Current Events of the TechnoPolitical World 1994 to Present.
American Politics today. With a special focus on The Impact of Digital Technology on Politics, Civil Liberties , Elections, Lobbying, and Life. ( and some other stuff too.) {MY COMMENTARIES ARE THE WORDS IN THE BLUE FONT.}
The Obama team has offered Shirley Sherrod her job back. Now, tell Obama to fire FOX News instead by kicking them out of the White House Press Corps.
"So we're calling on the White House to remove FOX News." --- ?
I do not feel good about this.
I am a First Amendment Freak, and big Civil Libertarian,
...
Fox News does not need my help looking stupid - they do well w/o my help ! :) - this is a case in point # one.
i have faith in the free market system of journalism -- that the idiots of the world -- both reporters AND the those reported on --- get theirs in the end.
As in: Sen. McCarthy do you not have any decency, sir !?!
The truth will always win out with a fully free press.
For the White House to ban Fox , IMHO would do more harm than good.
" My first reaction was: This may be the greatest gift to America by a foreign country since France gave us the Statue of Liberty. Someone still wants to spy on us! Just when we were feeling down and out, the Russians show up and tell us that it’s still worth briefcases of money to plant people in our think tanks. Subprime crisis or not, some people think we’ve still got the right stuff. Thank you, Vladimir Putin! Upon reflection, though, it occurred to me that this is actually a good news/bad news story. The good news is that someone still wants to spy on us. The bad news is that it’s the Russians."
"Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores."
The copyright laws offer creators incentive to produce new and unique works. These may come in various forms, including movies, music, and books, all of which are important components of American culture.
These works create jobs, from their production and manufacture to the advertising and sales that support them.
To cultivate these new jobs, intellectual property enforcement must keep pace with an ever changing digital world.
As an avid photographer I am intrigued by the debate at the turn of the 20th Century about whether photographs were copyrightable creations, or merely technical representations.
Public discussion then helped shape copyright laws to accommodate the new medium, just as it does now as times and technologies continue to change.
Today people watch television on handheld devices, skim books on digital readers and enjoy music on laptops, benefiting both content owner and the user.
But along with these new opportunities for distributing creative content, the World Wide Web has also brought new challenges.
"A rampant increase in online piracy threatens the financial viability of those same copyright owners who benefit from our new technology.
This risks harming not only those creators, but the hundreds of thousands of jobs that result from their products.
It also instills the user with a fundamental mistrust of the technology. Effective intellectual property enforcement is necessary to counter this attack. "
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS: "Are Profits Hurting Capitalism?" By YVES SMITH and ROB PARENTEAU
Published: July 2, 2010
..."So instead of pursuing budget retrenchment, policymakers need to create incentives for corporations to reinvest their profits in business operations"
"BEIJING, July 3 (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Saturday sentenced a Tibetan environmentalist who organized villagers to pick up litter and plant trees to five years in jail for inciting to split the nation, his lawyer said."
"“There’s obviously an embedded negative view toward using any type of outside information to influence coverage,” said Robertson Barrett, chief strategy officer of Perfect Market Inc., a company that helps news organizations make their content more detectable to search engine algorithms.
Mr. Barrett, a former publisher for the Web site of The Los Angeles Times, said many mainstream media outlets would start to come around to the idea if they did not feel pressured to let it affect their coverage.
“There’s a middle ground here in which publishers and news organizations can learn a lot about their audiences and what they want in real time and take that into account generally,” he said. “But that does not need to affect the specific story assignments.”
------------
Sunday, July 4, 2010
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
poster:"I would like to see a movie released with lots of extra clips so a person can legally make and share their own version of the film using the clips. Imagine how viral that would be."
SL : The tools are already out there and this is being done to one degree or another. (I've been working on a related project.)
Creativity on a personal level is expanding daily. I think we will eventually get to a point where we are much more interested in what we create ourselves for our small circle of friends and family than what others create for a bigger market.
The economics of having millions of people making their own art will change the salability of creativity, but as a culture we will likely be better for it.
Re: Creativity on a personal level is expanding daily. // The economics of having millions of people making their own art will change the salability of creativity, but as a culture we will likely be better for it.
by Technopolitical(profile) , Jun 22nd, 2010 @ 12:03pm
SL : "The economics of having millions of people making their own art will change the saleability [cor. sp] of creativity, but as a culture we will likely be better for it."
Me : exactly 100% plus
$$$ who cares.
Control of use .
who. when. where. how. why.
As long as i have full artistic control
i is cool.
Full Copyrights for Art.
It is not just a good idea.
It is the bedrock of our Constitutional Economic System for Artists.
--------------- -------- patents on drugs and cellphones ?
WASHINGTON — A California police department did not violate the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it audited the text messages on a pager the city had issued him, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday.
The decision represented only a preliminary attempt to define public employees’ Fourth Amendment rights in the digital era, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court, took pains to say that the ruling was narrow and closely tied to the facts.
Still, the decision puts government employees on notice that electronic communications on devices provided to them may not be subject to the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches, as long as their employers have “a legitimate work-related purpose” in inspecting the communications.
