A New Kind Of Teacher

Sal Khan in his walk-in closet office.

            Sal Khan, no it's not a place, it's a man. He is a man that has done something free for the world. Sal Khan runs Khan Academy. He's started a school, for free. That's right, free education. He quit his job as a Hedge-fund manager and decided to take his Harvard MBA and throw it out the window. Now, he teaches out of his walk-in closet for free. He has put together a very comprehensive list of video tutorials for virtually every subject. He's even gotten recognition from Bill Gates (Gates being a student). Check out this video praise from Gates at Ideas Festival 2010.

           Khan's videos never shows his face and you only hear his voice. His videos are done with just a few hundred dollars worth of video equipment and a electronic blackboard. With subjects ranging from The Atom to The 4-part French Revolution study. Khan has brought something to the internet that we as a society have needed for a long time, free legitimate education. His lessons are straight forward and very layman. His videos are almost done in a conversational manner.Bottom line go to his site www.khanacademy.org and further your education, it seems there are no more excuses for not going back to school. If your already in school, go to the site and *presto* free tutor.

ENJOY!

The Battles on the High Seas of the Internet!!

Even though my chosen article (click to view) for today is old, I encourage you to read it along with another Court Document (click for link) if you have the time.

Now, assuming you read the article, let me fast forward 3 years. Isohunt is the prominent search engine for torrents cached through out the internet. There site, due to a 4/2010 court order, have stupefied their site for the American user making it useless as a tool and instead of the safe sound nature of the website that we knew and loved (which allowed viewers to leave comments about their selected files) it has become less of a pirate playground and more of a virus wellspring for legitimate users. I'm not saying I'm innocent, when NAPSTER first came out in the late 90's we were ALL guilty, before we even knew it was wrong.

So, now with admitted guilt, I ask should we all be punished? Isohunt, in my opinion, was a witch hunt. A very unsuccessful one. They did not host the Illegal torrents, anyone who knows anything about torrenting knows the site did not contain any illegal data. For those of you that don't know, torrents are files that you can download, typically very small (256kb). When downloaded you can open the torrent with a Torrent Client and it will connect you to hundreds of other peoples computers and download from them.

So, the courts ultimatum? Filter your search terms. Great! Ohh wait, if we filter out every copyrighted source known to man what words are we allowed to search for? IsoHunt said NO! Now we can't see them in their full glory anymore (they do offer a "lite" version for us U.S. users).

So, what's my point? Google. IsoHunt has been unfairly tried. I challenge you to do something,
        1) Go to GOOGLE
        2) Think of a movie in theaters
        3) Now type - nameofmovie filetype:torrent
        4) Press enter
        5) Look at all the illegal torrents GOOGLE has to offer.

What's that you say? Google just supplied you with illegal content? What, it's no different than the results you get from IsoHunt? I don't expect anyone to stand up to Google, and I don't want them to. I just wish the court systems could recognize a search engine from PIRATE BAY.

My only true question is why Google hasn't been forced to filter their search terms. To me it was an ISO witch hunt. And ultimately if one of the boys or girls can't have candy then none of the boys and girls should have candy.

In closing I challenge you to find out some more on your own and let me know what you feel about it.

LINKS
GOOGLE
ISOHUNT LITE
The Real IsoHunt (only accessible through proxy)

Dare to Compare and See for Yourself

If History Repeats Itself, Why Don't We Think Ahead?

So...We're running out of IP addresses.

        Before I get started just let me say, I love technology and look forward to every new innovation. (while quietly not-being so innovative)  But, my faith is starting to dwindle. Before I even read half of the above article I was reminded of when we ran out of Phone Numbers. Later in the article they mention that the IP address problem is very similar to when we ran out of phone numbers. Thus, history repeats itself. Why didn't all the brilliant minds of yesterday think about this? It makes me curious. And believe me I don't like to always point out the obvious mistakes in my articles, but they really aren't helping me.
       So, they run out of IP addresses because every device that links to a network has one. They want to add extra digits to IP addresses, but haven't been successful in ten years. I have a layman's  suggestion.Try reusing them  much like a cell phone company  or land line company  recycles numbers. If you dial any one of your old telephone numbers I almost guarantee someone will answer.  Now, I know  it's very  hard to tell with so many devices when someone  breaks or looses one, but we should have had a system in place for these kinds of things. If we continue to rely on technology without  thoroughly checking all possible "doomsday" scenarios we might as well invite the old pen, paper, and stamps into our lives. That's what all the IP addresses are being wasted on anyway, texting, and so called social networking.

With that in mind, maybe pen, paper, and stamps would be a good thing.