September 11, 2007, 11:26 PM CT

China's Eye on the Internet

The "Great Firewall of China," used by the government of the People's Republic of China to block users from reaching content it finds objectionable, is actually a "panopticon" that encourages self-censorship through the perception that users are being watched, rather than a true firewall, as per scientists at UC Davis and the University of New Mexico.

The scientists are in the process of developing an automated tool, called ConceptDoppler, to act as a weather report on changes in Internet censorship in China. ConceptDoppler uses mathematical techniques to cluster words by meaning and identify keywords that are likely to be blacklisted.

A number of countries carry out some form of Internet censorship. Most rely on systems that block specific Web sites or Web addresses, said Earl Barr, a graduate student in computer science at UC Davis who is an author on the paper. China takes a different approach by filtering Web content for specific keywords and selectively blocking Web pages.

In 2006, a team at the University of Cambridge, England, discovered that when the Chinese system detects a banned word in data traveling across the network, it sends a series of three "reset" commands to both the source and the destination. These "resets" effectively break the connection. But they also allow scientists to test words and see which ones are censored......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 02:42:25 GMT

Linux Now Available on the Palm Gadgets

Palm's promoted next-generation OS will run on Linux. It's taking so long though that people are pointing to its delayed release as another sign of Palm's demise. But as always, when something's perceived to be important by enough people, someone online will freely share their expertise and time.

That's the case with the efforts of a group of Independent programmers. Together, they have come up with an Open Source Linux-based mobile OS that can run on newer model Palm smartphones and PDAs like the LifeDrive, TX, and of course the Treo:
The most recent success has been with "Cocoboot" version 4, released on 18 July. A Palm bootloader, Cocoboot will start the boot process, halt Palm (garnet), and start loading Linux from your SD card.
You can download Cocoboot from Sourceforge. As always, such technically complicated changes will void warranties, and must only be attempted by the brave and knowledgeable. More details on download Cocoboot from Sourceforge. Posted by: Rico Mossesgeld      Read more     Source

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:30:23 GMT

Laptop or Desktop: Which Computer is for You?

Sure, a computer system is one business tool that any practical home business person should never live without. But how do you choose what type of computer to use?

Desktop - It's the less portable type of computer that's known to be equipped with larger memory capacity. It's bulky and known to be more durable than a laptop. Do you agree with that? Many business owners who are not often traveling can benefit from the features a desktop offers - larger space capacity, larger screen options, etc. Top desktop brands include Dell Dimension E521 and Apple IMAC.

Laptops - For people who can't stay at home too much because of client meetings or simply because they love the outdoors and would prefer working in coffeeshops, a laptop is the best choice. However, there are still homebuddies who are too fidgety who can also benefit from the portability of laptops. Top brands of laptops include Apple MacBook Pro, Dell Inspiron

Check whether you have to move about too often. Your budget a couple of hundreds of dollars or more than a $1000? What will you use the computer for? Would you want it to be a strictly business tool? Or would you want it to serve as a pleasure gizmo, too (watching DVD's and gaming)? Will you be doing graphics editing that would require you advanced graphics software installed?

Answering those questions and thinking more of what you want your computer to accomplish for you will help in deciding what kind of laptop or desktop computer will suit you and your home based business.

So which one is for you? A MacBook Pro or a Dell desktop computer? Posted by: noel      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:34:48 GMT

Google Reveals YouTube Ads Strategy

YouTube, a video web site acquired by search engine giant Google in November last year, has revealed its online marketing strategy. The Big G said small half transparent adverts will be incorporated in a selection of video clips.

The advert will be displayed for 15 seconds after a user has started to watch the video. It will appear for 10 seconds on only 20% of the bottom screen without much disturbing the viewer. The user will have the choice to close the ad or let it run all the way through the video clip.

The ads will not be displayed on all YouTube videos. As a fact, the search engine company said the new marketing system will only appear on select partner videos and not on personal movies.

According to Google "less than 10% of viewers actively move to close the overlay when it appears and that there is a 5 to 10 times "click-to-play rate" compared with standard advertising format." Posted by: noel      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 04:47:31 GMT

The CIA, FBI and Wikipedia

Interesting revelations from Reuters that CIA and FBI computers edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on such hot topics as the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison.

The changes were picked up using the program WikiScanner and they might be in breach of Wikipedia's guidelines that seek to make the online encyclopaedia a completely neutral and reliable source.

Mind you, the guidelines make clear that merely having a conflict of interest doesn't stop you from making or changing an entry and that you just need to be mindful of your position. Yeah right! The CIA was really mindful when it changed the casualty figures for the Iraq war, as was the FBI when it removed the aerial and satellite images of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The BloggingStocks blog suggests it's probably no big deal when vested interests.

That may be, but the problem seems to be much more complicated than that. The temptation to rewrite history is all too much for multinational companies and political parties, reports The Independent on Sunday.

Examples include ExxonMobil changing details about the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, with an allegation that the company "has not yet paid the $5 billion in spill damages it owes to the 32,000 Alaskan fishermen" being replaced with references to the funds the company has paid out, Dell removing a passage about how the company out-sourced its support divisions overseas and someone at Rupert Murdoch's News International removing suggestions that the News of the World's anti-paedophile was hypocritical when the paper published semi-nude photos of models as young as 16. Posted by: leon      Read more     Source

August 21, 2007, 5:07 PM CT

Users Mistakenly Trust Higher Positioned Results in Google Searches

An eye tracking experiment reported in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication revealed that college student internet users have an inherent trust in Google's ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When participants selected a link from Google's result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position, even if that content was less relevant to the search query.

