so immense for almost every sector of the US economy that government departments -commerce, agriculture, energy and others - have been queuing up to protest, arguing that the effects of such regulation would be so damaging that it should be regarded as unthinkable.

But politicians of both parties, led by the two men vying for the presidency, are so carried away in the rush to appear "green" that it seems there is no longer any national voice powerful enough to question the sanity of such measures.

All the fashionable talk is of how fossil-fuels must be replaced by massively subsidised sources of "renewable" energy, such as vast arrays of solar panels, even though a recent study showed that a kilowatt hour of solar-generated electricity costs between 25 and 30 cents, compared with 6 cents for power generated from coal and 9 cents for that produced by natural gas.

What is terrifying is the extent to which America's leading politicians seem oblivious to the economic realities of what they are proposing. The readiness of Messrs McCain and Obama to posture in front of pictures of virtually useless wind turbines symbolises that attitude perfectly.

Here, in the EU we are only too sadly familiar with politicians floating off into cloudcuckooland over our future energy policy, with the virtual certainty that before many years this may leave us with a colossal shortfall in our electricity supplies.

But "the lights going out all over Europe" is one thing: if they go out in the richest economy in the world - while China cheerfully continues to build one new coal-fired power station a week - we may look back on the US presidential election of 2008 as a time when history really did reach a watershed; the moment when the nations of the West finally signed up to the most bizarre suicide note the world has ever seen.

Continued in article

Mixing tax hikes and trade protectionism could send the economy into a tailspin
History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy,
the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression.
Despite the rhetoric, that's not just on "rich" individuals. It's also on a lot of small businesses and two-earner middle-aged middle-class couples in their peak earnings years in high cost-of-living areas. (Obama's large increase in energy taxes, not documented here, would disproportionately harm low-income Americans. And, while he says he will not raise taxes on the middle class, he'll need many more tax hikes to pay for his big increase in spending.) . . . Now trade. In the primaries, Sen. Obama was famously protectionist, claiming he would rip up and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Since its passage (for which former President Bill Clinton ran a brave anchor leg, given opposition to trade liberalization in his party), Nafta has risen to almost mythological proportions as a metaphor for the alleged harm done by trade, globalization and the pace of technological change. Yet since Nafta was passed (relative to the comparable period before passage), U.S. manufacturing output grew more rapidly and reached an all-time high last year; the average unemployment rate declined as employment grew 24%; real hourly compensation in the business sector grew twice as fast as before; agricultural exports destined for Canada and Mexico have grown substantially and trade among the three nations has tripled; Mexican wages have risen each year since the peso crisis of 1994; and the two binational Nafta environmental institutions have provided nearly $1 billion for 135 environmental infrastructure projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy, the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression. While such a policy mix would be a real change, as philosophers remind us, change is not always progress.
Michael J. Boskin (Stanford University Economics Professor)," Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession," The Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121728762442091427.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

 Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

Stanford YouTube channel debuts --- http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/june18/youtube-061808.html

The university has drawn from departments and programs across campus and uploaded videos of classes, faculty interviews, panel discussions, seminars and other events in order to showcase the breadth and caliber of academic offerings at Stanford. By launching a channel on YouTube—the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos—the university is building upon its efforts to provide online access to free educational content for the Stanford community and greater public.

Stanford's Offerings on YouTube (turn you speakers on before clicking) --- http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Other universities (notably UC Berkeley) beat Stanford to YouTube. You can find the links to many of them at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Forwarded by my Good Friend Tom Robinson (Emeritus AIS Professor from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks)

"Family Emmons a hit in Beijing," NBC Olympics, August 15, 2008 ---
http://www.nbcolympics.com/shooting/news/newsid=216546.html#family+emmons+beijing

Parents all over America rely on the judgment of Joan Graves, '63. She heads the board that determines
the G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17 ratings for Hollywood's movies.

"As head of Hollywood’s movie ratings board, Joan Graves keeps parents in the know," Sonja Bolle, Stanford Magazine, July/August 2008 --- Click Here
Also at http://snipurl.com/bolle2008  [pgnet_stanford_edu] 

Remedial Education:  One of the Most Costly, Frustrating, and Low Success Endeavors in Higher Education

"Questioning the Value of Remedial Education," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/31/remedial

Remedial education is expensive and controversial — but is it effective?That’s the question that two education researchers have attempted to answer based on an analysis of nearly 100,000 community college students in Florida. The scholars — Juan Carlos Calcagno of the Community College Research Center, at Teachers College of Columbia University, and Bridget Long of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University — have decidedly mixed results to report. There is some positive impact of remedial education, they found, but it is limited. Their study has just been released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Florida is an ideal site for research on many education questions because the state has uniform requirements for community college students with regard to placement testing and remedial education — and the state also collects considerable data on what happens to students as they progress through higher education.

In looking at the impact of remedial education, the study found that — among those on the edge of needing remediation — being assigned to remedial math and reading courses has the effect on average of increasing the number of credits completed and the odds that students will return for a second year. But while those are important factors, the report finds no evidence that remedial education increases the completion of college-level credits or of degree completion.

“The results suggest that the costs of remediation should be given careful consideration in light of the limited benefits,” the authors write.

At the same time, however, they note that there are benefits to students and society of having people experience even one year of college, some of it remedial. Further, they note that if remedial education encourages early persistence, colleges may have the “opportunity to reach students with other types of programming and skill development” beyond that offered now. In terms of figuring out whether the trade-offs favor remedial programs, the authors say that there still isn’t enough evidence in, but that their study points to the need for more detailed analysis.

“More work is needed on the effects of remediation relative to its costs,” the authors say. The authors open their paper by noting that conservative estimates hold that public colleges spend $1 billion to $2 billion annually on remedial education — and that level of cost is sure to attract more scrutiny.

Jensen Comment
One of the most dysfunctional status symbols in the United States is a college degree. It's like you have to have a diploma or you're in a lower caste. I much prefer the German system in which only relatively small proportion of the populace completes a college education. But status is also attributed to skilled workers in the trades. Long and difficult apprenticeship programs make it difficult to become a master plumber, electrician, mechanic, bricklayer, etc. But these skilled workers have status and incomes commensurate with their worth. Up here in the mountains we have a regular UPS driver by the name of Joe. Joe has a BS in Finance from a major university, but he makes no pretense that he's any better than other UPS drivers who never went to college.  Some of them might have even had troubles with remedial courses if they had tried to go on to college. But they're darn good at their jobs or UPS would not keep them on from year to year. The same can be said for our police, firefighters, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.

The moral issue is to what degree society has an obligation to educate (not just train) all citizens who desire, for whatever reason, an education. The next question is who should pay for those who need remedial education before they can enter college degree programs. There are no easy answers here.

There also is the factor of socialization. Some students want to get into college for reasons other than education. Many college students meet their future spouses on campus. Is there a better selection to choose from on campus vis-a-vis on the job or in a bar after work?

Too Much Need for Remedial Education, Too Little Success --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#RemedialNeeds

Here's an unexpected way education pays
Mutual fund managers had significantly better returns on investments made in companies led by their former classmates than they did in companies where no such connections existed, according to a recent study. Indeed, investments in so-called “connected” stocks outperformed non-connected stocks by more than 8 percent, the study found.The findings are published in the bureau’s working paper, entitled
“The Small World of Investing: Board Communications and Mutual Fund Returns.”
Jack Stripling, "Another Way Education Pays," Inside Higher Ed, July 29, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/31/nber

Question
When does education become more and more like training (or education specialization at the wrong level)?
Undergraduate accounting programs probably have a worse problem with this than any other degree programs, including other business programs such as finance, marketing, and management. Accounting has more required courses in large measure due to the number of accounting courses required to sit for the CPA Examination.

"Pre-Med Education Must Be Compatible with Liberal Arts Ideals," by Timothy R. Austin, Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/07/31/austin

As we approach the second decade of the century, it is fair to ask what young medical doctors should know and where and when they should learn it. But amid calls for revisions to the undergraduate premedical curriculum, undergraduate colleges must guard against being co-opted as “farm clubs” for “big league” schools of medicine.In the American system of higher education, to paraphrase the opening of a popular television series, the task of educating and training tomorrow’s doctors is shared by two separate yet equally important institutions: baccalaureate colleges of arts and sciences and professional schools of medicine. And, as the ubiquitous use of the term “pre-med” implies, undergraduate educators have long accepted their responsibility to equip students who aspire to become physicians with the knowledge and skills essential for admission to medical school. It follows from this premise that changes in the scope and focus of medical school curricula will raise legitimate questions about the courses most appropriate for premed students.

This argument furnishes the starting point for a recent contribution by Jules L. Dienstag to the New England Journal of Medicine (“Relevance and Rigor in Premedical Education”). In his essay, Dienstag notes the demands placed on medical school faculties by an ever expanding range of “new scientific material” and deplores the “widely varied levels of science preparation” among first-year medical students. As a remedy, he proposes a radical reshaping of the pre-medical science curriculum and a corresponding revision of both the Medical College Admissions Test (or MCAT) and the criteria used by medical school admissions committees. By “refocusing” and “increasing [the] relevance” of the science courses pre-med students take, Dienstag argues, undergraduate institutions could better prepare graduates for professional school while simultaneously opening up additional space in the curriculum for “an expansive liberal arts education encompassing literature, languages, the arts, humanities, and social sciences.”

