Slashdot Mirror

Antipater writes "Researchers at Wake Forest University have created a brain implant that can imitate signals through the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory retention. Rats implanted with the device were able to remember information even after their hippocampus was shut down, reports the New York Times. Though still in its infancy, this technology could hopefully be used to help treat dementia or stroke victims."

mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment. Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we'll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena."

betterunixthanunix writes "The New York Times is reporting that the new FBI operations manual suggests a broad increase in surveillance. Denoted the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the manual officially lowers the bar of acceptability when it comes to engaging in surveillance activities, including allowing agents to perform such surveillance on people who are not suspected terrorists without opening an inquiry or officially recording their actions. The new manual also relaxes rules on administering lie detector tests, searching through a person's trash, and the use of teams to follow targeted individuals. It should be noted that these guidelines still fall within the general limits put in place by the attorney general."

itwbennett writes "Surely you've got better things to do this weekend than read 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's email. But just in case you don't, the NY Times is looking for volunteers to help 'identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight.' And, for your easy reference, MSNBC has posted the complete collection online."

smitty777 writes "Apparently the Russians are starting to add lie detectors to their ATMs in an attempt to prevent identity theft and bad withdraws. 'Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end. The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”'"

pjfontillas writes "Apple has quietly reversed their decision that required publishers who sell content and subscriptions in their iPhone and iPad apps to go through iTunes, with Apple taking a 30% cut. It's not so quiet in the workplace, however, as this news has a pretty big influence on developer workloads. Here at The New York Times our developers breathed a sigh of relief once we realized we don't have try and work around that requirement like The Financial Times did. Apple seems to have been doing much better with their community (consumers and developers alike) recently." Reader imamac notes that Apple has also filed a motion to intervene in the Lodsys patent suit against several iOS app developers that we've been following.

pjfontillas writes "Apple has quietly reversed their decision that required publishers who sell content and subscriptions in their iPhone and iPad apps to go through iTunes, with Apple taking a 30% cut. It's not so quiet in the workplace, however, as this news has a pretty big influence on developer workloads. Here at The New York Times our developers breathed a sigh of relief once we realized we don't have try and work around that requirement like The Financial Times did. Apple seems to have been doing much better with their community (consumers and developers alike) recently." Reader imamac notes that Apple has also filed a motion to intervene in the Lodsys patent suit against several iOS app developers that we've been following.

decora writes "NPR, and dozens of other media sources, are reporting that NSA IT whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake is innocent of all 10 original charges against him; including the 5 Espionage Act charges for 'retention' of 'national defense information.' Drake stared down the government to the last minute, rejecting deal after deal, because he 'refused to plea bargain with the truth.' The judge had even recently ruled that there was no evidence that Drake passed classified information to a reporter. In the end, he has agreed that he committed a misdemeanor: 'unauthorized access to a computer.' It is unknown what this means for the other non-spy espionage cases that Obama's DOJ currently has pending (Kim, Sterling, Manning), or the Grand Jury that is currently meeting to discuss Espionage Act charges related to WikiLeaks."

Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Government ministers and officials from the European Union countries who met to discuss atomic energy safety have agreed to carry out stress tests on nuclear reactors to test their capacity to withstand major incidents like the earthquake and tsunami that rocked the Fukushima plant in March. 'The accident at Fukushima in Japan has affected us all,' says French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. 'It quickly became apparent there is a need to learn lessons from the accident and to improve and raise our standards and ways of cooperating on nuclear safety.' The stress tests will be performed on Europe's 143 working reactors and other atomic installations. 'You have to move the safety envelope,' says Roger Mattson, former leader of the US task force that investigated the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, and an organizer of the group issuing the letter. 'You have to take these severe accidents into account and do more to prevent the very low-probability events.'"

An anonymous reader points out a New York Times article about a traffic analysis program that "'works by taking note of which cellphone tower a phone is communicating with. It then looks for disruptions in service followed by significant changes in location. If a phone located near Times Square suddenly loses service and reconnects at Prince Street and Broadway 15 minutes later, then it has almost certainly traveled there using the N or R trains.' In another interesting twist, the article briefly notes, 'The system will also include an experiment that uses phones' microphones to sense when riders are on buses.'" The article also mentions a similar project to track buses and trains in Los Angeles.

necro81 writes "It has long been recognized that adding capacitors in parallel with batteries can improve the performance of hybrid and electric vehicles by accepting and supplying spikes of power, which reduces stress on the battery pack, extending range and improving cycle life. The challenge has been figuring out where to put them, when batteries already compete for space. A new research prototype from Imperial College London has integrated them into the body panels and structural frame of the vehicle itself. In their prototype, carbon fiber serves as both the structure for the vehicle and electrode for the energy storage sandwiched within."

msmoriarty writes "Our reporter decided to try to document the high end of programmer salaries (at least in the US). It seems that $300,000 to $400,000 and up is not unheard of in the financial industry, but the highest salary we could document was apx. $1.2 million, earned by Sergey Aleynikov, who was later convicted of stealing proprietary source code from a previous employer, Goldman Sachs."

decora writes "An SAIC analyst has written a paper [PDF] calling for the 'stigmatization' of the 'unattractive' types who tend to discuss government secrets in public. The plan, described in the Naval Postgraduate School Homeland Security Affairs journal, is to promote self-censorship as a 'civic duty'. Who needs to censor themselves? Amateur enthusiasts who describe satellite orbits, scientists who describe threats to the food supply, graduate students mapping the internet, the Government Accountability Office, which publishes failure reports on the TSA, the US Geologic Survey, which publishes surface water information, newspapers (the New York Times), TV shows, journalism websites, anti-secrecy websites, and even security author Bruce Schneier, to name a few."

