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Jiamin Lin

Technological Freedom - 4 views

http://media.www.csucauldron.com/media/storage/paper516/news/2009/09/06/TheMeltingPot/Technological.Freedom-3759993.shtml Digital Rights Management (DRM) or should it be called "Digital Rights Mis...

started by Jiamin Lin on 16 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
lee weiting

Man ordered to pay $675,000 over illegal downloading - 11 views

using the golden rule, i feel that the downloader should be arrested and fine. i believe no one will want their hard work to be duplicated and copied without proper recognition. some questions...

illegal downloading music copyright

started by Olivia Chang on 26 Aug 09 3 follow-ups, last by lee weiting on 26 Aug 09
Weiye Loh

IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4694004576020083703574602.html

Mobile Privacy

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.
  • An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.
  • The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • iPhone apps transmitted more data than the apps on phones using Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Because of the test's size, it's not known if the pattern holds among the hundreds of thousands of apps available.
  • TextPlus 4, a popular iPhone app for text messaging. It sent the phone's unique ID number to eight ad companies and the phone's zip code, along with the user's age and gender, to two of them.
  • Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks. iPhone and Android versions of a game called Paper Toss—players try to throw paper wads into a trash can—each sent the phone's ID number to at least five ad companies. Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting gay men, sent gender, location and phone ID to three ad companies.
  • iPhone maker Apple Inc. says it reviews each app before offering it to users. Both Apple and Google say they protect users by requiring apps to obtain permission before revealing certain kinds of information, such as location.
  • The Journal found that these rules can be skirted. One iPhone app, Pumpkin Maker (a pumpkin-carving game), transmits location to an ad network without asking permission. Apple declines to comment on whether the app violated its rules.
  • With few exceptions, app users can't "opt out" of phone tracking, as is possible, in limited form, on regular computers. On computers it is also possible to block or delete "cookies," which are tiny tracking files. These techniques generally don't work on cellphone apps.
  • makers of TextPlus 4, Pandora and Grindr say the data they pass on to outside firms isn't linked to an individual's name. Personal details such as age and gender are volunteered by users, they say. The maker of Pumpkin Maker says he didn't know Apple required apps to seek user approval before transmitting location. The maker of Paper Toss didn't respond to requests for comment.
  • Many apps don't offer even a basic form of consumer protection: written privacy policies. Forty-five of the 101 apps didn't provide privacy policies on their websites or inside the apps at the time of testing. Neither Apple nor Google requires app privacy policies.
  • the most widely shared detail was the unique ID number assigned to every phone.
  • On iPhones, this number is the "UDID," or Unique Device Identifier. Android IDs go by other names. These IDs are set by phone makers, carriers or makers of the operating system, and typically can't be blocked or deleted. "The great thing about mobile is you can't clear a UDID like you can a cookie," says Meghan O'Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps. "That's how we track everything."
  • O'Holleran says Traffic Marketplace, a unit of Epic Media Group, monitors smartphone users whenever it can. "We watch what apps you download, how frequently you use them, how much time you spend on them, how deep into the app you go," she says. She says the data is aggregated and not linked to an individual.
  • Apple and Google ad networks let advertisers target groups of users. Both companies say they don't track individuals based on the way they use apps.
  • Apple limits what can be installed on an iPhone by requiring iPhone apps to be offered exclusively through its App Store. Apple reviews those apps for function, offensiveness and other criteria.
  • Apple says iPhone apps "cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used." Many apps tested by the Journal appeared to violate that rule, by sending a user's location to ad networks, without informing users. Apple declines to discuss how it interprets or enforces the policy.
  • Google doesn't review the apps, which can be downloaded from many vendors. Google says app makers "bear the responsibility for how they handle user information." Google requires Android apps to notify users, before they download the app, of the data sources the app intends to access. Possible sources include the phone's camera, memory, contact list, and more than 100 others. If users don't like what a particular app wants to access, they can choose not to install the app, Google says.
  • Neither Apple nor Google requires apps to ask permission to access some forms of the device ID, or to send it to outsiders. When smartphone users let an app see their location, apps generally don't disclose if they will pass the location to ad companies.
