Slashdot Mirror

In a new paper published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, computer scientists from Google and the University of Pennsylvania describe a new machine learning approach to classifying written journalism according to a formalized idea of "content density." "With an average accuracy of around 80 percent, their system was able to accurately classify news stories across a wide range of domains, spanning from international relations and business to sports and science journalism, when evaluated against a ground truth dataset of already correctly classified news articles," reports Motherboard. From the report: At a high level this works like most any other machine learning system. Start with a big batch of data -- news articles, in this case -- and then give each item an annotation saying whether or not that item falls within a particular category. In particular, the study focused on article leads, the first paragraph or two in a story traditionally intended to summarize its contents and engage the reader. Articles were drawn from an existing New York Times linguistic dataset consisting of original articles combined with metadata and short informative summaries written by researchers.

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon opened its first media center on a college campus, including couches, conference tables and TVs with game controllers, as well as a full-time Amazon staffer and a package pickup station. Since 40% of the boxes delivered to Penn are from Amazon, it will be installed in one of the dining halls, according to CNET, offering Amazon Prime members same-day or next-day delivery for more than 3 million items, from textbooks to toothpaste. Amazon already has pickup points on five college campuses, and hopes to add five more by the end of the year, in an effort to compete with 748 college bookstores run by Barnes and Noble.
One analyst told CNET, "They just want to hook you when you're 20."

New submitter Michael Tiemann writes: An article published in PLOS One finds increased hospital admissions significantly correlate with living in the same zip code as active fracking sites. The data comes from three counties in Pennsylvania, whose zip codes mostly had no fracking sites in 2007 and transitioned to a majority of zip codes with at least one fracking site. While the statistical and medical data are compelling, and speak to a significant correlation, the graphical and informational figures flunk every Tufte test, which is unfortunate. Nevertheless, with open data and Creative Commons licensing, the paper could be rewritten to provide a more compelling explanation about the dangers of fracking to people who live within its vicinity, and perhaps motivate more stringent regulations to protect them from both immediate and long-term harm.

First time accepted submitter Ugmug (1495847) writes Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner's Dilemma, they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game over the long term. But now they've come out with a somewhat less rosy view of evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature."

theodp writes "The Motley Fool reports that the Data Scientists at LinkedIn have been playing with their Big Data, ranking schools based on how successful recent grads have been at landing desirable software development jobs. Here's their Top 25: CMU, Caltech, Cornell, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Univ. of Washington, Duke, Michigan, Stanford, UCLA, Illinois, UT Austin, Brown, UCSD, Harvard, Rice, Penn, Univ. of Arizona, Harvey Mudd, UT Dallas, San Jose State, USC, Washington University, RIT. There's also a shorter list for the best schools for software developers at startups, which draws a dozen schools from the previously mentioned schools, and adds Columbia, Univ. of Virginia, and Univ. of Maryland College Park. If you're in a position to actually hire new graduates, how much do you care about applicants' alma maters?

Contributor Bennett Haselton writes with a interesting take on the recent release of racy celebrity photos: "Lawyers for Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney succeeded in getting porn sites to take down her stolen nude photos, on the grounds that she was under 18 in the pictures, which meant they constituted child pornography. If true, that means that under current laws, Maroney could in theory be prosecuted for taking the original pictures. Maybe the laws should be changed?" Read on for the rest.

Online warnings about the dangers of teen sexting, from sources ranging from the FBI to MTV, frequently warn that even a minor who takes a sexually explicit picture of themselves can be prosecuted for violating child pornography laws.

And these prosecutions really do happen. One Pennsylvania district attorney threatened child pornography charges against two teen girls who posed for a photo in their bras making peace signs, and tried to force them to write a report on why their actions were wrong and "what it means to be a girl in today's society." (With the ACLU's help, the girls' parents sued to stop the D.A. from following through.) A study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that in teen "sexting" incidents reported to the police, even in cases where the sexting was between two minors and there were no "aggravating" circumstances (abuse or lack of clear consent), police made arrests in 18% of those cases. (The arrest rate was higher in cases involving "aggravating" circumstances or where an adult was involved in the sexting.)

Meanwhile, hundreds of articles have been written about Porn.com being forced to take down the nude pictures of McKayla Maroney, after receiving word from her lawyers that she was underage when the pictures were taken. As far as I can tell, none of the articles about the incident mentioned that, if her lawyers are correct, then Maroney could be theoretically prosecuted for creating, possessing, and distributing child pornography. Of course nobody wants to see that happen, but the elephant in the living room is that before Maroney's photo leak scandal, many teens were arrested for doing essentially the same thing, and more of them will continue to be arrested after the celebrity nude hacking scandal is old news.

That's not to say that Maroney's photos necessarily did constitute child pornography. Nude or topless photos of minors are not necessarily illegal, if they're not sexually explicit; Thora Birch was under 18 for her topless scene in American Beauty. I haven't seen the Maroney photos (honest -- although I'd like to think that whatever she was doing, she was making her not impressed face). Maybe they really were explicit enough to qualify as child pornography. Maybe they weren't, and Maroney's lawyers misunderstood the law and thought that any of her underage nude or topless selfies were automatically child porn. Or maybe her lawyers knew the pictures were not really child porn, but they were bluffing when they demanded that Porn.com take the pictures down. Whatever the case, Maroney's lawyers claimed the pictures were child pornography, and if they're right, the lawyers just criminally implicated their client as well.

If the pictures really were explicit and she sent them to any of her same-age friends, she could also be charged with disseminating obscene material to a minor. Iowa teenager Jorge Canal was convicted on this charge, and his conviction upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court, after his 14-year-old female friend asked him to send him a picture of his erect penis, and he obliged. (Although since he was 18 at the time of sending the picture, there was no child porn charge.) If his defense attorneys tried a defense along the lines of, "My clients actions harmed absolutely no one, and it's the prosecutors who have ruined the lives of not only my client but also his supposed 'victim', by putting them both through a trauma that will hang over them for the rest of their lives," it didn't work.

