Those humans were targeted who were identified as “life unworthy of life” (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, and the weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 70,000 were killed under Action T4, a “euthanasia” program.

Hitler also actively engaged in genocides, tracking down and exterminating millions of Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Poles and Ukrainians or anyone else who disagreed with him. However eugenics campaigns were not limited to countries like Nazi Germany.  The inspiration for Germany’s heinous program actually started here and was sponsored by a philanthropic organization, just as the Education Reform movement is sponsored today.

After the eugenics movement was well established in the United States, it was spread to Germany. California eugenicists began producing literature promoting eugenics and sterilization and sending it overseas to German scientists and medical professionals. By 1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S. states combined. The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by California’s.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele [perhaps the closest thing to Satan in human form ever to walk the earth] worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:

“You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”

Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws. In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of Hitler’s 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the “science of racial cleansing”. Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterwards, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the “common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics.”

Even today, China is one of the few countries with both an explicit and implicit eugenics policy. The explicit “One Child” policy has exceptions that can be purchased or granted based on political connections or, individuals can ignore the policy if they have the wherewithal to pay the fines. The implicit policy involves testing children for sex (male children are more desirable leading to numerous female baby abortions) or aborting children for deficiencies and in many cases forced abortions.  Is it any coincidence China is often cited as prime example of what our education policies and programs should look like?  China classifies students as either college bound or menial labor bound from an early age using assessment data that determines which path is most suitable for a child.  This path ultimately determine how far in society a child will be able to progress, how often they will be allowed to procreate, how much education they will be allowed to receive.  This is the “Reformer” vision of the future of US education.

Current US law has outlawed the use of genetic testing for placement of employees, pricing of insurance, or admissions to primary schools or colleges. However test scores, and background checks have long been used and upheld as a way to discriminate against employees and enrollees. High test scores and grades can even be used to give discounts on auto-insurance and prior to the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 (more commonly known as Obamacare), insurers could discriminate and price products based on pre-existing conditions, age, gender, etc. Life insurance products are currently priced based on general health, blood pressure, medical history, whether a person is or has ever been a smoker, gender, age, etc.  For the time being, instead of using children’s actual DNA, which would be costly to store, evaluate and classify, the government is seeking to collect student’s educational DNA.  This ed-DNA will be used to start classifying students based on what computers and researchers believe are children’s potential.  It will be linked to income tax returns to see how much money children make, criminal databases to see how often they tangle with the law, doctor’s records to examine how often they avail themselves of health services and what types of diseases and conditions they develop.  With the recent decision of the Supreme Court that ruled DNA information is not patentable, expect bazillions of fly-by-night genetics testing providers to spring up offering discount rates on gene testing and storage.  This will initially be a boon for patients, but also for future government eugenics programs, and embryonic screening of children for desirable traits and exclusion and abortion of children with less desirable ones. (For an interesting window into the possible future of this type of genetic screening and profiling of children based mathematical projections and expectations I’d recommend watching the movie Gattaca.  We’re not as far removed from this future as you might think and this inBloom database LDOE is pushing is a necessary first step towards this future.)

Today instead of the Rockefeller Foundation funding eugenics programs with have the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation funding inBloom, a database that can be used to capture information on potential test subjects. We have Pearson conducting field tests on millions of children without their parents’ permission or knowledge. We have Michael and Susan Dell running a rival database called Ed-Fi that operates identically now, to the way inBloom is trying to operate in the future. We have the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortunes, funding a pared down pauper’s education to the masses, so they are easier to control and convert into future Wal-Mart employees and customers. The Koch brothers have influence over PBS (the Public Broadcasting System) which in theory is a media watchdog that only theoretically keeps watch over our liberties and infringement upon the same. All other media sources are beholden and censored by corporate and government interests, save independent bloggers who are now under siege by these government and corporate interests seeking to silence us so you only get a single “sponsored” narrative.

