Saturday, June 7, 2008
How Laptops in Education Can Help Dictators, Hurt Learning
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on worries that the OLPC's BitFrost security protocols could hand a ready-made surveillance system to controlling 3rd world governments. The laptops identify themselves regularly to a server that can disable individual machines reported stolen — a system that hands a government a kill switch for every unit. BitFrost also has the potential to have machines attach a unique ID to every internet transaction, helping out anyone wanting to track net internet use. A freely available paper from a recent USENIX conference spells out the concerns." Relatedly, an anonymous reader points out a story at Slate about a study which examined the impact that free PCs had on poor students in Romania, writing that "giving the kids machines without a corresponding level of parental supervision just resulted in distractions which ultimately damaged academic performance. By contrast, allowing children access to machines in a supervised setting, say an after school program via school labs, might mitigate some of the negative effects."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
Students seeking admission in first year junior college (and their parents) can breathe a sigh of relief. Now they will not have to go about...
-
Typography means a lot in any medium kind of presentation. Whether it’s a logo, banner or just a title; being able to inject creativity int...
-
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 2:10 PM PDT A leak on a Microsoft Web site referring to a product in the Office suite hints at a 2009 release for the...
No comments:
Post a Comment