conflux
News.Com
Chip implant gets cash under your skin
""We do hear concerns about this from a privacy point of view," Cossolotto said. "Obviously, the company wants to do all it can to protect privacy. If you don't want it anymore...you can go to a doctor and have it removed. It's not something I would recommend people do at home. I call it an opt-out feature."
Chris Hoofnagle, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said implanted RFID tags cause an additional worry. "When your bank card is compromised, all you have to do is make a call to the issuer," Hoofnagle said. "In this case, you have to make a call to a surgeon."
redux [10.24.03]
"Privacy experts expressed dismay at the idea of using RFID tags on children.
"I think the Buffalo experiment is getting children ready for the brave new world, where people are watched 24/7 in the name of security," said Richard Smith, an Internet privacy and security consultant. "My main concern is that once we start carrying around RFID-tagged items on our person such as access cards, cell phones, loyalty cards, clothing, etc., we can be tracked without our knowledge or permission by a network of RFID readers attached to the Internet.""
redux [10.13.03]
"Solusat, the Mexican distributor of the VeriChip -- a rice-size microchip that is injected beneath the skin and transmits a 125-kilohertz radio frequency signal -- is marketing the device as an emergency ID under its new VeriKid program."
""My big concern is that kidnappers will simply use 'high-tech' tools like knives to get rid of them," said Lauren Weinstein, creator of the Privacy Forum, an online digest related to privacy and technology issues."
redux [09.08.03]
"Worried parents will soon be able to keep an eye on their children at all times via a wearable tracking device and a website that maps where they go."
"Through the website parents will be able to pinpoint the location of their children in real time as well as replay where they have been over the last few hours."
redux [10.25.02]
"The maker of an implantable human ID chip has launched a national campaign to promote the device, offering $50 discounts to the first 100,000 people who register to get embedded with the microchip.
Applied Digital Solutions has coined the tagline "Get Chipped" to market its product, VeriChip."
"The company plans to develop a prototype for an implantable GPS ID chip by the end of the year."
redux [08.16.02]
"HILLARY CLINTON is supposed to have said of her husband that he was a "hard dog to keep on the porch". She is not alone. All over the world, dogs, husbands, children and even inanimate objects are liable to stray from the home--whether willingly or otherwise. Now, though, the technology exists to keep track of them."
"The angel is intended to look after old people who have become forgetful and young children who have become too adventurous, as well as dogs who are too interested in the bitch next door."
redux [02.26.02]
"A Florida technology company is poised to ask the government for permission to market a computer ID chip that could be embedded beneath a person's skin. For airports, nuclear power plants and other high-security facilities, the immediate benefits would be a closer-to-foolproof security system. But privacy advocates warn that the chip could lead to encroachments on civil liberties.
THE IMPLANT TECHNOLOGY is another case of science fiction evolving into fact. Those who have long advanced the idea of implant chips say it could someday mean no more easy-to-counterfeit ID cards, no more reliance on dozing security guards."
redux [02.06.02]
""Derek stood up and said, 'I want to be the first kid to be implanted with the chip,'" Leslie Jacobs said. "For the next few days all he did was talk about the VeriChip.""
"ADS chief technology officer Keith Bolton said he was a bit wary about the family's motives at first, but the Jacobses quickly convinced him they'd be perfect subjects. Since the VeriChip was announced in December, the company has been bombarded with queries from people interested in the device, Bolton said.
"Right now we have over 2,000 kids who have e-mailed, wanting to have the chip implanted," he said. "They think it's cool.""
redux [12.04.00]
"Applied Digital Solutions is launching a new line of products under the "Digital Angel" name that allow the monitoring of a person's whereabouts and vital statistics."
"Although the devices may evoke images of George Orwell's Big Brother, the company says the products could be used to keep track of pets, small children or adults with health concerns such as Alzheimer's disease."
redux [09.07.00]
"Worry no more, doting parents! Whether it's your little pumpkin's first day walking home from school by herself or the millionth time you've lost her at the mall, the BabysitterTM will track your sweetpea's location from a jelly bean-sized microchip implant, discretely tucked under her collarbone. You'll be able to chart her every move. What better way to give her independence, and put your mind at ease?"
Also available: The Constant CompanionTM lets you keep a watchful eye on grandma or grandpa, even when you can't be by their side; The Invisible BodyguardTM offers freedom from fear so you can enjoy the fauna and foliage when eco-tourism takes you to kidnapping hot spots around the globe. Coming soon: The INS Border PatrollerTM; the Maximum Security GuardTM; the Personal Private EyeTM; the Micro-ManagerTM."
redux [09.03.00]
"WHAT can grease the slippery slope toward tyranny, and erode trust within families? Sometimes, it's as simple as parents' love for their children.