Gun control opponents fight tooth and nail against the regulation of firearms sales, and electronic documentation of gun ownership, for fear of what the government can do with such a list and such information. Unbeknownst to them, the State (their states and the United States) are sponsoring a much more insidious data collection that will start with their children and follow them throughout their life. A federal database, called EDEN, is the first step toward knowing everything about you, forever. Currently EDEN does not collect personally identifiable information, but The US Department of Education is pushing national database collections SDLCs like inBloom and Ed-Fi because they will be able to quietly change a few policies and suck in all their information these providers collect. FERPA, the Familiy Educational Right Privacy Act, specifically exempts federal agencies from having to comply with it. Federal agencies that can request information at any time without parental notification or consent: 

 to authorized representatives of the Comptroller General of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, the U.S. Secretary of Education, and State and local educational authorities for audit or evaluation of Federal or State supported education programs, or for the enforcement of or compliance with Federal legal requirements that relate to those programs;

The Federal government will be able to tie this information into the all the other databases they use to keep tabs on you at all times. As recent leaks about PRISM by Edward Snowden reveal, the NSA (National Security Administration) gathers everything on you that search engines like Google possess, anything you post on Facebook, anything you do with your cellphone and anything you save on your cellphone. Google actually physically drives their Google-mobiles through everyone’s neighborhood photographing your actual houses, sucking up your local network names, your cars’ license plates, and any signal they can. This information gets included in Google maps, but also gets tied to a profile of you. From census information you are required to report every 10 years, the government gets more. Google was recently fined for their privacy invasion tactics to the tune of just 7 million dollars, or less than 1/3^rd of a day’s profits. (My guess is this is because the Federal Government wants this data, perhaps even requested Google compile this data, but needed to issue a token enforcement in response to the public outcry.)

While I think we were all impressed with how quickly the Boston bombers were identified and brought to justice, on some level most of you probably had a slightly queasy feeling. The amount of technology brought to bear, the speed with which that data was analyzed and actual pictures isolated and released, the subsequent identification of these bombers through a convenience store camera, the infrared heat signal tracking . . . it was all a bit spooky to me. Not long after there was the strange lethal shooting of the unarmed interview subject related to this case by the FBI, in the presence of 6 FBI agents, including what may be once in the back of the head.

So in addition to the criminal types and unscrupulous corporations that will have access to your children’s data as I covered here, you will have to worry about the Federal government getting a hold of your data and using for whatever suits their fancy. But let’s get to the meat of this initial matter, the handing over of student data to external data storage providers using Cloud Computing.

Here are some of the key things to keep in mind when your DOE comes knocking with a proposal to use a cloud storage provider like inBloom or Ed-fi for handling all your data storage and dissemination needs.

• Most IT pros do not trust cloud services with sensitive data. (There’s a reason banks don’t conduct financial transactions using cloud computing and the military doesn’t store top secret weapons designs on something called CloudNuke.)
  

  Some 86% of those polled by Lieberman Software said they do not trust the cloud for their organization’s more sensitive data, and 88% said that they believe that there is a chance that the data their organization keeps in the cloud could be lost, corrupted or accessed by unauthorized individuals.
  

• Clouds consolidate data, making it easier for criminals and governments to access this data, especially secretly. Vendors have a vested interest it concealing whether your data has been compromised, and as recent and historical events have shown, even the US government spies on its own citizens and allied nations.
  
• Clouds make your data a bigger, tastier target, in much the same way shopping malls attract patrons, gold rushes attract miners, and dung attracts flies.
  
• Storing data on inBloom and Ed-Fi Clouds adds an addition level of risk. These vendors are not suggesting they will replace your internal data systems, they are “in addition to” your existing systems. Sharing student data on Clouds is like passing out your spare house key to everyone on the block, including ones you don’t know well or at all, instead of just a single well known neighbor – in case of an emergency.
  
