$200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math
The New York Times - July 31, 2010
- By Ashlee Vance
INFURIATING Scott G. McNealy has never been easier. Just bring up math textbooks.
Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same.
“Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says.
Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course material that he spearheaded six years ago.
“We are spending $8 billion to $15 billion per year on textbooks” in the United States, Mr. McNealy says. “It seems to me we could put that all online for free.”
The nonprofit Curriki fits into an ever-expanding list of organizations that seek to bring the blunt force of Internet economics to bear on the education market. Even the traditional textbook publishers agree that the days of tweaking a few pages in a book just to sell a new edition are coming to an end.
“Today, we are engaged in a very different dialogue with our customers,” says Wendy Colby, a senior vice president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “Our customers are asking us to look at different ways to experiment and to look at different value-based pricing models.”
Mr. McNealy had his own encounter with value-based pricing models while running Sun. The company had thrived as a result of its specialized, pricey technology. And then, in what seemed liked a flash, Sun’s business came undone as a wave of cheaper computers and free, open-source software proved good enough to handle many tasks once done by Sun computers.
At first, Sun fought the open-source set, and then it joined the party by making the source code to its most valuable software available to anyone.
Too little, too late. Sun’s sales continued to decline, making it vulnerable to a takeover.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and other top textbook publishers now face their, forgive me, moment in the sun.
Over the last few years, groups nationwide have adopted the open-source mantra of the software world and started financing open-source books. Experts — often retired teachers or groups of teachers — write these books and allow anyone to distribute them in digital, printed or audio formats. Schools can rearrange the contents of the books to suit their needs and requirements.
But progress with these open-source texts has been slow.
California and Texas dominate the market for textbooks used in kindergarten through high school, and publishers do all they can to meet these states’ requirements and lock in their millions of students for years.
Both states have only recently established procedures that will let open-source textbooks begin making their way through the arduous approval process. Last year, Texas passed a law promoting the use of open, digital texts and is reviewing material that might be used in schools.
In California, a state board is studying whether open texts meet state requirements. The CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit financed by another Sun co-founder, Vinod Khosla, has created several texts that have met the board’s criteria.
“In three and a half years, we have developed nine of the core textbooks for high school,” says Neeru Khosla, Mr. Khosla’s wife and the head of CK-12. “If you don’t try this, nothing will change.”
Aneesh Chopra, the federal chief technology officer, promoted an open physics textbook from CK-12 in his previous role as the secretary of technology for Virginia, which included more up-to-date materials than the state’s printed textbooks.
“We still had quotes that said the main component of a television was a cathode ray tube,” Mr. Chopra says. “We had to address the contemporary nature of physics topics.”
Eric Frank, the co-founder of Flat World Knowledge, argues that there is a huge financial opportunity in outflanking the traditional textbook makers. His company homes in on colleges and gives away a free online version of some textbooks. Students can then pay $30 for a black-and-white version to be printed on demand or $60 for a color version, or they can buy an audio copy.
About 55 percent of students buy a book, Mr. Frank said, adding that the leading calculus book from a traditional publisher costs more than $200.
Publishers have started de-emphasizing the textbook in favor of selling a package of supporting materials like teaching aids and training. And companies like Houghton Mifflin have created internal start-ups to embrace technology and capture for themselves some of the emerging online business.
They are responding in much the same way traditional software makers did when open-source arrived, by trying to bundle subscription services around a core product that has been undercut.
Ms. Colby of Houghton Mifflin puts the state of affairs politely: “I think the open-source movement is opening a whole new conversation, and that is what is exciting to us.”
Mr. McNealy wants to make sure there is a free, innovative option available for schools as this shift occurs.
Curriki has made only modest strides, but Mr. McNealy has pledged to inject new life. He wants to borrow from Sun’s software development systems to create an organized framework for collecting educational information.
In addition, he wants the organization to help build systems that can evaluate educational material and monitor student performance. “I want to assess everything,” he says.
MR. McNEALY, however, has found that raising money for Curriki is tougher than he imagined, even though so many people want to lower the cost of education.
