http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022369.html
September 20, 2009
EU: intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment
EU Project INDECT - "The main objectives of the INDECT project are: to develop a platform for: the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence, to develop the prototype of an integrated, network-centric system supporting the operational activities of police officers, providing techniques and tools for observation of various mobile objects, to develop a new type of search engine combining direct search of images and video based on watermarked contents, and the storage of metadata in the form of digital watermarks, to develop a set of techniques supporting surveillance of internet resources, analysis of the acquired information, and detection of criminal activities and threats."
Interesting, but not new. Very similar to the techniques we used to establish an order of battle based on communications links.
MIT Project "Gaydar" Shakes Privacy Assumpitons
Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 20, @02:57PM from the it's-who-you-know dept.
theodp writes
"At MIT, an experiment that identifies which students are gay is raising new questions about online privacy. Using data from Facebook, two students in an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person's online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. The project, given the name 'Gaydar' by the students, is part of the fast-moving field of social network analysis, which examines what the connections between people can tell us, from predicting who might be a terrorist to the likelihood a person is happy, fat, liberal, or conservative."
MIT professor Hal Abelson, who co-taught the course, is quoted: "That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information — because you don't have control over your information."
Help! Help! The lawyers are conspiring!
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022366.html
September 20, 2009
Survey: Substantial Growth in Online Social Networking by Lawyers Over the Past Year
2009 Networks for Counsel Study - A Global Study of the Legal Industry’s Adoption of Online Professional Networking, Preferences, Usage and Future Predictions - Sample Composition: "The survey was administered to 1,474 counsel – 764 private practice lawyers and 710 corporate counsel –in May and June of 2009; 33 countries were represented. Financial Services, Manufacturing and Healthcare were the top three industries represented."
Key Findings: "Networking remains critical to the legal industry, yet resource constraints make it more difficult than ever; Use of social networking sites has grown significantly over the past year, with three-quarters of all counsel now reporting they are members of a social or professional network.."
Related, via Bloomberg: Lawyer Fees Cut as Company Counsel Network for Tips - "Cash-strapped in-house attorneys are swapping such ideas and other information on Web sites like those owned by LinkedIn Corp., which connects professionals around the world. Corporate lawyers’ use of social networks -- some invitation-only -- grew about 50 percent in 2009, LexisNexis said after surveying 1,474 attorneys."
This is depressing. Grace Hopper said (back before the World Wide Web) that COBOL should be replaced. I don't think we even teach it any more...
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/09/09/21/1214224/COBOL-Celebrates-50-Years?from=rss
COBOL Celebrates 50 Years
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 21, @08:52AM from the cobol-is-for-old-people dept.
oranghutan writes
"The language used to power most of the world's ATMs, COBOL, is turning 50. It also runs about 75 per cent of the world's business applications, so COBOL should be celebrated for making it to half a century. In cricketing terms, that's a good knock. The author says: 'COBOL's fate was decided during a meeting of the Short Range Committee, the organization responsible for submitting the first version of the language in 1959. The meeting was convened after a meeting at the Pentagon first laid down the guidelines for the language. Half a century later, Micro Focus published research which showed people still use COBOL at least 10 times throughout the course of an average working day in Australia. Only 18 per cent of those surveyed, however, had ever actually heard of COBOL.'"
Has technology allowed us to better understand content? Interesting concepts – anyone can make art, not everyone can make a living with their art.
News Content As a Resource, Not a Final Product
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday September 20, @10:48AM from the also-the-book-is-a-hat dept.
Paul Graham has posted an essay questioning whether we ever really paid for "content," as publishers of news and music are saying while they struggle to stay afloat in the digital age. "If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn't better content cost more?" Techdirt's Mike Masnick takes it a step further, suggesting that the content itself should be treated as a resource — one component of many that go into a final product. Masnick also discussed the issue recently with NY Times' columnist David Carr, saying that micropayments won't be the silver bullet the publishers are hoping for because consumers are inundated with free alternatives. "It's putting up a tollbooth on a 50-lane highway where the other 49 lanes have no tollbooth, and there's no specific benefit for paying the toll." Reader newscloud points out that the fall 2009 issue of Harvard's Nieman Reports contains a variety of related essays by journalists, technologists, and researchers.
(Related) A resource for content?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022365.html
September 20, 2009
Federal Register On HeinOnline is Updated Daily
HeinOnline blog: "HeinOnline has had Federal Register coverage back to 1936 for several years now, but restrictions in our production process limited how quickly we could get new Federal Register days online. Recently, those production restrictions were eliminated, and starting at the end of July HeinOnline began updating the Federal Register on a daily basis. This means that you are now able to access yesterday’s Federal Register today. This current content is completely browseable, full-text searchable, and image-based, just like all other content in HeinOnline."
Interesting. Think about the market for education. Postulate students who qualify for a Harvard-level education, but can't go there for any of a hundred reasons (cost being the big one) What is the best alternative?
Bringing Convenience and Open Source Methods To Higher Education
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday September 20, @09:20AM from the i'll-have-a-mcdegree-and-a-diet-coke dept.
Business Week has a piece discussing the effects internet-based technology and open sharing are having on the standards of higher education. The author says every product's success or failure depends on its fidelity — the overall quality of experience — and convenience. Since the internet has made the sharing of even expert-level knowledge convenient, he wonders how long it will be until some school or company raises the fidelity enough to have their degrees accepted alongside those of professional-grade colleges. Quoting:
"Once in a while, a market gets completely out of balance. Forces conspire to prevent either a high-fidelity or high-convenience player from emerging. All the offerings crowd around one end or the other. Eventually, someone nails a disruptive approach. Customers and competitors rush in and the marketplace wonders why that great idea didn't come sooner. The higher education market is a lot like that. For centuries the university model dominated because nothing else worked. No technology existed that might deliver an interactive, engaging educational experience without gathering students and teachers in the same physical space. ... These days broadband Internet, video games, social networks, and other developments could combine to create an online, inexpensive, super-convenient model for higher education. You wouldn't get the sights and sounds of a campus, personal contact with professors, or beer-soaked frat parties, but you'd end up with the knowledge you need and the degree to prove it."
Tools & Techniques
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-simple-free-virtual-drive-tools-to-mount-disks-iso-images/
3 Simple Free Virtual Drive Tools to Mount Disks & ISO Images
Sep. 20th, 2009 By Saikat Basu
… The ISO file (.iso) is just an archive file format of an optical disk. It can be said to be an exact clone of a file system because it’s a byte for byte copy of a disk with all of its data and metadata.
… Using widely available tools called free virtual drive software or Disk Emulators, it’s easy to mount an ISO file (or a disk for that matter) and use it as one would with a disk loaded in the CD tray.
Tools & Techniques
PDF to Word
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Tools & Techniques
ScreenToaster
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