A colleague and friend says he'd gladly implant a location-tracking chip in his newborn daughter, to protect her from kidnapping and other threats. He says he wouldn't misuse such surveillance power. I'm sure he means it. I'm sure other parents would say, and believe, the same things.
This location-tracking product does not exist -- yet. Such is the race of technology, however, that it undoubtedly will exist soon enough. By then, I hope my colleague and others in his situation think hard about the consequences if they get what they want."
redux [07.17.00]
"Forget the pager number and don't bother calling.
One company is making it easier for folks to "track" anyone, by allowing them to pull up a map of the person's location on a personal digital assistant (PDA) or computer.
"Cell-Loc isn't the only company to come out with location-sensitive devices. After all, the industry is expected to bring in a whopping $3.9 billion by 2004, according to the Strategis Group.
The same Strategis study showed that people didn't mind being tracked down for emergency situations like roadside assistance."
redux [05.25.00]
"It could be getting harder to hide from the boss.
After allegations that some city employees are loafing on the job, Denver officials said Monday they want to spend $1.5 million to track city vehicles with the military's Global Positioning System satellites."
"One labor expert said it might be counterproductive for an employer to try to scrutinize its workers so closely."
redux [04.11.00]
"Johnny: "Mom! Grandma's missing again!"
Mom: "Don't worry, dear, the satellite will find her.""
"According to Reuters, a Japanese company has come up with a new way to track down grandmas, grandpas and anyone else who forgets where he or she is supposed to be, by using a satellite-based global positioning system and cellular technology."
6:50 PM
0 comments
The New Yorker
Thanksgiving Rules Revised
"10. You are entitled to ten naps per twelve-hour Thanksgiving Day period. Moments after 4 p.m., when time itself seems to have stopped, do not count as naps. Do not commence a nap when a blood relation older than you is addressing you directly."
9:55 AM
0 comments
The New York Times
The Embeds
[requires 'free' registration]
"I have heard condemnation of the embedding process, which critics say was a masterstroke of manipulation by the Pentagon. ''The Media and the War on Terrorism,'' edited by Stephen Hess of Brookings and Marvin Kalb of the Shorenstein Center, asks: Is there a ''Stockholm syndrome,'' in which the journalists start to ''identify with the soldiers and lose their professional detachment''? Embedding was a public relations success for the Pentagon, but I lose patience with the critics. The press has been complaining since Vietnam that the Pentagon shut it out of the action in Grenada, in Panama, in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, so why object when the Pentagon finally grants near-total access?"
redux [10.06.03]
"Michael Gordon, The New York Times military correspondent, told attendees that journalists should be embedded with combat units in future conflicts, while Rear Adm. T.L. McCreary, who heads Navy public affairs, and Lt. Col. Michael Birmingham, public affairs officer for the 3rd Infantry Division, agreed.
"Embedding is a tool," Gordon said. "If it's a major theater war, it's the way in [to covering the conflict].""
redux [04.28.03]
"Embedding reporters with fighting military units during the Iraq war offered unprecedented access to the battlefield and was generally a success, a panel of journalists told the annual meeting of The Associated Press on Monday.
But "we still have to work hard"' for bits of information that help bring the story of the war to readers, listeners and viewers, said Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor."
redux [04.11.03]
"Veteran military leaders and journalists agreed that the embedding of reporters with U.S. military forces in Iraq had been a success during a panel discussion at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference here. But they offered mixed opinions on specific elements of the war coverage and differed over how the press had handled some sensitive issues.
The panel, which included two veteran Washington journalists and two retired U.S. generals, offered mostly praise for the embedding process, which had more than 600 reporters, photographers, and broadcast media traveling with coalition troops."
redux [03.28.03]
"The Pentagon and U.S. media are very pleased with the way "embedded" correspondents are covering the war. In Europe, the media community is more skeptical."
"Today, openness is the priority. "Here's why embedding is important to me," Col. Rick Thomas, chief of U.S. military public affairs in Kuwait, told the British newspaper the Financial Times. "As the public affairs officer, I have a deep and abiding obligation to tell the families of our servicemembers what they are doing. ... My objective is that through the journalists' eyes and through their words and images, mothers and fathers will understand the courage, dedication and sacrifices of their sons and daughters.""
"Just as the Pentagon has developed increasingly sophisticated munitions for the battlefield abroad, it has perfected propaganda to secure public opinion at home.
n that battle, American citizens need critical, independent journalists if they are to get the information necessary to participate meaningfully in the formation of policy. Never has that been more crucial, as the United States unleashes an attack on Iraq that signals a new era of the use of force. Unfortunately in the first few days of the conflict, and the months leading to war, American journalism has largely failed, on several counts."
