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Disney, Ustream, SodaHead, Warner Bros., and a number of other websites are spying on kids’ Internet use, according to a lawsuit filed recently by a group of parents and their children. The suit accuses ad widget company Clearspring Technologies of enabling these sites to track kids all over the Internet, and not just on Clearspring partner sites, leaving them in violation of numerous federal and California state privacy laws.
According to the complaint, each of the Clearspring affiliates independently and knowingly authorized the company to track users, even on non-Clearspring affiliated sites. A Flash-based tracking cookie was allegedly installed by the affiliate sites without users’ knowledge, and would recreate itself by digging into the Flash storage bin for the same user information if deleted. Essentially, users who were trying to remain privacy-conscious by regularly deleting their cookies were not able to rid themselves of the cookies deposited by Clearspring.
From there, the defendants allegedly collected personally identifying information about their users in order to sell the data, which includes video viewing habits, gender, age, race, education level, geographic location, sexual preference, what the users like to read, home address, phone number, health condition, and more, says the lawsuit. The parents behind the lawsuit cited a recent study out of UC California-Berkeley about Flash Cookies and Privacy, which found that certain Flash cookies would respawn when deleted—without any notice to or consent from the user.
I delete all Flash cookies but I didn’t realize that some were able to “respawn.”
Is it really wise to antagonize the Good Lord? He has, according to the Scriptures, shown an occasional penchant for large-scale destruction.
So why would anyone, let alone a vast electronics retailer, wish to demand that one of his shepherds change his ways? In the case of Best Buy, it seems that the company decided that this one particular shepherd has a mission that steps onto its own hallowed ground.
Father Luke Strand, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is a man who believes that humor and advertising are vital components in ministering to his flock.
So he decked out his VW Beetle with a logo in black, white, and orange. The logo reads “God Squad.”
One can imagine that, in the often-dark and dreary lands of Wisconsin, this car raises both an eyebrow and a laugh. Unfortunately, it affected the eyebrows of the larger wigs at Best Buy.
Taken very literally, not all students are created equal—especially in their math learning skills, say Texas A&M University researchers who have found that not fully understanding the “equal sign” in a math problem could be a key to why U.S. students underperform their peers from other countries in math.
“About 70 percent of middle grades students in the United States exhibit misconceptions, but nearly none of the international students in Korea and China have a misunderstanding about the equal sign, and Turkish students exhibited far less incidence of the misconception than the U.S. students,” note Robert M. Capraro and Mary Capraro of the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M.
[…]
“The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,” Robert M. Capraro says. “The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and “less than” and “greater than” signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.”The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes. […] One cause of the problem might be the textbooks, the research shows.
The Texas A&M researchers examined textbooks in China and the United States and found “Chinese textbooks provided the best examples for students and that even the best U.S. textbooks, those sponsored by the National Science Foundation, were lacking relational examples about the equal sign.”
LINKS FIXED
This Episode’s Executive Producers: Sir Paul Couture, Matthew Moss, Carol Jordan, Dave in Vegas
Associate Excutive Producers: Robert Majors, Brian Kaufman, Mark Wilson
Knighthood: Dame Carol Jordan
How about Hustlers and Petrus?
Art By: Paul T.
Karma: friendsofcrowellhilaka.org
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Wow! Sort of makes you wonder about reincarnation.
Found by J.K. Davis.
Cop beats kid while he talks to his father on cell phone…also a cop. Full story here.
Over the weekend, President Obama did something that all American presidents are called upon to do. Defend the Constitution of the United States.
One of those tenets is Freedom of Religion. Not amend section A: popular religion [this week] only.
It’s how and why I feel free to tell folks I’m an atheist – or introduce someone in my family as a student of Buddhism – or note in the course of a conversation about San Antonito Chapel down the road that most of my neighbors are Catholics.
But, right-wing nutballs and the proto-fascists who infest the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party go crap out of their mind if Christian godliness and morality ain’t the only way endorsed to fly straight to heaven. Much less catch a tax break from the IRS.
So, combine all the hypocrisy into one big ball of cigar-snot and mealymouthed punditry – and you get this weekend’s tempest in a teabag.
Here’s a copy of the dangerous sedition uttered by Obama.
I’m not getting into cutting and pasting and commenting line-by-line because, frankly, it’s just the usual straight-up rhetoric required of any official who’s trying to explain our Constitution to people who don’t think it’s worth defending. The whole point of having a standard by which to govern a nation is that it is a standard to be upheld – not amended every time someone asks a hard question or a tough challenge comes along.
Our Founding Fathers realized that and fought and died for it. Now, because some terrorist gangsters come along and say our standards are worthless – a certain portion of our population is willing to prove them correct.
I wonder how much it cost Monsanto to get that “premature approval.” Apparently they didn’t spend enough on the judicial side of the government.
A federal judge ruled the premature approval of the genetically modified sugar beets from Monsanto by the government as unlawful.
