Category: Technology

Why is it so important that the public be able to put werewolves on T-shirts?

This Washington Post editorial attempts to answer this very question, regarding lawsuits over the use of copyrighted images in Twilight fan material. Following an apt quote from Tolkien, the author suggests:

Films such as the Twilight saga resonate because they show us complex characters grappling with big issues. …

Pictures, videos and slogans on T-shirts are tools of modern expression, and with a phenomenon as omnipresent as Twilight, fans should be free to engage, manipulate, remix and remake. Free speech is just too important for anything less.

Fans of any kind of cultural artifact, Twilight or otherwise, should agree with that.

via Washington Post – The Twilight copyright saga: Forbidden love and forbidden T-shirts.

Think twice before checking in

Sites like FourSquare are pretty cool. The basic idea is that by “checking in” at a location friends will know to find you there, and businesses will get to know their best customers.

But one concern is that it doesn’t take a sophisticated hacker to track another person’s location. Earlier this year, a trio of Dutch software developers put up a site called PleaseRobMe.com. The principle was simple: pull data from Twitter and Foursquare and post the username and (self-reported) locations. And many users weren’t paying attention to their privacy settings.

This has given me pause on a number of occasions–even for blogging while on vacation.  I see this as a great counterargument to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that “the age of privacy is over.” There are a few perfectly legitimate reasons to keep some information private.

via Location Services Raise Privacy Concerns – International Business Times.

AT&T: It’s our ball!

AT&T: drop net neutrality or U-verse gets it (Ars Technica)

AT&T has told the FCC that if it reclassifies broadband providers as common carriers, it will “have to re-evaluate whether we put shovels in the ground.” Interestingly enough, AT&T has already admitted that they are investing less in the development of this badly needed high speed network.

“AT&T has already slowed down U-verse deployment under the current Title I regime,” declared S. Derek Turner [of Free Press], “so to blame the FCC for the company’s own investment decisions is simply disingenuous.”

This points out the crucial difference between the understandings of Net Neutrality proponents and opponents. Providers see their network as “their ball,” while we’re asking them to build the playground.

The Science Gap

Miller McCune addresses The Real Science Gap in this (rather long) article. It provides a lot of food for thought in talking about the current structure of training (and paying) our future scientists.  A brief historical bit about Vannevar Bush’s (yes, the memex guy) 5 suggestions for “the basic structures of civilian research that remain to this day,” including what became the NSF.

The article goes on to criticize that we have too many scientists in universities, for too long, working at too low wage on faculty projects not of their choosing. There is some truth to these claims, but their suggestion is pretty shocking:

Any change in the science labor market would, of course, require dismantling the current system and erecting something that would value young scientists for their future potential as researchers and not just for their present ability to keep universities’ grant mills humming. This would mean paying them more and exploiting them less. It would also mean limiting their numbers by both producing and importing fewer scientists, so incomes could rise to something commensurate with the investment in time and talent and the high-level skills of a Ph.D.

Fewer scientists?! I personally do social science, which is pretty hard, but hard sciences are even more difficult. One has to wonder if we would be where we are today if someone 50 years ago had argued for fewer scientists. Sure, there is a lot of work that is wasted (failure is an integral part of the scientific process), but this time is an investment that has brought us where we are today. Arguing to throw the whole thing away is incredibly shortsighted.

Note that the comments are worth a skim.  There are a few other interesting articles about this and related problems: