via The Daily Beast - Blogs and Stories by Eve Conant on 3/1/11
If Gov. Walker defeats the public union, AFL-CIO president Richard L. Trumka predicts disastrous results for American workers. Trumka talks to Eve Conant about the price of union-busting. Richard L. Trumka has seen his share of strikes and protests,...Tuesday, March 1, 2011
TED 2011 Conference Kicks Off: How To Get The Latest Updates
via Technology on HuffingtonPost.com by Bianca Bosker on 3/1/11
The 2011 TED conference, which brings together billionaires and bloggers, neuroscientists and artists, luminaries and less-well-known innovators, kicked off Monday in Long Beach, California.
The theme for this year's week-long conference is "the rediscovery of wonder" and includes a distinguished and varied line-up of speakers. There's papercutter artist Beatrice Coron, tech pioneer and philanthropist Bill Gates, "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz, director Julie Taymor, and former Afghanistan commander Stanley McChrystal.
HuffPostTech is in Long Beach and will be blogging, interviewing, and live-tweeting from TED 2011. Follow @bbosker on Twitter for live updates from TED, or check back here, where we'll be compiling the latest news from TED 2011.
We want to be your eyes and ears at TED, so check out the full list of speakers at TED 2011 then tell us who you want to hear from and what you're interested to learn. Weigh in below or email us at bianca@huffingtonpost.com.
Timothy Karr: Speaker Boehner's Space Odyssey Net neutrality
via Technology on HuffingtonPost.com by Timothy Karr on 3/1/11
On Monday, House Speaker John Boehner (R - AT&T) chose the occasion of his first address outside Washington to take aim at Net Neutrality.
While the speaker may have traveled 650 miles to Nashville to deliver this attack, his speech came from the far reaches of the solar system, detached from the space-time continuum that keeps us earthlings rooted to reality.
"The FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet," the speaker said referring to the agency's Open Internet rules issued last December.
"'Network neutrality,' they call it. It's a series of regulations that empower the federal bureaucracy to regulate Internet content and viewpoint discrimination," he imagined, pledging to use the full powers at his disposal "to fight [this] government takeover of the Internet."
Brought to you by the Tea Party
The speaker's bold stand for free speech would be inspirational if it were connected to reality in any way. Instead, he is parroting talking points from industry lobbyists, and Tea Party front groups to intentionally mislead the public.
Open Internet protections actually prevent Speaker Boehner's dark scenario from happening: They forbid companies from unfairly blocking or degrading Internet websites and applications while keeping control over Internet content in the hands of end users -- people like you and me.
The speaker knows full well that real Net Neutrality has nothing to do with a government takeover of the Internet. He's playing dog-whistle politics and stoking irrational fears of government repression, while raking in campaign contributions from the phone and cable companies.
In the Nashville audience was Marsha Blackburn (R - Verizon), the member of Congress who has introduced legislation to strip the FCC of any Net Neutrality protection powers.
Speaker Boehner is also working alongside Rep. Greg Walden (R - NCTA) who has introduced a congressional resolution of disapproval that would reverse the FCC's past Net Neutrality rules and prohibit the agency from acting in any way as a watchdog of the open Internet.
Their plan to ban Net Neutrality would hand over our freedom to connect and speak freely via the web to Comcast, Verizon and AT&T -- with no recourse for the public when they block any content they don't like for any reason.
Speaker Boehner knows this to be true, but telling the truth won't help his patrons on "K" Street.
Netjacking
According to reports on Monday, cable operator and Internet service provider Mediacom has been caught hijacking its users' browsers and injecting unsolicited ads.
Disturbingly the ads themselves seem targeted to the individual user interests of the companies more than 750,000 broadband subscribers. According to Karl Bode of DSLReports, Mediacom "has apparently implemented deep packet inspection and DNS redirection advertising technology our users say is difficult to opt out of."
For those not familiar with deep packet inspection, or DPI, it's a technology that allows network managers to spy on, track and target user Internet content as our communications pass through routers along the Information Superhighway.
Using DPI is akin to having toll booth collectors inspect the contents of your car trunk to determine where you're going and what billboards you will see alongside the highway.
Screen shots taken by Mediacom users show a large banner ad for Mediacom's own discount phone service placed above the top of third-party Web page content, including Apple.com and Google.com.
Mediacom's actions are yet another example of a cable company interfering with its subscribers' use of the Internet.
Like Comcast and Charter before it, Mediacom's actions reveal the gatekeeper tendencies of network operators.