Dienstag’s prescription deserves serious consideration by faculty and administrators at baccalaureate and professional institutions alike. He offers valuable suggestions on a range of issues. But Dienstag naturally approaches this topic from his own perspective — that of the dean for medical education at Harvard Medical School. In advocating for changes that would address the challenges facing his own colleagues, he ignores (or at least passes too quickly over) complications and contradictions that those changes would create at undergraduate colleges.

Each entering class at any undergraduate institution contains many more students who express their firm intention to become medical doctors than will ever apply to a medical school, let alone gain admission. Some will learn in Chemistry 101 that their intellectual gifts are not those of a scientist. Others will be seduced by the excitement of laboratory research and pursue Ph.D. rather than M.D. degrees. Still others will surprise themselves (not to mention their parents) by discovering a passion for literature or archaeology, economics or music that overwhelms their earlier conviction about their destined career paths.

Such defections are scarcely surprising, given the limited knowledge and experience that high school students rely on as the basis for forming their views about possible life goals. But it is also important to recognize that many undergraduate institutions – liberal arts colleges in particular – actively encourage their students to remain intellectually curious and open to the full range of disciplines that they sponsor. “Pursue your passion,” we advise incoming first-year students at the College of the Holy Cross. “Find what excites and fulfills you and see where it may lead.” Tracking pre-med students into what Dienstag describes as a science curriculum with “a tighter focus on science that ‘matters’ to medicine” runs counter to this liberal arts ethos. While it might better prepare the minority of those students who will one day matriculate at a school of medicine, it could handicap those whose scientific interests point them toward industry or teaching and research. It could also restrict the breadth of the scientific education that non-science majors would take with them if later decisions led them towards majors in the humanities, arts or social sciences. And even for the small number of students who would in fact emerge from such a streamlined curriculum and enter medical school, one has to question the wisdom of targeting “biologically relevant” material at the expense of courses in topics as critical to the future of our planet as ecology and population genetics.

Another way of explaining the unease that some faculty members at liberal arts colleges may feel over Dienstag’s proposal is that it implies that the study of biology, chemistry, physics and statistics is undertaken as a means — and to one very particular end. The attitude we seek to foster in our students at liberal arts institutions, by contrast, is that one studies a discipline for what it reveals about the universe we inhabit and about what the mission statement at the College of the Holy Cross calls “basic human questions.” The knowledge and skills that one acquires in the process will be equally useful in one’s career and in one’s life outside the workplace and certainly do not limit who one may become, either professionally or personally.

There is no question that the combined eight-year premedical and medical school curriculum that has served us well for decades is coming under increasing pressure. With each year that passes, society expects more of its physicians; as Dienstag notes, we now demand that they be trained not only in medical science but also in “ethics, … listening skills, and skills relevant to health policy and economics.” Unless we are to extend the already long training period by another year, changes in what we teach and how we teach it are inevitable.

Dienstag urges those of us who teach undergraduates not to “shy away from the challenge” posed by this shifting environment. I suggest that the challenge we confront can not be addressed effectively without all parties being open to possible changes in the way they contribute to the process. More importantly, our colleagues in the professional schools must understand that the term “pre-med” designates a provisional career aspiration far more often than it does a firm commitment. Undergraduate students are by definition still learning about their world and seeking out their place in it, so our institutions serve their needs when we balance the importance of effective pre-professional preparation with the equally compelling need for curricular flexibility and disciplinary breadth.

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Cuil has demonstrated very well, it doesn't help you to look through the entire haystack
if it gets dumped on your head, and all you can see is a bunch of hay out there --- http://www.cuil.com/info/

"A Google Killer Stumbles Cuil's rough launch shows the difficulty of challenging major search engines," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, July 31, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21151/?nlid=1244&a=f

Boasting big plans, startup search engine Cuil (pronounced "cool") launched on Monday. The company sold itself on having indexed more pages than Google, ranking based on context rather than on popularity, and displaying results organized by concept within a beautiful user interface. There was just one problem: when the search engine launched, it didn't work very well.

Cuil's site was down intermittently throughout the day on Monday, and even when the site was up, it sometimes returned no results for common queries, or failed to produce the most relevant or up-to-date results. For example, as of Wednesday morning, searching Cuil for its own name returns nothing on the first results page that is related to the engine itself, in spite of the buckets of press it got this week.

"I've seen these sorts of things for all sorts of startups that get launched," says search-engine expert Danny Sullivan, who runs Search Engine Land. "You have issues with how it's displaying results; you have spam showing; you have a lot of duplicate results." But Cuil wasn't supposed to suffer from the common problems that all sorts of startups encounter. Its founders have impressive credentials: Anna Patterson and Russell Power both had major roles in building Google's large search index, and Tom Costello researched search architecture and relevance methods for Stanford University and IBM. On top of the company's talent, Cuil raised a reported $33 million in venture capital. "In many ways, Cuil was the exception," Sullivan says. "They were one of the few people or companies out there where you would say, 'Well, all right, I'd be dubious about anyone else, but if anyone's going to have a chance, you should have a chance.' But they didn't deliver, and I think that makes it even harder now for startups to come along."

One of Cuil's main selling points is the size of its index. Claiming to have indexed 120 billion Web pages, which it states is three times more than any other search engine, the company says, "Size matters because many people use the Internet to find information that is of interest to them, even if it's not popular." But Sullivan notes that relevance may be the most important quality of search. "When you come into the idea of size, that starts getting into the question of obscure search," he says. "The needle-in-the-haystack search sounds so very compelling--the idea that if you don't have a lot of pages, you can't search through the entire haystack. But, as Cuil has demonstrated very well, it doesn't help you to look through the entire haystack if it gets dumped on your head, and all you can see is a bunch of hay out there."

Investor Azeem Azhar, who incubated the startup search engine True Knowledge, notes that while it's useful to have a large base of knowledge, sometimes the sample that's selected matters more. "There are certain things that people expect to have, and there are certain facts that are more useful than others," he says. True Knowledge, which aims at the subset of searchers who are looking for answers to direct questions, is currently working on building up a database of relevant facts that can be used to answer questions such as, "Who was president when Barack Obama was a teenager?" The company hopes that by focusing on facts of broad interest, such as those relating to famous people and places, it will be useful to people even as it solicits responses for them by way of rounding out its database. When a user asks a question that the system can't answer, it returns, "If there are any answers, I couldn't find any"; invites the user to add to the database; and points to traditional search results.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I'm still upset that Cuil adds its own pictures to hits that have nothing whatsoever to do with the author or the documents. Jagdish is probably correct in saying that Cuil scans part of the document and tries to link a photo from its own archives that might possibly relate to content of the document. In this respect Cuil is doing a poor job picking relevant photographs. If I were a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim, I'd really be upset when Cuil added a bikini-clad porn star or an aardvark to my serious document about my religion. As for me I have a sense of humor, but I still contend that adding such useless pictures is a waste of bandwidth.

The theory is probably that, relative to text, a picture is worth a thousand words. But the wrong picture on a search hit relates to the wrong thousand words. And when it comes to searching, trying to search through a million photographs is certainly not as efficient as trying to search through a billion words for needles called "key words" or "search phrases." One can't search through a million pictures for such a thing as "FAS 133." It's pretty difficult to even sort a million faces for those with big noses. In Internet Explorer when I have a search page outcome listing 20 hits, I can quickly search the text on the page by hitting Edit, Find and typing in a search word. I cannot search the attached pictures for FAS 133. I suppose I could try to scan by eyesight for big noses. But what would this have to do with my search for FAS 133?

The only real answer to searching for needles in haystacks is indexing in a way that certain words in different terminologies (e.g., "cash" versus "money" versus "currency") or certain pictures (e.g., pictures with mountains) are given useful index magnets. More importantly, a good index system allows you to search for derivative financial instruments without getting millions of unwanted hits about mathematics derivatives or chemical derivatives.

We're already getting the highly useful index system for business financial reports. It's called XBRL --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL
Especially note the illustrations at http://www.tryxbrl.org/

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been trying for years to launch a more general indexing system called RDF but that has a long, long way to go --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineRDF

The Future of Search according to IBM --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#FutureOfSearch

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

Search by Logos
AllMyFaves --- http://www.allmyfaves.com/

Bob Jensen's Search Helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

Amazing New Facts About the Internet

I watched the history of computing in the 1990s on the History Channel on July 21, 2008 --- http://www.history.com/

Some facts mentioned concerning today in 2008 amazed me. I did not dig out independent verification of these facts.

• The amount of information on Internet servers now doubles every 12 hours.
  Jensen Comment
  For example we might soon have more barrels of information about oil on the Internet than barrels of oil underground. With stored information doubling every 12 hours this makes Google's ranking of "hits" in information searches all-powerful in guiding us to what we learn. I sure hope Google lives up to it's motto:   "Do no evil!" But even if it does no evil intentionally, any ranking of gazillions of documents provides different learning than other rankings of the same gazillions of documents. And the rankings of documents on a topic in English are bound to vary from rankings of documents on the same topics in Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, French, etc.
   
• There are over one billion users of the Internet worldwide. Although 70% of the people in the United States now use the Internet, the U.S. usage only ranks third among nations of the world at the present time.
   