"The problem, I suggested, is that most of the TV commentators on the home front appear to be just as "embedded" with the military as the far braver reporters now in the Iraqi desert.
Surely this is a bipartisan issue. While many on the antiwar side complain about the media's alleged "pro-war bias," those who support the war, and the Bush administration itself, have also been ill served by overly-positive coverage that now has millions of Americans reeling from diminished expectations."
"Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assigned itself the near impossible task of tracking a Niagara of media untruths. On March 25, the beleaguered FAIR watchdogs reported on broadcast lies by network household names about Iraqi use of Scud missiles -- disinformation that the media made up all by themselves."
"The military later announced "that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers." In fact, the Iraqis had not launched any Scuds since the beginning of the invasion."
"Smucker, who was traveling with the 1st Division but was not part of the Pentagon's embedding program, talked about the unit's location and approach to Baghdad in interviews Wednesday with CNN and National Public Radio."
"Judging from a transcript of the CNN interview, "it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports on that same news cycle," Van Slambrouck said. "Of course, the Pentagon has the final say in the field about any threat the information reported might pose.""
redux [03.12.03]
"Ask Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times if he wishes that he were among the hundreds of reporters embedded with U.S. military troops and the veteran scribe doesn't mince words. "I'm glad I'm not," he said during a satellite-phone interview from northern Iraq, where he's been assigned for two months. "I like the freedom of movement and the choice to see the story from the middle."
Fleishman's comments echoed those of many nonembedded correspondents assigned to the Middle East in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion."
redux [02.26.03]
"The Pentagon's new "embedding" policy, while less restrictive than a press pool, prohibits journalists from having their own vehicles. To Hedges, who says the first thing he would do if he were covering this war is get a jeep, the limitations are significant. "I'm not saying people shouldn't be embedded," he insists, "but they're not going to get an accurate picture unless people are allowed to do their job. When you're embedded in a unit, you rely on the military for transportation: they will decide where you go, what you see, and what you report. They're not going to drive the press vehicle to sites if things go terribly wrong."
He cites what happened early in the Gulf War in Al-Khafji, where he witnessed Saudi soldiers fleeing in panic from Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Marines were called in to push back the Iraqis. But back in Riyadh and Dhahran, "the press put out that the Saudis were defending their homeland. When the military has a war to win, everything gets sacrificed before that objective, including the truth.""
"The idea of embedding journalists with units was tossed around. But field commanders wanted those journalists to have at least the basics of basic training. Thus the media boot camp."
"If conversations between media and military at the base saloon on the last night were any indication, all but a very few gained much perspective if not renewed respect for the soldiers, sailors and Marines who will do the fighting.
After the Marines thanked us for coming, a young photographer stood and said: "We've learned a lot, and thank you. We learned again something we've always known, but see now in a different light: We carry cameras and notebooks. You guys carry something we don't -- the guns. And we will not forget that."
redux [02.14.03]
"The U.S. military plans to take extraordinary steps to provide the media access to combat zones in Iraq, but only after making reporters agree to a series of strict prohibitions, according to a lengthy document sent by a press officer for a major U.S. military base to a news organization that will be "embedding" reporters with American forces preparing for an attack on Iraq.
The document offers the first detailed glimpse into Pentagon planning for media coverage of the campaign."
"CBS News anchor Dan Rather says he hopes that embedding journalists among U.S. troops if there's a war with Iraq will help coverage, but he has doubts."
""There's a pretty fine line between being embedded and being emtombed," Rather said Thursday at a news conference where CBS outlined war preparation plans."
"Bob Steele, director of the ethics program for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the good intentions of the Pentagon and journalists give him hope, with some caution.
``There's no doubt there will still be tensions between the goals of the military and goals of journalists,'' he said."
"While the rhetorical and diplomatic wrangling over Iraq continues, it is worth noting that the global TV network war has already begun. The American Cable News Channel, CNN, made its reputation during the first Gulf war, but its got stiff competition this time around -- not just from the traditional networks, but from newcomer, Fox. Now if you think this is a trivial point, consider the budgets that these media giants are getting ready to commit. According to one account, CNN alone is planning on spending $60 million to cover the war in Iraq. But what will we see for all this money? Anything more than network anchors standing against a backdrop of Kuwait city and commenting on the latest official account of the battle from American generals? That's about it, according to distinguished journalist Phillip Knightley. The former 'Sunday Times' investigative reporter is also the author of what's considered a classic history of war reporting -- 'The First Casualty'. In it, he documents the decline of independent war reporting and the attitude of the military. It's best summed up by the American government censor, who at the height of World War II said, in relation to the press, "tell them nothing till it's over and then tell them who won.""
