Slashdot Mirror

Hugh Pickens writes "According to Business Week, the traffic accident that left U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson unconscious and alone in his bashed-up Lexus on June 9 raises questions about why the 10th official in line to succeed the president was left so vulnerable. It also highlights potential gaps in security for senior U.S. government officials, who receive varying levels of protection. 'They lost track of him,' says James Carafano, a terrorism scholar at the Heritage Foundation. 'Post 9/11, that's a bit of a head scratcher.' Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who are high in the line of succession and have national-security responsibilities, are provided protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but other federal officials, even in cabinet-level positions or other top posts, often travel without the security details that even a big-city mayor or state governor would be provided. Threats to cabinet-level officials aren't overblown, says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has urged that the government revamp its succession plans and says a nuclear bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated in Washington could leave a headless government. 'The lack of interest in continuity may stem from the same reasons some smart people refuse to create wills, even though failure to do so leaves behind horrific messes for their loved ones,' writes Ornstein. 'Yet the threat is real. Our leaders' failure to establish plans to ensure that our Constitution survives is irresponsible.'"

dcblogs writes "The City of Takoma Park, Md. this week granted a waiver to its public library to allow it to use some new HP hardware, whose products are otherwise banned under its 'nuclear free zone' ordinance. That law, adopted in 1983 one month after the Cold War-era movie 'The Day After' was aired, prohibits the city from buying equipment from any company connected to U.S. nuclear weapons production. The library bought new Linux-based, x86 systems from a Canadian vendor and didn't realize the vendor was using HP hardware. The hardware arrived in April and was unused until the Takoma Park city council granted it a waiver this week. The city's list of banned contractors was developed in 2004 by a now inactive group, Nuclear Free America, and hasn't been updated since."

phy_si_kal writes "The open source Opa project just released its 1.0 version. Opa appeared last year and was discussed a few times. Throughout the year, Opa adopted a JavaScript-like syntax, gained support for MongoDB and now Node.js. Opa positions itself as the enterprise JavaScript framework due to the safety and security provided by its strong static typing system. Indeed, Opa checks the type safety of the application over the whole application, from client, to server, to database. Opa also provides many automation algorithms, such as the automated use of Node.js fibers at runtime, automated client/server and server/database dialog. The site of the project also announces a developer challenge."

phy_si_kal writes "The open source Opa project just released its 1.0 version. Opa appeared last year and was discussed a few times. Throughout the year, Opa adopted a JavaScript-like syntax, gained support for MongoDB and now Node.js. Opa positions itself as the enterprise JavaScript framework due to the safety and security provided by its strong static typing system. Indeed, Opa checks the type safety of the application over the whole application, from client, to server, to database. Opa also provides many automation algorithms, such as the automated use of Node.js fibers at runtime, automated client/server and server/database dialog. The site of the project also announces a developer challenge."

elegie writes "In the US, a District Court has ruled that the Tetris clone "Mino" infringes the Tetris Company's copyrights with regard to elements of the Tetris game design and gameplay. On one hand, a lawyer said that 'a puzzle game where a user manipulates blocks to form lines which disappear' would be noninfringing. At the same time, the Mino game's reuse of such Tetris elements as the dimensions of the playing field and the shape of the blocks constituted infringement. In addition, the Tetris game's artistic elements were not inseparably linked to the underlying mechanics and replicating an underlying idea and/or functionality (which would likely be uncopyrighted) would not justify copying visual expression from an existing game."

snoop.daub writes "R.A. Dickey, pitcher for the New York Mets, has been in the news this week after two dominant pitching performances in a row, holding opponents to one hit in each of the games for the first time since Dave Stieb did it in 1988. He has taken over as the league's only knuckleball pitcher after Tim Wakefield retired last season. But just what is it about the knuckleball that makes it hard to hit? Conventional wisdom has it that the lack of spin on the knuckleball causes it to move in completely unpredictable ways, even changing directions in mid-flight. In the last few years, there has been a lot of good science done to understand baseball pitch trajectories, and a few months ago Prof. Alan M. Nathan showed that knuckleballs aren't really so different from other pitches. It turns out that the same 9-parameter equation that can be used to describe other pitch trajectories applies just as well to the knuckleball. The difference appears to be that, like in a chaotic system, knuckleballs depend sensitively on the initial conditions, so that small changes can cause randomly different forces at the start of the pitch which determine the resultant trajectory. Much of this and similar work depends on the Pitchf/x tool, which has recorded the complete trajectory, spin angle and spin rate of every MLB pitch since 2007! Baseball really does have the best sports stats geeks."

MojoKid writes "At the International Supercomputing Conference today, Intel announced that Knights corner, the company's first commercial Many Integrated Core product will ship commercially in 2012. The descendent of the processor formerly known as Larrabee also gets a new brand name — Xeon Phi. The idea behind Intel's new push is that the highly efficient Xeon E5 architecture (eight-core, 32nm Sandy Bridge) fuels the basic x86 cluster, while the Many Integrated Core CPUs that grew out of the failed Larrabee GPU offer unparalleled performance scaling and break new ground. The challenges Intel is trying to surmount are considerable. We've successfully pushed from teraflops to petaflops, but exaflops (or exascale computing) currently demands more processors and power than it's feasible to provide in the next 5-7 years. Intel's MIC is targeted at hammering away at that barrier and create new opportunities for supercomputing deployments."

MojoKid writes "At the International Supercomputing Conference today, Intel announced that Knights corner, the company's first commercial Many Integrated Core product will ship commercially in 2012. The descendent of the processor formerly known as Larrabee also gets a new brand name — Xeon Phi. The idea behind Intel's new push is that the highly efficient Xeon E5 architecture (eight-core, 32nm Sandy Bridge) fuels the basic x86 cluster, while the Many Integrated Core CPUs that grew out of the failed Larrabee GPU offer unparalleled performance scaling and break new ground. The challenges Intel is trying to surmount are considerable. We've successfully pushed from teraflops to petaflops, but exaflops (or exascale computing) currently demands more processors and power than it's feasible to provide in the next 5-7 years. Intel's MIC is targeted at hammering away at that barrier and create new opportunities for supercomputing deployments."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shipud writes "Sequencing the genome of an organism is not the end of a discovery process; rather, it is a beginning. It's the equivalent of discovering a book whose words (genes) are there, but their meaning is yet unknown. Biocurators are the people who annotate genes — find out what they do — through literature search and the supervised use of computational techniques. A recent study published in PLoS Computational Biology shows that biocurators probably perform no better than fully automated computational methods used to annotate genes. It is not clear whether this is because the software is of high quality, or both curators and software need to improve their performance. The author of this blog post uses the concept of the uncanny valley to explain this recent discovery and what it means to both life science and artificial intelligence."