Many states have attempted to pass laws specifically addressing sexting by and/or to teenagers by reducing the penalty from a felony child pornography charge to something less severe. What all of these laws still have in common, though, is that they retain the option to impose some criminal penalties on teens for sexting even among themselves. The ACLU has opposed such a bill in Pennsylvania on the grounds that even a misdemeanor charge for teen sexting would be too draconian of a punishment.

"The Need for Sexting Law Reform: Appropriate Punishments for Teenage Behaviors", written by Alexandra Kushner, a legal associate at Winston & Strawn LLP, and published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change, argues for de-criminalizing consensual sexting among teens. (The paper argues for retaining the option to prosecute cases involving abuse or malicious forwarding of a sexted picture.) Much of the paper is refreshing for the plain language not often found in legal argumentation; discussing the case of a 16-year-old and 17-year-old who faced child pornography charges for taking sexy pictures of each other, Kushner writes, "They should not have been charged at all because they were not harming each other or anyone else by taking and keeping these pictures." This is exactly the right way to frame the issue, but to most legal scholars, sentences like these are considered simply adorable.

For the other side, you can read "A Legal Response Is Necessary for Self-Produced Child Pornography", by law professor Susan Hanley Duncan. I found it less than convincing because much of the paper stresses that sexting can have serious unforeseen consequences for teens, including public humiliation if the pictures are forwarded to their friends. Well, we know that. But that just raises the obvious question: Isn't that punishment enough, and why do we need criminal charges on top of that? Even buying into the stereotype that teens are focused only on the present -- if a teen is not deterred by the humiliating prospect of having her photo forwarded around the entire school, then why would they be deterred by the threat of prosecution, which is less likely, further out in the future, and a potential risk that they might not even be aware of?

(Note that this logic does not apply to students who forwarded sexted images to harass the person appearing in them -- the person forwarding the image usually does not face the short-term threat of public humiliation, which means a legal penalty might be the only deterrent they would care about. That's one argument for retaining the option to prosecute people who forward sexted pictures maliciously.)

Even the FBI, in their "Advice for Young People" regarding sexting, betrays a certain embarrassment over the hypocritical nature of the laws. To a person forwarding an image of someone else, they warn: "You could face child pornography charges, go to jail, and have to register as a sex offender;" but to the person taking the original picture, they say only vaguely that you could "even get in trouble with the law" -- while leaving out the fact that all of the draconian penalties in their list, also apply to the person who takes the picture, under the laws that the FBI enforces.

But unless or until sexting laws are changed, Maroney probably did violate them according to the statements from her own lawyers, which might lead cynics to think that she escaped being charged because of her celebrity status. I think that's unlikely. Recall that "only" 18% of teens who sexted each other were arrested in cases where the incidents were reported to police, so if she had been a non-celebrity, she probably would have gotten off scot-free as well. Whether a teen gets arrested or charged for "sexting," probably depends less on what they actually did, than the luck of the draw as far as which police officer hears the report of the incident, and which prosecutor ultimately has the discretion to decide whether to file charges. (Of course that makes me a cynic too, but I'm the kind who thinks that people see patterns and non-existent reasons for outcomes that are far more random than we'd like to believe.)

Public reaction is another matter. When District Attorney George Skumanick prosecuted those two girls for posing in their bras making peace signs, he may not have had all of the public on his side, but there would have been an absolute tsunami of outrage if he had tried the same thing against a celebrity like Maroney, trying to get her to write an essay about "what it means to be a girl in today's society." I'm sure she would have been not impressed.

Contributor Bennett Haselton writes with a interesting take on the recent release of racy celebrity photos: "Lawyers for Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney succeeded in getting porn sites to take down her stolen nude photos, on the grounds that she was under 18 in the pictures, which meant they constituted child pornography. If true, that means that under current laws, Maroney could in theory be prosecuted for taking the original pictures. Maybe the laws should be changed?" Read on for the rest.

Online warnings about the dangers of teen sexting, from sources ranging from the FBI to MTV, frequently warn that even a minor who takes a sexually explicit picture of themselves can be prosecuted for violating child pornography laws.

And these prosecutions really do happen. One Pennsylvania district attorney threatened child pornography charges against two teen girls who posed for a photo in their bras making peace signs, and tried to force them to write a report on why their actions were wrong and "what it means to be a girl in today's society." (With the ACLU's help, the girls' parents sued to stop the D.A. from following through.) A study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that in teen "sexting" incidents reported to the police, even in cases where the sexting was between two minors and there were no "aggravating" circumstances (abuse or lack of clear consent), police made arrests in 18% of those cases. (The arrest rate was higher in cases involving "aggravating" circumstances or where an adult was involved in the sexting.)

Meanwhile, hundreds of articles have been written about Porn.com being forced to take down the nude pictures of McKayla Maroney, after receiving word from her lawyers that she was underage when the pictures were taken. As far as I can tell, none of the articles about the incident mentioned that, if her lawyers are correct, then Maroney could be theoretically prosecuted for creating, possessing, and distributing child pornography. Of course nobody wants to see that happen, but the elephant in the living room is that before Maroney's photo leak scandal, many teens were arrested for doing essentially the same thing, and more of them will continue to be arrested after the celebrity nude hacking scandal is old news.

That's not to say that Maroney's photos necessarily did constitute child pornography. Nude or topless photos of minors are not necessarily illegal, if they're not sexually explicit; Thora Birch was under 18 for her topless scene in American Beauty. I haven't seen the Maroney photos (honest -- although I'd like to think that whatever she was doing, she was making her not impressed face). Maybe they really were explicit enough to qualify as child pornography. Maybe they weren't, and Maroney's lawyers misunderstood the law and thought that any of her underage nude or topless selfies were automatically child porn. Or maybe her lawyers knew the pictures were not really child porn, but they were bluffing when they demanded that Porn.com take the pictures down. Whatever the case, Maroney's lawyers claimed the pictures were child pornography, and if they're right, the lawyers just criminally implicated their client as well.

