Of interest. I haven't read this yet.

This paper reports initial findings from a study that used quantitative and qualitative research methods and custom–built software to investigate online economies of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at several leading e–commerce sites (primarily Amazon.com). We explore several cases in which book and CD reviews were copied whole or in part from one item to another and show that hundreds of product reviews on Amazon.com might be copies of one another. We further explain the strategies involved in these suspect product reviews, and the ways in which the collapse of the barriers between authors and readers affect the ways in which these information goods are being produced and exchanged. We report on techniques that are employed by authors, artists, editors, and readers to ensure they promote their agendas while they build their identities as experts. We suggest a framework for discussing the changes of the categories of authorship, creativity, expertise, and reputation that are being re–negotiated in this multi–tier reputation economy.

Six degrees of reputation

This article is about shopping; I'm not suggesting you read it. But I thought this was a great opening line:

I DON'T particularly like the Rolling Stones, mostly because a few years ago I sat behind Keith Richards at a screening of the movie "Traffic," and he kept banging his chair into my shin and never apologized.

Leaving Las Vegas With a Little Secret

For Tom.

ARE you bored with bird flu yet? Yeah, me too. While senior executives are all resilience planning this, training day at a plush conference centre that, the rest of us are left to get on with our everyday tasks. But come the revolution (or the radiation attack on the City/alien landing on your building/blooming bird flu), junior and middle managers will have to act. You’d better hope that someone has a plan ...

via IEEE, which wrote:

Do you know your company’s plan for responding to bird flu? Or a flood? Or a bombing? If not, you’d better ask.

It pays to expect the worst

The first issue of this new journal may be of interest. A sampling of articles follows.

Steganalysis using higher-order image statistics

Techniques for information hiding (steganography) are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and widespread. With high-resolution digital images as carriers, detecting hidden messages is also becoming considerably more difficult. We describe a universal approach to steganalysis for detecting the presence of hidden messages embedded within digital images. We show that, within multiscale, multiorientation image decompositions (e.g., wavelets), first- and higher-order magnitude and phase statistics are relatively consistent across a broad range of images, but are disturbed by the presence of embedded hidden messages. We show the efficacy of our approach on a large collection of images, and on eight different steganographic embedding algorithms.

Personal authentication using 3-D finger geometry

In this paper, a biometric authentication system based on measurements of the user's three-dimensional (3-D) hand geometry is proposed. The system relies on a novel real-time and low-cost 3-D sensor that generates a dense range image of the scene. By exploiting 3-D information we are able to limit the constraints usually posed on the environment and the placement of the hand, and this greatly contributes to the unobtrusiveness of the system. Efficient, close to real-time algorithms for hand segmentation, localization and 3-D feature measurement are described and tested on an image database simulating a variety of working conditions. The performance of the system is shown to be similar to state-of-the-art hand geometry authentication techniques but without sacrificing the convenience of the user.

Automatic facial expression recognition using facial animation parameters and multistream HMMs

The performance of an automatic facial expression recognition system can be significantly improved by modeling the reliability of different streams of facial expression information utilizing multistream hidden Markov models (HMMs). In this paper, we present an automatic multistream HMM facial expression recognition system and analyze its performance. The proposed system utilizes facial animation parameters (FAPs), supported by the MPEG-4 standard, as features for facial expression classification. Specifically, the FAPs describing the movement of the outer-lip contours and eyebrows are used as observations. Experiments are first performed employing single-stream HMMs under several different scenarios, utilizing outer-lip and eyebrow FAPs individually and jointly. A multistream HMM approach is proposed for introducing facial expression and FAP group dependent stream reliability weights. The stream weights are determined based on the facial expression recognition results obtained when FAP streams are utilized individually. The proposed multistream HMM facial expression system, which utilizes stream reliability weights, achieves relative reduction of the facial expression recognition error of 44% compared to the single-stream HMM system.

IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

Net assessment is one of the principal frameworks for analyzing the national security strategy of the United States.

But net assessment remains something of a mystery to many people. This article aims to demystify net assessment by examining its key features. With this basic starter kit, one should be able to listen to briefings that use net assessment; comment intelligently on those briefings; and become a contributing member on a team that takes net assessment as its framework.

Net Assessment: A Practical Guide

Afghanistan is again at a crossroads.

One road leads to peace and prosperity; the other leads to the loss of all that has been achieved.

Everything depends on the level of international commitment to help Afghanistan emerge from the dark shadows of the instability and violence of its recent past.

The Future of Afghanistan

To be successful, the United States combating terrorism policy must include the synchronized use of defense, diplomacy and development to address the multiple elements of a combating terrorism strategy. This includes the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit to undermine the legitimacy of governments and facilitate terrorist recruiting campaigns. As valuable as the attack and disrupt mission may be, it fails to help at risk countries establish conditions that counter ideological support to terrorism and promote regional stability. This book examines the strategies, interagency process and regional approaches of the United States combating terrorism effort, emphasizes the importance of addressing the underlying conditions in supporting mainstream Muslim efforts to reject violent extremism, and makes policy recommendations to improve this effort.

Click through to browse a hyperlink-enabled PDF version of the table of contents. Separate chapters are available from there.

How To Win The Long Struggle Against Terrorism

For my own reference.

The Internet engineering community is making progress on the thorny issue of how best to route emergency communications such as 911 calls over the Internet.

This year-long effort is important for companies and government agencies that are migrating to VoIP and must ensure that police and firefighters can locate and respond to 911 calls placed from IP phones in their office buildings.

IETF taking on 911 problem within VoIP

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology announce energy savings by a factor of more than 500 in simulations with their ultra energy efficient embedded architecture based on Probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS).

GA Tech Develops Ultra-Efficient Embedded Architectures Based On Probabilistic Technology

Despite his expertise, Sean Naylor is not well thought of by the Army brass, for the good reason that he is generally and genuinely skeptical of the story lines that emanate from official outlets. Like any good reporter, he seeks to tell the whole tale, and some of what he reports the senior leadership would prefer not to hear.

Not a Good Day to Die is a good story and one well told. First, it is a compelling and interesting story, and second, it raises important questions about how the United States planned and conducted Operation Anaconda.

Sean Naylor will not have the last word on this campaign, but he has told a story of courage and devotion to duty that enriches both those who bear arms and those who do not. He has also raised important questions about how operations are planned and executed. His book is provocative, compelling, and irritating all at the same time.

It's within the top 1,000 books at Amazon. Check it.

Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda. By Sean Naylor