ColdWetDog writes "The US Air Force / DARPA 'baby shuttle,' the Boeing-built XB-37B has just landed after 469 days in orbit. No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days other than 'because we could.' I, for one, welcome our long duration, unmanned orbital overlords."

First time accepted submitter Quillem writes "Muthu Alagappan, a 5'9" biomechanical engineering undergraduate at Stanford, made a presentation at this year's MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which might well do to basketball what Moneyball did to baseball. His contribution revolves around a topographical analysis of NBA games which contends that there are really 13 positions in basketball — not just five. Besides a rather patronising — but informative — read in Gentlemen's Quarterly, there are earlier stories over at Wired and NYT blogs. Muthu's talk and slides are also available."

eldavojohn writes "A new report (PDF) from Climate Central shows that climate change has been affecting some states more than others for the past 100 years. As you can see from a video released by NASA, things have become most problematic since the 70s. Among the states most affected is Minnesota, where moose populations are estimated to have dropped 50% in the past six years. Now the U.S. Department of Energy is spending $50 million on a massive project at the Marcell Experimental Forest to build controlled sections of 36 feet wide and 32 feet tall transparent chambers over peatland ecosystems. Although peat bogs only account for 3% of Earth's surface, they contain over 30% of carbon stored in soil. They aim to manipulate these enclosures to see the effects of warming up to 15 degrees, searching for a tipping point and also observing what new ecosystems might arise. The project hopes to draw attention and analysis from hundreds of scientists and researchers around the globe."

Last week, you asked questions of Vermont Senate candidate Jeremy Hansen, running on an unusual platform: Hansen pledges to take advantage of modern communications if elected, and (with exceptions he outlines in his answers) vote based on the opinion of his district's voters on a per-issue basis. Read below Hansen's answers about such a system could work; he addresses concerns about security, practicality, morality, and more. "Before I start with the answers," he writes in introduction, "I want to clear a few things up. I am running as an independent for a Vermont Senate seat, not the U.S. Senate, so questions about classified and similar material do not (for the most part) apply. Also, for everyone's reference, there are 44,000 registered voters in Vermont's Washington County Senate district. Many of the concerns about managing input from very large populations are not as applicable here." Read on for more. Constitution?
by MyFirstNameIsPaul

What will you do when your constituents want you to violate the Constitution?

Jeremy Hansen: I would do the same thing as anyone else who has sworn an oath to "support the Constitution of the State of Vermont and the Constitution of the United States.": Tell them no.

Or when appropriate, I could suggest that an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary.

There is a "release valve" in all of this: the representative. I am not suggesting unfettered direct democracy. Part of my proposal is to reserve the right to vote in opposition to majority sentiment if I have a moral (or in this case, Constitutional) objection. At that point, I offer my constituents the opportunity to initiate a vote on whether everyone believes I should remain in office. If the majority votes that I made a mistake overriding the previous vote, I step down.

What is your participation threshold?
by Burz

It is conceivable there would be many bills that do not have popular attention, but which are still critically important to a functioning society. Will you require a minimum number of votes on an issue before going against your own better judgement, or will any amount of citizen input suffice to direct you?

JH: Even in a small district like Washington County, I agree that we do need a participation threshold. The threshold should be high enough to ensure a representative (though clearly non-random) sample, but not so high as to discourage participation and make the whole feedback process moot. If we pretend for a moment to have a random sample, a threshold of 2000 votes would seem to me a reasonable compromise between the two: at a 99% confidence level, that gives a confidence interval of 2.82.

Do you think direct democracy is the answer?
by PCM2

California has been running an ongoing experiment with direct democracy for many years, and here IMHO it's mostly been an abysmal failure.

Of course, the classic example of direct democracy gone wrong in California is Proposition 13, which put strict limits on property taxes, and as a result, impoverished school districts, libraries, fire departments, and other community services in many areas. Debate over the bill was so contentious at the time, and continues to be to this day, that to even approach the idea of repealing it is considered a political death sentence, so no representative has the will to do it.

So to repeat my question: Are you really sure this is a good idea?

JH: Am I 100% certain that it will work? No, but I am very confident that it will be an improvement. As Majid Behrouzi puts it in his second volume of "Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen," "[Democracy] is primarily about individual citizens experiencing political power directly and doing so on an ongoing basis." This is a goal that I believe we can reach, even if only initially at the county level.

California's situation is strange; I'll give you that. Here's a set of Economist articles (http://www.economist.com/node/18563638) (thanks r0ball) that talks about how strange it is, with a glimmer of hope towards the end:

"Switzerland, whence California imported the idea, the initiative process works well. In some of the other 23 American states that practise some variant, it works better than in others. So the problem is not direct democracy as such, or even the initiative process, but the details of its Californian variant. It needs to be fixed, not eliminated."

I'm also encouraged that I'm not the only (and certainly not the first) one pursuing this idea:

• Phil Dodds, current candidate for the House of Representatives in Florida
• The Pirate Party's Liquid Feedback
• Sweden's Aktiv Demokrati
• Online Party of Canada
• UK's People's Administration
• Australia's Senator Online

Campaign Confusion
by eldavojohn

Why would someone who feels that their important issue views are a minority ever vote for you? Clearly an opponent of yours could approach the LBGT community and say "Hey, Hansen's going to ask the population if you guys can get married and you're the minority so don't plan on that ever passing." Or the Atheists, the rich businessmen, the greens, the unions, any very specific religious group, etc (the list goes on). And by the time they're done pointing out how the majority are going to "oppress" the minority for all these interest groups, they've covered a large part of the population. How are you going campaign against something like this? Surely you can't even run on a position in response to any of these questions? Your answer will always be "Whatever the most people want." So how will you combat such a strategy?

JH: In part, I expect that all reasonable points of view will be presented. What I'm proposing is not perfect, and I can't hope to solve every problem with our current system of representation. Minorities already get short shrift more often than the majority, so I am not convinced what I'm proposing is in fact worse. I have felt quite comfortable explaining my position to individuals interested in minority position issues, and they have seemed receptive to the idea. You can't make everybody happy all the time, but you can provide citizens with more of a voice in the decisions that affect them.

How do you ensure the poll is representative?
by gstoddart

If you let everyone vote on a web page, you're self selecting for technology literate, able to afford an internet connection, and politically engaged enough to care to vote.

If the same 10% or so vote on every issue, you might end up with skewed results.

And, as has been pointed out, you'd need to be sure the system was secure and had some validation in it -- otherwise you have no idea if you can trust the votes. Then of course, all of your voters are essentially on record for having voted for/against something.