• Storage of student data is expected to cost 5 dollars per student, but could be more. With 700,000 current students in Louisiana that comes to 3.5 million dollars per year. If this figure includes all students that total surges to 15 million dollars per year, or roughly the cost of this year’s entire Voucher private school expansion that was recently ruled unconstitutional to fund from the public school MFP formula by Louisiana’s Supreme Court.
  
• LDOE has not proposed any specific use for this data, or this 15 million dollar annual expenditure. Wouldn’t this money be better spent on students, pre-k education programs, teaching supplies, professional development, anything else?
  
• FERPA was weakened by USED to allow vendors to use data for non-educational purposes. Just as your iPhone terms and conditions change almost daily, so could the terms and conditions under which these vendors operate. They claim they will not share this data initially, but they also indicate they will provide discounts to states that provide date to third party vendors from whom inBloom will “recapture costs.”
  

  “As a non-profit organization, inBloom is exploring cost recovery partnerships with select vendors, which are contracted by states and districts, for the services that it provides. These recovered costs will ultimately be passed on to participating districts through lower annual fees.”
  

  (This is fancy schmancy talk for selling your data but instead of money changing hands they will give “discounts” in much the same way sleazy car salesmen and fly-by-night furniture sellers mark up their prices before offering 30-50% discounts on everything in their store!)
  

But don’t take my word this.  Ask LDOE and BESE at tomorrow’s BESE meeting (June 18th), about what they feel it is necessary to spend upwards of 15 million dollars to endanger your children’s futures and allow the federal government, hackers and pedophiles easy access to your children’s private information and future.  They will tell you to make things easier for school districts to work with 3rd party vendors, they will tell you to take advantage of teacher dashboards not teachers unaffiliated with this administration are asking for, they will tell you this is to take a step into the future.

But I ask you, is this a future you want for yourself or your children and grandchildren?

Where we are nothing more than what our DNA and data says we are?

Cloud-computing is the combination of computer hardware and system software which were accountable to deliver various application or services over the internet. Generally, it utilizes the virtualization technology exactly where many computers are connected together to make a big virtual machine which could handle substantial amount of data and also computational activities. Grid computing, parallel processing and distributed computing concepts additionally play an important role in cloud-computing management. With cloud computing, one doesn’t have to store all of the data inside their personal computers rather they’re hosted on external servers and it can be accessed anytime from any place.

Cloud computing can bring extraordinary costs savings and far better efficiency results to your business.  With cloud internet hosting, cloud storage and virtual hardware, you can see at-least 30%-40% annual reduction on total IT expenditure costs. These days even governments of several countries around the world have begun to consider cloud because it decrease the total IT financial budget and provide the opportunity of much needed boost to their economic systems.

An additional benefit of cloud based computing is that one can enjoy top quality services without encountering any technical problems. Most cloud based services are well managed and they are totally free from snags and requires much less upgrades. In contrast to personal hard disk drives, there isn’t any risk of losing your data when it’s stored in the cloud. Cloud-computing services assist organizations save lots of time, hence improving the all round work productivity. Additionally, the security measures given by the cloud computing is much better than security offered by other conventional systems.

Cloud computing offers 3 different service types namely – Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS. Each service type suits various requirements of IT management of a business. For instance, in SaaS, the organization rents software program and database from the provider and then the provider will perform all the assistance, updates plus maintenance that are required. Hence through cloud computing programs are monitored and maintained totally offsite from the company. Needless to say, cloud computing streamlines the business functions in several new ways and also be as a necessity in modern business.

Veeam has been the leader of VMware backup for the past 5 years.  Their current solution – Veeam Backup & Replication Cloud Edition makes offsite backup to the cloud easy and lets you use Amazon, Azure or any other leading public storage cloud provider.

However, once customers get comfortable with the idea of backing up to Amazon, , they have already come to grips with the security implications.  If their comfortable backup up to Amazon, they should be comfortable running on Amazon.  This should accelerate the final migration to Amazon or a competitor.