8:39 PM
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Greenville News
Cell phone changes could make tons of toxic trash
"The long-awaited arrival of local number portability hits Monday, meaning for the first time, anyone who wants to change their service can keep their phone number -- long cited by consumers as the biggest pain with switching companies. Typically, when people change providers, they upgrade their phones, which relegates old phones to the dusty back of a junk drawer, or worse, the landfill.
There are a lot of phones to recycle. A 2002 study by the environmental group Inform, Inc., showed by 2005, there will be 130 million phones discarded annually."
"Cellphones, troublesome because they contain lead and the suspected human carcinogens arsenic, cadmium, and beryllium, exemplify the e-waste problem as millions are expected to be discarded, industry experts say.
"Because cellphones are so small, their environmental impacts might appear to be minimal," says Bette Fishbein, a senior fellow at Inform Inc., a national environmental research group based in New York. "But the growth in their use has been so enormous that the environmental and public health impacts of the waste they create are a significant concern.""
[requires 'free' registration]
"James Mosieur buys 50,000 cellphones a month, and now, with wireless number portability beginning today, he expects he will be acquiring even more.
Mr. Mosieur is the chief executive of RMS Communications, a private company in Ocala, Fla., with annual revenue of about $20 million that is made mainly by buying inactive phones from a variety of sources - manufacturers, carriers, wholesalers and individuals - and reselling them to companies that refurbish them."
"The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a leading industry trade group, wants to make it easier for consumers to put their old phones to good and new uses. The group is promoting "Donate a Phone," a program tied to the holiday shopping season that helps people find ways to get rid of old phones in a productive manner.
CTIA has also set up a Web site at recyclewirelessphones.com to give consumers more information about environmentally sound ways to dispose of old wireless devices."
6:45 PM
0 comments
Edge
Why Gordian Software has Convinced Me To Believe In the Reality
of Cats and Apples
"If you go back to the original information theorists, everything was about wire communication. We see this, for example, in Shannon's work. The astonishing bridge that he created between information and thermodynamics was framed in terms of information on a wire between a sender and a receiver.
This might not have been the best starting point. It's certainly not a wrong starting point, since there's technically nothing incorrect about it, but it might not have been the most convenient or cognitively appropriate starting point for human beings who wished to go on to build things. The world as our nervous systems know it is not based on single point measurements, but on surfaces. Put another way, our environment has not necessarily agreed with our bodies in advance on temporal syntax. Our body is a surface that contacts the world on a surface."
redux [10.16.02]
"In a landmark paper written at Bell Labs in 1948, Shannon defined in mathematical terms what information is and how it can be transmitted in the face of noise. What had been viewed as quite distinct modes of communication--the telegraph, telephone, radio and television--were unified in a single framework."
"Today that sounds like a simple, even obvious way to define how much information is in a message. In 1948, at the very dawn of the information age, this digitizing of information of any sort was a revolutionary step."
redux [08.07.01]
[requires 'free' registration]
"These would seem to be heady times to be a computer scientist. This is the information age, in which, we are told, biology is defined by a three-billion- letter instruction manual called the genome and human thoughts are analogous to digital bits flowing through a computer. And, we are warned, human intellect will soon be dwarfed by superintelligent machines.
"All kinds of people," said Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and musician, "are happy to tell us what we do is the central metaphor, the best explanation of everything from biology to economics to aesthetics to child rearing, sex, you name it. It's very ego-gratifying.""
"Humans have always tended to try to envision the world and themselves in terms of the latest technology. In the 17th and 18th centuries, for example, workings of the cosmos were thought of as the workings of a clock, and the building of clockwork automata was fashionable. But not everybody in the world of computers and science agrees with Dr. Lloyd that the computation metaphor is ready for prime time."
redux [07.31.01]
"The entire science of information theory grew out of one electrifying paper that Shannon published in 1948, when he was a 32-year-old researcher at Bell Laboratories. Shannon showed how the once-vague notion of information could be defined and quantified with absolute precision. He demonstrated the essential unity of all information media, pointing out that text, telephone signals, radio waves, pictures, film and every other mode of communication could be encoded in the universal language of binary digits, or bits - a term that his article was the first to use in print. Shannon laid forth the idea that once information became digital, it could be transmitted without error. This was a breathtaking conceptual leap that led directly to such familiar and robust objects as CDs. Shannon had written "a blueprint for the digital age," says MIT information theorist Robert Gallager, who is still awed by the 1948 paper."
redux [06.20.01]
"Here, at the inaugural moment of the computer age, the erasure of embodiment is performed so that "intelligence" becomes a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human lifeworld. The Turing test was to set the agenda for artificial intelligence for the next three decades. In the push to achieve machines that can think, researchers performed again and again the erasure of embodiment at the heart of the Turing test. All that mattered was the formal generation and manipulation of informational patterns. Aiding this process was a definition of information, formalized by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, that conceptualized information as an entity distinct from the substrates carrying it. From this formulation, it was a small step to think of information as a kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between different substrates without loss of meaning or form."