• Google will not disclose the number of Internet servers currently in use for Google searches, but techies estimate that it's moving close to 500,000 high capacity servers. I don't know if this includes the amazing YouTube servers owned by Google, but I doubt it. I can't imagine the number of servers needed to serve up over a billion videos on YouTube. It takes about one gigabyte of storage just to store ten minutes of video compressed into a mpg format. The storage needed to serve up over a billion YouTube videos boggles my mind --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
   
• Japanese robotic toys became popular in the 1990s and often sold between $35 and $100 per toy. What amazed me is that they sold over 80 million of just one type of robot about the size of a teddy bear and just as fluffy. This particular toy had a built in dictionary of over 100 English words and gave the impression that it was learning English over time as a child spoke to the robotic toy. Our National Intelligence Agency, however, was so stupid that taking this toy into their DC building was banned for employees because the NIA thought the toy robot might overhear secrets. I suppose one could be customized to record conversations, so maybe the NIA was not so stupid, although as of late the Agency has not demonstrated that in knows enough to worry about.

Bob Jensen's threads on how to find Internet statistics are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
(Just scroll down a short bit)

We hear a lot about carbon footprints polluting the earth. We also have Internet servers polluting the earth.
Egads! I'm a big time polluter at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

"China says its population of Internet users rises to world No. 1 at 253 million," MIT's Technology Review, July 25, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/21132/?nlid=1233&a=f

China's booming Internet population has surpassed the United States to become the world's biggest, with 253 million people online despite government controls on Web use, according to government data reported Friday.

The latest figure on Web use at the end of June is a 56 percent increase from a year ago, the China Internet Network Information Center said. It said the share of the Chinese public using the Internet is still just 19.1 percent, leaving more room for rapid growth.

The United States had an estimated 223.1 million Internet users in June, according to Nielsen Online, a research firm. The Pew Internet and American Life Project puts U.S. online penetration at 71 percent.

"This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's No. 1," a CNNIC statement said.

The communist government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to Web sites deemed pornographic or subversive. Web surfers have been jailed for posting or e-mailing material that criticizes communist rule or is deemed a violation of vague national security laws.

Beijing blocks access to Web sites run by dissidents, human rights groups and some foreign news media. Web surfers were blocked from seeing Google Inc.'s YouTube and other foreign sites with video footage of anti-government protests in Tibet in March.

That same month, the government said it would shut down 25 Chinese video sites and punish 32 others for violating new rules against carrying content that is deemed pornographic, violent or a threat to national security.

In financial terms, China's market lags those of the United States, South Korea and other economies. But online commerce, video sharing and other businesses are growing rapidly and have raised millions of dollars from investors.

The commercial boom has produced success stories such as games site Tencent.com and search engine Baidu.com, which are competing with foreign rivals for local market share. Baidu said Thursday its profits in the latest quarter soared 87 percent over the year-earlier period to 265 million yuan ($38.6 million).

Total revenues for China's Internet companies soared to 40.5 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) in 2007, up 48.6 percent from the previous year, the research firm Analysys International reported this week. It said revenues should keep growing at an annual rate of at least 30 percent in coming years, reaching 137.5 billion yuan by 2010.

By contrast, U.S. online advertising revenues alone in 2007 were $21.2 billion (145.2 billion yuan), according to a report by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The research firm BDA China Ltd. says China's online population should keep growing by 18 percent annually, reaching 490 million by 2012 -- a number larger than the entire U.S. population.

Internet companies are looking forward to a new growth spurt once Chinese mobile phone carriers roll out third-generation, or 3G, technology that can support Web-surfing and other services. No date has been announced, but with more than 500 million mobile accounts, China has a vast pool of potential wireless Internet users.

China's Internet boom has gotten a boost from a sharp slowdown in demand for fixed-line phones as more customers opt for mobile service. Fixed-line carriers have responded by expanding into broadband Internet, Web-based cable television and other services. The CNNIC report Friday said that as a result, 214 million Chinese now have high-speed access.

Question
What states (the "Seven Sorry Sisters") in the U.S. have the most lax laws regarding diploma mills?

"Watching a Watchdog’s Words," by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, August 14, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/15/contreras

Alan Contreras is an increasing rarity these days: a knowledgeable public official who says what he thinks without worrying too much about whom he offends. That trait has him in a scrape over free speech with his superiors in Oregon’s state government. And while they backed away Thursday from the action that had most troubled him, Contreras isn’t backing down from the fight.

Contreras oversees the state’s Office of Degree Authorization, which decides which academic degrees and programs may be offered within Oregon’s boundaries. Through his position in that office, which is part of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission, Contreras has become a widely cited expert for policy makers and journalists, on issues such as diploma mills, accreditation, and state regulation of higher education. He also writes widely on those and other topics for general interest newspapers and higher education publications — including Inside Higher Ed.

Some of those writings rub people the wrong way. In a 2005 essay for Inside Higher Ed, for instance, Contreras characterized a group of states with comparatively lax laws and standards on governing low-quality degree providers as the “seven sorry sisters.” Other columns have questioned the utility of affirmative action and discouraged federal intervention in higher education. In his writings about higher education topics, Contreras scrupulously notes that his comments are his own, not the state’s.

Contreras’s writings and outspoken comments over the years have earned him his share of enemies, particularly among proprietors of unaccredited institutions that he strives to shut down. And while his wide-ranging opinion making has allowed some critics to write him off as a gadfly, he testifies as an expert before Congress and delivers keynote addresses at meetings of higher education accrediting associations.

Those writings have raised some hackles in Oregon. About a year ago, Contreras says, Bridget Burns, the appointed head of the Oregon Student Aid Commission, told Contreras that she wanted him to seek her approval before he did any outside writing that identified him as a state employee. Contreras balked, and after numerous discussions among commission officials in the months that followed, he says, he was told during his annual review last December that “they realized I had the right to do my writing,” Contreras says. “I thought it was all done.”

But this week, Contreras says he was contacted by several acquaintances who had received an annual survey that the commission does, as part of his annual review, to assess the quality of his and his office’s work. In addition to the usual two questions of the “how are we doing?” variety, as Contreras calls them, the survey that began circulating last week contained two new ones:

• “Alan occasionally writes opinion pieces in newspapers and professional journals. Do you have any concerns about a state employee expressing personal opinions in this way?”
• “Do Alan’s writings affect your perception of OSAC?”

Contreras says that several of those who contacted him asked him whether he was under fire from his superiors. The official of one institution that is involved in a case before him, he says, “asked if I was the victim of a witch hunt by my own agency.” One recipient of the survey, Michael B. Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who serves on an accreditation panel with Contreras and has appeared on conference panels with him, says he was surprised both to have been asked to assess Contreras and by the tenor of the questions.

“It’s not uncommon for people who work closely with someone to be asked to comment on his or her performance, but I have never seen it cast like this to people who are pretty far removed,” Goldstein says.

Contreras characterizes the commission’s inquiry as an attempt “to unconstitutionally interfere with my free speech rights under the Oregon Constitution,” which reads in part: “No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.” The commission’s inquiry, he says, “damaged my reputation with the people I work with” in and around Oregon. “It’s clear that it’s perceived out there as some show of ‘no confidence’ in me.”

Contreras says that he complained Wednesday to the staff of Gov. Ted Kulongoski about the commission’s actions, and that he had asked for Burns’s resignation. Kulongoski’s higher education aide could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

Public Employees’ Free Speech Rights

The legal situation surrounding the free speech rights of public employees is in a state of flux. A 2006 Supreme Court decision altered 35 years of settled jurisprudence by finding that when public employees make statements that relate to their official duties, “the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline,” as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion in Garcetti v. Ceballos. That ruling modified the court’s 1968 decision in Pickering v. Board of Education, which had mandated that public employees have a right to speak about matters of public concern that must be balanced against the government’s ability to operate effectively and efficiently.

Contreras acknowledges that, both legally (even under Oregon’s expansive constitutional provision) and otherwise, he might be on shaky ground if he “went around trashing” the Oregon Student Assistance Commission’s scholarship and other financial aid programs. “It would be completely inappropriate for me to go around saying that these programs are terrible programs and shouldn’t be supported,” he says.

But “99 percent of what I write doesn’t have to do with anything the agency is doing,” Contreras says. “So what if I said the University of Oregon’s affirmative action plan is awful, or that the level of academic planning in most colleges is insufficient. That is legitimate comment on public policy issues, and it is perfectly normal comment by a citizen.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on diploma mills are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill

Bob Jensen's threads on whistle blowing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing

Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

"New Book by Pollster John Zogby Says Online Education Is Rapidly Gaining Acceptance," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 12, 23008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3236&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

John Zogby, president & CEO of the polling company Zogby International, says that American students are quickly warming up to the idea of taking classes online, just as consumers have taken to the idea of renting movies via Netflix and buying microbrewed beer.

In a new book by Mr. Zogby released today, he said that polls show a sharp increase in acceptance of online education in the past year. For more on the story, see a free article in today’s Chronicle.

National surveys show that a majority of Americans think online universities offer a lower quality of education than do traditional institutions. But a prominent pollster, John Zogby, says in a book being released today that it won't be long before American society takes to distance education as warmly as it has embraced game-changing innovations like microbrewed beers, Flexcars, and "the simple miracle of Netflix."

The factor that will close that "enthusiasm gap" is the growing use of distance education by well-respected universities, Mr. Zogby predicts in the book, The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House).

The book, which is based on Zogby International polls and other studies, also touches on public attitudes toward politics, consumer habits, spirituality, and international affairs, and on what men and women really do want from each other. Mr. Zogby says polls detect signs of society's emerging resistance to big institutions, and its de-emphasis on things and places. "We're redefining geography and space," he says—and a widening acceptance of online education is part of the trend.

Today there is still a "cultural lag" between the public's desire for flexible ways to take college courses and what the most-established players offer, Mr. Zogby said in an interview with The Chronicle on Monday. "There's a sense that those who define the standard haven't caught on yet," he said.

