Tech Tuesday:Espressos and Changing Grades

As if TV On Demand wasn’t enough: Harvard University is the most recent institution to start using the Espresso Book Machine, which prints any out-of-copyright book the university has digitized in about four minutes — about the time it takes to make an espresso.

The “ATM of books,” made by the New York-based firm On Demand Books, is already in use at about 15 libraries or book stores throughout the U.S., UK and Canada, and the firm plans to ship out 10 more machines by next spring. But the machine at Harvard’s Bookstore will be the first to benefit from a deal between the firm and Google last week, which will give users access to 2 million public-domain texts (printed before 1923) digitized by Google in addition to the 1.6 million offered by On Demand Books, according to an article in the Harvard Crimson,

The machine, which will be available to Harvard students Sept. 29, can print a 300-page paperback book in about four minutes, according to the article. Students can request a book be printed online or in the store, and can either pick up the book “within minutes” or have it delivered by bicycle.

This is great for all of those 18th century lit scholars out there, but somehow I’m not sure my class on health care reform will benefit from texts published before 1923 …

Next time, just show Mom the bad grades: A former Florida A+M student was given an 84 month (7 year) sentence for his involvement in a grade changing scandal last year.

According to an article in Famuan Online, the university’s student newspaper, Marcus Barrington was the last of three students to be sentenced for the scandal, which raised concerns about academic dishonesty on the Tallahassee campus.

Barrington, along with two other students from the university, were charged and indicted for tampering with computers to change grades for a total of 650 students, and to change residencies from out-of-state to in-state for another 90 students.

The three students allegedly installed a keystroke logger on computers in the university’s registrar office , which transmitted user names and passwords to a private e-mail account they created. With this information, they accessed student records and changed them.

Barrington’s co-conspirators each got a 22-month sentence, which they began in April and May, respectively.

Posted September 22, 2009 at 11:35 pm by Erica R. Hendry | Share on Facebook
Categories: Tech Tuesdays, lawsuits

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