It appears the fact checker hired by The New York Times back in 1899 wasn't very good. Retired dentist Dr. Daniel A. F. Schwenk found a few errors in his great-uncle Lt. M. K. Schwenk's obituary including his name and hometown. The Times has since corrected the mistakes saying it's never too late to set the record straight.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a global petition drive has started to add Wikipedia to one of UNESCO's world heritage lists joining such historic monuments and natural sites as the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur. 'The basic idea is to recognize that Wikipedia is this amazing global cultural phenomena that has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,' says Jimmy Wales. 'Too often, people think about us purely in terms of technology, when this is about culture, high tech and learning.' Getting Wikipedia listed will be an uphill battle although a petition drive has already started. It will have to negotiate a complicated approval process and overcome the skeptical regard of Unesco and heritage consultants to be considered for recognition. Susan Williams, the head of external media relations at Unesco in Paris, said a bid by a digital entity like Wikipedia would be unprecedented. 'Anyone can apply,' says Williams, who added that she was not aware of Wikipedia's plans. 'But it may have difficulty fulfilling the criteria.' The problem is that to be included on the World Heritage List alongside the Great Wall of China, Wikipedia must be found 'to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius,' which it's not says Adam Chen. 'We like dorking around on Wikipedia as much as the next person,' writes Chen. 'But Wikipedia resembles less the masterpiece of a genius than the fixation of an idiot savant.'"

V-similitude writes with news that Warner Bros. has been forced into a position of claiming 'fair use' in the defense of an upcoming movie. From the NYTimes: "In The Hangover Part II, the sequel to the very successful what-happened-last-night comedy, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up with a permanent tattoo bracketing his left eye. The Maori-inspired design is instantly recognizable as the one sported by the boxer Mike Tyson, which is part of the joke. (Mr. Tyson makes an appearance in both films, playing himself.) But S. Victor Whitmill, a tattoo artist formerly of Las Vegas and currently from rural Missouri, doesn't quite see the humor. Mr. Whitmill designed the tattoo for Mr. Tyson, called it 'tribal tattoo,' and claims it as a copyrighted work. ... Warner Brothers in its brief also invoked the 'fair use' defense for Hangover Part II, namely the right to parody what has become a well-known tattoo since it first appeared on Mr. Tyson’s face in February 2003."

V-similitude writes with news that Warner Bros. has been forced into a position of claiming 'fair use' in the defense of an upcoming movie. From the NYTimes: "In The Hangover Part II, the sequel to the very successful what-happened-last-night comedy, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up with a permanent tattoo bracketing his left eye. The Maori-inspired design is instantly recognizable as the one sported by the boxer Mike Tyson, which is part of the joke. (Mr. Tyson makes an appearance in both films, playing himself.) But S. Victor Whitmill, a tattoo artist formerly of Las Vegas and currently from rural Missouri, doesn't quite see the humor. Mr. Whitmill designed the tattoo for Mr. Tyson, called it 'tribal tattoo,' and claims it as a copyrighted work. ... Warner Brothers in its brief also invoked the 'fair use' defense for Hangover Part II, namely the right to parody what has become a well-known tattoo since it first appeared on Mr. Tyson’s face in February 2003."

WrongSizeGlass writes "A team of computer scientists at two University of California campuses has been looking deeply into the nature of spam, and they think found a 'choke point' [PDF] that could greatly reduce the flow of spam. It turned out that 95 percent of the credit card transactions for the spam-advertised drugs and herbal remedies they bought were handled by just three financial companies — one based in Azerbaijan, one in Denmark and one in Nevis, in the West Indies. If a handful of companies like these refused to authorize online credit card payments to the merchants, 'you'd cut off the money that supports the entire spam enterprise,' said one of the scientists." Frequent Slashdot contributor (and author of a book on Digital Cash) Peter Wayner wonders if "the way to get a business shut down is to send out a couple billion spam messages in its name."

The Installer writes with news of yesterday's stock offering from LinkedIn, which shocked investors by closing at more than double the initial price. "Buyers crowded the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and financial news networks flashed LinkedIn's stock price urgently all day. By the closing bell, the company had a market value of $9 billion, the highest for any Internet company since Google had its initial public offering seven years ago. Millionaires and even one billionaire were made, at least on paper. The stock, issued at $45, went as high as $122.70 just before noon and closed at $94.25 on a trading volume of 30 million shares." That price values the company at over 30 times its 2010 revenue, leading to speculation that this is either evidence of the second dotcom bubble (a possibility we discussed in February) or a "watershed moment for social media." Many experts are questioning the value of LinkedIn, while others are claiming intentional market manipulation.