It sounds like a good idea in theory, but the devil is always in the details.

JH: Part of my proposal is to incorporate offline "town hall"-style meetings and other non-Internet communications so that those citizens who aren't tech savvy or who don't have reliable Internet connections can still participate.

The short answer about trying to prevent skewed results is that I really can't. By having a participation threshold, the "release valve", and by widely publicizing the way the votes are going, we can mitigate some of the risk of skewed results. When an issue comes up for a vote, I will provide an analysis and justification for how I would vote if it were only my decision but ultimately leave the decision in the hands of the citizens. I also think that adding a deliberative component (discussion forums and such), citizens will hopefully have as much information as they need to make informed choices.

Citizens should be able to change their votes as new information comes to light, and would not necessarily be able to be tied to their previous votes.

How do you plan on handling the political "game"?
by MetalliQaZ

I like the concept of taking direction directly from the will of your constituents, but how do you plan on handling...politics? More specifically, when the party needs votes and deals have been made, how will you stand up to the leadership and refuse to take part? Will that not render you an outsider and remove valuable (perhaps necessary) political clout? It seems like the Washington political machine is incompatible with direct democracy.

JH: The good news about running as an independent, is that I don't have leadership to stand up to. (Also, recall as I mentioned above, that this is a state legislative position, and the only Washington that I will be interacting with directly is Washington County, Vermont) Still, I think you're right that politics will come up, and any sort of compromise/exchange of votes would have to be presented to my constituents as such. This could certainly remove valuable political clout, but I think my proposal is valuable enough on its own that I'm willing to sacrifice the clout if it comes down to that. I suspect that some constituents will react with indignance and some will think that compromise is a good idea. It's not often that a situation comes up with a simple black or white answer — this is where I feel the power of deliberation and discussion becomes apparent.

Security
by macaran

How will you ensure that only your constituents vote on the topic, and that they vote only once?

Security?
by eldavojohn

How are you going to stop someone from hacking this system? How will accountability be implemented while protecting voter's anonymity (so that employers or other interested parties with leverage can't influence their vote)?

JH: It will probably be difficult. Not that my credentials and experience will necessarily guarantee a secure final product, but I do have experience doing OWASP and PCI audits and source code review. I also have a good deal of knowledge in the field of cryptology and the ugly history of electronic voting. I know that there are solutions out there that allow for secure, auditable voting. Keep in mind that the electronic voting will probably not be the be-all end-all method for citizens to communicate their opinions. I see the methods that we already use to communicate to our elected representatives still being important: phone calls, emails, face-to-face meetings, snail mail. I have a list of all my constituents who are registered to vote, so cross-checking with that authoritative list will be an important component of the system. You say your name is John Q. Public from Woodbury, VT? An automated phone call or a card mailed to the address on file could verify John's identity and set him up with a username/password. (As a side effect, this might also be a good way to motivate voter registration.) For the anonymity and employer influence question, stay tuned for the "vote buying" answer below.

What is Right but Unpopular
by eldavojohn

Throughout history many leaders -- Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman and even George W. Bush -- have made decisions that they felt were "right" but were definitely unpopular. Post hoc, we can see the effects and judge those actions. Now these were all high level actions but similar things do happen at the state and county level. Example: Your county's schools are failing horribly and need money but the only place you have money is vehicle tax that is supposed to go to your roads. You propose (if you are even going to take such actions) to move some money from the road fund to the schools -- sacrificing potential traffic problems in the name of education and staying above backwater Mississippi standards. Your populace (who have completed high school and already make long commutes) disagree with you when their vote fails to pass the proposition. What do you do? Maybe an example closer to home: With soaring copper prices, someone proposes to reopen The Elizabeth Mine, but the EPA warns you that clean up from 150 years of abuse hasn't even concluded yet. Unfortunately your populace votes for their jobs and temporary income over the environment, what do you do?

JH: In part, the "release valve" could come into play as previously described, but alternatively, tools like participatory budgeting or other feedback mechanisms to help everyone understand the long-term ramifications of decisions.

Don't you risk vote buying?
by Kupfernigk

In effect, isn't there a risk that following your idea will simply mean that you will vote according to who buys the most online votes, whether by advertising or direct corruption? In this country (the UK) there is a long history of people voting for extreme parties or positions in elections that do not seem to matter. We believe that our representatives have not only the right, but the duty, to identify what is best for their constituents rather than simply to follow whoever shouts loudest.

JH: Right now, it's those with the money that tend to shout loudest anyways — this is something that will be somewhat mitigated by my proposal. It's easier to sway the opinion of a single politician than it is to expect the same effect on a sizable majority of their constituents. The "return on investment" for a lobbyist could be as high as 22,000%.

In terms of vote buying, we have absentee ballots for the general election with the same risk and arguably more serious consequences. As I mentioned earlier, changing one's vote at any time should be no problem. Vote the way the "buyer" is paying you for, then change it back later.

I find the claim that representatives doing "what is best for their constituents [even when they don't know it's good for them]" a bit paternalistic. Phil Dodds put it well in a recent message to me: "[People are] weighing ‘direct democracy' against a fictitious idealized representative democracy. It is not helpful to idealize the current system." I agree with Phil here and think our current system is unrepresentative and far more sensitive to corporate interests than it is to the people for whom the government ostensibly works.

Do You Experience Any Apprehension?
by eldavojohn

At the prospect of going from a professor of deterministic systems to someone who will be a part of and responding to an inherently chaotic and non-deterministic system?

JH: Not all of computer science is deterministic systems, of course — randomized algorithms, Monte Carlo simulations, and genetic programming all involve an element of randomness. I also teach, which one could certainly argue is a pretty chaotic system. I have spent a lot of time with real IT systems, which do not always behave the way that they should. I have two kids under 5 — you want to talk about random?

More seriously, this is a new challenge for me, and I don't doubt that it will be a lot of work both as I campaign and build the system, but also should I be elected, to actually deliver what I'm promising. I believe all of this work will be worthwhile — any apprehension I might have is tempered by feeling that what I'm doing is right.

Hansen adds this note: "I'd like to thank those that contacted me with contributions and offers of technical help — I appreciate both, but will definitely need more help on the software side of things starting immediately and through the end of the year as we build the platform I discuss in more depth on my site and in the answers below. We hope to have something concrete to show by the end of the summer. In particular, thanks to candidate Phil Dodds, project facilitator Drew Nolan, and e-Democracy researcher/consultant Kyle Rivers for the work they've already done."

