New York Times on Free Speech in China

On December 2, the New York Times published an editorial titled Yahoo Betrays Free Speech. The piece discussed how Yahoo helped the Chinese government find the identities of two Chinese journalists who both received ten years in jail for "disseminating pro-democracy writings".

Here's a quote from the editorial:

Yahoo’s collaboration is appalling, and Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people. Microsoft shut down a blogger at Beijing’s request. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft censor searches in China. Cisco Systems provided hardware used by Beijing to censor and monitor the Internet.

You may have seen the following YouTube piece on the Yahoo settlement (or something similar) last month:



I encourage you to read the New York Times editorial and watch the video clip - good classroom material for discussion from political, legal, business/financial and even technological (how do they do that?) perspectives.

One Laptop Per Child Update: Birmingham, Alabama

On Wednesday, Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford announced the city would be the first in the United States to provide OLPC computers to students in the public schools. 15,000 laptops will be purchased and distributed on April 15, 2008 to all city students in grades 1-8.

Here's a quote from the Birmingham News:

"Our students will have access to global thinking now," said Birmingham schools Superintendent Stan Mims. "It becomes a tipping point in the digital divide."

If one should become lost, stolen, etc the school system will have the ability to remotely disable the machine.

A Going Green and Disco Music Flashback

I'm working on a "Green" ICT blog series for next week. In the series I'll write about different IT and communications technologies that are reducing energy consumption and pollution. My research has brought back a lot of memories dating back, in some cases, to over 30 years ago. Here's a quick historical outline from my perspective:

Early to Mid-1970's - I was in high school in 1973 when the OPEC oil embargo started (for younger reader's reference - 1973 is just about when disco music became popular). I remember my parents turning down the thermostat (along with the radio) and waiting in line for hours to buy gasoline....... It wasn't all bad news though - it was an exciting time with lots of work being done in the area of energy conservation, alternative fuels, etc. New technologies were in rapid development and moved quickly into production. There was a major push towards fossil fuel alternatives like solar and and renewable fuel technologies. Many community colleges in the country were starting solar technology associate degree programs. Business, industry, education, government....... we were all engaged and focused on moving away from our dependence on foreign oil.

Fast forward a bit to to 1977 - The oil embargo had ended in the spring of 1974, disco was peaking (remember Saturday Night Fever?) and alternative energy businesses and technologies were still hot. Some close friends built an amazing home with a huge thermal mass, solar hot water panels and even a small photovoltaic array. The house was positioned to take maximum advantage of the winter New England sun (at the sacrifice of curb appeal) and was not built with an oil, gas or electric heating system.

The 1980's - Things had changed a bit since the late 1970's. Disco was dead, oil was relatively cheap and solar technology in particular, once so promising and exciting, had fallen off most of our radar screens..... As a result, many college solar technology degree programs were suspended due to lack of interest.

The 1990's and early 2000's - Things like energy conservation and pollution were not part of mainstream discussion and oil (for the most part) was still cheap and available. Low gas mileage SUV's (I admit I still have and drive one) became the rage..... My solar house friends considered "trading up" to a larger, less energy efficient home but decided to stay put. Disco was still dead.

Today - With the price of oil things have changed. On my way in to work today I listened to a broadcast on some new local construction. The woman designing the development was talking about orienting houses to take advantage of the sun and installing solar hot water systems..... she even mentioned photovoltaic arrays...... Wow - solar is back - can disco be far behind?:)

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UPDATE: December 8, 2007
Bruce, a reader from Massachusetts, sent along a picture of his beautiful super energy-efficient geodesic dome home. I've added his message and picture below (picture is clickable for a larger view).
Thanks Bruce!

Hello Gordon: Enjoyed reading your latest blog on "A Going Green and Disco Music". You mention how your friends built a house to maximize solar gain etc., it reminds me on how my wife and I build our house, inspired by Buckminster Fuller, a geodesic dome. Check it out.
Since I'm 50 I can remember first hand what the oil embargo's were like. There's a lot of us "greenies" out there!
Bruce F.

