It took the interwebs mere minutes to uncover their ruse, which didn't stop them from popping out two days' later to explain that it was a "prank".And finally, an Apple employee has broken rank with the Cupertino Collective to actually admit something the fruity firm put together isn't totally smack-your-face awesome. Speaking about iDevice video output, the anonymous hero said in a comment on a blog:Certain people are aware that the quality could be better and others are working on it. For the time being, the quality was deemed to be suitably acceptable. Given the dynamic nature of the system (and the fact that the firmware is stored in RAM rather then ROM), updates **will** be made available as a part of future iOS updates. When this will happen I can’t say for anonymous reasons, but these concerns haven’t gone unnoticed.The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative has published a response to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) that found kids given the program's signature PC didn't learn much and spent less time reading.
The study, available here (PDF) , is titled Home Computers and Child Outcomes: Short-Term Impacts from a Randomized Experiment in Peru. The study “presents findings from a six-month follow-up of a randomized experiment in which approximately 1,000 OLPC laptops were provided for home use to students attending public primary schools in Lima, Peru.” The experiment was conducted outside the full OLPC program, which integrates the groups XO laptop into classrooms.The study found the test “... was successful at increasing children’s exposure to computers by raising the likelihood that children had access to a computer at home and increasing the likelihood of home computer use at both the extensive and intensive margin.”But giving out the laptops “ … also affected the time spent on other activities, with children more likely to complete domestic chores but less likely to read books compared to their classmates.”
The amount of chores kids performed rose, the study suggests, because kids were offered time playing games as a reward. But gaming time ate into reading time.Reuters noted those two elements of the study and, while not quite resorting to the “games=possibly violence-inducing brain candy for kids who'll end up in dead end jobs, reading=well-adjusted literate kids who will only ever watch reality TV in an ironic way” meme, popped out a story that said “the findings seem to contradict the [OLPC] initiative's key assumptions and back critics who said it is not a magic wand.”Throw in the fact the study also found “... no significant differences between treatment and control groups on objective and self-reported skills for using a Windows personal computer (PC) and Internet” and things look bad for the OLPC project.Enter OLPC CEO and President Rodrigo Arboleda, pointing out that the study “expressly states that it tries not to evaluate the One Laptop Per Child initiative or educational one to one projects” and that the study tests only the impact of PCs in the home, not the overall OLPC project.
“This study shows the difference of an isolated experiment of computers at home without a comprehensive intervention strategy that did not generate impact,” he writes, pointing to another IADB study (PDF) that found “with a sample of 319 rural schools (which is significant), children in the OLPC project in this country have an advantage on average of 5 months in the development of their cognitive abilities with respect to children who have not been helped by the program.”Arboleda also says “numerous studies and research in the last decade by recognized academics have shown that the provision of technology alone has no effect unless there is an appropriate intervention process.”“It is for this reason that the results of the experiment showed little effect and did not generate changes in reading habits, cognitive skills or academic achievement.” PC World has been ordered by the UK ads watchdog to pull claims it offers a next-day collection service for repairs under its Care Plan Premier warranty.Pcworld.co.uk boasted that the biz would pick up a customer's dicky gear the following day if the punter called before 3pm and had shelled out for the aforementioned warranty. The retailer's website also compared this service favourably to similar packages offered by its rivals.
But a member of the public challenged the online blurb in a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and claimed the offer was misleading and could not be substantiated.He told the watchdog that he wanted his PC to be picked up the next day for repairs, but after a phone call to PC World he instead decided to take the machine into the shop himself. The store was unable to explain exactly why this happened, because it had not kept detailed notes of the conversation, but the chap evidently left aggrieved to the extent that he lodged a complaint.PC World insisted it could have fetched the computer from the complainant, had paperwork to prove it had available time slots to pick up the hardware, and that 23 other customers who called that day had their kit collected. But the watchdog ruled the data "was not sufficient to demonstrate that calls that requested collections of items covered by a plan were received at the dates and times referred to or when the collections were completed".
The ASA also rejected PC World's argument that the complaint was really a contract dispute rather than a problem with the advertising. Protestations that the anonymous complainant had used the retailer's repair service previously without issue also failed to cut any ice.The complainant had signed up to a warranty called Whatever Happens Premier, which was later renamed to Whatever Happens Care Plan Premier; the Whatever Happens Premier service was advertised as "next day courier collection... call before 3 pm" whereas Whatever Happens Care Plan Premier offered the slightly different "next day collection … call before 3pm".PC World said it was always changing its warranty terms, and as such newer products had different benefits - for example, the Care Plan offers remote fixes and a laptop on loan for PC system repairs. The retailer argued there was no reason to determine the service was misleadingly advertised from just a single grievance.However the ASA upheld the complaint after ruling that a "snapshot" of calls from the same area as the complainant on the same day was not enough to support PC World's advertised promise.
"Data, which related to calls received on only one day and in one area, was not sufficient to demonstrate that consumers with the advertised care plan generally had their items collected the next day when they called before 3 pm," the ASA stated in its adjudication. "For the reasons given, we considered the claim had not been substantiated and therefore concluded that the ad breached the code [of practice]."The decision means PC World cannot no longer run the offending blurb, at least in its current form. The ASA told the retailer to ensure it can substantiate its claims in future. Startup Open Garden has a new Android version out, allowing anyone to create a mesh network without rooting, and share that network with the world too.The idea of Open Garden is to use all available internet signals from various devices at the same time via a mesh network to deliver an efficient and consistent mobile internet connection.It's not the first mesh network for mobile devices, but Open Garden's 2.0 release supports Windows and Mac as well as Android devices, and will happily create a mesh network without prompting and load-balance wireless connections for speed, not to mention sharing that connectivity with all and sundry in the interests of ubiquitous connectivity.In contrast to other mesh-radio projects, Open Garden is focused on ease of use, and we were able to get a mesh up and running in minutes with Wi-Fi connectivity stretched into previously blank spots simply by strategically placing hardware around the garden: