Technolotics was an irreverent look at technology, politics and the media; from a ragtag bunch of Irish students. The show was the first regularly updated Irish vidcast, and ran from August 2005 – August 2006.

audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/45_technolotics.mp3

Listen: Episode 45
Watch: Youtube

Notes

A cure for depression?

If you’re a mutant mouse that is
Scientists breed mice without gene related to serotonin transmission.
Serotonin important on mood, sleep and sexuality.
Mice found to act if they had been treated with antidepressants.
First time genetic ‘cure’ for depression found.

Links

Science Blog story

Amazing New VOIP Offerings

Jajah

Free phone 2 phone calls, initiated via website
Complicated pricing plan
Your phone rings – there phone rings – free for most landlines

Hullo.

Practially free VOIP calls on your home phone or computer
Also offers conference calls, call transfers to other phones and call forwarding.
US only

VOIPDiscount

Offers free calls to landlines and computers in certain countries including Ireland.
Involves a download and buying credit which expires after 120 days.
Limited number of free test calls

Links

Techcrunch comparison
Voip Discount
Jajah

Fox shows for free online

‘Full Throttle’ streams Fox shows over the internet using downloadable player.
Shows available include Prison Break, Bones, American Dad, The Loop and Stacked
Ads included at bottom of viewer and will be included and unskippable within the streaming shows.

Links

Techcrunch article

Is war a disease?

Study of the effects of the affects of being in a warzone on soldiers.
Soldiers examined before and after tour of duty in Iraq.
Compromized ability in tasks of sustained attention, verbal learning and visual-spatial memory. Also soldiers were more confused and tense it seems.
Only upside was an improvement in simple reaction time.

Links

AMA Journal

How to rig an election

Gerrymandering exists in the USA, with representatives deciding electoral districts rather than independent commissions.
District boundaries are altered to favour one party over another with both parties guilty of the practice.
Both parties created safe districts where current party has unchallenged dominance leaving a few districts which are tightly contested.#
Leads to apathy in safe districts and states and the concerns of a small group in a hotly contested state deciding the balance of the legislature.

Links

Economist Article
Gerrymandering definition in wikipedia

Iraq’s invaders may install dictator

US government could be considering giving up on democracy in Iraq and instead installing a dictator.
Comes as the situation continues to deteriorate in Iraq.
Conservative like Donald Rumsfeld wanted a to simply go in, remove Saddam and destroy the country in a show of might and then leave the damage behind. He may get his way.
Problems in Iraq has turned support against Bush and costs him every day troops remain in Iraq.

Links

Times Article

The shit on wastes

All peers – the new bittorrent based firefox extention has launched
All peers allows you to effectively, reliably and quickly share documents with trusted friends
Works via Bittorrent

Links

Techcrunch anouncement

Media Pimp

Gareth

Play Multiplayer Monopoly, Scrabble etc for Free
Techpolitics.us does blog radio
Sweet gestural interface

Francis

Track me Not
BlackBox Search
Gratis Gaming

Listen: Episode 44
Watch: Youtube

Notes

News from the world of Yaaar

Owner-Free File System takes aim at copyright

What was the name of the previous effort at this? – we covered this in an early technolotics show
System creates situation (using encryption) whereby copyrighted data can be claimed by two copyright owners.
Since two copyright owners is not allowed, neither owns the data.
Legal validity of approach untested and unlikely to hold water.

Pirate Party launches darknet

A heavily encrypted commerical Virtual Private Network at a cost of €5 per month.
Purports to offer, secure and most importantly anonymous communications.

BPI show how wonderful they are by banning a 12 year old from the charts merely for signing to a label that doesn’t support sueing file-sharers.

Links

Arstechnica
Pirate Party Commercial Darknet
Wired article
12 year old singer songwriter screwed by British Phonographic Industry

NSA Wiretapping Unconstitutional

Judge rules government’s warrantless wiretapping program violates the rights to free speech and privacy.
Appeal to Supreme court almost certain.
Experts believe Supreme Court likely to rule that state secrets privilege overrules the Constitution as they have done in the past.

Links

CNN Story
Expert interpretations on Wired

Iranian Presidents Blog is real

broken and entertaining engrish first post is a lengthy and heavily propagandist autobiography
‘The last year of my high school, I prepared myself for university admission test-conquer. And later on that year, I took the test. Although I had nose bleeding during the test, but I became 132nd student among over 400 thousand participants.’
Seems part of a campaign (including recent BBC interview ) to reach a wider international audience.
Iran uses one of the most sophisticated internet censorship systems in the world making the blog one of the few websites an Iranian can legally read.
Amusingly Ahmadinejad also refers to the ‘unecessary’ referendum which ensured a democratic rise to the theotratic Mullahcracy

The Iranian presidents power is limited in the extreme – with all bills passed by the Majles parliament are open to veto by a a variety of bodies composed primarily or exclusively of religious leaders – as are electoral candidates

Links

BBC News Story
English translaton

US Planned Lebanon attack with Israel

Journalist Seymour Hersh (the first to write about abuses in Abu Ghraib) alledges in the New Yorker that the two nations planned the attack as long ago as spring
These were not merely strategic talks – but Israels obtaining official permission to attack
The aim of the attack may have been to reduce the threat posed by Hezbolla in the wake of an American attack on Iran
The NSA and Pentagon deny the allegations

Links

Guardian Story

How copyright screws up education

Anyone whose attended 3rd level education in recent years will likely have had run ins with problems related to onorous copyright restrictions

in my case it was clas notes for advanced neuroscience courses – which lacked all illustrations – making them meaningless!

A year long study by Berkman Center for Internet and Society – has found problems

unclear rules, DRM locking up content, difficulties obtaining rights, undue caution by publishers

Links

Boing Boing Story

Pretty soon we’ll have to fly naked

How airport security has become an irrational nightmare
End of a week of false alarms and overblown threats and growing skepticism as to the legitimacy of these threats.
Evidence non-existent or tenuous for UK bomb threat, 1 year of surveillance had turned up nothing, torture of prisoner produces “a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction.”
Only solution is to send luggage in an unmanned plane and strip and drug passengers during flights so that can’t get up to mischief.

Links

Toronto Star Story
False security threats extracted during torture
British aviation bans all hand-luggage
Craig Murray; The UK Terror plot: what’s really going on?

Media Pimp

Gareth

America in Colour

Francis

Bill Biggarts final exposure

Listen: Episode 43
Watch: Youtube

Notes

Scanning Your Email Update

Update to the email scanning story from #41

One of our viewers was so concearned by the encroachment on privacy represented by website blocking at the ISP / email scanning

MP responds stating that there is no reason to change this policy

Nothing wrong with the Internet Watch Foundation Quango (technically a charity) deciding what is and is not unacceptable
– i.e.: Potentially illegal content

This unaccountable ‘voluntary’ censorship by ISPs will continue unless / until ISPs object – at which point it will become mandatory!

Reminder: While the IWF focus on the ‘potentially illegal child abuse’ element of their remind – they also monitor – and now how have the power to block – any ‘potentially illegal content’

Interesting to look at the IWF’s annual report from last year – and compare the number or ‘reported websites’ and the number of cases where illegal content was actually found

2003 – 2004 the amount of ‘illegal content’ found doubled, while reported images only increased by 28% approx (check this)

Over 2,000 – non child related ‘adult obscene content’ sites were reported last year

His MP’s response to email traffic scanning – ‘We have noted’ no further comment

DRI take Data Retention to court

DRI has written to Min. for Justice, Communications and Garda Commissioner asking for them to cease breaching the Constitutional, statutory and European rights of the citizens of Ireland.

Failing that, their solictors McGarr Solicitors will undertake legal action.

April 2002: Mary O’Rourke tells telecoms providers to retain data generated by their customers supposedly under Section 110 (1) of the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983.

December 2002: Data Protection Commissioner deems previous direction as inadequate, constitutionally invalid and was in breach of the Data Protection Act and Data Retention Directive.

Telecoms traffic explicitly protected under European law.
only for a limited period and only where necessary, appropriate and proportionate in a democratic society.

Irish Government in 2005 gave the Garda Commissoner the power to request a service provider to retain, for a period of 3 years, traffic data or location data or both.

Again in breach of European law, Ireland pressed for alteration of European laws

Result Directive 2006/24/EC.

DRI believes Directive was not adopted in accordance with European Law, a view shared by current Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.

Proceedings undertaken my Min. for Justice to declare directive invalid by European Court of Justice.

DRI believe proceedings may be discontinued, meaning unconstitutional laws and directions will remain unchallenged.

They have requested relevant parties in writing to withdraw the directions to the telecoms providers and not apply the unconstitutional laws.

Failing to get a positive response they will prepare for legal proceedings.

Links

DRI to Challenge Data Retention
Irish Eyes on Data Retention

Tuppenceworth review the legalities of Video Sharing Sites

Simon McGarr looks at the Terms and conditions of Youtube, blip.tv, Google video and more.
Finds that these sites try and grab any rights you have not explicitly stated you want to retain.
Only way to retain total control is to host the video yourself which costs.

The Heros

Video Egg

They only have a licence to the content until you remove it.
Licence only allows them a non-exclusive rights to “reproduce, modify, adapt and publish such Content solely for the purpose of providing the Service.”
Best licence as licence only provides them the rights needed to host and display the video and only as long as you want them to.

The Villans

Includes Youtube, Grouper and Motionbox.
All 3 require you to signing all your rights away to them.
Includes rights to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works
Grouper and Motionbox have perpetual irrecocable licences, hence once given to them you never can regain control of your content.

The In-betweens
Blip.tv.

Not as bad except
they want the right to distribute via media other than electronically. Why?
They also want to display content on affiliated sites. What is an affiliated site?

Google Video

Explicit clause stating content creator retains ownership of video an Google has non-exclusive rights are good.
Clause granting Google rights to modify and reformat are cause for worry as both are open to interpretation.
Reformat could mean changing to different video formats or transferring to cd/dvd. Unclear from the text.

Links

Tuppenceworth Post

Short Stories

Where the employees choose the boss

Ricardo Semler as CEO of Brazil-based company Semco has turned every aspect of traditional organization and management on it’s head.

Employees set their own working hours
Employees choose their own salaries
All meetings are voluntary and open to everyone
Employees hire their own bosses
HR has been almost abolished, because leaders need to be able to treat their employees right themselves
All employees rate their bosses twice a year and all ratings are published
Employees choose which leader they want to work under
Employees choose which Semco office they want to work out of
Employees can take early retirement, meaning they get one day a week off in return for working one day a week after they retire.

Semler in his new book states that he believes life cannot be divided into work and free time any more.
If you can work on a spreadsheet on Sunday night then you can go to the movies on Wednesday afternoon.
Management works by not interfering and trusting that employees will find a solution.

Links

The Seven Day Weekend
Semco company website

Meebo Me!

Online IM service Meebo continues to expand and extend its offerings.
Recently announced Netvibes interoperability.
Now has announced Meebo me. A widget which you can embed on a webpage allowing you to IM anyone who visits the page.

allows for realtime chat between the creator of a site and his/her audience.
Visitors appear as buddies in the users page on meebo.com, vistors can simply chat by entering text into the widget.

This marks meebos first move from a instant messaging aggregator to a network provider

Links

Meebo Me

Corporate Sponsorship of Schools

Cash-strapped schools sell naming rights to buildings/rooms even principle’s offices to corporations for one time payments.
Payments can be in excess of $500,000
Washington D.C considered selling naming rights to its subway stations. Las Vegas sells naming rights for its monorail.
Clark, Texas, council voted in November to rename the town DISH in exchange for a decade of free satellite TV from the DISH Network.
Corporations see naming as way of recruiting future workers.

What does it say about a country that forces schools to fundraise in this way?

Links

Corporate Sponsorship of Schools

Deathnell for the social network? House moves to block

Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) social networking sites and chat rooms must be blocked by schools and libraries or those institutions will lose their federal internet subsidies
Motivation in the words of Texas Republican Ted Poe “social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids.”
Vague law blocks sites that

allow people to post profiles,
include personal information
and allow communication among users.

If law can be enforced it could have an impact on a large number of companies.

Would create big obstacles to accessing sites that pose no risk to children including media and news sites like, Slashdot, Amazon and News.com.
Implies that social networking sites and chat rooms are inherently dangerous to minors.

Links

TechCrunch article
ZDNet article

Special Report

Audio Report from Drew @ Slick.comRemind them an IP is not a person

According to Tech Dirt – the RIAA are refusing to take to court cases where users point out that an IP address is not the same as a person
2 cases have been dropped on this basis
Keeping an open Wifi port has its advantages

Links

Remind them an IP is not a person

Media Pimp

Gareth

IPTV Boards
Free Ebooks in multiple forms
Amazing Shockwave FPS Game
USA-Trip Our Trip accross the states!

Francis

Street Performing World Championchips on this weekend!

Listen: Episode 42
Watch: Youtube

Notes

Is Blue sky R&D dead?

Scientific capital is not being replenished via Blue Sky research.
Start-ups are being locked out of the market by patent and trade secrets litigation.
Cold War era brought us the transistor and Arpanet, seeds of todays information economy at great private and public expense – Kansian pump priming of the economy via public and corporate research spending
Bell Labs, Xerox PARC and IBM’s Labs allowed Blue sky research into areas with no apparent commercial applications.
Research labs became an unaffordable luxury. Closest is Google’s 20 percent time.
Researchers now are under pressure to legitimize research by demonstrating it’s potential as a marketable product.
Where then is the opportunity to do Blue sky research?

Academia? No – increasingly accademic research is part funded by business

IP and trade secret laws prevent new ideas from coming to market.

Links

Ars Technica article

Update on email rummaging

We previously reported – plans are afoot to automatically scan the email of every uk citizen, and block ‘objectionable’ websites at the ISP level
One of our viewers contact his MP, and recieved an interesting reply

Social Celebrity – The strange story of Brooke “Brookers” Brodack

Youtube star Brooke “Brookers” Brodack has crossed over into mainstream media.
Her profile on youtube has had almost 2 mil views
Over 13000 subscribers to her videos on youtube.
Brookes video consist primarily of her singing along to songs
Spotted by Carson Daly who became a devoted fan.
Brookers has signed a talent/development deal to Daly’s company Carson Daly Productions.
She will work on developing content for Tv, Internet and mobile outlets.

Links

Variety.com article
Youtube director profile of Brooke “Brookers” Brodack.

Short Stories

Otavo

Your questions answered – social bookmarking, question asking and to-do lists.
Users can:

Ask and answer questions, organise and comment on bookmarks and share goals which are called quests

Users rewarded for inviting new users and adding quests.
Question is, is it good enough to abandon your current bookmarking site eg. del.icio.us?

Can you import the bookmarks and to-do lists you might already have?

Links

Otavo.com
TechCrunch article on Otavo

Finally someone stands up to the MPAA punks

MPAA and Universal Pictures are suing Shawn Hogan for downloading Meet the Fockers over BitTorrent.
Hogan denies the accusation and states he already owns the film on Dvd.
Hogan has declined to settle for $2500 and will fight the case in court.
Most people sued by the MPAA or RIAA under similar accusations settle due to the large legal fees that would be incurred fighting the case in court.
As we have stated a previous show, very tenuous evidence is often used by MPAA etc. to prove piracy

Photos of computer screen and an IP address supplied to Tiscali to prove copyright infringement.

Hogan however has the means and the desire to fight.
This provides the first opportunity to resolve issues relevatant to these cases:

How the associations get access to ISP records
whether you can tie someone to an IP address in the age of Wi-Fi, anonymyzing networks, IP spoofing, Zombie networks etc.

Links

Wired News:Shawn Hogan, Hero

Tired of selling your soul? Freecycle!

Simple idea: Rather than throwing out something perfectly usable that you no longer want or need, give it to someone else for free: Freecycle it!
Freecycle Network is made up of individual groups which give away and get stuff for free.
Started in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson’s downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills
Members email a list of any unwanted objects to other members in the group who then can respond if they want the item.
The giver then can decide who shall recieve the unwanted item.
Everything shared is free, legal and appropriate for all age levels.

Links

Freecycle.org
Freecycle groups in Ireland

AMD to buy ATI

TCAL Story
Hard OCP explanation of the purchase
FinFacts article

Fight the news

Games for Change conference this month – showcased many games with political objectives
A variety of controversial games have been released dealing with contemporary political issues
Peacemaker – strategy game – resolve the middle east conflict as either the Israeli prime minister or the Palestinian president
Food Force – released by the UN – explains the difficulty of providing aid to a war zone
A forse more powerful – teaches nonviolent political strategy
Dafur is Dying – released by MTV & tied to a real world campaign – where players must support thier village
Games already carry indoctrinatory messages – look at every action strategy shooter featuring US troops
Republican party used games to ‘illustrate’ political points during 2003 campaign
Some believe games are a highly effective way of explaining complex systems
More research needed to verify pedagoic efficacy
A struggle to keep the games interesting

Will this trend make things worse, or even the playing field?

[1]

Dating 2.0

Techcrunch takes a look at the latest Web2.0 dating sites
As with other web2.0 services they currently make up a tiny proportion of their market

with more traditional sites Match.com & Yahoo personals dominating

Consumating – hipsters, tagging, contests, celebration of wierdness
Engage – matchmaking

users act as daters or matchmakers – viral quality
compatibility votes

Greatboyfriends.com (and girlfriends) – friends and family leave family – which is then verified
Matchtag – social network with activities – users post activities – pick best respondent – then carry out the preprepared date
MingleNow – groups meet up by favourite bar / restaurant cafe

interesting as it moves away from just dating

Poddater (remember podato?) – uses create videos which other users download and review
Prescription4Love – users with unique medical conditions / disabilities can meet
Verbdate – integrates skype chat, flickr photos, and tags
Wikia Personals – free global personals via wiki
Problem with many of these sites – US only! Tiny user populations

Links

[2]

Media pimp

Gareth

New porn only clone of YouTube
Play almost any megadrive game online
First Look – Valve Portal
Downhill Duel – best flash game ever?
Top 100 Science fiction books
Great Live Buck 65 Performance
This weeks theme music

Francis

Make a steadycam for $14
Item/Lending sharing in Dublin
Tourist Remover: Remove unwanted items from snapshots.
RiffTrax: Alternative commentaries on your favourite movies.

Listen: Episode 41
Watch: Youtube

Notes

Guilty by conception

UK goverment unveils scheme to identify future criminals at birth.
Aim is to identify those at risk of failure, violent behaviour or criminality and then take action to prevent that happening.
Midwives, doctors and nurses asked to identify ‘chaotic’ families whose babies are in danger of growing up to be delinqunts, drug addicts and violent criminals.
Action on Rights for Children (ARCH) points to evidence that early intervention can in fact be harmful.

Assessment tools will include value judgements, made by doctors, nurses, midwives: one person’s dysfunction is another’s normal.
Those assessing may feel under pressure to note everything, even part-imagined ‘signs’ to stave off future allegations of negligence.
Cases could then be built on very tenuous or non-existent evidence.
Misses the point that even if the signs exist there is no guarantee the child will become a criminal.
Withholding information may become common as people fear any information given being used against them.

Misses the point that we already know where many of the dysfunctional families reside, in the most poor and disadvantaged areas.
So why not spend the money and resources in helping these people and their children rather than stymatising them by invading their homes and dictacting their home life.

Links

The Register article
Register Article.
Independent Online article.
Observer online article.

Short Stories

Why antivirus doesn’t catch the infestion

Evolution in action again – as virus writers specifically test against the most popular packages
According to top packages have an 80% failure rate
Little known russian antivirus shop Kaspersky produced the most immune to new malware antivirus

Links

Kaspersky Australian computer emergency responce team – 80% of malware gets through Antivirus software is being defeated Why most antivirus apps dont work

YouTube owns your videos

YouTubes updated terms and conditions provide the company myspace like ownership of your posted content
The licence enables derivative works – meaning that musicians could find their tracks stripped from posted videos and resold
While it looks like the company are just being legally cautious, this is another example of how we are relying on such networks not to be evil

Links

Wired News Story
Boing boing Update

EU blocks municipal broadband

The European Commission is blocking individual municipalities who seek to provide free broadband for their residents
Similar laws have been passed at state level in the US – though the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 may change that
Is the worship of free market economics reducing access to broadband?
Arguably, broadband – like road networks, education, or urban waste disposal – is an example of where government investment provides a massive boon to economic growth – as well as an essential service
Let me just take this opportunity to describe the bin tag situation in Ireland!

Links

Ars technica article

Too quick to Taze?

As this horrific video demonstrates – US police show little hesitation in using dangerous and highly agressive non-lethal takedown techniques

Taze video

Artificial Intelligence turns 50

Artificial intelligence the name was coined 50 years ago
Although strictly speaking, people have been trying to build AI since Turings 1950 ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’ paper
A.I has developed not into the generalist analogue of human intelligence imagined by Turing – but rather into a set of specialist knowledge bases and pattern recognition systems
Will general computational intelligence develop out of the exponential increase of computational power?
Or – as seems more likely, are we constained by our current inability to perfectly understand the mechanisms of our own cognition
Expert systems (like medical specialist programs), and fuzzy logic recognition mechanisms (like security cameras), are still incredibly stupid and specific
The simplist insect is more self sufficient, environmentally adaptive, and independent than our most advanced robots
Turing test is a red herring – confusing conversation with intelligence
Despite their stupidity specialist programmes have multiple uses in a variety of fields

Medicial diagnosis, voice recognition, surveillence of the public, aeronautics

Is robotics relevent to AI? How much is embodiment a prerequeset for AI?

Links

Wired News article
Great discussion on the dangers of ‘evil AI’

Media Pimp

Francis

Slimtimer web based time tracking service

Gareth

YYY’s Cheated Hearts
Cheated Hearts Dublin
Secret Diary of Steve Jobs Aged 51 1/2

Listen: Episode 40
Watch: Youtube

Notes

Police State UK – The abuse of antisocial behaviour orders

A physics graduate is fined £80 for describing a metal detector as “piece of shit that wouldn’t stop anyone” in public.
Kurt Walker fined £80 for using the word “fuck” in a public park in Kent. He’s refusing to pay.
ASBO Law states that it’s illegal to use threatening words or behaviour likely to cause alarm, harassment or distress.

Main problem with an ASBO is that due process does not occur.
Civil court orders which can be based on hearsay evidence. The burden of proof is much lower than in a criminal case.
Police only have to persuade a judge that your behaviour “may cause harassment or alarm or distress” to someone else to get one imposed.

Makes it very hard to defend oneself.
Less than 1% of applications for ASBOs have been refused.
Up to 35% of young people with asbos in the UK had a diagnosed mental disorder or accepted learning difficulty.

But breaching an ASBO is a criminal offence. With penalty in the UK of 5 years in jail.

Asbos can be used to criminalise behaviour that would otherwise not be illegal. Including:

playing football,
feeding pigeons,
swearing,
being sarcastic and
riding a bicycle

Restricts individuals rights of free speech and association.

Little or no evidence they actually solve anything.
Justice Minister Michael McDowell plans to introduce them in Ireland.

Links

The Register news article
BBC News: Teenager fined £80 for swear word
The Case Against Anti Social Behaviour Orders: Coalition Against ASBOs, March 2005
10 things you should know about Asbos
A Guide to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts

China harvesting Falun Gong organs, report alleges.

60,000 organ transplants recorded between 2000 and 2005 (by China Medical Organ Transplant Association)

18,500 of the organs came from identifiable sources.
41,500 transplants from no other explained sources.

There is a booming transplant industry in China.
Number of liver transplant centres has jumped from 22 in 1999 to 500 in 2006.
Number of liver transplant operations has jumped from 135 to 4,000 in the same period.

Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China (CIPFG)

Made recordings of phone calls to hospitals, prisons and transplant centres.
organs from alleged Falun Gong prisoners were promised to prospective buyers within as little as a week

Ex-wife of Chinese surgeon alleges that he removed the corneas from 2,000 euthanized Falun Gong prisoners over a 2 year period.

All died and their bodies were burned.

China admitted in 2005 that it harvests and sells the organs of executed prisoners.

British Transplantation Society alleged China without the consent of prisoners or next of kin.

Report by former MP David Kilgour and Winnipeg lawyer David Matas.
Report based on recordings of phone calls, interviews, and info taken from chinese hospital and transplant centre websites.

Links

CBC News

BPI: We should be able to cut off your Internet

British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has requested 2 ISP’s to terminate the DSL connections of customers allegedly engaged in infringing file-sharing.
BPI asked for immediate action without due process based on the evidence of a single screenshot.
Tiscali has refused to comply stating “It is not for Tiscali, as an ISP, nor the BPI, as a trade association, to effectively act as a regulator or law enforcement agency and deny individuals the right to defend themselves against the allegations made against them.”

“Notice-and-takedown” regime allows censorship of web-pages if they allegedly infringe copyrright.

Embedded in law in Europe through the EUCD and in the US via the infamous DMCA.
Used by the Church of Scientology to silence critics.
WTO used it to silence a parody site.
Diebold used it to suppress the publication of a whistle-blower memo that detailed the critical failings of their voting machines.

Significantly it only works on material hosted on the ISP’s server.

Notice-and-termination, is the new proposed regime.
The ability to communicate over the Internet can be removed by anyone claiming you’re infringing copyright.
Alternatively internet connections may be crippled only supporting bandwidths and protocols approved by the entertainment industry.
It is being proposed as a United Nations treaty obligation, hence every ISP would be forced to adopt this regime.
An obvious target is P2P networks which Notice-and-takedown is ineffective against.

Requests for takedowns usually generated by software bots, which often mistakenly identify copyright infringements.
No presumption of innocence for the alleged copyright infringer.
No method for someone to defend themselves.
Entertainment industry becomes judge, jury with the ISP as executioner.

Links

Boing Boing article: BPI: We should be able to cut off your Internet
Ars Technica article: British music industry, concerned about piracy, targets ISPs
Ars Technica article: British ISP tells recording industry to provide real file sharing evidence

Games That Never Age: The Unrecognized Potential of Procedural Synthesis.

Everyone has heard of Procedural Synthesis and what it can achieve.

Astounding graphics but with very small file sizes.

What is procedural synthesis?

Method of using mathematics to produce real-time graphics instead of pre-rendered imagery.
Base components are created such as the texture of bark or tree leaves.
Algorithms then make them look different as they are re-used throughtout the game.
When you consider the number of re-used textures in games you see the benefits: walls, sidewalks, sky etc.

Drawback of procedurally generated graphics is that it’s computationally intensive.