“We are growing nicely,” he says, “but there is a whole bunch of stuff on simmer.”
The Strange New Friend of the Iranian Demonstrators
January 08, 2010 - By Hassan Daioleslam
As the Iranian uprising enters its seventh month and spurs the ruling regime's disintegration, the Iranian community in the U.S. is witnessing a peculiar sideshow. Some of the "Iran experts" who had relentlessly preached friendship and coexistence with the Iranian regime, in a bizarre overnight reinvention of themselves, are now riding the green wave and presenting themselves as the advocates of the regime's victims, the Iranian people. Chief among them is Tria Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
For the past twelve years, Trita Parsi has unremittingly lobbied the U.S. Congress to lift pressure off the Iranian regime. A short while ago, he advised the U.S. government to share the Middle East with the ruling mullahs. Now, supported by some influential circles in the U.S. and benefiting from his new PR agency, Parsi strives to present himself as a voice for the Iranian people and the green movement. Amazingly, just a few months ago, Parsi predicted the premature death of the Iranian uprising. In an article titled "The End of the Beginning," he wrote:
Iran's popular uprising, which began after the June 12 election, may be heading for a premature ending. In many ways, the Ahmadinejad government has succeeded in transforming what was a mass movement into dispersed pockets of unrest. Whatever is now left of this mass movement is now leaderless, unorganized -- and under the risk of being hijacked by groups outside Iran in pursuit of their own political agendas.
Credibility
Parsi's new facade is primarily rooted in self-interested calculations. He is seriously discredited among Iranians, who know him as a lobbyist for the Iranian regime. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has served informally as a Western-based spokesman for Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossen Moussavi, recently told the Washington Times: "I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic."
Parsi's sudden concern for the Iranian democratic movement is partly designed to cover up his twelve years' lobbying in favor of the Iranian regime. Furthermore, he is faced with an upcoming court appearance in Washington in which his lobbying will be thoroughly scrutinized. A year ago, in an effort to silence me and intimidate his critics, Parsi brought a defamation lawsuit against me. I was among many Iranians and Americans who believed that he lobbied in favor of the Iranian regime.
During the discovery process, some of Parsi's communications were released and proved to be highly compromising to him. According to Washington Times, "Law enforcement experts who reviewed some of the documents, say e-mails between Mr. Parsi and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Javad Zarif -- and an internal review of the Lobbying Disclosure Act -- offer evidence that the group has operated as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws."
The content of these documents was serious enough that Senator John Kyl officially wrote to the U.S. Attorney General and pressed for an inquiry into Parsi's lobby. The reaction in the Iranian community has been outrage toward Parsi's activities in favor of the Iranian regime.
Parsi and human rights violations in Iran
Parsi's newfound passion for human rights in Iran is in sharp contrast to his deplorable record. He started his political career in 1997, when he founded a lobby organization called "Iranians for International Cooperation," or IIC. In 2002, he founded his current lobby organization, NIAC. From 1997 to 2007, there was not a single statement by Parsi or his organizations condemning the human rights violations in Iran. In fact when human rights activists in 2000 protested the appearance of and a speech by the Iranian ambassador, Parsi lashed out at the protesters for not being civilized!
In an interesting document posted on their website, NIAC listed their entire statements about human rights violations in Iran. It is titled "NIAC Articles on Human Rights in Iran." Not a single statement before May 2007, when Parsi's lobby in favor of the Iranian regime was exposed and he was publicly denounced by the Iranian community. It is therefore logical to conclude that his 2007 sympathy for the human rights in Iran was designed to repair his disgraceful image.
Not only did NIAC and Parsi not condemn the regime's brutality, but they also tried hard to distance themselves from anti-regime actions. In one of NIAC's internal documents obtained through the discovery process, we read:
A second challenge was a misquote by Agence Franc Presse, which accredited NIAC for organizing anti-Tehran demonstrations on the Mall in Washington DC on July 9. On learning about this mistake, NIAC immediately contacted AFP and convinced them to make a correction. AFP retracted the story, but it took them three days to do so, by which the story had been picked up by other news media. Although NIAC's has channels to inform certain parts of the Iranian government on the inaccuracy of the AFP report, the misquote can be used by other elements of the government to create obstacles. Furthermore, the parts of the government that NIAC has access to are steadily losing their influence in Iran.
