Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said that bookstores and libraries... 'should not be carved out as safe havens for terrorists and spies, who have, in fact, used public libraries to do research and communicate with their co-conspirators.' This comment is simulaneously rediculous and very frightening coming from an officer of a large democracy.
Google and blogger mix to crush Canadian candidate
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Google Never Forgets
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· Score: 1
It is interesting to see this post, as tomorrow is the one year anniversary of a local political scandal involving the Google usenet archive, a popular Canadian political blogger, and a young hopeful running for office in the Province of Alberta's legislature. Essentially, the blogger, a certain National Post collumnist Colby Cosh, posted a link to anti-semetic comments that a New Democratic Party candidate, Malcolm Azania, made in a newsgroup 10 years previously. In the end, Azania came in third in his riding.
It seems to me that the anoymizing technique used in Roti is essentially the same as that used in MUTE. Would anyone more qualified than I care to make a comparison?
slashdot is a national security threat
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Nuclear Fuel How-To
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· Score: 0, Troll
How long until the FBI makes a request to the secret Patriot Act court for all user accounts and weblogs from slashdot? At first this sounds like a humorous and rediculous comment, until you think that one of the powers that the Patriot Act gave to the feds was the ability to look at public library records to see who has been borrowing books on aviation, chemistry, nuclear weapons, and other suspicious subjects. Does freedom have to be the price of security?
Sadly, things are similar in Canada. While education funding agencies (the provincial education ministries in the Canadian system) are motivated by saving money, sadly, schools are often not. And this is despite tight budgets being the norm across the board. A fellow in the energy conservation services business and I (I am in IT consulting) were recently exchanging notes on our recent experiences working with schools. We had both independently come to the conclusion that schools are not motivated by economics, despite, paradoxically, being vocal about inadequate funding. It means very little to a school principal that you have a proposal (for energy savings or IT) that will save a large school board millions of dollars over two or three years, as it means little or no money for his or her school's budget. In Canada, there is currently a prevalence of "school based budgeting" where the bulk of funding received by a school board is distributed to the schools to do with as they see fit. This eliminates almost all opportunity for initiatives that realize efficiencies due to scale, such as significant FOSS deployments.
Do my eyes deceive or did I just read that the unique wireless control mechanisms of this robot will allow developers to implement AI? If that's all we needed, we've been focusing on the wrong areas!
Ah! I have a colleague who never tells anyone that he plays RPGs on a weekly basis, as he is worried that it will impact his career progression. Maybe he is onto something?
I was pleased to hear this announcement and am hopeful that other national library organizations will follow suit in their own jurisdictions - students should not be exposed to a single perspective on this or any issue. To quote Tony Samek, of the University of Alberta's School of Library and Information Studies, "The largest current threat to intellectual freedom in Alberta [Canada] is the dwindling numbers of Teacher-Librarians employed in the province." Who else will defend intellectual freedom in the K-12 system?
One aspect of this discussion that Landsburg does not touch upon is the theory, influenced by biological immunology, that computer vandalism such as writing an Internet worm contributes positively to the Internet's collective resistance to more targeted forms of computer crime, hacking into personal computers in order to perform fraudulent online banking transactions, for example. How could we measure the positive economic value of malware authoring in terms of it's net impact (if any) on reducing the net impact of computer crime? While this question will likely remain unanswered, I doubt we will identify a prosocial angle on murder.
Slashdot Mirror
Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said that bookstores and libraries... 'should not be carved out as safe havens for terrorists and spies, who have, in fact, used public libraries to do research and communicate with their co-conspirators.' This comment is simulaneously rediculous and very frightening coming from an officer of a large democracy.
It is interesting to see this post, as tomorrow is the one year anniversary of a local political scandal involving the Google usenet archive, a popular Canadian political blogger, and a young hopeful running for office in the Province of Alberta's legislature. Essentially, the blogger, a certain National Post collumnist Colby Cosh, posted a link to anti-semetic comments that a New Democratic Party candidate, Malcolm Azania, made in a newsgroup 10 years previously. In the end, Azania came in third in his riding.
Nice summary of the differences. Thanks.
It seems to me that the anoymizing technique used in Roti is essentially the same as that used in MUTE. Would anyone more qualified than I care to make a comparison?
How long until the FBI makes a request to the secret Patriot Act court for all user accounts and weblogs from slashdot? At first this sounds like a humorous and rediculous comment, until you think that one of the powers that the Patriot Act gave to the feds was the ability to look at public library records to see who has been borrowing books on aviation, chemistry, nuclear weapons, and other suspicious subjects. Does freedom have to be the price of security?
Sadly, things are similar in Canada. While education funding agencies (the provincial education ministries in the Canadian system) are motivated by saving money, sadly, schools are often not. And this is despite tight budgets being the norm across the board. A fellow in the energy conservation services business and I (I am in IT consulting) were recently exchanging notes on our recent experiences working with schools. We had both independently come to the conclusion that schools are not motivated by economics, despite, paradoxically, being vocal about inadequate funding. It means very little to a school principal that you have a proposal (for energy savings or IT) that will save a large school board millions of dollars over two or three years, as it means little or no money for his or her school's budget. In Canada, there is currently a prevalence of "school based budgeting" where the bulk of funding received by a school board is distributed to the schools to do with as they see fit. This eliminates almost all opportunity for initiatives that realize efficiencies due to scale, such as significant FOSS deployments.
Do my eyes deceive or did I just read that the unique wireless control mechanisms of this robot will allow developers to implement AI? If that's all we needed, we've been focusing on the wrong areas!
Check out this shot I took today at my local dump.
Ah! I have a colleague who never tells anyone that he plays RPGs on a weekly basis, as he is worried that it will impact his career progression. Maybe he is onto something?
Maybe getting turned down for military service or being religated to a low clearance desk job is not such a bad thing?
Check out the VeriChip FAQ. Also, the ars technica story has some great Bruce Schneier material on the Bush administration's idea for RFID passports.
I was pleased to hear this announcement and am hopeful that other national library organizations will follow suit in their own jurisdictions - students should not be exposed to a single perspective on this or any issue. To quote Tony Samek, of the University of Alberta's School of Library and Information Studies, "The largest current threat to intellectual freedom in Alberta [Canada] is the dwindling numbers of Teacher-Librarians employed in the province." Who else will defend intellectual freedom in the K-12 system?
Sure... try playing go at kgs or at the Dragon Go Server. You can also play go on Yahoo games. If you want to play go against your computer, try gnugo.
One aspect of this discussion that Landsburg does not touch upon is the theory, influenced by biological immunology, that computer vandalism such as writing an Internet worm contributes positively to the Internet's collective resistance to more targeted forms of computer crime, hacking into personal computers in order to perform fraudulent online banking transactions, for example. How could we measure the positive economic value of malware authoring in terms of it's net impact (if any) on reducing the net impact of computer crime? While this question will likely remain unanswered, I doubt we will identify a prosocial angle on murder.