Episode32
From Technolotics
Contents |
[edit]
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
[edit]
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
[edit]
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!
[edit]
Links
- Slashdot Story
- Splasho Story
- Forever Geek Story
- Kevin Rose's Responce
- Another 'Digg bullying' example
[edit]
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
[edit]
Links:
Ars Technica - The RIAA vs the EFF
[edit]
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.
[edit]
Links:
[edit]
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.
[edit]
Links
[edit]
The latest on bionics
[edit]
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.
[edit]
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.
[edit]
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.
[edit]
Links
[edit]
Another Front in the Global War on Islam
- Bush will attack Iran
- Because it's about the dumbest thing he could do.
[edit]
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.
[edit]
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.”
[edit]
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
[edit]
Links
[edit]
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
[edit]
Media Pimp
[edit]
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]
[edit]