But Mr. Zogby writes that polling by his organization shows that attitudes about online education are changing fast. His polling also points to other challenges that colleges will face as they race to serve a worldwise generation of 18-to-29-year-olds that Mr. Zogby calls "First Globals."

In one 2007 poll of more 5,000 adults, Zogby International found that 30 percent of respondents were taking or had taken an online course, and another 50 percent said they would consider taking one. He says the numbers might skew a little high because this poll was conducted online and the definition of an online course was broad, including certificate programs or training modules offered by employers.

Only 27 percent of respondents agreed that "online universities and colleges provide the same quality of education" as traditional institutions. Among those 18 to 24 years old, only 23 percent agreed.

An even greater proportion of those polled said it was their perception that employers and academic professionals thought more highly of traditional institutions than online ones.

Rapid Shift in Attitude

Yet in another national poll in December 2007, conducted for Excelsior College, 45 percent of the 1,004 adults surveyed believed "an online class carries the same value as a traditional-classroom class," and 43 percent of 1,545 chief executives and small-business owners agreed that a degree earned by distance learning "is as credible" as one from a traditional campus-based program.

Mr. Zogby said that differing attitudes in two polls within a year show that "the gap was closing"—and he said that wasn't as surprising as it might seem. As with changing perceptions about other cultural phenomena, "these paradigm shifts really are moving at lightning speed."

That, says Mr. Zogby, is why he writes about online universities in a chapter—"Dematerializing the Paradigm"—that discusses the rise of car-sharing companies like Flexcar (now merged with Zipcar), the emergence of Internet blogs as a source of news and information, and the popularity of microbrewed beer.

And while it may be true that microbrews and Zipcars, at least, are still very much niche products, Mr. Zogby says they are signs of transcendent change—just like the distance-education courses that are being offered by more and more institutions across the country. "When you add up all the niche products, it's a market unto itself," he says.

In the book, Mr. Zogby also highlights the emerging influence of the First Globals, whom his book calls "the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history." First Globals, he says, are more socially tolerant and internationally aware.

It is these First Globals, he writes, who are shaping what he says is nothing short of a "fundamental reorientation of the American character away from wanton consumption and toward a new global citizenry in an age of limited resources."

Higher education, he said in the interview, needs to take notice and adapt. These days, he said, students are much more likely to have experienced other cultures firsthand, either as tourists or because they have immigrated from someplace else. Whether college for them is a traditional complex of buildings or an interactive online message board, said Mr. Zogby, "there is a different student on campus."

"How to Be an Online Student and Survive in the Attempt," by Maria José Viñas, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 11, 2008 --- Click Here

The lives of many online college students are not easy. They have to combine jobs, house chores, family life and, on top of all that, do some actual studying. To help online students cope with this burden, a blog sponsored by Western Governors University offers survival tips.

The Online Student Survival Guide, a program that kicked off in May, is meant to give online students tips on adjusting to online learning and staying motivated throughout the courses, while balancing life and school. Following the famous Latin maxim “mens sana in corpore sano”, the bloggers also write posts on healthy eating—not only for the online students, but for their families, too.

Once again, the link to the Survival Guide is http://onlinestudentsurvival.com/

The Dark Side of Education Technology and Online Learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education are at the following sites:

• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#Motivations
   
• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
   
• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Cloud Computing --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Computing

"Google's Cloud Looms Large: How might expanding Google's cloud-computing service alter the digital world?," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, December 3, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19785/?nlid=701 

To know how you'll be using computers and the Internet in the coming years, it's instructive to consider the Google employee: most of his software and data--from pictures and videos, to presentations and e-mails--reside on the Web. This makes the digital stuff that's valuable to him equally accessible from his home computer, a public Internet café, or a Web-enabled phone. It also makes damage to a hard drive less important. Recently, Sam Schillace, the engineering director in charge of collaborate Web applications at Google, needed to reformat a defunct hard drive from a computer that he used for at least six hours a day. Reformatting, which completely erases all the data from a hard drive, would cause most people to panic, but it didn't bother Schillace. "There was nothing on it I cared about" that he couldn't find stored on the Web, he says.

Schillace's digital life, for the most part, exists on the Internet; he practices what is considered by many technology experts to be cloud computing. Google already lets people port some of their personal data to the Internet and use its Web-based software. Google Calendar organizes events, Picasa stores pictures, YouTube holds videos, Gmail stores e-mails, and Google Docs houses documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. But according to a Wall Street Journal story, the company is expected to do more than offer scattered puffs of cloud computing: it will launch a service next year that will let people store the contents of entire hard drives online. Google doesn't acknowledge the existence of such a service. In an official statement, the company says, "Storage is an important component of making Web apps fit easily into consumers' and business users' lives ... We're always listening to our users and looking for ways to update and improve our Web applications, including storage options, but we don't have anything to announce right now." Even so, many people in the industry believe that Google will pull together its disparate cloud-computing offerings under a larger umbrella service, and people are eager to understand the consequences of such a project.

To be sure, Google isn't the only company invested in online storage and cloud computing. There are other services today that offer a significant amount of space and software in the cloud. Amazon's Simple Storage Service, for instance, offers unlimited and inexpensive online storage ($0.15 per gigabyte per month). AOL provides a service called Xdrive with a capacity of 50 gigabytes for $9.95 per month (the first five gigabytes are free). And Microsoft offers Windows Live SkyDrive, currently with a one-gigabyte free storage limit.

But Google is better positioned than most to push cloud computing into the mainstream, says Thomas Vander Wal, founder of Infocloud Solutions, a cloud-computing consultancy. First, millions of people already use Google's online services and store data on its servers through its software. Second, Vander Wal says that the culture at Google enables his team to more easily tie together the pieces of cloud computing that today might seem a little scattered. He notes that Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple are also sitting atop huge stacks of people's personal information and a number of online applications, but there are barriers within each organization that could slow down the process of integrating these pieces. "It could be," says Vander Wal, "that Google pushes the edges again where everybody else has been stuck for a while."

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's Technology Glossary --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm

Question
What is authorship by "CrowdSourcing?"

"Management Professor Uses 'Crowdsourcing' to Write Textbook," by Jeffrey R. Young, Inside Higher Ed, August 15, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3248&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Charles Wankel is gathering hundreds of co-authors from around the world to write his latest textbook -- 926 of them in 90 countries, to be exact. Mr. Wankel is an associate professor of management at St. John's University, in New York. Each of his co-authors, most of whom are also management professors, will write or edit a small portion of the final text, which is slated to be published by Routledge. They're organizing the vast effort using a wiki that lets participants see and edit each other's contributions. Mr. Wankel is essentially asking the expected audience for the book to be part of its production, since he hopes that management professors around the world will end up using the text in their courses. He found his co-authors by searching social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn for members who were management professors -- and of course he invited colleagues he had met over the years. The practice has been called "crowdsourcing," a term coined by a Wired magazine writer to describe outsourcing a project to a large group using collaborative Internet technologies. The authors are practicing what they teach, too: The book's title is Management Through Collaboration: Teaming in a Networked World. Chapter editors and others who devote significant amounts of time to the project will get a cut of the royalties, says Mr. Wankel. And the hope is that authors will do more than just write -- they'll be asked to submit test questions, case studies, and even supplementary video clips. "If each of us does a YouTube video interview with a manager where we live in the language where we are, we'll have a 1,000 of them in 90 countries," says Mr. Wankel. "It's this kind of thing that the dinosaur books can't compete with."

Jensen Comment
There's a bit of moral hazard in textbook adoption when a large proportion of the 926 authors are inclined to adopt a textbook because they have written part of the book. Hopefully, most authors are not so inclined, but in years past accounting textbook publishers used a criterion of home university market share when selecting joint authors. These publishers would first consider the colleges having the largest numbers of students in a given course (such as basic accounting where large universities may have thousands of enrollments each year in basic accounting). Suppose Universities W, X, Y, and Z qualify in this regard. The publishers would seek out co-authors in those universities.

The moral hazard became so great that some accounting programs established policies against adopting basic accounting textbooks of faculty members.

There can of course be very legitimate personalized reasons for having each author write about his or her theory development --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/00overview/GreatMinds.htm

Jeff McNeill commented as follows on August 15, 2008:

Why even use a “traditional publisher”? Why not simply conceive of this effort as a wiki itself? We are still in the dark ages here ...

"Eight Life Changing Ideas from the Best Graduation Speakers,"  Online Education Articles, August 11, 2008 --- Click Here

Hi Robert,

Just a wanted to send you a link to an article I did that you and your mailing list/website might be interested. I got the idea for the article in part because an email you sent with some notes from P.J. O’Rourke. Thanks!

http://www.distance-education.org/Articles/Eight-Life-Changing-Ideas-from-the-Best-Graduation-Speakers-87.html 

Enjoy,

Ben Pfeiffer
Distance-Education.org
www.distance-education.org 

With over 50% of the American Accounting Association membership within five years of retirement age, this could not have come sooner.

U.S. Social Security Retirement Benefit Calculators --- http://www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator/

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

Question
Is college accountability stronger in Europe or the U.S.?

"On Accountability, Consider Bologna," by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, July 28, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/28/bologna

Impressed by American higher education’s embrace of accountability?

You shouldn’t be, according to a new policy brief on the Bologna Process from the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Written by Clifford Adelman, a senior associate at the institute, the document “contends that none of the major pronouncements on accountability in U.S. higher education that we have heard in the recent past – from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education to platitude pronouncements and wish lists for student learning from the higher education community — even begin to understand what accountability means.”

