In a rare victory for freedom of information in China, the government has abruptly reversed course on its mandate that Internet filtering software be installed on every computer sold in China after July 1.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that mandatory installation of the software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, would be delayed indefinitely. The software caused a torrent of protests from both Chinese computer users and global computer makers…. China has said the software is designed to filter out pornography and violence to protect minors, but many experts say it can also block any other content that the authorities deem subversive [The New York Times].
While some experts suggested that the Chinese government might be delaying the program’s roll-out simply to give computer makers more time to test the software and comply with the policy, others believe that the government was forced to bow to the pressure from outraged citizens. “This shows that social pressure can’t be ignored,” said Zhou Ze, a Beijing lawyer who challenged the legality of the plan. “They tried to control public opinion to back the plan by creating a fuss about pornography, but that failed, and they will have learnt to be more careful next time” [Reuters]. Analyst Edward Yu of Beijing says that while protests from foreign computer companies probably influenced the government’s decision, “we think public opinion played an even more important role” [AP].
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The street protests in Iran will be not be televised–how passé. Instead, they are being tweeted.
The microblog service Twitter has become a critical way to get out information about the tumult in Iran’s capital, Tehran, where people have poured into the street to protest the disputed results of last Friday’s presidential election. And the whole world is watching. The U.S. State Department has confirmed that over the weekend officials reached out to Twitter and asked them to delay a network upgrade that was scheduled for Monday night. The reason? To protect the interests of Iranians using the service [Time].
The vast majority of Twitter messages support the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and argue that he was the true winner of the presidential election. Twitter users are posting messages, known as tweets, with the term #IranElection, which allows users to search for all tweets on the subject. On Monday evening, Twitter was registering about 30 new posts a minute with that tag. One read, “We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread Moussavi’s message. One Person = One Broadcaster. #IranElection” [The New York Times]. Since then, the Iranian government has restricted the movements of foreign journalists and has cracked down on blogs and Web sites within the country, but the flow of information on Twitter has only increased.
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A new online tool is expected to debut this week to answer questions like these: How far away from Earth is the planet Neptune at this point in its orbit? And how has the unemployment rate in Iowa’s Scott County changed over the past decade? WolframAlpha, a powerful new service that can answer a broad range of queries, has become one of the most anticipated Web products of the year. But its creator, Stephen Wolfram, wants to make something clear: Despite the online chatter comparing it to Google, his service is not intended to dethrone the king of search engines. “I am not keen on the hype,” said Mr. Wolfram [The New York Times].
Google’s mission, after all, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In contrast, WolframAlpha doesn’t present users with an organized list of information; it sorts through data sets, performs calculations, and presents an answer. Type in a query for a statistic, a profile of a country or company, the average airspeed of a sparrow ― and instead of a series of results that may or may not provide the answer you’re looking for, you get a mini dossier on the subject compiled in real time that, ideally, nails the exact thing you want to know. It’s like having a squad of Cambridge mathematicians and CIA analysts inside your browser [Wired].
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The online bookseller Amazon is expected to unveil a larger model of its Kindle e-reader at a press conference today, and the company hopes that the device will revolutionize several old-media industries: textbook publishing and the newspaper and magazine business. Photos show that the new reader will be about the size of a sheet of paper and will have a 9.7-inch screen, which will be more conducive to displaying content from textbooks, newspapers, and magazines.
The new product will be unveiled at Pace University, one of six colleges that will use the Kindle to distribute course material to students next fall in a technological test run. Experts say that bringing college textbooks to a light and portable e-reader makes loads of sense. Anyone who’s been to a U.S. college in the past few decades could tell you that textbooks are very highly–some would say obscenely–priced. They’re also bulky, and often difficult to get rid of once purchased: Selling the third edition of an introductory biology textbook on the used-book market is pretty difficult when the fourth edition comes out a year later. Theoretically, this should be the perfect market for an electronic reader like the Kindle…. “I do think the textbook market will be the killer app for e-readers,” said Sarah Epps, a media analyst at Forrester Research [CNET]. However, Epps added that it would probably take several years for the technology to catch on, and for publishers to reach acceptable profit-sharing agreements.
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Objections are increasing to Google Book Search, Google’s massive effort to scan millions of books and present their contents online. The company reached an agreement last year with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers to pursue the project. It is awaiting a judge’s approval…. The settlement is unusual is that it essentially structures the digitized book search market while that market is in its infancy, said Bert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute [Reuters]. But Google is facing new obstacles in winning that judicial approval, as concerns continue to mount over how much power will be concentrated in the company’s hands.