Lack of computing power restricts the complexity of algorithms that modify textures.
However as processors get faster then higher resolution textures can simply created by modifying the algorithms that work with the base textures.
Graphics of games can improve as better algorithms are released and downloaded via automatic updates.

Problems include:

It won’t be widely adopted.
Every visual element a game is not procedurally generated, hence not everything can be upgraded.
You’re still playing the same game, procedural synthesis doesn’t address gameplay only graphics.
Why not AI procedurally generated so you can get updates of smarter opponents?

Will Wright’s latest project: Spore uses procedural synthesis liberally.
This includes the way creatures move and behave being generated on the fly.

Links

About.com article
Will Wright’s Spore

Short Stories

FBI plans new net-wiretapping push

FBI has drafted legislation that requires ISPs to create wiretap hubs for surveillance
It also will force networking gear manufacturers to build “backdoors” in equipment to enable eavesdropping

Measures included are:

Expanding wiretapping requirements to “commercial” Internet services including instant messaging if the FCC deems it to be in the “public interest.”
Forcing ISP’s to monitor and identify for instance VoIP calls.
Remove the requirement that the Justice Department publish a “notice of the actual number of communications interceptions” every year

FBI claims changes in law needed to thwart terrorists and criminals who have turned to such things as VOIP.

Links

Boing Boing article
CNet article

Microsoft hit with 280m euro fine

Microsoft fined for failing to comply with anti-competition ruling.
Landmark ruling in 2004 ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with info on Windows.

Microsoft was ordered to supply “complete and accurate” technical information to rival developers.
Aim was to allow rival firms to write programs that could run more smoothly on Windows.
Daily fines of 3 million a day will come into effect from the 31st of July if Microsoft fails to comply.

Microsoft claims to have complied and will appeal the fine.
It also plans to argue that the commission’s original demand was too vague.

Links

[1]

Friendster wins a patent on social networking

Friendster has received a patent that covers online social networks.
patent,is extremely general would seem to cover the activities of many other sites
Patent refers to a “system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.”
Patent covers the basic steps involved in joining a social network:

entering a personal description and relationships to other users,
mapping relationships and degrees of separation,
and connecting to others through these friends.

Company could in future pursue licenses and litigation from its competitors.

Expecially LinkedIn (covered last week) that allows people to connect within a certain number of degrees of separation.

Patent could be challenged in the patent system or the courts.

“Once the patent is issued there is a presumption of validity that follows with it,” said attorney Bill Heinze of Thomas, Kayden, Horstemeyer & Risley.

Friendster has fallen on hard times, eclipsed by rivals such as MySpace.
Patent was applied for about 3 years ago

Another 11 patents are in the pipeline for Friendster.

Links

Red Herring Article
TechCrunch Article

Media Pimp

Mark

The Skeptics Guide To The Universe

Adult Swim on Bravo UK

Ciaran

Ask A Ninja

Francis

Balcony TV
Dave Chappelle on the Internet
Lily Allen.

Listen: Episode 39
Watch: Youtube

Notes

Fear and loathing in single sex schools

Review of data from across the world showed no evidence that single-sex schools were consistently better.
Ability and social background of the pupils reason for their performance in school league tables.
Success of single sex schools could be attributed to them creaming the best students.
Situation occurs of co-educational school having a large gender imbalance containing the girls deemed unfit for the single-sex school.

Is it natural to seperate boys and girls at school as is simply denies them the chance to interact? Hence stunting their social and personal development?
An interesting study would be to compare the social skills of those from single and co-educational schools.
Children go to school together up until the age of 11, why then seperate them?

Links

The Observer news article
Guardian Unlimited news article

Social networking products that game the system.

SalesGenius,

Allows a salesperson to see exactly what you looked at and clicked on on their website after clicking on a link sent via email.
The subsequent telephone sales pitch is then based on what they have learned by observing you.

LinkedIn is a social networking site for jobs.

It allows people to connect to strangers who may employ them via someone they do know who will vouch for them.
Situation may occur where you are asked to connect people you don’t know to one another, which can be socially awkward.

Jigsaw allows one to trade business contacts almost like baseball cards.

You get money or credits for submitting contact information which can then be used to buy contact information.
Idea of trading your contacts or obtaining contacts merely to trade them for better ones is kindof creepy.

Links

Break the social contract–for fun and profit by Rafe Needleman

Who’s reading your email?

New plans to scan e-mails for illegal images of child abuse.
AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, EarthLink and United Online have joined with the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to create new ways to safeguard children.
First initiative is to create a database of images of child abuse and then process each to create a digital fingerprint.
They will then monitor email attachments and images files sent over the networks in the hopes of spotting illegal images.
Chances of false positives are quite high.

Seems more of a token gesture rather than a real effort to stop the trading of images of abuse.
Trading often happens on restricted servers with files encrypted and obfuscated to hide their true content.

UK is moving towards forcing ISP’s to put in place technical measures that will block customers from accessing websites identified by the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) as containing illegal images.
Interestingly the IWF has not a statutory body and has no legal powers.
But it will have the power to block a website it considers unacceptable or illegal under current law.

Why would you oppose this?

Another foot in the door of the total surveilence of email
False positives – family snaps etc
What other images will trickle into later versions the tracking algorithem – essentially anything illegal that is distinct enough to algorithmically analyse cheaply – any form of drug useage, or how about photos of you at a protest. But technology is never used for repression right?
Look at the list of other things the IWF watch for

things that may be banned at the ISP – copyright violations, peer to peer services (note – not just file sharing), mobile camera violence (happy slapping we think)

Great UK firewall anyone?

Links

Commentary by Bill Thompson on BBC Technology website
[1]

The Future of Futurism

In 1976 Stefan Kanfer divided futurists into two groups:

Neo-Malthusians are convinced that the world is going to hell.
Cornucopians, in contrast, promise vast riches.

Most futurists believe technology will empower the ordinary individual.
Glenn Reynolds believes in a “comfy chair revolution” that will turn every consumer into a producer.
John Robb believes that such empowering technology has the downside of also being available to terrorists, criminals etc.
Philip Longman, believes “the comfy chair revolution” will strengthen the hand of fundamentalists worldwide. The forces of reaction will simply outbreed the secular world.
Barry Lynn argues that the global supply chains we count on are too fragile to survive a major shock, be it natural disaster or terrorist attack or otherwise.

Some things don’t change, i.e. death and taxes etc.
Good futurists take the constants into account and extrapolate on current trends.

The author states that the Cornocopians have generally got things right.

Rising standard of living: Not for all, gap in wealth between rich and poor has widened.
the XBox as a Superintelligent robots: eh.. no.
Vast Undersea cities: This may come true but not through design, more likely through rising sea levels flooding cities.

Links

Slate.com article

Short Stories

New Defamation bill makes it harder to sue for libel

The Irish Governments new defamation bill allows a defence of innocent publication to people providing the medium.
The bill has been proposed and is due for debate in the Dail before being passed into law in November.

ISP’s could be liable if they exercise an editing role on a site as they would then have the opportunity to excise defamatory material.
In the UK ISP’s are absolved from liability over what at third party writes about another person online.

The new legislation may well force ISP’s to disclose the identity of bloggers and contributors to chatrooms so that the defamer can then be sued for everything he owns.

All this means is that the ISP is less likely to get sued.
You however will still be at risk for damaging someone’s good name, even more so now they can find out who you are.

Links

SiliconRepublic article

Amanda Congdon leaves Rocketboom.

Anchor of popular daily video blog Rocketboom Amanda Congdon leaves the show.
She claims she was forced to by Andrew Baron her former partner in RocketBoom.
Rocketboom released a statement stating she was no longer with them due to her wanting to move to a different part of the country.

RocketBoom has catapulted itself to success,

with 250,000ish daily viewers,
distribution via Tivo
and $40,000 per week in advertising revenue.

How much of that is attributable to the anchor is debatable but future success may depend on finding a suitable replacement.
Or maybe they will kiss and make up.

Links

TechCrunch Article

US military turns to “blog analysis” for intelligence

Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is currently funding a US$450,000 study that attempts to mine blogs for “invaluable help in fighting the war of terror.”
Some genius has come up with the idea of basing the relevance of a source by the number of hyperlinks to it. Someone contact the Nobel foundation.
This of course is not at all like the method used by the world’s largest search engine.
System will allow warhawks to figure out what topics bloggers are talking about before it makes it onto Fox News.

Links

Ars Technica article

Media Pimp

Gareth

Lost Words
Become a camcorder pro

Francis

StoryCorps – Oral history of the USA

Notes

Bush to set up domestic spy service

George Bush has announced a new Intelligence agency to be set up within the FBI – the National Security Service
The agency will be empowered to sieze the property of those suspected of spreading WMD
This story ironically comes shortly after GB intervened to prevent the controversial supreme court decision allowing so called ’eminent domain’

where local governments to enact compulsory purchase orders for private developments

The FBI will restucture to include a new

The NSS will consolidate the bureau’s counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and intelligence duties

The expantion of the FBI’s duties from crime fighting to domestic surveilance seems clear
The agency will be headed up by John Negraponte, the controversial former US amassador to Hondoras

alleged to have been involved in the training and aid to Nicaraguan Contras death squads
Actions that would later result in the conviction of the United Stated in the UN International Court of Justice for unlawful use of forse
additionally he is alleged to have been involved in the running of CIA trained Honduran death squads – responsible for the deaths of opponents of the US supported regieme
and the establishment of secret detention and tortue facilities in Honduras

One potentially positive move is the establishment of a counter-proliferation center – to prevent the spread of chemical / biological / nuclear weapons
The changes are being marked as a reaction to the Silverman-Robb Commission report on the “Intelligence Failures” in Iraq – which led to the ‘mistakes’ on WMD

Links

BBC News Article
Associated Press – Bush Limits Property Siezure
Sourcewatch profile of John Negroponte

Scientist Unite To Attack Creationism

The Inter Academy Panel on International Issues – of the International Council for Science has released a strong condemnation of anti scientific / anti evolutionary education
The statement attacks the denial of evolution – and the confusion of untestable beliefs with scientific hypotheses
It urges parents and educators to teach children about the scientific method and scientific discoveries
It also lists a variety of evidence based statements in support of evolution and the scientific method
The statement is signed by representatives of 68 International scientific representative bodies

Links

ICSU Statement (PDF)
Physics Today Article

ACLU hounds NSA on brain scan misuse

In a story right from the pen of Philp K. Dick – The ACLU have accused the NSA of adapting functional neuroimaging in the questioning of suspects domestically and internationally
FMRI likely to be the technology involved

The technology works by capturing statistical alterations in oxygenated bloodflow to various brain regions in response to activity
which is assumed to correllate with brain activity
When hemoglobin – the bloods oxygen transporter – is oxygen rich, it become magnetic in response to the application of external magnetic fields – allowing the recording of blood oxygen level dependent images of neural activity
Images are mathamatically transformed into meaningful analogues of brain activity

MRI and fMRI techniques are revolutionizing neuroscience – however the very idea of a ‘lie region’ in any individuals brain is absurd – although it might be possible to present individuals with stimuli (e.g.: photographs) and observe their brains activation in response
The ethics of subjecting suspects (or even convicted criminals) to unnecessary medical proceedures in order to extract information, is highly dubious

Links

ACLU Article
Wikipedia on FMRI

Short Stories

Warner to sell movies via GUBA.com

Studio Giant Warner Bros. (a subsidiary of Time Warner) have announced a deal with startup GUBA.com
Interestingly the studio is not persuing horizontal integration with TM owned America Online
Warner are experimenting with a variety of distribution mechanisms – having already signed a deal with bittorrent creator Bram Cohen
Pricing

Movie – 24 hour rental – $1.99
Movie – ‘Permanent’ DRM’d download – $19.99 / $9.99 – same day DVD release
TV shows – $1.79 per episode

Compatibility – Windows media PC’s, networks and portable devices

Links

Yahoo News Article

Google launches Paypal rival

Google has finally launched its long awaited PayPal rival checkout #
If the service proves popular – it could ultimately be an even greater income generator than adwords
Signing up is as simple as filling in a single page form with credit card / billing details
Each user can store an unlimited number of credit card / billing address combinations
Google have cleverly linked the tech into adwords adds – with a shopping cart icon indicating support for the service
Order / shipping status & fraud protection are included

Links

Google Checkout
Slashdot Article
Google Checkout Promo Video

Canadian Scientists Regrow Teeth and Bones Eh

Canadian Scientists are using ultrasound to fix fractured & diseased teeth
The wireless device – inserted like a cap above teeth stimulate the gum and roots to produce growth
The technology may one day allow bone growth to increase height

Links

BreitBart.com Article

Java may go open source in months

Sun have announced their intention to Open Source their Java virtual machine / programming environment
The move may save the beliegered language which has come under attack from new tech

Like Microsofts .Net and C# technologies

It could additionally provide a huge boon to embeded devices running Linux
Move comes 2 years after it was suggested by IBM & Eric S. Raymond
Compatibility & forking issues may delay the move for several months

Links

Infoworld – Sun to open Java
Cnet – IBM urges Sun to open Java

Media Pimp

Gareth

An interesting article I almost wholly disagree with Artificial General Intelligence and its Potential Role in the Singularity – by ben gortzel

AGI is unlikely to be developed – primarily because humans don’t have General Intelligence – but rather a wide variety of modular intelligences
Evolutionary computing – rather than a grand design is likley to produce the first highly intelligent AI – but as this process involves problem solution – and the solution space of general category problems is huge – we shouldn’t expect to be able to comprehend the thoughts – or even the perspective of such a creature
After all – from one perspective, language enabled memes can be percieved as globally active artificial intelligences

Podcatcher Matrix Compare Podcasting Clients
Scientology Orientation Video

Daniel

Director

Jonah

The Year 2012

Fiona

The Perry Bible Fellowship

Listen: Episode 37
Watch: Youtube

Notes

LA Police to watch from the air

Police in LA have announced plans to launch UAV’s ‘The SkySeer’
Am I the only one who thinks Farenheit 451 has come to pass?
The drones – autonomously controlled via GPS – will observe the ground for signs of dissent, bright colours or dark skin (sic)
They are intended to fight crime

“This technology could be used to find missing children, search for lost hikers, or survey a fire zone,” – Commander Sid Heal, of LAPD
“Unmanned surveillance crafts may become the norm in urban policing”
Em..so the technology can see into basements, people hike in the city, and city fires now grow so big they need a survey?

Currently they lack zoom – but are silent, and can pan and tilt their video cameras – sending visual feeds back to base – future versions could see into your living room
LAPD current have 18 helecopters – the UAVs are much cheaper 25 – 30k and are likely to quickly become ubiquitous
“Do we really want to live in a society where our backyard barbeques will be open to police scrutiny?” – Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
“You shouldn’t be worried about being spied on by your government,” said Heal. “These days you can’t go anywhere without a camera watching you whether you’re in a grocery store or walking down the street.”

Links:

Drones in the Sky

Earth Temp at 400 year high

National Academy of Sciences concludes Earth is the hottest it has been in 400 years.
Scientists explained human activities as being responsible.
The panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years

Reviewed the scientific work of other scientists
Panel looked at how other scientists reconstructed the Earth’s temperature over thousands of years.
Reconstruction carried out based on tree rings, corals, glaciers, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments.
One study compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick of temperatures and the stick’s long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

Bush administration has maintained that threat is not severe.
White House says new pollution controls would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.
Last year House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton launched an investigation of three climate scientists.
House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert said Barton should learn from scientists not intimidate them.

National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.

Links:

Global warming

Kyoto promices nothing but hot air

Countries that signed up to Kyoto are emitting more greenhouse gases than they say they are.
Under Kyoto, each government calculates its gas emissions by adding up estimates from individual sources.
Emission calculation system accepted by atmospheric scientists but not independently audited.

Peter Bergamaschi of the European Commission Joint Research Centre at Ispra, Italy has come up with an alternative “top-down method of estimation”
Claims he has convincing evidence that the figures for many countries are wrong, UK and France worst offenders.
Measured in detail how concentrations of greenhouse gases vary across the globe.
Concentrations are higher near sources and dependent on weather conditions.
Scientists claim they can now calculate a country’s emissions independently of government estimates.

Bergamaschi admits system not perfect but is based on real atmospheric measurements.
National figures often based on uncertain extrapolations from sites such as landfills whose emissions are highly variable.
Countries now have incentive to underestimate as carbon-trading occurs.

Links

[1]

Short Story

Digg 3.0 screenshots

Techcrunch have exclusive screenshots of the new Digg
New Features include..

Collapsable Groups of topics bundled together

Science, World, Business, Entertainment, Gaming, Online Video – youtube, yahoo video
New sections include – technology, entertainment, gaming, science, world & business, and online video.
Digg is now one of the post popular news sites in the world – 800,000 visitors a day

Links

Screenshots
New Features

Microsofties search with google

Overwhelming majority of MS workers use google
80 / 20 %
Google and Yahoo workers apparently do

100% at google & 64% at yahoo

Techweb Article

Royle Society to try open publishing

UK royal society cream of UK academia
to publish some journals under open licensing

will be available for free online
contributers will cover costs

Comes in wake of RS publishing a paper attacking Open publishing

subsequent open letter from members reversed policy

Welcome Trust have recently decided to publish all articles supported by its research grands through open access
European commission have recommended the same for state funded research in the EU
[2]

Opera 9 Launches

Includes primative built in torrent support

A must in future browsers if citizen media is to survive

The worst website in history has been launched to advertise it

It’s ment to be amusing we think

New features include

Skins
Pop Up Blocker
Password Manager
Source code editor, WC3 validator
Widgets
My Opera Community – a user community with photo upload and 300meg free space

Opera 9 launches

Media Pimp

Gareth

The Power of Nightmares
Against School
Instructables
Dark Light Film Festival

Francis

Quickmuse
Give me a name
Ten Dollar Digital Camera

Listen: Episode 36
Watch: Youtube

Notes

A Dose Of Genius

• Dramatic increases in the numbers of students using “smart pills” to increase
  • concentration,
  • focus,
  • wakefulness
  • and short-term memory.

• Adderall,
  • used to treat attention-deficit disorder.
  • Sales up 3,135 per cent in the last 4 years.
• Provigil
  • used to treat narcoleptics, who fall asleep uncontrollably.
  • Sales up 359.7 percent in the last 4 years..
• These “brain steroids” are cheaply available, with those having legitimate perscriptions selling or giving away the pills to their friends.

• Study published in an international biomedical and psychosocial journal noted that 7 million Americans used bootleg perscriptions in 2002 and 1.6 million were in the student age group.
• In May, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America issued its annual attitude-tracking study on drug use
  • it concluded 2.25 million kids of middle school and high school age are abusing stimulants.
  • This represents 1 in 10 students in that age group.

• These represent the first geneneration of brain pills, memory drugs may soon be on sale pending the results of clinical trials.
• Four US companies are racing to bring drugs for Alzheimer’s patients to market.
• Researchers expect those drugs to slowly filter into use by a population sick of forgetting what they meant to buy at the shops and students looking for an edge.
• One new drug boosts the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory.

• For the future:
  • Will business see it as a way to get more out of the average worker.
  • Certainly in jobs where mental endurance matters it will creep in, especially as those who take them at school move into these roles.

• What about the side effects?
  • Cleaner student accomodation.
  • Strattera — the ADHD medicine can result in liver failure
  • a form of Adderall was pulled from its markets as a result of sudden unexplained deaths in children with cardiac abnormalities.

• How long before it becomes common over here?
  • Points race and pressure to succeed placing greater pressure on students.
  • Will those who cannot attend grind schools use these drugs to keep up?

Links

• Original Article from Washington Post

The Last Radio

• The GNU programmable radio
• Capable of grabing most of the electromagnetic spectrum

• Most devices that use wireless communications utilize single purpose radios which operate over a narrow band of frequencies.
• A general purpose radio that can be reconfigured offers greater flexibility and economy of scale.
• Imagine being able to recieve or transmit any kind of signal using one device.

• Eric Blossom & Matt Ettus teamed up to develop a HDTV reciever.
• While they have yet to decode HDTV they have gone on to build the a software-defined radio.
• The system consists of the:
  • Universal Software Radio Peripheral, or USRP motherboard
  • the daughterboards that allow it to transmit and recieve over various parts of the electomagnetic spectrum.

• The device is already being used to track shopper movements within a closed area using triangulation of the GSM signals.
• Blossom is working on a passive radar system which will use ambient radio waves to track flying objects up to 50 km away.
• System opens up vast possibilities for researchers and amateurs, Ettus is selling the kits from his website starting at $550

Links

• Wired News
• Ettus.com

Netvibes Ecosystem

• Popular WEb2.0 online desktop / portal netvibes have launched Netvibes Ecosystem
• The ecosystem is a cleverly designed one way mirror of RSS content, widgets created with the netvibes API, and flash content
• You can alter how netvibes works, subscribe to feeds created by users, add a clock, games etc
• With integrated POP3 mail, mouseover feed preview, and built in RSS viewer, Netvibes is rapidly becomming a top notch alternative to separate RSS feed viewers

Links

• Netvibes Ecosystem

Gesturtek outdo the Wiimote

• New camera software from Gesturetek should enable X360 and PS3 to replicate all the functionality of the Wiimote and more

• Gesturetek showed off their Software development kit at E3
• It is used to program for the as-of-yet unannounced XBox 360 camera.
• This is not a slightly better EyeToy which could only identify motion and direction.
• The SDK allows for the identification and tracking of a single person’s face.
• It also tracks limbs in 3 dimentional space.
• It can in fact identify and track individual fingers.
• This allows for very sophisticated gesture recognition if the hype is to be believed.

• The SDK is also being ported to the PS2 and PS3 and should be ready by the end of the summer.
• The question is – will software support the peripheral?
  • Writer makes the point that Nintendo Wii is all about the controller.
  • Game makers have no incentive to incorporate gesture control into their games.
  • It’s much easier to churn out generic sequels to popular titles.
  • Those that do might do so poorly.
  • Nintendo on the other hand incorporate gesture recognition by default.
  • It’s the unique selling point of the Wii.
  • For developers it is much more likely to be fully incorporated into games for the Wii.

• Gesture games are hugely popular, Guitar Hero allowing air guitar afficionados everywhere to strut their stuff.

• If the system works then it would be nice to see other uses of it.
• no more seaching for the remote control, simply control every device in the room via gestures.

Links

• About.com

Short Stories

Google Spreadsheets

• Googleblogger – Spreadsheets for everybody else
• Will not replace advanced corporate functions
• But – multiuser / post online / all basic functions – fine for home / small business use
• Only major feature missing = charts

Google Browser Synch

• Google have launched a tool for those of us forced to skip from Desk to desk
• Google browser synch lets users carry their settings with them
• bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords are kept up to date
• handy, but do you trust google with this info?

NSA Lawsuit will go ahead

• Judge rules that the lawsuit against the NSA over their illegal wiretapping can go ahead

• Lawsuit filed by the ACLU in Detroit and the Center for Constitution Rights in New York in January.
• Claim was that the wiretapping violated American’s rights to free speech and privacy.
• Plaintiffs asked the judge in March to declare the wiretaps illegal.
  • The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a visit to a secret court to authorize spying within the United States.
  • The NSA had not done this, making their wiretaps warrentless and illegal.

• Government filed a motion saying no court can consider the issues as it may harm national security.
• Judge said she will hear the government’s motion only after proceeding with the hearing on the plaintiff’s motion to declare the spying illegal.
• The Justice Department has yet to respond to the legal challenge.

• Link:: Boston.com

Hitch – iPod to iPod without PC

• Finally – rip to and from portable devices without a PC

• Link:: Sima Products

Media Pimp

Gareth

• Man vs Flash
• Observer Chris Morris Special
• The Amen Break Video
• The Establishment – Ultimate Peter Cook Fan Site
• Amazing RC Piloting
• Powers of 10

Francis

• Search for content with a particular tag on flickr, youtube, del.icio.us,technorati, feedster, newsvine, reddit and tailrank, all at the same time on Tagfetch.com
• Make your own lcd projector
• Make google maps the easy way with Google Map Maker
• Prison Break begins on RTE 2 on Tuesday night.

Listen: Episode 35
Watch: Youtube

Notes

The Stolen Election

Rolling Stone on how Bush stole the 2004 election
Robert Kennedy Jr, son of Robert Kennedy, leading US environmental campaigner writes
It’s never been clear the exact (actual) outcome of the 2000 election – first election since the 1876 election in which the Supreme Court affected the decision – but most have assumed the 2004 election – although fraut with controversy was a clear victory for Bush
Not so says R.F.K
disparity between exit poles and results – in all but 4 states favouring Bush

Exit polls are almost never wrong – with a margin of error of approximately 1% (beyond that require in science for significance)
variety of discrepancies pollsters view as almost completely impossible

half of 6 million americans abroad did not recieve ballots on time
Pentagon shut down the website used to file oversea registrations
Consulting firm hireed by Sproul & Associates hired by RNC to register voters – caught shredding Dem registrations
New Mexico – 20,000 votes unregistered on ballot machines
1 million ballots spoiled by electronic voting equipment nationwide
In deciding electoral college state Ohio – 350,000 voters (most dem) did not have votes counted or could not vote, officials removed thousands of eligable voters from register (1/4 of total), provided too few vote counts to democratic precincts & derailed a recount

50 thousand complaints were recieved from voters

Irregularities invariably favoured Bush
Evidence points to a systematic co-ordinated campaign

refusing to accept registrations
removing voters who were already registered
failing to properly count ballots
providing too few voting machines to democratic areas
on a massive scale designed to throw the election – particularly in Ohio – where the election was run by a hardline republican – who broke many state and fedral laws in his running of the vote

A disgusting but unsurpring report of an election stolen brazenly and on a massive scale, a crime unreported in the partisan US media

Redefining Journalism

Blog c-lo.net argues in it’s latest post that journalism is broken.
Inspired by Mark Cuban post on how that journalism no longer offers people (particularly young people) enough of a “payoff”.
Writer argues to throw objectivity out the window and embrace subjectivity because it already occurs, witness the popularity of Fox News.
Main ideas on what journalism should be:
Objectivity is a load of bull. Transparency and honesty are not.
Don’t act like opinions don’t exist. People need opinions.

Opinions give meaning to facts.

Redefine the concept of authority.

Journalists currently control who is seen as an expert on any particular subject.
User created content means that journalists no longer control access to expert opinions.

Post argues people want the facts presented and interpreted in a particular way.
Commenter makes the point: will people choose the presentation and interpretations that question their preconceptions of an issue or bolster those preconceptions.

