The Agonist - Technology

China plans for humanoid Olympics

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:28:31 -0800

Nov 6

BBC -
China is planning to hold a robot Olympics in 2010.

The international event will be held in the city of Harbin and will see robots take part in 16 different events.

Robots will be able to compete in familiar Olympic sports such as athletics as well as those more suited to machines such as cleaning.

Entry to the competition will be restricted to robots resembling humans. They must possess two arms and legs. Wheels are banned.

The organisers of the games expect from more than 100 universities from around the world to send competitors to the event.

Science and Politics downunder

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:20:49 -0800

Philanthropy is not a life style choice for most of Australia's rich and famous.
But Australian science, especially the federal Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO )got a major financial boost due to a 10 year struggle fighting with HP, Apple, Dell et al. over the invention of WiFi; that was settled back in April.

However, Australian politics and science remain closely related, and casting aspersions on the ruling parties attitude to global emissions is not kosher.

Electrons at LHC firing up again...

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:23:42 -0700

Observer.UK

It is a vast device the size of London's Circle Line but is engineered to a billionth of a metre accuracy. Ensuring that no flaws arise at scales and dimensions like these pushes engineering to its absolute limits.

Cern almost succeeded last year. Now it is convinced that it has got it right this time. "All I can say is that the LHC is a much safer, much better understood machine than it was a year ago," said Myers.

Most physicists believe he is right. "If it works, we will have built the most complex machine in history," said one. "If not, we will have assembled the world's most expensive piece of modern art."

Internet addresses set for change

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:17:15 -0700

Seoul | October 30

BBC - The internet is set to undergo one of its biggest changes, with the expected approval of plans to introduce web addresses using non-Latin characters.

The board of the net regulator, Icann, will decide whether to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts at its annual meeting in Seoul.

More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.

The first Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) could be in use next year.

Plans for IDNs were first approved at a meeting in June 2008, but testing of the system has been going on for two years.

Sperm bank offers celebrity look-alike donors

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:43:38 -0700

Michael Inbar | October 12

MSNBC - Want to have Ben Affleck’s baby? While that appears to be the exclusive domain of Jennifer Garner, women can now at least give themselves a fighting chance of having a child who looks like a movie star, sports hero or world leader.

A Southern California sperm bank has taken to matching its donors to the celebrities they most resemble, putting an actual image to a process that previously had prospective parents sort through an often confusing jumble of printed characteristics, from ethnicity to eye color.

Microsoft Knew Windows 7 Upgrades Could Paralyze PC's Back In July

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:36:53 -0700

October 26

Some people who are upgrading their PC's from Windows Vista to Windows 7 are finding the upgrade paralyzes their computers, leaving them in a never ending rebooting cycle, unable to use either operating systems.

Many users started to post the problem in a forum on Microsoft's own website on Friday, one day after the highly touted new operating system was released. As of this afternoon, 3 days later, there are still people posting the same problem and no fix from Microsoft for most of the users.

There doesn't seem to be any connection to how the OS was purchased, some users purchased Windows 7 as a digital download from Microsoft or Digital River, and some purchased retail boxed versions of the OS. It is affecting every version of Vista, from Starter to Ultimate.

Uncle John McCain is at it again

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:57:44 -0700

The old duffer that just keeps coming back for more, John Mccain, is ba-a-a-ack. And this time he's funded by his new darlings, cable and telco companies, who have apparently loaded him up with funding to go smack down that pesky FCC and its net neutrality rules.

From Reuters (in a reprint from a PC World piece byMark Sullivan):
Surprise: McCain Biggest Beneficiary of Telco/ISP Money
http://tinyurl.com/yjmh5bd

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is the top recipient of campaign contributions from large Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast over the past two years, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. McCain has taken in a total of $894,379 (much of that money going to support his failed 2008 bid for the presidency), more than twice the amount taken by the next-largest beneficiary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ($341,089).
Meanwhile, McCain has emerged as the ISPs' biggest champion against new "network neutrality" rules from the Federal Communications Commission, which voted Thursday to move forward in the process to adopt such rules. Shortly after the FCC vote, McCain introduced a bill (the "Internet Freedom Act") that would block regulation of the nation's largest broadband networks.

The name of the bill is, of course, classic McCain/GOP doublespeak, as a second PC World article makes clear:

From a PC World piece by Tony Bradley, reprinted by Reuters:
McCain Moves to Block FCC Net Neutrality
http://tinyurl.com/yzouz6n

McCain's bill, the Internet Freedom Act, seeks to do the opposite of what its name implies by ensuring that broadband and wireless providers can discriminate and throttle certain traffic while giving preferential treatment to other traffic.