Open WiFi Access Point Concerns

Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed, in a 409 to 2 vote, the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act of 2007

If you currently have an open WiFi access point at home, own a business that provides open access, work at a college offering open wireless access, work at a library, etc you should be aware of this Bill. Here's the Bill Summary from the Library of Congress website:

Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act of 2007 or the SAFE Act of 2007 - Amends the federal criminal code to expand the reporting requirements of electronic communication and remote computing service providers (service providers) with respect to violations of child sexual exploitation and pornography laws. Requires such service providers, in reporting violations of such laws to the CyberTipline of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (Center) to provide:

(1) information on the Internet identity of a suspected sex offender, including the electronic mail address, website address, uniform resource locator, or other identifying information;

(2) the time child pornography was uploaded or discovered;

(3) geographic location information for the offender; and

(4) images of such child pornography.

Requires the Center to forward each report which it receives from a service provider to a designated law enforcement agency.
Requires service providers to preserve images of child pornography for evidentiary purposes.
Authorizes the Center to provide images of child pornography reported to its CyberTipline to service providers to enable such providers to stop further transmissions of of pornographic images.
Grants service providers and the Center immunity from civil claims or criminal charges for complying the requirements of this Act, except for certain intentional or reckless misconduct.

If somebody you know or don't know uses your open network to do something illegal you could be responsible. And..... it's not just WiFi providers that need to be concerned - email account providers, Website hosts, etc will also need to comply.

Initial fines could go as high as $150,000 with additional fines up to $300,000 for repeat offenders. The Bill now goes to the Senate.

The Kindle and The Sony: A Couple of Electronic Book Readers

[Here's a recent piece I wrote for my monthly technology column in La Prensa, a Western Massachusetts Latino newspaper. To read previous La Prensa technology columns go here.]

Amazon recently released a product called the Kindle, a 10.3 ounce electronic reader with a 6 inch grey-scale screen. The Kindle allows users to connect wirelessly and shop the Amazon Kindle store electronically – a computer is not required. According to Amazon, more than 90,000 books are available including 100 of the 112 current New York Times Best Sellers with most selling for $9.99 each. Newspapers are also available including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post along with top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes. Monthly subscriptions to newspapers cost between $5.99 to $14.99 per month and magazines typically cost from $1.25 to $3.49 per month.

The Kindle uses a cell phone data network and works just about everywhere your cell phone works. There are no monthly wireless bills – wireless charges are included in the cost of the content being downloaded. Users can also email documents and pictures to a Kindle. A Kindle is not cheap at $399 for the device.

Sony also has a product called the Sony Reader. The Sony Reader is a one-half inch thick e-book reader that weighs around 8 ounces. It holds about 80 books worth of content and has a rechargeable battery that lasts approximately 7,500 page turns. It has 64MB of internal memory and an additional memory card slot. The screen is very pleasant on the eyes, using a technology called e Ink® from E Ink Corporation. E Ink uses micro-capsules instead of the glowing LCD cells on computer screens that appear as black or white depending on the charge associated with page content. The Kindle uses the same E Ink screen technology. According to Sony: "The result is a reading experience that’s similar to paper - high contrast, high resolution, viewable in direct sunlight and at a nearly 180-degree angle, and requiring no power to maintain the image."

The Sony Reader requires a computer for book purchases and transferring files (via USB cable) to the Reader. The Sony Reader also displays documents, blogs, newsfeeds, and JPEG file pictures (like the Kindle - just black and white) and plays unsecured MP3 and AAC audio files through an external audio jack. Books are primarily purchased by users using Sony’s ebooks website. The Sony Reader is currently selling for around $300 on Amazon.

Back in September I wrote here about the weight of my two daughters book bags and the Sony Reader. In the September post I calculate both of my daughters Book Bag to Weight Ratio (BBWR).

I see great potential for ebook products, especially in our classrooms. If you also have children (or grandchildren or know children) in school you likely have concerns about the weight of books they are carrying around every day in their bookbags. An electronic reader like the Amazon or Sony products could be a perfect solution. However, I don’t think we’ll see widespread use in our classrooms until the price drops and a color screen is included.