Links

Post on c-lo.net
Post by Mark Cuban

Tag the fuckers

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company’s RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers.
Idea disclosed in response to Bush administrations call to know “who is in our country and why they are here ”
VeriChip make very small passive RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips about the size of a grain of rice.
Chip can be injected directly into the body, FCC has approved VeriChips for this purpose.
Reader broadcasts a signal which powers the chip which then sends its data to the reader.
I frankly don’t see how this helps them track illegal immigrants or nefarious individuals who will either not have the chips or remove them. VeriChip are a solution in search of a problem.

Probably a more realistic worry is the near inevitable tagging of currency and consumer goods.
Consumer goods will almost certainly be tagged, a number of testing centres already exist where every product for sale in the store is tagged.
Main worry for many is that anybody can read the tags after you have bought the product e.g. mugger scanning you to find out whether you’ve anything worth stealing.
Research has been carried out into disabling the chips before they leave the store.

Revelation, chapter 13

Then I saw another beast which rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon…16: Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead…17: so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

So great for shopping then

Revelation, chapter 14

8: Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of her impure passion.”…”If any one worships the beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand he also shall drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”

Bad breath and cramping ahead for the chipped

‘Security’ and the death of amature science

Consumer Product Safety Commission has begun a crackdown on the sale of chemicals which could be used to make illegal fireworks.
CPSC wants buyers to have an explovive chemicals licence to buy any of the chemicals, presumable in any amount.
The problem is that those same chemicals have a wide range of other uses.
This is having a huge impact on the teaching of science in schools.

Schools are shying away from hands on experiments due to fears of accidents and the law.
students lose interest reading text books
This eventually leads to less scientists and less able scientists because they don’t have the experience.

This and other forces are also having a chilling effect on amateur research.

More than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production
In certain states you now need a licence to own certain types of glassware and unbelievably ph strips.
Any amateur scientist now fears discovery, and not the scientific kind but the S.w.a.t. team breaking down the door kind.

Strangely enough amateur scientists have always played some part in science’s progress

In recent years, citizen scientists have discovered comets and supernovas and invented tools for gauging Earth’s magnetic field.

Some big names in tech and science started out as amateur chemists.

Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the Internet and David Packard the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard spent time in their youth making home made bombs which they then detonated… cuz it was cool.

Consider on the other hand that you can buy bullets in Wal-Mart, a product made with the sole purpose of maiming and killing.

Links

Wired News Story

The net as enemy

Declassified “Information Operations Roadmap” provides glimpse of the Pentagon’s plans for “information operations”
US military are looking to fight an electronic war
Using propaganda dessimated electronically via blogs, websites etc. and physically via unmanned aerial vehicles, “miniaturized, scatterable public address systems”, wireless devices,
Document intriguingly thinks of the internet as the enemy with “fight the net”
Grand finale describes their aim to control the electromagnetic spectrum.
Anything that depends on the electormagnetic spectrum they want to be able to destroy.
That includes every telephone, computer, mobile phone, radio on the planet.
Links

BBC News

Short Stories

Gaming Propaganda from the other side

An interesting counterpoint to the usual US special forces in Iran game
the Union of Islamic Student Societies are releasing a game
storyline: US special forces kidnap an iranian nuclear scientist on pilgrimage – Commander Bahman must save him

EU Propose Email Tax

A european parliment working group has suggested a tax on text message and emails – just who would pay this tax, or how it would be collected, has not been explained
A variety of proposals for an EU tax or taxes have been announced in the light of negotiation difficulties expaning the EU budget, before now primarily paid by import duties, VAT, and contributions from member states

Big Oil Attacks Gore

Former US presidental candidate Al Gore has released a new film based on his anti-global warming lectures An inconvenient truth
Predictably ‘Big Oil’ is critical
Oil companies have hired ‘the competitive enterprise instiute’

which denies the effects of global warming
to produce 2 sixty second adds attacking Gore, and the film directly

Make More babies to catch up to the brown people

Fox News ‘pundit’ John Gibbons has suggested in his show ‘The Big Story’ that white americans need to ‘make more babies’
His reasons?

Hispanic americans are having more children
White europeans are having less “hence ‘Eurabia’.”
“Because civilizations need population to survive.”

We wouldn’t want the brown people taking over, now would we

Media Pimp

Francis

Make your PC look like a WMD

Gareth

CC Hits – Digg for CC music
List of Podsafe Music
How to Protect yourself from Big Brother
Cooked and Bomd
Monkey Mail

Sarah

Aharef: Websites as graphs

Listen: Episode 34
Watch: Youtube

Notes

Evil Broadcast Treaty stopped

Podcasters saved from new broadcast copyright – for now
WIPO – Broadcast treaty
Seeks to give copyright rights to the first person to transmit something – even if they have no role in creating it
Creators would have to seek permission from the first body to broadcast a work to show it on any other channel
Even public domain and fair use clips would be included!
For now the web has been excluded – due to the opposition of every country in the world other than the United States
Still affects podcasters – e.g.: under the treaty the portion of our show clipped on blizzard of odd – could never be shown on any television station world wide again – without RTE’s permission!!!
The broadcast treaty is a work of monsterous greed which shows US copyright and patent laws – and the ‘international body’ created to inforse them for what they are – property rights for communication and ideas
Have no fear – webcasting will be added in due course.

Is Bebo Dangerous

Irish Blogger Red Mum has hopped into the debate on the dangers of bebo Is bebo a haven for nefarious pedorasts?

Yes and know

Yes

Kids do post too much personal information Kids befriend individuals they don’t know personally Kids use their own names

No

This is no different to IRC, Yahoo chats, or any of hundreads of kinds and millions of examples of internet communications tool We can either wrap our children in cotton wool, or teach them appropriate care One thing is certain – very soon it will be effectively impossible to restrict omnipresent internet access Kids in fact meet strangers from online – very rarely – without either their friends present or a real world contact in the group Parents are understandably worried – but in the real world, abusers are much more likely to be carers – whether relatives, educators or care home staff

[3]

Wall marts Wikipedia war

Two years ago the wikipedia page was highly critcal of Wall Mart, however lobbyists have gradually been changing the page to present Wall Mart more positively, eg no mention of disputes over unions.
No one knows whether these people are being employeed by Wall Mart.
Up a dozen edits a day, those speaking up against NPOV are threatened

Universe(s) May be a Trillion years old

Small value of the cosmological constant which goes against the value predicted by particle physics theories.
This has long been a problem for cosmologists.
New theory proposes a cyclic universe.
Theory by: Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University, in New Jersey, US, and Neil Turok at Cambridge University in the UK
Universe goes through a series of big bangs and big crunches.
At each step the universe is essentially reset.
Cosmological constant drops after each reset.
The length of each cycle is thought to be about a trillion years.
This may indicate that the universe is many trillions of years old.
The theory does not explain why the size of the cosmological constant is so similar to the density of matter in the universe today.

[5]

Short Stories

A copy-right controlled museum is a crime against humanity

[6]

Museums are starting to restrict photography claiming that it violates copyright, despite that fact the most exhibits aren’t copyrighted, or have expired years ago.
They want to maintain a monopoly a postcards and images of the exhibits.
High resolution scans of Michelangelo’s David were only allowed to be taken by Stanford provided the resulting 3d images were DRMed, Italy wants to copyright the countryside of Tuscany to prevent companies taking advantage of images of the scenery. [7]
Do the curators really ‘own’ images of their exhibits? The purpose of museum is to spread knowledge.

Bad Science

[8]

Misconceptions spread by K6 textbooks
SCIENTISTS USE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD? not quite.
THERE ARE SEVEN COLORS IN THE RAINBOW?
FRICTION IS CAUSED BY SURFACE ROUGHNESS? no one knows, chemical bonds are involved as well

Archaeoacoustics

[9]

Recovery of sounds from objects made before the invention of recording.
1969 Woodbridge experiments were able to recover the sound of a potter wheel from a pot using a hand-held crystal cartridge.
Was also able to recover words spoken while painting from a canvas.
There have been excellent april fools on this theme in the past [10]
X-Files also feature the word of god being recorded in clay – in the episode Hollywood AD

Chindogu

Intentionally useless devices
Chindogu means “a tool that exists on the edge of reason”
Essay by John Lienhard describes them as:

can’t be intended for real use, but it must be meant for everyday life.
It must actually exist.
Its purpose cannot be humor, propaganda, or vulgarity, nor can it serve any religious or ethnic prejudice.

Remaining guiding principles are:

Chindogu must reveal the spirit of anarchy
It must challenge, and I quote, the suffocating historical dominance of conservative utility.
Chindogu must represent freedom from true purpose.

Examples include

t-shirt with grid on the back so that a friend can be told which grid square to scratch.
Butter stick, like a chapstick but with butter for easy spreading on bread.
My personal favourite is the ten in 1 gardening tool.. it’s like a giant swiss army garden knife.

[11]

Slashdot Redesigns

Some cool entries from the slashdot redesign contest

[12] [13]

Ultra High Definition TV Invented

So sharp it makes you naucious
6 times the resolution of standard tv
this new experimental UHDV used 4*HD recordeds to store 3.5 terabtyes
Projected onto a 4 * 7 metre screen

[14]

The School with no Rules

Conceived by an assortment of parents who had taught their children at home and others in search of educational alternatives, Fairhaven opened in 1998 with 33 students.
No timetables, compulsory classes, set cirriculum. Students study what ever interests them.
To graduate students must write and defend a thesis saying why they can be considered adults. However their diploma is offically recognised.
Danny Mydlack spend two years there filming a documentary, a preview is available on you tube. He came to conclude that how the kids learn is more important then what they learn.
[15]

Now you see me

Another stab at a cloaking device [16]
This weeks new cloaking technology
Scientists at Utah and Sydney University
Using superlenses to make light travel backwards
Might make objects transparent or semi-invisible
Even invisibility over some wavelengths would be useful for stealth craft

Media Pimp

Gareth

Behold the Banana – The athiest nightmare [17]
The New Metrosexual superman [18]
Colbert Burns Bush – The complete videos [19]

Francis

The Raconteurs [20]
Web 2.0. Mashup Matrix [21]

Listen: Episode 33
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

The Death of Net Neutrality

Article by Daniel Berninger on GigaOM website.
Argues that net neutrality refers to “the uses of the Internet not the quality of access”.
Already a large number of classes of service available from the telcos, you pay for the performance and capacity of your Internet access.
The telcos have in mind creating another kind of customer, charging for the right of transit.
Technology already exists to examine packets at the routers.
Kills innovation as the ability to charge per application allows telcos to block technologies such as VOIP from ever getting a foothold.
Allowing telcos this kind of control allows them to make more money while providing nothing new.
Link [1]

The New Digital Millenium Copyright Act

Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 will expand the copyright restrictions of the DMCA.
Will also expand federal police wiretapping and enforcement powers.
Attempted copyright infringement would become a federal crime punishable by up to ten years in prison.
This is more time in prison for those who download child pornography.
Will make it a crime to “make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess” software that can bypass DRM systems.
Amazingly it will allow copyright holders to impound “records documenting the manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in” infringements.
According to the EFF this is a Godsend for the RIAA as they can demand server records.
EFF’s “Unintended Consequences” report exposes further issues with the basic DMCA which obviously will only become worse.
One issue is that Sony’s DRM rootkit software may not have been publicized because it exposed the people who discovered it to litigation by Sony.
Links

[2]
[3]

Where Windows Vista Fails

Vista was first unveiled on in October 2003 it still isn’t here.
Worse many features have come and gone, promises made and broken time and time again.
Writer points the finger of blame at a mindset of establishing market dominance at any cost as the root of the problem.
Bill Gates is seen as the epitomy of this philosophy and all that is wrong with Microsoft.
Some of the wonderful things we have to look forward to in Vista are.
User Account Protection

Meant to prevent even administrators from carrying out dangerous actions that could harm the system.
Actually annoys the user with continuous popup warnings regarding simple actions.

Glass Windows

Vista’s touted transparent windows.
You can’t tell which Window currently is at the top (i.e. has focus)

Media Center

Tv and multimedia interface software that’s not integrated into Vista and not a standalone product.
Simply it doesn’t follow the same UI structure of previous versions, is ugly and confusing.

Interesting point made by John C. Dvorak, IE is also a disaster and chews up a lot of Microsoft’s attentions.
IE is linked to the OS and is the source of many of the security problems.
Dvorak urges MS to drop IE and concentrate on making a working OS.
Might not be a bad idea considering how slow Vista is taking to get to market.
Links
Paul Thurott’s Supersite for Windows
The Great Microsoft Blunder

Short Stories

Googleblogger Report: Google SketchUp

New downloadable program from Google that allows the creation of 3D objects.
Integrates into Google Earth, so you can see what your 3D object would look like in the world.
Buildings such as the Whitehouse are available and can be edited.
SketchUp comes in 2 versions, Pro and Free.
This is the first time that Google has offered software in this form.

Apple’s all seeing eye

Apple application for a patent for dual monitor/image capture device.
Image capture devices placed in between each pixel.
Overall image produced as amalgum of images from each device.
Acts as both a monitor and camera.
Aim is to make videoconferencing etc. easier

Camera is always present.
User looks directly at the camera.

Eerie similarity to the viewing screens in 1984.
Also raises serious security issues, zombie machine can be used to spy on others.
Link [4]

Media Pimp

Gareth

Top 20 Fake [5]

Francis

Jeff Bridges Blog [6]
The Soul Exchange [7]
I used to believe [8]

Listen: Episode 32
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Digg hits a gas main

Social bookmarking phenomena Digg is in trouble this week, after being accused of the blogosphere’s greatest sin – censorship
Slashdot have posted a story – in Taco’s mangled grammer ‘submitted so numerous that I had little choice but to post’ – accusing dig of a variety of heinous crimes

The allegations

Stories put onto the front page by the editorial staff, rather than the community
Site which reports this banned from being dug
Stories which report site which reports this disapearing
Users who submit stories which report site which this disapearing, being banned by name and IP
Other stories being removed for being critical of ‘Go Daddy’, a Revision 3 Sponsor

Digg’s Responce

It’s the system man!

Kevin Rose say’s the stories removed we taken down due to user reports
No response on the front page editorial control
Users who report this are being banned, because accusing other users of gaming the system ‘violates digg’s terms of use’ (paraphrase) – even if the accused is digg itself!

Links

Slashdot Story
Splasho Story
Forever Geek Story
Kevin Rose’s Responce
Another ‘Digg bullying’ example

The RIAA vs the EFF

Ars Technica have an article on the Internet culture wars – the RIAA vs the EFF
Elektra v. Barker – one of the thousands of frivolous RIAA lawsuits – if the RIAA win, the repercussions could undermine the very nature of the internet.
RIAA state sharing a folder constitutes infringement – even if files are never accessed
RIAA attempting fundamental changes to copyright law through courts
RIAA is argue copyrighted uploads to P2P infringe as much as downloads
Current law: to “distribute” a copyrighted work – physical exchange of a material object must take place – law doesn’t take account of the digital distribution of copyrighted works.
Ars Technica say – ironically EFF are arguing for pre-internet disribution model
We say – hooey – this mearly points out the absurity of applying arbitary legal weight of theft to duplication => makes sence from a commercial perspective, insanely fascistic if actually applied on individual scale => this is not how information works

Links:

Ars Technica – The RIAA vs the EFF

The Flaws of HDCP

HDMI is a technology that restricts the availability of high-def TV content.
Devices carry out a HDCP handshake before sending HD video over a connection.
Handshake authenticates devices & computes secret key for encrypting video between them
Each HDCP device is given two things: a secret vector, and an addition rule (not secret.)
A device uses it’s own vector and the other device’s addition rule to compute the secret key.
Vector and key are set so that both devices end up with the same key.
Problem is that conspiring devices can break the system and discover the secret vectors, thereby impersonating any HDCP device.
They came up with their own rather than using established handshake protocols such as Diffie-Hellman.
Reason for custom protocol seems to be to accomodate reduced computational ability, protocol is a simplified and less secure version of Diffie-Hellman.

Links:

Freedom to tinker
Diffie Hellman Key Exchange

The ignorance of crowds

This is a question we tacked back in show 2
Do folksonomy sites like Wikipedia lead to a better ‘infosphere’, or just a noiser and more confusing media landscape
WikiTruth (wikitruth.info) charts the inner machinations of wikipedia.
Creators of the website (who claim to be wiki admins) say the increasing banality of entries and decrease in the quality is self-inflicted.
Essentially, the more edits by more people is decreasing the quality of the information.
Problems with the homogenity of information,
Diverse views become suppressed, denying the viewer the ability to see an issue from multiple viewpoints.
Options for the administrators include restricting access.
This risks driving away contributors.
Raises the question of whether traditional sources such as encylopedia Britannica are better due to an editing process.

Links

Guardian Article
Acerbic comments from Lore Sjöberg
Wiki Truth

The latest on bionics

Super vision

Scientists are concentrating on restoring sight to blind people.
Daniel Palanker, a physicist at Stanford University in California has created a bionic eye.
Dead cone and rods are bypassed and the cells of the inner retina are stimulated with electrical signals directly.
Dr Palanker believes the system will provide a human user with 20/80 vision, enough to read large fonts and recognise faces.

Super strength

The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (Bleex) fits along a user’s legs and allows the carrying of 90Kgs with no strain on the user.
Made up of 40 sensors, a hydraulics system and a central controller that decides how to distribute the weight so the user feels none of it.

Bionic limbs

Modern artificial hands, give wearers a better quality of life but they have little of the functionality of the real hands they replace.
William Craelius of Rutgers University in New Jersey has developed Dextra.
System can be trained to recognise muscle movements in user’s arm and then carry out a corresponding action.
Dextra can control up to three fingers, one user even could play the saxaphone with it.
Future work will concentrate on many types of hand motion – grasping a key, opening a door, holding a hammer.

Links

Guardian Science Article

Another Front in the Global War on Islam

Bush will attack Iran
Because it’s about the dumbest thing he could do.

Why Iran is a much worse place to invade than Iraq

It’s geographically 3 times larger.
It’s population is approximately 3 times larger.
Population is a military strategists dream: a large number of fighting age men ~ 18 million with few very old or very young.
The failure to “win hearts and minds” in Iraq when you are replacing somebody like Saddam is not much encouragement that it can be achieved in Iran.
It will be another muslim country invaded within a few short years.
Iran has strong links to terrorism.
Shia Islam is the state religion, an attack on the country may be used by terrorists to claim the US is attacking Islam.
Current rumours indicate that the US will carry out airstrikes and limited special ops raids on the nuclear sites to disable them.
This may be difficult as the sites are spread thoughout the country to make such a task more difficult.

The New Yorker allege

Special Op’s Troops are already on the ground
Airforce planners drawing up target list
Disagreement between Europe and US over how long it would take for Iran to build a bomb
Bush’s white house refer to Irans president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as another hitler – clearly violating Godwins Law
‘Saving Iran’ will be Bush’s legacy
Administration purport to believe – “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.”
Only alternative administration will consider – campaign of coercion
“The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”
administration wants to change to power structure of Iran
senate is being selectively briefed on the plans
no one is ‘really objecting’
Special Op’s on the ground would be needed to knock out nuclear and chemical factories
Administration considering ‘tactical use’ of nuclear weapons
Joint Chiefs of staff want to take nukes of the table – administration refuses
Pentagon advisor – “The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.”
Case for a near and present danger is being built on unreliable evidence – A. Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb
I.A.E.A – Iran 5 years from bomb – “the Iranians want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side”
“there’s nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it.”
Flynt Leverett (european diplomat) – Europeans want sanctions & diplomacy – US & Isreal want bombs – “There may be a military option, but the impact could be catastrophic.”

Unanswered Questions

Who is the rogue regieme here? The ones who want a bomb, or the ones who want to use the bomb?
How will Russia and China react to an attack on Iran – nuclear or conventional
What chaos will erupt, if the heart of the muslin world is invaded (remember ‘regime change’) by a western millenarian christian conservative nation

Links

New Yorker Article
Justin Gauvin excellent blog
Godwins Law
International Atomic Energy Agency

Addendums to last weeks show

FYI, not sure if Rowan mentioned this – but the creator of comment cast Robin Blandford is his cousin
LASIK@Home is a joke site

Media Pimp

Gareth

Negative Pimp – Freaky Ajax Hell Hive 7
Mark Echo Tags Airforce One [1] – or does he [2]
The iPod Box, MS Style [3]
Quake3 in a browser [4]
Poetrymagazines.org.uk – huge searchable archive of a variety of British poetry magazines [5]
David Elsewhere (worlds best dancer) [6]

Francis

Help me win my Bet [7]
Lost Episode 17 related map [8]

Listen: Episode 31
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Mac BootCamp

Intel macs now officially run Windows
http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
Macs get mainstream – All silicon valley geeks must have PowerBooks (except me)
How will OSX cope with the competition – Who will reboot?

The hardcore will stay for the unix backend

But Mac enthusiasts already talking about a no-windows-booting pledge

http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/take-the-no-windows-booting-pledge/

Reasons to love Open Source DRM

Sun Microsystems has proposed, with its DReaM initiative open source DRM.
Central idea is to assign rights to users not devices, hence rights can follow user across devices allowing access to DRMed media from a multitude of devices.
Lawrence Lessig approved Sun’s plan apparrently because they have with the Creative Commons to support their licences.
However: Sun’s DReaM “Usage Scenarios” document says that its fair-use mechanism is purely optional for rights holders.
No obligation on copyright holders to support fair use.
who would certify the players, and what would block the non-certified players from playing DReaM-protected content, that is still not clear.
Not all are happy with Sun’s scheme: ‘I wish Sun would figure out a way to let me do less with my music and movies,'” Cory Doctorow.
EFF makes the point that “open” and “royalty-free” DRM doesn’t make it any less capable of restricting the public’s rights under copyright.
Link: Wired

Laser Eye Surgery for the Home!

LASIK@Home was founded in 2004 by Dr. Amir Khadim, M.D., Ph.D.
Key to the system is the Scal-Pal Scanning Adjusting Laparascopic Personal Laser.
Contains two lasers: first laser cuts a small flap in the cornea of your eye. Then the second laser vaporizes a tiny section of the lens without damaging the surrounding tissue.
Claim that “LASIK@Home is 100% safe” is a little hard to believe, especially for what it does.
Normally such surgery costs thousands of dollars and is carried out by trained professional who have years of experience. Would you trust yourself and a piece of plastic and electronics to do as good a job?
Risks of Lasik surgery include: loss of vision
Link [1]

Comment Tracking

CoComment – http://www.cocomment.com/

only comments on posts you’ve commented on
only shows comments by other cocomment users

co.mments – http://co.mments.com/

lets you track any comments

commentcasting http://commentcasting.bytesurgery.com/

Robin Blandford, final year DCU
leave comments on podcasts by phone, which are nicely wrapped up in an RSS feed

Short Stories

Listen to this NSA

Phil Zimmermann’s (creator of PGP)newest encryption software, Zfone.
The fruit of 10 years trying give the world easy-to-use software to cloak internet phone calls.
Open source, currently in Beta.
uses the industry standard SIP protocol, so it will work with a number of clients.
It has been submitted to IETF for approval as an internet standard, and rumours exist that it is indeed good enough to beat the acres of computers under Fort Meade.
Question is whether it will be adopted widely or will Skype continue to dominate.
Skype uses their own closed-source, own proprietary protocols.
may end up being used by the paranoids and geeks.

Face Recognition

riya – http://riya.com

launched publically a week ago after months of valley hype
recognizes common faces in your photos

You upload all your photos
it finds the faces automatically
then you train it by telling it who’s who
eventually it learns to recognize people and label them
you can search for other people’s photos of yourself (or whoever)

They employ lots of vision processing guys and plan to expand into more areas of image recognition
You can’t import all your photos from flickr yet
looks cool but haven’t used it yet

Can this level of technology beat the cutest kitten test? http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/security/the_cutest_humantest_kittenauth

better have a good supply of kitten photos and other animals to stop a brute force attack

Media Pimp

Rowan

Kleptones Latest Album

http://www.kleptones.com/pages/downloads_24h.html

Shadow of the Colossus – PS2 game

http://www.us.playstation.com/Content/OGS/SCUS-97472/Site/

Francis

Greg Apodaca’s Digital Portfolio

If you ever wondered how much photoshopping is used in glamour magazines then take a look at this… the skill of this guy is unbelievable! Nottie to hottie with a wave of his mouse!
Link: bikini_nottie_to_hottie

How to pull an all-nighter

How to pull an all-nighter when you have that all important assignment due in the morning.
Link How to pull an all-nighter

Listen: Episode 30
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Robocode competition

Interviewees:

Imelda Morton (former competitor and student)
Peter Benilov (creator of one of the pitbots)
Louise Crowe and Aoife Clohessy, (2nd level students)
Niall Donnelly (member of the WIT team which made it to the semi-finals)
John Barrett (member of the DIT team which came second with their bot Spinning-Banana)
Andrew Adams and Alan Morey (the winning team members from CIT with their bot Chuck Norris.)

Assisted with lights and camera: Mike Kiely.
Special Thanks To: Bernie Goldbach
Music: John Fleagle – Doon da Rooth (Available from Magnatunes), DJ Wurz – Irregulator (Available from CCMixer), Le Tigre – Fake French, Marc Kaschke – Remember the Name, DJ Dolores – Oslodum 2004, Wadealin – No Meaning No (Gold Teeth), Chuck B – Visciouslemurer

France forces ITunes Open

A New Law passed by the French Parliament will force any music purchased in an online store to be playable on hardware from a variety of manufacturers [1]
The legal change would legalise cracking DRM, and break apples holy marraige of iPod & iTunes
Leander Kahney writing on wired news [2] likens this strategy to Microsofts Embrace Extend Extinguish strategy of incompatibility and nonstandard flakey interfaces
If passed the law would be a huge victory for consumers

but likely also result in Apple dropping out of the French market
and labels refusing to lisence music for online distrobution

Only time will tell if the French parliament will follow through a force labels to distribute DRM free music online
As Wired point out such a law would have far reaching consequences

ideally preventing the sort of monopolistic behaviour that has allow Sky to build a monopoly in Ireland
and is leading cable companies to delete or restrict the recording of old shows from the clients PVRs

OPod: OPML Feed Grazer

Rowan Nairn has developed an ultra impressive feed grazer
His OPod software – the first of its kind – points the way to a new method of browsing the web as feed
Links:

Gareth’s article on OPML & the future of the Web
Rowan Nairn’s Opod

The podcasting rule book

Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS) launch a

licensing scheme for music podcasters in the UK [3]

The terms of the liscence are onerous to say the least

10 seconds at start and end of the song must be obscured
music must not represent more than 80% of a programme
avoid revealing a cast’s musical content in metadata

Songs are charged at 1.5p per song per download or 12% of gross income – whichever is larger

Child stolen for Parody religion membership

Judge has taken a mother’s child from her after seeing photos of a SubGenius event.
Subgenius are an ironic Web religion dedicated to parodying and mocking actual religion
The judge in this trial was a strict catholic
Not only was the woman’s child taken – but the judge ordered (verbally) that she abstain from communicating about the case on the internet
The firm who defended Larry Flint on obscenity charges are defending her maternity rights
The culture wars have a new front line
Links:

Boing Boing
Bartholomew’s notes on religion
Wikipedia

Media Pimp

Gareth

You’re a man now dog
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog – Get your daily fix of middle english
Consumating – Indy Dating Site, with tags
Banned SouthPark Episode With Scientology

Draw a Pig Personality Test

Francis

Epica Film Winners for 2005

Listen: Episode 29
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Matrixstream IPTV

Movies / Television channels streamining instantly through any broadband connection up to 1080P resolution over the H.264 codec through best effort network – public internet [1]

The claim is HD can be distributed in real time on a 6 meg connection!