"Think of the Turing test as a magic trick. Like all good magic tricks, the test relies on getting you to accept at an early stage assumptions that will determine how you interpret what you see later. The important intervention comes not when you try to determine which is the man, the woman, or the machine. Rather, the important intervention comes much earlier, when the test puts you into a cybernetic circuit that splices your will, desire, and perception into a distributed cognitive system in which represented bodies are joined with enacted bodies through mutating and flexible machine interfaces. As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, no matter what identifications you assign to the embodied entities that you cannot see, you have already become posthuman."
6:32 PM
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ABC News
Theories Surround JFK Assassination
"Forty years after John F. Kennedy's assassination, an overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe the official conclusion that a loser named Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed the president with a cheap mail-order rifle fired from the Texas School Book Depository."
"The poll, conducted earlier this month, found that 70 percent think the assassination was part of a broader plot; 51 percent believe there was a second gunman; and more than two-thirds believe there was a government cover-up."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Those who will gather at conferences and flood Internet newsgroups this weekend to insist upon a conspiracy in Kennedy's murder often say that they are crusading to make their fellow citizens face the truth that their president was killed by rogue elements of their own government. And yet, it can be said that those who accept the overwhelming evidence of Oswald's lone guilt (a distinct minority) are trying to accept an even more daunting truth: that the world is sometimes convulsed by hapless men in fortuitious circumstances. It is more frightening, not less, to think that a figure like Kennedy can be murdered by a 24-year-old warehouse clerk, as opposed to, say, the C.I.A."
"One academic expert said the persistence of Kennedy conspiracy theories is simply part of a long-lived American tradition.
"People will believe forever, no matter the reliability of the evidence," said Charles Stewart, a Purdue University communications professor who studies and teaches how conspiracy theorists make their conspiracies believable. "We love conspiracies in this country. Even back to the colonists, Americans always have been suspicious about their government and have rallied around conspiracies.""
"Watch it yet once more. The cars roll by in the bright afternoon. The president lifts his hand to wave. The smile, the wit, the charisma are still intact. The roses, emblem of martyrs, are beside him. Believe it or not, someone has seriously conjectured that what is about to happen was secretly planned by Kennedy himself. Aware that he was dying of Addison's disease, he instead preferred to stage his own gory exit, sacrificing himself to ensure his enduring hold on our memory.
John F. Kennedy as ultimate conspirator. That may be the strangest twist in the mythmaking that for 40 years has been fashioning so many of his lives and deaths."
6:36 PM
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Offshoring may be risky move
"U.S. companies sending information-technology work overseas merely to cut salary costs may find their savings are either disappointing or short-lived.
The reason is that the unexpected costs of moving IT jobs to India and China, including skyrocketing salaries, are changing the financial equation of offshoring just as U.S. executives are rushing to adopt the practice."
"Nearly 20 percent of companies that farmed out IT work did not achieve any cost reductions, while 9.2 percent experienced an increase in costs, according to a survey by people3, a Gartner company."
""There's an assumption by many companies that they can save a large percentage of their budgets by outsourcing some or all of their IT capabilities, however the true savings are not always as promising as one would expect," Lily Mok, a consultant at people3, said in a statement. "Many companies often neglect to factor in all costs associated with managing the outsourcing engagements, which average 4.5 percent of the total contract value and can be as high as 15 percent.""
"On paper, it looks extremely attractive. A Russian programmer charges 80% less than an American. But when you parse it all out, the total cost of offshoring a given IT job is generally comparable to getting the work done domestically, says Tom Weakland, a partner at management consultancy DiamondCluster. It's just that few companies are aware of these real costs. "Most companies can't accurately measure their productivity and costs prior to and after outsourcing," says Weakland. "Most look just at wages.""