Hugh Pickens writes "ABA Journal reports that the chief of the International Monetary Fund may claim consent as a defense to accusations that he sexually assaulted a maid at the Sofitel Hotel in New York as defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman told the judge he believed the 'forensic evidence' was 'not consistent with forcible encounter.' Police have said the maid knocked on Strauss-Kahn's door and called out, used her master keycard to open the door, and left her work cart in the doorway, a typical safety practice in hotels. According to the police account, Strauss-Kahn emerged naked, tried to attack the maid, and then shut the hotel door when she tried to escape. The NY Times explains how the key card evidence may play out: 'If the defense for Mr. Strauss-Kahn maintains that the encounter was consensual, its version will have to accommodate the unambiguous computer record of her leaving the door propped open,' the story says."

Hugh Pickens writes "Sam Grobart writes in the NYT that buying gadgets can sometimes be like buying a car; it requires sorting through options because the reality is that most of us are usually dealing with a finite amount of money to spend, and that means making trade-offs. Grobart puts forward his set of rules for getting the most for your tech dollar when buying computers, cameras, cellphones, data plans, and service contracts. For example, Rule No. 1: pay for PC memory, not speed. 'When buying and configuring a new computer, companies often give the option of upgrading the processor and adding more memory, or RAM. If it is an either/or proposition, go for the RAM,' writes Grobart. 'Processors are usually fast enough for most people; it is the RAM that can be the bottleneck.' Other rules include 'Pay for the messaging, not the minutes,' 'Pay for the components, not the cables,' 'Pay for the sensor size, not the megapixels,' and 'Pay for the TV size, not the refresh rate.' Kevin Kelly expands on Grobart's rules of thumb with 'Pay for the glass, not the shutters,' 'Pay for reliability, not mileage,' and 'Pay for comfort, not for weight.' Any others?"

b0bby writes "The NY Times reports that Google is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state in which self-driving cars could be legally operated on public roads. 'The two bills, which have received little attention outside Nevada's capitol, are being introduced less than a year after the giant search engine company acknowledged that it was developing cars that could be safely driven without human intervention.'"

The NY Times has a story about a group of students who took a 2007 course in app development at Stanford that turned out far better than any of them expected. Quoting: "... by teaching students to build no-frills apps, distribute them quickly and worry about perfecting them later, the Facebook Class stumbled upon what has become standard operating procedure for a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond. ... Early on, the Facebook Class became a microcosm of Silicon Valley. Working in teams of three, the 75 students created apps that collectively had 16 million users in just 10 weeks. Many of those apps were sort of silly: Mr. De Lombaert’s, for example, allowed users to send “hotness” points to Facebook friends. Yet during the term, the apps, free for users, generated roughly $1 million in advertising revenue."

lee1 writes "The Seoul police raided Google's office in Seoul, S. Korea today on suspicion that they have illegally collected users' location data, without consent, for advertising purposes. Google claims to be cooperating with the investigation."

HungryHobo writes with news that WikiLeaks has started to release a collection of 779 files involving the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. "The details for every detainee will be released daily over the coming month. ... In thousands of pages of documents dating from 2002 to 2008 and never seen before by members of the public or the media, the cases of the majority of the prisoners held at Guantánamo — 758 out of 779 in total — are described in detail in memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida. These memoranda, which contain JTF-GTMO's recommendations about whether the prisoners in question should continue to be held, or should be released (transferred to their home governments, or to other governments) contain a wealth of important and previously undisclosed information, including health assessments, for example, and, in the cases of the majority of the 171 prisoners who are still held, photos (mostly for the first time ever)." Reader rrayst notes that according to one such document, if you use a Casio F-91W wristwatch, you might be a member of al-Qaida.

HungryHobo writes with news that WikiLeaks has started to release a collection of 779 files involving the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. "The details for every detainee will be released daily over the coming month. ... In thousands of pages of documents dating from 2002 to 2008 and never seen before by members of the public or the media, the cases of the majority of the prisoners held at Guantánamo — 758 out of 779 in total — are described in detail in memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida. These memoranda, which contain JTF-GTMO's recommendations about whether the prisoners in question should continue to be held, or should be released (transferred to their home governments, or to other governments) contain a wealth of important and previously undisclosed information, including health assessments, for example, and, in the cases of the majority of the 171 prisoners who are still held, photos (mostly for the first time ever)." Reader rrayst notes that according to one such document, if you use a Casio F-91W wristwatch, you might be a member of al-Qaida.

Bayoudegradeable writes "It seems that Photoshop skills that not-so-cleverly hide the bones of a rack of ribs are not enough to change meat into acceptable vegan dishes. The NYTimes reports that readers of VegNews are horrified to learn that images used to portray vegetarian images are none other than meat and dairy images manipulated to hide their animal origins. One commenter noted, 'vegan food must turn out so unappetizing that even the leading vegan magazine will not show legitimate photos of it.'"

