Netizen

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Online Courses And The Global South

Juan Lindo, president of El Salvador, 1841-42 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before I came to America for college, after high school, I had rented a room not far from the largest library in Nepal. I liked to read. One of the things I noticed at the library was there were all these chemistry journals from decades back. I had some idea of how fast knowledge changed and new research happened. I was flabbergasted that there were Masters students writing their thesis papers based on journal articles from 30 years ago that would not stand global level scrutiny. But it was happening. I had read somewhere, different countries live in different centuries.

Taking journals online, taking world class courses online fundamentally changes things. This below is a welcome report.

Online Courses Put Pressure on Universities in Poorer Nations

edX, the $60 million collaboration between MIT and Harvard to stream “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, over the Web. ..... The University of El Salvador, located in San Salvador, is the only public university in the country. It spends $60 million a year to teach 50,000 students, and its budget is so limited that it can only accept about one-third of applicants. (By comparison, the University of Michigan, which has a similar number of students, spends $1.6 billion on its core academic mission, not including sports teams, dorms, and hospitals.) Protests over the shortage of spots regularly shut down the campus. Semesters don't end on time. The university doesn't appear in international rankings. ..... within 50 years there might only be 10 universities still “delivering” higher education. ...... One problem is out-of-date coursework. Martinez says computer science is still taught using the waterfall model, a programming approach that dates to the punch-card era. “A computer science student here spends the first six months doing flow diagrams, because that’s how we did it in the 1970s in El Salvador when we didn’t have any computers to work on,” he says. MOOCs, by contrast, are teaching a new technique known as agile software development in classes like edX’s CS169.1, which focuses on how Web-based programs such as Gmail are created.

$299 For Phone, Then $30 A Month

And I am thinking this is almost Republic Wireless territory. Granted there is no unlimited talking, but I guess the trick is to use the unlimited data to use your Google Voice app. I have been using Google Voice as my primary phone for years now. It is free. The quality is great. And it is really smart. The integration to my Gmail account is unbeatable. Otherwise I get anxious giving out my regular phone number. My Google Voice is a much cleaner experience. I like my address book in the cloud.

The Republic Wireless price experience with the sexiest phone experience, you can't beat that.

Republic Wireless' $19 Feast
Nexus 4: Sold Out
Nexus 4: My First Smartphone
The Nexus 4 Phone
Nexus 4 At $299: Really?

Nexus 4 is sold out. And the T-Mobile pre-paid SIM card that makes the $30 a month plan possible is also sold out. Interesting. Looks like a lot of people are going for this.

Google's Nexus 4: Understanding your carrier options

If you can manage with a low pool of monthly minutes (and with free Google services, it's more feasible than you'd think), T-Mobile Monthly 4G is about as cheap as you can get for smartphone service. The company's marquee prepaid plan -- which I use myself -- is $30 a month for 100 anytime minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited data (with the first 5GB per month at 4G HSPA+ speeds). .......... Straight Talk is a Wal-Mart-affiliated provider that offers service on your choice of AT&T's or T-Mobile's network. Its best plan is $45 a month for unlimited minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited data

How free Google services can help shrink your phone bill

trim back your monthly minutes -- and that doesn't mean you have to talk any less ...... The only number I give out to people these days is my Google Voice number ...... a fee-free VoIP phone line for your home and/or office. No hassle, no bills, and -- at least in my experience -- landline-like call quality. ..... As long as I'm at home, my actual cell phone never rings and I never use any cellular minutes. ........ a VoIP calling app for my Android phone ..... GrooVe IP lets you use the free Google calling service right from your smartphone; instead of using cellular minutes, you place calls over Wi-Fi or your 3G/4G data connection

How free Google services can help shrink your phone bill
Why I'm ditching the Verizon Galaxy Nexus

Nexus 4: Sold Out

The hard part is there is no word from Google when it will be available again. There is a part of me that believes this was a marketing gimmick on the part of Google. This sold out in an hour thing was deliberate. Because if it was not then there might not be a Nexus 4 for me this holiday season.

If this selling out in an hour was unplanned and unexpected there might not be enough time to produce enough to meet the demand of the holiday season. I find it hard to imagine that is the case. You can't build as many as people can buy? Come on.

Nexus 4: My First Smartphone

Google Nexus 4 sells out within an hour in US, UK

According to reports from the UK, the 8 GB Nexus 4 disappeared from digital shelves within 15 minutes of launch ..... in the US, consumers apparently ran through the entire Nexus 4 supply – the 8 GB and 16 GB models – in an hour. ..... Google said more phones were on the way. ..... "There’s been so much interest for the Nexus lineup that we’ve sold out of some of our initial stock in a few countries," Google reps wrote. "We are working hard to add more Nexus devices to Google Play in the coming weeks to keep up with the high demand." ..... It's worth noting, of course, that Google has not revealed exactly how many Nexus 4 smartphones it had on hand. ...... the Nexus 4 is a beautiful, powerful phone – a worthy rival to the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III, the two devices that dominate the smart phone market today. ..... "What once was a smartphone series designed for developers has been decked out with top-notch features and priced so attractively that consumers will take notice of it; there's nothing comparable that comes close to it in that price range" ..... "This is a smartphone that we'd normally expect to be much more expensive unlocked, but Google set a precedent by lowering the cost of the Galaxy Nexus, keeping the Nexus 7 [tablet] at $200 and is now continuing the trend with the Nexus 4. The price of freedom has never been more reasonable."

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The Surveillance State

FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation

The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment - monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series, reported: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." ...... And the Obama administration has spent the last four years aggressively seeking to expand that Surveillance State, including by agitating for Congressional action to amend the Patriot Act to include Internet and browsing data among the records obtainable by the FBI without court approval and demanding legislation requiring that all Internet communications contain a government "backdoor" of surveillance. ....... what is most disturbing about the whole Petraeus scandal is not the sexual activities that it revealed, but the wildly out-of-control government surveillance powers which enabled these revelations. What requires investigation here is not Petraeus and Allen and their various sexual partners but the FBI and the whole sprawling, unaccountable surveillance system that has been built.