This little gu]y has been poking around the news off and on the last few months; it sounds like a lot of forced enthusiasm to me. From Nature: Experts plan to reclaim the web for pop science The project also includes an encyclopaedia that will use similar technology to the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, is helping to create it. But that’s where the resemblance ends. All content in the Digital Universe will come from vetted experts, and articles will be reviewed by editors before going live. There will also be links to approved websites. Sounds good, until you realize you need at 100+ meg download (it uses its own browser) to access the service, and once you get it, there isn’t much there (yet). Critics interviewed by Nature were unwilling to speak on the record. But some believe that the project is over-complicated, and that much of its underlying technology — which still requires significant development — runs against the trend to distribute information in lightweight formats that can be accessed by cell phones or PDAs such as the BlackBerry. “If you have to rely on a high-bandwidth always-on network environment, on devices with a lot of storage, you are pretty much going in the wrong direction,” says one critic, an expert in Internet information systems. He is also unimpressed by the Digital Universe’s concept of peer-reviewing material. “There’s more than enough content on the web, even substantive content,” he says. “I’m not sure that generating new content is really a breakthrough.” There are also questions over the business model, in which revenue would largely come from selling high-speed Internet access, with half the profits fed back into the work. “It’s an odd choice; that’s a dying business,” comments one observer familiar with […]

I talk about net neutrality a lot, but I admit that it is a loaded phrase, and mentioning it makes me feel like a dirty socialist. ‘Preoccupation’ is given by dictionary.com as a synonym for ‘neutrality’ under the entry ‘indifference’, and it just works on so many levels in this context. From Business Week: Is Verizon a Network Hog? Documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission show that Verizon Communications is setting aside a wide lane on its fiber-optic network for delivering its own television service. According to Marvin Sirbu, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who examined the documents, more than 80% of Verizon’s current capacity is earmarked for carrying its service, while all other traffic jostles in the remainder. PAYING FOR PRIORITY. Leading Net companies say that Verizon’s actions could keep some rivals off the road. As consumers try to search Google, buy books on Amazon.com, or watch videos on Yahoo!, they’ll all be trying to squeeze into the leftover lanes on Verizon’s network. On Feb. 7 the Net companies plan to take their complaints about Verizon’s plans to the Senate during a hearing on telecom reform. “The Bells have designed a broadband system that squeezes out the public Internet in favor of services or content they want to provide,” says Paul Misener, vice-president for global policy at Amazon.com. The point, as BlackFriars notes, is that Verizon is trying to artificially limit bandwidth to create bottlenecks that will justify introducing their long-planned tiered service. However, as Ars technica reports, this might not change service much at all. We contacted Dr. Marvin Sirbu, Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and an FTTP expert to see how the numbers really add up. In short, there’s almost no cause for concern that Verizon’s own traffic will […]

From Wired: AT&T Sued Over NSA Eavesdropping The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on Tuesday, accusing the telecom company of violating federal laws by collaborating with the government’s secret, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens’ phone and internet usage. The suit (.pdf), filed by the civil liberties group in federal court in San Francisco, alleges AT&T secretly gave the National Security Agency access to two massive databases that included both the contents of its subscribers’ communications and detailed transaction records, such as numbers dialed and internet addresses visited. “Our goal is to go after the people who are making the government’s illegal surveillance possible,” says EFF attorney Kevin Bankston. “They could not do what they are doing without the help of companies like AT&T. We want to make it clear to AT&T that it is not in their legal or economic interests to violate the law whenever the president asks them to.” One of AT&T’s databases, known as “Hawkeye,” contains 312 terabytes of data detailing nearly every telephone communication on AT&T’s domestic network since 2001, according to the complaint. The suit also alleges that AT&T allowed the NSA to use the company’s powerful Daytona database-management software to quickly search this and other communication databases. This is a shociking reminder that Google is still a small fish in the big pond of information gathering, and explains why the government thought it could push them around. Being in league with AT&T, however, doesn’t bode well for our chances with net neutrality. Another story to follow.

AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre says something stupid again: From Financial Times: AT&T chief warns on internet costs “I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network – obviously not the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees – but for accessing the so-called Internet cloud.” … “If someone wants to transmit a high quality service with no interruptions and ‘guaranteed this, guaranteed that’, they should be willing to pay for that,” the AT&T chief said. “Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn’t get on [the network] and expect a free ride.” See Ars Technica for the same old criticism we have seen before. The congressional hearings on net neutrality will be starting soon, and I’ll definitely be keeping up with the game. Of course, this becomes much more interesting because…

Crusader in D&D pointed out this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The story of Project SHAMROCK is pretty interesting. Project SHAMROCK, considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegraphs via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. Operation Shamrock lasted well into the 1960s when computerized operations (HARVEST) made it possible to search for keywords rather than read through all communications. The is testimony from those involved with the original investigation up on the CIA homepage, definitely worth the read. From L. Britt Snider: Recollections from the Church Committee’s Investigation of NSA We sought pertinent documents and witnesses from each of the three companies involved: RCA Global, ITT World Communications, and Western Union International. No one could find any record whatsoever of an agreement with NSA or ASA setting forth the terms of the operation. Only RCA Global could produce a witness who had been involved in establishing the arrangement after World War II; the other two companies could produce a few witnesses– mid-level executives–who had become aware of the arrangement over the course of its existence. I deposed each of the witnesses the companies identified. The RCA Global executive, then retired, was the most colorful and forthright of the lot. He offered no apologies for what he or the company had done. He said the Army had come to him and asked for the company’s cooperation, and, by damn, that was enough for him. The executive from ITT World Communications, by comparison, came to the deposition surrounded […]

More info on this EFF lawsuit The lawsuit also alleges that AT&T continues to assist the government in its secret surveillance of millions of Americans. EFF, on behalf of a nationwide class of AT&T customers, is suing to stop this illegal conduct and hold AT&T responsible for its illegal collaboration in the government’s domestic spying program, which has violated the law and damaged the fundamental freedoms of the American public. The idea, as far as I can tell, is that the government surveillance is illegal, and AT&T coperated with illegal activity. Note that AT&T’s privacy policy specifically allows a provision for government requests: AT&T will not sell, trade, or disclose to third parties any customer identifiable information derived from the registration for or use of an AT&T online service — including customer names and addresses — without the consent of the customer (except as required by subpoena, search warrant, or other legal process or in the case of imminent physical harm to the customer or others). Of course, the implication is that the legal processes are in fact legal. If they aren’t, that seems like a breach of contract to me, and EFF might have a case. Unlike, for instance, the ACLU lawsuit against the NSA, this one is going for the family jewels. The lawsuit request an injunction and damages under the statute. The laws provide that the victims can receive damages of at least $21,000 for each affected person. As a member of a ‘hopeful society’, lets hope something comes of this, preferrably before November. As a citizen of America, however, I know that wont happen. Ars technica: EFF sues AT&T to stop NSA spying State secrets privilege, the use and abuse of which has been on the rise as government ineptitude becomes more visible in the information […]

http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/pics/robot.gif hello robot Alright, today marks the first day on our new hosting, with our spanking fresh domain name, and a boat load of extras that I don’t even know how to work yet. You will notice that this is http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog, as opposed to say, eripsa.net or eripsa.com, which to be honest I can’t really get my head around. In any case, I just spent a bunch of money so that you have to type 5 fewer letters to read the news I steal from the net. So give this site a good stress test, if you can, and let me know if things look bad on other browsers, or if links dont work, or loading times are slow, or anything else you stumble across. I need to put up a ‘recent posts’ bit on the side bar, and hook up the rss feed, and there are a couple of other odds and ends I know dont work. But let me know what else you stumble upon.