Last week, you asked questions of Vermont Senate candidate Jeremy Hansen, running on an unusual platform: Hansen pledges to take advantage of modern communications if elected, and (with exceptions he outlines in his answers) vote based on the opinion of his district's voters on a per-issue basis. Read below Hansen's answers about such a system could work; he addresses concerns about security, practicality, morality, and more. "Before I start with the answers," he writes in introduction, "I want to clear a few things up. I am running as an independent for a Vermont Senate seat, not the U.S. Senate, so questions about classified and similar material do not (for the most part) apply. Also, for everyone's reference, there are 44,000 registered voters in Vermont's Washington County Senate district. Many of the concerns about managing input from very large populations are not as applicable here." Read on for more. Constitution?
by MyFirstNameIsPaul

What will you do when your constituents want you to violate the Constitution?

Jeremy Hansen: I would do the same thing as anyone else who has sworn an oath to "support the Constitution of the State of Vermont and the Constitution of the United States.": Tell them no.

Or when appropriate, I could suggest that an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary.

There is a "release valve" in all of this: the representative. I am not suggesting unfettered direct democracy. Part of my proposal is to reserve the right to vote in opposition to majority sentiment if I have a moral (or in this case, Constitutional) objection. At that point, I offer my constituents the opportunity to initiate a vote on whether everyone believes I should remain in office. If the majority votes that I made a mistake overriding the previous vote, I step down.

What is your participation threshold?
by Burz

It is conceivable there would be many bills that do not have popular attention, but which are still critically important to a functioning society. Will you require a minimum number of votes on an issue before going against your own better judgement, or will any amount of citizen input suffice to direct you?

JH: Even in a small district like Washington County, I agree that we do need a participation threshold. The threshold should be high enough to ensure a representative (though clearly non-random) sample, but not so high as to discourage participation and make the whole feedback process moot. If we pretend for a moment to have a random sample, a threshold of 2000 votes would seem to me a reasonable compromise between the two: at a 99% confidence level, that gives a confidence interval of 2.82.

Do you think direct democracy is the answer?
by PCM2

California has been running an ongoing experiment with direct democracy for many years, and here IMHO it's mostly been an abysmal failure.

Of course, the classic example of direct democracy gone wrong in California is Proposition 13, which put strict limits on property taxes, and as a result, impoverished school districts, libraries, fire departments, and other community services in many areas. Debate over the bill was so contentious at the time, and continues to be to this day, that to even approach the idea of repealing it is considered a political death sentence, so no representative has the will to do it.

So to repeat my question: Are you really sure this is a good idea?

JH: Am I 100% certain that it will work? No, but I am very confident that it will be an improvement. As Majid Behrouzi puts it in his second volume of "Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen," "[Democracy] is primarily about individual citizens experiencing political power directly and doing so on an ongoing basis." This is a goal that I believe we can reach, even if only initially at the county level.

California's situation is strange; I'll give you that. Here's a set of Economist articles (http://www.economist.com/node/18563638) (thanks r0ball) that talks about how strange it is, with a glimmer of hope towards the end:

"Switzerland, whence California imported the idea, the initiative process works well. In some of the other 23 American states that practise some variant, it works better than in others. So the problem is not direct democracy as such, or even the initiative process, but the details of its Californian variant. It needs to be fixed, not eliminated."

I'm also encouraged that I'm not the only (and certainly not the first) one pursuing this idea:

• Phil Dodds, current candidate for the House of Representatives in Florida
• The Pirate Party's Liquid Feedback
• Sweden's Aktiv Demokrati
• Online Party of Canada
• UK's People's Administration
• Australia's Senator Online

Campaign Confusion
by eldavojohn

Why would someone who feels that their important issue views are a minority ever vote for you? Clearly an opponent of yours could approach the LBGT community and say "Hey, Hansen's going to ask the population if you guys can get married and you're the minority so don't plan on that ever passing." Or the Atheists, the rich businessmen, the greens, the unions, any very specific religious group, etc (the list goes on). And by the time they're done pointing out how the majority are going to "oppress" the minority for all these interest groups, they've covered a large part of the population. How are you going campaign against something like this? Surely you can't even run on a position in response to any of these questions? Your answer will always be "Whatever the most people want." So how will you combat such a strategy?

JH: In part, I expect that all reasonable points of view will be presented. What I'm proposing is not perfect, and I can't hope to solve every problem with our current system of representation. Minorities already get short shrift more often than the majority, so I am not convinced what I'm proposing is in fact worse. I have felt quite comfortable explaining my position to individuals interested in minority position issues, and they have seemed receptive to the idea. You can't make everybody happy all the time, but you can provide citizens with more of a voice in the decisions that affect them.

How do you ensure the poll is representative?
by gstoddart

If you let everyone vote on a web page, you're self selecting for technology literate, able to afford an internet connection, and politically engaged enough to care to vote.

If the same 10% or so vote on every issue, you might end up with skewed results.

And, as has been pointed out, you'd need to be sure the system was secure and had some validation in it -- otherwise you have no idea if you can trust the votes. Then of course, all of your voters are essentially on record for having voted for/against something.

It sounds like a good idea in theory, but the devil is always in the details.

JH: Part of my proposal is to incorporate offline "town hall"-style meetings and other non-Internet communications so that those citizens who aren't tech savvy or who don't have reliable Internet connections can still participate.

The short answer about trying to prevent skewed results is that I really can't. By having a participation threshold, the "release valve", and by widely publicizing the way the votes are going, we can mitigate some of the risk of skewed results. When an issue comes up for a vote, I will provide an analysis and justification for how I would vote if it were only my decision but ultimately leave the decision in the hands of the citizens. I also think that adding a deliberative component (discussion forums and such), citizens will hopefully have as much information as they need to make informed choices.

Citizens should be able to change their votes as new information comes to light, and would not necessarily be able to be tied to their previous votes.

How do you plan on handling the political "game"?
by MetalliQaZ

I like the concept of taking direction directly from the will of your constituents, but how do you plan on handling...politics? More specifically, when the party needs votes and deals have been made, how will you stand up to the leadership and refuse to take part? Will that not render you an outsider and remove valuable (perhaps necessary) political clout? It seems like the Washington political machine is incompatible with direct democracy.

JH: The good news about running as an independent, is that I don't have leadership to stand up to. (Also, recall as I mentioned above, that this is a state legislative position, and the only Washington that I will be interacting with directly is Washington County, Vermont) Still, I think you're right that politics will come up, and any sort of compromise/exchange of votes would have to be presented to my constituents as such. This could certainly remove valuable political clout, but I think my proposal is valuable enough on its own that I'm willing to sacrifice the clout if it comes down to that. I suspect that some constituents will react with indignance and some will think that compromise is a good idea. It's not often that a situation comes up with a simple black or white answer — this is where I feel the power of deliberation and discussion becomes apparent.