Works with existing broadband networks with no upgrades or changes.
Essentially is a middleware that promises to provide VOD, via push, pull or streaming.
uses multicast or unicast to reduce load on the backbone network.
How does it work in practice with a large user base? Unknown. As far as we know nobody has deployed this yet.

Finally the device cringley has been predicting?

Will it recieve the necessary studio support to succeed?

Last Stand For Sanity

The Pirate Bay [2]

The MPAA’s latest sortie against filesharers has omitted one of the most prominent: The Pirate Bay.
Founded in 2003 by a group of Swedish file-sharing advocated the Pirate Bureau.
Site has provoked a file-sharing debate in Sweden and has even spawned a pro-piracy political party making a credible bid for seats in the Swedish parliament.
Sites immunity credited to the basic structure of the BitTorrent protocol. Servers provide only torrent files, which by themselves contain no copyright data — merely pointers to sources of the content.
MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards insists The Pirate Bay violates copyright laws around the world.”The torrent and torrent tracker is something that points people to various files that make up a copyright that is protected under the law.”

MSID

Laurence Lessig thinks an MSID might not be the worst idea [3]

The system effectively adds an “identity layer” to the Internet.
Hard to to falsify an identity and easy to verify your own.
Users’ computers will hold files called InfoCards that give encrypted sites access to authenticated information about the user.
When a Web site requests personal data, you choose whether to release that information, securely and with the verification of the card’s issuer.
Privacy fears addressed by the fact that the user decides what information is shared.
System is also open, it’s a protocol, implementable by many, not just Microsoft.
It will be distributed with Vista, MS’s new OS.

Short Stories

Functional Body Modification

The first stage in extrasensory enhansement – elegant lowtech(ist) implementation of superhuman status [4]

Google to purchase writely?

Google office rumours get a boost [5]

Google Mars

It’s out of this world – sorry I couldn’t resist![6]
You can look down on the red planet with elevation, infra red, and visible views

Webpages That Suck – Worst pages of 2005

And heres my least favourite (requires sound) [7]

Gabbly

Finally, a painless way to add live & recorded chat to any website
Simple put gabbly.com/thesiteyouwant – and begin chatting [8]
This is viral methinks

Almost a mental Keyboard

A funny thinkable cursor [9]
Hope for paraplegics and wanabe cyber people alike.
A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain
Cap works like an EEG.
Device can train itself to new users in about 20 minutes.

Origami

Microsoft have finally unveiled their origami project. Unsurprisingly its an ultra mobile PC. [10] [11]
These will be even more mobile than the smallest of todays micro laptops
The Specs: 7′ screen, touch screen interface, 800grams approx,
Some models will have: gps, web cam, finger scanner, 40gig hard drives

Isolatr

The antisocial network [12]

Science Myths Explained

20 of the most plausible scientific myths explained [13]
Our favourite – the five second rule is five seconds too long

Media Pimp

Gareth

Langer Land – What have the Brits done for us? [14]
Find Me Guilty – Vin Deisel Attempts to Act [15]
TV Go Home – Charlie Brookers mad masterpiece [16]
Convert to PDF [17]

Francis

View from the Sidewalk. [18]

Listen: Episode 28
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Everyone by the campfire

A discussion of the democratizing impact of citizen media, distributed distrobution, folksonomy, podcasting, vidcasting and the future of news, entertainment and human communication

Buzzwords: Web2.0, emergent, folksonomy

Content Creation: Geocities -> Google Pagemaker

Media: NBC, Sky, Fox -> Indymedia, Channel 101, Revision3

Knowledge: Britannica -> Wikipedia

Productivity: WordPerfect -> Office -> Writely, Thinkfree, EyeOS

Blogging: Livejournal -> Blogger -> WordPress

Bookmarking: Bookmarks -> del.icio.us, furl

Homepage: Portals (yahoo etc) -> netvibes, pageflakes

Search: Altavista -> Google -> Technorati, Kosmix, Rollyo

Community: Six Degrees -> Orkut -> Myspace, Bebo, FaceBook

Storage: XDrive -> Ourmedia -> Google locker – infinite free personal storage

News: Slashdot, Google News -> Google Alerts, Newsvine , Digg

Collaboration: Usenet -> Mediawiki -> Wetpaint, WikiWyg

The Future of Science

Kevin Kellys new work in progress – discusses the future of science
Kelly suggests potential near term advances in the scientific method

The New Methodology

Some of the Tools Kelly suggests science may adopt

Compiled Negative Results – the recording and analysis of negative results

As things stand – only studys which find a significant result tend to be published – creating a significant ‘file drawer problem’ – and failing to uncover flaws in exisiting theory / paradigms

Triple Blind Experiments – experiments which occur ubiquitously, without the awareness of participants – raw data collection over masses of variables – allowing flexability of post hoc data analysis / study design

Combinatorial Sweep Exploration – sampling and analysis of randomly constructed massive samples of models of studied objects – e.g.: brute force attacks on the analysis of genomic structure – through modelled or constucted recombinations genotyping

Evolutionary Search – the evolution of a problem solution (e.g.: computer program, useful polypeptide) through iterative evolutionary simulation – ‘Wolfram science’

Deep Simulations – hypercomplex simulations of life systems – from weather patterns, to genomes, to animal brains

Wiki-Science – multiple author continuas work in progress leading edge discussion / papers

Links

Kevin Kelly.org – The Technnium

Podcasting Consultancy Goes Mainstream

Conn Ó Muíneacháin on the Sunday Business Posts article about Irish podcast consultancies
Digicast
Doop – producing podcasts for the band whipping boy – [1], and Irish Emigrant magazine
Century Homes – have commissioned a series of podcasts for the construction industry
Digicast – plans sponsored casts like a tour of Dublin – have a proprietary download system

This is important – as caching makes it difficult to realistically judge podcast downloads

Links:

Edge Case
Digicast Podcasting Consultancy

Googlenews – Googleblogger

Gdrive – googles theoretically unlimited storage solution has been confirmed [2]
More limited hacks – allowing use of gmail or goole pages storage for data back up are already available

Media Pimp

Gareth

The Power Glove [3]
The IT Crowd First Season [4]
Diggnation on Time [5]
Spore Gameplay Video [6]
House of Cosbys [7]

Jason

Google Calendar Screenshots [8]
Wikipedia [9]

Francis

Real Life Simpsons [10]

Listen: Episode 27
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

How Easy to kill you All

One journalist wondered just how easy it would be to create a biological WMD.
Scientists have always been skeptical that individuals or terrorist groups about the idea that individuals or small groups are capable of creating bioweapons.
In their opinion “A significant bioterror attack today would require the support of a national program to succeed”
Roger Brent, a geneticist who runs a California biotech firm, claimed in an unpublished paper that that genetically engineered bioweapons developed by small teams are a bigger threat than suitcase nukes.
There is a growing number of researchers claiming that advances in DNA-hacking technology have reached the point where an evil lab assistant with the right resources could create a bioweapon.
Anyone’s allowed to buy raw genetic material and lab equipment online and very few checks are carried out.
Experts believe that currently the expertise required to create a fully fledged bioweapon such as smallpox is beyond a lab technician.
However DNA synthesis is following a kind of accelerated Moore’s law—the faster and easier it gets, the faster and easier it gets.
If the current pace of biotech proceeds for another decade, cooking up a lethal bug will be as easy and cheap as building a Web site.
after-the-fact vaccines won’t stop a plague; they take months to develop and deploy.
the only option is a general-purpose virus detector and destroyer, which has yet to be invented.
Such a device would also do an enormous amount of good for routine health care and global disease possibly eliminating large lethal epidemics of infectious disease in our lifetime.
Links:

Article on Pual Boutin’s Blog

The Right to Dissent

Publisher of the Mohamad Cartoons explains his reasoning
“cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam.”
Editor felt was a legitimate news story
Editor cited a half-dozen cases of self-censorship – freedom of speech vs. fear of confronting issues about Islam as the motivation for the cartoons.
Cartoons do not demonize or stereotype – those who have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet have given it a bad name.
Editor noted: cartoons depict Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse have not drawn the embassy burnings or death threats that the Mohammad cartoons have.
religious who demand we observe their taboos in public domain – not asking for our respect, but for our submission.
“I acknowledge that some people have been offended ….. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material.”
aimed to provoke debate – hailed moderate Muslims who contributed to the debate about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect beliefs
success and failure – inspiring defences of freedom of speech vs. tragic demonstrations

paper has recieved numerous death threats – some of the cartoonists and staff in hiding

Links:

Article on Internetavisen Jyllands-Posten

Unintelligent Design

Did all life evolve from Viruses?
Virus’s have typically been looked down upon their name comes from the Latin word for “poisonous slime”.
Virus’s are seen as evolutionary latecomers as they depend on organisms such as cells etc. to host them.
However the sheer number of new viruses (millions literally!) being discovered are painting a broader and more benign picture.
Scientists estimate that they have discovered and documented less than 1 percent of all the living things on the planet.But for every organism in that unidentified 99 percent, at least 10 times as many unknown viruses are thought to exist—the vast majority of which are harmless to life and yet integral to it.
The discovery of a new virus Mimivirus (because it mimics a bacterium) is so complex that The London Telegraph described it as, ” unlike anything else seen by scientists . . . that . . . it could qualify for a new domain in the tree of life.”
The complexity of Mimivirus indicates an ancient ancestor which may have been around when life was first emerging on Earth.
Virus’s seen traditionally as the bringers of death could see a new role, as one of the foundations of life.
Links:

Article on Discover.com

A Digital Identity System for Comment

Bloggers have to deal with comment spam etc. and it is a constant trade-off between reader convenience and effectiveness.
A company called clipperz is proposing a reputation based online system
This system requires the trust of the public in and the existence of an online identity bond merchant
The only conceivable companies which would have the trust – Microsoft, Ebay, Google

Could this be the more important feature of the proposed Google Wallet

The system clipperz propose is essentially

commenter gets unique trust token from identity merchant
blog confirms id – checks ‘rating’ with ID merchant
confirms or deletes comments – and provides feedback to merchant

Flaws

Requires trusted identity merchant

Whom do you trust to watch all comments
Especially in the light of companies like google being more than williung to co-operate when governments seek access to email / posting etc

Open to campaigns of identity smear
Open to identity theft
Spam blog nets could support each other – unless id’s were linked to real world ID’s

Hired bloggers could still comment / spam for cash – spam would just be more targeted

Who will pay? Confirmation of real world id & fighting abuse would cost real cash – so ID’s would not be free
Even posting a dissenting opinion – especially in a contentious area – could lead to loss of reputation

Judging the reliability of a blogs feedback – how? Just moves the problem around

Anonymity from government / corporate surveilence
Identity providers have too much power – without central authority – they can dicatate you reputation / punish you for switching providers
Every identity bond merchant would have to co-operate
The market for fake / second hand reputations would be huge
Links:

Proposal on Clipperz.net

Short Stories

Gervais Show to Charge

The Ricky Gervais Podcast will be jump the gun of the yet to be enabled monetarised iTunes downloads – having signed an exlusive deal with audible.com
Shows will be available on iTunes as an audible partner
This will be the first experience most users have with the nefarious world of DRM
The shows will be available for the price of $7 per month (or as part of an audible.com subscription) – monsterously high when compared to Satellite packages
Audible files apparently no longer work once you’ve cancelled your account
If your computer dies – you may no longer be able to listen to the files you’ve purchased
Audible files cannot be used on mp3 players other than the ipod
Audible files can only be burnt to a CD once
Links:

The Rick Gervais Show on Audible.com
O’Reilly.net on audible’s DRM hell
Computing Pioneer Dave Winer’s experince with audible
Dave Winers Podcast on his experience with audible
Goldwave Software – can supposedly circumvent the odious restrictions on audible files
Audible Subscription Plans

Out of Control

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
Kevin (former executive editor of Wired magazine) Kelly’s 11 year old masterpiece is free to read online
The book covers the emergent biological properties of complex systems – to ultimately argue ‘that biological and machine life are converging’
The book covers topics as varied as transhuman evolution, complexity, anthropology, epistemology, ontology, and ethics
Links:

Out of Control on Kebin Kelly.org

Additional Stories We’re Not Covering

Dropped Technolotics Stories

Media Pimp

Gareth

Expose for Windows – a number of tools which replicate the functionality of the fantastic exposé tool on mac [1]
Stardock Object Dock – Make your desktop a mactop [2]

Francis

New Trailer for shitcool Richard Linklater directed, Philip K.Dick Adapted flick – A Scanner Darkly [3]
Fuzzmail – Blurs the Bountrys between chat and mail [4]

A video Interview with Suw Charman of the UK’s Open Rights Group, covering Digital Rights, Copyright Reform, Privacy, Data Retention, Automatic Vehicle Tracking and other issues.

Listen: Suw Interview
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Listen: Episode 26
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Bullying Causes Brain Damage

An experiment where mice were repeatly placed in cages with larger dominant aggressors

found that levels of BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor) were decreased
‘bullied’ mice went on to behave in a socially avoidant manner
which could be ameliorated with anti-depressents

Using viral transfection – researchers temporarily turned of BDNF production in the mesolimbic dopamine system and repeated the experiment with a new set of mice

These mice failed to be negatively conditioned – as with BDNF production blocked a whole series of genes failed to express in reaction to repeated social defeat

The results indicate BDNF may play a role not just in depression – but addiction, social phobia, and post traumatic stress disorder
Implications: New drugs to treat anxiety, more rational approach than ‘chemical imbalance’

repeated incidences of social stress may lead to long term social anxiety and emotional withdrawal

Links:

Science Daily Coverage
Science Magazine Coverage
Original Paper – Essential Role of BDNF in the Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway in Social Defeat Stress

Drive by Night

Luxury car manufacturers BMW and Mercedes release competing night vision systems
Dashboard monitors expose what the naked eye is unable to see lurking in the dark.
< 20 percent of fatal accidents occurred between midnight and 6:00 a.m.
Mercedes uses near-infrared sensors
BMW uses far-infrared technology

BMW system.

BMW system has longer range 984 feet – see bends earlier
but compromises on the sharpness of the displayed image
People appear as “very bright, ghostlike images”.
Future versions of BMW system will sound an audible alarm when an obstacle such as a person or animal is detected on the road ahead. Algorithms will be used to avoid too many false positives which would annoy and distract users.

Mercedes system.

Mercedes system has shorter range but better resolution and displayed objects brightness does not depend on it’s temperature.
Display is also better placed on the dash behind the steering wheel where other dials and gauges are usually placed.

Our thoughts

No head up display so it can be argued you’re taking your eyes off the road to look at the monitor.
Can’t replace the human eye or common sense.
Are accidents really caused by not seeing what’s ahead or by the fact that at that hour people are most likely to be DUI, exhausted and driving recklessly because there is less traffic around.
Can any algorithm be accurate enough to sound an alarm without falsies?

Links:

Wired Article

Short Stories

Vatican Rejects ID

The January 17 edition of L’Osservatore Romano contains an article that dismisses Intelligent Design on scientific grounds.
Views expressed in L’Osservatore are thought to reflect Vatican thinking because its content is published with official approval.
An editorial by Fiorenzo Facchini said proponents of ID improperly blur the lines between science and faith.
Links:

The Christian Century Coverage

CD Ripping isn’t fair use

The RIAA and other copyright pigopolists have decided that ripping your CD’s to your iPod should be illegal
In a submission to the US copyright offices – the RIAA stated

that format shifting (e.g.: ripping), and time shifting (e.g.: TIVO) – do not count an non-infringing uses

In complete contrast to their statements in the Groxster case etc
Remember this is already illegal in Ireland
Links:

EFF Coverage

UN calls for Guantanamo Close

A UN report has called for the immediate closure of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay
The report calls for either the immediate trial or release of the inmates – and described certain practises as ‘amounting to torture’

namely – force feeding of inmates
interrogation techniques such as – the use of dogs, exposure to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation for several consecutive days and prolonged isolation
solitary confinement
beating, kicking, punching and excessive force
interrogations designed to cause religious offence – might seem ridiculous – but how would americans feel if iraqi fighters showed their prisoners videos of jesus and mary ‘having a go’
arbitrary detention without limit

The Liaison to the UN, Human Rights Commission responded as follows

report ignored certain pertinant facts
inspectors refused to visit camp – inspectors stated they would not have been able meet prisoners independently

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – stated she could see little alternative to camp closure
In a study released last week, two lawyers acting on behalf on guantanamo prisoners – stated

only 45% of Guantanamo detainees had committed a hostile act against US
only 8% were Al Qaeda fighters

Links:

International Herald Tribune Coverage
New Abu Ghraib Photos

Supernatural Selection – Daniel Dennet on Religion

Daniel Dennett in his new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” (Viking) argues religion is human behaviour and as such should be studied as a human behaviour.
The idea is not new Marx and Freud had their own explanations. “Religion is the opium of the people” anyone?
Book opens by comparing religion to a parasite, causing irrational and/or inexplicable actions to be taken by people.
The question is who or what is benefitting from these actions.

Research including brain scanning has been carried out to trace the origins of faith.

Old assumption that religion was the product of ignorance. Natural disasters, diseases etc. product of the Gods.
This would mean that as people are more educated, religion dies.
However: by most measures the United States is a more religious country than it was 40 years ago

Several new theories enlist Darwin and evolution.
Religion evolved because it conferred benefits on believers, human groups that formed religions tended to outcompete those that didn’t, surviving longer and propagating more.
Links:

Boston Globe Article

Media Pimp

Francis

How to download quicktime movies [1]
Infiltration – The Urban Exploration Webzine [2]
Classic Commodore 64 Games online! [3]

Gareth

Freedom Downtime – Kevin Mitnik Documentary [4]
Mod your LCD monitor [5]
Pageflakes [6] – Better than netvibes?
Listable.com is a votable list of web 2.0 applications – with every hot (and many not) Web 2.0 Apps linked to play with [7]
A great list of tools for Win 2000 / XP’s CMD programme [8]

Pexy

Girlfriend X – High Tech Dating Software for Men [9]

Listen: Episode 25
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

PS3 Sexclusive

According to kikizo.com, last month sony shipped the final PS3 dev kits to developers
Still no signs of final hardware – the cases you’ve seen are just mockups
“I think to fit everything that Sony wants in there AND leave space for a 2.5 inch hard drive,” explains one senior developer working on a final kit, who will be our guide for much of this report, “the machine would have to grow. The models they’re showing off are way too small for what they want.”
Graphics card – RSX chip – next gen Nvidia chipset Gefore6800 * 2
Many games are being developed in only 720p NOT full HD 1080p – the PS3 then upscales to 1080i
Games played by kikizo have – full dynamic real world lighting, depth of field, sub surface scattering, high res textures, materials physics, complex fire etc
More onscreen action simultaneously than XBOX 360
Hardware = barely superiour to XBOX360 – will depend of developer skill & libraries
Graphics do not live up to killzone trailer – almost reach MGS4 standard
Launch – later summer in Japan, Autumn in US, Next spring in Europe!
Links:

Kikizo

Farewell AA Battery.

Traditional batteries haven’t progressed far beyond the basic design developed by Alessandro Volta in the 19th century.
MIT’s Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES)are using nanotube structures to improve on an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor.
Capacitors store energy as an electrical field, making them more efficient than standard batteries, which get their energy from chemical reactions.
Ultracapacitors have advantages over batteries: a 10-year-plus lifetime, indifference to temperature change, high immunity to shock and vibration and high charging and discharging efficiency.
Ultracapacitors have an energy storage capacity around 25 times less than a similarly sized lithium-ion battery.
LEES ultracapacitor has the capacity to overcome this energy limitation by using vertically aligned, single-wall carbon nanotubes.
Here’s the science bit.

Storage capacity in an ultracapacitor is proportional to the surface area of the electrodes.
However, the pores in the carbon are irregular in size and shape, which reduces efficiency.
The vertically aligned nanotubes in the LEES ultracapacitor have a regular shape, and a size that is only several atomic diameters in width.
The result is a significantly more effective surface area, which equates to significantly increased storage capacity.

NEC, Hitachi, Toshiba – AA and notebook battery size [1]

Currently fears about the safety of the methonol fuel used in fuel cells is preventing their widespread adoption
Rearchers in Stanford University are working on hydrogen fuel cells batteries which use tiny channels to deliver fuel to the cells heart – defeating the difficulty of the too quick / inefficent burn up of fuel [2]
Practical difficulties with fuel cells involve the physical process of refueling
but this isn’t quite as much of a problem as with electric cars
you’re not going to get stranded if your laptop dies
and additionally distribution isn’t as much of a headache – however, they also mean you can no longer charge your battery from the mains
Researchers hope to eventually increase laptop life to 20 hours or more

Links:

Science Daily

Google News

Google Desktop 3.0

This update allows users to search multiple computers and share content with other Desktop users as well as

new features such as drag and drop sidebar panels.

It may soon be part of every computer you buy from Dell.
TEFF urges consumers not to use the “Search Across Computers” feature.

It will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers.
It will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.
The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business.
Other litigants could do the same, seeking the data from Google rather than you.
The Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers—much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it’s on your computer at home.
Google claims so far not to have restricted access to the data to just a few employees but in future it may be used for marketing purposes. It’s current privacy policy doesn’t rule it out.
Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Legal Director calls on Google to “demand that Congress update the privacy laws to better reflect life in the wired world.”

Links:

Download it here, if you’re feeling stupid.
Dell in search tests with Google.
EFF Post:Google Copies Your Hard Drive – Government Smiles in Anticipation

Gmail Chat

Gmail and Google Talk are integrated.
Gmail users can exchange text messages with others without having to log onto a separate chat program.
The program will also allow users to store instant-message conversations.
Google still faces an uphill battle to beat AOL and MSN in the IM game. AOL has 57million subscibers and 27 million on MSN. Google has declined to say how many people use Google Talk.
If you don’t have it it may be because you’re language setting in Google is not set to English-US.
Internationalization on the code is poorly done, changing the language changes the entire application!
Not common code! Greatly slowing down the rollout of new features to users in non-US countries.
Links:

New Google Service to Blend the Gmail and Chat Features
Gmail Features Not For The British!
Chat + Email = Crazy Delicious

Short Stories

Anonymous P2P

Mute is a service for protecting your privacy while using peer to peer services

It does this in two ways

Encrypting all data sent to and from your P2P client – to safe guard against packet sniffing
Creating a virtual I.P address – ‘ant-routing’ – to safeguard your identity – with load balancing to ensure efficient data transfer

Other Alternatives…

The I2P bittorrent proxy, with with the Azureus Bittorrent client (recommended), or custom I2P-BT torrent software – allows you to use Bittorrent anonymously
Wastes – private encrypted chat & filesharing networks – allow groups of trusted friends to privately communicate – examples include WinW & Bad Blue

Links:

How Mute Works
Download Mute for Mac
Download Mute for Windows
Interview with Mute Developer Jason Rohrer
Excellent article from Clay Shirky about Anonymous IM & P2P
How to use Azureus with I2P
Custom I2P Bittorrent Client
WinW – An encrypted private networking client
Another encrypted private networking client
More information on Anonymous P2P

A real video ipod?

Apple have patented some two handed UI
Could this pave the way for a keyboard less laptop? Check out this video of whats possible [3]
Tech Manifesto have a tonne of info [4]

Media Pimp

Gareth

Colour Blender – The Web Masters Dream

Generates a palate of complimentry colours for any colour you pick
Complete with photoshop colour table & illustrator colours to download

Clay Shirky’s Writings about the Internet

Intelligent, well informed, critical thinking about anonymity, artifical intelligence, and other aspects of computing and the web

My Space Profile Hack

Stop your myspace looking poo

Francis

MacGyver Returns!
Brokeback to the Future What if you crossed Brokeback Mountain with Back to the Future?
The Quiet American Recordings of very everyday stuff made during the travels of one man. Some really interesting stuff here.

Listen: Episode 24
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Psilocybin Mushrooms Banned

They grow naturally on earth
They’ve been used to religious, meditative, and personal insight for thousands of years
They are completely non addictive
But the ‘loophole in the law’ has been closed – and they’ve become a class A drug
Tainaiste (vice president / deputy prime minister) Mary ‘Jabba’ Harney – has banned the sale or even possession of this naturally growing plant

Harney alleged that several people have died from mushroom use [1]..
1,500 aprox [2] of yearly deaths from alcohol abuse and alcohol related illnesses – and €2.65 billion annual cost to economy
48% estimated (healthpromotion.ie) of criminal offences related to alcohol
6000 [PDF – health promotion.ie http://www.healthpromotion.ie/uploaded_docs/hput00091.pdf] tobacco related deaths per year
subject which should be close to the tainaistes heart the 2,500 deaths from obesity related diseases ** have not lead to the prohibition of alcohol, tobacco, or fatty foods

Shock Therapy 2.0

The highly controversial psychiatric treatment ECT (Electron convulsive therapy) [3]

works by literally scrambling the brain – stimulating massive depolarization across the brain, and possibly destroying large amounts of neurons – mechanism of efficacy is largely a mystery
still used in treatment of severe depression
serious side effects – long term & short term memory loss – provoked large anti-ect movement [4]

ECT, like pharmaceutical interventions, is a cheap alternative to long term therapy
New ‘kinder’ alternative [5] – specificially directs magnetic fields through the skull directly to brain circuts thought to be responsible for specific disorders
Supporters claim no cognitive deficits or negative side effects
But as the theraputic mechanism is unknown – some psychiatrists have expressed concearn
The danger is that the brain ‘circuts’ which are involved in modulating disorders like depression, OCD, and schizophrenia – don’t just do one thing

like all of the neocortex they also store memories
OCD – orbito frontal cortex – regulates behaviour – anteriour cingulate – regulates drive, motivation and emotional processing => stimulating or inhibiting these areas could have enormous consequences for the regulation of emotion and behaviour
temporal parietal cortex – schizophrenia – also processing of memory
prefrontal cortex – depression – also altertness, fight or flight, and sexual functioning

This sort of intervention – without extensive research and animal models to back up its use – is potentially extremely irresponsible & even dangerous

Google News

Googleblogger: Is google evil?

