Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ Dystopias
Ed Webb

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home Boing Boing - 2 views

  •  
    I can't imagine our school using us as students to sign up for their gateway programs and internet connections to be spying on us through our computer thats crazy, I'm sorry but I wont stand for that and neaither would my parents if that was the case.
Ed Webb

To avoid ID, more are mutilating fingerprints - The Boston Globe - 2 views

  • a sevenfold spike in people arrested with mutilated fingertips, a disturbing trend they said reflects dire efforts to evade the harsher punishments that come with multiple arrests, to avoid deportation, or to fool the increasingly sophisticated computers that do most fingerprint checks
  • While authorities have had some recent successes in identifying those with mutilated fingerprints, most have not been identified. Indeed, of the recorded arrests this decade in Massachusetts, only 17 percent were positively identified by matching their scuffed fingerprints with previously recorded prints.
  • detectives suspect they are missing many others who may have been recorded as new fingerprints by the state’s computer system, which receives on average about 700 fingerprint cards a day from some 360 law enforcement agencies around the state
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Officials at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they do not keep national records of the number of suspects found to have deliberately disfigured their fingerprints.
  • Jose Elias Zaiter-Pou, a doctor who flew from the Dominican Republic and allegedly planned to surgically remove the fingerprints of illegal immigrants for a $4,500 fee
  • Surface cuts do not do the job, he said; the marring must go deep under the skin, which grows back with the original patterns if not sufficiently disfigured.
  • “I can’t imagine the pain it must take. You have to get deep down, in the nerve endings. I see these people, to go to this extreme, as a real danger to society.’’
  •  
    Sign in stranger
  •  
    Ahhh that's disgusting. And disturbing. And it's awful that people feel they need to go to this extreme.
Ed Webb

The Imagination Age: Surveillance Satire: A Cat Dumps a Woman in the Trash - 5 views

  •  
    Well. That was hilarious and very random. I was really confused until I found the video it was making fun of. I think that what the UK woman did was disgusting but I'm not sure how I feel about this video in concerns with surveillance. I think that surveillance can be taken too far, but the camera the owners had installed was to keep their car from being stolen or broken into. Which seems to me like a fair reason to install a camera. So I'm not sure.
Ed Webb

Many 'extinct' species still alive, biologists say - CNN.com - 2 views

  •  
    A rare bit of good news on biodiversity and species survival.
Ed Webb

Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? - Boston.com - 3 views

  •  
    This is an example of a common and pernicious version of technophobia - the idea that overreliance on new tech disempowers and renders stupid a new generation. Does it have any credibility?
Ed Webb

Surveillance does not make us safe | openDemocracy - 1 views

  • Surveillance is about power– rarely safety or security
  • The possession of great powers by the state should prompt a principled determination to ensure that the permissible exercise of such powers is strictly defined, regulated and monitored so as to guarantee that any intrusion into liberty and privacy of the individual is fully justified by an obviously superior community interest.
  •  
    I agree that Surveillance can be used for safety and security reasons. I mean we can't deny that video's of robberies and such haven't come in handy for catching the bad guys. However, I also agree that it has a lot to do with power. It's so easy to take surveillance too far and impede on others' privacys. It's scary... Emily
Ed Webb

Sleep isn't priority on campus, but experts say it should be | Connect2Mason - 0 views

  • Sleep deprivation affects 80 to 90 percent of college students, and getting a good night’s sleep is essential to staying healthy but is often overlooked
  • sleep deprivation has short-term effects such as increased blood pressure and desires for fatty foods, a weakened immune system, a harder time remembering things and a decrease in sense of humor
  • the idea that staying up late or pulling all nighters will help prepare for a test is a misconception because it negatively affects cognitive skills. “Pride in not sleeping much is like pride in not exercising," Gartenberg said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • people should only go to sleep if they are tired, caffeine and exercising before bed disturbs sleep, and alcohol does not help people fall asleep, but rather disrupts sleep and decreases its quality
Ed Webb

New research indicates that robots may already be self aware and plotting our demise / ... - 0 views

  • The printing press, the assembly line, and recently the genetic engineering have all brought along with them protest and outrage from a populace sure that these advances will bring about the end of the human species.
  • “These robots are able to hide and evade in ways that other robots simply have not been able to do. That indicates that such behaviour is not overly complicated and well within the reach of modern robots.”
  • Dr. Edward Webb
    • Ed Webb
       
      Not I, I assure you
Ed Webb

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com - 0 views

  •  
    This is the TED talk I mentioned in class 9/27
Ed Webb

P.J. O'Rourke: 'Very Little That Gets Blogged Is Of Very Much Worth' - Radio ... - 0 views

  • I'm no expert,
  • One thing a professional reporter knows that I'm not always sure that a person who isn't a reporter knows is that it is very easy to see part of an event and miss the more important part of an event, to see one thing when something else has happened. You have to be very aware of how complex most events are, and how narrow one's vision of most events are. And the police will tell you -- my father-in-law is a retired FBI agent -- and he will certainly tell you that there's nothing as unreliable as an eyewitness. You don't even have to go to the movies to see Rashomon. Just take any couple that you know that's been divorced and ask for his story of what happened, and then ask for her story of what happened.
  • It really isn't any one person. It's the experienced news organization that filters this out.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • If I have a gripe with the Internet, it isn't short attention spans, it isn't blogging, or it isn't ease of idiot communication. It would be that the initial effect of the Internet, probably because it has academic origins rather than economic origins, was to devalue content. And I mean that in a gross monetary sense. The idea was that information was suddenly free. Information is not free. You [always] pay a price for information. Sometimes the price is just paying attention or being careful. But usually there's a monetary price involved because it costs money to get people out there who know what they're doing and have reasonable judgment and knowledge and perspective and background, and you don't want it to be free. It's not going to be terribly expensive, it's probably going to be cheaper than what newspapers have come to cost.
  • when it comes to the more important analytical side of news, where it is important say for instance for a news organization to have a team of experienced reporters in place with the background knowledge of the place they're in and contacts they've developed over time, you can't replace that with a random backpacker tweeting from Tajikistan
  • The job wasn't to speak truth to power. Anybody can speak truth to power if they're far enough away from the power.
« First ‹ Previous 461 - 480 of 604 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page