The settlement would establish a revenue-sharing system and would allow Google to present the partial contents of books in the public domain, books that that are still under copyright but are out of print, and current books whose publishers have negotiated agreements with Google. But critics worry that Google is building a new kind of monopoly based on access to information, and that the company could therefore set prices as high as it wanted. In a new legal filing by library groups, critics of the settlement wrote that “the cost of creating such a library and Google’s significant lead-time advantage suggest that no other entity will create a competing digital library for the foreseeable future” [CNET]. The Justice Department’s antitrust division is also reportedly investigating the deal.
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“People ordered genomes for Christmas” [The New York Times], says the chief executive of the personal gene-sequencing company Knome, commenting on the recent increased demand for his company’s services. Now, Knome is partnering with the non-profit X Prize Foundation to auction its complete genome scan service on eBay. Bidding will open at $68,000—far below Knome’s current price of $99,000. The auction starts Friday and will continue for 10 days. The highest bidder will walk away with a full readout of their gene map, along with a complete interpretation of their genetic details [CNN].
The auction is essentially a publicity stunt [The New York Times] for the company, and is set to begin Friday in order to coincide with DNA Day, the anniversary of the discovery of the double helix structure. Proceeds will benefit the X Prize Foundation, an educational institute offering a $10 million prize for the sequencing of 100 genomes in 10 days for less than $10,000 per genome. Knome and other personal genetics companies claim that besides identifying risk of diseases, sequencing can also determine an individual’s potential reaction to certain drugs and pick out those that may be ineffective or even toxic…. Genomics plays a critical role in the move towards personalized medicine [CNN].
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When Adam Wilson wants to update his Twitter feed, he doesn’t have to tap out a single keystroke–brainwaves are all he needs. On April 1st, he used a brain-to-Twitter communication system to transmit this message: “USING EEG TO SEND TWEET.” That message may be a modern equivalent of Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Brain-computer interfaces are no longer just a gee-whiz technology, but a platform for researchers interested in immediate real-world applications for people who can think, but can’t move [Wired].
The system uses electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the electrical activity in the user’s brain. Explains University of Wisconsin professor Justin Williams: “All the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually…. And what your brain does is, if you’re looking at the ‘R’ on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the ‘R’ flashes, your brain says, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Something’s different about what I was just paying attention to.’ And you see a momentary change in brain activity” [MSNBC]. After the message has been painstakingly assembled, letter by letter, the user sends it by focusing on the “Twit” box on the screen. When that flashes and the EEG reader picks up the brain signal, the message is sent to Twitter.
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Some doctors are so concerned about being negatively reviewed on Web sites like Yelp, RateMDs, and Angie’s List that they are asking patients to sign gag orders that bar them from posting negative online reviews. A company called Medical Justice, which seeks to protect doctors against medical malpractice claims, advices doctors to have each patient sign the non-disclosure agreement–and if the patient refuses, to turn him away.
“Consumers and patients are hungry for good information” about doctors, but Internet reviews provide just the opposite, contends Dr. Jeffrey Segal, a North Carolina neurosurgeon [and the founder of Medical Justice]. Some sites “are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices,” and their sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation, Segal said [AP]. About 2,000 doctors have signed up for the service since it was launched two years ago. Segal claims that privacy laws and medical ethics prevent doctors from defending themselves on the review sites.
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In a convention hall 40 years ago today, a computer scientist took to the stage and blew the crowd away with a couple of screens and the world’s first computer mouse. In a presentation that was later dubbed the “mother of all demos,” Stanford researcher Douglas Engelbart showed off his lab’s research project: the first personal computer, complete with a mouse and an interactive screen.
The invention featured rudimentary windows and hyperlinks that allowed jumping from one document to another, as well as the ability to edit text and add graphics on a video monitor. The presentation also offered a peek at future computer networks that would become the Internet [San Francisco Chronicle]. At the end of the demonstration, the crowd rose in a standing ovation. Today, an event at Stanford will honor the 83-year-old Engelbart and commemorate his moment of glory.
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Sophisticated computer hackers are as big a threat to the United States as weapons of mass destruction and global jihad, argues a new report on cybersecurity. The report, which was produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, contains recommendations for the incoming Obama administration, and issues a dire assessment of the government’s current efforts to prevent cyberattacks. “America’s failure to protect cyberspace is one of the most urgent national security problems facing the new administration that will take office in January 2009,” the report states. Cyber safety is “a battle fought mainly in the shadows. It is a battle we are losing” [DailyTech].
The federal government has been embarrassed in recent years by intrusions into the computer networks of many different agencies, including the Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Commerce departments, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Defense University. An investigation last year by The Washington Post showed that multiple compromises of unclassified computer systems for the Transportation Security Administration and DHS headquarters went unnoticed for months in 2006 because the agency failed to effectively monitor its own networks [Washington Post]. In some cases the breaches have been linked to Chinese computer servers, indicating a possible convergence between hacking and espionage.
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Clinics around the world are offering unproven stem cell treatments to desperate patients with diseases like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, a new report says, and consumers should be on the lookout for snake oil salesmen. A new set of guidelines issued by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) gives consumers some hints on how to identify the scammers: Beware, it warns, of clinics claiming to treat multiple diseases with the same cells, boasting that there is no risk, and offering patient testimonials – rather than results from clinical research – as evidence that their treatment works. “Patients want to believe so much that a treatment is helping them that they can convince themselves that is has” [New Scientist], the guidelines caution.
In an accompanying study in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers examined the direct-to-consumer advertising that shady clinics use to attract customers. They looked at 19 Web sites that advertised stem cell treatments in several countries, including China, Mexico, and Russia, suggesting that stem cell clinics are becoming a lucrative part of the “medical tourism” industry. Researchers wrote: “The average cost of a course of therapy among the four websites that mentioned costs was $21,500, excluding travel and accommodation for patients and care givers. And examples of serious treatment side effects can be found” [Reuters] for the types of treatments being advertised.
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NASA engineers have finally tested an “interplanetary Internet” that could be crucial for future communications with rovers and astronauts exploring the moon, Mars, or other planets. NASA says the system would rely on probes and orbiters to serve as relay stations, or routers, to send communications around the solar system. The space agency has been working for 10 years on the project with Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s key inventors and now chief Internet evangelist for Google [AP].
The protocols (the language computers use to speak to each other) used for our terrestrial Internet won’t work for deep space, because they assume that the network’s nodes will be connected continuously, and that messages will travel swiftly. But communication between objects in space are frequently disrupted by solar storms and obstructing planets, and sending a message from Earth to Mars can take up to 20 minutes. So engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with Cerf to come up with a new protocol, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN).
With the new communications design, each network node is designed to hold onto data packets, instead of discard them, until a destination path can be found. “The incentive to use Internet-like protocols over space links was to take advantage of automated routing,” [said NASA's Leigh Torgerson]. “With standard space-link communications, the ground sends commands to spacecraft to tell it what time and what data to send. It’s very hands-on-intensive” [Computerworld].
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Ten intrepid genetic explorers have volunteered to have their genetic information posted on the Internet for anyone’s perusal, along with photographs, their disease histories, allergies, medications, ethnic backgrounds and a trove of other traits, called phenotypes, from food preferences to television viewing habits [The New York Times]. The 10 volunteers are the first participants in the Personal Genomics Project, an endeavor run by Harvard Medical School that hopes to offer free genetic testing to 100,000 people in exchange for their privacy.
The project aims to advance genome research by tapping volunteers who have a Facebook-mentality sense of privacy–minimal–and enough excitement about genomic science that they are willing to lay out their genetic and medical information so any researcher can sift through it for links between genes and traits. “There’s a hope that by making these data public, you can harness crowd-sourcing power in the same way that Wikipedia and YouTube and Google and Linux all emerged from cooperative, distributed efforts” [Boston Globe], said Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, who is one of the 10 pioneers.
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Google has backed a venture to use satellites to bring high-speed Internet to three billion people in Africa and other developing markets around the equator. Today Google announced a partnership with cable operator Liberty Global and bank HSBC. Their partnership is called O3b Networks—O3b stands for “other 3 billion,” a reference to the world’s population that still can’t access the Internet [The New York Times].
The group announced an order for 16 satellites as the first stage in the $750 million project, which will provide cheap, fast Internet access to companies that sell internet service via mobile phones or wireless networks. The move is being greeted as a clever technological solution, a boon for the developing world, and a smart business move. “Google has an interest in boosting the Internet all over the world to reach new masses,” said [business analyst] Wim Zwanenburg…. “The growth market for Internet and mobile phones is in emerging countries” [Bloomberg].
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Airfare prices are soaring, and airlines have tried to cope by charging for food, drinks, and other formerly free items. But there’s one bright spot on the horizon: Passengers may soon be able to access the Net during flights—although you’ll have to pay for that, too.
Delta Airlines says it will beginning offering Internet access on some flights beginning as early as October, and plans to outfit the entire domestic fleet with Web capability by next summer. Fliers with Wi-Fi-enabled devices like laptops, smartphones and personal digital assistants will be able to access the Internet while in flight. The service will cost $9.95 on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on longer flights [The New York Times].
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