Technology is addressing surveillance from all angles. If you look, smell, taste, and now sound evil, robocop is authorized to shoot! (but if you're not guilty, it will only be a flesh wound...)
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061122/102805.shtml
Another Reason Not To Raise Your Voice In Public
from the they-can-hear-you dept
We've been pretty amazed at all the innovation in surveillance technology lately. Those grainy videos from convenience stores are rapidly becoming ancient history. The most exciting advances in technologies that can identify certain types of behavior, like violence or just plain old suspiciousness. The latest is some acoustic technology that can identify aggression in somebody's voice. So police can be alerted if it sounds like a fight is about to break out in a store or on the street. One of the big problems with this type of thing is the possibility for false positives. Actions that aren't violent or aggressive may from time to time be identified as such. And if there are too many, it ruins the usefulness of the technology. But perhaps by rolling these technologies together, law enforcement could improve their confidence as each one could confirm what's being picked up on the others. As for the other big problem, the continued erosion of privacy, it doesn't look like any help is on the way.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/INTERNET_PODCASTS?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Study Finds Podcast Use Rising but Small
Nov 22, 12:26 PM EST
NEW YORK (AP) -- A growing number of Americans are listening to podcasts, but very few do so every day.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday that 12 percent of Internet users have downloaded a podcast, an increase from 7 percent earlier in the year.
However, only about 1 percent said they download a podcast on a typical day - unchanged from the survey earlier this year. The rest do so less frequently, perhaps only once.
Podcasts are typically sound files that can be played on personal computers, TiVo Inc.'s digital recorders and music players such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod. Many are regularly scheduled and automatically delivered, and more recently some have incorporated video.
News organizations such as National Public Radio and The Associated Press offer news podcasts throughout the day, while amateurs have produced podcasts once or twice a week to discuss their favorite television shows, among many other subjects.
"While podcast downloading is still an emerging activity primarily enjoyed by early adopters, the range of content now available speaks to both mainstream and niche audiences," said Mary Madden, senior research specialist at Pew. "We are at a crossroads of a major transition in the way media content is delivered and consumed."
Men and online veterans are more likely to download podcasts, according to the telephone survey of 972 adult Internet users, which was conducted Aug. 1-31 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The previous survey was conducted February to April.
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/22/1423216&from=rss
In Search of Stupidity
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 22, @03:06PM from the you-don't-have-to-look-far dept.
Ben Rothke writes "In Search of Stupidity gets its title from the classic, albeit infamous business book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. In Search of Excellence quickly became a best-seller when it came out in 1988 and launched a new era of management consultants and business books. But in 2001, Peters admitted that he falsified the underlying data. Librarians have been slow to move the book to the fiction section." Read the rest of Ben's review.
... The first chapters of the book discuss the story and mythology around the origins of DOS. It details such luminaries as Digital Research, IBM, Microsoft, Bill Gates and Gary Kildall and more. The first myth about Microsoft is the presumption that the original contract with IBM for MS-DOS gave Microsoft an immediate and unfair advantage over its competitors. The reality is that over time, MS-DOS did indeed become Microsoft's cash cow; but it took the idiocy of Apple, IBM and others to make this happen.
Goodbye global warming?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/22/2028258&from=rss
Company Claims New Chip Converts Heat to Electricity
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday November 22, @04:24PM from the confirmed-skeptics-unite dept.
Dster76 writes to tell us that the startup, Eneco, claims to have invented a solid state energy conversion chip which they claim will be able to convert heat directly into electricity or reach temperatures of -200 C when given an electrical current. While such a device could revolutionize many aspects of computing I'll keep my skeptic hat on for the time being.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061122/152739.shtml
DMCA Exemptions Announced; Nothing Much For Consumers
from the keep-on-trying dept
Every few years, the Copyright Office/Library of Congress is supposed to look at requested "exemptions" from the DMCA anti-circumvention rule, where people have presented evidence saying that the law is too onerous under certain circumstances. Just the fact that they admit that the law is often so onerous that it needs regular review for exemptions should point out how problematic the law is -- but that's a debate for another time. The exemptions process itself is filled with problems, and people were pretty upset last time around by the very limited number of exemptions offered. Last year, the EFF even announced that the process was so broken that it served no purpose to file for exemptions that protect consumers.
Today the Copyright Office came out with the list of exemptions. There are six exemptions, which is the largest number so far (though, we're talking a pretty small sample size), though some of them basically appear to be extensions of what was approved last time (such as cracking copy protection on obsolete formats and to allow e-books to be read aloud). They also allow circumvention for mobile phone firmware if it's needed to legally connect to a wireless network, and finally, they dealt with the Sony rootkit issue. Back when the Sony rootkit was big news, some people pointed out that removing it, technically violated the anti-circumvention rule of the DMCA -- but the Copyright Office, in their infinite wisdom, has now said that (thank goodness), you're allowed to circumvent copyright protection if it's on a CD and if it's for audio works and if that copy protection introduces security vulnerabilities, but only to test, investigate or correct the security flaw.