Google struck the news this week – having created a special chinese portal

lacking gmail, blogger, and with censored results [6]
This may be a competitive move against Baidu.com – a home grown search company, which is gaining market share in China against Google

Chinese authorities had in the past blocked access to the chinese language version of google
Executives have stated that this is ‘the ethical price they have to pay’ to have servers on the Chinese mainland, improving speed and quality of service

[7]

Sites such as BBC news, and Amnesty international – and any references to contensious issues like Tibet, Tiwan, or the Tienamen Square massacre – are filtered out by the 30,000 strong army of censors employed to patrol the ‘great chinese firewall’
Google has always been censored by China – but will now actively work with the Chinese government to censor freedom of speech and access to information within China
Googles move has been widely criticed by organisations like ‘Reporters without Borders’ and Amnesty International

Goobuntu?

IT online magazine The Register has reported that a Google is working on a desktop Linux varient, based on the Ubuntu distrobution [8]
Sources within Google deny such plans exist [9]
Why would google bother with a local OS – server side use maybe – but they already have a Google OS for their data centers

Bush silenced climate expert

Nasas top climate expert claims he’s been pressured into silence since calling for reductions in green house emissions [10]
James E. Hansen – claims officials are attempting to restrict and censor his communications
NASA officials deny the censorship – stating that the agency does not allow its staff to make public policy statements – and needed to centrally co-ordinate the dissemination of information
Hansen heads global climate simulations at NASA – and has been calling for emission reductions since the late 80’s
Media outlets considered as too liberal – such as NPR – are being refused interviews with the leading scientist
Similar muzzling of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Catch the Fat

Is obesity contagious? [11]
Obesity may be linked or even caused by viruses
2 viruses – Ad-36, and Ad-37, which have been found to cause obesity in animals – may have the same effects in human carriers
screening and vaccination are still a long way off – as is a certain knowledge of the extent and proportion of obesity caused by viral vectors

what is certain, is that culture and national diets have an enormous impact on obesity levels

the contagin theory is still controversial – but supporting scientists point out that its only in recent years ulcers have been identified as viral in origin (the helicobacter virus was eventually found to be responsible)

Short Stories

Who has your STD?

inSpot – a site funded by the San Francisco dept of public health, allows you to anonymously inform your sexual partners you may have given them an STD – via e-cart [12]
the humourous cards (e.g.: ‘ I got screwed while screwing, you might have it too’) could be construed as reducing the intimidation factor of the message, or making light of a serious situation

Wireless *10

Super Fast wireless on the way [13]
IEEE have approved a proposal for 802.11n wireless standard
Aims for maximum speed of 600mbps – with more data rate consistency – fast enough and reliable enough for high bandwidth applications like multiple HD video streams with surround sound

Media Pimp

Gareth

Indy games to play [14]
Memepool [15] – a mini boingboing from the creator of del.icio.us
Great News Network [16]

An audio interview with Bernie Goldbach of Digital Rights Ireland, covering the recent high court action taken to reveal the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Irish File sharers.

Listen: DRI Ireland Interview
Feed: RSS

Listen: Episode 23
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Special Report – File Sharing Lawsuit

Last Years File sharing Case

Application Last July before Justice Kelly J in commercial court.
BT, Eircom and other ISPs should provide Names and Addresses linked to I.P of file traders
US Company – Media Sentry hired by IRMA to gather data
Method of Data Gathering

Searches of Gnuttella (Limewire, Bearshare) and Fast-track (Kazaa) networks – DCC++ & Torrent not searched
Shared folders scanned – sample tracks downloaded
Screenshots of folders taken to demonstrate availability of copyrighted material

ISPs neither consented nor objected

If objected – liable for costs in loss
If consented – plaintiff liable for their costs in loss

ISPs pointed out many of the privacy issues, data protection issues, and international precedents

Norwich Pharmacal order [1] – where innocent party is required to provide information about an infringer

Allows rejection of privacy right in ‘Prima Facia’ (self evident) case of breach of individual property rights

IMRO received all the personal data they had sought

None of the alleged file sharers were tried – most settled (for and average of € 2,500), 5/17 refused to pay – IMRO and the labels have 7 years in which to sue them [2]

Detailed discussion of the case (including contributions from Digital Rights Ireland chair TJ McIntyre) [3]

Dutch Precedent

Tuesday, July 12, 2005
A case was taken in Holland – Dutch court rejected claim under European law – on the basis that the firm acquiring the data was based in the US – a nation with no data protection act

specific companies can acquire ‘safe harbor provision’ to circumnavigate this restriction
Media Sentry had not acquired such a provision

Media Sentry was scanning more than just media – folders could have included user’s personal data
Media Sentry had not demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that i.p addresses were connected to particular infringing computers
Dutch court stated that ISPs “are obligated to deny the request to provide identifying information”

Data in this case were being exported – the Irish court at the time of the first case were not aware of this
Analysis of Dutch Decision from Constitutional Code Blog [4]

This weeks case

24th January 2006
Under ‘Phase II’ of IMRO’s action against ‘serial file sharers’

In a press release to announce the action IMRO stated – “The scale of the challenge and the damage is apparent when we consider that any one of these individuals engaged in illegal file sharing could be connected to some 2-3 million others at any one time on the Internet.”
This misleadingly implies simultaneous downloads

Justice Peter Kelly
49 alleged copyright infringers
29 users had tracks copyright to Warner music, 15 from Universal, 29 from Sony
500 – 5000 songs available each

One address appeared so much that it was ‘almost industrial’ in scale

Affidavit – from manager of EMI Ian Cavana

stated – publicity measures of ISPs unlikely to succeed
50% claimed drop of P2P recorded for two month period after case
Sought names, addresses, and phone numbers

In court this Wednesday – Eircom stated DRI letter had informed them of Dutch case
Label barrister stated ‘litigation is currently being conducted in many countries, and the courts there apply the data protection legislation as they find it’
Need for a balance between property and privacy rights – ‘the level of infringement here sets property rights at naught. Like property rights just aren’t worth anything’

Essentially the balance of proof that they were not in violation was with the accused users

ISPs e.g.: Irish Broadband ‘Don’t and can’t monitor’ use of connections

Today – court ordered names should be handed over
Judge described behavior as ‘Not petty theft. Some of it seems to be theft on a grand scale’

DRI’s stance

Fighting this litigation of technical grounds – view copyright infringement as indefensible
oppose not suits but potentially unlawful manner of data gathering
no legally coherent pro-file sharing argument
believe issues like the recent introduction of sweeping European data retention laws more important [5]

Future Liability

Under Irish Law – Section 140 of the Copyright and Related Acts 2000[6]

sharers of copyrighted files (not downloaders) – are liable for criminal prosecution – and thus potentially imprisonment of up to 5 years
liability for each song uploaded could be up to €1,900 for each copyrighted song in their shared folder, up to a maximum of €127,000 euro

No ‘fair use’ [7] provision exists under Irish Law

Hence copying the songs you buy on CD onto your PC or Mp3 player could open you to legal action
Who’s to know you may think – but with the recent update to the iTunes music store information can be carried back to Apple – remember every song you’ve not bought from the iTunes music store is technically an illegal copy
as is every *.WMA (windows media) song purchased from another music store and ‘transcoded’ (imported) into iTunes

Personal use as a right was specifically excised by the Copyright Act 2000

Possible Legal Defense

I.P’s assigned to wireless routers – publicly accessible connection argument

has been used successfully in the US [8]
untested in Irish court

Why the Law is wrong

The law in this area is self evidently ridiculous – but lets look at why

Copyright infringement is not stealing or theft – OED ‘the felonious taking away of the personal goods of another’ – note taking away
The corralling of knowledge ownership
The denial of creative dissent
File Sharing does not lead to a drop in record sales [9]
File sharers buy more music – [10] – up to 4.5 times more – unsurprising as they are music fans – Many use file sharing to sample new tracks
RIAA, IMRO and other industry bodies have refused all attempts to monetarize file sharing – fearing not the bottom line, but their monopolistic control of artists
Industry estimate of file sharing are deliberately low for three reasons – to make it seem illegitimate – and to hide the fact that it is so widespread as to make anti file sharing laws undemocratic [11] – the real figures make a nonsense of their proclaimed impact on sales (up to 900million ‘illicit’ downloads per year)
Industry estimates of the costs of file sharing are ridiculously high – of course each track made available does not cost X dollars – that is to assume a sale lost (whether per download etc) – in fact, wide distribution can equal increased sales, as more people hear the song in question and a proportion of those buy the song
Many highly respected academics and organisations – such as the BBC [12] have a more positive interpretation of file sharing than the recording industry party line
Although Recording Industry bodies purport to represent all musicians – their defacto monopoly of representation and the commitment of many musicians not to allow labels to sue fans for downloading their music make a nonsense of this – artists as diverse as Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco, Beastie Boys, David Bowie, Green Day, Courtney Love, Pearl Jam, REM refuse to allow their fans to be sued for sharing the music they love. – Here’s the story Francis mentions in the show, about Avril Lavines label actually funding the case of a sued file sharer [13]
Law suits do not reduce file sharing – over 7000 file sharers have been sued in the US since 2003. Meanwhile file sharing has increased [14]
Despite having to compete with an increased range of media purchases – DVD, Internet, Digital Television – CD sales have increased [15] and are not being reduced by file sharing
16% of the Irish public admit to having downloaded copyrighted music [16]
The majority of music published in history is not being made available by record labels – either in file or CD form [17] – This music is not generating a profit for anyone, which translates in economic terms to a loss – This music will under copyright till 2067
Many (probably a majority) of books published in the past century are similarly unavailable [18] – and many classics are lost to history – Life of the author +70yrs copyright – File sharing and digital information sharing can stop this – [19]

Media Reporting

DRI Press Release [20]
DRI Article [21]
The Register [22]
Irish Examiner [23]
RTE Business [24]
Irish Times [25]
Underway In Ireland [26] MP3

Are Parasites controlling your BRAIN!

Parasites exhibit the ability to manipulate the ability of their hosts

Example: parasite that causes ant to clamp itself to the tips of grass blades greatly increasing the chances of it being eaten by grazing animals. Getting into a sheep or grazer’s digestive system allows the parasite to complete it’s life cycle.
Example: Rabies can cause carriers to become aggressive and bite. By no coincidence the disease can be contracted through the saliva of a victim.

Toxoplasma gondii: lives in the guts of cats eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats.

Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host’s body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy.
The rats are different to uninfected rats in one way: they are more likely to be eaten by a cat.
Healthy rats shied away from cat odors such as cat urine as it causes high anxiety in the rat: a survival mechanism, stay away from predators.
The infected rats were not anxious behaving as if the odor wasn’t there.

Toxoplasma gondii can be carried by people so can it also have a subtle effect on the human carrier?

E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia.
Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia.
Most interestingly, drugs that are used to treat schizophrenia can be used to treat Toxoplasma.

A fascinating area for further study, what other parasites are altering our personalities and can they be part of the reason for cultural diversity?
Links:

The Return of the Puppet Masters
Do Parasites Contribute to Human Cultural Diversity

Vista will only allow signed kernel-mode software

In a supposed effort to curb the threat of rootkits Microsoft plans to block uncertified drivers from loading on x64 versions of Windows Vista.
To get your driver to run on Vista you must obtain PIC (Publisher Identity Certificate) from Microsoft.
There’s no way round this save some kind of hack “Even users with administrator privileges cannot load unsigned kernel-mode code”
Microsoft will give away the PIC for free, but software publishers are required to purchase a VeriSign Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate.
Drivers must be signed for devices that stream protected content. This includes audio drivers that use PUMA (Protected User Mode Audio) and PAP (Protected Audio Path), and video device drivers that handle protected video path-output protection management (PVP-OPM) commands.
The above seems like the real motivation for this, to protect copyrighted content. Microsoft control what drivers and arguably what hardware will work with Vista. It’s pretty easy to see that no drivers that could do anything the RIAA or MPAA don’t like will ever get a PIC.
One poster at the Awful Forums compared the idea to “cutting your leg off to avoid the pain after a workout.”
Links:

Commentary on the idea
eWeek:Microsoft Hardens Vista Against Kernel-Mode Malware
Whitepaper on the Issue

The Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome People in America 2005.

Interesting Entries:

47. Martha Stewart.
44. George Lucas. Charge: being an “awful writer and a shitty, shitty director.”
40. Tom Cruise. Charge: “Criminal Narcissism.”
26. Spammers
25. Paris Hilton Charge: “Won’t go away”
16. R Kelly Charge: “urinating on an underage girl” and “inflicting the worst piece of music in American history upon the public consciousness.”
13. God Charge : “If your answer to the age-old question of God’s existence is “yes,” your next question should be, “Why is he such a dick?” After three major natural disasters, not to mention the eternal constants of famine, war and disease, to believe in God is to believe either that He enjoys fucking with us, or at best has totally lost interest in the whole “people” thing. Never calls anymore.”
6. Michael Jackson.
No. 4 is You!
Charges: Silently enabling and contributing to the irreversible destruction of your planet. Absolving yourself of your responsibility to do anything about it that your immediate neighbors don’t. Assuming that it’s normal behavior to spend several hours each day totally inert and staring into a cathode ray tube. Substituting antidepressants for physical motion. Caring more about the personal relationships of people you will never meet than your own. Shrugging your shoulders at the knowledge that your government is populated by criminal liar’s intent on fooling you into impoverished, helpless submission. Cheering this process on.

Exhibit A: You don’t even know who your congressman is.
Sentence: Deathbed realization that your entire life was an unending series of stupid mistakes and wasted opportunities, a priceless gift of potential extravagantly squandered, for which you deserve nothing but scorn or, at best, indifference, and a cold, meaningless demise.

3. George W. Bush
2. Dick Cheney
1. Pat Robertson Charge: being a “insecure, misogynistic, homicidal fanatic”

Links:

The Beast

Media Pimp

Francis’ Pimp

TurboTanks Tank Game [27]

A cool and addictive game based on the Atari 2600 classic.

MPAA Dvd warning parody [28]

A parody of the warning message that appears on every dvd.
My particular favorite is “You may view this media only in your own dwelling, in complete secrecy, with the shades drawn, and with an armed sentry posted at the door. You can not loan this media to anyone for any purpose. We reserve the right to charge an additional fee if you can remember or recollect the contents of this media.”

Gareth’s Pimp

An intricate but well thought out theory on what’s going on behind the scenes in Lost [29]

Listen: Episode 22
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Granny Apple in the News

Will Disney buy Pixar, and make Steve King?

After days of speculation the Telegraph are reporting that the deal will go ahead
Jobs will be largest Disney shareholder
But will he have any power – Roy Disney failed to save animation at disney despite 1% of shares
What of Pixar, can its independent spirit survive?

Jobs invites microsoft to make their own iPod. As this week mine dies.

Implication is they need to produce a competing music store
My guess? – Jobs is feeling the heat to increase iTunes store pricing, and feels a big no. 2 would spread the load
If MS had a licenced DRM platform, then Apple might open up fairplay
Apple matters speculates Apple owns the markey + the invitation is bait

Links:

MSNBC – Disney in talks to buy Pixar
Telegraph – Disney buys Pixar
The Rise and Fall of Disney in the Modern Era – account of Roy’s attempts to save Walts company from Eisner et al
Apple Matters – Jobs to Gates, bring it on!

Wasted Business Opportunity

My stickies – Tagged web notes – **When I first saw these I thought – ah one of those genius, why didn’t I think of it ideas – but is the market to saturated?

Then I realised they haven’t yet implimented the obvious thing – web stickies aren’t a del.icio.us style folksonomy – although the site suggests they intend to
Heads up to anyone with excellent coding skills looking for a business opportunity – produce a whiteboard collaborative / quasi-collaborative RSS syndicated folksonomy notation system – lacking the limitations of del.icio.us (bland interface, no private bookmarking)

Links:

My Stickies

Firefox 2 on the Way

The alpha version of the worlds best browser is due next month
New Features to include:

Tab & Interface enhancements – e.g.: Saving open tabs on close, history of each tab, tag based bookmarks
Smoother RSS Integration – integrated viewer, everything is feeds
Offline support of web apps – ‘supercookies’
Unifed smoother search – (combination of all engine output?), search cache history
Better antiphishing / security

What would you change? – Media plugin crashes, better popup blocking, better conversion of javascript open window commands to tabs, replacement of bookmarks with del.icio.us etc (by default), update without reset
Links:

PC Pro Article
Official FF Roadmap

Cringley’s 2006 predictions

Bob Cringley’s predictions for last year were down on his usual average 66% – and he calculates generously
Apple

Will lose in their streaming case versus Burst.com
The new Intel Macs will support XP and Apple will start stealth competion with Microsoft
Boxed X will work on Wintel machines
.Mac online storage goes to a terabyte

Google

2006 is merely preparation for a big push in 2007
New products and services will be announced and another public offering of shares to boost the warchest.
Wont release a PC or OS

Links:

iCringley 2006 Predictions

Al Gore compares wiretapping to Martin Luther King Surveillance

Al Gore – who since failing to convince the American people of anything but his inadaquacy has become an amazing speech writer (or hired some)
compared Bush’s warrentless mass wiretaping to J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of the black leader

who vowed to “take him off his pedestal.”, and blackmailed him in an attempt to induce suicide
Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) partly introduced in reaction

Bush’s indescriminate automated wiretapping illegal (under FISA) & unconstitutional
Gore brings indeterminate detention without warrant, extraordinary rendition and torture of prisoners – examples of Bush regiemes disregard for constitution
Deeper Questions: Unitary executive – enslavement of judicial and legislative branches, perceptual war, imperialism
Calls for an investigation by Senate and Congress, Special counsel should be appointed by Attorney Gen to investigate presidental abuses of power
Meanwhile bob cringley downplays the illegality and importance of the Bush wiretaps
Links:

The Raw Story – commentary and text of speech
iCringley on Wiretaps

Googleblogger: Google defies the US government

Google is fighting a subpoena to hand over some of the information in its database to help “fight pornography”.
Google is fighting the subpoena on justification of request grounds

Commentators speculate – dont be evil, and commercial access to database grounds

Microsoft and yahoo have already surrendered data to the request
FBI is seeking to resusitate anti-porn laws already ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme court
Child Online Protection Act – would have forced every site to age check adults using their services

effectively useless because non-us sites would not have to comply
emphatically dangerous because there is no anonymous free method of confirming such identity
Additionally your obscenity is my art – new anti porn laws are already being used to curtail free expression

Links:

International Herald Tribune – Google refuses to hand over search records
CBS – Feds Seek Google Records On Porn

Media Pimp

Francis’ Pimp

A photograph of the world’s first ‘Bug’. A moth that got caught in a relay in an early computer system [1]
Watch out ladies the Hoff is single again. Check out this music video of The Hoff singing Hooked on a Feeling. [2]

Gareth’s Pimp

The Socratic teaching method – useful for anyone who’s had to give a lecture [3]

Listen: Episode 21
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Revolutionary Interface

A Mock up of the Nintendo revolution interface which will allow us to play emulated games is now available [1]
Games will be rentable or purchasable for NES, SNES and N64 – together with the Revolutions porported Gamecube compatibility – it will be the most compatible console ever [2]
Fantastic that a main stream publisher has realized the popularity and potential profitability of emulated games – but will the price be right?
Could they do more – an online playground for orginally locally playable games?
It’s still unclear where purchased games will be stored without a Hard Disk (streaming download? memory card?) – how much they will cost – or if they will be region limited

Listen to many songs free

Inspired by this Digg story (don’t bother clicking – it doesn’t work any more [3] we’ve discovered the fantastic service Radio.Blog.Club [4]
Like Pandora [5] app we discussed previously – but much more flexible and content rich.
But Radio Blog Club is much more than just this – its also a stand alone application that allows you to stream music on your website (or blog.)
You can download the RBC software [6] convert all your mp3 files to their RBS file format, upload to your web host, install the online app and you’re site viewers will have a play list of your (largely undownloadable) songs to listen to

Logitech Video Effects

Logitechs new cam software is the first consumer level software to create an animated avatar [7]
More than just a cool toy, its the first step to dynamic AR communications which will allow rich anonymity and the development of increasingly expressive and immersive virtual worlds

Hyperspace Physics

And article in the last edition of New Scientist [8] details the awarding of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics prize for research on nuclear and future flight to a paper proposing ‘gravitophotonic’ hyperdrive technology
The technology is based on the theories of the obscure German physicist Burkhard Heim
Heims quantum interpretation of Einsteins General Relativity proposes a 2 dimensional subspace – which could potentially be used to travel vast distances in negligable time
The US military and department of energy have expressed interest in putting Heims theories to the test
When Heim unveiled his revolutionary theory in 1957 it aroused interest from von Braun and members of the nobel committe – however due to Heims reclusivity – caused by deformitys derived from a laboratory accident, and inability to secure funding within Germany, led to the disapearance of the theory for half a century
Heims theory has been since been used to predict the mass of fundamental particles more accurately than any other theory
A more developed version of Heims Theory – predicting an eight dimentional Heim-Dröscher space, is behind the award winning paper

Edge Question 2006

Each year Edge magazine asks a question of many of the worlds most famous scientists
Last years question – “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” [9] provoked a storm of intriguing ideas
This years question ‘What is your dangerous idea?’ has generated even more intelligent challenging responces [10]
Some ideas include:

Mirror neurons providing a rational basis for ethics – V.S. Ramachandran
Consciousness does not exist – Susan Blackmoore
Evangelical Science taking the place of Religion – Carolyn Porco
The Self Aware Internet – Terence Sejnowski
Zero parental influence – Judith Rich Harris

The Google Blogger

Google Video Store

Google Video Store
Google have monitarized their video service – offering an alternative to Apples iTunes video store
The video store is geographically limited (read ‘FU non US citizens – But the added navigation dropdown greatly increases usability[11]
Episodes of Star Trek DS9, I Love Lucy and other ‘classic’ shows are available, in addition to B-movies and music videos – but nothing to cope with iTunes exclusive shows
Shows are in X format, and can be put ont PSP and iPod – but vary in image quality
Classic Twilight Zone Episodes are also available – “You are about to enter a world where Google made a service that is worse than Apple’s and that god awful AOL video store. This world is called Google Video Store.”
Google have announced their own DRM – no word yet on what technology it uses

Google Pack

Google have launched a pack of software – all already available, but all useful to ‘newbies’
However the pack seems more of a marketing proposition than a compilation of essential software – note the absence of SpyBot, and the presence of the inferior ‘Adaware’ – or the use of Norton AntiVirus over the free AVG Suite [12]
Still no sign of a Google Office Suite, either online or downloadable
The Pack includes

Adobe Reader 7
Ad-Aware SE Personal
GalleryPlayer HD Images
Google Desktop
Google Earth
Google Pack Screen saver
Google Talk
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Mozilla FireFox with Google Toolbar
Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition (Six month trial version)
Picasa
RealPlayer
Trillian

Media Pimp

Gareth

Guerrilla News Network – An Independent Media Organization – which allows independent journalists to create an online presence and publish evidenced articles and media [13]

Francis

Build your own CoilGun [14]

Listen: Episode 20
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

The American Paradox

This years winner of the nobel prize for literature, the playwright Harold Pinter, addressed the Academy on the topic of American Imperialism [Hear / See / Read his lecturehttp://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html]
Since WW2 American has overthrown socialist regiemes, and put into power totalitarian regiemes and military juntas, trainned and supported guerillas responsible for mass rape, torture and the murder of politicial dissidents, and carpet bombed into submission nations it could not control

it has done this in Latin America (e.g.: Chile, El Salvador), South East Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia), the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and around the world – whilst preaching a doctrine of freedom, democracy and fear
This is what Pinter describes as ‘a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed’

Harper magazine this week reports [1] – while just under 80% of US describe themselves as Christian [2], only 40% can name more than 4 of the 10 commandments
Many (incorrectly) consider the laizze faire philosophy of Ben Franklin – the lord helps those who help themselves – to be enshrined in Biblical text
The united states is amongst the most “spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth” – yet it gives less foreign aid than any developed nation with the exception of Italy
18% of American children live in poverty
Despite the new testaments direct and explicit condemnation of murder – America has the highest murder rate of any developed country, and is amongst the only nation to execute both the mentally handicapped and children
Is Christianity the problem? Is it hypocracy? Or is it the unquestioning attendence to any creed – in quest for certainty and cognitive assonance
Economic Doctrines like ‘The Washington Consensus’ [3] have been used to distort the historic protestant plantation principles of hard work, self respect, and independence – into laissez faire [4] free market selfism
Such doctrines are lauded, upheld and made invisible by coporate media consensus [5], and an education system where primary and secondary level schools recieve only a small proportion of their funds from central government – meaning public schools in poor states and districts often fail to ensure even basic literacy – acting (like the prison system [6], as an insitution of institutionalisation and social control [7])

Short Stories

XBox 360 Review

Plus+’s – Universal Profiles, ‘Silver’ Live Package included
Minus-‘s – Overheating Power Supply, Worst Launch lineup ever, Game scratch if the unit is moved in vertical orientation

GoogleBlogger: New Gmail Features

RSS feeds right into your inbox [8]
Automatic detection of addresses / tracking numbers – put in handy boxes on the right
Anti Virus
HTML preview of word and pdf attachements

British High Court Bans Torture Evidence

Evidence obtained by torture (anywhere in the world) can no longer be used as evidence in a British Court [9]
Government had argued ‘Special Immigrations Appeals Commission’ [10], set up to deport or exclude individuals for ‘public interest reasons’ needed to hear evidence no matter how obtained in order to identify terrorists

Music Industry to attack tab and lyric sites

Not satisfied with attempting to bankrupt its biggest fans, the music industry have desided to begin suing sites which offer lyrics, tabs and sheet music [11]
The Music publishers association head Lauren Keiser has announced a crackdown, and his intention to “throw in some jail time” if possible
“The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income,” he said. “But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we’re taking a more proactive stance.” – said Kesier, before annoucing new giant nets to stop the escape of musical notes from pianos
Music publishers of course currently offer no legitamate alternatives to online tab and lyric sites

Bush claims no torture

Despite the secret CIA prisons revealed by the Washington Post [12], and the practice of extraordinary rendition [13] to ‘friendly’ client states who practice torture
President Bush claims the US handles prisoners in accordance to international and American law – technically impossible since its treatment of Afghan and other prisoners in Guantanamo Bay violates the Geneva convention
Condolezza Rice has just finished a ‘keeping the troups in line’ European tour – unsubtly stating “European intelligence agencies had helped Washington extract information from suspects”
Whitehouse spokesman Scott McClellan recently stated renditioned prisoners “do not necessarily fit into the traditional military or criminal justice systems that were designed for different needs,”

Digital Rights Ireland Launch

The Irish equivalent of the EFF have launched [14]
Ireland has the most draconian data retention laws in Europe [15]
And its music rights framework is absurd (putting your cd’s on an iPod is illegal
DRI aim to “Protect Civil, Legal and Human Rights in a Digital Age”
Some of their initial activities include – fighting IRMA on suing filesharers [16], and the EU data retention directive [17]

Founder of Veganism Dies

Donald Watson, who founded veganism in 1944 has died aged 95 [18]

Iraqi Fighters using hallucinogenic enhancements?