VM Import/Export enables you to easily import virtual machine images from your existing environment to Amazon EC2 instances and export them back to your on-premise environment. This offering allows you to leverage your existing investments in the virtual machines that you have built to meet your IT security, configuration management, and compliance requirements by seamlessly bringing those virtual machines into Amazon EC2 as ready-to-use instances.

Product Description

WorkForce DS-30 Portable Color Document Scanner WHY BUY? Engineered for Business. Scan, save and send important data wherever your business takes you with the WorkForce DS-30 portable document scanner. Delivering full-function flexibility on the go, the DS-30 scans receipts, documents up to 8.5″ x 14″, plastic I.D. cards and more right into an e-mail, searchable PDF and more. Send your scanned files directly to the most popular cloud services with the included software. Included correction tools allow you to automatically remove punch holes from scanned images, auto-size documents, enhance text quality, and correct image skew so you can keep your business moving when you’re out on the road. Perfect for busy professionals, this lightweight, travel-friendly single-side scanner is ready to perform whenever you are. USB powered, there’s no external power supply required. And, it’s Mac, and PC compatible. What the press is saying: “We like that the DS-30 is portable, affordable, can scan a variety of documents, and supports scan-to-cloud functionality. We give the WorkForce DS-30 our Editor’s Choice Award.” Better Buys for Business, (March, 2012) Scan directly to the cloud The DS-30 scans directly to popular cloud services. Just install the included software on your PC and you’re ready to get started. Scan and save data from wherever your business takes you. Special scanning features included Great image quality — 600 dpi resolution Auto size detection Text enhancement for color, black-and-white and grayscale — for improved OCR accuracy Image skew correction Color enhancement and color dropout for Black-and-white and grayscale — to clean up scanned images Removes punch holes from scanned images Features/Benefits Scan directly to the cloud with one touch — compatible with popular cloud services via included software Scans a variety of originals — scans documents up to 8.5″ x 14″, as well as business cards and plastic I.D. cards Lightweight and travel-friendly — the portability you need to capture data while on the road; weighs under 1 lb USB powered — connect to your computer; no external power supply required Create editable text and searchable PDFs — OCR and document management suite included for PDF and PDF/A files Compatible with Windows and Mac — ideal for any business setup Powerful software included — Epson Document Capture Pro, ABBYY FineReader, NewSoft PageManager (for Mac) and more Dimensions (W x D x H) — 10.86″ x 1.97″ x 1.45″ (excluding protrusion), Weight 0.7 lb WHAT’S IN THE BOX WorkForce DS-30 Scanner USB cable 2 install CDs (PC and Mac) Setup guide Carrying bag Calibration and cleaning sheets Eco Features Recyclable product Epson America, Inc. is a SmartWay Transport Partner

Tag : 01-Epson B11B206201 WorkForce DS-30 Portable Document Scanner, 02-Epson B11B206201 WorkForce DS-30 Portable Document Scanner, 03-Epson B11B206201 WorkForce DS-30 Portable Document Scanner, 04-Epson B11B206201 WorkForce DS-30 Portable Document Scanner

Small businesses in large numbers are looking to the cloud as a platform to deliver solutions for the problems of escalating IT costs, mobility, and remote access to business data.  The cloud is also becoming the recommended platform for the delivery of services from accounting and bookkeeping professionals, as the benefits of remote data access and real-time collaboration nicely address the requirement for accounting pros to exchange and share information with their business clients.  One of the popular “cloud” hosting solutions addressing a collaborative accounting model is a hosted application approach to using Intuit QuickBooks desktop products.  While accounting professionals may be aware of the Authorized Commercial Host for QuickBooks program (which allows commercial service providers to offer QuickBooks hosting services), many firms are not aware of what Intuit refers to as the “self-host” model, which is a QuickBooks hosting program model oriented towards accounting firms with an in-house technical capability.