As the EFF notes, all of the proposed exemptions that would protect consumers directly (such as for things like space-shifting, region coding and backing up DVDs) were rejected. So, you may run afoul of the law if you do any of those things to copy protected media. Even though the actions themselves are perfectly legal, getting around copy protection to do them is a violation of the law. Last time these exemptions came out, we hoped that the DMCA would be amended before the next set of exemptions were necessary -- so lets hope that Rick Boucher can finally push through the changes he's been proposing before another three years go by.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/23/0433202&from=rss
Cell Phone Owners Allowed to Break Software Locks
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 23, @04:13AM from the free-at-last dept. Communications News
An anonymous reader writes "The library of congress approved many copyright exemptions today. Among the exemptions were new rules about cell phones, DVDs, and electronic books."
From the article: "Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday. Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations [only 'film professors?' Bob] and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books. All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years. In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs."
It amazes me that this is not a very common business model. Businesses (and schools) are just discarding old licenses and buying new ones rather than upgrading?.
UK firm crosses pond to sell preowned Microsoft licenses
Disclic has closed its first deal selling licenses it procured from companies going out of business in the U.K. to a company in the U.S.
By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service November 22, 2006
A U.K. company that has made a business out of selling preowned licenses for Microsoft Corp. products has brought its products to the U.S. for the first time.
... Customers can access Discount-licensing.com's product search feature here
Unwin said prices for U.S. customers are generally 15 percent less expensive than prices for U.K. customers. The company sells preowned licenses for about 35 percent to 40 percent cheaper than the original cost of the license. [Business model 2.0: sell for 36-41% less! Bob]
Because of these discounts, software resellers have been purchasing software from Discount-licensing.com to sell to their customers so they can make higher margins, [well, duh! Bob] Unwin added.
Discount-licensing.com has added several hundred new customers so far in 2006, in addition to repeat customers. The most popular licenses the company sells are for Office XP, Unwin said. Other product licenses that do well include the SQL Server database and Exchange 2003 messaging server.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2062940,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
OpenOffice Extension Rivals SharePoint
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols November 22, 2006
Most people think that OpenOffice.org is a strong office-suite in its own right. But, when it came to a back-office document collaboration and management engine, like Microsoft SharePoint to enable OpenOffice users to work together, it was a different story.
Things have changed, with the release by Dutch firm O3Spaces B.V. of a program that lets OpenOffice and StarOffice users collaborate on projects.
O3Spaces works by providing users a single web-based team environment, with built-in search capabilities and an optional Java-based Desktop Assistant. Its search functionality is said to work across PDF, ODF, and Microsoft Office document formats.
With its built-in alert capabilities, users can be notified whenever changes are made to their shared information.
Read the full story on Linux-Watch: OpenOffice Extension Rivals SharePoint
There is some real potential here...
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/22/remote-control-mail-check-your-postal-mail-on-the-web/
Remote Control Mail: Check Your Postal Mail on the Web
Marshall Kirkpatrick November 22 2006
Kirkland, Washington based company Document Command Inc. has launched its consumer facing web interface for postal mail called Remote Control Mail. The service provides an alternative to PO Boxes, mail forwarding or waiting until you get home from the road to deal with your mail. The company receives your postal mail, scans the outside of what’s sent to you and provides a web interface to quickly sort through letters, bills, magazines and direct mailings. It looks like a lot of fun and very useful for some people. Though Remote Control Mail is targeted today towards niche users, that market size is not small and there are plans to extend related services to far more users. Document Command is working on a full scale robotics system that will provide even more functionality to institutions and mail customers in general.
Users of the service are able to quickly view the front of anything sent to them and choose between having the items shredded, recycled, archived, opened and scanned or forwarded to wherever they are in the physical world. Future features may include the ability to deposit checks to your bank account and automatically apply signatures to documents with just a few clicks.
Remote Control Mail is now available for personal users for an activation fee of $25 and monthly rates starting at $19.95 per month for up to 5 named mail recipients. Business plans are also available. Customers provide a Remote Control Mail address to anyone sending them mail and the company will forward selected mail wherever you request. Where legally permitted, the company will also forward to international addresses.
Through early testing the company has been able to determine behavioral statistics for postal mail customers with unprecedented detail. The company has found that 30% of incoming envelopes are ordered to be opened and scanned. After being scanned, 13% of recipients asked that the original mail piece be forwarded to them, 53% had the piece recycled and 34% had it shredded.
Those are the kind of aggregate statistics that businesses in many industries will probably pay for and could help things like direct mailings become more targeted and less annoying. Some consumers will no doubt have privacy concerns, but those concerns don’t seem atypical to me relative to what any direct service provider faces.