If the pictures really were explicit and she sent them to any of her same-age friends, she could also be charged with disseminating obscene material to a minor. Iowa teenager Jorge Canal was convicted on this charge, and his conviction upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court, after his 14-year-old female friend asked him to send him a picture of his erect penis, and he obliged. (Although since he was 18 at the time of sending the picture, there was no child porn charge.) If his defense attorneys tried a defense along the lines of, "My clients actions harmed absolutely no one, and it's the prosecutors who have ruined the lives of not only my client but also his supposed 'victim', by putting them both through a trauma that will hang over them for the rest of their lives," it didn't work.

Many states have attempted to pass laws specifically addressing sexting by and/or to teenagers by reducing the penalty from a felony child pornography charge to something less severe. What all of these laws still have in common, though, is that they retain the option to impose some criminal penalties on teens for sexting even among themselves. The ACLU has opposed such a bill in Pennsylvania on the grounds that even a misdemeanor charge for teen sexting would be too draconian of a punishment.

"The Need for Sexting Law Reform: Appropriate Punishments for Teenage Behaviors", written by Alexandra Kushner, a legal associate at Winston & Strawn LLP, and published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change, argues for de-criminalizing consensual sexting among teens. (The paper argues for retaining the option to prosecute cases involving abuse or malicious forwarding of a sexted picture.) Much of the paper is refreshing for the plain language not often found in legal argumentation; discussing the case of a 16-year-old and 17-year-old who faced child pornography charges for taking sexy pictures of each other, Kushner writes, "They should not have been charged at all because they were not harming each other or anyone else by taking and keeping these pictures." This is exactly the right way to frame the issue, but to most legal scholars, sentences like these are considered simply adorable.

For the other side, you can read "A Legal Response Is Necessary for Self-Produced Child Pornography", by law professor Susan Hanley Duncan. I found it less than convincing because much of the paper stresses that sexting can have serious unforeseen consequences for teens, including public humiliation if the pictures are forwarded to their friends. Well, we know that. But that just raises the obvious question: Isn't that punishment enough, and why do we need criminal charges on top of that? Even buying into the stereotype that teens are focused only on the present -- if a teen is not deterred by the humiliating prospect of having her photo forwarded around the entire school, then why would they be deterred by the threat of prosecution, which is less likely, further out in the future, and a potential risk that they might not even be aware of?

(Note that this logic does not apply to students who forwarded sexted images to harass the person appearing in them -- the person forwarding the image usually does not face the short-term threat of public humiliation, which means a legal penalty might be the only deterrent they would care about. That's one argument for retaining the option to prosecute people who forward sexted pictures maliciously.)

Even the FBI, in their "Advice for Young People" regarding sexting, betrays a certain embarrassment over the hypocritical nature of the laws. To a person forwarding an image of someone else, they warn: "You could face child pornography charges, go to jail, and have to register as a sex offender;" but to the person taking the original picture, they say only vaguely that you could "even get in trouble with the law" -- while leaving out the fact that all of the draconian penalties in their list, also apply to the person who takes the picture, under the laws that the FBI enforces.

But unless or until sexting laws are changed, Maroney probably did violate them according to the statements from her own lawyers, which might lead cynics to think that she escaped being charged because of her celebrity status. I think that's unlikely. Recall that "only" 18% of teens who sexted each other were arrested in cases where the incidents were reported to police, so if she had been a non-celebrity, she probably would have gotten off scot-free as well. Whether a teen gets arrested or charged for "sexting," probably depends less on what they actually did, than the luck of the draw as far as which police officer hears the report of the incident, and which prosecutor ultimately has the discretion to decide whether to file charges. (Of course that makes me a cynic too, but I'm the kind who thinks that people see patterns and non-existent reasons for outcomes that are far more random than we'd like to believe.)

Public reaction is another matter. When District Attorney George Skumanick prosecuted those two girls for posing in their bras making peace signs, he may not have had all of the public on his side, but there would have been an absolute tsunami of outrage if he had tried the same thing against a celebrity like Maroney, trying to get her to write an essay about "what it means to be a girl in today's society." I'm sure she would have been not impressed.

An anonymous reader writes: Dan Friedman at TechCrunch is ready to call Massive Open Online Courses a failure. Originally hailed as a revolution in learning, MOOCs have seen disappointing course completion numbers. Coursera and Udacity, two of the most prominent online learning hubs, have seen about 8 million enrollments in the past few years. Unfortunately, half of those students didn't even watch a single lecture, and only a few hundred thousand completed the course they signed up for.

Friedman says, "[N]ew technologies enable methods of "learn by doing" that just weren't possible before we could deliver immersive experiences to people's laptops and phones. In the 1960's, Jerome Bruner expanded an educational theory known as constructivism with the idea that students should learn through inquiry under the guidance of a teacher to grasp complex ideas intuitively. That process of trial, failure, and then being shown the correct path has been proven to drive student motivation and retention of learning. What we don't yet know is if that process of trial and failure can become 10x more engaging when delivered through a new medium such as Minecraft or Oculus. ... These new immersive worlds promise to hold the attention of students in ways textbooks never could."

peetm (781139) writes "Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine (now taking an M.Sc. in pure CS) asked me to suggest useful books for her boyfriend: '... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. ... Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ...' Whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favorites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful.

And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject." I'll throw out Pierce's Types and Programming Languages (and probably Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages ), and Okasaki's Purely Functional Data Structures .

peetm (781139) writes "Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine (now taking an M.Sc. in pure CS) asked me to suggest useful books for her boyfriend: '... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. ... Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ...' Whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favorites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful.

And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject." I'll throw out Pierce's Types and Programming Languages (and probably Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages ), and Okasaki's Purely Functional Data Structures .