"Another lesson we learned the hard way is that fixed-bid offshore projects tend to misalign the vendor's interests with ours by placing undue emphasis on cost and time line while sacrificing quality and customer focus. Because we care about what the code looks like (this vendor's on-site liaison and account executive admitted to me that they do much better with fixed-bid projects when the customer doesn't inspect their code), we would have been better off using a time and materials arrangement, which would have given us more control over every part of the process."
redux [10.23.03]
"In this way, offshoring, far from being bad for the United States, creates net value for the economy. It directly recaptures 67 cents of every dollar of spending that goes abroad and indirectly might capture an additional 45 to 47 cents--producing a net gain of 12 cents to 14 cents for every dollar of costs moved offshore.
The total possible wealth creation does not, of course, ease the plight of people who lose their jobs or find lower-wage ones."
redux [07.17.03]
"Citing statistics from market research firms such as McKinsey, the body said the United States stands to save over $300 billion over the next six years by shifting some business operations overseas."
""US banks, financial services and insurance companies have saved $6 billion to $8 billion in the past four years owing to IT outsourcing to India," Nasscom claimed. "Helped by these savings, companies have prevented layoffs and instead added 125,000 more jobs.""
8:17 PM
0 comments
Wired News
Palestinians Surf During Siege
"Cooped up in their communities for most of the past three years of fighting, Palestinians have found a way to escape: going online.
Internet use has risen sharply, putting the Palestinians ahead of much of the Arab world. Business people use the Web to place orders with suppliers, university students keep up with lessons and relatives separated by Israeli closures stay in touch through chat rooms."
redux [07.26.03]
""We need communications with the outside and there are no phones," said Ibrahem al-Samarra'i, general manager of Tina, a computer company and Internet cafe. "We need e-mail.""
""It is freedom, really," said Layth Abed al-Samea, a former computer engineer who left his field to become a graphic designer, as he trawled the Web at the Botan. "I chat with my family, with my cousin in Qatar...I also search for jobs.""
redux [06.13.03]
"For a country that has been brutally scarred by a war that has left little standing, the idea of an information revolution takes some getting used to."
""The Taleban banned the use of the internet because they did not want Afghans to be part of the world and see the freedom that people elsewhere were enjoying.
"It's our chance, we have to grasp it.""
redux [02.03.03]
"Plans are in motion to quadruple the current number of Internet users to four million by 2005 and the country's fledgling information technology sector will get injections of $100 million over the next two years, an initial investment aimed at harnessing the Internet's economic potential.
Yet even as it encourages Internet industry growth with tax breaks and other IT-friendly policies, Vietnam has tightened control over networked information. Web sites with pornography, violence, and in particular, criticism of Vietnam's communist, one-party system are all deemed ``poisonous and harmful.'' The government blocks access to many."
redux [09.30.02]
"After resisting the Internet as a freewheeling tool of globalization and political anarchy for a decade, Saddam Hussein's government has cautiously embraced it.
Internet cafes have sprung up all over Baghdad in recent months, and even in smaller cities such as Karbala, a religiously conservative city 75 miles southwest of the capital. Just last month, the government took another major step, permitting some citizens to have Internet connections at home
Iraqis can now surf the Web and send e-mail to their hearts' content -- as long as they do it via www.uruklink.net, the government-controlled service provider monitored by Saddam's agents."
redux [08.29.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"THE Saudi government is censoring public Internet access to a degree that goes significantly but haphazardly beyond its stated central goal of blocking sexually explicit content that violates the values of Islam, according to a recent study by Harvard Law School researchers.
The study's detailed list of blocked sites offers a glimpse into the areas that the Saudi government has deemed most troubling. Among them are sites related to pornography, women's rights, gays and lesbians, non-Islamic religions and criticism of political restrictions. Many humor and entertainment sites have also been blocked."
The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."
redux [06.25.02]
""This version of the bill still allows the ability to prevent Internet activities without any necessity," said Kovalev, a 72-year old civil libertarian and member of the liberal "soyuz peravikh sil" faction.
Kovalev cited the portion of the bill that says it is "forbidden to use computer networks for extremism" and pledges a vague punishment that may "take into consideration" existing Russian criminal laws."
"Unlike the less-populated but richer countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which only last year overtook Egypt as having the largest Arab Internet population, Egypt is not trying to restrict the Internet.
But security police are monitoring chat rooms and local sites deemed immoral or damaging to the state or religion have been shut down. A few people have been imprisoned for soliciting sex on the Net."
redux [06.06.02]
""Without the internet the story may still have got out," said Mr Zheng. "With so many people killed it would have been hard to keep it a secret for ever, but it would have been much more difficult."
The internet is changing China in subtle but profound ways. Information is now being spread and exchanged in ways unthinkable just a few years ago.