Security
by macaran

How will you ensure that only your constituents vote on the topic, and that they vote only once?

Security?
by eldavojohn

How are you going to stop someone from hacking this system? How will accountability be implemented while protecting voter's anonymity (so that employers or other interested parties with leverage can't influence their vote)?

JH: It will probably be difficult. Not that my credentials and experience will necessarily guarantee a secure final product, but I do have experience doing OWASP and PCI audits and source code review. I also have a good deal of knowledge in the field of cryptology and the ugly history of electronic voting. I know that there are solutions out there that allow for secure, auditable voting. Keep in mind that the electronic voting will probably not be the be-all end-all method for citizens to communicate their opinions. I see the methods that we already use to communicate to our elected representatives still being important: phone calls, emails, face-to-face meetings, snail mail. I have a list of all my constituents who are registered to vote, so cross-checking with that authoritative list will be an important component of the system. You say your name is John Q. Public from Woodbury, VT? An automated phone call or a card mailed to the address on file could verify John's identity and set him up with a username/password. (As a side effect, this might also be a good way to motivate voter registration.) For the anonymity and employer influence question, stay tuned for the "vote buying" answer below.

What is Right but Unpopular
by eldavojohn

Throughout history many leaders -- Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman and even George W. Bush -- have made decisions that they felt were "right" but were definitely unpopular. Post hoc, we can see the effects and judge those actions. Now these were all high level actions but similar things do happen at the state and county level. Example: Your county's schools are failing horribly and need money but the only place you have money is vehicle tax that is supposed to go to your roads. You propose (if you are even going to take such actions) to move some money from the road fund to the schools -- sacrificing potential traffic problems in the name of education and staying above backwater Mississippi standards. Your populace (who have completed high school and already make long commutes) disagree with you when their vote fails to pass the proposition. What do you do? Maybe an example closer to home: With soaring copper prices, someone proposes to reopen The Elizabeth Mine, but the EPA warns you that clean up from 150 years of abuse hasn't even concluded yet. Unfortunately your populace votes for their jobs and temporary income over the environment, what do you do?

JH: In part, the "release valve" could come into play as previously described, but alternatively, tools like participatory budgeting or other feedback mechanisms to help everyone understand the long-term ramifications of decisions.

Don't you risk vote buying?
by Kupfernigk

In effect, isn't there a risk that following your idea will simply mean that you will vote according to who buys the most online votes, whether by advertising or direct corruption? In this country (the UK) there is a long history of people voting for extreme parties or positions in elections that do not seem to matter. We believe that our representatives have not only the right, but the duty, to identify what is best for their constituents rather than simply to follow whoever shouts loudest.

JH: Right now, it's those with the money that tend to shout loudest anyways — this is something that will be somewhat mitigated by my proposal. It's easier to sway the opinion of a single politician than it is to expect the same effect on a sizable majority of their constituents. The "return on investment" for a lobbyist could be as high as 22,000%.

In terms of vote buying, we have absentee ballots for the general election with the same risk and arguably more serious consequences. As I mentioned earlier, changing one's vote at any time should be no problem. Vote the way the "buyer" is paying you for, then change it back later.

I find the claim that representatives doing "what is best for their constituents [even when they don't know it's good for them]" a bit paternalistic. Phil Dodds put it well in a recent message to me: "[People are] weighing ‘direct democracy' against a fictitious idealized representative democracy. It is not helpful to idealize the current system." I agree with Phil here and think our current system is unrepresentative and far more sensitive to corporate interests than it is to the people for whom the government ostensibly works.

Do You Experience Any Apprehension?
by eldavojohn

At the prospect of going from a professor of deterministic systems to someone who will be a part of and responding to an inherently chaotic and non-deterministic system?

JH: Not all of computer science is deterministic systems, of course — randomized algorithms, Monte Carlo simulations, and genetic programming all involve an element of randomness. I also teach, which one could certainly argue is a pretty chaotic system. I have spent a lot of time with real IT systems, which do not always behave the way that they should. I have two kids under 5 — you want to talk about random?

More seriously, this is a new challenge for me, and I don't doubt that it will be a lot of work both as I campaign and build the system, but also should I be elected, to actually deliver what I'm promising. I believe all of this work will be worthwhile — any apprehension I might have is tempered by feeling that what I'm doing is right.

Hansen adds this note: "I'd like to thank those that contacted me with contributions and offers of technical help — I appreciate both, but will definitely need more help on the software side of things starting immediately and through the end of the year as we build the platform I discuss in more depth on my site and in the answers below. We hope to have something concrete to show by the end of the summer. In particular, thanks to candidate Phil Dodds, project facilitator Drew Nolan, and e-Democracy researcher/consultant Kyle Rivers for the work they've already done."

ananyo writes "Hungary's Medical Research Council (ETT), which advises the government on health policy, has asked public prosecutors to investigate a genetic-diagnostic company that certified that a member of parliament did not have Roma or Jewish heritage. The MP in question is a member of the far-right Jobbik party, which won 17% of the votes in the general election of April 2010. He apparently requested the certificate from the firm Nagy Gén Diagnostic and Research. The company produced the document in September 2010, a few weeks before local elections. Nagy Gén scanned 18 positions in the MP's genome for variants that it says are characteristic of Roma and Jewish ethnic groups; its report concludes that Roma and Jewish ancestry can be ruled out." Adds ananyo: "The test is of-course nonsense, and notions of 'racial purity' have long been discredited." Just when you think the world is too modern for such things, modernity gets hijacked by flim-flam.