I have recieved numerous requests to publicly comment on the Google scandal in China. As always, Ars Technica gives the best commentary on this issue, and I agree with their analysis. The scandal, of course, is not with Google’s business practices; the outrage is a result of people realizing that Google is a business in the first place. I wrote the following email to a colleague in response to one such request: Man, you are like the third person to tell me to post something about this. I really dont think this has much to do with Google at all- Microsoft has been in China for a year now abiding by the local censorship laws, and no one has said squat. I’ve ALWAYS held the position that Google is a company first and foremost, and regardless of what its policy says (ie, “Dont be evil”), its first priority is to make money. I don’t see any contradiction in its acting by the laws of the local government, even when those laws are unjust. As popular and powerful as Google is, it can’t stare down a row of tanks. Kyle responded: “Microsoft has been in China for a year now abiding by the local censorship laws, and no one has said squat.” A sort of third-person version of the ‘tu quouqe’ fallacy. Nice. “I’ve ALWAYS held the position that Google is a company first and foremost, and regardless of what its policy says (ie, “Dont be evil”), its first priority is to make money.” Having, as one’s first priority, the making of money so radically underdetermines the courses of action one might take, that your premise hardly provides any information at all, much less something like implication that the chosen course was the right one. Such an argument, were it valid, […]

Ars Technica reports on congressional staffers who were given orders to go into Wikipedia and tamper with the representatives’ entries. From Ars Technica:Congressional staffers edit boss’s bio on Wikipedia This alone makes for a pretty interesting story, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Further investigation by the newspaper and by Wikipedia staff found that more than 1,000 edits had been made to Wikipedia entries by House staffers over the last six months alone. Because all changes emanating from the House come from a single IP address (a proxy), it’s hard to trace specific edits back to individuals, who can plausibly deny making them. Not all of these were malicious (though someone from the House did write that Rep. Eric Cantor “smells of cow dung”), nor were they all white-washes. But enough of them were problematic that Wikipedia launched a full investigation and found that Senate staffers were tempted in equal measure. People seem quick to reassert the ‘Wikipedia is unreliable’ line in response to these cases, but they almost always have a happy ending. In this case, the representative who first got caught received a nasty little note on his entry: Wikipedia: Marty Meehan On 18 July 2005, U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan’s staff made controversial changes to his Wikipedia article. These edits consisted of, among other things, removing verified facts that portrayed him in a bad light. On January 27, 2006, Matt Vogel, Meehan’s chief of staff, admitted to authorizing a replacement article on Meehan published on Wikipedia, with a staff-written biography. This ran afoul of internal Wikipedia guidelines. I think these cases, rather than undermining the goals of projects like Wikipedia, actually reinforce a healthy skepticism and a loyalty to the truth.

breeds more of the same. Image Hosted by ImageShack.us From Fox News: Japanese Working On Robot Butler “We are hoping to make them something comparable to service dogs,” Isao Hara, senior researcher at the institute in Japan’s technology hub of Tsukuba, just northeast of Tokyo, said of the pair of robots painted in silver and blue. “I think it’s quite possible for them to interact with humans. We are now studying how robots can join the human society.”

There is a really good article on Turing in The New Yorker this week, that goes into much greater detail both on his life and work, and the Enigma problem. As a bit of a teaser: From The New Yorker: CODE-BREAKER In 1938, Turing was awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics by Princeton, and, despite the urgings of his father, who worried about imminent war with Germany, decided to return to Britain. Back at Cambridge, he became a regular at Ludwig Wittgenstein’s seminar on the foundations of mathematics. Turing and Wittgenstein were remarkably alike: solitary, ascetic, homosexual, drawn to fundamental questions. But they disagreed sharply on philosophical matters, like the relationship between logic and ordinary life. “No one has ever yet got into trouble from a contradiction in logic,” Wittgenstein insisted. To which Turing’s response was “The real harm will not come in unless there is an application, in which case a bridge may fall down.” Before long, Turing would himself demonstrate that contradictions could indeed have life-or-death consequences.

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