The Authorized Commercial Host for QuickBooks program from Intuit allows 3^rd party service providers to become accredited hosting providers for QuickBooks desktop editions.  The program is designed for providers who offer services broadly to the market, and there are a number of requirements which must be met before the provider is accepted into the program.  Additionally, there is a fairly high cost of entry to the program, as the belief is that hosting QuickBooks could be a highly profitable business and that the authorization has a high value in the market.  For small businesses and many accounting service providers, working with a commercial hosting provider makes the most sense, as the authorized commercial host has the infrastructure and the support organization necessary to service hosted customer requirements.

On the other hand, there are a lot of accounting and bookkeeping firms  which have skilled in-house IT personnel, and which are more than capable of creating a hosting capability to serve not only their internal requirements, but also to meet basic requirements of the QuickBooks-using clients they do accounting or bookkeeping work for.  For many of these firms it makes sense to at least explore the possibilities of implementing a “self-hosting” model for client user access to QuickBooks.

When an accounting firm works with a number of clients with QuickBooks desktop edition files, the firm has to install and manage not only their own software products, but also the relevant QuickBooks software products in use by the various clients (must have the right QB program in order to open the QB data file).  This often puts an undue burden on the internal IT systems of the practice which has its own internal-use software and systems to support.  With an application hosting approach, the firm has an ability to provide hosting services to their clients in a direct manner, building their own “economy of scale” on the platform, and achieving all the real-time and remote access benefits of an outsourced hosted model.  The difference is that the firm does not experience a retail cost for the hosting solution, often resulting in the ability to offset much of the cost of providing service to the client.  This offset is most frequently experienced through the efficiency gained at the firm level through direct access to client data and applications.

The technical model for delivering hosting services to a relatively small client base is not overly complicated.  In many cases, commercial service providers have complex architectures because they must serve a large and diverse client base, and they never really know what sort of devices (computers and printers) or connectivity the customer may have.  Commercial providers generally have to be prepared to deal with any and all situations, where a “self-host” firm needs only to concern themselves with supporting their particular client users and use cases.  Additionally, when the solution is offered as part of the accounting or bookkeeping service, the general and technical support requirements of the customer tend to be focused during mutual working hours, as opposed to the 24×7 support requirement of the commercial host.

As accountants and bookkeepers search for solutions to improve efficiency, increase profitability, and differentiate services, it may make sense for those with an in-house IT capability to explore the possibility of becoming a QuickBooks self-host.  It is one possible way to eliminate cost as a barrier to working closer with QuickBooks clients.

Make Sense?

J

Read about Hosting All My Applications in the Cloud

or more about the Collaborative Online Model for Small Business Accounting Professionals

I was reminded of the old radio tube format last week when one of our Cloud Customer Managers passed on this email from a customer:

“Yesterday when I was driving home, I was listening to KSCS and I heard a commercial for the Kronos Cloud. In the 12+ years that I’ve worked with the Kronos application, I’ve never heard a commercial for them before.”

Now I try to avoid just being a commercial here, but it seems many people in my demographic may not have heard our radio ads. Yep. Radio. So out, it’s in. Here are samples. Take two, they’re small…

“Marketplace AM/PM” - 10 second sponsorship “tag” – running on NPR’s Marketplace:

“Just Doing It” – 30 second “spot” – running on Bloomberg radio and Dial Global radio network:

Walmart’s response after spotting this correlation is to now always make sure affected outlets are well stocked in advance with this easy-to-prepare food item. Data mining has been a powerful business decision tool for big box stores, but what about everyone else: can we as consumers directly benefit from all the data we’ve helped to create?

Online retailers and social media sites have led in this area. They have returned to the consumer some of their insights by providing customer-specific recommendations that are based on a global analysis of behaviors. Special collaborative filtering algorithms hunt through the data to find similarities between your own purchasing patterns and larger groups or clusters. These statistically-based recommendations are at the heart of Amazon’s book and Netflix’s movie suggestions.

But outside of e-commerce, companies have generally been reluctant to share their Big Data.