Hugh Pickens writes "Garance Franke-Ruta writes about a new study of racially charged search terms on Google that aims to predict the effects of the Bradley effect, a theory proposed to explain observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some U.S. elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. 'How much we are under-representing people who are intolerant and therefore unlikely to vote for Obama is an open question,' says Andrew Kohut, the president of Pew Research Center. 'I suspect not a great deal, but maybe some. And "maybe some" could be crucial in a tight election.' The study found that the percentage of an area's total Google searches from 2004-2007 that included the racially charged search for the word 'n****r' is a is a large and robust negative predictor of Obama's vote share. 'A one standard deviation increase in an area's racially charged search is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in Obama's vote share, controlling for John Kerry's vote share,' writes Stephens-Davidowitz in the study. The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points (PDF) of the national popular vote in the 2008 election. This implies racial animus gave Obama's opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage, country-wide."

coondoggie writes with an update on the Mars Science Laboratory. From the article: "Even as it hurtles towards an August 5 rendezvous with the red planet, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is being fine-tuned for a more precise landing and better operations once it reaches its destination. NASA today gave a status report for the MSL which was launched November 2011, and is still over 17.5 million kilometers away from Mars. Of major interest today was the fact NASA said it has narrowed landing target for the Mars rover, Curiosity letting it touch down closer to its ultimate destination for science operations, but also closer to the foot of a mountain slope that poses a landing hazard, the agency said." From NASA: "The larger ellipse, 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) by 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) was already smaller than the landing target area for any previous Mars mission, due to this mission's techniques for improved landing precision. Continuing analysis after the Nov. 26, 2011, launch resulted in confidence in landing within an even smaller area [handy diagram], about 12 miles by 4 miles (20 by 7 kilometers). Using the smaller ellipse, the Mars Science Laboratory Project also moved the center of the target closer to the mountain, which holds geological layers that are the prime destination for the rover. ... 'We're trimming the distance we'll have to drive after landing by almost half,' said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager ... 'That could get us to the mountain months earlier.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Version 3.0 of MorphOS has been released. It's the independent PPC OS designed for outdated Apple systems like G4 PowerBooks (5,6; 5,7; 5,8; or 5,9) and eMacs (1.25 GHz/1.42 GHz) and PPC Mac Minis, and some G4 PowerMac models (depends on graphics hardware). It further runs on discontinued and niche Genesi desktop systems (Pegasos) and the stunted 128-megabyte-of-RAM tiny Efika. MorphOS is a nice-looking, low-resource, and nimble OS that can't match the capabilities of current Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its installation/live CD is free without caveat, and runs for 30 minutes at a time, as many times as you like. You may purchase MorphOS to remove the time limit. A particular weakness of MorphOS is its lack of support for wireless networking."

New submitter nagalman writes "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, receiver of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."

New submitter nagalman writes "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, receiver of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."

New submitter nagalman writes "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, receiver of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."

An anonymous reader writes "JEDEC hasn't finalized the upcoming DDR4 standard yet, but it seems they left out licensing some crucial IP for (the already finalized and shipping) LRDIMMs (for use on data center servers). As a result they are only produced by one source which is facing some hurdles justifying their copying of IP. This article discusses how DDR4 is based on LRDIMMs and the future of memory. Quoting: 'JEDEC finalized the LRDIMM standard without securing licensing on load reduction and rank multiplication. Inphi, currently the only maker of LRDIMM buffer chipsets – others have backed off – lost a challenge of Netlist IP at the USPTO. As a result the Netlist patents have become stronger and are going to come back and bite Inphi in Netlist vs. Inphi, which was stayed pending these patent reexaminations – patents which survive re-examination can never again be challenged in court. NLST patents ’537 and ’274 survived with all claims intact, which is a powerful statement on the strength of their IP – Inphi has appealed to the BPAI, but the USPTO decision is telling.'"

stevegee58 writes "After 25 years on the air, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers) are calling it quits in September. With their nerdy humor, explosive laughter and geek cred (both MIT alums) Tom and Ray will be sorely missed by the average NPR-listening Slashdotter." How many garages have names as cool as "Hacker's Haven"? I've long thought that someone should assemble a compilation featuring nothing but hours of their laughter. (Which will be available for sampling, since they will continue to play archived material for a long time yet.)

stevegee58 writes "After 25 years on the air, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers) are calling it quits in September. With their nerdy humor, explosive laughter and geek cred (both MIT alums) Tom and Ray will be sorely missed by the average NPR-listening Slashdotter." How many garages have names as cool as "Hacker's Haven"? I've long thought that someone should assemble a compilation featuring nothing but hours of their laughter. (Which will be available for sampling, since they will continue to play archived material for a long time yet.)

reebmmm writes "Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, voluntarily sitting as a district court judge, in the patent infringement dispute between Apple and Motorola has, tentatively, dismissed the case on the eve of trial. In this hilariously short order, Judge Posner states, 'I have tentatively decided that the case should be dismissed with prejudice because neither party can establish a right to relief.' Because it is 'with prejudice' the parties cannot refile their case. The parties are likely to appeal the order (when it's finalized)."

ideonexus writes "Years ago Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, a blog seeking to educate the public about elections forecasting, established his model as one of the most accurate in existence, rising from a fairly unknown statistician working in baseball to one of the most respected names in election forecasting. In this article he describes all the factors that go into his predictions. A fascinating overview of the process of modeling a chaotic system."

An anonymous reader writes "CERT/CC has called out AMD for having insecure video drivers. AMD/ATI video drivers are incompatible with system-wide ASLR. 'Always On' DEP combined with 'Always On' ASLR are effective exploit mitigations. However, most people don't know about 'Always On' ASLR since Microsoft had to hide it from EMET with an 'EnableUnsafeSettings' registry key — because AMD/ATI video drivers will cause a BSOD on boot if 'Always On' ASLR is enabled."

sfcrazy writes "Red Hat's Tim Burke has clarified Fedora/Red Hat's solution to Microsoft's secure boot implementation. He said, 'Some conspiracy theorists bristle at the thought of Red Hat and other Linux distributions using a Microsoft initiated key registration scheme. Suffice it to say that Red Hat would not have endorsed this model if we were not comfortable that it is a good-faith initiative.'" Color me unimpressed, and certainly concerned: "A healthy dynamic of the Linux open source development model is the ability to roll-your-own. For example, users take Fedora and rebuild custom variants to meet personal interest or experiment in new innovations. Such creative individuals can also participate by simply enrolling in the $99 one time fee to license UEFI. For users performing local customization, they will have the ability to self-register their own trusted keys on their own systems at no cost." From what I can tell, the worst fears of the trusted computing initiative are coming true despite any justifications from Red Hat here. Note that the ability to install your owns keys is certainly not a guaranteed right.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla currently has an experimental project on github called Shumway to try to interpret SWF (aka Flash files) using browser-standard technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript. All I can say is please and thank you! 'Shumway is an HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance. Shumway is community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Our goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering SWFs. Integration with Firefox is a possibility if the experiment proves successful.'" It's not the first such attempt; here's a post from a few years back about one called Smokescreen, and another about QuickTime programmer Steve Perlman's subscription-based workaround for iDevices.

garymortimer writes with news of the test flight of a hydrogen powered UAV. From the article: "Phantom Eye's innovative and environmentally responsible liquid-hydrogen propulsion system will allow the aircraft to stay on station for up to four days while providing persistent monitoring over large areas at a ceiling of up to 65,000 feet, creating only water as a byproduct. The demonstrator, with its 150-foot wingspan, is capable of carrying a 450-pound payload."