Zothecula writes "Parkour is all about hurling yourself quickly and efficiently past whatever obstacles are in your path while maintaining as much momentum as possible. It's a challenge for humans, so how would robots fare? In an effort to push the boundaries of robotic agility, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania decided to find out by teaching their RHex robot some Parkour moves." See the Kod*lab homepage for much, much more on the RHex family.

mhore writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first all optical, nanowire-based NAND gate, which paves the way towards photonic devices that manipulate light to perform computations. From the release: 'The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length.' The gate works by shining light on the nanowire structure to turn on and off information transported through the wire. The research appeared this month in Nature Nanotechnology (abstract)."

benrothke writes "In Digital Vertigo: How Todays Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us, author Andrew Keen, who describes himself as the Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley (whatever that means), raises numerous profound questions about social media and its implications on society. In the new world of social media and Web 3.0, which is claiming to revolutionize communication and interactions, Keen writes that history is repeating itself and points to the beginning of the industrial revolution as an example. He writes of Jeremy Bentham who invented the Panopticon; a structure where the inhabitants were watched at all times. Bentham felt the Panopticon could make humanity more virtuous, more hard-working and happier; similar to the promise of Web 3.0. The Panopticon was a failure, and Keen sees the same for Web 3.0. The book is a critique of Web 3.0." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us author Andrew Keen pages 256 publisher St. Martin's Press rating 8/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 0312624980 summary Critique of Web 3.0 While definitions of Web 3.0 vary greatly; Keen focuses on the personalization aspect. His view is that the current Internet culture and the wave of Web 3.0 social software is debasing society.

In this well-researched book, Keen presents two theses: that Web 3.0 is turning into an Orwellian infrastructure and that the hype of the Web 3.0 prognosticators is all hype. For the first point, it is a false premise, while the later has significant merit.

Keen has a misinterpretation of Big Brother and 1984. The book has scores of references to George Orwell, Big Brother, 1984 and related themes. Orwell describes Big Brother as the dictator of a totalitarian state, where the ruling party wields total power over the inhabitants.

In the society that Orwell describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities. Since the publication of 1984, the term has been synonymous for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.

It is hard, if not impossible to see how Facebook and other social media services, which are voluntary and operate on an opt-in model, are anything close to totalitarianism and forced surveillance. The notion that Facebook is absolutism flies in the face of its tens of thousands of groups and topics, often in conflict with each other. Ironically, Keen never mentions the fact that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was born in 1984.

One of the inherent problems with Facebook is that even if a person likes something, it is unclear if they bought the item, truly like it, or simply liked it to enter a raffle or help a friend. That is one of the reasons why General Motors Co. recently announced plans to stop advertising with Facebook. They found that that paid Facebook ads have little impact on consumers car purchases.

And therein is the rub; while all of that information is somewhat nebulous within the databases of Facebook, there is another organization, where substantial amounts of a person's most personal data is stored. That is an organization Keen seems oblivious to. That company is Experian, the largest of the big 3 credit firms.

While someone may like the New York Times on Facebook, Experian knows if the person has a subscription to the Times, what type of subscription they purchased, how long they have been a subscriber and how they paid for it. That is but one small example of the myriad data Experian has. Experian is not a social media company, they are not part of the Web 3.0 social revolution, yet they are significantly more dangerous than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn combined; a fact the book never discusses.

While Keen is critical of the social media wonks that the future will be social, he assumes that their prognostications of a social future are completely accurate. But as Facebook's growth has slowed and the fruits of its IPO stalled, there are many people who are simply tiring of social media.

In the introduction, Keen astutely quotes British philosopher John Stuart Mill that privacy is not only essential to life and liberty it's essential to the pursuit of happiness, in the broader and deepest sense. Keen sees social media in direct contradiction to that notion of privacy.

He closes the chapter with the observation estimating that in 2020; about 50 billion intelligent networked devices such as his BlackBerry Bold will be in use, many of which will be gathering personal data. Note though that at the recent 14th Annual AT&T Cyber Security Conference, one of the speakers put that number closer to 500 billion.

In chapter 1, Keen quotes Julian Assange that Facebook is that world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, names, address, locations, and more. Keen accepts that observation as gospel, uses it as an underpinning in the book, oblivious to Experian, which is interminably more comprehensive and authoritative than Facebook will ever be.

Case in point, many people put their birthday on Facebook as January 1, as it is a required field. While that Facebook data is utter rubbish, Experian has the person's true DOB.

Chapter 1 closes with numerous social media services being termed Orwellian services. It is hard to understand how an opt-in system is Orwellian. The chapter then closes with the histrionic question of "has Nineteen Eighty-Four finally arrived on all of our screens".

The histrionics continue with Orwell and its derivatives being used nearly 10 times on the first page of chapter 2. With that, Keen does note the importance of privacy and how it is being significantly eroded in social media. He quotes social media research scientist Dr. Julie Albright that privacy is taking a back seat to the notion that our every thought, act or desire should be publicized.

There are interesting insights in chapter 2 where he writes that social media has enabled new kinds of collective stupidity, and that it makes it hard for people to think for themselves; rather they simply cite what has already been cited.

He also notes that social media makes it effortless to destroy a life of integrity and a person's reputation. He notes that in our hypervisible age, all it takes is a camcorder and a Skype account to destroy someone's life; using the Dharun Ravi case as an example.

A point Keen perceptively makes is that there is little evidence that with all the sharing in social media, that it actually makes people more forgiving or tolerant. Rather it fuels a mob culture of intolerance, Schadenfreude and revengefulness. He writes that the tolerance that Jeff Jarvis thought Web 3.0 would bring, are in fact fueling the corrosive belligerence that has infected much of the snarky, gotcha public discourse in contemporary society.

Keen writes in depth about Mark Zuckerberg's notion of frictionless sharing and is concerned about its privacy consequences. Yet Zuckerberg's grand plan will only work if everyone opts in, which is still quite speculative.

In chapter 8, much of Keen's fears are allayed when he writes that the truth is that most of us don't want to share everything we read, watch and listen to online. In June 2012, noted security guru Marcus Ranum announced that he was deleting his Facebook account due to the inanity of the posts and invitations.

Keen himself said that he stopped using Facebook as he was embarrassed by some of the things people put up so he decided to close his account; calling it one of the best things he'd ever done online. With that, frictionless sharing goes nowhere.

Chapter 5 — The Cult of the Social, presents some of the most perceptive thoughts in the book. Keen quotes historian John Tresch that today's social media systems encourages people to manage their fame machine, with the goal to build followers and establish their own cloud of glory;but gaining nothing in the long-term.