Meanwhile, Adelman contends that across the Atlantic, the nearly decade-old, 46-country higher education reform initiative known as the Bologna Process offers lessons for what real accountability – not “accountability light” – looks like. And out of Europe’s efforts to make colleges, continent-wide, “more compatible and comparable,” Adelman identifies a series of “reconstructive recommendations” for American higher education.

As the policy paper, entitled “Learning Accountability from Bologna: A Higher Education Policy Primer,” states, “[a]ccountability in higher education begins with the establishment of public definitions of degrees and criterion-referenced statements of academic performance so that when an institution awards a credential it can assert, with confidence: ‘This is what this degree represents, this is what the student did to earn the degree, and a warrantee has been issued on behalf of both institution and student.’”

“I want to be able to look at a degree like I’m looking through the window right now, and see what’s on the other side,” Adelman said in an interview Friday. “We can’t do that with U.S. degrees today.”

The policy paper starts with an explanation of Europe’s use of “qualifications frameworks,” defined as sets of learning outcomes and competencies that a student must demonstrate in order to receive a degree “at a specific level.” (“It is not a statement of objectives or goals. It is not a wish list. It is a performance criterion.") European nations have taken different approaches to developing qualifications frameworks that define common outcomes by degree level — and, it’s worth noting, only 7 of the 46 have completed the complex process so far. Of those that have, Ireland, for instance, created a 10-level framework, stretching “from kindergarten to doctorate.” The Netherlands tied the labor market into its framework, indicating, Adelman explained, which degrees qualify students for what sorts of jobs.

On this note, Adelman recommends that state higher education systems define common core learning outcomes for associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees, “ratcheting” up the outcomes at each interval. Asked Friday why states should take the lead on this front, Adelman pointed out they hold most of the control in American higher education. ("Keep the feds out!") Asked about the role of private colleges in this proposed process, he said, “They buy in if they want to.”

Drilling down to a disciplinary level, Adelman next describes efforts to establish a set of common reference points across European colleges through what’s called a “tuning” process. For the United States, he recommends that state authorities organize the various academic departments, in each discipline, to try out a statewide tuning process, which, he writes, is different than standardization and in fact “goes to great lengths to balance academic autonomy with the tools of transparency and comparability.”

“We all know that the flagship state university has more resources and faculty depth than regional institutions, and that one school can have faculty members with very distinct specializations who offer various aspects of a discipline that another school can’t do,” Adelman said Friday, by way of example. “But here if I say that all history majors in the state have to have a program that has time depth to it – that you can’t just major in 1850 to 1900, you’ve got to have a bigger range in history – there’s nothing wrong in everybody buying into that. Everybody can buy into that, whether you’re at the flagship state university or a regional institution. Then how you fill that out, how you execute it in your own program, is your own business.”

“The metaphor I use consistently for this,” he said of the Bologna Process and accountability more generally, “is they’re singing in the same key but not necessarily the same song.”

The report also recommends that the American system of awarding credit be changed to reflect the level of academic challenge of each course (with standardized levels defined in each state). “We give three credits for introduction to sports and three credits for neuro-psychology and pretend those things are equivalent. They’re not,” Adelman said.

It also recommends that American colleges design “degree supplements,” which, attached to the student’s diploma, would offer more extensive information on the content of the degree. Adelman recommends that the supplement include, among other items, the statement of purpose for the degree, a statement of how the student came to the institution (via high school or transfer, for instance), explanations of program requirements, and a title and description of a thesis or final project.

“All we know now is that if someone earned a degree, they earned 120 credits with 40 in the major and a 2.5 minimum GPA. It says nothing about anything else, “Adelman said.

“You learn what accountability means when you look at this loop that 46 countries in Europe have agreed to,” he continued. “And the loop starts with the qualifications frameworks in the degrees, then it goes to tuning in the disciplines, then the third step is the credit system, which is very different than ours, but it’s linked to student learning outcomes.”

“When you get to that diploma supplement at the end, it’s a warranty of everything that’s happened before it. And it’s really student-centered.”

“Learning Accountability from Bologna” is the second in the Institute for Higher Education Policy’s five-part series on Measuring Global Performance. The institute released a longer essay on the Bologna Process in May.

Bob Jensen's threads on college accountability are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Accountability

Question
Is Apple's MobileMe a good idea for you?

"Apple's MobileMe Is Far Too Flawed To Be Reliable," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2008; Page D1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121685869764279343.html

So it was a big deal when Apple announced a new service that, for $100 a year, would bring corporate-type synchronization of email, calendars and contacts to anyone. It was even better that Apple promised that the service, called MobileMe, would work on Windows computers as well as on the company's own Macintosh computers, iPhones and iPod Touch hand-helds. To top it off, Apple threw in 20 gigabytes of online storage, a suite of Web-based applications, the ability to synchronize browser bookmarks and an online photo gallery.

Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can't recommend it, at least not in its current state. It's a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises.

I am not referring to the launch glitches that plagued MobileMe earlier this month, such as servers that couldn't keep up with the traffic and email outages that, for some users, persist as I write this. Those were bad, but they have eased considerably. Apple already has apologized for them and is giving customers an extra 30 days on their subscriptions to make up for the poor start. The problems I am citing are systemic.

Here's how it's supposed to work. You subscribe to MobileMe and set up a new MobileMe email account, which can also suck in email from your current address. Your MobileMe email is pushed to your Windows computer using your choice of Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or the new Windows Mail program. It's also pushed to your Mac using the built-in Apple Mail program. And it shows up instantly on your iPhone in the phone's built-in email program.

Similarly, if you add, delete or change a calendar entry or a contact on any of the devices, the change automatically is reflected on all the others. In Windows, the MobileMe calendar shows up in Outlook, and the contacts can be viewed in Outlook, the Windows Address Book or Windows Contacts. On the Mac, the calendar and contacts appear in the built-in iCal and Address Book programs. On the iPhone, MobileMe uses the built-in Contacts and Calendar programs.

Bookmarks can be synchronized using either the Mac or Windows versions of Apple's Safari Web browser, or Internet Explorer 7 on Windows.

At the MobileMe Web site, using any computer, you can send and receive email via a Web-mail program, and view and edit your calendar and contacts. Changes made on the Web site instantly show up on your computers and your iPhone, and vice versa. Also at the MobileMe Web site, you can maintain a photo gallery and view your online file storage.

But in my tests, using two Macs, two Dell computers and two iPhones, I ran into problem after problem. One big issue is that while changes made on the Web site or the iPhone are instantly pushed to the computers, changes made on computers are only synced every 15 minutes, at best. Apple has admitted that this is a problem, and says it is working on it.

But there's more. The Web site was sluggish, and occasionally calendar entries wouldn't load at all. Sometimes, you have to manually refresh the Web pages to see changes made on your devices. And when I tried to open my Web-based file-storage page directly from the MobileMe control panel on Windows, I got an error message on both Dells.

My MobileMe calendar, which originated on a Mac, didn't flow into the main Outlook calendar, but appeared as a separate calendar in Outlook, which was visible only by changing settings. My address-book groups on the Mac, which are simply distribution lists, didn't show up as distribution lists in Outlook, but as separate address books, and they also weren't immediately visible. Apple blames Outlook quirks for these issues, but in my view, it should have overcome them.

Other problems abounded. On one occasion, my synced contacts on the iPhone appeared as names only, without any information. In general, synced contacts on the iPhone loaded slowly.

When my Apple Mail program used rules I had set up to automatically file certain emails into local folders instead of leaving them in the inbox, they simply disappeared from my MobileMe account on the iPhone and the Web site. Avoiding this requires a tedious editing of all your rules.

Twice, MobileMe was unable to sync my bookmarks at all, and when it did, their order was scrambled. When I synced contacts to my iPhone, my custom ringtones for particular contacts were lost and had to be reselected.

Apple patiently explained each of my problems, sometimes helping me with workarounds, sometimes claiming they were rare, other times saying that it was working on fixes.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#Technology

New Online PhD Program in Nursing

Jensen Comment
I have a friend who has a PhD in nursing. She's also a trauma nurse in a major medical center and a Colonel in the Army Reserves. She got her nursing PhD in a traditional manner from the University of Texas. From her I learned that doctoral degrees in nursing are infrequent relative to most other academic disciplines. Getting a nursing doctorate is less of a requirement for tenure in most nursing programs in part because they've not been required for tenure. I also suspect that defining a research niche for nursing is a bit difficult since there are so many overlapping medical research disciplines in medical and biological science.

Respectable online PhD programs in most any discipline are infrequent, although I mention a few of them at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm#CommercialPrograms
I know of no respectable doctoral program in accountancy.

Hence it surprised me somewhat that there would be an online PhD program for nursing --- http://www.convergemag.com/story.php?catid=422&storyid=107594

Capella University, an accredited, online university based in Minneapolis, announced a new PhD in education specialization in nursing education that aligns with the National League for Nursing (NLN) competencies.

Capella's new specialization was developed to help address the growing shortage of nursing faculty. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), U.S. nursing schools turned away more than 40,000 qualified applicants in 2007. Nearly three-fourths of the nursing schools surveyed cited faculty shortages as one of the reasons they could not accept all qualified applicants.

"Capella has launched this new nursing education specialization to help meet this important need," said Kimberly Spoor, Ph.D., who is faculty chair of Postsecondary and Adult Education for Capella's School of Education and will lead the university's nursing education faculty. "The lack of nursing faculty is an issue that is affecting our country's ability to educate enough registered nurses to meet the needs of our health care system. The AACN projects a shortfall of 340,000 nurses by the year 2020. The U.S. Department of Education has also identified nursing as an 'area of national need.'"