The Entertainment Software Rating Board, which has struggled to keep up with the flood of games produced for app stores and other online markets, is now taking steps to automate the rating process. "Starting on Monday the ratings board plans to begin introducing computers to the job of deciding whether a game is appropriate for Everyone, for Teens or for Mature gamers (meaning older than 16). To do this the organization has written a program designed to replicate the ingrained cultural norms and predilections of the everyday American consumer, at least when it comes to what is appropriate for children and what isn’t. ... the main evaluation of hundreds of games each year will be based not on direct human judgment but instead on a detailed digital questionnaire meant to gauge every subtle nuance of violence, sexuality, profanity, drug use, gambling and bodily function that could possibly offend anyone. The questionnaire, to be filled out by a game’s makers (with penalties for nondisclosure), is like a psychological inquest into the depths of all the things our culture considers potentially unwholesome."

a_hanso tips an article by Gary Taubes in the NYTimes Magazine that evaluates claims from Dr. Robert Lustig's virally popular lecture on the negative effects of sugar on peoples' health. (YouTube video of the lecture.) Taubes discusses the science behind the claims and the odd willingness of people to accept Lustig's arguments without further inspection. Quoting: "When I set out to interview public health authorities and researchers for this article, they would often initiate the interview with some variation of the comment 'surely you’ve spoken to Robert Lustig,' not because Lustig has done any of the key research on sugar himself, which he hasn’t, but because he’s willing to insist publicly and unambiguously, when most researchers are not, that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse. In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us. This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?"

An anonymous reader writes "A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test. Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected." Update: 04/16 22:01 GMT by T : Mea culpa. This story slipped through; consider it a time-machine / late-April Fool's day joke, please.

darkonc writes "Early Tuesday in Japan, the government decided to raise the severity level of the accident to the maximum 7 on an international scale, up from the current 5 and matching that of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. The government declared the level 7 emergency because it is now estimated that the crippled plant was emitting over 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity for a number of hours at the height of the nuclear incident. Previously, on Monday, the government had expanded the evacuation zone around the plant to include at least 6 cities up to 60 km away from the plant. These cities, outside of the current 20-30 km evacuation area, are now expected to exceed the 20 millisieverts/year limit on residual radiation established by International Commission on Radiological Protection and the International Atomic Energy Agency in the case of an emergency."

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the NY Times: "The Police Department's growing web of license-plate-reading cameras has been transforming investigative work. Though the imaging technology was conceived primarily as a counterterrorism tool, the cameras' presence — all those sets of watchful eyes that never seem to blink — has aided in all sorts of traditional criminal investigations. ... 'We knew going into it that they would have other obvious benefits,' Mr. Browne said about the use of the readers in the initiative. 'Obviously, conventional crime is far more common than terrorism, so it is not surprising that they would have benefits, more frequently, in conventional crime fighting than in terrorism.'"

erfnet writes "The New York Times remembers back to when 'college was a buyer's bazaar' and digs up 19th-century classified ads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and others. In competitive efforts to attract students from the limited pool of qualified candidates, applications were taken as late as September for an October freshman class. Vassar offered lush room accommodations. The expectations were high: Latin, Greek, Virgil, Caesar's Commentaries; Harvard's entrance exam from 1869 is posted (PDF). Could any of us pass the exam today?"

erfnet writes "The New York Times remembers back to when 'college was a buyer's bazaar' and digs up 19th-century classified ads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and others. In competitive efforts to attract students from the limited pool of qualified candidates, applications were taken as late as September for an October freshman class. Vassar offered lush room accommodations. The expectations were high: Latin, Greek, Virgil, Caesar's Commentaries; Harvard's entrance exam from 1869 is posted (PDF). Could any of us pass the exam today?"

An anonymous reader writes "After nearly 30 years, the Commodore brand has taken on new management and is re-releasing its flagship computer, this time with all the amenities of a modern-day computer packed inside. From the article: 'The new Commodore 64, which will begin shipping at the end of the month, has been souped-up for the modern age. It comes with 1.8 gigahertz dual processors, an optional Blu-ray player and built-in ethernet and HDMI ports. The new Commodore is priced between $250 to $900.'"

HansonMB writes "Facing the likelihood of state budget cuts that would eliminate $15 million for library and reading programs – and, apparently, create a future in which people no longer read things on paper – the city of Newport Beach is considering turning its first library into a community center that would host all the same amenities – except for the books." The library has been inundated with hate-mail as people around the country have learned of their idea, and they hastened to clarify that no final decision has been made; carting books in as needed from other locations was always part of the plan. Whether or not they go through with it, efforts are underway elsewhere to create a massive, public digital library, spurred in part by the recent ruling against Google Books.

HansonMB writes "Facing the likelihood of state budget cuts that would eliminate $15 million for library and reading programs – and, apparently, create a future in which people no longer read things on paper – the city of Newport Beach is considering turning its first library into a community center that would host all the same amenities – except for the books." The library has been inundated with hate-mail as people around the country have learned of their idea, and they hastened to clarify that no final decision has been made; carting books in as needed from other locations was always part of the plan. Whether or not they go through with it, efforts are underway elsewhere to create a massive, public digital library, spurred in part by the recent ruling against Google Books.