UPDATE (12/6/07, 12:30PM): A buddy, John W., wrote to me this morning. Go to eBay and do a search on Kindle - check out those prices!

A Helicopter Parent at 30,000 Feet

According to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, the world record for helicopter altitude is 12,442 meters (approximately 40,820 feet) set by Jean Boulet in Aérodrome d'Istres, France on June 21, 2002. Boulet used a SA 315 Lama helicopter to set the record. The SA 315 is a specialized helicopter designed to fly at high altitudes - most helicopters max out below 20,000 feet.

What do helicopters have to do with parents? Helicopter parents are a little different and don't seem to be affected much by altitude. They're defined by many as parents who constantly hover over their children, stepping in whenever there is a problem at school or sports, music, etc. Speaking from experience - the ability to be constantly connected with our children (computers, cell phones, text messaging, email, etc) has made it extremely tempting for us parents to "hover" and our children to (perhaps) overly rely and depend on us parents.

What does 30,000 feet have to do with all this? A couple of weeks ago on a flight I sat next to an interesting guy right around my age. He had a Tablet PC, a scientific calculator and what looked like photocopied pages from a textbook. Being the nosey person I am I would steal a peek at his screen every once in a while as he flipped through the photocopied pages, wrote and erased equations on the Tablet PC and punched away on the calculator. I figured he was kind of old to be taking a course and thought he might be a teacher or professor. Then I realized he was erasing way too much to be faculty and seemed to be pretty frustrated with operating the calculator. His penmanship was beautiful - another tip he was likely not faculty or a student! :)

What did I do? Being curious - I saw my opening and made my move when I recognized the Snell's Law equation on the Tablet PC. Breaking the ice, I asked him if he was taking a course and was amazed at his response. He told me he was an "extremely successful" architect and he was helping his son out by doing his college physics homework. The kid was an undergraduate at a well know university, majoring in pre-med. He told me physics was a "useless" course that his son was required to take for his major. He also told me the kid needed to get a good grade in the class to get into medical school. Much of the work was homework/take-home type assignments and, again (he kept saying it), he was "just helping his kid out".

What exactly was he doing? He was hand writing the solutions on the Tablet PC using the electronic ink feature in Word. Saving the hand written assignments as Word documents, he would email them to his son who would then rewrite (he claimed) the assignments and pass them in to his professor.

He did not ask what kind of work I do and I did not offer. I did tell him I thought that what he was doing was cheating, not fair to the other students in the class, etc. He could not have cared less about my opinion.

How was he doing? I could see that all three of the problems he had completed were wrong - his answers made no sense. From what I could tell (those calculator symbols are small when you are trying to sneak a peek) he had the calculator in radian mode when it should have been in degree mode. I could see his blood pressure rising as he struggled with the calculator.

I did not say a word but would have loved to see the look on his face when Dad got his grade for that assignment back.

One Laptop Per Child - Holiday Giving

Back in September I wrote an update on the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), the brainchild of MIT Media Lab founder and Chairman Emeritus Nicholas Negroponte (who now also serves as chairman of OLPC).

One of the fundamental concepts of the OLPC project is to get computers into as many students hands as possible and let them tinker with them in an effort to stimulate and enhance creativity, like the educational toys many of us have bought for our children. The initial target cost for the laptops was $100 which was not acheivable - the current XO model runs for around $200 and uses a child friendly version of the Linux based open source operating system, built in low-power wireless networking, a display that can easily be seen in the day, a speaker and microphone and a pull cord for hand recharging. You may recall earlier prototypes had a hand crank for recharging. The first ones are being made by Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese computer manufacturer.

Since November 12th, OLPC has been offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. According to the OLPC website:

"For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving)."

If you do donate between now and December 31, your donated laptop will go to a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda in early 2008 and you will get your XO around the same time. Here's a 30 second video of actor Masi Oka (from the NBC show Heroes) describing the program:



You also may donate laptops via OLPC's Simply Give and Give Many options.

T Mobile has stepped up, offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access to all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program.

I've asked Santa for an XO - I cannot think of a better gift for this holiday season.