The Chinese state's once total control on information has been broken and hard as it may try it has little hope of regaining that control."
redux [03.21.02]
"Mao once said, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." The entrepreneurs in China Dawn seem to want to change the last phrase to "ISP access."
But their enthusiasm betrays a streak of naivete. As Tiananmen so amply demonstrated, in China today, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun. And the prediction that the rise of the Internet will liberate Chinese from authoritarian rule is far from certain."
redux [08.08.01]
"It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term."
"In this paper we illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintainng control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule."
redux [06.19.01]
"Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister has warned the internet threatens democracy and people's sense of patriotism.
Lee Hsien Loong says governments must find new ways to build a consensus on national issues and strengthen national identities."
"The internet "opens up societies and helps individuals link up with like-minded souls anywhere in cyberspace," he said.
But it "may weaken the bonds of place and circumstance that have always tied citizens to their home and nation," he added."
redux [10.26.00]
"The world is changing fundamentally. Images and information respect neither time nor borders. Hierarchy is giving way to networking. Openness is crowding out secrecy and exclusivity. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded across a global network of governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. In this world of instantaneous information, traditional diplomacy struggles to sustain its relevance."
"Nations once connected by foreign ministries and traders are now linked through millions of individuals by fiber optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. The Internet, with 100 million users today, will reach one billion people by 2005 and will be available to half the world's population by 2010. The network will become the central nervous system of international relations."
redux [10.10.00]
"Metaphors, symbols and sayings are mighty mind-setters. They captivate our minds and focus our attention to one main point, effectively excluding others. Putin used the burning of the Ostankino television tower, once hailed as a symbol of Soviet supremacy, as a metaphor for the desperate economic need of Russia. The global media played along with this tune, once again showcasing images of Russia's decay. But there is another largely untold story to be extracted from Putin's metaphor: TV towers are more than symbols - indeed they are very concrete centers of mind control, distributing the flow of information and entertainment."
"Who chose the crumbling Berlin Wall as the icon and metaphor for the breakdown of communism and the end of the Cold War? Wouldn't a TV tower in flames be more accurate? It wasn't about the free flow of capital. It was about the free flow of information."
11:30 PM
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Metropolis
Disconnected Urbanism
"When you walk along the street and talk on a cell phone, you are not on the street sharing the communal experience of urban life. You are in some other place--someplace at the other end of your phone conversation. You are there, but you are not there."
"This matters because the street is the ultimate public space and walking along it is the defining urban experience. It is all of us--different people who lead different lives--coming together in the urban mixing chamber. But what if half of them are elsewhere, there in body but not in any other way?"
redux [09.12.03]
""Buildings and transportation systems are planned," Townsend contends, "but changes that grow from the use of communication devices emerge." Unlike the centrally designed urban changes ushered in by skyscrapers and subways, the social trends that appear spontaneously when a million people use their mobile phones, PDAs, and wireless laptops are less predictable and happen more quickly. For this reason, Townsend thinks cities could begin to change "far faster than the ability to understand them from a centralized perspective.""
"As a result of the extra telephone-enabled work accomplished while commuting or moving from place to place within a city, Townsend believes the pace of urban life is quickening.""
redux [11.24.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"BRYANT Park is an example of what the geographer Kevin Lynch, in his classic 1960 book "The Image of the City," called a node. Nodes, as he defined them, "may be primary junctions, places of a break in transportation, a crossing or convergence of paths, moments of shift from one structure to another." They help give "legibility" to the city, help us to orient ourselves. Node is also a word synonymous with hot spot -- a junction of Wi-Fi signals -- and the electronic nodes are turning up in the same parks, airports and public gathering places that Mr. Lynch considered physical nodes.
For Mr. Townsend, there is much possibility, and still much to be learned, in the relationship between the physical Bryant Park and its virtual twin. For example, should there be some physical manifestation of the Internet activity in the park, like a light that grows brighter with more users? Should information about park events, dining options and other local information be posted on the Bryant Park portal?"
redux [01.10.01]
""Anyone who is now designing a public space needs to find ways to allow people to exist in both the physical world of the 'town square,' as well as the 'information space' accessed through mobile phones, PDAs, and whatever else Nokia and Palm can throw at us over the next decade," Townsend said.
He said much of the behavior and structure of the city at an aggregate level is based upon individual behavior.
"So the introduction of this cute little device (mobile phones) would slip under the radar of urbanists, even though it fundamentally changes the way individuals interact -- which consequently alters the behavior of the entire system," he said."
"While mobile telephones are sold as a technology that helps conquer constraints of location and geography, it is increasingly apparent that the time-management capabilities of this new tool are equally important.