Before his speech Monday night, President Obama had to contend with a more daunting obstacle than enforcing the Libyan no-fly zone, and that was Dancing with the Stars. It turns out the White House had to negotiate a time with ABC that did not interfere with the broadcast of the second highest-rated show on television. From the article: "A White House spokesman, Joshua Earnest, sent a statement by e-mail: 'The White House routinely works with the networks, as a group, in circumstances like these to find a time that’s respectful of both the networks and their audience – while ensuring that the president has the platform he needs to deliver an important message to the American people.'”

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton is back with a story about Internet censorship in the Middle East. Several blocking software companies claimed that they had no control over how various Middle Eastern governments used their software. Bennett says it's time to put this patently false claim to rest. American censorware companies could easily cut off Middle Eastern governments from using their software, and thus make their existing filtering systems far less effective; they just refuse to do it. Hit the link below to see what he has to say, and make up your own mind.

The Wall Street Journal published an article Monday listing the Western-made Internet censoring programs used by several Middle Eastern governments, in countries that filter what their citizens can access on the Web. Like a similar 2011 report from the OpenNet Initiative, hopefully this listing will shine a spotlight on the problem, and make it easier for human rights groups to call for these companies to stop aiding censorious governments.

However, I wish that the article had quoted someone giving a rebuttal to the several companies which claimed, "Once the customer buys the product, we have no control over it," as stated variously Netsweeper, Blue Coat, and McAfee (which makes Smartfilter). For a product that relies on continuous updates provided by the software company, this claim, of course, is nonsense. Unfortunately, the claim seems to go unchallenged so often, that there's a risk that it will start to affect policy -- people may believe that we can't regulate how American censorware is used by repressive countries, so we shouldn't even try.

Some background: When a customer buys a standard network filtering program like Websense, SmartFilter, or Blue Coat, the product comes with a built-in list of websites to be blocked by the software. (The customer can select or de-select categories of sites to be blocked, like "pornography" or "gambling".) The purchase of the software typically comes with a year or two of free updates to the blocked-site list. The software vendors employs a combination of human reviewers and (more often) automated crawlers to scour the Web looking for new sites that fall into their categories, and add these sites to their database. Customers who are within their subscription period can download periodic updates to this blocked-site list. After a customer's initial free subscription period runs out, they can opt to continue purchasing updates to the database. If they don't, then the product will continue to work, but the blocked-site list will be frozen (except for any new sites that the customer finds on their own and adds manually to their own blocked-site list).

Once the blocked-site list is frozen, the filtering product becomes ineffective against any user making a serious effort to get around it. This is because there are many mailing lists like mine that mail out new proxy sites every week (a proxy site is a site which contains a form that allows the user to access third-party Web sites indirectly, usually to circumvent Internet blocking). And as long as the user can access at least one unblocked proxy site, they can access any other blocked site by going through the proxy. So when a censorious regime stops updating their blocked-site list, the product becomes ineffective almost immediately. (For that, I suppose, the blocking companies should be grateful to us proxy site makers, since we make it necessary for their customers to keep renewing their blocked-site subscriptions year after year.)

So, even if one were to accept the (highly dubious) claim that the software vendors didn't realize what was going on when a foreign government approached them to buy their software, once they realize that their software is being used to violate the rights of the country's people, they can easily stop providing updates to that customer. This can be done by either (a) blocking the IP addresses that the customer uses to download the updates, or (b) blocking any further updates using that customer's license key. (Each installation of a blocking program like Websense comes with a license key unique to that customer, and the program has to submit the license key to the download server in order to download the latest update to the blocked-site list. If the customer's subscription runs out or gets cancelled, no more updates.)

This is roughly the situation that exists in Iran. The Iranian government claims to use McAfee's Smartfilter to filter Internet access for their citizens, despite McAfee's claim that they don't sell to Iran because of the embargo. But the evidence suggests that while Iran may have once acquired Smartfilter along with a copy of their filter list that was current at the time, they're not getting regular updates to the blocked-site list. From corresponding with Iranians and testing the filter through a server located inside Iran, I've found that most of the proxy sites we mail out never get blocked at all in Iran, even as they eventually get blocked in countries like Bahrain and Kuwait that are using Smartfilter with a subscription to the blocked-site database. The proxy sites we mail out that do get blocked in Iran are usually blocked a few days later than they are in Bahrain and Kuwait. This suggests that the Iranian censors are finding and blocking new proxy sites by ad hoc methods, and that they're not as effective at it as American censorware companies. So the Iranian situation proves two points: that Western blocking companies really can prevent a foreign government from using their products (well, duh), and that this restriction actually works, in the sense of making the country's filter less effective.

So when a McAfee spokesman told the WSJ reporters, "You can add additional websites to the block list; obviously what an individual customer would do with a product once they acquire it is beyond our control," that's true only in the most literal sense. Yes, Bahrain can add human rights web pages to their list of sites blocked by Smartfilter, and McAfee can't stop them, but the effectiveness of this block depends on the Bahrani censors using Smartfilter to block new proxy sites as well, which McAfee continues to aid them in doing, as a matter of choice.

