"The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb." -- Marshall McLuhan, 1969
Wired News: AT&T Gave Your Data to Feds
Topic: Surveillance
7:46 am EDT, Apr 8, 2006
AT&T provided NSA eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.
"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets," according to Klein's statement.
The DPRK is also one of the world's most secretive nations. For a North Korean, contact with a foreigner can land one in jail… or worse. But there is one embarrassing secret that is hard for the government to hide, literally. It's the Ryugyong Hotel in the Potong District of North Korea's capital city of Pyongyang. It's difficult to hide because it's a massive, 105-story structure which dominates the city's skyline. It's an embarrassment because it's a complete engineering failure… its empty, dilapidated husk lurks over the capital, mocking the citizens of the proud country.
The Ryugyong or "Capital of Willows" Hotel stands 1,083 feet tall, and it was planned to have 3,000 rooms and seven revolving restaurants. It has a total of 3.9 million square feet of floor space. The hotel would be the tallest hotel and seventh largest building in the world if it were finished. It would also have been the first building with over one hundred floors outside of New York or Chicago.
I noticed this downright huge building in Pyongyang while traveling the world via Google Earth. I'd love to visit Pyongyang. It seems like a Disneyland style theme park where "failure" is the theme.
'Playing The Clash made me a terror suspect' | the Daily Mail
Topic: Music
12:42 am EDT, Apr 6, 2006
Harraj Mann, 24, played the punk anthem London Calling and classic rock track Immigrant Song in a taxi before a flight to London.
The lyrics to both tracks made the driver fear his passenger was a terrorist.
Mr Mann, of Hartlepool, Teesside, had boarded the plane at Durham Tees Valley Airport when the flight to Heathrow was stopped and he was arrested by police.
He said he was told he was being questioned under the Terrorism Act and his choice of music had aroused suspicions.
If this is the case, my playlists would get me shipped directly to Guantanamo.
"I played Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale first, which the taxi man liked. I figured he liked the classics so put on a bit of Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song - which he didn't like. Then, since I was going to London, I played the song by The Clash and finished up with Nowhere Man by The Beatles."
Oh please. Let's see how this would go with DJ Rattle:
"First, I started up with an American classic, Neil Young's 'Revolution Blues'." Said Levay. The words of this classic include the following: "Yes, that was me with the doves, setting them free near the factory. Where you built your computer, love. I hope you get the connection, cause I can't take the rejection. I won't deceive you, I just don't believe you."
This did not heighten the attention of the taxi driver, but the last verse of the song did: "With my carbine on, I keep em hoppin, till the ammunition's gone. But i'm still not happy. Feel like something's wrong. I got the revolution blues. I see bloody fountains, and a ten million dune buggies, comin' down the mountains."
"Then, I went into some Bad Religion, 'The Numbers Game'" Said Levay. Among the lyrics are the following: "They call it liberation. With opiates of silicon big brother schemes to rule the nation. We're one nation under god. We stand above the rest, with mighty high technology, we're never second best. Our specialty is infiltration!"
"From there it went downhill as I played Petter Bazooka by the Dead Milkmen followed by some Public Enemy." Said Levay, "At this point I noticed he was sweating and visibly perturbed."
Indian director hopes to cast Paris Hilton as Mother Teresa - Yahoo! News
Topic: Movies
7:54 am EDT, Apr 5, 2006
An Indian movie director said he hopes to persuade Paris Hilton to play the role of Nobel laureate and prospective Catholic Saint, Mother Teresa, in an upcoming film.
"Her features resemble Mother Teresa," director T. Rajeevnath told AFP from the southwestern coastal state of Kerala.
Normally, I couldn't care less about movie casting or Paris Hilton.. And even though I went to Catholic school for 6 years, I'm not religious. But, no. No fucking way. There is no way Paris Hilton should be cast as Mother Teresa. First, the NunBun is stolen, now this. sigh...
World Bank should link loans to press freedom - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune
Topic: Economics
7:49 am EDT, Apr 5, 2006
By making press freedom a condition for its loans, the World Bank would protect the media, allowing them to defend the public's right to transparency and accountable government.
It is in the World Bank's interest to have open marketplaces in the countries it gives loans to. It is arguable that an open marketplace is not possible without a free media. This makes sense.
CNN.com - DHS spokesman arrested in child sex sting - Apr 4, 2006
Topic: Current Events
5:53 am EDT, Apr 5, 2006
Brian J. Doyle, 55, is charged with seven counts of use of a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmission of harmful material to a minor, according to a sheriff's office statement.
