Should school children handover their social media passwords?

Dave Lewis  thinks that this is not acceptable. What do you think?

Traid Community School in Illinois has invoked State law for the following:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/illinois-says-students-have-to-give-up-facebook-passwords-or-face-prosecution

I think as long as the passwords are handled responsibly by the school boards this should be OK. Afterall the school children are under 18 years of age (somemay be more in the highest grade) and we have laws protecting them from drinking and smoking.

Why not for handing over the password?

Read this Illinois law related pdf:
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/98/PDF/098-0801.pdf

Also read the following:
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html

This will prevent not only cyber bullying but also nip cyber crime in the bud. Can school boards handle the passwords repository responsibly?

That's perhaps another story
 

@travel: Free community colleges-Cool

This is extremely laudable although an expensive project. Hope the quality is maintained of not improved. Even the opposition may like it. Reduce courses that do not contribute to employment. A A+ to our President.

@travel: You do not need to buy TESLA in India, MahindraReva's e02 will do

 

 MahindraReva has entered second generation with e02 all electric cars that use lithium-ion batteries. The first generation car had lead acid battery. Here is a picture of the lead acid battery car of my neighbour who is quite satisfied with its performance. He seems to get 80Km with a single charge. I asked him what if the car stops in the middle due to battery (which lost its charge) and he smiled and said he calculates where he is going and he has no problem. He has been using it for a couple of years.

e02 is second generation with two models one basic(T0) and one premium(T2) both 4 seater cars and and the base starts at 4.82 lakhs and premium at 6.82 lakhs.e20 site is here:
http://www.mahindracarsindia.com/car/Mahindra-E20

Here is a picture from Mahindra's site.I have seen a couple of them running the city (Bengaluru). You can get 120Km out of a single charge. It is sold in many Indian cities, Bhutan and Bermuda (Island car).

http://mahindrareva.com/news-and-reviews/press-coverage

 e02 comes in 6 different colors: Spanish Red, Arctic Silver; Eco Green; sunfire yellow; coral blue and Oceanic white.

I think this is perfect for Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands and the smaller US cities.

There are both free and paid charging stations are available in many cities and Bengaluru has some 98 stations. The owners will have their own charging setups. While it takes 5 hours for full charging at your home set up(15a/220V), it can be charged in about an hour using it's Quick2Charge technology. The battery lasts for 50000 Kms and can be leased.

Full specifications are available here:
http://mahindrareva.com/product/specifications





1 lakh is 100,000
US $1 = 63.5 Rs
1 Km = 0.6214 miles

It was a mixed year

2014 was a mixed year. I lost my brother Dr. Vijaya Raghavan Krishnaswamy, a neuro-surgeon by profession. He left a void that cannot be filled.

I did not complete the book I was writing.

Regarding the blogs I did quite well with a record number of posts.
                                                 Year   Posts
Hodentek.blogspot.com           2013   94
                                                 2014   246

HodentekHelp.blogspot.com.  2013.  17
                                                 2014   56

HodentekMsss.blogspot.com   2013   34
                                                  2014  48
 
HoentekMobile.blogspot.com  2013   13
                                                  2014   56

I started a new blog in 2014- http://hodentekPlus.blogspot.com.

I also found that a certain person was pilfering (http://hodentek.blogspot.in/2014/12/domain-name-service-dns-and-dns-changer.html) entire content from blog, my hardwork of about 10 years. I complained to Google without any success. I suppose this is not on Google's priority. Google wants every post that is stolen with proof of content stolen. There were over 900 posts in my blog and you can imagine the work involved.
 

Learn business visiting places in India

This is a nice opportunity to know India if you are planning to do business with India.
Jagriti Yatris is business school on wheels where you visit the businesses visiting the various places where businesses are located which includes most of the important locations. This coming year is the seventh time for this event with participants from many countries(around 40%) with ages in the range of 20 to 25. This is a nice event to get to know the realities on the ground. 

This is not exactly a complete Indian initiative. It is sponsored by the likes of Google, Coca Cola, etc. with support from Indian Railways. It costs around $1000 (approximate) with about $100 paid by the candidates. Candidates are sponsored based on their annual income.

Read more here:
http://www.jagritiyatra.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagriti_Yatra

Get the Skype Qik video messaging and start chatting via video

Go to this site and get SKYPE Qik free app. It is an messenger app built around Skype which allows you to swap videos with groups of friends. All you need to do is a single touch that records those previous moments which you ccan immediately share. You shoot and send the video with your mobile. The groups are made of your phone contacts and these messages are private.

You can pre-record upto 12 short videos and you can drop the videos, Qik Flick as they called into your chat. Of course you can manage messages deleting and cleaning up and unlike other stuff on the Internet these disappear after two weeks, something very desirable. It can be used with Microsoft, Apple and Google phones.

Here is video that you may want to play and learn more of this interesting addition.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells powering cars and homes in Japan

Nuclear fusion was supposed to provide clean energy but it is perhaps decades away. It is a tough cookie. Now Japan's R&D has produced viable Hydrogen Fuel cells that can power homes and cars.Toyota motor has a model 'Mirai' on the market that is powered by Hydrogen and coming to US in the not so distant future. Now hydrogen fuel cells to provide energy for homes are being developed.

Hydrogen fuel cells for homes is something that is not on a drawing board, but already installed in many Japanese homes. I am sure this will get Japan back in the saddle and we will be having a better environment; less dependence on fossil fuels; less pollution; improved quality of life; fewer transmission, distribution losses as energy gets used where it is produced; and less of Fukushima scenarios.

Tokyo Gas and Panasonic Corporation have jointly developed the Fuel Cell which they call 'ENE-Farm' probably a diminutive for energy farm. In fact so far there have been couple of models starting Jan 2013 after debuting first time in May 2009. The price of the new model which came out in April 2013 was 1,995,000 Yen (April 2013 price) including tax but not installation. Right now it may seem prohibitive but the price is sure to go down.

Read more here:
http://news.panasonic.com/press/news/official.data/data.dir/2013/01/en130117-5/en130117-5.html
The following images are from the above site:

Summary of features copied from the above mentioned site:

"The "Ene-Farm" fuel cell co-generation systems generate electricity through a chemical reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere and hydrogen extracted from city gas. The heat generated as a byproduct of this process is also used for hot water supply*7. This system is extremely eco-friendly. Since the electricity is generated and used at the same place, there are no losses in transmission. Also, all heat produced during electricity generation can be used without waste. Compared to conventional method of using electricity from thermal power plant and hot water supply using city gas*8, the fuel cell system allows primary energy consumption to be reduced by approximately 37%*9 and CO2 emissions by approximately 49%. Users can cut around 60,000 yen from annual utility bills, and CO2 emissions by approximately 1.3 tons a year*10."

A number of companies in US are engaged in Hydrogen fuel cells and some are already providing viable products and if the adoption picks up this industry can do a lot of good to our environment and generate lot more jobs as well.