Hash: Tech

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 23:38:15 GMT

Capitalism for beginners: Educational tech toys are high on parents' to buy lists this Christmas, according to Wired's Leander Kahney.

Testing this season's top toys, her two year old particularly liked the Pretend and Learn Shopping Cart:

'Well-made and sturdy, the supermarket trolley comes with a variety of plastic food items -- bananas, packets of cereal -- that can be scanned with a handheld scanner attached to the cart. Pass an item in front of the scanner, and the cart speaks its name and the number of items. Scan the item again, and the cart speaks its color, the food group and its nutritional benefit.

'Aimed at preschoolers, the cart is billed as teaching numbers, counting, quantities and simple food facts. . .

'Lyle preferred the exploratory mode and its free-form play. The game mode, when asked to find certain items, was not altogether successful. Lyle had no trouble finding the first item asked for but lost interest before finding the second one, preferring to scan items at random.' [Wired News].

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 22:09:09 GMT

A splice of mice: Mickey isn't the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. [Animation World Network].

Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse.

Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard's scientists invented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its Supreme Court says the university doesn't deserve a patent - at least not until the politicians have had a chance to think the ethics of biotech over. [National Post].

As with Mickey, business concerns slam into public concerns here.

It doesn't make much business sense for patented genes to be freely accessible. After all, you don't want your rivals rummaging through your research work.

This isn't just a standard big business line. As biotech develops, smaller firms, entrepreneurial boffins often, universities even, are entering the market as niche developers. Like artists, writers, coders and other intellectual property creators, they want to safeguard their work so they can be properly rewarded.

Fine, but when it comes to biotech, sole ownership of this kind of information isn't in the public interest. Charging for access is likely to discourage research. Ideas develop most rapidly, most fruitfully through free exchanges of information. And it goes against common sense, moral sense, for private groups to have monopolies over such fundamental knowledge.

Think eugenics here. Think perfect blue-eyed, blond-haired babies. Think the Boys from Brazil.

Scientists as scientists tend to agree that science should be open to all, should be open source. According to Michael Morgan, formerly executive director of research at the Wellcome Trust, research and competition were enhanced when the results of the Human Genome Project were immediately made public - for free - over the Internet. [Globe and Mail].

Business argues, however, that open source can sit alongside proprietary code. An academic institution, like Harvard, can apply its expertise to become a business and generate wealth for the good of its staff and students, for the greater good.

Perhaps. But GM mice, unlike Mickey or Windows XP, scamper through the real world. Clicking through standard intellectual property arguments when faced with invention at such a fundamental level, at a time when the news is one long brave new nightmare, isn't enough.

Corporations are exercising property rights over their biotech creations. How morally right is this? To enclose a creature's genetic code? To turn such fundamental information, the stuff of life, into something that can be bought and sold?

Like much else in life, as the public debate over patenting life splutters on in parliaments and in the media, the business of business happens quietly in the background. The corporations are shaping the biotech agenda. In universities even.

Canada's politicians may ponder long and hard. They won't be able to ignore the pressure from corporate lobbyists. Canada has to play the same free trade rules as the rest of the world. Patent law there, as everywhere else, will be reinvented for the 21st Century.

Meanwhile, challenging the idea of minting money out of minting life is left to the scientists. The Canadian decision came the day after the publication of the draft complete mouse genome. Scientists from 27 institutions in six countries took part in the £87m Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium. [Independent].

The consortium is in the public sector. All its data is in the public domain.

Real or cartoon, mice or men, code of all sorts will cheer loudly.

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 19:28:58 GMT

Trusting Linux: Despite throwing cash around during his tour of India last week, Bill Gates failed to persuade at least one Indian to fall for Windows.

Digvijay Singh, chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, told Gates that he's decided to plump for Linux, Microsoft's open source rival, when considering software for government projects.

'For us it is not a question of Microsoft versus Linux. It is just a matter of choosing between a free software and a monopoly. We feel that when we are putting public information out in the open, then it should not be through a proprietary software.' [India Times].

The developing world, when given the choice, prefers Linux.

Computer industry reports predict Linux use will spread to two-thirds of Chinese software developers over the next year. [Linux Devices].

Linux will be run in some 33 percent of computers in Latin America. [Forbes].