"Despite the popularity of search engines, most users are not aware of how they work and know little about the implications of their algorithms," says study author Bing Pan. "When websites rank highly in a search engine, they might not be authoritative, unbiased or trustworthy."

As per Pan, this has important long term implications for search engine results, as this type of use, in turn, affects future rankings. "The way college students conduct online searches promotes a 'rich-get-richer' phenomenon, where popular sites get more hits regardless of relevance," says Pan. "This further cements the site's high rank, and makes it more difficult for lesser known sites to gain an audience".

The author says users need to be aware that search engines have tremendous influence on what and how information is accessed. An effort on the part of search engine developers to provide users with information on how the algorithms function could help to raise user awareness......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

August 6, 2007, 5:32 PM CT

Shed light on Internet scams

Computer researchers from UC San Diego have found striking differences between the infrastructure used to distribute spam and the infrastructure used to host the online scams advertised in these unwanted email messages. This discovery should aid in the fight to reduce spam volume and shut down illegal online businesses and malware sites.

While hundreds or thousands of compromised computers may be used to relay spam to users, most scams are hosted by individual Web servers, computer researchers from the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering have found. Based on an analysis of over one million spam emails, 94 percent of the scams advertised via embedded links are hosted on individual Web servers, as per new peer-evaluated research to be presented@the USENIX Security 2007 conference in Boston on August 09, 2007.

Using new Internet monitoring approaches developed@UCSD, the computer researchers studied a spam feed over the course of a week. They analyzed spam-advertised Web servers hosting online scams that either offer merchandise and services (e.g., pharmaceuticals, luxury watches, mortgages) or use malicious means to defraud users (e.g., phishing, spyware, rootkits). The scientists followed the URLs embedded in spam back to the hosting servers, probed the servers and analyzed the Web pages advertised in the spam......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

August 6, 2007, 5:02 PM CT

Graphics, Video and Rock

American Idol and Comic-Con have come and gone, but fun in San Diego's summer sun has just begun. From August 4 to 9, the top computer graphics and interactive media folks from around the world will flood San Diego for the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference - and UC San Diego is part of the action.

UCSD's Calit2 is rolling out a red, pixilated carpet and serving up video in 4K - more than four times the resolution of high-definition TV. The video program includes a short movie by Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson shot entirely with a 4K video camera. These video performances will complement digital performances and installations at UCSD that are part of SIGGRAPH, the premier computer graphics and interactive technologies conference, which will attract an estimated 25,000 people to San Diego from August 4 through 9.

Working with a handful of high-profile partners, UCSD's Calit2 and Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) will treat visitors to demonstrations of the cutting-edge visualization technologies during SIGGRAPH. One example is the chance to take a virtual swim in the largest metagenomics data set in existence to date. Click here for more details on when you can check out the a number of art-meets-technology projects at Calit2.

For the 21-and-over set interested in an off-campus concert that is so cool it's not an official UCSD event, rock stars with day jobs as Jacobs School professors and students will be playing at Dream Street Live in Ocean Beach on Thursday 9 August. Audition Lab is going on at 8 PM and SO3 plays next, at 9 PM......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

August 3, 2007, 10:31 PM CT

Animated beer smooth to pour

CSIRO fluids researcher Dr Mahesh Prakash says the physics of bubble creation in carbonated drinks like beer is complex.

"As you pour beer into a glass, you see bubbles appearing on what are called nucleation sites, where the glass isn't quite smooth," Dr Prakash says.

"The bubbles expand to a certain size then rise up in streams to the surface, where they bump into each other and form a raft of foam that floats on the top".

Dr Prakash and colleagues have captured the maths describing these processes in software that allows movie makers, film production houses and others to create super-realistic special effects.

The four-year project is being undertaken jointly by CSIRO and South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, one of the world's largest computer graphics developers for games, with most of the research being done in Melbourne.

Clever maths called smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) helps the software do its job by working smarter not harder. The software uses less computer power and takes less time to get better results than other special effects software it has been benchmarked against.

CSIRO Business and Commercialisation Manager, Andrew Dingjan says CSIRO and ETRI hope this will bring the fluid animation software within reach of smaller film production houses......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

July 23, 2007, 5:03 PM CT

Making tomorrow's computers from a pencil trace

Troy, N.Y. A key discovery at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could help advance the role of graphene as a possible heir to copper and silicon in nanoelectronics.

Graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, eluded researchers for years but was finally made in the laboratory in 2004 with the help of everyday, store-bought clear adhesive tape. Graphite, the common material used in most pencils, is made up of countless layers of graphene. Scientists simply used the gentle stickiness of tape to break apart these layers.

Saroj Nayak, an associate professor in Rensselaers Department of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy, has worked with graduate student Philip Shemella and others for two years to determine how graphenes extremely efficient conductive properties can be exploited for use in nanoelectronics. After running dozens of robust computer simulations, the group has shown for the first time that the length, as well as the width, of graphene directly impacts the materials conduction properties.

Nayak, Shemella, and their team outlined their findings in the report Energy Gaps in Zero-Dimensional Graphene Nanoribbons reported in the July 23 issue of Applied Physics Letters.

In the form of a long 1-D nanoscale ribbon, which looks like molecular chicken wire, graphene demonstrates unique electrical properties that include either metallic or semiconducting behavior. When short segments of this ribbon are isolated into tiny zero-dimensional (0-D) segments called nanorectangles, where the width is measured in atoms, they are classified as either armchair or zigzag graphene nanoribbons. Both types of nanorectangles have unique and fascinating properties......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source