Bradley then goes on to make the important, if salient, point:

According to the text of the McCain bill, the FCC "shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services." Isn't that what the FCC does? Isn't that sort of like introducing a bill to prohibit the Treasury from printing money, or a bill to prohibit the IRS from collecting taxes?

Sounds like Comcast, ATT et al promised him the world, and in classic politician style, McCain drafts up a wish list for them to submit to Congress. Basically, they wish the FCC and all the net neutrality bloggers would just go away.

Well, we're not going away. And I think by now the public pretty much as recognized John McCain for what he is: a politican who holds out his finger (usually the middle one) to test which way the political winds are blowing, and try to suck some cash and publicity for himself out of it.

We have to smack him down yet again, initiate another round of write your congress people (thanks in part to net neutrality, this is very easy to do nowadays) and tell your reps which side of the issue is the right one to be on to get your vote.

A Censored Headline and why it Matters

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:54:19 -0700

A Censored Headline and why it Matters:

German High Court Outlaws Electronic Voting

Justices of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Image

(DailyCensored.Com) The justices above are clearly the most rational group of high level functionaries in the industrialized world. They did what no other court would do in Europe or the United States. They effectively outlawed electronic voting. On March 3, 2009, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared that the electronic voting machines used in the 2005 Bundestag elections for the German national parliament were outside of the bounds of the German Constitution.

They reasoned that electronic voting is not verifiable because citizen votes are counted in secret. It obscured a technology inaccessible to all but a very few initiates. Most importantly, the German high court noted, electronic voting machines don't allow citizens to "reliably examine, when the vote is cast, whether the vote has been recorded in an unadulterated manner" Mar. 3, 2009.

The written opinion effectively bars electronic voting in future elections based on the complexity of voting machines and the inability of voters to watch their vote being counted. This raises the bar of acceptability well above the meaningless solutions offered by "paper trails" for touch screen voting or the so-called "paper ballots" for computerized optical scan voting machines, the most popular form of voting in the United States.

Germany's 2009 Bundestag elections were conducted with hand counted paper ballots.

Have you heard that one of the world's leading economic powers, the fourth largest economy in the world, banned electronic voting; said it was undemocratic? Given the multitude of problems encountered in the U.S. and the number of questionable election results, wouldn't it make sense that when Germany banned electronic voting and replaced it with paper ballots, there would be at least a days worth of national coverage in the United States?

Nothing like that occurred. The Associated Press (Times of India) story on the verdict danced around the periphery of the world media market with coverage in Turkey, India, Australia, and Ireland. But there were no major media takers for the AP story in the United States.

There was every reason to carry the story. In a 2006 Zogby poll, 92% of the 1028 registered voters surveyed said they agreed with this statement:

Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes - 92% agree. New Zogby Poll On Electronic Voting Attitudes Aug. 21, 2006

That's exactly the proposition that the German court upheld. Surely there was an audience for the German decision but there was hardly a word from corporate media.

Why did this happen?

There are certain vital stories that the U.S. corporate media won't touch. The most prominent censored headline is "Over One Million Iraqi Civilians Dead in Conflict." This figure has been known since 2007 while a previous survey showing 650,000 dead was spiked in 2006. The Iraqi civilians died as a result of internal conflict unleashed by the U.S. invasion in 2003. Had Bush-Cheney not invaded with the approval of a sleep walking Congress, these people would not have died as they did.

Another vital story that isn't covered is election fraud, fixing an entire election. The corporate media simply can't raise the possibility that election fraud exists. The preliminary steps enabling election fraud through computerized voting are outsourcing elections to private vendors; the lack of any verifiable connection between your vote and the voting machines processes; and, security risks.

However, corporate media are more than happy to cover the nearly nonexistent "voter fraud" stories about masses of illegal voters showing up at the polls. The Bush administration was only able to produced 24 convictions of citizens and non citizens combined over a three year period.

The media will discuss electronic voting malfunctions but they simply won't connect the dots. Computers function as programmed, by definition. "Malfunctions" during vote counting are part of any given program. When the errors benefit one side of the political equation, it is highly relevant to raise questions about intentional "errors." However, the treatment of these stories is always within the context of computer problems instead of a broad inquiry into why elections are outsourced to private vendors and the resulting risks and problems and. U.S. elections will be virtually dominated by one private firm out of Omaha, Nebraska, ES&S.

