L2

Taxing Tobacco

Tobacco companies are avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxes by altering categories. Please refer to following link for further information:

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/tobacco-companies-using-l_n_360...

 

Doesn't it look similar to "potato chips" case? (reading for L2)

 

- Dhawal

Prop C: [insert name of highest bidder here] Park

On Tuesday, San Francisco voters approved Proposition C, which repeals 2004's Proposition H, a measure that banned the city from selling the naming rights to Candlestick Park. Prop H made it so that Candlestick would stay Candlestick—no 3Com, Monster, etc. But Prop C undoes that. It's interesting that the city's attitude changed so drastically in 5 years. Why are San Franciscans willing to give up a name now that they fought for five years ago? The recession?

There Are Now 100,000 Apps for That

As if organising information wasn't enough, we will now need to organise all the applications that deal with information!?! hah!

The article talks about how "Apple is outpacing competitors in the mobile apps arms race: There are roughly 10,000 applications available for Android-powered smartphones and around 300 for the Palm Pre." And yeah, there are over 100,000 apps available at the App Store !

What's in Name? Latent Discrimination, Study Says

A recent study in Germany suggests that non-traditional first names are correlated with poor academic performances and bad behavior.

Surprisingly, at least for Americans, is the particularly poor performance associated with the name "Kevin". I've known some bad Jeffs, and even a few sketchy Erics, but Kevin? This guy?

Kevin Arnold

Interop Challenges with Humans

Was calling in a prescription refill this morning, got the doctor's answering service (not the office). I could hear typing while I left my info, and checked that they were in fact using a computer-based message-taking-and-delivering system -- though I'm sure there's an actual term for that sort of thing. They took my name, phone #, doctor's name, other info, but said they could not take the name of the Rx itself.

Tyler Cowen: “Smart people are doing wonderful things.”

In the essay "Three Tweets for the Web" for the Wilson Center's Wilson Quarterly, Tyler Cowen considers how the web has truncated our cultural output and our attention spans. One example he gives is how the LP has become the iTunes single. He argues that the way we pull together our personal information streams from the vast array of resources, both online and offline, is a unique expression of who we are.

Peeping Tom threatens legal action against his victims

In St. Catharines, Canada, Patricia Marshall and her two daughters (ages 18,19) suspected they had a peeping tom looking into their windows and they felt unsafe.  Marshall installed a video surveillance camera outside on her backyard, and a few days later, their 19-year old neighbor James Cedar was caught on videotape... They pressed charges.

Facebook allows residents of Golan Heights to specify Israel *or* Syria as parent country.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/21/israel.syria.facebook/index.html

Perfect example of the name matching problem discussed in Lecture 7. Strangely, I'm not even able to pull up Golan Heights (Israel or Syria) on the US Facebook site.

Netflix's next contest for movie predictions

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/netflix-awards-1-million-prize-and-starts-a-new-contest/?hp

Looks like Netflix's next contest has contestants designing an algorithm that can can accurately model a more accurate 'taste profile' of movie preferences when factoring in demographic & behavioral data (as well as the traditional genre and previously viewed ratings).

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