Websense, incidentally, announced in 2009 -- in response to an earlier ONI report describing how their software was used to censor Internet access in Yemen -- that they would stop providing censoring software to the Yemeni government. But ONI's current report claims that the Yemeni government continued to use Websense into 2011, and Websense declined to comment. Maybe the Yemeni government was using Websense with a "frozen blocked-site list" -- but the ONI report includes at least one instance where a site that was un-blocked by Websense (the opennet.net domain itself!) became un-blocked in Yemen shortly afterwards. So maybe Websense just lied about canceling the Yemenis' license.

Could some censorious country like Yemen continue using the Websense filter -- with a continuously updated blocked-site list -- even after Websense truly tried to cut them off? Possibly, but it would probably be more trouble than it's worth. Yemen would have to set up a shell company outside of their own borders, with an overseas bank account, in order to purchase the software. Then after Yemen had installed Websense on their servers, they would have to download the updates indirectly by going through an anonymizing proxy set up in some other country as well. And if Websense ever found out which of their customers was a shell company used by the Yemeni government, they could cut off that customer's license, and the Yemeni censors would have to start all over again. It's probably safe to say that most Middle Eastern countries wouldn't find this worth the trouble. (After all, Iran could do everything I've just described, but apparently they haven't; they still seem to be using Smartfilter with an outdated copy of the blocked-site list, and adding new proxy sites to their blacklist manually.)

So far, proposals to ban American censorware companies from selling to foreign governments have not gotten off the ground -- and now with several Middle Eastern countries using or looking at Netsweeper, we'd have to get Canada on board as well. But at the very least, let's start calling out censorware companies on the canard that "We just sell the software and have no way of controlling who uses it." The companies know that foreign governments are using it to censor their own people, and they can cut them off as customers any time they want to; they just don't.

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton is back with a story about Internet censorship in the Middle East. Several blocking software companies claimed that they had no control over how various Middle Eastern governments used their software. Bennett says it's time to put this patently false claim to rest. American censorware companies could easily cut off Middle Eastern governments from using their software, and thus make their existing filtering systems far less effective; they just refuse to do it. Hit the link below to see what he has to say, and make up your own mind.

The Wall Street Journal published an article Monday listing the Western-made Internet censoring programs used by several Middle Eastern governments, in countries that filter what their citizens can access on the Web. Like a similar 2011 report from the OpenNet Initiative, hopefully this listing will shine a spotlight on the problem, and make it easier for human rights groups to call for these companies to stop aiding censorious governments.

However, I wish that the article had quoted someone giving a rebuttal to the several companies which claimed, "Once the customer buys the product, we have no control over it," as stated variously Netsweeper, Blue Coat, and McAfee (which makes Smartfilter). For a product that relies on continuous updates provided by the software company, this claim, of course, is nonsense. Unfortunately, the claim seems to go unchallenged so often, that there's a risk that it will start to affect policy -- people may believe that we can't regulate how American censorware is used by repressive countries, so we shouldn't even try.

Some background: When a customer buys a standard network filtering program like Websense, SmartFilter, or Blue Coat, the product comes with a built-in list of websites to be blocked by the software. (The customer can select or de-select categories of sites to be blocked, like "pornography" or "gambling".) The purchase of the software typically comes with a year or two of free updates to the blocked-site list. The software vendors employs a combination of human reviewers and (more often) automated crawlers to scour the Web looking for new sites that fall into their categories, and add these sites to their database. Customers who are within their subscription period can download periodic updates to this blocked-site list. After a customer's initial free subscription period runs out, they can opt to continue purchasing updates to the database. If they don't, then the product will continue to work, but the blocked-site list will be frozen (except for any new sites that the customer finds on their own and adds manually to their own blocked-site list).

Once the blocked-site list is frozen, the filtering product becomes ineffective against any user making a serious effort to get around it. This is because there are many mailing lists like mine that mail out new proxy sites every week (a proxy site is a site which contains a form that allows the user to access third-party Web sites indirectly, usually to circumvent Internet blocking). And as long as the user can access at least one unblocked proxy site, they can access any other blocked site by going through the proxy. So when a censorious regime stops updating their blocked-site list, the product becomes ineffective almost immediately. (For that, I suppose, the blocking companies should be grateful to us proxy site makers, since we make it necessary for their customers to keep renewing their blocked-site subscriptions year after year.)

So, even if one were to accept the (highly dubious) claim that the software vendors didn't realize what was going on when a foreign government approached them to buy their software, once they realize that their software is being used to violate the rights of the country's people, they can easily stop providing updates to that customer. This can be done by either (a) blocking the IP addresses that the customer uses to download the updates, or (b) blocking any further updates using that customer's license key. (Each installation of a blocking program like Websense comes with a license key unique to that customer, and the program has to submit the license key to the download server in order to download the latest update to the blocked-site list. If the customer's subscription runs out or gets cancelled, no more updates.)