This lack of transparency was taken up in an article recently in The New York Times, If My Data Is an Open Book, Why Can’t I Read It? The writer tells about the frustrations in getting detailed data about cell phone and electric usage from each of her respective providers. She was hoping to see the geo-location data her carrier records (and, by the way, does make available to third-party marketers), but was told that the company doesn’t share customers’ own location logs with them without a subpoena. Her energy utility had similar reservations.

One of the stumbling blocks mentioned in the Times article is that old-economy companies feel they play the role of a benevolent data owner that shares just enough data to be a little helpful. It turns out that consumers are also uncomfortable with the idea that their long-time vendors might be analyzing, categorizing, and sharing conclusions from their personal data.

But attitudes are changing for both consumers and corporate data collectors.

For example, many of us have probably engaged in on-line banking through third-party applications, using desktop software to pay bills and analyze spending trends. Recently my stodgy bank began to offer direct online bill paying—yours probably has done the same long before mine– and so I transitioned to their cloud-based software.

I lost some of the convenience of instant analysis that I had when I was accessing my data on mydesktop computer. But then I noticed the bank was adding modest features—alerts that could be configured when my balance reached certain limits. I suspect there’ll be more features and reporting capabilities in the near future in their cloud-based service.

And in the equally conservative credit card space, start-ups have emerged to analyze millions of transactions for fraudulent charges. The key innovation here was to borrow a cue from Amazon’s book reviews: crowdsource vendor evaluation based on feedback from the service’s subscribers. I count myself as a customer of one of these credit card fraud detection services. It was clear in the terms of service that I was allowing my credit card data to be used in a collective fashion to help spot fraudsters.

The key mindset change for companies is that they have to recognize that consumers own their data, and consumers must realize that they are granting access to their data with (hopefully) suitable guarantees of privacy.

Once these data ownership understandings are formalized and accepted by both parties, it won’t be long before consumers have their own Pop-Tarts realizations as they reap benefits from Big Data.

We’re going to have people discussing all this and more on Wednesday and Thursday at this week’s Structure conference in San Francisco. In the sixth year of the event we’re spending a lot of our time delving into the practical matters of building out webscale infrastructure, from the networking conundrums to the business process around scaling.

If there’s one big theme for the show this year, it’s what happens when IT meets the business and how to bring an understanding of business goals to scaling out services, whether you are Amazon or Revlon. We’ll have Kevin Scott of LinkedIn(s lnkd) sharing how he re-architected the business social network’s infrastructure to better meet business goals. Cory von Wallenstein of Dyn will discuss the process the company follows to support existing features while building new ones that must scale rapidly without breaking the service or the bank.

We’ll also have executives from Warner Music Group sharing how the company is building out an internal platform as a service and what it will do for the business, while CIOs from Revlon, Kohl’s and The Clorox Company share their takes on the cloud from inside the enterprise.

Networking nerds from web giants will be there discussing the importance of using software defined networks and real-time information for building application aware networks. Plus, we have several talks from people such as Jeff Dean of Google, Jason Hoffman of Joyent and Adrian Cockcroft of Netflix(s nflx)  that will discuss how to push our infrastructure’s boundaries for the data-rich era we’re entering.

We’ll also have ten three-minute talks from our Cloud Trailblazers who will be there ready to talk about their ideas for how to rethink infrastructure. You can meet the stars of tomorrow over the course of the two-day event. Or you can network with the stars of today. Plus, two hot startups will debut and there’s also a six-company LaunchPad with very young startups.

I’m preparing to get on a plane from Austin to spend this week in San Francisco. I’ve made this trip dozens of times for dozens of GigaOM events, but this one has me the most excited. We’ve pulled some amazing people together to talk not just about defining the cloud or various trends in infrastructure, but how the shift in information technology is playing out at real companies whether they are startups, enterprises or the giants of the webscale world.

We have a few tickets left, so just sign up and get on over to the event. This isn’t some wannabe cloud show. This is Structure, the first and the best cloud show planned by myself, Derrick Harris, Barb Darrow and the GigaOM events team. We wouldn’t let you down.