In India, Linux powers the new $268 Simputer designed to bring cheap computing to tribal villages. [Register].

Just like everybody else, countries on a tight budget find that Microsoft software is expensive, bloated and riddled with bugs and security holes.

Like everybody else, they find themselves on a perpetual upgrade cycle, splashing out every few years on computers big enough, fast enough to deal with the spec demanded by the latest version of Windows.

Like everybody else, illegally copying software is becoming less of an option as corporations push through tough anti-piracy laws.

Linux's overriding advantage for sovereign states, however, may be its inherent trustworthiness. Governments can check its code and make sure it doesn’t contain any back doors, any holes left for foreign intelligence services to peer through.

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 22:25:44 GMT

Microsoft targets India: Bill Gates' charitable foundation is giving $100 million to fight AIDS in India. It's not an altogether altruistic move. The Alpha geek is on a tour to drum up public sector business and see off the threat from Linux. Embracing and extending as usual, Microsoft plans to invest $400 million in its Indian operations over the next three years. [NY Times].

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 19:12:32 GMT

iMakeWorlds: With 18 million copies sold so far, the Sims is already the world's most popular computer game. Will Wright, ultimate code god of the Sims, expects the social interactions possible in Sims Online, launched next month, to evolve into marketplaces and governments. The character he plays in the beta version is called Alan Greenspan. [Wired].

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 19:12:25 GMT

Enough already: When no longer needed as bench press weights or fake snow, AOL discs should be returned to sender via NoMoreAOLCds. [CNN].

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 21:07:09 GMT

Taking digital liberties: As the US Supreme Court discusses copyright protection and whether Mickey Mouse should go free, Brewster Kahle, director of the nonprofit Internet Archive, is outside the Court Building printing off books on demand from his Bookmobile.

Kahle wants an enriched public domain in which universal access to human knowledge is a right:

'We want to have a million books for everyone to use. We can't build a library to hold a million books -- the building would be just too big! So we use the Internet. We download a book from the Internet. We print it out, put a binding around it, you get to pick the book you want.' [Salon].

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 21:39:20 GMT

Free for all: Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia anyone can edit, now contains over 50,000 articles. The entry on the anti-globalisation movement has a revision history that's a good illustration of how Wikipedia works.

Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:50:29 GMT

Life in Pandemonium: On general release in October, Naqoyqatsi ('Civilised Violence'), the last in Godfrey Reggio's trilogy of non-narrative films about our world falling out of step with nature, describes the expansion of technology, the new digital spaces surrounding us. [QTime trailer]; [Koyaanisqatsi].

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 10:33:52 GMT

Copyright wrangling: It's ironic that both these articles, first in early June in Salon and then yesterday in the Washington Post examine the illegal copying of music, the stealing of intellectual property. Compare and contrast the two articles. Is the similarity in the pieces just a coincidence? Is David Segal guilty of stealing Dan Levine's ideas or is he creating something new from them? Segal adds facts and figures to Levine's more subtle piece. Does that put him in the clear? I think it does. . .

My take on the Post article: having finished off Napster through the courts, the music industry is now going guerilla. It's planting spoof files on p2p networks like Kazaa and Morpheus to stop what it considers is the theft of over two billion songs a month.

There's an increase in CD-R sales as new releases reach the shops and this reveals the extent of music piracy, it claims.

But Eric Garland, president of BigChampagne, a company that measures online file-sharing traffic, says what the industry is doing smacks of desperation.

'When you've got a consumer movement of this magnitude, when tens of millions of people say, "I think CD copying is cool and I'm within my rights to do it," it gets to the point where you have to say uncle and build a business model around it rather than fight it.' [Washington Post].

Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:48:09 GMT

Speed trap: Even the Home Office thinks it's wrong for scientists to force mice to take amphetamines and listen to the Prodigy. [Daily Telegraph].

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 21:37:27 GMT

Beggaring belief: Fortune magazine lists the 'greed' merchants, the top US tech executives who became 'immensely, extraordinarily, obscenely wealthy' by selling stock at inflated prices while investors were being told to buy.

The top three: between January 1999 and May 2002, executives at Qwest Communications made $2.26 billion through selling company stock; executives at Broadcom made $2.08 billion; executives at AOL Time Warner made $1.79 billion.

