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| compos mentis. Concision. Media. Clarity. Memes. Context. Melange. Confluence. Mishmash. Conflation. Mellifluous. Conviviality. Miscellany. Confelicity. Milieu. Cogent. Minty. Concoction. |
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| Topic: Business |
10:35 am EDT, Sep 28, 2003 |
Youth Intelligence is passionate about young people. We try to know everything about them. We read what they're reading, watch what they're watching, shop where they're shopping, and play what they're playing. Were constantly talking, relating, and connecting with them. We are the eyes, ears, and interpreters of today's youth culture. We are here to connect the dots for our clients. We filter our countless conversations, experiences, and interactions into insights. We provide fresh ideas and relevant strategies. We challenge traditional ways of thinking. We foster creativity and imagination. In doing so, we hope to exceed our client's expectations. This is the company we are today. Youth Intelligence |
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The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide |
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| Topic: Society |
10:21 am EDT, Sep 28, 2003 |
Once upon a time, a party host could send dread through the room by saying, "Let me show you the slides from our trip!" Now, that dread has spread to every corner of the culture ... When the bullets are flying, no one is safe. ... "a virus, rather than a narrative form" ... The relentless and lazy use of the program as a replacement for real discourse continues to inspire attacks. The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide |
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| Topic: History |
1:40 am EDT, Sep 28, 2003 |
From an article in Forbes magazine, circa January 1994: Entertainment is becoming as mobile as money. In the 1950s, Hollywood moguls established hegemony by monopolizing U.S. movie theaters. Antitrust litigators forced a divestiture. Hollywood has since reinvested in theaters, but today's antitrust police just yawn, because theaters now account for barely 20% of movie revenues. Television deals generate just under 40%. The biggest single earner is tapes for videocassette recorders, those pernicious Japanese gadgets that Hollywood worked so hard to kill a decade ago. The VCR, it turned out, was a superhighway in a box -- just what Hollywood needed to double its profits. More recently, a Beatles movie was transmitted in highly compressed form over the Internet. Within a few years it will be as easy to download compressed movies by telephone as it is to unload the family fortune. ... Nobody has any clear idea what will be the dominant distribution medium for entertainment or wealth at the end of the decade. You can be pretty sure, however, that it won't be whatever culture police choose to guard most closely. The New Maginot Line |
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EFF: Flawed E-Voting Standard Sent Back to Drawing Board |
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| Topic: Technology |
9:16 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
EFF last week called on IEEE members and other citizens to voice their concerns about the standard. Nearly five hundred people wrote to IEEE leadership pointing out flaws in the draft standard. On September 22, the first working group ballot on the draft failed overwhelmingly, causing the simultaneous ballot at the sponsor level to fail as well. EFF: Flawed E-Voting Standard Sent Back to Drawing Board |
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| Topic: Surveillance |
9:15 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
We propose the use of "selective blocking" by "blocker tags" as a way of protecting consumers from unwanted scanning of RFID tags attached to items they may be carrying or wearing. While an ordinary RFID tag is a simple, cheap (e.g. five-cent) passive device intended as an "electronic bar-code" for use in supply-chain management, a blocker tag is a cheap passive RFID device that can simulate many ordinary RFID tags simultaneously. When carried by a consumer, a blocker tag thus "blocks" RFID readers. It can do so universally by simulating all possible RFID tags. Or a blocker tag can block selectively by simulating only selected subsets of ID codes, such as those by a particular manufacturer, or those in a designated "privacy zone." We believe that this approach, when used with appropriate care, provides a very attractive alternative for addressing privacy concerns raised by the potential (and likely) widespread use of RFID tags in consumer products. We also discuss possible abuses arising from blocker tags, and means for detecting and dealing with them. You might consider this paper to be Ron Rivest's reply to Barry Steinhardt's concerns about RFID. The Blocker Tag [PDF] |
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Technology's Impact on Everything | CIO Magazine |
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| Topic: Technology |
8:50 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
The Fall/Winter 2003 issue of CIO Magazine is a special issue that focuses on "technology's impact on everything." They've assembled quite the team of contributors for this issue, including Ray Kurzweil, Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, Bjorn Lomborg, Robert Reich, Howard Gardner, Jonathan Zittrain, Paul Saffo, Newt Gingrich, The Dalai Lama, Howard Rheingold, Robert Ballard, Barry Steinhardt, and more. Here's how the Barry Steinhardt piece begins: PICTURE THIS: You're attending a trade show in Las Vegas. Strolling around the city one evening, you happen upon a sex shop and pause for a moment to snicker at the curious items in the store's window. Then you continue on your way. However, unbeknownst to you, the store's Customer Identification System has detected a radio identification signal emitted by a computer chip in one of your credit cards, and is recording your identity and the date and time of your brief stop. A few weeks later, your spouse is surprised to find in the mail a lurid solicitation from the store mentioning your visit. You've got some explaining to do. Technology's Impact on Everything | CIO Magazine |
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The Google File System [PDF] |
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| Topic: Technology |
8:32 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
The Google File System, a scalable distributed system for large distributed data-intensive applications, provides fault tolerance while running on inexpensive commodity hardware and delivers high aggregate performance to a large number of clients. The Google File System [PDF] |
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| Topic: Human Computer Interaction |
6:52 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
We ask how technology can enhance the individual in order to produce organizations that are more creative and efficient, and which better support the individual. We are developing methods to automatically learn the social network structure within a group based on data collected using unobtrusive, wearable sensors. The questions we are exploring are: - Who talks to whom?
- How does information flow?
- How are decisions made?
- Who are the experts?
- Can we predict the ramifications of organizational disruptions?
- How can we change the groups interactions to promote better functioning? Reality Mining |
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New Sun Microsystems Chip May Unseat the Circuit Board |
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| Topic: Technology |
11:34 pm EDT, Sep 22, 2003 |
On Tuesday, Sun researchers plan to report that they have discovered a way to transmit data inside a computer much more quickly than current techniques allow. By placing the edge of one chip directly in contact with its neighbor, it may be possible to move data 60 to 100 times as fast as the present top speeds. New Sun Microsystems Chip May Unseat the Circuit Board |
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