If Boehner and his cronies succeed in eliminating online consumer protections, these corporation won't hesitate to monitor user traffic and meddle with our digital freedoms.
The most Orwellian op-ed of the year
via Climate Progress by Joe on 3/1/11
Note: No head vise known to humankind can protect you from this op-ed — but for any survivors, I end the post with the joke of the day.
Quick Quiz — Who said what:
- For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups.
- I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.
- Despite this criticism, we’re determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.
- You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Quotes 1 and 3 are Charles Koch in a head-exploding Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Why Koch Industries Is Speaking Out.” Quotes 2 and 4 are Al Capone.
Let’s us have a moment of silence for the plight of the misunderstood businessmen. Time’s up.
Koch’s agenda is to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, especially himself, with no regard to the health and well-being of the many who will suffer along the way — and he will stop at nothing to achieve this. He and his brother are the Al Capones of pollutocrats — or Bernie Madoffs, if you prefer the modern-day analogy. They outspend Exxon Mobil on pro-pollution disinformation aimed at preventing action to preserving a livable climate. They must make their billions as quickly as possible before the global Ponzi scheme they are pushing collapses.
The policies of Gov. Walker, of course, would greatly harm the citizens of Wisconsin, again benefiting the super-rich pollutocrats at the expense of the middle class and poor.
The subhead for the WSJ opinion piece could only have been written by some editor at the paper recently hired away from the Ministry of Truth (aka Minitrue):
Crony capitalism and bloated government prevent entrepreneurs from producing the products and services that make people’s lives better.
Yes, that’s the goal of the Kochs — producing the products and services that make people’s lives better — if we lived in the Bizarro World. Here’s another quote:
This American system of ours … call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.
Oh, wait, that’s not Koch in the WSJ, it’s Al Capone again. Go figure!
The entire agenda of the Kochs is to ensure that businesses never are subject to science-based regulations aimed at preserving and improving the clean air, clean water, and a livable climate, thereby making people’s lives better. For the Kochs, limited government means unlimited pollution.
UPDATE: The Kochs want to continue all of the massive subsidies for dirty energy, while gutting them for the clean energy products and services that actually make people’s lives better. For good discussions of this, see
REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1):
– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally-planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.
– As Yasha Levine has reported, Koch exploits a number of government programs for profit. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a timber company subsidiary of Koch Industries, uses taxpayer money provided by the U.S. Forestry Service to provide their loggers with taxpayer-funded roads and access to virgin growth forests. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public,” according to the Institute for Public Accuracy….
– Koch Industries won massive government contracts using their close relationship with the Bush administration….
– SolveClimate recently reported that Koch Industries will reap huge profits from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs from Koch-owned tar sands mining centers in Canada to Koch-owned refineries in Texas. To build the pipeline, politicians throughout the Midwest, many of whom have received large Koch campaign donations, have used eminant domain — government seizures of private land. In Kansas, where Koch-funded officials advise Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and the Republican legislature, the Keystone XL Pipeline is likely to receive a property tax exemption of ten years, a special loophole that will cost Kansas taxpayers about $50 million.
The Kochs also fund and help oversee the extremist Tea Party movement (see New Yorker exposes Koch brothers and Video proof David Koch, the polluting billionaire, pulls the strings of the Tea Party extremists). As Brad Johnson summarizes their agenda:
Top on the Koch agenda is the elimination of the estate tax for billionaires, the end to an open Internet, and the prevention of limits on their toxic pollution. Spending millions of dollars a year — a tiny percent of their pollution-based wealth — the Koch brothers and their ideological allies intend to manipulate American democracy to protect their private economic interests.
I feel obliged to end this most head-exploding of posts on an upbeat note.
First, DARPA is funding research and development into a containment field that could protect people’s crania from Minitrue op-eds like this one. It’s too late for you, of course, but just imagine how that breakthrough might improve the lives of future generations!
Second, here’s a joke that’s circulating:
A public union employee, a Tea Party activist and Charles Koch are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle. Koch takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the Tea Partier and says, “watch out for that union guy he wants a piece of your cookie.”
