DELL DOWN 17%
May 23rd, 2012Dell Inc. (DELL) 12.51 Down 2.57(17.04%) 10:49AM EDT
Splat.
Via: Reuters:
Shares of Dell Inc (DELL.O) fell 15 percent on Wednesday after a weak revenue forecast and disappointing quarterly results triggered stock price target cuts by a slew of brokerages on the world’s No. 3 personal computer maker.
Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight
May 23rd, 2012Via: Wired:
Sure, it took an extra year or so, but Northrop Grumman has finally penciled in the first flight of the giant surveillance airship it’s building for the U.S. Army. The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle — a football-field-size, helium-filled robot blimp fitted with sensors and data-links — should take to the air over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the first or second week of June.
And Now… Software Will Allow a Single Professor to Deliver, ‘Meaningful Education to Hundreds of Thousands of Students at Once’
May 23rd, 2012In ten or twenty years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the majority of paid work in companies, that is, work that isn’t done by machines, being done by these “certificate” holders. They’ll live in ever expanding slums, autonomously policed by RoboCops and drones. They’ll have fast Internet and there will be Superbowl commercials about how great all of it is.
—Top U.S. Colleges to Offer Free Classes Online
Via: Inside Higher Ed:
Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according to new research.
In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software — with reduced face time with instructors — did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.
The study comes at a time when “smart” teaching software is being increasingly included in conversations about redrawing the economics of higher education. Recent investments by high-profile universities in “massively open online courses,” or MOOCs, has elevated the notion that technology has reached a tipping point: with the right design, an online education platform, under the direction of a single professor, might be capable of delivering meaningful education to hundreds of thousands of students at once.
The new research from the nonprofit organization Ithaka was seeking to prove the viability of a less expansive application of “machine-guided learning” than the new MOOCs are attempting — though one that nevertheless could have real implications for the costs of higher education.
‘The Pentagon has a manual. Basically, it will only provide full cooperation to propaganda pieces.’
May 23rd, 2012Via: Vice:
…the past few years have seen an explosion of high-profile cooperation between the armed forces and the movie industry. If the most powerful armed force in history isn’t winning in reality, it certainly is on the big screen. And like so many problematic aspects of late capitalism, the military-Hollywood complex has a grimly understandable logic.
Leap Computer Interface
May 23rd, 2012Via: Leap:
More Facebook IPO Antics
May 23rd, 2012“There is often VERY strong voodoo at work…”
I don’t want to bore people with too many posts about this, but the stories are getting pretty interesting for being only a few days out from the IPO.
Here’s The Inside Story Of What Happened On The Facebook IPO:
The analysts cut their estimates because a Facebook executive who knew the business was weak told them to.
Put differently, the company basically pre-announced that its second quarter would fall short of analysts’ estimates. But it only told the underwriter analysts about this.
The information about the estimate cut was then verbally conveyed to sophisticated institutional investors who were considering buying Facebook stock, but not to smaller investors.
The estimate cut appears to have influenced the investment decisions of at least some institutional investors, dampening their appetite for Facebook stock, and crucially, affecting the price at which they were willing to buy Facebook stock.
As I described earlier, at best, this “selective disclosure” of the estimate cut is grossly unfair to investors who bought Facebook stock on the IPO (or at any time since) and didn’t know about it.
At worst, it’s a violation of securities laws.
—
This one is a keeper. Don’t try to drink your coffee while reading this. You risk keyboard and monitor damage from uncontrollable laughter.
Hedge Funder Who Bet $100 Million On The Facebook IPO Just Called And Boy Was He Furious:
So Friday closes, everybody is saying what the fuck, I don’t know if I sold or not.
Iraqi Military to Buy U.S. Drones to Monitor Oil Fields
May 22nd, 2012Via: The Hill:
American military drones are returning to the skies above Iraq more than five months after U.S. troops withdrew from the country.
But this time, the drones will be operated by members of the Iraqi navy and will provide overwatch for the country’s oil platforms off its southern coast, U.S. officials in Baghdad said Wednesday.
The deal being will cover the sale of roughly 12 of the U.S. Navy’s Scan Eagle unmanned drones, a State Department official told The Hill on Monday.
The drones will be equipped with surveillance packages that will allow the aircraft to conduct day and night missions, the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Priest Claims Missing Teenage Girl Had Been Kidnapped ‘For Sex Parties by a Gang Involving Vatican Police and Foreign Diplomats’
May 22nd, 2012Via: Telegraph:
A teenage girl whose disappearance in Rome has remained a mystery for 30 years was kidnapped for sex parties by a gang involving Vatican police and foreign diplomats, the Roman Catholic Church’s leading exorcist has claimed.
Father Gabriele Amorth, who was appointed by the late John Paul II as the Vatican’s chief exorcist and claims to have performed thousands of exorcisms, said Emanuela Orlandi was later murdered and her body disposed of.
In the latest twist in one of the Holy See’s most enduring mysteries, he said the 15-year-old schoolgirl was snatched from the streets of central Rome in the summer of 1983 and forced to take part in sex parties.
“This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were organised, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the ‘recruiter’ of the girls.
“The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up a victim of this circle,” Father Amorth, the honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists, told La Stampa newspaper.
The debate over who kidnapped Emanuela and what became of her has raged in Italy for three decades.
Secret, Emergency European Central Bank Aid Props Up Greek Banks
May 22nd, 2012Via: Financial Times:
There has been no official announcement. No terms or conditions have been disclosed. But Greece’s banking system is being propped up by an estimated €100 billion or so of emergency liquidity provided by the country’s central bank — approved secretly by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. If Greece were to leave the eurozone, the immediate cause might be an ECB decision to pull the plug.
Extensive use of “emergency liquidity assistance” (ELA) to help banks in the weakest economies has been one of the less-noticed features of the eurozone crisis. Separate from normal supplies of liquidity and meant originally as a temporary facility for national authorities to use when banks hit problems, ELA proved a lifesaver for the financial system Ireland and is now even more so in Greece. As such, it has given the ECB — which has ultimate control over the facility — considerable power to determine countries’ fates.
FBI Investigates Bomb Threat at Site of New NSA Data Center in Utah
May 22nd, 2012Via: AP:
The FBI is investigating a bomb threat that halted construction of a National Security Agency data center at Utah’s Camp Williams.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Dujanovic Bertram tells The Associated Press that agents are searching the site for anything suspicious.
Research Credit: KL