On March 12, according to a police statement, Doyle contacted a Polk County computer crimes detective posing online as a 14-year-old girl "and initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her ... Doyle knew that the 'girl' was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"Judd said that Doyle, in the first conversation, told the detective his position with DHS and "started immediately into pretty vulgar language. He explained in graphic detail the sexual acts he wanted to perform with this 14-year-old."
As the two continued chatting online, police said, Doyle gave her his home and office phone numbers, and the number to his government-issue cell phone. He also had explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as the girl, authorities said.
In addition, he used the Internet to send "hard-core pornographic movie clips" to her, and also used an America Online instant-messaging service to have explicit online conversations with her.
Doyle also sent photos of himself that were not sexually explicit, but said he would send nude photos if the "girl" would buy a Web camera and send him nude photos of herself. In one photo, Judd said, Doyle's DHS security tag is clearly visible.
"I read the transcripts," Judd said. "I wanted to see if this was just as outrageous as the detectives depicted it ... It shocked all of us who have worked vice, narcotics, organized crime, homicides."
This is sure to be all over the news today...
While not directly related to this, I've asked this question around lately: "what the hell is DHS doing?" Answers have varied. No one seems to know exactly. Mostly stuff about establishing little fiefdoms and sharing email servers. My favorite comment so far has been "creating new ways to fuck up." Their press center is simply the "Remarks from Michael Chertoff" page. DHS appears to be a black hole.
(who never seems to use caps when referencing herself) was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. O'Reilly played serious softball with her. His voice was even up a few notches toward the beginning of the interview. Normally only crying war widows get that treatment from him. For Danah's sake, I'm glad. She is nice, smart, and liberal. None of which O'Reilly does well with. If MySpace wasn't a News Corp property, O'Reilly would have taken the opportunity to get righteous in the name of defending helpless children, and bitten off her head off. When it come to opinion leaders in the social networking space, danah is the queen bee. If she didn't have so many good things to say about MySpace, or New Corp didn't own MySpace, I'm sure that interview would have gone differently.
Given that there are approximately 50 million .COM domains registered, it is indeed true that the low-hanging fruit domain names are overwhelming taken, and your chances of lucking upon an unnoticed available three-letter acronym (TLA) are close to zero, and your only recourse would be to haggle with domain speculators.
Some interesting data about the state of available domains.
Chinese Internet users spend nearly two billion hours online each week, while the U.S. audience logs on for 129 million hours per week.
That's the bombshell Dr. Charles Zhang, chairman and CEO of Sohu.com, dropped last month after ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq, a milestone for a Beijing-based company.
Zhang reported that, according to his internal research, Chinese Internet users numbered over 150 million--and possibly up to 200 million--and Sohu.com, including all of their properties, was in the top five most trafficked sites in the world. Nielsen NetRatings, which doesn't have statistics for China, reports that the U.S. had 154 million active users in January 2006. This means that China, if Zhang is correct, is at or above the U.S. in the number of Internet users and that these users stay connected far longer each time.
The more I travel, the more I find that the most heated debates in many countries are around education. Here's what's really funny -- every country thinks it's behind.
"We have a creative problem in this country [India]."
"We must allow our students to ask why, not just keep on telling them how."
It's interesting that Tom Friedman is syndicated in Venezuela.
Today's NYT has an article about Wu Man, a Chinese musician, in which she confirms Friedman's reporting:
"She's a 21st-century musician, meaning she knows something deeply, and not only playing the instrument. She can work with anybody in a short time. She can figure out what somebody knows, what they don't know. People say she's put the pipa on the contemporary page."
This after wondering whether she would be able to keep up her career in the United States. "I had initially been prepared to give up music," Ms. Wu said. "I thought I was going to end up studying computers like my friends."
This proposal is drawing national attention as visionary, though it is more remarkable for the manner in which it neatly illustrates the problems with how we think about technology and schooling.
Absent in Michigan, and often elsewhere, is serious thought about how technology might help cut costs or modernize educational delivery.
There is no reputable analysis suggesting that the billions invested in technology have enhanced the productivity or performance of America's schools.
"People think I'm crazy when they hear I'm getting my second master's degree at 27," says Krumm. "But I felt the degree was necessary to switch the direction of my life."
The point of the new labor law is to encourage businesses to hire young people without worrying they'll be stuck with them forever. Youth unemployment has been one of France's biggest problems for 30 years. A quarter of those under 25 are jobless; that figure surpasses 40 percent in the troubled suburbs. It's an enormous failure: young people have never been better prepared or educated than today, yet France offers them hardly any future apart from temporary jobs and unpaid internships.
No one in France wants to be "flexible"; stable jobs are the best paid and the most prestigious. It's telling that the students at the elite grandes écoles have been slow in joining the protests: promised a better future than the graduates of the less illustrious universities, they figure that flexibility doesn't concern them.