The book closes with John Stuart Mill's notion that remaining human requires us to sometimes disconnect from society, to remain private, autonomous and secret. The alternate Mill recognized was the tyranny of the majority and the death of individual liberty; which Keen notes is not an unrealistic fear.

Another observation of Mill's that our uniqueness as a species lies in our ability to stand apart from the crowd, to disentangle ourselves from society, to be let alone and to be able to think and act for ourselves. For the proponents of Web 3.0, they see our uniqueness as a species as being social; for Keen, it is the antithesis.

In the book, Keen advocates that we need to ensure the balance between our public and private lives and is rightfully scared of those that say we are heading into a world that will no longer have privacy. Mills notion of the fundamentals of privacy mean that if we abandon it, we lose some of our essence as human beings.

Keen lets the reader know that he is not a Luddite and doesn't advocate completely abandoning social media. As a Twitter devotee, he has found the time to write over 10,000 tweets and amass nearly 20,000 followers.

Overall, Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us is a book well worth reading. Keen raises countless fundamental questions of the underlying hazards of Web 3.0. He writes of our often blind infatuation with this new thing called Web 3.0 in which people are reveling far too much of their inner self, just for the use of a free service.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.

You can purchase Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

slew writes "Looking at liquids with a transmission electron microscope to observe things like crystal growth has been difficult to do. This is because liquids need to be confined to a capsule to view them in a TEM (because the electrons are flying at the sample in a chamber near vaccuum pressures where liquids would evaporate or sublimate). Traditional capsules of Silicon Oxide or Silicon Nitride have been fairly opaque. A paper describes a new technique with a 'pocket' created between two graphene layers which can hold liquids for observation by a TEM and the graphene is apparently much more transparent than previous materials allowing a better view of the processes (like crystalization), taking place in the liquid. The BBC has a non-paywalled summary article."

Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Shea writes in the WSJ that physicists studying Google's massive collection of scanned books claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words, marking an advance in a new field dubbed 'Culturomics': the application of data-crunching to subjects typically considered part of the humanities. Published in Science, their paper gives the best-yet estimate of the true number of words in English — a million, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster's Third New International Dictionary has 348,000), with more than half of the language considered 'dark matter' that has evaded standard dictionaries (PDF). The paper tracked word usage through time (each year, for instance, 1% of the world's English-speaking population switches from 'sneaked' to 'snuck') and found that English continues to grow at a rate of 8,500 new words a year. However the growth rate is slowing, partly because the language is already so rich, the 'marginal utility' of new words is declining. Another discovery is that the death rates for words is rising, largely as a matter of homogenization as regional words disappear and spell-checking programs and vigilant copy editors choke off the chaotic variety of words much more quickly, in effect speeding up the natural selection of words. The authors also identified a universal 'tipping point' in the life cycle of new words: Roughly 30 to 50 years after their birth, words either enter the long-term lexicon or tumble off a cliff into disuse and go '23 skidoo' as children either accept or reject their parents' coinages."

New submitter Guppy writes "A previous story reported widely in the media, and appearing both on Slashdot and XKCD, described a novel cancer treatment, in which a patient's own T-cells were modified using an HIV-derived vector to recognize and kill leukemia cells. In a follow-up publication (PDF), a further development is described which allows for a nearly unlimited choice of target antigens, broadening the types of malignancies potentially treatable with the technique (abstract)."

theodp writes "Back in 2005, Wharton's Michael Useem speculated that IBM's sale of its PC Division to Lenovo was more about ingratiating Big Blue with the Chinese government than getting top dollar for the assets. 'Government relationships are key in China,' Useem explained. Now, a NY Times article on outgoing IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano seems to confirm that Useem's analysis was spot-on. From the NYT article: 'In 2004, I.B.M. sold its PC business to Lenovo of China. Mr. Palmisano says he deflected overtures from Dell and private equity firms, preferring the sale to a company in China for strategic reasons: the Chinese government wants its corporations to expand globally, and by aiding that national goal, I.B.M. enhanced its stature in the lucrative Chinese market, where the government still steers business.'"

Trepidity writes "Controversy continues over the seemingly unstoppable trend of 'gamification' (something we've discussed previously). The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business held a Gamification Symposium entitled 'For The Win' this week, indicating apparent academic respectability. But in the opening panel debating definitions of 'gamification,' one participant, game scholar Ian Bogost, defined it as 'bulls***.' Elsewhere, Jon Radoff responds that it may not be BS, but is too focused on superficial behaviorism rather than deeper gameplay. For my part, I wonder if by claiming gamification is a completely new thing, rather than just a new word, we're missing out on important past lessons, like the very strange history of Soviet gamification."

Hugh Pickens writes "Ever bought something from Xbox Live Arcade? The first time, you may have been a bit bamboozled by the process because Microsoft doesn't just let you put $15 on your credit card to buy a new game; purchases are done in 'Microsoft Points' that you deposit into a virtual wallet and you use the points to buy stuff. 'Gamers possessed of equal parts suspicion and curiosity may wonder why our gaming overlords adopted such a strange system instead of just letting us pay real money for our purchases,' writes game psychologist James Madigan. He says the real reason for Microsoft Points is that sometimes you are going to have some points left over in your account. Leaving money on the table or in your Xbox Live account makes most of us a bit uncomfortable (PDF) because it feels wasteful. 'It's similar to overeating at a buffet or doubling your paper towel use after buying the 124 roll jumbo pack,' says Madigan. 'Even though you could just let those paper towels or Nintendo Points sit there until you have a good reason to use them, spending real money on something else seems wasteful.' And Microsoft isn't the only one – Sony and Nintendo have similar systems, and Valve has even rolled out a 'Steam Wallet' for in-game microtransactions."

An anonymous reader writes "US teams dominated the MAGIC 2010 autonomous robotics competition, mapping and neutralizing simulated bombs at the 250,000 sq. meter Royal Showgrounds in Adelaide, Australia. Leading the pack with a team of fourteen robots was Team Michigan, principally from the University of Michigan, followed by the University of Pennsylvania, and RASR. This contest marks the beginning of practical robots that not only think for themselves, but also actively coordinate with a human commander."