Justice Kennedy said the court was uncomfortable fashioning comprehensive legal rules, given the pace of technological and cultural change.
“The court must proceed with care when considering the whole concept of privacy expectations in communications made on electronic equipment owned by a government employer,” Justice Kennedy wrote in a part of the opinion joined by every member of the court except Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Cell phone and text message communications are so pervasive that some persons may consider them to be essential means or necessary instruments for self-expression, even self-identification,”
Justice Kennedy went on. “On the other hand, the ubiquity of those devices has made them generally affordable, so one could counter that employees who need cell phones or similar devices for personal matters can purchase and pay for their own.”
The decision did not address the privacy rights of people employed by private companies.
Twenty counties have raised concerns about the shift from lever machines to electronic voting devices, which the state is belatedly supposed to make for the upcoming statewide primary.
Throughout New York State, county legislatures and election authorities have raised serious concerns about state and federal laws requiring them to replace lever machines with electronic systems before the September primaries.
The advocacy group Election Transparency Coalition has a map showing that over 20 counties that have passed resolutions or sent letters to the State Board of Elections opposing the transition. The election commissioners of Nassau County have filed a lawsuit to stop the transition to computerized machines on the grounds that the new machines are untested, faulty, owned by a corporate giant and prone to ,,,,,,
Re: Re: Re: Where is the harm? Re: Re: Copyright is still a farce in the age of supercopying machines that fit in our pockets. by Anonymous Coward, Jun 8th, 2010 @ 12:50pm ----------------
------------------------ YOU : What "limited extend"? How is it limited? By what force of nature is it "technically true, to a limited extent"?
ME : GREAT POINTS !!
lets me try here
>>> What "limited extend"?.
ANS : I make my Art, Once public , I will always loose some control,
How you interpret it for one.
Do you see the point i had in mind when I wrote the song?
Our do you Pretzel Logic twist into your own worldview.
But I have still have legal control of my Arts reuse and sale. ================
You : How is it limited?
Me : It is limited by the law.
You CAN PARODY my art legally 100%.
Usually artist LOVE parody of their work,
Imitation is the highest form of compliment.
But even if the original Artist does not like the PARODY,
there is nothing he can do-- legally.
He can punch the parody artist in nose if they meet at the Grammy-s,, but it never happens. --------------=============
ME : By what force of nature is it "technically true, to a limited extent"?
ME : Again , I make my Art, and Once public ,
I will always loose some control,
How you interpret it for one.
=============
YOU :By what force of nature ?
Me : Well here we have to get meta-physical.
Law is man. Thought put on paper. rspected.
The constition itself has no POWER.
It needs the Government.
"Power comes out of the barrel of a gun" -- Mao,
( Sorry Mr. Lennon, sometime even Mao hit one good.)
We elect gov't within the framework of our Constitution, won by rebellion against England ,
and till today fought for by People with guns -
-- who represent our President , Governors , and Mayors , and/or any official who command a police or army force ----
So in the "real world" the "force of nature" is Government Guns and Jails.
We have elections , checks and balances , so the Gov't does not oppress us without our legal consent.
There is always the next election.
If we elect bad leaders , who it to blame?
The People of the Nation.
That is why some nations rise , and some nations fall.
The People. ---------------- What is the "force of nature" above the real materiel world?
It rains . My INTERNET modem goes on and off repeatably.
Sometimes the surge is so strong , that because I only have USB ports on my computer, the surge causes my Windows to reboot.
I loose no data when this happens and the computer is unharmed. it is just a pain.
I understand ,, that now cable vision DOES NOT support /endorse using a USB to connect the modem to the computer,, but I have no choice........
..... AND UNLESS IT RAINS -- with water getting into a corroded Cablevision Telephone pole box some where --- unless it rain ,, I HAVE NO PROBLEM !!
No rain ,, no re-boot problem. there should be no problem when it rains --that IS CABLEVISIONs problem , not mine.
We just did a test here at my house , and sprayed water with the garden hose all over the tele-pole directly behind my house. MY INTERNET was un affected. Being the last rainy day - Tuesday May 18th of this week ---- the INTERNET did go on and off REPEATABLY all day , the problem is another tele-pole box somewhere.
ALSO -- it is very clear , that the cablevision box on the tele-pole behind my house is SHINNY BRAND NEW ! Meaning it was recently changed --- as I have been told by your tech support guys all the way through for 3 weeks now.
The problem of the INTERNET going on and off on ONLY rainy days , is clearly not in my house , not the box behind my house on the tele-pole ,, BUT ANOTHER tele-pole box.
This point point was agreed upon by a senior tech rep who spoke to me last Friday May 14 -- the day No ONE showed up for a scheduled appointment.
AGAIN --please forward this email to the highest ranking folks at cablevision who supervise BOTH field repair and customer service.
Signed
TP
====
mailed-by
cablevision.com
hide details6:24 PM (30 minutes ago)
Mr. Technopolitical:
Thank you for taking my call today. As agreed I will arrange a tech to come to your home between 2PM and 5PM on Friday 5/28. The tech will replace the NIC card in your computer and replace the your present modem with a Docis 3.0 modem.