German Citizens Prevail

A recent article by elections activist Kathleen Wynne, former Associate Director of BlackBoxVoting.org, told the story of the story of the landmark German case with a link to an extensive radio interview with litigant Dr. Ulrich Wiesner (Electronic Voting Declared Unconstitutional in Germany).

Physicist Ulrich Wiesner, PhD and Prof. Joachim Wiesner, PhD, an eminent German political scientist, brought suit against the use of electronic voting machines in the 2005 Bundestag elections. The evidence gathered supported the findings of the court described above. While both Wiesner's on the suit have PhD's and distinguished careers, they brought the landmark case on their own as citizens. Undeterred by the odds and the dismissal of German politicians, they stood by their cause and won.

It's a great story, father and son team prevail against huge odds to ensure that all Germans get their vote counted. But none of the majors here bit.

These articles constitute most of the serious coverage of this story in the United States. Paul Lehto wrote two articles for OpEdNews.com on March 3 and 19, 2009: Germany Bans Computerized Voting, Will Hand Count in 2009 and German high court honors US democratic principles. Activist Bev Harris wrote a commentary on 3-19-09: Let's get off the hamster wh..., BlackBoxVoting.org. Newsweek ran an insightful column in its education section on June, 2009, We do not trust machines. While AP ran the story, it wasn't picked up and featured by any major media outlet in the United States. The International Herald Tribune also covered the decision but its sister paper, The New York Times, dropped the ball.

The Wynne article told the story of the citizens who made the decision happen, the Wiesner father and son team. Deadline Live with Jack Blood, the radio show, carried a comprehensive interview of German litigant, Dr. Ulrich Wiesner and follow up discussions with Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris

But that's it. The highest court in the nation with the world's fourth largest economy makes law that bans electronic voting after determining that computerized elections are fundamentally opposed to democratic principles. The decision applies directly to the electronic voting systems used in the United States. What do we hear from the U.S. corporate media? Just about nothing.

In this case, when a tree falls in the forest and just a few people hear it, it's no big deal. But it should be.

END

For more information on hand counted paper ballots and evidence for this case, see:
Center for Hand-Counted Paper Ballots
VoteRescue.org
Hacking the Electoral Law, Ulrich Wiesner, PhD, 23rd Chaos Communications Conference (PDF)

This article may be reproduced in whole or in part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

The Newest Threat To Net Neutrality: The Blue Dogs

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:57:24 -0700

Not intent on watering down health care reform the Blue Dogs are now going after one of the few things Obama has been very prgoressive about: net neutrality.

High-speed Internet access is a legal right in Finland

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:34:58 -0700

Melissa Rohlin | Helsinki | October 15

LAT - Life, liberty and the right to broadband access?

If Thomas Jefferson and our enlightened forefathers were here today, perhaps our unalienable rights would mimic Finland's, which will now include the right to broadband access. According to Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communication, 1-megabit Web access will become a legal right for all citizens in July.

France is one of the few countries that has made it a human right but Finland said it's the first country to make it a legal right.

It's not clear whether those who can't get connection can sue the government for the violation.

Since 1-megabit web access is dauntingly slow -- it's equivalent to DSL speed -- the government has pledged to expand the legal right to 100-megabit broadband access by the end of 2015. This news must come as a relief to Finns who have more important things to do than suffer the pain and frustration of a slow Internet connection. (There are allegedly 1.6 saunas for every Finn.)

FBI Putting Driver's Licenses in Virtual Lineup

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:56:11 -0700

Stephen J. Dubord | Raleigh, NC | October 13

The New American - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now able to scan millions of driver’s licenses using facial recognition technology as they seek to track down fugitives.

The project, initiated in North Carolina, has led to at least one suspect being apprehended. Now the Bureau wants to expand the program nationwide, but privacy experts are warning that this puts innocent people into a virtual criminal lineup.

“Everybody’s participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver’s license,” stated American Civil Liberties Union attorney Christopher Calabrese. And there is no way to opt out of the lineup other than not having a driver’s license.

The FBI had their first success story with a double homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales. Using a 1991 booking photo of Corrales as the standard, the Bureau used computers to hunt through the 30 million photos in the North Carolina motor vehicle agency database. Within seconds, the search turned up a dozen drivers resembling Corrales.

“Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all,” analyst Michael Garcia noted. “If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that’s a home run.”

[...]