Freddybear writes "University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab posted new video of their scary fast maneuverable quad-rotor drone. It can now fly through openings (hoops) which are themselves moving." The entire list of GRASP projects is worth crawling through.

Freddybear writes "University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab posted new video of their scary fast maneuverable quad-rotor drone. It can now fly through openings (hoops) which are themselves moving." The entire list of GRASP projects is worth crawling through.

xt writes "The Boltzmann equation is old news. What's news is that the 140-year-old equation has been solved, using mathematical techniques from the fields of partial differential equations and harmonic analysis, some as new as five years old. This solution provides a new understanding of the effects due to grazing collisions, when neighboring molecules just glance off one another rather than collide head on. We may not understand the theory, but we'll sure love the applications!"

blair1q writes "A judge in Brooklyn has excluded Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) lie-detector evidence from a trial there. However, the decision will not set a precedent, as it was made without even conducting a hearing on the method's validity, but on the principle, argued by the defense, that 'juries are supposed to decide the credibility of the witness, and fMRI lie detection, even if it could be proven completely accurate, infringes on that right.' That principle can be tested in later hearings, such as one scheduled for May 13, 2010, in Tennessee; in this case, the defense wants to use fMRI evidence it has already collected to prove its client is innocent. fMRI has been shown to be 76-90% accurate. That number seems significantly larger than the rate of false convictions."

alphadogg writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've discovered a way to circumvent the networking technology used by law enforcement to tap phone lines in the US. The flaws they've found 'represent a serious threat to the accuracy and completeness of wiretap records used for both criminal investigation and as evidence in trial,' the researchers say in their paper, set to be presented Thursday at a computer security conference in Chicago. Following up on earlier work on evading analog wiretap devices called loop extenders, the Penn researchers took a deep look at the newer technical standards used to enable wiretapping on telecommunication switches. They found that while these newer devices probably don't suffer from many of the bugs they'd found in the loop extender world, they do introduce new flaws. In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if the connection between the switches and law enforcement are overwhelmed with useless data, something known as a denial of service (DOS) attack."

Death Metal writes "In a working paper titled, 'Is Tom Cruise Threatened? Using Netflix Prize Data to Examine the Long Tail of Electronic Commerce,' Wharton Operations and Information Management professor Serguei Netessine and doctoral student Tom F. Tan pull information from the movie rental company Netflix to explore consumer demand for smash hits and lesser-known films. Netflix made its data available as part of a $1 million prize competition to encourage the development of new ways that will improve its ability to introduce customers to lesser-known titles they might find appealing." In short, the researchers say that the Long Tail effect described by Chris Anderson is much less important in the real world than popularly held. Says the article: "The key difference between the opinion of [Anderson's] book and the study by Wharton researchers is how they define 'hits' and 'niches.' In the book, Anderson focuses on the definition of hits in absolute terms such as the top 10 or top 1,000 products, while Netessine and Tan argue that, to take growing product variety into account, one has to define popularity in relative terms, such as the top 1% or top 10% of products, to properly assess the presence or absence of the Long Tail."

Following up on our earlier discussion, here's more detail on Geoffrey Nunberg's argument that Google Books could prove detrimental to academics and other scholars. Recently Nunberg gave a talk at a conference claiming that the metadata in Google Books is riddled with errors and is classified in a scheme unfit for scholarly use. This blog post was fleshed out somewhat a few days later in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Quoting from the latter: "Start with publication dates. To take Google's word for it, 1899 was a literary annus mirabilis, which saw the publication of Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, [and] Stephen King's Christine... A search on 'internet' in books written before 1950 and turns up 527 hits. ... [Google blames some errors on the originating libraries.] ...the libraries can't be responsible for books mislabeled as Health and Fitness and Antiques and Collectibles, for the simple reason that those categories are drawn from the Book Industry Standards and Communications codes, which are used by the publishers to tell booksellers where to put books on the shelves. ... In short, Google has taken a group of the world's great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore." The head of metadata for Google Books, Jon Orwant, has responded in detail to Numberg's complaints in a comment on the original blog post — and says his team has already fixed the errors that Nunberg so helpfully pointed out.

Following up on our earlier discussion, here's more detail on Geoffrey Nunberg's argument that Google Books could prove detrimental to academics and other scholars. Recently Nunberg gave a talk at a conference claiming that the metadata in Google Books is riddled with errors and is classified in a scheme unfit for scholarly use. This blog post was fleshed out somewhat a few days later in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Quoting from the latter: "Start with publication dates. To take Google's word for it, 1899 was a literary annus mirabilis, which saw the publication of Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, [and] Stephen King's Christine... A search on 'internet' in books written before 1950 and turns up 527 hits. ... [Google blames some errors on the originating libraries.] ...the libraries can't be responsible for books mislabeled as Health and Fitness and Antiques and Collectibles, for the simple reason that those categories are drawn from the Book Industry Standards and Communications codes, which are used by the publishers to tell booksellers where to put books on the shelves. ... In short, Google has taken a group of the world's great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore." The head of metadata for Google Books, Jon Orwant, has responded in detail to Numberg's complaints in a comment on the original blog post — and says his team has already fixed the errors that Nunberg so helpfully pointed out.

DavidMatuszek writes "I will be teaching Java again this Fall. Students work in pairs, but unfortunately (after the first hour) typically not physically together. I would like to find collaborative software that is (1) dead simple to use, because that's not what the course is about, and (2) free. Google Docs would do, but students will be sharing code — plain text — not RTF or HTML or Word files. Is there such software for plain text?"

digitalderbs writes "A problem plaguing most people with multiple computers is the arduous task of synchronizing files between them: documents, pictures, code, or data. Everyone seems to have their own strategies, whether they involve USB drives, emailed attachments, rsync, or a distributed management system, all of which have varying degrees of success in implementing fast synchronization, interoperability, redundancy and versioning, and encryption. Myself, I've used unison for file synchronization and rsnapshot for backups between two Linux servers and a Mac OS X laptop. I've recently considered adding some sophistication by implementing a version control system like subversion, git, or bazaar, but have found some shortcomings in automating commits and pushing updates to all systems. What system do you use to manage your home directories, and how have they worked for you for managing small files (e.g. dot configs) and large (gigabyte binaries of data) together?"