Please let me know if for any reason we need to change these plans. My phone details are attached below.
“We usually say ‘attack’ so you can see what would happen,” he said. “My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.” And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.
The difference between Mr. Wang’s explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction.
“Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the U.S. power grid,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group. “Once you start interpreting every move that a country makes as hostile, it builds paranoia into the system.”
After we do a background check, drug test , and credit search,
you can go to room "A" for your polygraph ,
and then to room "B" for your Brain Scan.
Let the moral and legal debate begin.
---------------------------
Brain Scan Can Read Your Thoughts
New insights into brain activity could explain how memories are formed and how they change over time.
Thu Mar 11, 2010 02:30 PM ET | content provided by AFP
THE GIST:
Brain scans could reveal what a person is thinking.
Using fMRI scans, scientists can distinguish memories of a past event a person is recalling.
The brain scans could provide fresh insight into how memories are stored and how they may change through time.
A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person's mind, researchers said Thursday.
British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identifythought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.
~~ I really , really do not like electronic voting. I feel it could threaten the functioning of our democracy. Anything electronic can get hacked . ( See other posts on this topic.)
Re-counting electronic votes needs techie geeky types. I still like paper ballots , marked in hand by the voter. Primitive , yes ; slow yes ' but it is easier and truer to recount. The less that can go wrong , the less that will go wrong ~~~
from the how-about-just-opening-the-source-code? dept
As was rumored at the end of last year, the US Justice Department has decided to break up Election Systems & Software (ES&S), the dominant e-voting provider in the country. You may recall that just a few months earlier, ES&S (who has a long and troubled history of inaccurate, buggy and insecure e-voting machines) had purchased the remains of Diebold's e-voting business for just $5 million. Of course, Diebold also had a long and troubled historyof inaccurate, buggy and insecure e-voting machines, so the two made a perfect match. In both cases, the companies relied on security by stonewalling -- insisting that nothing was wrong, despite lots of proof to the contrary, and refusing to let third party security experts ever look at their machines. Rather than breaking up the companies, why don't the feds just require that any e-voting machine use open source software that can be tested by anyone?
~~ The Internet was in its youth carefree fun. Now it is an angry adolescent that needs serious discipline and constant oversight , as Google just learned -- AGAIN !!-- in China.
We can only hope the Internet matures well-- and remains useful and open,
Click the labels on these topics for more from me on this ~~
January 18, 2010
Companies Fight Endless War Against Computer Attacks
The recent computer attacks on the mighty Google left every corporate network in the world looking a little less safe.
Google’s confrontation with China — over government censorship in general and specific attacks on its systems — is an exceptional case, of course, extending to human rights and international politics as well as high-tech spying. But the intrusion into Google’s computers and related attacks from within China on some 30 other companies point to the rising sophistication of such assaults and the vulnerability of even the best defenses, security experts say.
“The Google case shines a bright light on what can be done in terms of spying and getting into corporate networks,” said Edward M. Stroz, a former high-tech crime agent with the F.B.I.who now heads a computer security investigation firm in New York.
Computer security is an ever-escalating competition between so-called black-hat attackers and white-hat defenders. One of the attackers’ main tools is malicious software, known as malware, which has steadily evolved in recent years. Malware was once mainly viruses and worms, digital pests that gummed up and sometimes damaged personal computers and networks.
Malware today, however, is likely to be more subtle and selective, nesting inside corporate networks. And it can be a tool for industrial espionage, transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer lists, future plans and contracts.
* Political WORK History *
* 1983-1986: New York Public Interest Research Group / Straphangers Campaign, New York, NY.
* 1986-1991: Greenpeace U.S.A, New York, NY,
* 1991-1992: Environmental Planning Lobby, Albany & Westbury, NY.
* 1992-1995: New York Public Interest Research Group / Straphangers Campaign, New York, NY.
* 2000: Nachas Healthnet Incorporated. Brooklyn, NY 11219.
* 2006 - 2008: Washington Heights-Inwood Coalition.
/*/*/
Education:
1998-2003: Yeshiva University, New York, NY. Political Science Major. Writing Arts Minor. B.A., January 2003.
* 1995-1998: Rabbinical College of America, Morristown, New Jersey. Judaic Studies B.A., August 1998.
Technopolitical(
Technopolitical(
Re: Creativity on a personal level is expanding daily. // The economics of having millions of people making their own art will change the salability of creativity, but as a culture we will likely be better for it.
bySL : "The economics of having millions of people making their own art will change the saleability [cor. sp] of creativity, but as a culture we will likely be better for it."
$$$ who cares.
Control of use .
who. when. where. how. why.
As long as i have full artistic control
i is cool.
Full Copyrights for Art.
It is not just a good idea.
It is the bedrock of our Constitutional Economic System for Artists.
---------------
--------
patents on drugs and cellphones ?
it is a different horse.
not my thing.
(reply to this comment)(link to this comment)