jkauzlar writes "Believe it or not, it's been 18 years since Design Patterns by Gamma, et al, first began to hit the desks of programmers world-wide. This was a work of undeniable influence and usefulness, but there is criticism however that pattern-abuse has lead to over-architected software. This failure is perhaps due to wide-spread use of patterns as templates instead of understanding their underlying 'grammar' of this language such that it may be applied gracefully to the problem at hand. What's been missing until now is a sufficiently authoritative study of design patterns at this 'grammatical' level of abstraction. Jason McC. Smith, through a surprisingly captivating series of analytic twists and turns, has developed a theory of Elemental Design Patterns that may yet rejuvenate this aging topic." Keep reading for the rest of Joe's review. Elemental Design Patterns author Jason McC. Smith pages 368 publisher Addison-Wesley Professional rating 9/10 reviewer Joe Kauzlarich ISBN 978-0321711922 summary Software Design Much as developing a large taxonomy of star-types in astronomy lead to and enabled theories of star formation, or a classification of organic life lead to studies of genetics, it makes sense that the large volumes of collected object-oriented design patterns should somehow lead to a generic understanding of them. Smith actually approached this in an attempt to solve a very practical problem: given the variety of ways a particular pattern can be implemented, how can one be recognized programmatically with a degree of certainty?

What's most fascinating about Elemental Design Patterns is the analysis performed in working out a solution to the question of how a pattern may be defined in a way that's language-agnostic and flexible to differing implementations. This was a success: his resulting pattern recognition tool even found unintentional usages of well-known design patterns in a large legacy code base, which could then be refactored from the ugly 'accidental usage' to transform apparent chaos into maintainable order.

The basic idea is that every pattern is composed of elemental patterns. For example, the 'Factory Method' pattern may be decomposed into four EDPs (elemental design patterns): 'Create Object', 'Fulfill Method', 'Conglomeration' and 'Retrieve'. The 'Pattern Instance Notation', introduced in this book, and which serves as an extension to UML, helps visualize the relationships between the four sub-patterns and the larger pattern. No doubt readers will find the notation useful in their own work.

This premise's success or failure hinges on two questions: are the set of patterns really elemental? and can the set of patterns be complete? Oddly, the patterns listed in the book are NOT complete: "this book touches on only one-quarter, at best, of the possible EDPs that exist" (p. 107). The fact that this book (which defines 16 patterns in depth) is only the beginning of a project is not well-communicated. Those who might benefit from a complete listing of EDPs (i.e. analysis tool makers) might be puzzled at how to immediately put this book to use if it's not complete. After all, Smith insists in the Preface that "this book is meant to be used." To me, this implies it should serve as more than a basis for research or design-skills edification.

As for them being elemental, in the sense that all possible 'macro-patterns' may be built from them, Smith backs up this claim with the help of a mathematical formal system called rho-calculus, which is introduced in some depth in the appendix, but avoided in the body of the text for readability's sake. Readers wanting a full mathematical treatment are referred to Smith's Ph.D thesis.

What makes the book worth reading and re-reading is in the methods employed to analytically derive EDPs. As dull as I probably make it sound, Smith gives the entertaining first half of the book an almost 'novelistic', first-person quality in which the reader is engaged to experience Smith's insights first-hand. In a sense, the EDPs are 'unfolded' from simple concepts like the degrees of method or object similarity in a method-call relationship.

Understanding this point is important to understanding EDPs: a method call is not just a method call from a 'micro-patterns' perspective. Calling a very different method on the same object is semantically distinct from calling a very similar method on a very different object. The first is described by the EDP 'Conglomeration' (breaking larger tasks into subtasks); the second, by the EDP 'Redirection' (redirecting a process to another object). Of course, the terms 'similar' and 'different' are fuzzy qualifiers to programmers and there's bound to be some debate on how these terms are applied. Smith, in order to make this distinction, puts faith in the developer's ability to name classes and methods. But anyway, such 'semantic' relationships are the real building-blocks of the higher-level patterns. Once other object-oriented principles are considered, like inheritance, the EDP list grows.

The importance of Elemental Design Patterns from a designer's perspective should now be more clear. I kept stressing the word 'semantic' in the last paragraph because what this book strives to do is provide a *language* for describing object-oriented structure that, first of all, doesn't rely on the OO language itself (C++, Smalltalk, Java, Javascript, etc), and more notably, which takes into account the designer's purpose for employing simple devices like method calls and class extension. As I said earlier, a method call is not just a method call. There may be a dozen or so 'structural' reasons to call a method, and each reason is given it's own 'word' (i.e. EDP) in Smith's language. It stands to reason that a designer with a firmer grasp on his own intentions is a more effective designer.

You can purchase Elemental Design Patterns from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

alphabet26 writes "The Canadian Information Processing Society has formally responded to the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act introduced in February of this year. Bill C-30 would grant authorities extended powers to monitor and track Canadians online. In the statement CIPS recommends that the Government of Canada 'prohibit access to personal information, related records/data, content, communications or records of internet use without the safeguard of a warrant.' CIPS is a non-profit organization that represents Canadian IT professionals and is a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)."

closer2it writes "At this week's All Things D conference, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher invited Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel. He spoke about things like TV not dying, cord-cutting being some kind of myth, and that googlers are smart guys and they should do something about the stealing of content. Josh Topolsky, from The Verge, apparently challenged him (video) on this point, asking: 'Aren't you saying that the road is responsible for the fact that someone drove on it before they robbed my house?' Emanuel didn't like this analogy, and even ended the reply asking Topolsky where he works. Mike Masnick also wrote a piece about the interview. I guess that if the Internet has enemies, I'd say Emanuel gives them a face."

eldavojohn writes "The title of this hard-hitting piece of journalism reads 'Powerful 'Flame' cyberweapon tied to popular Angry Birds game,' and opens with, 'The most sophisticated and powerful cyberweapon uncovered to date was written in the LUA computer language, cyber security experts tell Fox News — the same one used to make the incredibly popular Angry Birds game.' The rest of the details that are actually pertinent to the story follow that important message. The graphic for this story? Perhaps a map of Iran, or the LUA logo, or maybe the stereotyped evil hacker in a ski mask? Nope, all Angry Birds. Describing LUA as 'Gamer Code,' Fox for some reason (popularity?) selects Angry Birds from an insanely long list in their article implying guilt-by-shared-development-language. I'm not sure if explaining machine language to them would alleviate the perceived problem or cause them to burn their desktops in the streets and launch a new crusade to protect the children."