Applicants to the School of Education's Ph.D. nursing education specialization must have a current license as a registered nurse and a master's degree in nursing.

Click here for more of the latest news in education technology.

If a new new online PhD program is introduced for accountancy, it may well be that Capella University will be the first to offer such a degree that has a chance of being recognized (for hiring purposes) by AACSB-accredited colleges and universities. Note that the AACSB does not even accredit onsite doctoral programs and has not yet accredited any online undergraduate or masters online business programs that do not also have AACSB accreditation for their onsite programs. For example, quite a few major colleges like the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland have onsite AACSB-accredited business programs that by extrapolation apply to their own online business undergraduate and masters programs. But I do not know of any online business education program that has AACSB accreditation without first having such accreditation for an onsite program. I don't think there is even a process getting separate accreditation for the online portions of business education programs at such places as the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland.

Questions
Do schools like the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland have separate designations on the transcript whether a course like Principles of Accounting was taken onsite or online?

If a student earns an online accounting degree or MBA degree from the University of Wisconsin or the University of Maryland, do these universities even designate that the degree was earned online? Personally I doubt it, especially since some students my combine onsite courses with online courses such that it's almost impossible to designate a degree as being online versus onsite.

Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education programs are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Some great gadgets for travelers --- http://snipurl.com/travelgad  [www_computerworld_com] 
Link forwarded by Glen Gray

Calling all digital nomads -- you may not be wearing a dark suit, a tie and shiny shoes, but you're out there with at least a full day of work to get done. Chances are that, more times than not, your workspace is a table at Starbucks, a hotel lobby couch or a client's lunchroom. In other words, you labor where and when you can, without the kind of resources that a more office-bound employee can call upon.

As a result, your mobile gear has to be small, light and able to come through for you while making you look good. Regardless of whether it's a Wi-Fi smart phone, a solar-powered battery or a portable printer, it has to get the job done without making you work up a sweat. After all, appearance counts for a lot these days.

Here are a dozen great gadgets that no self-respecting digital nomad will want to be without.

Print shop to go

Printstik PS910

 

Printstik PS910
Click to view larger image

Forget about waiting at a Kinkos to print out that hard-copy report. Planon's Printstik PS910 is a go-anywhere print shop. At 1.5 pounds and powered by a lithium ion battery, the PS910 easily fits into a notebook bag, yet it can print from a smart phone, handheld or notebook, either through a USB cable or wirelessly via Bluetooth. The $300 printer uses thermal technology; a package of three rolls of thermal paper costs $25. It means that you only get monochrome documents, but if you need a quick sales letter, a map or a proposal, this could be just the thing.

Power central

Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger

 

Mini Surge Protector
Click to view larger image

So much work, so few power outlets -- it's the nomad's nightmare. Belkin's Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger turns a single AC outlet into three, delivering electricity to you and those around you (sharing that outlet may get you good karma, or even a free latte). It also provides a pair of USB ports for charging phones, handhelds or media players. At 6 ounces, the Mini Surge Protector is worth its weight in batteries, and it rotates so that it won't block the second outlet on the wall. The device costs $25, but is well worth it -- not the least because it carries a $75,000 warranty against damage from a power spike.

Clean machine

InvisibleShield

 

InvisibleShield
Click to view larger image

It may not be able to stop a coffee cup from tipping over, but Zagg's InvisibleShield keyboard cover can keep a spill from turning into a digital disaster. Made of an ultrathin plastic film, the type-through cover keeps liquids, dust and who knows what else out of your notebook's delicate keyboard. When it gets dirty, wipe it clean. The $35 cover has been precision-cut for a wide variety of notebooks and comes with a lifetime guarantee not to scratch or wear out.

Lean, green machines

Solio Magnesium Edition and Voltaic Backpack

 

Solio Magnesium
Click to view larger image

Why spend valuable work time searching in vain for an AC outlet when the sun can power your phone or other equipment? Solio's Magnesium portable solar charger has three photovoltaic solar panels that slide out to provide up to 8 watts of power. It's enough to provide 15 minutes of cell phone talk-time for every hour in the sun. Solio's Magnesium charger comes with a USB tip and a coupon for another iGo power tip of your choice. If you'd rather simply power your backpack, you can go green for $249 with Voltaic's solar backpack. It puts out 4 watts of juice, has its own battery and comes with 11 power tips so it's sure to fit your equipment.

Keeping secrets

Fellowes Monitor Filter

 

Fellowes Monitor Filter
Click to view larger image

The Fellowes Monitor Filter is essential equipment for digital nomads trying to keep a secret. Regardless of whether it's a spreadsheet for your company's upcoming IPO or the private portion of a friend's Facebook page, the filter will prevent those around you from seeing what's on your screen. Only those looking straight at the screen can see anything, so digital Peeping Toms peering sideways over your shoulder will see only black. Available for 12.1- to 15.4-in. displays, the filter costs about $35.

Write on

Pulse Smartpen

When recording a meeting and taking notes is not enough, Livescribe's Pulse Smartpen lets you do both by linking your handwritten notes to what was said live. The Pulse Smartpen can play back exactly what was said and when by pressing the pen to any place in your notes. The only catch is that you need to use one of Livescribe's special 100-page notebooks, which cost $20 for a four-pack. The $150 charcoal blue pen looks and feels good when held, weighs 1.3 ounces and can record up to 200 hours of meetings, brainstorming sessions and contact info. The software puts it all together, along with cool apps like a translator and transcription service, but it only works with Windows computers.

A good call

iPaq 910 Business Messenger

 

iPaq 910
Click to view larger image

HP's iPaq 910 Business Messenger may look like an ordinary smart phone with a screen on top and a thumb keyboard below for tapping out e-mails, quick memos and instant messages. But on top of calling and Web surfing over a 3G GSM quad-band mobile phone network, this 5.3-ounce smart phone can link with an 802.11b/g Wi-Fi network at a connected coffee shop or client's office. Other features include built-in Google Maps with Multimodal GPS navigation, mobile versions of various Microsoft apps and an alphanumeric QWERTY keyboard. An unlocked iPaq 910 handset costs about $500.

Make the connection

Ultimate Cable Kit and GearJuice

 

IOGear GearJuice
Click to view larger image

Never seem to have the right cable (or it's buried in the bottomless pit of your notebook bag)? Meritline's Ultimate Cable Kit ($26) can make the connection with retractable FireWire, USB, telephone and Ethernet cables and all the tips needed to plug just about any peripheral into your computer. It all fits into a black-padded travel case and comes with a travel mouse and headphones. For those who never seem to have the right AC adapter, IOGear's GearJuice ($40) can charge up just about any phone, anywhere. The kit includes a power adapter and seven tips that work with an assortment of popular cell phones, media players and handhelds, along with a 2,000 milli-amp hour battery; enough power for several extra hours of talk-time.

Biz flicks

Flip Mino

 

Flip Mino
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When it's time to pop a video clip into a presentation, onto your blog or up on YouTube, Pure Digital's Flip Mino does the trick. A mini mite of a camcorder, Mino weighs 3.3 ounces, but can capture a whole hour of TV-quality clips at 640-by-480 resolution video and 30 frames a second. For those in a hurry (and what digital nomad isn't?) the $180 Mino can transfer clips directly to online video services such as AOL Video, YouTube and myspacetv. And if you're really in a hurry, you can buy an "action mount" that lets you attach the camera to your handlebars or helmet. Pinching pennies? The Mino is actually the head of the Flip class. If you want to save a few bucks, you can opt for the slightly less sleek $150 Flip Ultra and the basic $130 Flip Video.

Quiet, please

Jawbone

 

Jawbone
Click to view larger image

Nomads need to work wherever and whenever they can, but the world is a noisy place. Aliph's Jawbone Bluetooth headset uses advanced digital signal processing technology to block out the racket going on around you and let your voice shine through on calls. It can't silence crying babies, traffic sounds or ringing phones, but at least with Jawbone, the people on the other end of the call won't hear them, making you sound better. Lighter and smaller than other headsets, the latest version of the $130 Jawbone weighs one-third of an ounce, yet it's stylish, with a leather-covered ear loop and a variety of finishes.

 

July 18, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

Thanks for the new gadget link Glen.
I snipped it to http://snipurl.com/travelgad  

I may order the InvisibleShield keyboard cover.
My wife says my keyboard should be quarantined --- along with my entire computer nest. I think she's like to put a shield around the entire mess with me inside.

I also will order the Mini Surge Protector.

Here's another gadget (a bit expensive) from a former tidbit:
"New Keyboard Saves Accountants Time," SmartPros, January 18, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x60437.xml   
The R-Tab Keyboard homepage is at http://www.r-tab.com/   

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology  

My favorite gadgets are external storage/backup devices --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#archiving
These are great for exchanging files between my computers as well  as for backing up files in case my main working computer crashes.

Community College Open-Textbook Project Gets Under Way
Especially note the open sharing sources being used

The Community College Open Textbook Project begins this week with a member meeting in California," by Catherine Rampell, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2008 --- Click Here

At the meeting, representatives of institutions around the country will start reviewing open-textbook models for “quality, usability, accessibility, and sustainability,” according to a news release. They will initially review four providers of free online educational resources: Connexions, run by Rice University; Flat World Knowledge, a commercial digital-textbook publisher that will begin offering free textbooks online next year; the University of California’s UC College Prep Online, which offers Advanced Placement and other courses online; and the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, which was founded by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and the League for Innovation in the Community College.