Evidence has accumulated that resistence fighters in Iraq are utilising a variety of drugs to provide them with the will to fight [19]
including a hallucinogen – BZ ‘Agent Buzz’/ 3-quinuclidinyl benzillate – developed by the US government – which promotes psychotic agression

Media Pimp

Francis

The Webtender [20]
Downloading Porn with Davo [21]
Sex by RSS [22]
Stuff that Sucks [23]

Gareth

Steve Woznick Interview [24] -Much of the crappyist software comes from Apple, Apple won’t release X for commodity hardware,

Listen: Episode 19
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Police State Miami

Although Miami hasn’t been hit by a terrorist attack – authorities convinced it is a credible target
To confuse Al Qaida and other wanabe terrorist – displays of force
And maybe [1] maybe not [2] unconstitutional random ID checks
Police state anyone?
News Sources disagree as to whether displays of force

random collections of large amounts of officers at hotels, banks etc
more worryingly on trains and buses – plain clothes and uniformed + long term surveillance
will include ID checks

Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said. “We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don’t want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears.”
Interestingly – sources disagree as to what the ACLU have to say!

Washington Post: officers on street patrol (making informed decisions on which individuals to stop), which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”
Associated Press: “What we’re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”

I feel safer already

Science Under Attack

Dvorak on Dead Media

Are DRM and quirky vendor only cables, connections and formats, leading us into a world of unreadable data
Dvorak has lots of media tech – cameras, memory sticks, DAT and video cassette tapes – which are, or will shortly be unreadable
He compares this – rather disingenuously – to the burning Great Library of Alexandria – where much of the collected knowledge of the classical world was lost
What if the *.gif liscence enforcement had been stricter
What if *.jpg had been DRM’d
Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and its European equivalents – cracking these obsolete and abandoned formats is as illegal as DVD Jon’s cracking of the DVD so he could watch his movies on Linux
Dvorak’s forum in PC Magazine has some interesting suggestions from readers [6]

Interestingly, and to his credit, Dvorak responds to comments (even negative ones) on his forum

Short Stories

ATI speeds up video * 5

ATI’s new “Avivo XCode” encoding tool – which only works on its latest X1000 series GPUs
can massively speed up video encoding of MPEG 4 (Divx, Xvid), H.264, Windows Media 9, DVD etc
An example of what happens when software functions are moved to hardware
This will have a huge impact 2 – 3 years down the line on home video incoding
Only a drop in the ocean compared to the future impact of fully featured rendering on the GPU

Googleblogger: Google Space, Google Boutique Store Opens

Londons Heathrow airport is home to google first shop
where everything is of course free

iTunes Music Store (finally) on Linux

DVD Jon has released a free (as in beer & speech) interface to the iTMS [8]

Engaget: How to stream anything with VLC

Get the most out of the best media player ever [9]
Stream your movies and music around your lan or wan

Jason’s Friend’s Friend in drug blog hot water

A malaysian blogger has been forced to take down all drug related posts on his blog
The guy had been blogging about his experiences while on various substances (crystal meth, heroin etc.)
A Malay tabloid newspaper found out and put him on the frontpage
The authorites contacted him and he is considered *very* lucky to only have to remove the posts

[10]

Media Pimp

Jason

Cloud [11] - A truly original game?

Download [12]
Controls [13]

Francis

Porn Hacks [14]

Gareth

Boingboing.net [15]

Listen: Episode 18
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Notes

Lies Damn Lies and the Recording Industry

An article has been published in the New York times about the file sharing revolution
Sean Fanning has developed software called snocap, that subtitutes requested copyrighted content on P2P networks with low quality versions which include verbal adds for the full version. Ha Ha. Good luck with that one Sean.

Especially considering users can merely switch to a file sharing network with uncorrupted information

Check out the graph on th left hand side of the article – which compares records shipped – from 2001 – 2005, directly with 2003 – 2005 filesharing growth
Ignoring the fact that records shipped (not sold) is an easily manipulated figure the recording industry has used to disguse sales and manipulate the debate for years
Ignoring the fact that simultaneous filesharing use is VASTLY underestimated by this graph
You can’t compare across differnt periods of time like this
Check out the rightmost bar on the right hand bar chart – its for six months – implying that sales are steady throughout the year – clearly an unsubstantiated assumption – if you look across 2001 – 2005 (assuming that the half years figures relate) you don’t see a drop!
This ties in to a week of articles slate magazine ran recently on education [1]
Here’s a link to the excellent slate.com podcast on the subject [2]
As part of this week, slate organised a round table of leading academics to examine the future of American undergraduate education [3]

one of these academics points out the importance of an education in statistics [4] – which is more and more important in understanding the information we’re presented with

In other recording industry news – the EU seem determined to enact laws ensuring telecommunications / internet data retention for a year [5]

a chilling prospect to anyone concearned with privacy and individual liberty
especially in the light of new EU directives seeking to criminalise copyright infringement [6]
which could allow future sco like companies to threaten individual users of alledgedly infringing software with imprisonment – and gain access to the investigation into those accused as part of a ‘joint investigative team’
just to put this in perspective – imagine being accused, as an individual citizen, of the witting or unwitting download or ‘infringing use’ of copyrighted materials – and facing the threat of prison, while a mega corporating investigates you, in full co-operation with the police
employers, get ready for a potential 4 year imprisonment and the closure of your business if the proposed “European Parliament and Council directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of IP rights” [7] is passed

Googleblogger: Google plan to own the web

Robert Cringely’s column this week covers the deployment by Google of huge amounts of automated data centers
This boxes will act both as a giant storage and local caching repository, and as a distributed processing grid – ideally for deep, rich web applications
Google will place these miniture super computing centres – each capable of storing 3.5 petabytes and containing 5,000 AMD 64bit Opteron processors – at the 300 internet peering points worldwide
Internet television, google approved media and peer to peer applications, will be greatly accellerated by the interconnection of these datacentres via google recent dark fibre purchases
Google office, google desktop, or any other complex add / subscription supported services, would sit locally and provide the thin client dream that Sun promiced and failed to deliver
Google can also use their complete control of the backend to provide secure transaction services – making them the cheapest and most trustworthy provider of eskrow services and online market places
A potententially unbeatable challenge to companies like Ebay, Yahoo, and even Microsoft
Who’s afraid of google – according to wired news, everyone [8]

Every online company is threatened
TV stations are threatened by the furture potential of video.google.com
Craigslist like services could face death from base.google.com
Telecommunications – google free wifi (pah), and gtalk with recently purchased location aware IM tech Meetro
M$ – Potential Google OS / Online office
Publishing industry – books.google.com
Ecommerce industry – google wallet

Bush wanted to Bomb Al Jazera

Various UK papers have reported recieved warning under the offical secrets act, not to reveal the contents of a leaked memo [9]
The leaked memo is alleged to contain a transcript of talks between Tony Blair and George Bush, in April 2004 – and include a conversation in which Prime Minister Blair convinces President not to launch an attack against the independent Arab News Channel Al Jazeera
The white house have dismissed the allegations as ‘inconceivable’
In recent years the offices of Al Jazerra have been the target of a series of ‘accidental’ attacks from US troups

In 2001 the channels offices in Kabul in Afganistan were hit
In 2003 a journalist, Tariq Ayub died when the stations Bagdad office was hit during a rocket attack

The allegations came to light in the form of a front page story on the cover of Britains Mirror newspaper on Tuesday

Microsoft to Open Office Document Format

Microsoft have announced that they are to submit the various formats of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the International Standards Organisation and potential ‘open standards’ [10]
Move comes in wake of Massachusetts proposing to requiring open docuement compliance on government documents to ensure backwards compatibility, also in reaction to pressures from the EU and governments world wide who want Microsoft to standardise their software
Namely the Open Document format support by IBM, Sun and other companies
Microsoft currently refuse to support open document – complaining of the difficulties already incountered including support for its older file formats in its new ‘open xml’ proprietary architecture

A difficulty which wouldn’t have emerged if Microsoft hadn’t continually introduced new incompatible versions to sell new editions of office repeatedly over the products history

Unlike a truely open standard, while an ISO standard can be examined by other companies – but can’t be used to build applications
Can a close document model survivel in the wake of Web 2.0 ?

Short Stories

Holographic Storage next year

Next gen non-volatile storage by 2006
Maxtor are launching 300 gig removable disks, with 20meg a second data transfer

Is that a gun in your hand, or just bad science

New scientist reports – the techniques used to verify a gun has been fired by a suspect are flawed to the point of complete unreliability

[11]

Crashbox 360

Initial reports of Xboxen crashing [12] were confirmed, when microsoft admitted a problem with the production process [13]
Up to 5% of boxes may be affected [14]
Not to worry however, as early reports indicate the problem can be repaired by increasing air flow to the power supply [15] – no word yet as to what to do if your house burns down

Media Pimp

Gareth

Accelerating Change Podcast – [16]
Flowline – software modeling of fluid systems [17] this stuff will be real time in hardware in the next generation of physics accelleration – vid [18]
Erotic Star Trek Fan Fic – Spock and Kirk in Drag [19]

Francis

Hundread Worst Porn Titles of All Time – [20]

Jason

CNET Top 100 Blogs [21]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/17_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 17
Watch: Youtube
Feed: RSS

Perfect spheres into space to check Einstein’s theory

The Gravity Probe B satellite [1] was launched by NASA to measure the curvature and rotation of space time around earth [2]
Testing two unverified predictions of general relativity – frame dragging and the The Geodetic Effect – which have implications for the grand unification of physics
The four gyroscopes in the satellite ddidn’t vary from a perfect sphere by more than 40 atomic layers
Electromagnetic torc rods were used to hold the satellite in a static orientation, so tiny changes in the orientation of the gyroscopes could be measured
Magnetometers onboard sensed the earths magnetic field, and position and orientation were measured with tiny gyroscopes – allowing the onboard computer system to adjust the flow of currents to the torc rods accordingly, controlling the pitch, yaw, and roll of the craft
Perfect example of the faster, cheaper, better mantra which has been nasa’s guiding principle in recent years – although this approach has faced difficulties [3]
An awesome description of the development of the experiement, as the scientific implications behind it, can be found here [4]

Negroponte and the $100 laptop

Big press release this week… [5] – The laptop seems not to be vaporware
The man behind the project, Nicholas Negroponte is founder of the MIT media lab, and wired magazine [6]
Preliminary specs now available – forms a wi-fi mesh network out of the box, has dual mode high contrast colour & bw display, 40 minutes of power from 1 minute of cranking, 7″ screen, microphone and speaker, 500mhz processor
Also, Negroponte turned down Jobs’ offer of free copies of OSX – probably due to the possibility of apple reneging the offer in the future, and the lack of memory on the machine – 1gig total

Negropoente has stated that he wants the users to develop software for the machine
Compilers and a development environment will ship with the laptop
It’s not yet clear which education software will be included
Let’s hope armys in the developing world dont develop software to use the machines as a VOIP and unit tracking device for battle

Thailand and Brazil have already shown interest
Negraponte proposes the laptops be paid for over a 5 year period – but this may still be too much for developing nations where wages are just a few dollars a month
The real question is whether the funding behind this laptop would be better spent cancelling 3rd world debt, restructuring ‘fair trade agreements’ which cripple developing nations ability to compete, and preventing weapons sales to nations disintegrated by war

AOL & TIVO merge / AOL Launch In2TV

AOL is to launch a new ‘on-demand’ streaming tv brand In2tv – divided into channels for [7]
‘DVD Quality’ Content will be provided by Time Warner – and many of the shows annoucned so far are ancient – Pinky and the Brain, Falcon Crest, Mr. Cooper, Perfect Strangers, Wonder Woman etc
Adds will be shorter than normal television – 2 compared to 8 minutes, but ‘unskippable’
Our guess is that the service will have all sorts of restrictions – e.g.: no watching 10 episodes of Babylon 5 in a row, may be geographically restricted and / or restricted to a special client browser like iTunes
The selection will change on a month by month basis – so as not to canibalize DVD box-set sales – expect this service to be used to whet, rather than sate your appitite
You can expect to get a lot more tv on bittorrent, as people start to capture the stream
The service will also include social features – IM, games, quizes, online chat with cast members; and promotional features – stars before they were famous, theme months etc [8]

Google Map of Sex Offenders

Another service has launched, integrating google maps API with publically available databases
In this case sex offenders register of each US districts – publically available under the emotively entitled ‘Megans Law’, passed in 1994 the wake of tabloid outrage over the death of Megan Nicole Kanka – raped and murdered by a paedophile who lived accross the street
Now you can surf for sex offenders in your area – clicking on the icon gives you their name, picture and address
Brings up questions of privacy, nefarious use of api’s, public access to such information
Sex offenders register does not just contain paedophiles and rapist – offences which require registration vary hugely from state to state, and even county to county
Example: [9] This list of offenses from Franklin county Missouri State includes – Sexual Contact with an Inmate or resident of a jail, prison or correctional facility, and Sodomy !!!!,
In the case of Franklin county – picked as a random googled example, the registration is for life, and extends back to offenses committed as long ago as 1979

Short Stories

Student folds paper 12 times

Everybody said that you can’t fold paper 12 times…. they were wrong [10]
Evidence that you should never assume something’s impossible…

Digg might bury slashdot

Wired news story on how digg is going to become bigger than slashdot

[11]

Massive gmail bug that google never mentioned

The ability existed to hack into ANYONE’s account on gmail
Google never mentioned it (their produce is only beta)
Luckily the bug was never published until google solved the problem

[12]

Media Pimp

Jason: The script of scarface poster [13]
Jason: Techtainment

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/16_part1_technolotics.mp3]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/16_part2_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Part 1, Part 2
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8qGAe0WDSo
Feed: http://technolotics.wordpress.com/feed/

Notes

Googleblogger article

Google mobile is a new suite of features for US cell phones
Google mobile search – lets you search the web from your phones web browser
Google SMS – texts answers to your questions, directly to your phone – still very glitchy [1]

Google SMS howto [2]

Currently the following features are available

Business & Residential listings
Driving Directions
Movie showtimes
Weather conditions
Stock quotes
Q&A – fact based questions which google parses !!!
Product prices
Definitions

Google are also allowing mobile carriers to integrate google search into their own sites – making google mobile search available in a variety of flavours

XHTML (WAP 2.0)
WML (WAP 1.2)
iMode
PDA Devices

FBI keeping tabs on thousands of Americans

This summer George Christian was given a letter in person by the FBI instructing him to to surrender [3] “all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person” who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away.

He refused and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public.

The letter was a “National security letter”. Originating in the 1970’s as way for the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents.

The Patriot Act now allows clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies. More than 30,000 letters are now sent out each year.

Letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress.

The information gathered is kept in government data banks and the government retains the right to share the information within the federal government and beyond. This includes “state, local and tribal” governments and for “appropriate private sector entities,”.

A national security letter cannot be used to authorize eavesdropping or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital citizen including web browsing habits, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work.

Most worrying of all the House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a prison term for breach of secrecy as the reciever of a letter is not allowed discuss the letter with anyone.

CNET calls for Sony Boycott

Article written by Molly Wood, section editor, CNET.com [4]

Sony’s actions regarding the rootkit, which may be criminal are an example of how so-called content creators and not on the side of consumers.

The increasing attempts by companies to restrict our fair use as encouragement for individuals and groups to circumvent these controls not because they want to break the law but “because you have sold us a crappy product, and, fundamentally, because it is not our responsibility to protect your profits.”

Short term solution is to not buy any Sony products of any kind.

Long term solution may be that suggested by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. [5]

Copyright law with teeth that concentrates on prosecuting large scale piracy.
But broad exemptions for personal use.

Glide Effortless, and the death of the desktop

[6]

On November 15th TransMedia will launch Glide, an integrated suite of applications all of which are available online and accessable through a normal web browser.

Glide includes applications for creating, sharing, and selling photos, music, video, and documents, as well as doing content management, calendaring, E-mail, and conferencing and marks another step in the emergence of the software-as-a-service model exemplified by Google and Salesforce.com

Glide is not only being sold to end users, TransMedia is also licensing the software to media companies so they can sell it as a branded service. Hence media and cable companies can sell online applications and services which are more closely integrated than offerings from competitors.

The entire suite has be developed together hence Glide Mail is able to easily and securely send all sorts of media files, playlists, slideshows, and podcasts to anyone as tiny 5K messages.

Glide is able to share files securely because the actual files aren’t shared. Rather the act of sharing creates streaming browser-based preview files that are transcoded for universal compatibility. This neatly avoids the risk of piracy.

Cable and telecom companies may adopt Glide as a way to offer additional services on top of their broadband offerings. This would inevitably lead to further competition to software service providers like AOL, Google, MSN, MySpace.com, and Yahoo.

As we know many companies are moving towards the software as a service models, on November 15th we will see one of the first fully integrated services of this kind. The repercussions for the future and companies such as Microsoft will only emerge with time.

Cheap Fusion at last

A new breakthrough promices the dream of fusion without the expense and environmental costs of existing projects [7]

Physicist Eric Lernet – has suggested a new process of converting hydrogen and boron to helium -> releasing large amounts of stored energy

This could be a cheap alternative to the multinational ubber expensive Tokamak fusion projec in France

Lerner has been researching the technology for 20 years, initially at NASA’s Jet Propulsion lab

Unlike existing nuclear power, the process would not harness a chain reaction, nor require an intermediate lossy conversion stage into usable electricity – instead it goes straight from fusion to energy

Device can be started or shut down at the flip of a switch

The science bit: The process works by firing pulses of electricity through a hydrogen / boron gas, creating hot conducting plasma whirlwinds, which are twisted by magnetic fields into plasmoids. Magnetic fields then fire an electron beam at the plasmoids, igniting fusion reactions, and gaining energy before finally being decelerated to produce electricity; some of which is recycled to restart the process.

Lerner maintains the process would be so safe and simple that onsight personel would not even be needed

Despite being the first researcher to surpass a billion degree temperature in the lab, Lerner alleges that the US governement is unwilling to fund his research – a serious alternative to Oil and Gas

Amazons Mechanical Turk

Amazon have launched a service that ties human intelligence to the needs of software

agents [8]

The new amazon turk pays micropayments for cognitive tasks (they call Human

Intelligence Tasks or HIT) that humans find easy – but machines difficult or impossible

This human processing time can be used by companies in at least two ways

As part of an automated process that would otherwise be impossible
To build up banks of semantic data, with the goal of training artifial intelligence programmes for specific tasks

Companies set the price for specific tasks – and amazon takes its 10% vig off the top
Now you really are working for the machine [9]
The mechanical turk (named after a victorian machine which convinced audiences it could play chess, but contained a hidden human player) reversing the human computer relationship
The mechanical turk could prove a huge boon to machine intelligence, however it faces serveral drawbacks

The slowness of humans to complete tasks
The high cost vs potential value – exludes possible use by emergent Web 2.0 services operating on a small budjet
Arguable that performing these tasks may not be cost effective
As yet there are no hits available to try out

Plotpatents.com applies to patent story lines

A test patent was filed in November 2003, attempting to patent a fictional plot [10]
The patently absurd story patented is an update on the tale of Rip Van Winckle – but apparently patent madness knows no limits
Copyright already protects the expression of an idea – but the development of human culture over thousands of years has been a gradual exploration of a set of underlying themes and archytypal plots
Patents seek to stop this evolution dead – or at least corporatise and delimit is
Patents give exclusive rights to an idea – what an absurd proposition!
In the past patents were granded to useful, novel, non-obvious designs for phsyical inventions, chemical and materials – more recently (especially in the US) the use has spread to processes, business practices, genes and software code => restrictions which would have prevented the development of Windows, MacOS and the Internet has they existed historically
According to Jay Thomas, Professor of Law at Georgetown University – “case law has established that virtually any subject matter is potentially patentable”
Knight hopes to set a precident to be used to patent all sorts of story lines [11]
And potentially values each patent between 5k and 67k
You’re already liable – the patent has been provisionally approved, and under us law [12] it can be used to litigate, even before final approval
Boing boing has more info [13]

Israel using sonic booms as non-lethal weapons

Israel have begun using sonic booms to terrorise the now totally palistinian population of the gaza strip [14]
The effect is generated by Israely air forse jets bypassing the speed of sound while flying over Gaza – creating noises so loud as to cause nosebleeds
This tactic has historically been used by Israel – namely in the lebanon
The united nation have described the tactic as an abuse of human rights [15], which are causing anxiety, panic, fear, and poor concentration in children, and leading to miscarraiges
Sonic weapons and other ‘less lethal weapons’, are increasingly used in conficts internationally, and against protestors in the united states and europe [16]
These weapons are often used in situations where no violence would otherwise have occured, and frequently result in serious injury or death. A campaign has already begun in the US to end use of ‘less lethal’ weapons [17]
Israel additionally continues to carry out air raids on QUOTE UNQUOTE militant targets, in Gaza
Since 2000, over 3700 Palestinians have been killed, including over 700 hundread childen, and many more injured; by Israeli soliers and settlers [18]

The CIA’s secret Prison

US officials have admitted in the Washington post, that terror suspects are being held in a secret prison in the former soviet union

[19]

The prison is part of a system set up after 9/11 which has included eight countries, in a hidden global internment network
almost nothing is known about who is imprisoned, or what methods of interrogation / torture are used within them
congress has been discouraged from questioning the CIA about them
The CIA refused to adknowledge the existence of the prison – to avoid foreign censure
Last month, Dickhead Cheney and CIA Directer Portly J.Gross asked congress to excempt CIA employees from anti torture legislation
The CIA argues that to be effective in the War on Whatever it needs to be empowered t hold and interrogate suspects without time limits or even the military tribunals of Guantanamo Bay
Despite host countries being signatories of the Geneva convention and UN convention against torture and inhuman treatment – the CIA enact these practices
The parliments of Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have all opened enquiries into secret and illegal kidnap of their citizens by the CIA
Prisons considered less important may be handed over to ‘friendly’ intelligence services in the middle east – known as extraordinary rendition
After 9/11 the CIA drew up a High Value Target list – the head of the CIA’s counter terrorism Center, the CTC argued for assasignation by hit teams, others within the CIA argued that the network could be more effectively disabled with information
President Bush signed an order allow the CIA to kill and detain Al Qaeda operatives anywhere in the worlds
Initially CIA prisons were set up in Afganistan, where numerous deaths and abuses occured, at prisons like ‘The Salt Pit’
The secret prison system has now grown far beyond the original bounds of Al Qaeda operatives
prisoners being transported to these secret prisons are passing through Shannon airport.
At was 9/11 justified debate last night in Trinity college – one of the speakers – a member of the Al Muhajiroun organisation, which is on the hard line of the muslim community, was questioned about his approval of potential terrorist acts in Ireland among other things
His reply was that Muslims in Iraq would find Ireland a legitamate target, due to bombers refueling here – however he has been misquoted in todays independent newspaper as describing Irish people as US collaborators and threatening directly Ireland
The paper literally misquoted the speaker Anjem Choudary, as well as misspelling Mujahideen [20] as Mujahadem; adding weight to his claim that the media willfully distorts the opinions of Muslims

Media Pimp

Gareth: It may not be 3D [21], but it sure is Gorillaz [22]
Gareth: Pandora music picker [23] – creates a free radio station based on your favourite artist / song, using

The Music Genome Project [24] which attempts to classify songs based on sound rather than genre. PS: Youll need a US zip code to sign up [25]

Francis: The cast of Lost sing Bohemian Rapsody. This is brilliant, if you are a Lost fan you will love this.[26]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/15_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 15
Feed: RSS

Notes

New service offers podcasters 25c a download!