This cordiality between NIAC and the regime continued under Ahmadinejad. Private communications between Javad Zarif (Ahmadinejad's ambassador) and Parsi suggest policy coordination and a high level of trust between them. Parsi regularly sent Zarif his articles, and Zarfi admired and praised Parsi's viewpoints and writings.
How could someone be so trusted and admired by Ahmadinejad's ambassador and at the same time genuinely defend the human rights of Iranians or defend the interests of the Iranian-Americans?
Repairing political discredit
Parsi's new pretense as a defender of Iranian democratic movement likely is also motivated by cunning political calculations. He and his peers have for many years argued that the Iranian regime is stable and that the U.S. government should adapt to this reality. The U.S. should, according to Parsi, seek coexistence with the mullahs and accept their hegemony in the region. In fact, the "coexistence" theory was entirely based on the solidity of the Iranian regime.
Two years ago, in November 2007, Parsi wrote an advisory report for the U.S. administration and tried to debunk seven common myths or misconceptions about Iran. The first myth was about the regime's stability:
Myth: Iran is ripe for regime change.
Trita Parsi: Not true. Although the ruling clergy in Iran are very unpopular, they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Then, in 2008, the same report was reedited slightly, cosigned by twenty other "Iran experts," and sent as a "Joint Statement" to the Obama administration. Once again, the "experts" rejected the idea that the regime could be frail and unstable.
The Iranian uprising has swept away these wrong and illusory ideas and has brought a significant blow to the credibility of these self-proclaimed "Iran experts." Therefore, Parsi's sudden "support" for the Iranian uprising is designed to repair this huge credibility deficiency. By getting back his credibility, Parsi and his organization would be able to influence Obama's policy toward Iran.
Currently, the main issue on the table is the upcoming sanctions against Iran. Parsi, NIAC, and similar groups continue their decade-long agenda to lift the pressure off the Iranian regime and minimize the scope and impact of future sanctions. Once again, Parsi tries to wrap his anti-sanction lobby in a human face and argues that the Iranian democratic movement will suffer under this new wave of sanctions.
Parsi's effort to humanize his lobby is part of a calculated strategy that he has meticulously applied for the past several years. In a secret document written in 2002 and sent to a Washington lobbyist, Parsi explained the need to give a human face to their lobby:
Although the mission of the proposed lobby should be to improve relations between the US and Iran and open up opportunities for trade, the initial targets should be less controversial issues such as visas and racial profiling/discrimination ...
Despite its predominantly business oriented constituency, it is essential that the lobby creates a "human face" for its aims and goals. AIPAC successfully painted the opponents of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act as "greedy businessmen who had no scruples when it came to doing business with terrorist regimes." The oil companies failed to characterize their campaign with "human concern for the well-being of innocent Iranians stuck with a dictatorial regime" or "support for the poor mid-Western family father who lost his job due the sanctions." The human element is essential both when it comes to attracting support among Iranian-Americans and when it comes to winning the debate and the votes on the Hill.
For more than a decade, Trita Parsi has worked hard to remove sanctions against the Iranian regime. He has professed continuously that the Iranian regime (regardless of who is in power) is stable, and hence warrants a friendly policy from the West. He developed close relations with Ahmadinejad's ambassador in the U.N. and reported to him the pulse of the U.S.'s political circles. He collaborated and coordinated with companies inside Iran who stand to benefit significantly from the lifting of sanctions. He lied about the number of NIAC members to garner false credibility in Washington towards advancing his cause. And now, he has reinvented himself as a pro-human rights activist who advocates "smart sanctions" against Iran. Should we believe that this sudden transformation is sincere, or is it a cunning but desperate attempt to gain lost credibility?