Federal District Judge Jeffrey S. White said that the lack of any thorough risk assessment of the transgenic plants, as required by law, makes an approval for commercial cultivation impossible.
The environmental consequences of the sugar beets were not assessed adequately by the Agriculture Department, but an approval was given despite this violation of the National environmental Policy Act.
White, based in San Francisco, stated this already in a ruling in September 2009 and warned farmers to opt for conventional seeds. Apparently everyone ignored this earlier decision and warning, as 95 percent of all sugar beets planted in the U.S. are based on the genetically altered Monsanto seeds. The Agriculture Department “has already had more than sufficient time to take interim measures, but failed to act expediently,” White wrote.
The planting of these plants, which are resistant against the controversial herbicide Round-Up, also marketed by agro-industrial behemoth Monsanto, is now banned.
Found by Misanthropic Scott.
PCWorld
We are living in a geek’s paradise. We are so spoiled by our gadgets and the Internet that we expect everything to be automated, digitized, and customized, not to mention responsive to the swipe of a finger.
Technology has rewired our brains, altered our expectations, and, frankly, turned us all into cranks.
How do you know if this has happened to you? Look for the following 21 warning signs.
You know you’ve been spoiled rotten by technology when…
1. You no longer complain about how slow, buggy, and crash-prone your PC is. Instead you complain about how slow, buggy, and crash-prone your smartphone is. And now you’re doing it in the checkout line at the supermarket.
2. You automatically assume that every screen is a touchscreen, but you have to touch them all just to make absolutely sure. This explains why you’re no longer allowed to enter Best Buy.
3. Someone else is named Mayor of McFatty Burgers in Foursquare before you are, and you wind up depressed for a week. Don’t worry, you’re still King of the Dorks. Would you like fries with that, Your Highness?
Click here to see the rest of the 21.
Found by Cinàedh.
 No, not this pop tart
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The iconic toasted confection opened a flagship store and cafe in Times Square Tuesday.
According to the New York Times, Kellogg’s, the company that has made Pop-Tarts since the late 1960s, is renting a 3,200-square-foot space until January, at which point they will consider whether New York needs a permanent tart-aria.
What’s on the menu at the new outpost?
According to the New York Times, the menu includes:
1. Fluffer Butter, marshmallow spread sandwiched between two Pop-Tarts frosted fudge pastries
2. Sticky Cinna Munchies, cinnamon rolls topped with cream-cheese icing and chunks of Pop-Tarts cinnamon-roll variety
3. Ants on a Log: celery, peanut butter and chunks of the Wild Grape version
4. Pop-Tarts Sushi, three kinds of Pop-Tarts minced and then wrapped in a fruit roll-up.Kellogg’s is still getting back to us on the calorie counts for the new items, but you can get a sense of things from a standard blueberry pop-tart which contains 210 calories and 5 grams of fat.
The perfect compliment to a meal of Hot Pockets.
 
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Whitney Gollinger, marketing chief for a Manhattan condo building with an outdoor movie theater and panoramic city views, is highlighting a different amenity to spur sales: the financial backing of the federal government.
The Federal Housing Administration agreed in March to insure mortgages for apartments at the 98-unit Gramercy Park development, known as Tempo. That enables buyers to make a down payment of as little as 3.5 percent in a building where apartments are listed at $820,000 to $3 million. “It’s a government seal of approval,” said Gollinger, a director at the Developments Group of New York-based brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “We need as many sales tools as we can have these days, and it’s one more tool.”
The FHA, created in 1934 to make homeownership attainable for low- to moderate-income Americans, is now providing a lifeline to new Manhattan luxury condominiums after sales stalled. Buildings featuring pet spas, concierges and rooftop lounges are applying for agency backing to unlock bank financing for purchasers. The FHA guarantees that if a homebuyer defaults on his mortgage, the agency will pay it. At least nine Manhattan condo developments south of 96th Street have sought approval for FHA backing since the agency loosened its financing rules in December, according to a database of applications maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, the government comes through with another gem.
If marijuana was legal for adults in California, would more people show up at work high? And how would that change the definition of a “smoke break” during work hours?
That’s the latest issue facing proponents of Proposition 19, the ballot measure that would make marijuana legal for adults in California.
Voters will have a chance in November to decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes for adults over 21 but the political debate over the controversial issue has been heating up for quite some time. The latest argument against the ballot measure is that given the legal freedom to smoke pot, people will be high at work.
The California Chamber of Commerce on Thursday released a legal analysis that claims Proposition 19 would lead to more workplace accidents by forcing employers to let workers smoke pot on the job. The analysis by the non-profit group also challenges the proposed law by claiming it would make California companies ineligible for federal contracts because employers could not guarantee a drug-free workplace.
A ridiculous argument for obvious reasons. Along with a ban on alcohol use at work, individual employers will enforce the same with marijuana. Problem solved…no study necessary, the advice is free.
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