Fruitcast will soon launch, the service works by inserting adds in podcasts, and offering podcasters [1] up to 25c per download

[2]

This could add up to a hefty premium if true – but critics are divided as to whether the greater specificity and targeting of podcasts is enough to justify the higher per lister figure from advertisers
Amounts are still theoretical right now
Adds are designed to be unobtrusive and sponsorship style
It remains to be seen whether fruitcast can gather interest from advertisers in the new medium [3]

Womens attractiveness varies with hormone levels

Boingboing reports [4] a study in New Scientist [5] which reveals womens facial appearance alters on a day to day level – with hormone levels – changing the mean rated attractiveness of their faces
Researchers photographed 59 women every day for six weeks, and compared each days ratings with hormone levels recorded from urine samples
Woman with the lowest levels of hormones were also compared against those with the highest
Those faces considered most healthy and feminine were also considered most attractive
Some of these changes can be masked with make up
Higher hormone levels also likely correllate with higher oestrogen levels during puberty – making it likely that hormone supliments during puberty could increase attractiveness in later life
Image from study [6]

Flock respond to our reviewlet

[7]

Back button issue Francis encountered is a glitch
OPML export and other enhancements will be added
Resent uber early release was pushed out to meet demand
Thanks guys – We’ll give a more detailed review in a few months
Wikipedia article on OPML [8]

Google Desktop 2.0 Launched

[9]

Integrates google sidebar, google search, and google reader functionality
Moves windows to the left to accommodate
Read RSS, view slideshow of photos, chat, search, examine maps, read news, view frequently used items and take notes simultaneously
In related news, google have also resumed scanning books – defending the move in the official google blog by emphasising the access to out of copyright works [10]

Sony Rootkit Debacle

Sony have released copy protected CD’s which play fine on CD players, but not only illicitly install software which redirect windows system calls to their own subroutines
The software additionally kills windows if an attempt is made to uninstall it
Some analyists are calling the software a rootkit – a term for nefarious malware deployed to gain root access (i.e.: complete control) of a target system [11]
This software creates both a potential gateway into a users system, and kills windows if removed
Sony have responded to criticism by releasing tools to uninstall these drivers

[12]

Boing Boing article on the EFF’s decryption of information hidden in printouts [13]
And here’s the original article about the method [14] – which was developed by the secret service

Windows Live Stillborn

[15]

Microsoft launches its answer to web 2.0 services from competitors like yahoo [16], google [17], and netvibes [18]
The services launched by Bill Gates are Windows Live and Office Live
Office Live will be an adjunct to the existing office package – rather than the rich online office environment many believe google are building
Windows live
Both services will come in a variety of packages, from add supported to subscription
CNET discuss an earlier attempt by microsoft to build an online .Net office package – which was ultimately scuppered by competition from the exisiting office team [19]
Early review describe the services as underfeatured but potentially interesting [20]
For years microsoft have been gradually attempting to move toward a web services model – this may be their first major step to turning that change into actual revenue
Predictably, as with Windows 95 before it, the demo crashed
You can try out Windows Live here [21] – Look familiar?
Firefox support is patchy – but MS are to be commended for including OPML export from the outset
Why are they reducing functionality from Start.com [22] ? Microsofts initial offering in this area. Most likely different teams produced different solutions.
Blake Ross [23] is the Firefox / Mozilla developer we obliquely refer to
According to Google Answers, Walmart have 28% of the US Game Market (in 2002) [24]

The coming console wars

Ars Technica puts together everything that’s know about the next generation consoles [25]
They compare processors, network, graphics, memory, and storage hardware etc
Try to guestimate the strategy of the big three from their published hardware information
In the case of the revolution – they work backward, speculating about the graphics and processor hardware from the announced intentions of Nintendo
Surprises

the large amount of RAM in the Revolution, and potentially large L2 processor memory cache – could be great for building highly interactive environments, smart a.i, deep / emergent gameplay,

Revolution processor most likely to be the Cell, or Xenon processor

If Xenon, could be as high as 2ghz – although raw gigahertz matter less in the next generation – a simple, single or dual core, 2 or four thread, meaty processor, would be easier to program and yeild shorter development times and a lower learning curve

Media Pimp

Half Cocked: Chip [26], found via A couple of Donkeys [27]
Barry: Ladder Theory [28]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/14_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 14
Feed: RSS

Notes

Flock Released

Folksonomy browser released
Very early version
Includes blogging features, del.icio.us integration instead of bookmarks, and a feedreader

Why Google are really scanning the whole worlds library

Whats the point – the books can’t be read online, and google don’t have an online store
Searching within books seems a small return for such a large effort
When fururist George Dyson visited google recently, he got an interesting explanation for google books
“We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,” explained one of my hosts after my talk. “We are scanning them to be read by an AI.” [1]
This ties in with this weeks post from thegoogleblogger

Google Base is a web application, a publically accessable semantic-web database of everything [2]
Could be the backbone of an ebay style service but is probably much more
Google’s suggestsions include “Description of your party planning service; Articles on current events from your website; Listing of your used car for sale; Database of protein structures”.
This release could also mean that the long awaited equivalent of ebay’s paypal gmoney is coming
Google’s stock price is the highest its ever been.

Dysons article [3]
A thoroughly mapped symantically coded web would allow programs to operate as cellular automota – interacting in novel ways independent of the necessity for specific instructions
Turing “intellectual activity consists mainly of various kinds of search.”
Combine distributed semantised memory, which distributed emergent processing – you get, what? A conscious internet

He who controls the net (part 2)

As we’ve decribed in previous shows, a battle for control of the domain name root servers is taking place [4]
A number of developing countries are seeking to take control away from ICANN (a not for profit US coporation) and put it in the hand of a UN body
Last month Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for Internet and media affairs proposed removing US oversight of ICANN
In the past the US had spoken of ending government connections to ICANN,
But in June the Department of Commerce statemented that the U.S. would retain control over the governing of the Internet
Recent government intervention has included preventing the deployment of the .XXX domain
Some fear that the internationalisation of ICANN will hasten the “cantonization” of the internet into a series of ‘internets’ segregated by firewalls, and edited to remove dissent and ‘socially undesirable content’

Human 2.0

A.I researcher Ray Kurzweil discusses the post human future [5]
Kurzweil argues we are approaching the technological singularity [6] – when the exponential benifits of digitalisation will be applied to human society through biotechnology and an erasure of the levels of separation between the mind/brain and the digital world
This is refered to as a singularity, because beyond this point, change in the computational power of intelligence and its impact on society becomes so rapid and profound it cannot be meaningfully predicted
This development of Moores Law is an example of Kurzweil’s Law of accelerating returns – when a system approaches a fundamental limit of complexity, a paradigmatic evolution occurs, allowing it to leap past that limit
Kurzweil belives that throughout history more complex forms of life have been evolving – with shorter and shorter gaps between leaps in evolution – an evolution ultimately leading to the end of evolution – with engineering replacing the random guesswork of natural selection
Kurzweil views scientific development as chaotic in a mathamatical sence, random but rule based and hense predictable
Leaps in nano-technology, genetics and molecular computing will result in complete flexability of the physical body, combined with enhancements of the mind increasing intelligence by incomprehensible amounts
Together the biological and computing revolutions will remove the gap between natural humans and created bio-tech intelligences
Nanobots will allows brain to brain communication, fully immersive virtual reality, and near imortality through gene repair and disease combat
Problems with this view

Ignores knowledge deficits and hyper complexity of the human brain – not a unitary organ, but a variety of interconnected systems
intelligence and cognitive functioning don’t merely rely on a neural net of interconnectiosn
also a complex neurotransmitter interchange – which differs from area to area within the brain
protein synthesis, influenced by genetic and epigenetic factors is a process which keeps revealing new onion like layers of complexity
No practical progress toward strong A.I has been made
Assuming the 20th century level of exponential development will continue ignores the specific economic and sociological factors which led to rapid technological development – e.g.: Effective peace in Western Europe and America, high Kensian Coldwar investment by government, cheap oil, microprocessor development (which may well not be replicated by molecular computing)

First bio-eclectronic organism created

In an interesting conjunction, the first functioning bio-mechanical organism has been created [7]
Ravi Saraf a University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineer, has grafted bacteria, a silicon chip and gold nano particles together to create a humidity measuring device [8]

The bacteria contract when they lose moisture, decreasing the distance between the nano particles and greatly increasing the current across the nano particles
Saraf wants to continue his research to produce devices powered by the energy of the bacteria itself – and integrating with the cells own logic

Yahoo criticised by Chinese Dissident

Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo has written to Yahoo founder Jerry Yang criticising Yahoo’s cooperation with China [9]
Lauren Gelman, Associate Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society blog about this – asking why can’t western corporations like Cisco and Yahoo band together to develop ethical ways of working in China
Simply put..They will only do this if public pressure forces the creation of effective ‘ethics abroad legislation’ in the US and Europe – Chances of that low – none

or alternately if consumer pressure forces a change of policy – how ever, as coporations like Nike have shown, such changes generally last only as long as public attention is focused on a specific problem

Here’s a link to a mirror of the original FT article (which was subscriber only) [10]
Interestingly Liu Xiaobo claims that Yahoo lied about being legally obliged to hand over the bloggers information (without knowledge of how it would be used) as the Chinese business is located in Hong Kong, which has an independent judiciary

Flickr not as open as all that

Flickr have attempted to block access to amatur flickr porn site [flickerlicious http://xxx.flickrlicio.us/2005/10/27/flickr-doesnt-believe-in-web-20/]
This despite the site obaying flickrs terms of service, and the flickr founders being proponents of open API’s and social networking

How to punish bloggers

‘Attack of the Blogs’ from Forbes magazine [11]
The story describes 50% – 60% of criticism of companies by blogs as astroturfing by competitors (a random and nonsence figure)
Apparently ‘Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective’
Encourages business to build a ‘blog swarm’ of bribed bloggers
Suggests feeding dirt on critics to rival bloggers, using the DMCA to scare a bloggers host, threatening the host with defamation and ultimately evening suing bloggers
‘The potential for brand damage is really high’

Examples of ‘brand bashing’ given include Groklaws critques of SCO’s laughable were it not so dangerous attack on linux, and the security flaw discovered by bloggers in Kryptonite bicycle locks

Really makes you feel bad for the poor mega corporations – of course the genuine danger is a media so reduced to soundbites, so complacent and owned by so few vested interests that it ignores both stories which threaten its paymasters and any discussion of the deeper causes and implications of the stories it covers
The article is full of factual errors – for example makes veiled reference to [Jeff Gannon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gannon] describing how one right wing blogger was supposedly attacked for defending him

The article does not mention that Gannon, who’s real name is James Guckert – was attacked not for having been a gay prostitute, but for having worked as a shill for the whitehouse, masquerading about his identity and his press position, and his involvement in the [Valerie Plame http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame] affair [12] – which has recently led to the indictment of whitehouse staffer Lewis Libby [13], and may yet lead to the conviction of top bush ‘advisor’ Karl Rove [14]

Media Pimp

Francis: He Man Sings 4 Non-Blondes [15]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/13_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 13
Feed: RSS

Notes

Contributer Reminder

Anyone is welcome to contribute stories – either through our email or wiki
However we will never run with anonymously contributed stories

Please include your real name and email

Also we will only discuss stories that are

a) newsworthy
b) relate meaningfully to wider issues in technology and politics

Wikispam

Technolotics gets its first wikispam
Adds for Viagra and phentermine
Changes could only be seen by looking at the wiki code The Page in Question
Wiki article on wikispam Wiki Spam

DVD John Joins Mp3tunes

Jon Lech Johansen, cracker of DVD encryption with DeCSS and creater of JHymn (which removes DRM crippling from iTunes store bought tracks) has joined Mp3tunes [1]
Mp3tunes is a start up created by Michael Robertson, creator of the Lindows linux distribution, which allows users to purchase songs in *.mp3 format, and ‘controversially’ to download those songs an unlimited number of times
Mp3s are in 192kbps VPR and artists get approx 60c of the 88c price (as opposed to roughly 7c of an iTunes music store track)
This feature has in the past lead to a lawsuit from
Johansen is to work on a new project ‘Oboe’ – which will ‘”bring digital music into the 21st century”
Since Norway adopted EU anti-circumvention legislation Johansen is no longer free from legal threats
A column in this weeks wallstreet journal profiles Johansens bumpy legal history [2]

Johansens teen years were eaten up in trials, as they recording industry tried unsucessfully to have him imprisoned for cracking (aged just 15) the ‘protection’ which ment DVD’s couldn’t be played on open operating systems like Linux
Johansen initially one a prestigious award for developing DeCSS
Later his computer systems were siezed and he was charged (but ultimately not convicted) with gaining unauthorised access to a DVD
Johansen’s legal costs were met by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) [3], who fight to protect citizen’s privacy and consumer rights online
Publishing or linking to DeCSS code is still illegal in the US

The EFF disect new EU DRM proposals

An EU working group have proposed a DRM toolkit – a set of standards for public access to creative and copyrighted works accross europe
EFF allege These requirements would preclude developments and use of free and open source devices and..creative commons works [4]
They further suggest that the proposed compulsory DRM remove fair use style rights extant in copyright law and practise
The EFF point out that DRM is not equivalent to a contract as it can be summarily renegotiated at any point in the future by the “rights holder” with no recourse – e.g.: Apples alterations to the amount ot times an iTunes track and be burned
Here’s the original proposal

The Big Kahuna

Microsoft hops on the Mail 2.0 bandwaggon with Kahuna
Kahuna will be the new interface for hotmail – a service which in the past has lost public confidence due to practices like auto deleting old mail when its tiny (still only 2MEG) storage was used up, and deleting accounts which have lain unused for periods as short as one month
The beta is available to 200,000 users of Hotmail
The mail beta uses AJAX to create a responsive client Article on Kahuna
No word yet as to whether it will work with all browser – three guesses

Google Blog Post

Microsoft has allied with RealNetworks the maker of the Real media player and Yahoo to combine their instant messaging systems.
Real in return dropped a 1 billion lawsuit against Microsofts use of the windows monopoly to promote windows media player. Lawsuit was will be settled for about 700 million to be paid over the next 18 months.
They will also work together on new DRM tech and on an ‘anti-apple’ online music strategy
Google and Comcast are interested in buying AOL from Time Warner – providing Google with access to what exactly?
Google also partnered with Sun Microsystems – Dvorak on TWIT speculated that this partnership was merely to spread google bar (its stated purpose), and worry microsoft
Others speculate – despite Googles flat denial – an online thin clinet office suite – with Google Earth and Print integration. One argument against this, is that Google, unlike apple, do not have a history of flat out denial followed by u-turn. E.g: Google browser. Additionally, they may wish to develop technology mearly to keep their options open
Google and Microsofts actions have been seen by many as a frank competition for the future of the online space – a war that microsoft is far from guarenteed to win

Google software and online products are free to use
Google is actively producing Web 2.0 applications that Microsoft has spent years failing to comercialise – with its .net infrastructure
Google has show huge flexability and speed of product development – in stark contrast to Microsofts historic ‘3 times to get it right’ iterative development process
Microsoft has only had two original ideas Clippy and the BSOD
Google have, by and large kept their goody two shoes image, while Microsoft have gained huge enimy within the industry and amongst cusomers
Google’s gross revenue shot up 96% to 1.58 billion this year in the 3rd quarter and its stock price went up to $342 about 11%. Most of this revenue was from text ads that are placed on google searches and about 1 billion in net revenue

However..

Microsoft are 3 times googles size
Historically highly effective competitors, whereas google have shied away from competition where radical improvement on existing tech is not possible
Microsoft have huge install base and market share with Windows – can bundle any app they like post anti-trust

How to be Happy

Research on Happyness is in psychological vogue The Sunday Times Article
Recent years have seen the launch of a journal of happieness studies and the publication of 3,000 papers on the topic
Psychologists differentiate between immediate Joy, and a satisfaction with ones life
Happyness seems to have a strong genetic component – with even major life changes having little long term effect
A study of the top 10% happiest of students has determined they have the most social contacts – although given the history American blindspots of status and class – these variables may not have been considered – additionally its easy to confuse cause and effect. People like happy people
Martin Seligman, president of the APA – has led the legitamisation of happiness research

Previously known for the discovery of learned helplessness – which has had an effect on the development of cognitive therapy
Seligman funded 50 research groups to study the problem
Researchers have discovered six virtues recogised crossculturally – wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence
Humans seem to have a bias tword negative feelings – 4 of the six universal human emotions are negative
Positive emotions seem to originate from the higher “less bestial” part of the brian, the frontal cortex
We seem rigged with evolved pain and danger recognition mechanisms, which prevent us from being happy – making us take good things for granted
Despite this researchers remain convinced that appreciable improvements in happiness are achieveable

The article mentions two take home methods of increasing your happiness

Write down three things that went well and why, every day for a week.
Identifying your signature strengths and use one of them in a new and different way every day for a week.

Cynics might also note that Seligman charges 10 dollars to register on his website for happiness tips [5]

Whats behind the Revolution

1 up take a look behind Nintendos thinking, and the development of their ‘revolutionary’ controller

1 up article

Although the new controller seems very different its in keeping with Nintendos history of design innovation – the GameCube controller was the exception
The new control system endevours to make gaming a more social activity – and remove control barriers to entry
Nintendo see online as a buzzword which hides the lack of innovation in game development – a little rich from a company who’s output is almost entirely sequel based
Nintendo is taking a completely different approach to expanding the gaming market

Rather than Microsoft and Sony – adding non gaming features, and ever higher graphics – they aim to expand the market to all age groups – make gaming more casual, and in a word, fun

The remote controll format is as much an asthetic device to remove the intimidation as a usability decision
In a sense the revolution remote is a way of skipping a technology generation – real time tracking is still to primitive to use for anything more sensitive than a parlour game (e.g.: Eyetoy)

almost equal functionality in a much simpler – though still bleeding edge – technology

Latest in a long line of movement based controllers – from power glove, to Capcoms Onimusha sword controller – yet managed to be (in concept at least) more accurate, yet more general than any

Bram Cohen, woos hollywood

BitTorrent easily allows downloading of files
BitTorrent now accounts for at least 20% of net
Cohen has made no attempt to allow his users any degree of privacy
and has no problem when the MPAA and RIAA launch suits against people posting copyright-infringing material
Last month venture firm DCM-Doll Capital Management invested $8.75 million in the startup
Cohen suffers from Asperger’s syndrome

story on cnn money

Media Pimp

Prince of Persia in flash [6]
Two irish Geeks and a TV [7]
Ajax Calendar – only works in IE! [8]
Fast Seduction [9]

Listen: Episode 12
Feed: RSS

Notes

Why you shouldn’t buy another ipod

The long awaited ipod video has been released, along with the new iMac G5, and iTunes 6 containing the long awaited iTunes video store
Videos are restricted to music and 5 ABC tv series for now, and are two dollars each
This is not making new content available, but monatarising existing free content – e.g.: TV, and music videos
The ipod video only supports H.264 video, Mpeg 4, and *.MOV (quicktime) formats – not the much more common DivX, Xvid or even windows media (Compared to Zen Vision which supports both)
Video playback when fully charged is only 2 hours! (Compared to 4.5 hours on Zen Vision)
Screen is only 2.3′ (Compared to 3.7′ on the Creative Zen Vision)
Only 320×240 videos can be played back – so forget connecting this to your TV or converting your existing videos – although it is possible to rip a DVD specifically for this format [1]
No fastforward or rewind!
Television shows will only be available in the US market! – defeating the entire point of putting them online. Thankyou Steve ‘Sellout’ Jobs

No darkness anymore

New calculations may mean that dark matter, the ‘missing’ substance proposed to account for the rotational speed of galaxies; based on newtonian physics, may not exist at all
A paper published in physics periodical ‘Cern Courier’ asserts that when general relativity is applied to the problem of explaning the speed at which galaxies rotate – the amount of matter infered no longer necessitates the assumption of dark matter

[2]

Western Corporations Help Censor the Net

We’ve talked in the past about how western corporations help repressive Asian regiemes like the Chinese government, to censor the net
A new charity the OpenNet Initiative [3] has been set up to provide detailed information on how technology is being used as a tool of repression
Reports are available already on Burma [4] and Singapore [5]

First post from thegoogleblog.blogspot.com

New correspondent for technolotics [6]
First post [7]]

Recently Google released Google Reader a program that uses RSS feeds to help you view your information faster and better than before. To use it all you have to have is a gmail account and you can subscribe to different feeds like http://www.technolotics.com, and The New York Times. It is very similar to a program called Web Clips which runs in Google Sidebar. For those of you who don’t know about Google Sidebar it is Google Desktop 2.0 and takes up about 2 inches of the right side of the screen. From this you can talk online using Google Talk, view stock prices, read your gmail, customized news, web clips, and even listen to evil DRM encrypted itunes. It can also search your computer for AIM chats, websites, programs, all files and folders. If you have Google sidebar there is no need to use reader because it is kind of slow and it doesn’t automatically update the list of what you read like web clips does. Google Reader also doesn’t work for all sites. I couldn’t get http://www.thegoogleblog.blogspot.com to work and to get technolotics to work I had to try it a few times. Not one of their best programs but it serves its purpose. Since it’s only in its beta I would wait before using it more and stick to just reading the sites or using Web Clips.

Breaking Americas Grip on the Net

The Department of Commerce i.e. the US government has been forced to give up control of the Internets domain name root servers. [8]
At the final preparatory meeting for next month’s World Summit on the Information Society David Hendon representing the EU proposed two changes: a new forum that would decide public policy, and a “cooperation model” comprising governments that would be in overall charge.
The DoC fought the proposed changes but world’s governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control which will be proposed at a UN Summit next month.
The US will likely have to acqueise in the face of internation pressure
However – Proposed changes are vague intent, and ideologically motivated
How the net will ultimately be controlled is still up for debate
EU commission says internet could fall apart [9] if the US retain control

What they mean is that without united centralised control, the net will become fragmented

Why BluRay will win

Playstation 3 = first to market
Larger capacity – starting at 50Gb and possibly rising to 150Gb – space for Hd movies – and potential movie / game combos – although this is unlikely in real world applications
Support of four of 5 Hollywood majors
Includes DRM to completely block copying – hense studio support
Sony has staked its future on this technology
Source: Business Week [10]

Yahoo launch podcast service

Yahoo have created an extremely simple friendly interface [11]
A wide variety of podcasts have been pre-added
They don’t provide hosting space, but they have detailed podcast creation instructions [12]

Climate Meltdown

This summer only 60 miles of ice floes across the Canadian northwest. [13]

Experts fear the Arctic region a destructive cycle leading to glacier melt.
Arctic sea ice this month dipped some 20% below the long term average for September
Melting an an area twice the size of Texas.
If current trends continue, before the end of the century there will truly be a “Northwest Passage” from Europe to Asia
This upsets all previous linear climate models
Could be a tipping point leading to a climate equivalent to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, one of the most rapid and extreme global warming events recorded in geologic history [14] 55 million years ago – which led to mass extinctions – and the dominance of out mamalian ancestors

Siemens Unveil True Electronic Paper

German electronics giant Siemens have revieled what they claim is the first truly practical electronic paper [15]
They claim the cost is low enough to be used on news papers and magazines
The material will probably be used on advertisements first, and then covers and pages as costs drop
Screens should be available by 2007
Amazing as the potential is, digital paper is probably the least revolutionary application of this technology
One square metre of the material costs around £30

Media Pimp

Cory Doctorow on Twit [16]
Netvibes RSS reader [17]
Japanese Porn Vending machines [18]

everything from hentai figurines to artifical vaginas
NOT WORKSAFE strong stomach neeed

Listen: Episode 11
Feed: RSS

Notes

Folksonomy rankings, the future of search?

Ok what is a folksonomy [1]
A new search engine for social bookmarking, entitled collaborative rank [2], has launched.
Site is a research project by a student of the University of New South Wales [3] in Australia
It enables search of taggers posts to del.icio.us [4] weighing search results by user importance, for the specific tag searched [5]
User rank is calculated based on the originality and subsequent popularity of a users posts to del.icio.us [6]
Does this ‘improve on pagerank’ by rewarding taggers?
The genius of del.icio.us [7] is that it provides an incentive for the grind of tagging, bookmark collection..But are other users tag choices and bookmarks useful?
Could this lead to sites currying favour with top taggers?
Or what about folksonomy spam?

RIAA sues a child

Although the RIAA’s case against 14 (then 13) year old Brittany Chan was dimissed with prejudice. They are continuing the persecution by suing her [8]
The four major record labels are demanding that the court appoint a legal guardian so a case may be taken against her

Anonymous Bittorrent

Users of the i2p anonymizer layer [9] now have the option to run anonymous bittorrent software
Although it is possible to use onion routing (Tor) with bittorrent already [10], this is not what Tor was design to do, and is strongly discouraged
Now users have the option of using the i2p network to anonymize Peer to Peer, with with azureus [11] (recommended), or custom I2P-BT torrent software [12]

Pod0matic Podcast Portal adds iTunes Support

Great services which should hopefully Apples insane demand for a US credit card before adding a podcast to the iTunes store [13]
Podomatic also provide 250megs of space for podcast hosting, and automatically create iTunes compatible RSS feeds for you. Making it an excellent beginner service
Whats needed is a service which would provide for adding your cast into iTunes, without tying you to a single podcasting hub – allowing for expansion and more professional podcasts

The new private library

Just like Google [14], yahoo is planning on scanning and developing a searchable online library of printed books [15]
Unlike Google, yahoo are planning on making the complete texts of copyrighted works readable
The Open Content Alliance, which is part financed by Yahoo, will synthesise the digital collections of several leading research librarys of research papers and historical works [16]
This collection will not include copyrighted works without permission from publishers
Scanning and hosting will be done by the Internet Archive [17], and works will be available under Creative Commons liscences [18]
It remains to be seen how much publishers support they will recieve for this effort
Several authors, such as BoingBoing’s [19], Cory Doctorow [20] have demonstrated that open source / creative commons literature can still be commercially viable

The UnGoogleable

All it takes is one link to your blog or darknet to get crawled, but some people are managing to stay off Googles radar [21]
Some take this further, living completely off the grid, with no bank account, no credit cards, and no phone line – although clearly, being completely off grid and hense untaxable and untraceable would be illegal [22]

No you cannot have children

The Indiana state legislature has proposed legislation which will require a licence to procreate by means other than sexual intercourse [23]
Women wishing to use invetro fertilization, sperm donation etc will have to apply for a licence – a licence for which only married women will be considered
The new law will make insemination without the “gestational certificate” a class B misdemeanor
Under Indiana law this means that those convicted are liable for a ‘Fine up to $1000 and up to 180 days in jail’
A married couple requesting assisted reproduction..

Must provide a description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents, include a description of individual participation in faith-based or church activities, hobbies, and other interests.
Are subject to fingerprint and criminal history checks

This is reminicent of Margaret Atwoods dystopian novel ‘The Handmaids Tale’ [24]

Make your own Web Application

New social software Ning [25] allows you to develop your own social / folksonomy software!
The service already includes templates of clones for a host of popular web applications like flickr [26], del.icio.us [27], thefacebook [28] etc
Developers can clone existing apps, or make their own in PHP
Although developers are restricted from running thirdparty adds, they are free to charge for the services they create
Ning provides plenty of plug in services and APIs to make the creation of web apps easier, as well as built in (limited) storage space
Current quotas for app content are – 1GB limit for public content, a 100MB limit for private content, and a 10MB limit for the developer file system where your PHP, HTML and other application files are stored

Steve Balmers Visit to Trinity

Steve Balmer visited Trinity on Friday [29], and Jason was there reporting for us!
PDF of proposed legislation [30]

Most sound recording are out of public reach

A study by the library of congress [31] has concluded that a majority of sound recordings are unavailable [32]
This is due to a combination of factors from changes in technology making old recordings unreadable to copyright holders lacking insentives to reissue them

How to pick up girls

‘The Game’ New book released on the blossoming PPA (Professional Pickup Artists Scene), which teaches how to use Neuro Linguistic Programming [33] to increase your conquests [34]

Media Pimp

Winamp now includes XM satellite radio! [35] Now you can listen to Howard Stern!
Ipod Video Pic ? Perhaps to be released on Monday [36]
Tactapad – the intuitive two handed haptic feedback control device [37]
Vimeo [38]

This weeks episode totaled out at over 90 minutes! But we enjoyed it so much, we wanted to let you listen to the lot. It’s now available as three separate parts

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/10_technolotics_1of3.mp3]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/10_technolotics_2of3.mp3]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/10_technolotics_3of3.mp3]

Listen: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Feed: RSS

Notes

90% True

For decades polygraphs have come under such criticism for their unreliability, that they are not submissable as evidence in many jurisdictions and ‘defense’ senarios [1].
Now neuroscientists testing changes in brain blood flow during lying claim they can attain a 90% accuracy on lie detection.