Hugh Pickens writes "Rebecca Rosen writes that if you've recently opened up — or, more specifically, tried to open up — a CFL light bulb, you can sympathize with the question posted on Quora last year, 'What is the worst piece of design ever done?' The site's users have given resounding support to one answer: plastic clamshell packaging. 'Design should help solve problems' — clamshells are supposed to make it harder to steal small products and easier for employees to arrange on display — but this packaging, says Anita Schillhorn, makes new ones, such as time wasted, frustration, and the little nicks and scrapes people incur as they just try to get their damn lightbulb out. The problem is so pervasive there is even a Wikipedia page devoted to 'wrap rage,' 'the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open hard-to-remove packaging.' Amazon and Wal-Mart are prodding more manufacturers to change their packaging to cut waste. 'We've gotten e-mails from customers who've purchased scissors in a clamshell, which would require another pair of scissors to open the package,' says Nadia Shouraboura, Amazon's vice president of global fulfillment. Other worthy answers to the Quora question include the interfaces on most microwaves, TV remotes, New York City's parking signs, and pull-handles on push-only doors, but none gained even close to the level of popular repudiation that clamshells received."

ideonexus writes "Republicans in North Carolina are floating a bill that would force planners to only consider historical data in predicting the sea-level rise (SLR) for the state as opposed to considering projections that take Global Warming into account. NC-20, the pro-development lobbying group representing twenty counties along the NC coast, is behind the effort and asserts that the one-meter prediction would prohibit development on too much land as opposed to SLR predictions of 3.9 to 15.6 inches." Scientific American has an acerbic take on the bill.

sirlark writes with an update on the protracted legal proceedings regarding Julian Assange's extradition to Sweden: "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost his Supreme Court fight against extradition to Sweden to face accusations of sex offenses. The judgement was reached by a majority of five to two, the court's president, Lord Phillips, told the hearing. Mr Assange's legal team was given 14 days to consider the ruling before a final decision is made, leaving the possibility the case could be reheard." This may, however, not be the end. From the article: "Lord Phillips said five of the justices agreed the warrant had been lawful because the Swedish prosecutor behind the warrant could be considered a proper 'judicial authority' even it they were not specifically mentioned in legislation or international agreements. This point of law had not been simple to resolve, said Lord Phillips, and two of the justices, Lady Hale and Lord Mance, had disagreed with the decision. But Ms Rose immediately indicated she could challenge the judgement saying that it relied on a 1969 convention relating to how treaties should be implemented. She said this convention had not been raised during the hearing. " This led to the court staying the order until June 13th to give Assange's lawyers time to argue this avenue.

Hugh Pickens writes "According to noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, sometime in the next 15 to 30 years scientific discoveries about evolution will have accelerated to the point that 'even the skeptics can accept it.' 'If you don't like the word evolution, I don't care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God.' Leakey began his work searching for fossils in the mid-1960s and his team unearthed a nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton in 1984 that became known as 'Turkana Boy,' the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature. At 67, Leakey conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise, and the family claims to have unearthed 'much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.' Leakey, an atheist, insists he has no animosity toward religion."

theodp writes "Covered earlier on Slashdot, but lost in the buzz over the Google driverless car is Project Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), Europe's experiment with 'vehicle platooning,' which has successfully completed a 125 mile road test on a busy Spain motorway. Three Volvos drove themselves by automatically following a truck in the presence of other, normal road users. The Register reports that on-board cameras, radar and laser tracking allow each vehicle to monitor the one in front, and wirelessly streamed data from the lead vehicle tells each car when to accelerate, break and turn."

mikejuk writes "Following the successful defense of the Internet against SOPA, website owners are being invited to sign up to a project that will enable them to participate in future protest campaign, the Internet Defense League. The banner logo for the 'bat-signal' site is a cat, a reference to Ethan Zuckerman's cute cat theory of digital activism. The idea is that sites would respond to the call to "defend the Internet" by joining a group blackout or getting users to sign petitions. From the article: 'Website owners can sign up on the IDL website to add a bit of code to their sites (or receive code by email at the time of a campaign) that can be triggered in the case of a crisis like SOPA. This would add an "activist call-to-action" to all participating sites - such as a banner asking users to sign petitions, or in extreme cases blackout the site, as proved effective in the SOPA/PIPA protest of January 2012.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Continuing its tradition of reverse engineering and fabricating its stockpile of 40-year old American weaponry, Iran announced that it is about to unveil its first ever domestically produced Cobra attack choppers. Nearly 50 years after the U.S. introduced the legendary Bell AH-1 Cobra, once the backbone of the U.S. Army's attack helicopter fleet, Iran's locally-grown Cobras will be armed with 'different types of home-made caliber guns, rockets and missiles,' according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. 'All the phases of designing and manufacturing of the chopper have been done inside the country and the helicopter enjoys some capabilities which make it preferable to Apache Choppers,' says Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari. Iranian officials stress that Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country, reports the FARS news release. More photos available here."

Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that a fire that swept through a nuclear-powered submarine in dry dock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has caused such extensive damage to its forward compartments that the 22-year-old Los Angeles-class attack submarine might have to be scrapped. 'These submarines were designed decades ago. So they're no longer state of the art,' says analyst Loren Thompson. 'If this vessel returns to service, I will be amazed.' The fire broke out while the Miami was on a 20-month stay at the shipyard for an overhaul, and it took firefighters from more than a dozen agencies twelve hours to put out the fire, described as intense, smoky, and a 'hot scary mess.' 'It takes a lot of guts to go into a burning building. But the idea of going into a submarine full of hot toxic smoke — that's real courage,' said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree after meeting with the shipyard commander. Firefighters isolated the flames so they would not spread to nuclear propulsion spaces at the rear of the submarine. There was nuclear fuel on board the sub, but the reactor has been shut down for two months and was unaffected. Rear Admiral Rick Breckenridge says an investigation has been launched into what caused the fire, but he expects that investigation to take a long time to complete and wouldn't say if human error has been ruled out as a cause of the fire, or if the focus is on mechanical issues."

ananyo writes "After 35 years, astronomer Jill Tarter is retiring from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) — a field she helped pioneer and popularize, most recently at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter, who inspired the late Carl Sagan to create the fictional character Ellie Arroway, heroine of the book and movie Contact, says she will instead focus her efforts on what she calls 'the search for intelligent funding.'"

ananyo writes "After 35 years, astronomer Jill Tarter is retiring from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) — a field she helped pioneer and popularize, most recently at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter, who inspired the late Carl Sagan to create the fictional character Ellie Arroway, heroine of the book and movie Contact, says she will instead focus her efforts on what she calls 'the search for intelligent funding.'"