p2pnet news roundup #3: October 7, 2008
p2pnet news view | P2P:- Today is Day 2 of p2pnet`s Canada elections 2008 special and although I won’t be doing the usual posts (with one or two exceptions) , I promised I’d run headline roundups two or three times a day.
Cheers!
Jon
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When Is A Small Sample Really A Small Sample? – mattmaroon.com
Had an interesting argument on HN the other day. People were giving anecdotal evidence about Macbook failure rates, and other people were saying they were insignificant samples. I shared mine about having frinds who had 4 Macbook Pros total (one actually bought a backup because his first turned into such a brick, an experience I’m begging him to blog) and of course the discussion devolved from there into how it was an irrelevant sample size. Now let’s say 3 of these had to visit the Apple Store for repairs. A sample of 4, at first, seems too small to conclude anything from. However, I remembered just enough from my personal studies of probability to suspect that 3 out of 4 failures was actually quite meaningful. So I did a little digging. I talked to my friend Matt Matros, who is my go-to guy when I have math problems since he has a degree in it from Yale, and he pointed me at Baye’s Theorem, which is the correct way to solve it. It turns out the odds of observing 3 or more failures in a sample of 4 laptops, if you assumed the laptops failed only 10% of the time, would be on the order of 0.037%.
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A.M.D. to Split Into Two Operations – New York Times
Advanced Micro Devices said Tuesday that it would split into two companies â one focused on designing microprocessors and the other on the costly business of manufacturing them â in a drastic effort to maintain its position as the only real rival to Intel. In addition, the company said two Abu Dhabi investment firms would inject at least $6 billion into the two firms, mostly to finance a new chip factory that A.M.D. planned to build near Albany, N.Y., and to upgrade one of the company’s existing plants in Dresden, Germany. A.M.D., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., makes graphics, computer and server processors. It will own 44.4 percent of the new entity, which has been temporarily named the Foundry Company, a reference to the technical term for a chip factory. The Advanced Technology Investment Company will own the rest. Advanced Technology, which was formed by the Abu Dhabi government, has promised to put up $2.1 billion immediately and contribute $3.6 billion to $6 billion more to build or upgrade chip fabrication plants, also known as fabs. A.M.D. said the two companies would share voting control equally. The Mubadala Development Company, an Abu Dhabi company that bought 8 percent of A.M.D. in November, will pay $314 million for 58 million newly issued shares, increasing its stake in the presplit company to 19.3 percent. It will also get warrants to buy 30 million shares. A.M.D. stock closed Monday at $4.23 a share, down 30 cents.
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Lightbulbs Could Replace Wi-Fi Hotpsots – cellular-news
Boston University’s College of Engineering is launching a program, under a National Science Foundation grant, to develop the next generation of wireless communications technology based on visible light instead of radio waves. Researchers expect to piggyback data communications capabilities on low-power light emitting diodes, or LEDs, to create “Smart Lighting” that would be faster and more secure than current network technology. This initiative aims to develop an optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a Wi-Fi access point.
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Delta to filter Wi-Fi sites – Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Delta Air Lines plans to block inappropriate Web sites from its in-flight Wi-Fi service to be launched this year. Delta previously said it planned to rely on flight attendants to handle inappropriate situations, such as pornography surfing. But after feedback from customers and attendants, the airline changed its policy and is working with Wi-Fi provider Aircell to use a system to block inappropriate content. “Blocking will be limited in scope and will be for sites that few, if any, would question are inappropriate to be viewed on an aircraft,” Delta spokesman Kent Landers said Thursday. “Our focus is to achieve a balanced approach.”
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E-Textbooks for All – Inside Higher Ed
Many observers, both in academe and in the publishing industry, believe it’s only a matter of time before electronic textbooks become the norm in college. Some campuses in particular may already be getting a glimpse of the future through partnerships with individual publishers or with consortiums. Such deals tend to offer students a choice in addition to their current options in the hope that they’ll opt for the cheaper alternative. In contrast to that model, and through a partnership with with the publisher John Wiley & Sons, an experiment soon to be underway at the University of Texas at Austin will shift certain classes entirely to e-textbooks. Beginning next semester, for the initial pilot phase of one to two years, the university will cover the electronic materials for the approximately 1,000 students enrolled in a handful of courses in largely quantitative subjects such as biochemistry and accounting. By purchasing in bulk on a subscription model, the university initially hoped for a “per student per book” cost of $25 to $45. (Wiley hasn’t publicized a final price range, so it’s unclear whether it will be that low.) The idea of the “beta test,” as the university dubs it, is to see how students and faculty respond to e-textbooks and to decide whether they could be deployed on a larger scale.
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