Al writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have immunized monkeys against the simian immunodeficiency virus, the animal model that is closest to HIV. They did so by shuttling a gene into the monkeys' muscles, making the muscle cells produce antibody-like molecules that work against SIV. With both SIV and HIV, the chameleon-like mutability of the virus's surface changes so quickly that most antibodies made by the immune system are soon rendered ineffective. Philip Johnson and colleagues designed DNA sequences for two antibodies known to be effective against SIV. They used antibody-like molecules, called immunoadhesins, in which the functional part of an antibody is fused with a more stable section of another antibody. The same approach could be used to deliver antibodies that are effective against HIV, but which the body doesn't normally produce."

DieNadel writes to share that naturally occurring proteins called "zinc fingers" are being used in a new approach to AIDS treatment. Using modified T-Cells with the zinc fingers, researchers at the Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown a reduction in viral load in mice. "'By inducing mutations in the CCR5 gene using zinc finger proteins, we've reduced the expression of CCR5 surface proteins on T cells, which is necessary for the AIDS virus to enter these immune system cells,' explains first author Elena Perez, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Penn. 'This approach stops the AIDS virus from entering the T cells because it now has an introduced error into the CCR5 gene.'"

OshMan writes "University of Pennsylvania's ModLab is doing some interesting stuff with modular robots. In this case involving absolutely no weapons! An example clip on YouTube shows one of their cluster robots re-assembling itself after being kicked apart. For more information about the program check out their site. So let the Borg and Terminator jokes begin!"

OshMan writes "University of Pennsylvania's ModLab is doing some interesting stuff with modular robots. In this case involving absolutely no weapons! An example clip on YouTube shows one of their cluster robots re-assembling itself after being kicked apart. For more information about the program check out their site. So let the Borg and Terminator jokes begin!"

bbc writes "Project Gutenberg has volunteered to host all it legally can of the IMSLP's catalog. The Canadian provider of free public domain music recently caved to legal threats from an Austrian sheet music seller. On the Book People mailing list, Project Gutenberg's founder Michael Hart wrote: 'Project Gutenberg has volunteered to keep as much of the IMSL Project online as is legally possible, including a few of the items that were demanded to be withdrawn, as well as, when legal, to provide a backup of the entire site, for when the legalities have finally been worked out.'"

gbr writes "I've been trying to automatically synchronize data between a laptop and a server. When the laptop is connected to the network, I want all writes to automatically propagate across to the server. When the laptop is disconnected I want the laptop user to continue working with the local data. When the laptop is reconnected, I want the data to automatically re-sync. The issue is, the data on the server may have changed as well, which needs to propagate back to the laptop. The data doesn't contain anything too special, no database tables etc. It does contain binary data such as executables and word processing documents. I've looked at ChironFS, Unison file sync, and drbd. ChironFS needs a manual rebuild if a connection fails, and the user needs to know which machine contains the correct data. Unison requires the user to initiate the synchronization process manually every time, and drbd is just not meant for the job at hand. How do you automatically, and invisibly to the user (except in the case of conflicts), synchronize between a laptop and a server?"

megazoid81 writes "While there have been complaints of late, Google was recently named the best place to work according to the widely read annual Forbes survey, in its first appearance on the list. The plethora of perks at Google does make you wonder though what kind of hours the company expects its employees to keep. In the context of Google's perks, a Knowledge@Wharton article explains that there are two kinds of workers: segmentors and integrators. Segmentors want to maintain a strict separation between work and home while integrators don't mind mixing the two. The piece posits that segmentors might actually mind too many perks at their workplace and find their commitment eroding. Does Google have a disproportionate number of integrators in its workforce? What kind of worker are you — segmentor or integrator?"

mtruch writes "BLAST, the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope, is about to be launched from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. BLAST is a 2700 kg telescope with a 2 meter primary mirror that hangs from a 1.1 million cubic meter balloon floating at an altitude of 38 km that will study the star formation history of the universe. It will float west at nearly constant latitude for about 14 days until it is (hopefully) located over McMurdo again and will be terminated and recovered. Real time position and flight track is available from the CSBF. Watch the launch live via a crappy webcam link. Three of the graduate students working on the project have photo blogs of much of the prep period, and specifically Don's blog should have launch photos soon (bandwidth to/from McMurdo is at a premium). BLAST made it on Slashdot in the past, when it launched from Sweden in June 2005, and indirectly with an interview with Prof. Barth Netterfield and George Staikos. Yes, the flight computers still run Slack, and yes, we still use kst for data viewing and analysis. There is a Discovery Science show about BLAST and high-altitude balloons, and a future documentary film being made as well."

eldavojohn writes "Richard Berk, a University of Pennsylvania criminologist, has worked with authorities to develop a software tool that predicts who will commit homicide. I could not find any papers published on this topic by Berk, nor any site stating what specific Bayesian / decision tree algorithm / neural net is being implemented." From the article: "The tool works by plugging 30 to 40 variables into a computerized checklist, which in turn produces a score associated with future lethality. 'You can imagine the indicators that might incline someone toward violence: youth; having committed a serious crime at an early age; being a man rather than a woman, and so on. Each, by itself, probably isn't going to make a person pull the trigger. But put them all together and you've got a perfect storm of forces for violence,' Berk said. Asked which, if any, indicators stood out as reliable predicators of homicide, Berk pointed to one in particular: youthful exposure to violence." The software is to enter clinical trials next spring in the Philadelphia probation department. Its intent is to serve as a kind of triage: to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous.

crazybilly writes, "The Language Log, home blog for several professional linguists, posted a story a few days ago about how Microsoft is redefining the word 'genuine' (as in the 'Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative') in an attempt to increase public sympathy for their anti-piracy efforts. From the article: 'An unlicensed copy of Microsoft Windows is perfectly genuine. It has exactly the same functionality as a licensed copy and was made by the same company... I suspect that Microsoft is attempting to redefine "genuine" because it has had a hard time getting sympathy for its actual complaint, namely unlicensed distribution.'"

digitalhermit writes "I guess many folks are of very little brain, and big words bother them... There's a push for simpler spelling. Instead of 'weigh' it would be 'way.' 'Dictionary' would be 'dikshunery' and so forth. Dunno if it's a joke, but it seems in earnest. Mark Twain must be spinning around somewhere." Twain is often credited with the satirical call for spelling reform called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling," though according to Wikipedia, Twain was "actually a supporter of reform," and the piece may have been written by M.J. Shields. Benjamin Franklin was another champion of spelling reform, and even came up with a phonetic alphabet to implement such reform.