The FBI itself is not authorized to gather and retain photos. That is why the facial recognition process must take place at the Division of Motor Vehicles in an individual state. The authority to make the driver’s license information available to law-enforcement officials already exists under state and federal laws. “Unless the person’s a criminal, we would not have a need to have that information in the system,” pointed out Kim Del Greco, overseer of the FBI’s biometrics division. “I think that would be a privacy concern. We’re staying away from that.”

So sensitive, Mr./Ms. Del Greco! Nice to have you on the side of all that is good in the world.

AP Article

Iceland looks to serve the world

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:51:05 -0700

Simon Hancock | Reykjavik | October 9

BBC - Since the financial crisis, Iceland has been forced to retreat back from high octane bubble living to nature.

Fortunately, there is a lot of that nature to retreat to.

It is a breathtaking world of volcanoes, endless prairies and ethereal winter landscapes.

Not, you might think, the most obvious place to stick millions of the world's computer servers which are, for all their uses, rather less attractive.

But the country now wants exactly that - to become home to the world's computing power.

[...]

In Iceland, with its year round cool climate and chilly fresh water, just a fraction of this energy for cooling is needed. It means big savings.

Just outside Reykjavik, work is well advanced on the first site which its owners hope will spark a server cold rush.

FTC Sets Endorsement Rules for Blogs

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:37:56 -0700

Cecilia Kang | Washington | October 6

WaPo - Bloggers who offer endorsements must disclose any payments they have received from the subjects of their reviews or face penalties of up to $11,000 per violation, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.

The agency, charged with protecting consumer interests, had not updated its policy on endorsements in nearly three decades, well before the Internet became a force in shaping consumer tastes. The new rules attempt to make more transparent corporate payments to bloggers, research firms and celebrities that help promote a product.

"Given that social media has become such a significant player in the advertising area, we thought it was necessary to address social media as well," said Richard Cleland, assistant director for the division of advertising practices at the FTC.

Consumer interest groups have long complained about the lack of disclosure. They say consumers often have no way of telling what corporate payments have been made to bloggers writing on parenting, fitness, dieting and financial services sites, for example.

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Changes Affect Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, Celebrity Endorsements

The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act.

The notice incorporates several changes to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which address endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as the disclosure of important connections between advertisers and endorsers. The Guides were last updated in 1980.

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

Celebrity endorsers also are addressed in the revised Guides. While the 1980 Guides did not explicitly state that endorsers as well as advertisers could be liable under the FTC Act for statements they make in an endorsement, the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves. In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.

The Commission vote approving issuance of the Federal Register notice detailing the changes was 4-0. The notice will be published in the Federal Register shortly, and is available now on the FTC’s Web site as a link to this press release. Copies also are available from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20580.

The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 1,700 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s Web site provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.

Anti-Wi-Fi paint keeps your wireless signal to yourself

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:28:53 -0700

Sep 30 | The Tech Blog

Don't like the idea of your neighbors rudely snooping on the wireless signal you slaved to pay for from the lazy comfort of their living room? It's not just about slowing down your connection; while they're downloading Mad Men via bittorrent, you could be on the hook for their actions.

Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.

Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint.

Are zombie computers going to take over the world?

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:24:33 -0700

Venessa Lee | Singapore | Oct 3

AFP -

They go by names such as GhostNet and botnets but they have nothing to do with harmless computer games. Instead, they are associated with something more dangerous - spying in cyberspace which, in the worst-case scenario, can undermine a country's national interests.

Earlier this year, Canadian researchers uncovered a cyber-espionage operation involving GhostNet, an electronic spying network that uses malware, or malicious software, The New York Times (NYT) reported in March.

Through the network, the camera and audio-recording functions in an infected PC can be activated, enabling a stranger to see and hear what is going on in the room where the computer is located.

According to the NYT, GhostNet had stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices, including those of the Dalai Lama. It had infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries.

The researchers believed that its targets included the governments of South Asian and South-east Asian countries.

The threat posed by GhostNet is just one of the many serious forms of cyber attacks that have led governments worldwide to set up special agencies to counter them.

On Wednesday, the creation of Singapore Infocomm Technology Security Authority (Sitsa), a special agency to protect Singapore from cyber attacks, was announced.

The threat from cyber attacks, which can be politically or criminally motivated, is apparently relentless.

"Every quarter of a second, there is an attack somewhere on the Internet," said Mr Ilias Chantzos, director of government relations at Symantec Corporation, maker of Norton security products.