  • Lack of standard practices means different companies treat the same information differently. For example, Apple says that, internally, it treats the iPhone's UDID as "personally identifiable information." That's because, Apple says, it can be combined with other personal details about people—such as names or email addresses—that Apple has via the App Store or its iTunes music services. By contrast, Google and most app makers don't consider device IDs to be identifying information.
  • A growing industry is assembling this data into profiles of cellphone users. Mobclix, the ad exchange, matches more than 25 ad networks with some 15,000 apps seeking advertisers. The Palo Alto, Calif., company collects phone IDs, encodes them (to obscure the number), and assigns them to interest categories based on what apps people download and how much time they spend using an app, among other factors. By tracking a phone's location, Mobclix also makes a "best guess" of where a person lives, says Mr. Gurbuxani, the Mobclix executive. Mobclix then matches that location with spending and demographic data from Nielsen Co.
  • Mobclix can place a user in one of 150 "segments" it offers to advertisers, from "green enthusiasts" to "soccer moms." For example, "die hard gamers" are 15-to-25-year-old males with more than 20 apps on their phones who use an app for more than 20 minutes at a time. Mobclix says its system is powerful, but that its categories are broad enough to not identify individuals. "It's about how you track people better," Mr. Gurbuxani says.
  • four app makers posted privacy policies after being contacted by the Journal, including Rovio Mobile Ltd., the Finnish company behind the popular game Angry Birds (in which birds battle egg-snatching pigs). A spokesman says Rovio had been working on the policy, and the Journal inquiry made it a good time to unveil it.
  • Free and paid versions of Angry Birds were tested on an iPhone. The apps sent the phone's UDID and location to the Chillingo unit of Electronic Arts Inc., which markets the games. Chillingo says it doesn't use the information for advertising and doesn't share it with outsiders.
  • Some developers feel pressure to release more data about people. Max Binshtok, creator of the DailyHoroscope Android app, says ad-network executives encouraged him to transmit users' locations. Mr. Binshtok says he declined because of privacy concerns. But ads targeted by location bring in two to five times as much money as untargeted ads, Mr. Binshtok says. "We are losing a lot of revenue."
  • Apple targets ads to phone users based largely on what it knows about them through its App Store and iTunes music service. The targeting criteria can include the types of songs, videos and apps a person downloads, according to an Apple ad presentation reviewed by the Journal. The presentation named 103 targeting categories, including: karaoke, Christian/gospel music, anime, business news, health apps, games and horror movies. People familiar with iAd say Apple doesn't track what users do inside apps and offers advertisers broad categories of people, not specific individuals. Apple has signaled that it has ideas for targeting people more closely. In a patent application filed this past May, Apple outlined a system for placing and pricing ads based on a person's "web history or search history" and "the contents of a media library." For example, home-improvement advertisers might pay more to reach a person who downloaded do-it-yourself TV shows, the document says.
  • The patent application also lists another possible way to target people with ads: the contents of a friend's media library. How would Apple learn who a cellphone user's friends are, and what kinds of media they prefer? The patent says Apple could tap "known connections on one or more social-networking websites" or "publicly available information or private databases describing purchasing decisions, brand preferences," and other data. In September, Apple introduced a social-networking service within iTunes, called Ping, that lets users share music preferences with friends. Apple declined to comment.
Weiye Loh

Science: Singapore vs The World - erwinchan - 0 views

erwinchan.posterous.com/science-singapore-vs-the-world

Science Singapore Data Visualization

shared by Weiye Loh on 12 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • View SlideshowDownload this gallery (ZIP, undefined KB)Download full size (214 KB) An infographic from FastCompany indicates the highest activity "scientific productivity" in 2003. The number of scientific papers published are the variable and the greater the size of the circle, the greater the number of papers published. The locations of top scientific activity are Boston, London, and New York. The radius of our circle is bigger than the island ourselves.
  • Another project that can help us visualise the impact of our nation's science is from WorldMapper. Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. This method helps us to see the familiar island shape much larger and gives us the understanding of how "fat" we are in relation to the world.View SlideshowDownload this gallery (ZIP, undefined KB)Download full size (149 KB) W
Weiye Loh