MoNickels writes "Turns out, those endless news reports and blog entries in April about "texting makes you stupid" were inaccurate. As linguist Mark Liberman at LanguageLog now reports by way of apologizing to Wilson, it wasn't Wilson's fault, but that of "rotten science journalism." Psychologist Glenn Wilson was reported to have done a study said that chat and email, as the Guardian put it, "are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis." But Wilson says, "This...is a temporary distraction effect—not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 [subjects] somehow became '80 clinical trials.'" The original Slashdot story was covered back in April."

Xandu writes "BLAST, the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope, was launched on the 11th at 11:09 UTC from Esrange in northern Sweden, and is currently floating over Greenland. BLAST is a 2700kg telescope with a 2 meter primary mirror that hangs from a 1.1 million m^3 balloon floating at an altitude of 38km that will study the star formation history of the universe. It will float west at nearly constant latitude for about 5 days before the flight is terminated over northwest Canada or northern Alaska. Real time position and flight track is available from the NSBF. Two of the graduate students working on the project have photo blogs of the entire (8 week) prep period, including several launch photos. The press has more traditional coverage as well. And if that isn't geeky enough to make it on Slashdot, the flight computers run Slack."

efp writes "Mark Liberman posted over in the Language Log that, in considering alternatives to Google's library initiative in Europe, French President Jacques Chirac would consider a partnership with Microsoft 'since he has so many views in common with its president, Bill Gates'. This comes out of talks between the French president, the head of the French National Library and the Minister of Culture, in in part 'building an alter ego to the American project, before thinking of an eventual collaboration with Google, so as not to negotiate from a position of weakness' as they plan to digitize their cultural resources."

opencity writes "A team of scientists at UW-Madison has successfully used single bacterial cells to make tiny bio-electronic circuits. Slipping between the electrodes, the microbes, in effect, become electrical "junctions," giving researchers the ability to capture, interrogate and release bacterial cells one by one. Built into a sensor, such a capability would enable real-time detection of dangerous biological agents, including anthrax and other microbial pathogens. Two mpegs -- 11MB and 35MB -- available here. Related by scale and buzzwords: physorg.com reports scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to sneak nano-sized probes inside cell nuclei, where they can track life's fundamental processes, such as DNA repair, for hours on end. Related cool pictures and strange font choices on Nano-Bio Interface Center."

GerritHoll points out an article in Nature according to which "researchers at the University of Pennsylvania 'say that a "plasmonic cover" could render objects "nearly invisible to an observer.' Earlier attempts at invisibility worked by colouring a screen to match its background, like a chameleon. The described technique is new, because it works by the concept of reducing light scattering. It is not a 'magic cloak,' however, because it will not work for the full range of visible light and needs to be adjusted precisely for the shape of the object. However, the concept could find an application in stealth technology."

theodp writes "While Google pooh-poohed any comparison of its controversial AutoLink feature to Microsoft's SmartTag technology, Google's generation of dynamic links to maps and use of ISBN numbers to trigger links to booksellers cover the same territory as Microsoft's 2000 patent application for Providing electronic commerce actions based on semantically labeled strings, whose sole inventor - Jeff Reynar - was the lead SmartTag Program Manager while at MS and is reportedly now a Google Product Manager who's being credited as AutoLink's creator. Reynar's patent applications that have been assigned to Microsoft, including one for Smart Links and Tags, describe a world of 'recognizer' plug-ins that automatically look at every document a user creates, receives or views, transmitting messages to 'action' plug-ins - and even to the plug-ins' authors - that can be used to decide what info you'll be presented with, what options you'll be given, what price you'll pay for goods, and even who you'll be permitted to buy from."

prostoalex writes "The Economist says linguists are gradually adopting the World Wide Web as a useful corpus for linguistic research. Google is used, among other resources, to research how the written language evolves and how some non-standard examples of usage become more or less acceptable (The Economist quotes the phrase 'He far from succeeded,' where 'far from' is used as an adverb). LanguageLog is a resource linked in the article, where linguists discuss current peculiarities of the English language."

belmolis writes " The New York Times is reporting that the bidding is on for the .net domain currently administered by VeriSign. VeriSign's current contract expires June 30th; applications are due today. Three companies are known to be interested: NeuStar, which currently manages .biz, Afilias, which manages .info, and Denic eG, a non-profit that manages the German .de domain. ICANN is bending over backward to avoid any suggestion of bias due to its conflict with VeriSign over VeriSign's Site Finder "service" and has appointed an independent team to evaluate the applications. VeriSign has been lobbying hard to keep the domain and is reported to have received letters of support from Microsoft and IBM."

secureman writes "It looks like Matt Blaze (the University of Pennsylvania CS professor best known for finding security flaws in the NSA Clipper Chip and in master keyed locks) is still causing trouble in physical security circles. There's a draft paper (dated December '04) on his web site entitled Safecracking for the Computer Scientist, which is a pretty in-depth look at what computer security can learn from safes (and vaults). The interesting thing is that it describes in detail the different ways that safes are cracked, probably revealing techniques that locksmiths would rather you didn't know about (there's a lot of security-by-obscurity there). The conclusion seems to be that while safes can fail, at least they do so in better ways than computer systems do. Warning: it's a 2.5 meg pdf file with lots of pretty pictures."