[2]

Although this method (involving enormous MRI machines) is not courtroom viable, could it one day lead to a functional method of determining falsity?
Clearly an improvement on the polygraph, the usefulness of any kind of lie detector may always be obscured by three factors

Antisocial personality disorder (commonly referred to as Psychopathy / Sociopathy) individuals are capable of dishonesty without any overt physiological changes
Mentally ill or intentionally decieved testees may test negative, but be unaware of the ‘untruth’ of their statements
Even a perfect lie detector can only detect lies, not untruths

Is this really detecting dishonesty, or merely stress, like a GSR test

Finally, hands free porn!

Have researchers developed a non invasive method of mind controlled computing [3] ?
Previously electrodes had to be implanted in the brain to allow such control
It is questionable if this really represents a route to hands free control – simple two command binary control at the moment; biofeedback currently allows more dynamic control

Printing ‘things’

The revolutionary world of protyping machines [4]

Evolving Software

Genetic Algorithyms are evolving, and hold the promice of revolutionising software development [5]

MIT to make 100 dollar laptop

New MIT project aims to produce hardware for the developing world [6]
Neat features like Crank powered, tablet / notebook / ebook configurations
This may be useful for NGO’s, but its price point is many times the monthly income of an entire village or slum in many developing regions

Copy ‘Protected’ Flash

Digital Ripoff Mugging in your pocket [7], new flash memory released which forces DRM on users.

Good news for Homebrew Fans

PSP firmware downgrader released [8]
If hardware manufacturers allowed free homebrew liscensing this sort of thing would have a lot less motivation

Spy(ing on your)Kids

Parent use tech to keep tabs on thier kids [9]
From grade reporting smart cards, and tracking GSM phones, to chiped cars; parents in the US now have an array of technologies to track and control their offspring

MS back HD DVD over Blu-Ray

Bad news for the Blu-Ray consortium, as MS back HD technology in Vista [10]
MS Claim that HD tech has simply delivered better results outside the lab, and the Blu-Ray group have not managed to achieve many goals outside lab, but is this a strike at the PS3 and Sun?
Sonys PS3 will use Blu-Ray technology for its backup media, and Suns Java mobile has been chosen as Blu-Ray’s ‘interactivity layer’
MS claim – blu-ray does not yet allow user backup, support backward compatible hybrid disks, requires expensive upgrades to fabrication facilities, and has lower 20gig vs 30gig real world capacity
The Blu-Ray disk association has released a press release which denys each of MS’s allegations in turn[11], they claim

Blu-Ray’s launch capacity will be 50gigs
Copying will be a function of the copy protection system which is the same in both formats
HD DVD is also not natively compatible with DVD, unless Red lasers are added to the DVD hardware
Java is better than the MS proposed interactivity layer

Suicide Girls in the News

Suicide girls in the news twice this week
Rebel girls claim owner is a tool
Chilling effect of FCC porn squad OR a publicity stunt [12]
Looks like a little of both [13]

FCC to wiretap VOIP

Last Friday the FCC released it’s CALEA First Report and Order [14], which allowed law enforcement to apply the same wiretipping laws used for copper – to VoIP service.[15]

Record your life

Mit graduate student designs the first effective lifelog. Nothing will ever be the same. [16]
The system, which he intends to commercialize and build into one portable device, records all a days conversations, translates them to text with speech recognition software, and tags each conversation with meta data memory triggers like news events contemporaneous with the conversation

Kevin Sites changes the news

The controversial solo journalist and independent media blogger takes citizen journalism to the next level with a contract from yahoo [17], a new step for the media giant
Site was previously best known for U.S. filming a US Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a Fallujah mosque
Yahoo aim to “cover every armed conflict in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles – and their global impact”.
Sites will be yahoo’s sole correspondent “deliver(ing) stories via a five-fingered multimedia platform of text, photography, video, audio, and interactive chat”

No fly madness

Ever wonder why you’re getting cavity searched every time you use an airport? [18]
Turns out there are 2 seperate lists, nofly and the ‘selectee’ list
Erroneous entries can only be removed by the law enforcement agency which added them; ‘the terrorist screening centre’ exists to double check these names
Agencies can add individuals to these lists for any reason or none. They make no sence from an anti terrorism perspective
Even sharing a last name with a known alias of a ‘suspected terrorist’ is enough to land on the list, which can be a nightmare to get off
Nun faces another no fly screwup [19]

RIAA attack bittorrent

Corrupt torrents spring up on bittorrent trackers. [20]
These torrents incorrectly report the number of seeders and leachers to trackers, falsly inflating their popularity, and crash out at 97 – 98%
They have appeared on both MiniNova and MyBittorrent, and all orginate from the same IP
Are these the first volleys in an attack on bittorrent?
Could these be the work of Movielabs [21], and company formed by six of the hollywood majors to attack peer to peer services
If you’re worried about your privacy, we recommend the PeerGuardian 2.0 software [22], which is compatible with many P2P programmes

Media Pimp

TFM [23]
Free Online Typing Test [24]
IpodderX released for Windows [25] – highly rated, bitorrent supporting podcast client
‘Shining’ parody of Kubricks classic [26] (Coralized link), and here’s a link to the original [27]
Pee-mail [28], wees your mail
The Adventures of Captain McGillicuddy [29]Woo hooo! I’m a captain!

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/09_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 9
Feed: RSS

Buy it, burn it, return it

Scotti’s Record Shops chain in northern New Jersey, US, actively encourages ‘piracy’ [1]. Are CD rentals the way forward? How long can a forward thinking approach like this survive?

Customers can return a new or used CD in 10 days for 70% of purchase price
Interestingly, much of the reduction in sales is due to online retailers like Amazon and mall stores like Abercrombie & Fitch; rather than piracy.
Scotti’s are now in discussions with the RIAA, and may revoke the policy

Record industry Rothweiler starts to bite

Digital File Check is a piece of software released by the IFPI, the international equivalent of the RIAA; which…

“..helps to remove or block any of the unwanted “file-sharing” programmes commonly used to distribute copyrighted files illegally. It also allows the user to delete copyrighted music and video files from the “shared folders” of the computer from where they are commonly swapped illegally on the internet.”[2]

Strongly (and wrongly) implying that file sharing is illegal, that it has no legitamate purposes, and that users do not have the right to share their media and run their choice of software.

From the site..

Digital File Check will:

  1. Identify and easily uninstall or block unwanted 'file-sharing'- or 'peer-to-peer' (p2p) - software on your computer. Some p2p software can slow or damage your PC and can be used to illegally trade files.

  2. Search your computer and remove any music, film or image files that may have been copied or distributed without your permission or that of the copyright holders.

  3. Go through a simple inventory of all music, movie and picture files on your computer.

The IFPI claim this soft ware will not report back on users media.

This in the same week that an IFPI representative from Iceland says playing music on the platform of your choice is ‘a privilege, not a right’ [3]

. Interesting attitude from an industry who’s entire business is built on technology they didn’t invent, and art they themselves don’t create.

Browsing hots up

With one of the worlds most standard complient, quickest and most feature rich browsers now free [4]; and the rate of Firefox exploits appearing heats up are firefox’s days as a media darling over? [5]

Is Opera better than Firefox? [6] Are Firefox’s customisable extension enough to push it beyond Opera features like..

Fast load and render time
Download resume
IRC, email and news
Image on off toggle
Dynamic style sheet changes – like greasemonkey
Mouse gestures
Voice activation and text to speach
Improved tabbed browsing (heavily influenced by Mozilla

BUT

No integrated RSS aggregator
Some pages don’t render properly (eg: technolotics.com!)

How safe are your credit card details

Credit card companies in the US fight for the right not to inform customers their details have been stolen. [7]

SCL the commerical propaganda / ‘psy ops’ company [8]

He’s lucky he didn’t end up in Guantanamo Bay

One mans report in the Guardian; detailing his arrest and detainment for ‘looking suspicious’ in a tube station. [9]
He was guilty of suspicious behaviour like carrying a rucksack, looking at the people on the platform, and taking papers from his rucksack.
He was DNA tested, finger printed, arrested, and his flat is searched.
Despite working and living in London, and having no known ties to terrorism, he is detained till 4am the next day.
Would he have recieved the same relatively polite treatment from homeland security agents?

Blogging Freedom

Reporters without borders (group part funded by the French government) advises how to blog from repressive regiemes, and anonymously use the internet to enable dissent.

CBS [10]
BBC [11]

Reporters without borders suggest that Chinese companies operating abroad are probably peddling their censorship and surveilence tools – but many of these tools were developed by Western corporations.

e.g.: ‘Great Chinese Firewall’ developed by Cisco.
e.g.: Google not only blocks ‘controvercial’ keyword searches, like ‘democracy’, it temporarily shuts down when too many are performed.

Reporters without borders alledge china is creating a new kind of internet ‘not based on the free circulation of information but on market information’

ISPs are state controlled
30,000 telecoms works are employeed monitoring net access
A climate exists where search engines and portals self censor. Removing non-conformist ‘false information’

Totalitarian observation like this is developing in the West too (e.g.: failed carnivore programme). And is exactly why we need technologies like Tor[12] [13], Privoxy [14], and Stephen Clarks Freenet [15]

The War on Porn

This week it’s porn [16]. Forget crime, prescription drug addiction, obesity, natural disasters, or even terrorism. According to the FBI, the real danger facing Americans is Porn.

A new 8 man anti-obsenity squad is being formed to gather evidence against “manufacturers and purveyors” of porn, for prosecution under obsenitiy laws.

Controversial Bush appointee, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, is making pornography (sold to, and made by and for consenting adults) one of his top priorities.

Gonzalez is well know for his role in..

Placing limits on the freedom of information act
Describing articles of the Geneva convention as quaint, and suggesting they did not apply to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay
Issuing a memo stating that laws prohibiting torture did not apply to the detention and interogation of enemy suspects; unless they led to serious injury or death
Authorising the trial by military court of ‘terror suspects’

Media Pimp

Newest systm goes in depth on podcasting [17]
Geeks build tracking sentry gun [18]
The geek chart [19]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/08_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 8
Feed: RSS

Notes

Britain makes moves toward totalitarianism

British government proposes up to three month “internment in all but name” (Amnesty international), without charge, for ‘terror suspects’ [1], the equivalent of a 6 month prison sentence, without having been convicted of any crime (Liberty); and a criminal offence of ‘glorifying exalting or celebrating’ any ‘terrorist act’ within the last 20 years, and certain listed acts in perpituity [2]. This goes beyond even the Draconian American Patriot act in removing the right of free speech, and giving government responsibility for which ideas are judged criminal – e.g.: Is writing in support of the Eastern European revolutions which ended communism, or the armed struggle in South Africa to be a crime? What about the socialist movements in South America, which struggled violently against US supported military juntas?

Dutch move toward the total information state

Dutch open files from birth on children. Sensible data synthesis and organisation, or greatest potential for abuse in history? Is this inevitable in other states? [3]

Revolution Controller Announced

Moves fluidly in 3D space, includes lasor pointer (gun) function, expandable with add on peripherals such as stick. Reviews on wired [4], and IGN [5]

Essentially a 3D mouse, will FPS’s finally be playable
Can also be flipped around and used as a pad
Fully wireless
Why do expansions have to be physically connected?
Video [6]

Chinese beauty Produces made from humans

Guardian Unlimited – The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners [7].

How to kill the Internet

How to kill the internet [8]

Steve Gibson alleges the net can be brought down by a DNS attack on the root servers.
Is he a crazy hyperbolic doom sayer. Or the best hope to save the net?

The 6 dumbest ideas in computer security [9]

Bad science in the media

Guardian article discusses sciences sensational reporting and misrepresentation in the media [10]

RNA evolution

To what extent does RNA control our development and evolution? [11]

Another explanation of the role of RNA other non DNA forms of information encoding. [12]

If RNA is so important do RNA virus’s (retrovirus’s) alter the behaviour of carriers to facilitate transmission? This slashdot comment points to a number of studies evidencing that the HIV virus may make specific changes through RNA to the structure of the brain, encouraging viral transmission. [13]

The Web 2.0

Wikipedia explanations of RSS [14], Webfeeds [15], Web Syndication [16], and the Web 2.0 [17]

Coral Content [18] and Dijjer [19] could solve the bandwidth problems of citizen media. But more than that, open a path to the ‘walled gardens’ of the net.

Microsoft start.com [20], My Yahoo [21], and Google Hompage [22]; RSS, search and mail portals (online aggregators)

Google launches blog service [23]

Undoubtedly this will be more comprehensive than technorati, but lacking the trackback (google has historically been quite poor at indexing linkto’s).
Ignores robot’s file – my blog is indexed.

Yahoo mail beta [24]

Media Pimp

Jason: Meebo [25]
Gareth: International talk like a pirate day [26]
Francis: Eating Odd Stuff [27]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/07_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 7
Feed: RSS

Notes

Ipod nano a crashing bore

Ipod nano is announced to much fanfare [1], possibly the most over hyped device ever?

Pointlessly tiny colour screen, for what, photos?
Less space
NO new features, e.g.: Camera, wifi, radio narrowcasting, video playback, IM, games
Sexy industrial design, I want one, but why!!! (Kinda like the PSP)
Ipod Nano video advert, [2], from Mac TV [3]

Yahoo help Chinese government to jail journalist

Yahoo attacked for what many percieve as it selling out a customer to please the Chinese government.[4]

Is this a scary example of how far companies will go to cosy up to the Chinese government and gain access to the chinese market?

One writer puts himself in Yahoo’s shoes and asks what would he do differently.[5]

The piece illuminates the difficulty that all corporations face when requested for such information by government authorities – the blogger points out, that though the US for example has theoretical division of judicial and legislative branches, courts rubberstamp wiretap applications; making it in effect just as broken a system.

The writer argues that that companies like Yahoo have to trust governments and/or agencies to only make valid requests for information, they do not have the ability or skills (and they may not have the information)to judge each request on it’s merits.

A related story, the Chinese premier declares that China is moving towards democracy. [6]

“If the Chinese people can manage a village, I believe in several years they can manage a township. That would be an evolving system.”

Internet TV for the masses

New open source software Broadcast Machine based on RSS allows the easy publication of Internet-TV and subscription to internet-tv feeds.[7]

Good that monopoly on vlogging / vidcasting aggregators is not being left to itunes.

But Not sure this is so insanely great…

“Eventually, the foundation plans to integrate Microsoft’s Windows Media Player into its software, and embed the viewer’s digital rights management technology, Wilson said. Adding DRM could help make PCF applications more useful to traditional media.”

This is really weird, considering it’s produced by the Downhill battle guys [[8]]

“Downhill Battle is a non-profit organization working to support participatory culture and build a fairer music industry.” Who list among their goals, breaking the major label monopoly.

I questioned them about this on their blog [[9]], so hopefully they’ll respond.

Also related: Nerd-TV [10] a chatshow for nerds. Hooray!

 But is it's first broadcast the most boring piece of television ever?

Travolta flys in while Bush flys over

Stars of screen and tv arrive in New Orleans to help out. [11] [12]

In an arguably offensively obvious photo op. Particularly amusing is the Team America like moment in which Sean Penn’s, ‘Child Saving Boat’ sprang a leak within moments of setting off. Jerry Lewis on the other hand, did something useful with his celebrity, raising 3 million US dollars in a telethon.

America fails to look after it’s own, criticism of the US government’s handling of the situation in New Orleans grows.

The two Americas: How Cuba successfully deals with Hurricanes and the failure of the American government to do likewise.[13]

Firefighters drafted in to hand out fliers for FEMA; a waste of valuable resources? Answer: Yes! [14]

Katrina survivors need IE6 to apply for aid online and contend with a confusing website[15]

Legal battle over former executive reveals the rivalry and hostility between Microsoft and Google

[16]

Legal documents reveal executive in Microsoft wants to “kill” Google.

Unprotected PC lasts only 8 seconds on the net before being attacked

A BBC world interview with a security consultant, shows a computer running XP with no firewall nor antivirus software is connected to the internet[17]

New breed of ‘hackers’ motivated by financial gain.
8 seconds later the first worm is attacking it.
PC turns zombie within minutes.
30 minutes later the computer has crashed.

Podato, podcast dating… Gasp!

A dating website where the singletons leave podcast profile and it’s Irish![18]

Related items:

Podomatic: make creation, listening and sending podcasts easy [19].
Link to suggestion [20] for Podmeet, ideas for podcasting meetup?

Pornified, Pamela Paul’s book on the effects of pornography on America discussed on Slashdot

Is porn really bad for you? [21]

Box Wrap Patent Infringment, controlling your use of everyday products

Lexmark wins a case whereby it stops a company from refilling it’s cartridges as it infringed the Box Wrap Patent agreement. [22]

The danger with this is that others will follow suit with similar agreements.

Car companies sell cars with agreements that prohibit you from repairing or modifying your own car, it can only be done by an authorized dealership.

Media Pimp

I think I’m going to shit my pants. I’ve been waiting for this movie for ages, and I hadn’t noticed the trailer becomming available. Imagine, a story by the best science fiction writer of all time [[23]], brought to film by one of the greatest (and most under appreciated) directors of his generation [[24]]; mix in a little bleeding edge digital rotoscoping. The result is this, [[25]], by the sweet balls of Jesus, A Scanner darkly.
Revealicious [26]
Youtube.com [27]]
The Nintendo Revolution Controller [[28]]

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/06_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 6
Feed: RSS

Notes

Filesharers buy more music

Guardian Reviews Study – which alleges filesharers buy more music [1]

– Fileshares spend 4.5 times more on (downloaded) music, according to music research firm ‘The leading question’

– Controversy exists as to whether music sales have really fallen, for 2 reasons. Sales are calculated by record companies as percentage of units shipped which then sold. Ship more units and sell less and sales magically drop. Sales of music were at an all time high in the late 90’s, as music fans began to fully adopt the cd format

– Head of EMI stated that cheaper tracks would sell more = ‘Bollocks’

– Felix Oberholzer, a Harvard Business School professor, and Carolina academic Koleman Strumpf, last year produced research which concluded that when it came to CD buying, downloading had a net effect of neither adding or subtracting to CD sales.

– Industry sources put illegal:legal downloads at 900m:180m per half year.

– This is important because record companies argue that the reason for falling profits is filesharing; and that they are suing not out of pigopoly but necessity.

Meanwhile the RIAA sues more filesharers, there’s a good discussion on Slashdot [2].

Also Hollywood admits commercial piracy is the real problem [3]

Poor left to face the fury of Hurricane Katrina

Here’s an article from before the Hurricane hit [4]. – Not only were poor ill equiped financially to escape, or even prepare; they lacked information about the potentially catastophic impact of such a major hurricane.

And here’s one about the poor sheltering in the cities sports arena [5]

Hugo Chavez, socialist president of Venezuela offers aid [6] – Aid from Venezuala and other nations including Canada, refused.

Is the disaster in New Orleans further evidence of the damaging effects of global warming? [7] – past 10 years have been most active hurricane years on record, possibly the result of changes in temperature and salination in the Atlantic due to global warming – link is still very controversial

New Orleans is now pretty much a war zone with troops given orders to shoot to kill.. But how to differentiate looters and survivors? [8] – Troops ‘Fresh back from Iraq, they have M16’s and they are locked and loaded’ Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco – Don’t confuse reports of violence and hijackings, with lootings. People are literally Starving in New Orleans, and only a tiny minority have resorted to violence

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency warned this would happen) [9] – Bush Administration cut flood prevention funding by 44% – In 2003 allowed development on wetlands which were necessary to control flooding – Forsing Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency to say they could only protect wetlands if related to interstate commerse

Democracy now has excellent coverage of the disaster. [10]

Comparison of Cubas hurricane preparation. [11]

Windows Vista is designed for Hollywood, not users

[12]

Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn), is set to enclude a raft of technologies to ‘protect’ read ‘control’, the media and programmes you watch, run and create on your pc.

GM promice self driving car by 2008

[13] Possible fluff piece. Another story on same topic [14]

– Opel Vectra will use lasers a video camera (and one would assume an onboard GPS to navigate roads) – Car will ‘see’ signs, bends, other vehicles and lane markings Highly dubious as all these road features can be obscured – Interesting comparison with Darpa’s Grand Challenge

Creationist Theme Park Opens in Palm Springs

[15]

Great quote..

Kids flock to the huge statues. “And it’s not like they’re crying, ‘Oh, mommy, take me out, I’m scared.’ They’re drawn to it,” Chiles said. “There’s something in their DNA that knows man walked with these creatures on Earth.”

A related story: The battle over evolution continues in US schools. [16]

US Abstinence Policies harming Ugandan Aids Battle

[17]

Not allegation from lefty group, but UN’s special envoy on fighting aids in Africa.

Background: Uganda has one of the most sucessful anti AID’s campaigns in Africa A.B.C (Abstinance, Be Faithful, Contraception) – although I’m not sure if that’s a translation. However an article in the Lancet has questioned these figures [18].

More criticism of Creative Commons

Reg writer lays it on thick [19]

– Article has an elitist atitude to creativity, refering to users of Creative Commons as ‘hobbyists’. Also asking whats wrong with existing liscencing system, where mashups which aren’t successful won’t be sued and those worth a damn will be liscenced.

– This is bollocks – The ‘Grey Album’, a possibly the most innovative hiphop album of all time, was taken off physical shelves and effectively banned online – do to the reluctance of the beatles record company to liscence their back catalogue – which is heavily sampled in the album.

– Small scale mashups are regularly sued, and always have been. Record companies have used any means necessary to limit and control remixes – for example the well known case of the underground Band ‘Negativeland’, who’s remix of U2’s ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’, entitled U2, was sued for trademark infringement [20]

– article ignores technologies such as DRM, which would, if retrospectively extant, have prevented the very development of Hip Hop music and mashup culture

– article ignores the cases of documentaries like the groundbraking ‘Eyes on the Prize’ civil rights documentary which can no longer be shown, due to its use of stock footage for which the copyright has now lapsed [21]

– Of couse Beethoven doesn’t ‘need to be remixed’ but, remixes and sampling, such as the groundbreaking ‘Art of Noise’ album, The Seduction of Claude Debussy [22]. Can create something wonderful and original through a redevelopment and reinterpretation of pre-existing work – arguably something which all creativity does anyway. Were there a ‘patent’ (not directly relevent but metaphorically so, especially with the advent of software patents) on classical music, we would never have had Mozart in the first place.

– The writer does not realise that with the advent of digitization, outside of museums, in future only CC style liscenced and public domain information will be the ONLY free to access and develop information.

Research Alleges up to half of Research is Wrong

[23]

– New Scientist reports on an analysis by John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, which states that only 50% of the conclusions of research is ultimately supported by future studies

– We bring this up, because it will be misinterpreted as meaning 50% of research isn’t worth doing. When in fact no research could be tested for replicability if it wasn’t done in the first place.

– The article also states the odds for research that uses overly small sample sizes is worse; which is obviously true, but should be taken care of by research departments granting permission for a study, along with statistical power etc. At undergrad level these issues are often ignored, but at graduate level one would hope they are addressed

– Very interestingly article is published by Public Library of Science [24], an open source science organisation which seeks to enable the creation of public libraries of science containing the full text and data of any published research article, available free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world.

– Link to article [25]

Media Pimp

Real time HTML Editor [26]

The miniture Earth, poverty cartoon [27]

The Elegant Universe [28], free downloadable documentry.

Threadless T-Shirts [29]

In this episode we discuss:

• Who’ll mind the mainframes is mainframe programming a dying art?
• Researchers use Transcranial magnetic stimulation to uncover change blindness
• Lancet metastudy finds homeopathy doesn’t work
• Europe Russian and Japan may unite to build manned craft
  – while nasa picks new booster for return to the moon
• Is google getting evil?
• Custom versions of windows are a hit on P2P
• Blast Poscast Hosting
• Is Science doomed in the US?
• University of Texas to Abandon print books
• Swat team raid rave with attack dogs
• Media Pimp: Students for an Orwellian Society, Thor rolls a joint, Blogcritics.org Everything2.com

Listen: Episode 5
Feed: RSS

• The jokers on who in the Nolan Batman sequels?
• Coke aint so sweet in India
• Stimulating stimuli cause temporary blindness
• Epigenetics, the science which transcends genetics
• Gvisit.com – website stats meets google maps
• FCC want to track your wifi ip phone
• Feds want flyer background checks
• Google’s new share offer – what are they funding?
• The hollywood moon landings, real after all?
• The Wall Street journal’s ‘Requiem for the Once-Imagined Future’
• Media pimp – BA festival of Sciences, The Register, Democracy Now

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/04_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 4
Feed: RSS

In this episode we discuss..

• Gaming addiction claims another Korean life
• Republican conflict over stem cells
• Snuppy the cloned puppy
• Ipodsubwaymaps.com – shows up Apple, shines on google
• Google implements wildcard natural language questions
• Mobile phones in UK to spy on their users
• British licence plates get RFID tagged

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/03_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 3
Feed: RSS

In this episode we discuss..

• 10 year sentence in UK for keeping your private key private
• MacTel to use TCPA/Palladium ‘treacherous computing’
• How to protect your privacy with TOR, Privoxy, and Peerguardian
• What’s wrong with Wikipedia? – The flaw in folksonomy systems
• First conviction in UK for using an open access point
• Irish Music Rights Organisation ‘Imro’ threatens filesharers with lawsuits
• Media pimp – Absolute Kosher Records, Tek5
• Competition – win a Dudley Corporation CD
• …and loads more.

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/02_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 2
Feed: RSS

First episode of technolotics.

In this episode we discuss..

• Bag searches on the NY subway
• John C. Dvorak (no relation the keyboard) doesn’t understand CC
• Windows Vista to require secure monitor
• ‘Oil Barton’ of the House of representatives committee on Energy and Commerce investigates environmental researchers
• Japanese researchers create worlds most lifelike android
• Bush administration clamps down on biotech research
• Cinemas in UK to ban mobile phones
• Execution of Iranian teenagers

[audio https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/01_technolotics.mp3]

Listen: Episode 1
Feed: RSS