Check out the picture at the top left. This guy is an independent who managed to get elected despite being opposed by both liberal and conservative media in the country. He is very much a product of the internet. He is a Howard Dean who made it. The traditional sources of power in South Korea are nailing this guys ass to the wall because he is an outsider. Of course, he is not without fault. He would have avoided impeachment if he had agreed to apologize over some technical elections issue. He refuse to do so, and so they booted him. Of course, its entirely possible that the call for an apology was literally an attempt to put him in a catch 22 situation where if he agreed to apologize he would be admitting wrongdoing and would be subsequently impeached anyway.

All in all, you can chalk this up next to Dean's implosion as a failure of the new media to challenge the present world order.

President of South Korea impeached

No, officers, we're computer scientists and engineers.

All the pictures are really neat. An autonomous vehicle of every shape and size. I think some of the video's audio overdubbing got mixed up in a few places. Maybe it was the stream. Nevermind, its not important.

Elite soldier units supplied by autonomous vehicles, "really smart" land bombs disguised as SUVs and cars, robot scouts, and many more products of science fiction are on the way, given the will to proceed by taking some very natural steps. The armies of the future are going to include much enlisted metal and many officers bread by video games. I either feel terrified or safe. I am not sure which.

What I truly fear is what will happen if we wind up with too significant a portion of our overall R&D capability as a country focused on building weapons. When we decide to lay new ground, we wind up creating things like the atomic bomb. WWII showed some amazing examples of how we could leverage our manufacturing capability and ingenuity at the time. We know our high tech creation engine is capable of performing similar amazing feats today. If we turn that on, we better be aware that once its on, its going to be pointed at something. Just based on the fact that humans don't seem to practice much restraint in the face of threats, we should assume we will wind up using whatever we create. Lets be careful about what we create.

In terms of robots, I see us at being able to either reach beyond ourselves, or reach out and crush someone. I would really rather be making Mars Rovers then Robot Warriors even though I see reason for both. As long as certain other people are also thinking in that same direction, this is a very good thing. The work of NASA may be the most peaceful way to exercise the power of the state. We have China to compete with now, and I think we can see eye-to-eye just enough to complete peacefully.

At any given time, I'm not sure if I should be in awe or scared shitless of DARPA. I do have the Internet here to sit and pontificate on, so I guess it can't be that bad. I hope our future robot masters are benevolent. :)

Robot Race Is Giant Step for Unmanned Kind

] When they plotted the links and topics shared by various
] sites, they discovered that topics would often appear on
] a few relatively unknown blogs days before they appeared
] on more popular sites.
]
] "What we're finding is that the important people on the
] Web are not necessarily the people with the most explicit
] links (back to their sites), but the people who cause
] epidemics in blog networks," said researcher Eytan Adar.
]
] These infectious people can be hard to find because they
] do not always receive attribution for being the first to
] point to an interesting idea or news item.

Different people are good at different things. Not everyone who has good ideas wants direct attention. This is one of the many elements of group think that systems like MemeStreams can be used to tap into.

There are ways present to drastically increase intellectual production capability by using Information Technology to route and filter information between individuals.

Its not nearly as simple as some people being particularly good filters or explorers. Without context, its all crap.

HP tracking the spread of memes through the blogosphere

] Now we're faced with a "Godzilla vs. Mothra" battle,
] where the Internet -- and its users -- will likely take
] the brunt of the collateral damage.

Best Quote on Verisign v. ICANN

] Your post advocates a
]
] ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
]
] approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work.
] Here is why it won't work.

Well, personally I think that whitelists suck less then spam, so I would add two more checkboxes to this form:

( ) People's complete unwillingness to make even the smallest change to their established routine.
( ) People's general expectation that their problems should be solved by other people.

Standard form for responding to anti-spam proposals

] The dispute over who controls key portions of the
] Internet's address system erupted into open conflict
] today when VeriSign Inc., the world's largest addressing
] company, sued the Internet's most visible regulatory
] body, charging that it has been unfairly prevented from
] developing new services for Internet users.

VeriSign's power grab attempts continue.

Verisign Sues ICANN to reinstate Sitefinder!

] Although in recent years the proportion of our labor
] force made up of those with at least some college has
] continued to grow, we appear, nonetheless, to be
] graduating too few skilled workers to address the
] apparent imbalance between the supply of such workers and
] the burgeoning demand for them. Perhaps the accelerated
] pace of high-tech equipment installations associated with
] the large increases in productivity growth in recent
] years is placing unachievable demands for skilled
] graduates over the short run. If the apparent
] acceleration in the demand for skilled workers to staff
] our high-tech capital stock is temporary as many presume,
] the pressure on our schools would ease as would the
] upward pressure on high-skilled wages.

In english: "We needed a lot of engineers to set up the new infrastructure over the past few years. Admins, Programmers, Network Engineers, etc... We're done doing that now. We don't need ya'll anymore. Thanks for all the productivity growth. I'm sure you can find a suitable job in another industry at a significant reduction in pay. You can rest assured that the overall economy has benefited greatly from your work. We're not planning to share the rewards with you, because you don't own it. We own it. We're looking for people who own stock to do really well in the coming years. We're exited about that, and we think you ought to be excited for us. Oh, and BTW, I'm cutting your pension. Have a nice day."

FRB: Speech, Greenspan--Critical role of education in the nation's economy--February 20, 2004

] There developers creating "virtual Earth"
]
] The Department of Defense is commissioning a re-creation
] of the entire planet from online-sim maker.
]
] As a rule, the developers of There prefer calling their
] creation a "virtual world" rather than a "game."
]
] Now it looks like that statement will no longer be
] hyperbole.
]
] According to a report on the BBC and HomeLAN Fed, the
] Department of Defense has commissioned the Menlo Park,
] California, company to create a replica of the entire
] planet. According to the report, the Earth sim will be to
] scale, featuring real-world distances--so if a user's
] avatar wanted to spend three months riding a bike around
] the Australian coastline, it could.

Dare I make a Matrix joke?

There developers creating 'virtual Earth'

] Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil
] disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey
] Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's
] attempts to censor this work.

Well, not exactly, but lots of people are turning their web pages grey.

I didn't find this until just this morning and I don't have time to tweak up the site code. However, if you re-recommend this meme others are more likely to read it.

Grey Tuesday

] The Federal Communications Committee and the Justice
] Department are at loggerheads over a new problem in the
] war on terror: how to listen in on Internet phone calls.
] Thanks to the blistering growth of VoIP (Voice over
] Internet Protocol) services, which have been adopted by
] approximately 10 million people worldwide so far, law
] enforcement officials now worry that wiretapping may one
] day become technically obsolete. If traditional phone
] lines go the way of the horse and carriage, will the FBI
] still be able to listen in on Internet phone calls? How
] would it go about tapping one? Is it even possible?

The gateways between the Internet VoIP based phone networks and the traditional phone networks are about the only places I can picture CALEA-compliant (like) hardware/software existing. Purely Internet based VoIP networks are going to resist any type of monitoring, use crypto, and exist even if they are outlawed.

Can They Hear You Now? - How the FBI eavesdrops on Internet phone calls (and why it sometimes can't). By David S. Bennahum