Unix users
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it's done.
---Scott Adams
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it's done.
---Scott Adams
A federal class action claims a suburban school district has been spying on students and families through the “indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students,” without the knowledge or consent of students or parents. The named plaintiffs say they learned that Big Brother was in their home when an assistant principal told their son that the school district knew he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district.” The families say the Lower Merion School District issued Webcam-equipped personal laptop computers to each of its approximately 1,800 high school students: in Harriton High School in Rosemont, and Lower Merion High School in Ardmore.
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“Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the school district, the webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.
The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low, newly disclosed tax data show. In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16. The figures came at the peak of the last economic cycle and show that widely published reports in major newspapers asserting that the richest Americans are losing relative ground and “becoming poorer” are not supported by the official income data. The long-term data show that under current tax and economic rules, the incomes of the top earners rise when the economy expands and contract during recessions, only to rise again. Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show. That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007.
How to have fun with the leftover Valentine chocolate Measure the speed of light using chocolate
from the wall street journal
Key Obama economic adviser Larry Summers coined a telling way to look at the current American economic state of play. He said the U.S. is experiencing a “statistical recovery and a human recession.” It is a phrase that should resonate through much of the industrial world, where high and long-standing unemployment is increasingly becoming a huge domestic political issue. Speaking on a panel at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Summers said one in five American men aged 25 to 54 are unemployed. He said given a “reasonable recovery,” that rate could improve to one in seven or one in eight. That still contrasts with a 95% employment rate for that group in the mid-1960s. He said the U.S. can gain from increased global integration, but if it is to be politically sustainable it “has to work for people.” That means job creation in the U.S. is a crucial issue.
Zappos insight talks with Dave Crenshaw the author of "The Myth of Multitasking"