Iranian / Persian Declaration Of Independence
We, the Iranian / Persian people, hereby Declare Our Independence, from any and all tyrannical regimes on the tight leash of the parasite ruling class, dominating Iran. We all agree that, under no circumstances, no religious ideology of any kind shall ever play any role in the national governance, sovereignty, social, political and economic decision making and future of Iran and the Iranian / Persian people.
Under the banner of a democratic national sovereignty, we, the Iranians / Persians have come together peacefully to take our country back on to the path of true democracy, a democracy instituted by the people, for the people.
We, the Iranian / Persian people shall embrace reason and common sense, worshiping at the altar of reason and common sense, but not at the medieval patriarchal, barbaric and tribal religious superstitious myths. The art of human survival and prosperity requires us to embrace reason, common sense, love, kindness, reconciliation, humanity and mutual cooperation. We shall set aside our petty differences to mature into a respectful and forgiving nation.
To that conclusion, we, the Iranian / Persian people agree that, we reserve the right to determine our own future, and the well-being of our culture and country. We all agree that the protection and preservation of our one and only home Planet Earth, life, liberty, pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, right to property, human rights, female equality, health and happiness must always come first, high on the national agenda of the democratically elected government of Iran.
We all agree to hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings: women and men are created equal, and are endowed by Mother Nature with certain unalienable rights: amongst which are: life, liberty, pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, right to property, human rights, female equality, health and happiness.
We all agree that, to secure the liberty, security and the human rights of all Iranians / Persians, government shall only be instituted by, and for the Iranian / Persian people through a constitutional and democratic representative form of governing system.
We all agree to hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings: women and men are created equal, and are endowed by Mother Nature with certain unalienable rights: amongst which are: life, liberty, pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, right to property, human rights, female equality, health and happiness.
We all agree that, to secure the liberty, security and the human rights of all Iranians / Persians, government shall only be instituted by, and among the Iranian / Persian people through a national democratic representative system of government.
We all agree that, the democratically elected government shall always derive its just powers from the consent of the Iranian / Persian people only.
We all agree that, it is also the fundamental right of the Iranian people to alter, or abolish any government, whenever it becomes destructive and abusive of the principles of Iranian / Persian people's life, liberty, pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, right to property, human rights, female equality, health and happiness.
We all agree that, only the Iranian / Persian people shall reserve the right to institute a new government, laying its foundation on the inherent principles of reason, common sense and ethical standards, to preserve and protect: life, liberty, pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, right to property, human rights, female equality, health and happiness.
We all agree that, our new non-violence and evolutionary grass-root political movement, shall be free of any religion, and function only based on our innovative, liberating and visionary platform, governed by the unmatched and superior power of reason, common sense, ethical standards, and honorable means of providing for, and managing public safety and social equality for all.
The Demise Of Our Nation, Iran / Persia Could Only Be Reversed
By The Eruption Of Iranian Passion
The World War One WW1 Conspiracy - Full Documentary
Published: Feb 04, 2021
What was World War One about? How did it start? Who won? And what did they win? Now, 100 years after those final shots rang out, these questions still puzzle historians and laymen alike. But as we shall see, this confusion is not a happenstance of history but the wool that has been pulled over our eyes to stop us from seeing what WWI really was.
This is the story of WWI that you didn’t read in the history books. This is The WWI Conspiracy. TRANSCRIPT AND DOWNLOAD: https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/
War is, and has always been a Racket.!
All Wars Are Zionist Central Banker's Wars.!
Written and spoken by Michael Rivero. A video by Zane Henry Productions I've made a new version of ‘All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars’ that contains a lot of new animations. - http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
Download All Wars Are Zionist Central Banker's Wars PDF copy
War is a Racket by Smedley Butler is a famous speech denouncing the military industrial complex. This speech by two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient exposes war profits that benefit few at the expense of many. Throughout his distinguished career in the Marines, Smedley Darlington Butler demonstrated that true patriotism does not mean blind allegiance to government policies with which one does not agree.
"To HELL with WAR and the Evil WAR Mongering and WAR Profiteering Bastards!"
Said: Smedley Butler
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