http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12066
Report: Intel developing new automotive black box
July 12, 2010 by Dissent
Zach Bowman writes:
Big Brother really wants to get into your future vehicle. Intel is currently hard at work on the next generation of vehicle event data recorders, the infamous black boxes that Congress has clamored for since Toyota’s unintended acceleration problems dominated headlines earlier this year. According to The New York Times, these new black boxes may do a lot more than just record things like vehicle speed and whether you’re wearing your seatbelt. Intel’s prototype will incorporate GPS and all of a vehicle’s onboard cameras for real-time mapping of the road conditions.
As if that’s not intrusive enough, Intel proposes that the EDRs record up to 30 seconds of interior video as well.
Read more on AutoBlog.
Preparing the way for Behavioral Advertising?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024687.html
July 11, 2010
Yahoo Research: The Demographics of Web Search
The Demographics of Web Search, Weber, I.; Castillo, C. SIGIR, ACM Press, Geneva, Switzerland (2010)
"How does the web search behavior of "rich" and "poor" people differ? Do men and women tend to click on different results for the same query? What are some queries almost exclusively issued by African Americans? These are some of the questions we address in this study. Our research combines three data sources: the query log of a major US-based web search engine, profile information provided by 28 million of its users (birth year, gender and zip code), and US-census information including detailed demographic information aggregated at the level of ZIP code. Through this combination we can annotate each query with, e.g., the average per-capita income in the ZIP code it originated from. Though conceptually simple, this combination immediately creates a powerful demographic profiling tool. The main contributions of this work are the following. First, we provide a demographic description of a large sample of search engine users in the US and show that it agrees well with the distribution of the US population. Second, we describe how different segments of the population differ in their search behavior, e.g. with respect to the diversity of formulated queries or with respect to the clicked URLs. [Consider using this information “backwards” to place an individual user into a “Segment” for behavioral advertising purposes. Bob] Third, we explore applications of our methodology to improve web search and, in particular, to help issuing query reformulations. These results enable the creation of a powerful tool for improved user modeling in practice, with many applications including improving web search and advertising. For instance, advertisements for "family vacations" could be adapted to the (expected) income of the person issuing the query, or search suggestions shown to users could be adapted to items that are more interesting given their particular characteristics."
This is an interesting take on Copyright...
Brazil Forbids DRM On the Public Domain
Posted by kdawson on Monday July 12, @12:55AM
"Cory Doctorow reports that the Brazilian equivalent of DMCA explicitly forbids using DRM-like techniques on works in the public domain. 'Brazil has just created the best-ever implementation of WCT [WIPO Copyright Treaty]. In Brazil's version of the law, you can break DRM without breaking the law, provided you're not also committing a copyright violation.' This means that, unlike the US, where it is illegal to break DRM, in Brazil it is illegal to break the public domain."
Could this be the true impact of Google?
The Creativity Crisis
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 11, @09:26AM
"For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. ... Like intelligence tests, Torrance's test — a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist — has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect — each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling. Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. 'It's very clear, and the decrease is very significant,' Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America — from kindergarten through sixth grade — for whom the decline is 'most serious.'"
This has been tried before and eventually will be accepted. The first true global currency?
Bitcoin Releases Version 0.3
Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 11, @05:09PM
"How's this for a disruptive technology? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network. Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government."
Here are the FAQ a paper describing Bitcoin in more technical detail (PDF), and the Wikipedia article. Note: a commercial service called BitCoin Ltd., in pre-alpha at bitcoin.com, bears no relation to the open source digital currency.
Describing our world statistically...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024690.html
July 11, 2010
Pew Report - Mobile Access 2010
Mobile Access 2010 - Six in ten Americans go online wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone; African-Americans and 18-29 year olds lead the way in the use of cell phone data applications, but older adults are gaining ground. July 7, 2010. Aaron Smith, Research Specialist
"Cell phone and wireless laptop internet use have each grown more prevalent over the last year. Nearly half of all adults (47%) go online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card (up from the 39% who did so as of April 2009) while 40% of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). This means that 59% of adults now access the internet wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone—that is, they answered “yes” to at least one of these wireless access pathways. That adds up to an increase from the 51% who used a laptop or cell phone wirelessly in April 2009."
Think of this as (one slice of) the government's database of bad ideas! What a fun tool.
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=37114
DoD — Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure Updates
The updated encyclopedia now offers 155 pages of actual violations by Government personnel.
(Related)
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=37111
DoD — 2010 Ethics Counselor’s Deskbook
Each chapter addresses a separate ethics topic and provides an introduction with explanation of the applicable references to rules and regulations and ethical principles in each area.
Customizing the Internet. Perhaps I could get my students to create a start page for each class?
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/ustart-org-have-a-start-page-of-your-very-own
uStart.org - Have A Start Page Of Your Very Own
uStart is a new website that will give you a ready chance to have your own start page - and a start page that is quite dynamic at that. If you decide to create a start page using uStart you will not merely aggregate links to all your most-visited sites together, you will actually have access to what has been updated on these sites right from your start page. This is possible because what you add is not just a tile reading the name of the site but actually a widget that reflects a website’s each and every change.
Creating a uStart page is very easy, as a wizard is provided to guide you all along the way. You can proceed to add the widgets that you want displayed one by one, and all the categories that you could possibly want to have featured on your own page are certain to be featured. Sports, video games, economy, TV series… these are just four that I chose at random, and they are all representative of most people’s interests. And the same goes for another category that haven’t mentioned yet, made up of pages named “Your Gmail”, “Your Facebook” and “Your Twitter”.
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