As a result, the widespread use of these devices is quickening of the pace of urban life and at an aggregate level, resulting in a dramatic increase in the metabolism of urban systems. This quickening metabolism is directly tied to the widespread formation of new decentralized information networks facilitated by this new technology. As a result, new paradigms for understanding the city and city planning in a decentralized context are discussed."
redux [02.28.01]
"The Digital Age, though, has weakened the urban magnet. People no longer have to live amid service providers to have access to their services; many services can be effectively summoned electronically. Telecommunications, moreover, is bringing work back into the home. People now may work in a wired spare bedroom or in a home office in an executive ghetto such as Aspen, Colo."
"For planners and politicians, the dawning Digital Age creates an urgent need to find policies that will create an acceptable level of social equity. For architects and urban designers, the complementary task is to develop an urban fabric that provides opportunities for social groups to intersect and overlap - perhaps using a laptop at the piazza cafe instead of a personal computer inside the gated condo."
9:49 PM
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Fast Company
The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
"Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97--a year's supply of pickles for less than $3! "They were using it as a 'statement' item," says Pat Hunn, who calls himself the "mad scientist" of Vlasic's gallon jar. "Wal-Mart was putting it before consumers, saying, This represents what Wal-Mart's about. You can buy a stinkin' gallon of pickles for $2.97. And it's the nation's number-one brand.""
"To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Wal-Mart's prices are about 14 percent lower than other groceries' because the company is aggressive about squeezing costs, including labor costs. Its workers earn a third less than unionized grocery workers, and pay for much of their health insurance. Wal-Mart uses hardball tactics to ward off unions. Since 1995, the government has issued at least 60 complaints alleging illegal anti-union activities."
"Wal-Mart sales clerks make about $14,000 a year, below the $15,060 poverty line for a family of three."
"Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they're held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70% of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year.
Health-care benefits? Only if you've been there two years; then the plan hits you with such huge premiums that few can afford it--only 38% of Wal-Marters are covered."
"Even more disturbing is Wal-Mart's widespread use of global suppliers to bring down costs and maximize company profits. In one 58-page report titled "Toys of Misery," the National Labor Committee describes sweatshop-like conditions in China's Guangdong Province factory, one of Wal-Mart's toy suppliers.
At this sweatshop, workers are expected to work 13 to 16 hours per day, seven days a week for 13 cents per hour. They are expected to pay for their own medical care and are fired if too sick to report for work. In addition, workers live in 7-foot-by-7-foot squatter shacks or in factory dormitories which they may rent, further depleting their low wages. Finally, there is no health and safety enforcement, thus employees (mostly young women) are exposed to harmful glues, paint thinners, and other solvents used in manufacturing toys."
"Some economists argue that the Wal-Martization of the American workforce is simply the free-market system functioning as it should. Gary Stibel, founder and principal of the New England Consulting Group, said Wal-Mart has saved consumers more than $20 billion through its discount pricing. Figuring in Wal-Mart's pressure on other retailers to lower prices, savings top $100 billion, he said.
"In this day and age, the United States needs more companies like Wal-Mart to create jobs, even if not at the highest pay," Stibel said."
"Retail Forward forecasts that Wal-Mart's domestic grocery sales could reach $162 billion by 2007. Sales already total $82 billion. That's $30 billion more than the state of Florida's 2003 budget. "In the process, Wal-Mart will consume almost a third of the expected growth in U.S. spending on grocery and drug products during 2003-2007," its report said."
Such growth would give Wal-Mart control of 35 percent of food store industry sales and 25 percent of the drugstore industry -- and put many established retailers in jeopardy, according to Retail Forward."
7:24 PM
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News.Com
Is cyberterrorism a phantom menace?
""The goal of terrorism is to change society through the use of force or violence, resulting in fear," he explained. "I want to put this cyberterrorism thing to rest. It's a theory, it's not a fact.""
Even though there were examples of attacks that have physical consequences--such as the case of Vitek Boden, sentenced to two years in prison for releasing up to 1 million liters of sewage into the river and coastal waters of the town of Maroochydore, in Queensland, Australia, in 2001--they could not be described as terrorist acts, Mogull explained. To a large extent, it comes down to motive, he said."
"Verton criticized the IT security community for what he called appeasement, accepting unacceptable levels of risk and focusing on past threats rather than future dangers.
"This is going to be one of the primary battlefields of the future," he said. "We need to have a discussion of cybervulnerabilities today, before the next failure occurs.""
redux [09.03.03]
Nearly half of all Americans surveyed say they are worried that terrorists could launch attacks through the networks connecting home computers and powerful utilities, a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found.
Some