This is roughly the situation that exists in Iran. The Iranian government claims to use McAfee's Smartfilter to filter Internet access for their citizens, despite McAfee's claim that they don't sell to Iran because of the embargo. But the evidence suggests that while Iran may have once acquired Smartfilter along with a copy of their filter list that was current at the time, they're not getting regular updates to the blocked-site list. From corresponding with Iranians and testing the filter through a server located inside Iran, I've found that most of the proxy sites we mail out never get blocked at all in Iran, even as they eventually get blocked in countries like Bahrain and Kuwait that are using Smartfilter with a subscription to the blocked-site database. The proxy sites we mail out that do get blocked in Iran are usually blocked a few days later than they are in Bahrain and Kuwait. This suggests that the Iranian censors are finding and blocking new proxy sites by ad hoc methods, and that they're not as effective at it as American censorware companies. So the Iranian situation proves two points: that Western blocking companies really can prevent a foreign government from using their products (well, duh), and that this restriction actually works, in the sense of making the country's filter less effective.

So when a McAfee spokesman told the WSJ reporters, "You can add additional websites to the block list; obviously what an individual customer would do with a product once they acquire it is beyond our control," that's true only in the most literal sense. Yes, Bahrain can add human rights web pages to their list of sites blocked by Smartfilter, and McAfee can't stop them, but the effectiveness of this block depends on the Bahrani censors using Smartfilter to block new proxy sites as well, which McAfee continues to aid them in doing, as a matter of choice.

Websense, incidentally, announced in 2009 -- in response to an earlier ONI report describing how their software was used to censor Internet access in Yemen -- that they would stop providing censoring software to the Yemeni government. But ONI's current report claims that the Yemeni government continued to use Websense into 2011, and Websense declined to comment. Maybe the Yemeni government was using Websense with a "frozen blocked-site list" -- but the ONI report includes at least one instance where a site that was un-blocked by Websense (the opennet.net domain itself!) became un-blocked in Yemen shortly afterwards. So maybe Websense just lied about canceling the Yemenis' license.

Could some censorious country like Yemen continue using the Websense filter -- with a continuously updated blocked-site list -- even after Websense truly tried to cut them off? Possibly, but it would probably be more trouble than it's worth. Yemen would have to set up a shell company outside of their own borders, with an overseas bank account, in order to purchase the software. Then after Yemen had installed Websense on their servers, they would have to download the updates indirectly by going through an anonymizing proxy set up in some other country as well. And if Websense ever found out which of their customers was a shell company used by the Yemeni government, they could cut off that customer's license, and the Yemeni censors would have to start all over again. It's probably safe to say that most Middle Eastern countries wouldn't find this worth the trouble. (After all, Iran could do everything I've just described, but apparently they haven't; they still seem to be using Smartfilter with an outdated copy of the blocked-site list, and adding new proxy sites to their blacklist manually.)

So far, proposals to ban American censorware companies from selling to foreign governments have not gotten off the ground -- and now with several Middle Eastern countries using or looking at Netsweeper, we'd have to get Canada on board as well. But at the very least, let's start calling out censorware companies on the canard that "We just sell the software and have no way of controlling who uses it." The companies know that foreign governments are using it to censor their own people, and they can cut them off as customers any time they want to; they just don't.

theodp writes "'He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy,' President Obama said of GE CEO Jeff Immelt, as he announced Immelt would chair the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. On Friday, the NY Times reported that one trick Immelt employs to keep GE competitive is paying no American tax bill. In fact, GE claimed a 2010 tax benefit of $3.2B on worldwide profits of $14.2B, $5.1B of which came from US operations. According to the NYT, GE's extraordinary tax-avoidance success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. GE's giant tax department is led by a former Treasury official whose 975-member team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the IRS and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress. GE's return to rock-bottom tax rates marks a dramatic reversal from the mid-80's when President Reagan reacted to corporate accounting gamesmanship and supported a change that closed loopholes and required GE to pay a far higher effective rate, up to 32.5%. 'That GE can almost set its own tax rate shows how very much we need reform,' said Rep. Lloyd Doggett. 'Our tax system should encourage job creation and investment in America and end these tax incentives for exporting jobs and dodging responsibility for the cost of securing our country.'"

Layzej writes "On March 15, Professor Bill Cronon posted his first blog. The subject was the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in influencing recent legislation in Wisconsin and across the country. Less than two days later, his university received a communication formally requesting under the state's Open Records Law copies of all emails he sent or received pertaining to matters raised in the blog. Remarkably, the request was sent to the university's legal office by Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, with no effort to obscure the political motivations behind it. In a recent editorial, the New York Times notes that demanding copies of e-mails and other documents is the latest technique used politically to silence critics."

frnic writes "Deutsche Telekom is tracking its customers' locations and saving the information: '.... as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts. The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin. Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse — an unprecedented one, privacy experts say — of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones."

WesternActor writes "According to PCMag.com, the New York Times has asked Twitter to shut down the FreeNYT Twitter feed that basically retweets all of the Times' articles. Is this really possible? After all, the feed just points to a list of Times Twitter accounts, all of which can also be found on the Times' website. If the Times succeeds in shutting this down, it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general."

bhagwad writes "Several reports have emerged that China is cutting off phone calls mid-sentence when contentious words like 'protest' are used. Seems like China's draconian censorship regime is going into overdrive with even more sophisticated censoring. Of course, this comes on the heels of Google accusing them of mucking around with Gmail as well."

Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin O'Brien writes that Deutsche Telekom's announcement to sell its American wireless unit, T-Mobile USA, to AT&T for $39 billion ended a decade-long foray into the American market that was undermined, in part, by the advent of the iPhone (reg. may be required). Deutsche Telekom had been generating decent sales from its American operation, but after the iPhone went on sale, sold exclusively at first for AT&T in the United States, T-Mobile USA began to lose its most lucrative customers: those on fixed, monthly plans, who defected to its larger American rivals — AT&T and Verizon Wireless. 'The iPhone effect cannot be underestimated in this decision,' says analyst Theo Kitz. "Without being able to sell the iPhone, T-Mobile was in an unsustainable position and T-Mobile USA became a problem child." Ironically, AT&T's acquisition won't help T-Mobile customers get access to the iPhone anytime soon, as T-Mobile will remain independent, albeit under AT&T's stewardship, for around a year, and won't offer the iPhone to its customers during that period."

dzou writes "David Rumelhart, a pioneer in building computer models of cognition and behavior, has died at the age of 68. Rumelhart conducted early research on artificial neural networks and helped develop the idea that cognition can be modeled through the interaction of many neuron-like units. In the 1980s, he was instrumental in developing neural networks that could learn to process information. At the time, although researchers understood how to train networks to solve linearly separable problems (like an AND gate), those networks could not solve linearly inseparable problems (like XOR), which would be crucial for modeling human cognitive processes. Rumelhart and his colleagues demonstrated that networks that solve these types of problems can be trained using the backpropagation learning algorithm. In turn, this has led to breakthroughs in areas like speech recognition and image processing, as well as models of human speech perception, language processing, vision, and higher-level cognition. Rumelhart suffered from Pick's disease in the last years of his life. An annual award in cognitive science, the David E. Rumelhart Prize, is given in his honor by the Glushko-Samuelson Foundation."

Hugh Pickens writes "In 1988, Michael Friedlander was a newly minted shift technical adviser at a nuclear power plant near the Gulf Coast when Hurricane Gilbert, a Category 5 storm, was bearing down on the plant. They received word that all workers should leave except for critical plant personnel, and there was never a question: 'my team and I would stay, regardless of what happened.' 'The situation facing the 50 workers left at Fukushima is a nuclear operator's worst nightmare,' writes Friedlander. 'But the knowledge that a nuclear crisis could occur, and that we might be the only people standing in the way of a meltdown, defines every aspect of an operator's life.' The field attracts a very particular kind of person, says Friedlander, and the typical employee is more like a cross between a jet pilot and a firefighter: highly trained to keep a technically complex system running, but also prepared to be the first and usually only line of defense in an emergency. 'We will likely hear numerous stories of heroism over the next several days, of plant operators struggling to keep water flowing into the reactors, breathing hard against their respirators under the dim rays of a handheld flashlight in the cold, dark recesses of a critically damaged nuclear plant, knowing that at any moment another hydrogen explosion could occur.'" The severity rating of the crisis has now been raised from 4 to 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, and Japan's Prime Minister called the situation "very grave."

DarkStarZumaBeach points out a frequently updated page from the International Atomic Energy Agency with updates on the situation at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, which reports in terse but readable form details of the dangers and progress there. The most recent update says that the plant's Unit 2 has been re-wired for power, and engineers 'plan to reconnect power to unit 2 once the spraying of water on the unit 3 reactor building is completed.' Read on for more on the tsunami aftermath. Reader srwellman writes "A large plume of radioactive smoke is heading from Japan to the West Coast of the US. Officials claim the plume is not dangerous."

dooms13 suggests (by way of The Register) that the disaster in Fukushima is nonetheless a demonstrated triumph for nuclear safety: "If nuclear powerplants were merely as safe as they are advertised to be, there should have been a major failure right then. As the hot cores ceased to be cooled by the water which is used to extract power from them, control rods would have remained withdrawn and a runaway chain reaction could have ensued – probably resulting in the worst thing that can happen to a properly designed nuclear reactor: a core meltdown in which the superhot fuel rods actually melt and slag down the whole core into a blob of molten metal. In this case the only thing to do is seal up the containment and wait: no radiation disaster will take place, but the reactor is a total writeoff and cooling the core off will be difficult and take a long time. Eventual cleanup will be protracted and expensive."

Something to contemplate while the rescue effort continues: imscarr writes "The coastline of Japan has drastically changed since the earthquake & tsunami. New bays have formed and many areas are completely flooded. These interactive before-and-after images show you the magnitude of devastation. Other photos here."

Adds reader madcarrots: "The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB), a unit of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), directed by Professor Michel Andre, has recorded the sound of the earthquake that shook Japan on Friday, March 11. The recording, now available online, was provided by a network of underwater observatories belonging to the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and located on either side of the earthquake epicenter, close to the Japanese island of Hatsushima."