Related Posts:
- From promoting acid rain to climate denial — over 20 years of David Koch’s polluter front groups
- What we’re up against: Polluter-funded Tea Party climate zombie astroturfing
- Must-see video: Polluter-funded Smithsonian exhibit whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change
- Tea party pollutocrat David Koch denies climate change, shrugs off his carbon pollution
- Rolling Stone names 12 politicians and executives blocking progress on global warming
Augmented Reality: Tonchidot heading for SXSWi
via Beyond The Beyond by Bruce Sterling on 3/1/11
@iguchi Please translate it! #domo makes real world social networking. http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/jp-the-day-sekai-camera-threw-away-camera/
*Okay, I WILL translate that — or rather, I’ll have Google do it. Not necessarily a model of verbal clarity here. But one gets the drift.
*A couple of years ago I opined that Augmented Reality people would look like Augmented Reality People some day. And Iguchi, man, he’s really got a look.
LAUNCH conference is that TechCrunch50 (first 40), Jason Calacanis launched a new project with the chief editor Michael Arrington. 頓智has long prepared the venue during this Sutatoappuronchiibento the DOMO unveiled . Raised the same venue in 2008, when the difference is that the product will have a really high degree of perfection, “is moving again,” the fact. SXSW now in the public areas of this app that DOMO is said to come to early March.
DOMO is the first time I met last year in August. Sekai is “BEYOND REALITY” (Sekai Asobe beyond) when I went to interview the timing of launching a new slogan. CEO to exchange views among various Sekai what will happen in the future Takahito Iguchi, showed me the concept stage and the fact sheet.
I was then, as the Social Platform Sekai , wrote an article saying that. The contents of this article is about, “DOMO” Even though the world of good. Because, when it seemed the story.
Iguchi world taught me, through an enhanced reality Sekai Sekai in people LIKE to meet and expand the relationship. Social Platform is a fusion of real and virtual that.
DOMO is a world product will achieve just that. DOMO users to find the marginal interest (to determine tag) someone who’s looking for, “DOMO” if you connect with that person. Yes. They LIKE it in the Real World is really trying to achieve. Small parties and concerts for example, a conference that “events (events)” service being used by BUMP There are, DOMO is “to meet other before meeting” the most that they may be different.
DOMO spun頓智does, I will become it? Are discarded Sekai is “NO” to expect
Sekai Camera Performance Certainly covered only the 2008 event, as the explosive growth of the product could be heard easily. I think that there were two challenges. One goal and one wall is hard.
What to do with the Sekai? Mochiyori various ideas various people have never seen a product ーー, Sekai was used in different places. Deta game also. Iguchi about this, but clearly in a previous interview, “Sekai Camera Deau stand on the front end between people,” he answered. DOMO shows, the actual construction of an extension of the Social Platform is an answer I think one of them.
Another wall is hard. Sekai Live should be called a symbol of the intense battery consumption anyway. iPhone4 now work properly but finally turned, until it is no exaggeration to say and had honestly would not usable.
Hard problem to solve as the difficulty they alone, the first problem was great. It now, DOMO clear that the concept would have been great 頓智 harvest. They live in a dump that once dare not be a problem if, say 頓智 could also indicate a new development.
And let us foresee a new revival of this shift Sekai. Hado is catching up (even though I made them once or!) Friends live through the day came when the camera actually LIKE that, I think Sekai is a really Sekai product will change….
The Best Of TED: 15 Unmissable Tech Talks
via Technology on HuffingtonPost.com by The Huffington Post on 3/1/11
The annual TED conference celebrates technology, entertainment and design by bringing together some of the most inspiring and revolutionary minds from across the globe.
We're kicking off TED2011, which started Monday, February 28, and lasts through the week, by looking back at the best TED talks on technology from previous years.
Check out our slideshow, featuring Wikileaks's Julian Assange, the Large Hadron Collider, Wii remote hacks, a robot standup comedian, and much more. Vote for the most revolutionary presentation, and upload your favorite TED talks on tech using the participation tool.
Watson, the Computer Jeopardy! Champion, and the Future of Artificial Inte...
via Scientific American - Mind & Brain on 3/1/11
Earlier this month, the nation watched as Watson, a computer system designed by IBM, drubbed the two all time champions of Jeopardy. It was a much more difficult challenge than, say, beating a grandmaster at chess. To win, Watson had to navigate the vagaries of human speech, the idioms, the puns, the cultural references -- all the things, in short, that make language delightful and deeply machine unfriendly. Journalist Stephen Baker spent a year behind the scenes, as the team of IBM engineers struggled to design and build Watson in time for the show. He tells the story of project Watson, and what it means for the future, in his new book, " Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything ." He and Gareth Cook, the editor of Mind Matters, discussed Watson and artificial intelligence. [More]
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