'Executives and directors of the 1,035 corporations that met our criteria took out, by our estimate, roughly $66 billion. Of that amount, a total haul of $23 billion went to 466 insiders at the 25 corporations where the executives cashed out the most.' [Fortune].

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 18:16:20 GMT

I'll buy that: Full of shiny gadgets, Gizmodo is an experiment by Nick Denton to see if weblogs can make money.

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 17:38:46 GMT

Net gains: Scott Rosenberg on why the internet matters even after the pop of the tech stock bubble: 'Hundreds of millions of people around the world continue to bend it to their own ends, in chaotic, unstable and unpredictable ways. As a generator of instant wealth, the Net may now be a big bust; as a generator of instant ideas, it keeps thrumming along.' [Salon].

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 17:38:12 GMT

iMicropayments: To complement The End of Free, here comes The Start of Fee.

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 16:57:36 GMT

Live virtually: No need to protest about income disparity gaps, corporate sleaze or Bush's foreign policy misadventures. Click the icon on the screen and you too can build yourself a better, brighter tomorrow.

As computers get more powerful and broadband becomes standard, virtual spaces like EverQuest are expected to turn into boom worlds for the companies that own them.

EverQuest has 433,000 players who pay $12.95 a month. Creating relationships and societies out of the EverQuest virtual playground, subscribers generate $5m a month for Sony.

The typical player spends 20 hours a week living in EverQuest. According to Edward Castronova, an economics professor at California State University at Fullerton, one-third of adult players spend more time in the game world than in their paying jobs.

Not surprisingly, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Vivendi-Universal and Disney are pouring millions into developing online worlds.

In December, LucusArts and Sony release Star Wars Galaxies. Next year, Sony releases PlanetSide: a first-person action game set in an online world.

Consultancy Themis Group says that by 2003, revenue from online games will double to $635m. That's more than the revenue expected from the latest Star Wars film. [Business 2.0].

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 16:48:53 GMT

Yesterday was Hiroshima Day: At a ceremony to mark the dropping 57 years ago of the first nuclear bomb, Tadatoshi Akiba, mayor of Hiroshima, protested against US unilateralism: "America has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world. . . Rather, we, the people of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority to destroy the world." [CNN].

Fat chance when the US is contemplating the use of mini-nukes, low-yield nuclear weapons designed to destroy underground bunkers. [Guardian].

Freeman Dyson, physicist, on the corruptive power of nuclear weapons:

"I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds." [From the film The Day After Trinity].

Tue, 23 Jul 2002 09:49:46 GMT

ETA: Don't fret. Tech@iMakeContent.com will be launching in the next couple of days.

Mon, 24 Jun 2002 19:09:33 GMT

Palladium: Trustworthy computing from Microsoft? Is it open to abuse? [MSNBC].

Mon, 17 Jun 2002 22:35:54 GMT

We are Google: Google currently delivers 3,190,000 entries for 'Islam'; 832,000 entries for 'Judaism'. Which tells us what? More Jews than Muslims use the internet? Jews have a greater interest in comparative religion? 'Man' gets 69,400,000 entries; 'Woman', 22,400,000; 'Mars', 7,700,000; 'Venus', 2,390,000. So? We're living in a feminised world that's desperately searching for a better understanding of what men want? [Smackdown].

Imagine a world in which everybody had access to the internet. The ability to peer into the word rankings of particular communities would give an amazing, dynamic insight into collective thought processes. Reworked continuously, word rankings would mirror our minds, the minds of our neighbours, our enemies.

English and Brazilian word rankings are bound to be quite different from each other. Would subtle changes in Google word rankings precede sporting fixtures? elections? wars? earthquakes. . ?

The zeitgeist according to Google is currently biased towards the West and the US and towards English. But Google's ability for capturing the essence of what's going on can already be seen: the top word for September 2001 was 'Nostradamus'. [Google Zeitgeist].

Want to know if the Brazilians are shaking at the prospect of meeting England in the World Cup? Give it a couple of years. By 2006, the 10 O'Clock News will consist of nothing but analyses of the Google sporting zeitgeist by the BBC's chief Google editor and a professor in Google studies. [First Monday].