Monday, November 21, 2011


Local (One commenter suggest a $100 test for the gullibility gene...)
"Parents are being sold on the idea of buying DNA tests for their kids, to find out which sports they will be better at. The company called Atlas is based in Boulder, Colorado; and is selling DNA tests for $160. They are looking for what's called the ACTN-three gene, the gene behind what is called 'fast-twitch explosive muscles.' Children that don't have ACTN-three will be better suited for endurance sports like long distance running or swimming. Children that have a lot of it will be better suited for sports like football, rugby, wrestling, or hockey. Kids that have some ACTN-three will not be the fastest and not the slowest, they don't burn out the quickest and they don't last the longest. They are categorized as capable of playing just about any type of sport they like."


Is there an expectation of privacy on the street?
"More than 250 cameras in Washington D.C. and its suburbs scan license plates in real time. It's a program that's quietly expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago. Some jurisdictions store the information in a large networked database; others retain it only in the memory of each individual reader's computer, then delete it after several weeks as new data overwrite it. [There must be a method for recalling this data. Why just capture and delete? Bob] A George Mason University study last year found that 37 percent of large police agencies in the United States now use license plate reader technology and that a significant number of other agencies planned to have it by the end of 2011. But the survey found that fewer than 30 percent of the agencies using the tool had researched any legal implications. With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles."
[From the article:
Scores of cameras across the city capture 1,800 images a minute [We call that 30 frame per second video Bob] and download the information into a rapidly expanding archive that can pinpoint people’s movements all over town.
… “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re not driving a stolen car, you’re not committing a crime,” Alessi said, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”


A challenge for Law School students?
Invitation to a Dialogue: Nameless on the Web?
November 21, 2011 by Dissent
Can you legitimately call yourself a privacy advocate or privacy lawyer if you advocate reducing others’ privacy? I don’t think so, and I was very disappointed to read a letter to the editor in today’s New York Times by Christopher Wolf (@privacywolf). Chris writes, in part:
It is time to consider Facebook’s real-name policy as an Internet norm because online identification demonstrably leads to accountability and promotes civility.
People who are able to post anonymously (or pseudonymously) are far more likely to say awful things, sometimes with awful consequences, such as the suicides of cyberbullied young people. The abuse extends to hate-filled and inflammatory comments appended to the online versions of newspaper articles — comments that hijack legitimate discussions of current events and discourage people from participating.
Read more on The New York Times. The paper is inviting readers to respond to Chris’s commentary and they will publish responses and his rejoinder in their Sunday Review.


This is interesting. Perhaps this is how news should be covered for the “SmartPhone” generation?
By Lauren Rabaino on November 18, 2011 2:37 PM
… First tweets go out, sometimes with no links to additional coverage. Then a few grafs go up on a blog, followed by additional updates, either to the top of that post or as new posts. Eventually, a print story gets started, which is posted through an entirely different workflow onto a different-looking story page. This version is usually written as an hourglass-style narrative, following typical print conventions. For the rest of the day, new updates start going to this story rather than the original blog post.
… A few use cases of places doing it right, or at least something closer to right
BBC Live Coverage
When news about the Norway shooters broke a few months ago, The BBC set up a live coverage center where live updates came in a stream in the form of text, photos and blog posts. The dashboard contained updates in realtime of different types. Although it sounds similar to Twitter, the benefit is that BBC owned the platform. They could include updates longer than 140 characters, control formatting, and optionally include tweets, too.


How hard could it be to reconfigure this for Denver?
"As the next redistricting battle shapes up in New York, members of the public have an opportunity to create viable alternatives. Unlike the previously reported crowdsourced redistricting of Los Angeles, the public mapping of New York is based on open source software — anyone can use this to set up their own public web-based redistricting effort."


Geeky stuff
"The world of software is made slightly crazy because of the huge flexibility within any computer language. Once you have absorbed the idea of a compiler written in the language it compiles, what else is there left to gawp at? But... a Java Virtual Machine JVM written in JavaScript seems like another level of insanity. A lone coder, Artur Ventura, has implemented a large part of the standard JVM using JavaScript and you can check the code out on Github. Notice this isn't a Java to JavaScript translator but a real JVM that runs byte code. This means it could run any language that compiles to byte code."
Bonus: on Ventura's website is a set of visual notes from a talk he gave titled "My Language Is Better Than Yours."


More geeky stuff
Wilocity: the 60Ghz wireless revolution begins at CES
If all goes according to Wilocity's plan, the start-up's dream of high-speed wireless networking will take a crucial step toward reality in January.
That's because the company, which is leading the charge for next-generation technology called 802.11ad designed to reach 7 gigabits per second, plans to show off a variety of devices using its technology at the mammoth CES trade show that month.
"We'll be able to show you what your life would be like on 60GHz," said Mark Grodzinsky, Wilocity's vice president of marketing.
… In Wilocity's dream, they will excite people about the possibilities of wireless networking that's faster than what typical computers today can do with a wired connection. For example, a smartphone carried into the office could connect to a keyboard, mouse, and large display. A tablet carried into the den could become a controller for a game shown on the big-screen TV.

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