The open-textbook project was paid for by a $530,000 grant to the Foothill-De Anza Community College District from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Connexions at Rice University --- http://cnx.rice.edu/
"Really Open Source," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, July 29, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/07/29/open

Few projects in academe have attracted the attention and praise in recent years of OpenCourseWare, a program in which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is making all of its course materials available online — free — for anyone to use.

In the four years since MIT launched the effort, use of the courseware has skyrocketed, and several other universities have created similar programs, assembling material from their own courses.

With less fanfare than MIT, Rice University has also been promoting a model for free, shared information that could be used by faculty members and students anywhere in the world. But the Rice program — Connexions — is different in key respects. It is assembling material from professors (and high school teachers) from anywhere, it is offering free software tools in addition to course materials, and it is trying to reshape the way academe uses both peer review and publishing. The project also has hopes of becoming a major curricular tool at community colleges.

“I was just frustrated with the status quo,” says Richard G. Baraniuk, in explaining how he started Connexions in 1999. “Peer review is severely broken. Publishing takes too long and then books are too expensive,” he says. “This is about cutting out the middlemen and truly making information free.”

“I was just frustrated with the status quo,” says Richard G. Baraniuk, in explaining how he started Connexions in 1999. “Peer review is severely broken. Publishing takes too long and then books are too expensive,” he says. “This is about cutting out the middlemen and truly making information free.”

Baraniuk is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, so many of the initial modules (which can either be materials for a course, a lecture or any other organizational unit) were in engineering and were submitted by Rice professors. But as Connexions has grown (from 200 modules in its second year to 2,300), it has attracted content in many disciplines and from many scholars.

There are materials for courses on art history, birds, business and graphic design. Offerings are particularly strong in music. And participating professors come from institutions including Cornell, Indiana State and Ohio State Universities, and the Universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Wisconsin at Madison. Professors from outside the United States have also started to use the site — it offers materials from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of Cambridge.

Use of the materials has grown steadily — in May, more than 350,000 individuals used the site at some point, a mix of professors and students, about half of them on return visits.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen lists other free online textbooks in various disciplines, including accounting textbooks, cases, and free online tutorials, at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Bob Jensen's threads on free online tutorials in various academic disciplines are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials

Jensen Comment
There are various free online mathematics and statistics textbooks linked at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
(Scroll Down)

The history of Rice University's Connexions open sharing initiative is briefly described at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

"TextMeTV Is Either Future of Television or Beginning of Its End," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Late at night on a television station in Lansing, Michigan, a new kind of program tries to make the audience the main attraction. It's called TextMeTV, and it goes like this: One or two young hosts, some of them college students, sit on a couch and read text messages being sent in live from viewers, and those messages are also posted on a box in the corner of the screen. Sometimes the hosts encourage those texters to debate topics of the day, other times they offer free iPods or other prizes to viewers who can answer trivia questions. The show looks more like a YouTube page than a television show. Though moderators do edit the text messages that come in before they post them to the screen, the show is live with no tape delay, says Helena Kirby, a producer for the show and one of its 7 rotating hosts. "There's no swearing and no sexual talk -- we keep it pretty clean," she adds. Viewers pay a small fee per text message to participate. Ms. Kirby says the show's best moments have been when viewers sparred about race issues or politics. "People get fired up," she says. But this January the show -- which has been on since last year -- began focusing more on games and contests, like trivia challenges, than on debates. One entertainment blogger recently called the show "the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard," noting that the show seems empty of substance. But Ms. Kirby argues that it represents a revolutionary new format. "I think some people are just afraid of it -- that this new concept is going to do something big, and they don't want it to," she says. "I say, Out with the old, in the with the new." Amariee Woods, another host of the show who is a senior at Michigan State University, says that younger audiences want to participate, not just passively consume media. "People want to put their comments on everything, and the faster they can do that, the better." A similar show in Texas called Subtext, which features students from the University of Texas at Austin, uses a similar format but focuses on dating. The shows are essentially trying to turn television into something more like the Internet. In fact, the shows would probably work better as interactive Web pages where people could put aside their cell phones and interact with their computer keyboards. But then the show's producers would not be able to make a cut of the text-messaging fees, as they do now. Do younger viewers now see one-way broadcast television as dull? Or are these interactive shows a sign that media companies are trying to mix many kinds of media formats? Use your computer keyboard to let us know what you think.

 

TextMeTV (watch the video) --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Missing Attribution in Controversial Book

A think tank is today publishing allegations that a prominent, controversial book released by the University of Pennsylvania Press about terror networks has two key passages that are plagiarized. While saying that the allegations are overblown, the press director said via e-mail that future editions would have attribution for the passages.The allegations come from Public Eye, a publication of Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst for the group, makes the allegations as part of a broader critique of a much discussed book called Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Marc Sageman, the author and a counter-terrorism consultant, argues in the book that too much of a focus on al Qaeda misses the reality that terrorism has become decentralized, with various groups being inspired more than directly led by those who plotted the mass killings of 9/11. The book has received extensive press coverage and has been seen by many as significant.
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, July 28, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/28/leaderless

From the Financial Rounds Blog on July 28, 2008 --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

Is There Predictive Power In The Option-Implied Volatility Smirk?

Apparently, the answer is yes. Xiaoyan Zhang (of Cornell), Rui Zhao (of Blackrock Inc.), and Yuhang Xing (of Rice University) recently conducted a study titled "What Does Individual Option Volatility Smirk Tell Us about Future Equity Returns?" Here's their abstract (emphasis mine):

The shape of the volatility smirks has significant cross-sectional predictive power for future equity returns. Stocks exhibiting the steepest smirks in their traded options underperform stocks with the least pronounced volatility smirks in their options by around 15% per year on a risk-adjusted basis. This predictability persists for at least six months, and firms with steepest volatility smirks are those experiencing the worst earnings shocks in the following quarter. The results are consistent with the notion that informed traders with negative news prefer to buy out-of-the-money put options, and that the equity market is slow in incorporating the information embedded in volatility smirks.

Basically, they calculate the "volatility smirk" (the difference between the implied volatility for At-The-Money (ATM) calls and Out-of-The-Money (OTM) puts) for individual stocks. They then sort firms into portfolios based on deciles of the smirk, and compare returns for the various portfolios (or for "hedge portfolios" constructed by shorting the "high smirk" decile and going long the "low smirk" decile) . The logic for this approach is the hypothesis that informed traders with negative news will choose to buy OTM puts, thereby causing a divergence in the IV of the puts vs for the call.

All in all, a pretty cool paper showing how information flows across markets. Given some work I'm doing with options data, I found it to be particularly timely.
 

Read the paper (not free) at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1107464

Read about "The Sardonic Smirk" at http://econophysics.blogspot.com/2006/04/sardonic-smirk-volatility-smile-and.html

An important implication of a negatively skewed volatility smile is that way out-of-the-money puts had market valuations well beyond that predicted by Black-Scholes. There are two possible explanations for this. The first explanation is that Black-Scholes is correct and, thus, the market is incorrectly over-valuing these options. This line of thinking is probably wrong since most people concede based on mounting evidence -- not the least of which is the volatility smile itself -- that the simplistic Black-Scholes option valuation model is flawed.

The better explanation is offered by Emanuel Derman in pp. 227-228 of his book:

Anyone who was around on October 19, 1987 could easily guess why [low-strike puts are so relatively expensive]. Ever since that day when equity markets around the world plunged, investors remained constantly aware of the possibility of an instantaneous large jump down in the market, and were willing to pay up for protection. Out-of-the-money puts were the best and cheapest insurance. Like stable boys who shut the barn door after the horse bolted, investors who lived through the 1987 crash were now willing to pay up for future insurance against the risks they had previously suffered.

In other words, markets are doing what the theorists had not done: attempting to price in the possibility of catastrophic risk. Standard theories -- based on the framework of the Gaussian / 'Normal' probability distribution -- tended to underestimate the risk of the bottom falling out.

 

Lecture Capture Technology and Copyright Problems

July 28, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Another "hat" I wear is a beta tester for Techsmith.

They have just announced another new product called "Camtasia Relay Server" which is designed to facilitate the recording of lectures and surveys, primarily by non-techies and seamlessly upload that lecture to a web server, for rendering and serving up. See:

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasiarelay/sign-up/ 

My main concern - as I told Techsmith - is if the server is owned by the University, who owns the intellectual property rights to the professors' lectures??

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu 

 

July 28, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard,

Copyright ownership rights vary from college to college. Some universities (I think South Dakota) even own the copyright to books that faculty write and all lectures. Other universities lay no claims to faculty creations except in the case of funded grants that significantly draw upon university resources such as science and medical labs. Generally colleges are more aggressive with faculty patents than they are with copyrights, but this varies greatly.

The place to start is the Faculty Handbook in your college or university which in most instances is now online (access may be restricted to faculty and staff). You might also check the student handbook regarding student rights to captured lectures, exams, etc. As Jagdish once pointed out to us, it’s not necessary that a copyright be registered for the “owner” of intellectual property to have copyright rights. It is wise to intellectual property right policy section of every syllabus.

The big issue is when students capture professors’ lectures (in video or audio) and then serve them up on any server (including YouTube). I suspect faculty or college administrators can actually sue students but this would probably be advised only when financial or health damages such as mental breakdown are substantial. Problems of having students capture and serve up lectures are as follows:

1 This is a form of plagiarism, but the lecturer or college itself must actually find that the lecture has been plagiarized and is being made available on some server. This in itself is difficult because the piece may keep popping up. For example, the same video of a Barbara Streisand singing “America” might appear on a dozen or more YouTube URLs. If notice is given to YouTube to cancel one URL, the video may appear on three new URLs the same day. Back where I grew up we just say “you can’t keep a prairie dog from poppin’ up in another hole and another and another and another and another.”
 

2. When there is a copyright violation (in hard copy or online) standard procedure is to request that the person cease and desist from making the material available. Generally this alone will make the violator cease and desist. The problem, however, is that hundreds of other users of the material by now may have their own copies and may themselves serve it up like an entire prairie dog colony in a pasture.

There’s a great deal of information about copyright infringement (including on YouTube) at http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=copyright+violation&x=28&y=33

 

In terms of capturing lectures, Apple Corporation may give the Camtasia Relay Server a run for its money.

 

“Patent Filing Suggests Apple Is Exploring New Lecture-Capture Software,” by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3199/patent-filing-suggests-apple-is-exploring-new-lecture-capture-software

A patent application filed by an Apple employee details software that would capture video and slides from college lectures and automatically edit them into video podcasts.

The application, titled “Automatic Content Creation and Processing,” was unearthed this month by AppleInsider. The name on the patent application is Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. An Apple spokesman could not be reached for comment Monday, but the company is notoriously tight-lipped about products that are still in development.

Apple already runs a free service called iTunes U that helps colleges around the country manage online offerings, and several companies sell software that helps capture lecture video and slides as well. One unusual feature described in the new patent application, though, is the ability to determine automatically when to run video footage of the professor speaking and when to splice in images of lecture slides. As the patent application puts it, the software would determine “a time to switch the first and second streams from the event data.”

Many college officials are looking for easy ways to record large numbers of lectures and offer video or audio recordings to students. The goal is to capture and distribute lecture podcasts without requiring professors or other staff members to perform time-consuming editing or file management.

 

Bob Jensen's helpers on copyright issues are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright

Bob Jensen's video helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Question
Have you checked to see if some student or fraternity has posted your tests online?
Here's one place to look, but it's certainly not the only place to find your tests online.

"Test-Answer Site Removes Professors' Ability to Block Their Tests," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3169&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A Web site that invites students to post exam answers online for others to view, PostYourTest.com, has eliminated the ability of professors to request that tests from their courses be banned from the site.

Posting answers made some professors worry that students would use them to cheat on exams. Demir A. Oral, the operator of the site, told The Chronicle last week that he allowed professors to place their courses on a “Ban List” that would exclude their materials from the site. He said that 200 professors had made such requests and he had complied.

But a notice on the site now says “the Ban List is suspended.” It says that already-made ban requests will be honored. Professors must now wait for content to be posted before requesting removal, and submit a form stipulating that they own the copyright to the material and that their request meets requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Jensen Comment
One place to start when you want to see if one of your examinations is online is to see if it was "plagiarized?" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm

Questions
Will you read the fine print on the menu before you order your Whopper or Fish Sandwich?
More importantly will you lose 30 pounds because you read this fine print?

The argument for the New York City ordinance (listing restaurant menu item calories and other details) thus comes down to the argument for social experimentation generally: that it will yield valuable information about the effects of public interventions designed to alter life styles. I therefore favor the ordinance, though without great optimism that it will contribute significantly to a reduction in obesity.
Richard Posner, "Compelled Disclosure of Food Characteristics," The Becker-Posner Blog, July 27, 2008 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Requiring restaurants to post calorie content of foods will have a negligible effect on demand for these foods because, as I argue above, consumers are buying these foods not mainly because they are ignorant of the effects on weight, but because of cheapness, convenience, and taste. Banning fast food restaurants would have an effect by eliminating their convenience. Still, substitutes would develop, such as prepared foods in supermarkets, or fast foods served not in chains but in individually owned restaurants (hostility to food chains is also partly responsible for the growth of legislation against them). Maybe eventually some of these substitutes would be banned too. Such continuing extensions of the power of government are a very unattractive prospect. Given all the ineptitude in government regulation, as reflected for example in the regulation of Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae, and in other housing problems, I believe it is better to tolerate some mistakes by consumers in their choice of foods. Such additional regulation of fast foods will make people worse off in the long run as well as in the short run.
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, "Compelled Disclosure of Food Characteristics," The Becker-Posner Blog, July 27, 2008 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

From the Scout Report on August 8, 2008

ooVoo 1.7.1.35 --- http://www.oovoo.com/ 

If you are in London and you have colleagues in New London, Connecticut, what do you do? Well, you could try out this latest iteration of ooVoo for starters. ooVoo 1.7.1.35 is a video conferencing and chat tool that also allows users to record their video discussions and conversations. This latest version includes a higher-resolution video chat feature along with extensive support for social networking sites. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

---

Skype 3.8.0.144 --- http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/downloading/

International long-distance phone bills can be rather costly, and Scout Report readers who haven't given the Skype application a try may wish to do so now. This latest version allows users to conduct conference calls with as many as nine people and it also includes a browser plug-in that turns phone numbers on web pages into links that Skype can automatically dial. This version of Skype is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and XP.

Skype vs. Vonage --- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/skype-vonage3.htm

Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Education Tutorials

Learning Resources
Wisc-Online: Online Learning Object Repository (multimedia) --- http://www.wisc-online.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

Nature Online Video Streaming Archive (multimedia) --- http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/index.html

Pakistan Research Repository --- http://eprints.hec.gov.pk/

Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health (multimedia) --- http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/againsttheodds/index.cfm

Science and Technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/science.html

Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product (video) --- http://cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS/multiple_choice/site/?r=4-14-2008

Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science

Social Science and Economics Tutorials

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (multimedia) --- http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/

Exploring Race (multimedia) --- http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/

American Museum of Natural History: Division of Anthropology --- http://anthro.amnh.org/

Pakistan Research Repository --- http://eprints.hec.gov.pk/

MAPLight.org (for a better understanding of politics and legislation) --- http://www.maplight.org/

Christianity Missionary Archives
Internet Mission Photography Archive --- http://digarc.usc.edu/impa/controller/index.htm

British Museum: Power and Taboo: Sacred Objects from the Pacific http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/pacific/sacred_objects_of_the_pacific/power_and_taboo_sacred_ob.aspx 

Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

Law and Legal Studies

MAPLight.org (for a better understanding of politics and legislation) --- http://www.maplight.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law

Math and Statistics Tutorials

New Math (Tom Lehrer)--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a81YvrV7Vv8

Mathematics for Accounting Research (Tom Lehrer) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
(Watch until you are at or near the end of the video since it sort of has a false ending.)

"Open Textbook Meets Community Colleges," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Education, August 12, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/12/connexions

Proponents of the open textbook movement have long envisioned a world of free (or almost free) educational materials, available to print or download

For one popular textbook, at least, that vision is now a reality.

Connexions, a prominent online “open educational resources” hub based at Rice University, announced Monday that it has published a statistics textbook online that’s widely used in transfer-level community college courses. Officials at the site hope the zero-dollar price tag will help students deterred by ever-increasing textbook prices.

The book, Collaborative Statistics by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean, is not only available as a full download. The content between the covers has been sliced and diced into “modules,” Connexions’ basic building blocks, that any student or instructor can rearrange or adapt for their own use. Developers of the project also plan on adding videos of class lectures by Illowsky as well as other supplementary classroom materials, effectively uploading an entire course experience to the Web.

Rice’s announcement says it is “believed to be the first complete package of free textbook and course materials available online in the United States.” (That’s an assertion that might be challenged, especially if the course materials are in the public domain already, although most proponents of textbook reform would be pleased to see competing claims on this topic.)

“This is a big deal for community colleges because there are many students who can’t afford to go to school not necessarily because of tuition but because of the costs of textbooks and what have you … it really enhances their educational opportunities,” said Joel Thierstein, Connexions’ executive director.

He expects “close to 1,000 students in the fall” to be using the free version of the book in classes across the country. The text has been used for over a decade in California community colleges in courses accepted as transfer credits by the University of California system.

“We’re anticipating that this is just the very first step of a project to provide a similar concept in other disciplines to community college students for free as well, so this is a first step of many,” Thierstein added.

The authors first reacquired the rights to their book and published it themselves for a period, he said. More recently, the rights were transferred to Rice, which obtained them with backing from the Maxfield Foundation, which is chaired by an alumnus and trustee. Connexions, which since 1999 has been a major resource for educators to upload, share and collaborate on freely available class resources, now offers the textbook content online under a Creative Commons license. Readers can also opt for an on-demand printed version, priced at $31.95.

The textbook was published in coordination with the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, a group of colleges across the country started within the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in California.

Community College Open-Textbook Project Gets Under Way
Especially note the open sharing sources being used

The Community College Open Textbook Project begins this week with a member meeting in California," by Catherine Rampell, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2008 --- Click Here

At the meeting, representatives of institutions around the country will start reviewing open-textbook models for “quality, usability, accessibility, and sustainability,” according to a news release. They will initially review four providers of free online educational resources: Connexions, run by Rice University; Flat World Knowledge, a commercial digital-textbook publisher that will begin offering free textbooks online next year; the University of California’s UC College Prep Online, which offers Advanced Placement and other courses online; and the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, which was founded by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and the League for Innovation in the Community College.

The open-textbook project was paid for by a $530,000 grant to the Foothill-De Anza Community College District from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.