Lindzen debunked again: New scientific study finds his paper downplaying dang... - 0 views

climateprogress.org/...ative-feedbacks-clouds-tropics

Science Academic Research Academic Journal Climate Science Denial

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Consistently being wrong and consistently producing one-sided analyses that are quickly debunked in the literature should lead scientific journals and the entire scientific community (and possibly the media) to start ignoring your work. But when you are one of the last remaining “serious” professional scientists spreading global warming disinformation who retains a (nano)ounce of credibility because you are associated with a major university — M.I.T. — and your name is Richard Lindzen, apparently you can just keep publishing and repeating the same crap over and over and over again.
  • is this more, or less, support for the calls of some — most notably James Annan — for journals to shift at least some of the peer review cycle to an open format? http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 11/ 30/ more-on-the-climate-files-and-climate-trends/
  • Also, Gavin seemed to say that — with or without flaws– this paper’s approach was “a useful contribution to the literature”: “Even if it now turns out that the analysis was not robust, it was not that the analysis was not worth trying, and the work being done to re-examine these questions is a useful contributions to the literature –- even if the conclusion is that this approach to the analysis is flawed.” http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2010/ 01/ 08/ a-rebuttal-to-a-cool-climate-paper/ #more-13033
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • . Is the problem less with the paper and publishing process than the tendency of commentators (whether on blogs or elsewhere) to seize on particular findings as the new “truth” — and for public not attuned to the tussles of science to swallow such proclamations?
  • its only because of the blogosphere immediately seizing on every new paper as proof that we think there’s an issue with the peer-review process. For the scientists involved, this was a useful exercise in thinking about this problem, and moved the ball forwards rather than backwards overall. But we had to put up with way too much crap in the blogosphere in between the time when the paper was published and these rebuttals came out.
Weiye Loh

Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press | vox - Re... - 0 views

www.voxeu.org/index.php

Printing Press Movable Type Information Technology Economy History Diffusion of Innovation

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Despite the revolutionary technological advance of the printing press in the 15th century, there is precious little economic evidence of its benefits. Using data on 200 European cities between 1450 and 1600, this column finds that economic growth was higher by as much as 60 percentage points in cities that adopted the technology.
  • Historians argue that the printing press was among the most revolutionary inventions in human history, responsible for a diffusion of knowledge and ideas, “dwarfing in scale anything which had occurred since the invention of writing” (Roberts 1996, p. 220). Yet economists have struggled to find any evidence of this information technology revolution in measures of aggregate productivity or per capita income (Clark 2001, Mokyr 2005). The historical data thus present us with a puzzle analogous to the famous Solow productivity paradox – that, until the mid-1990s, the data on macroeconomic productivity showed no effect of innovations in computer-based information technology.
  • In recent work (Dittmar 2010a), I examine the revolution in Renaissance information technology from a new perspective by assembling city-level data on the diffusion of the printing press in 15th-century Europe. The data record each city in which a printing press was established 1450-1500 – some 200 out of over 1,000 historic cities (see also an interview on this site, Dittmar 2010b). The research emphasises cities for three principal reasons. First, the printing press was an urban technology, producing for urban consumers. Second, cities were seedbeds for economic ideas and social groups that drove the emergence of modern growth. Third, city sizes were historically important indicators of economic prosperity, and broad-based city growth was associated with macroeconomic growth (Bairoch 1988, Acemoglu et al. 2005).
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Figure 1 summarises the data and shows how printing diffused from Mainz 1450-1500. Figure 1. The diffusion of the printing press
  • City-level data on the adoption of the printing press can be exploited to examine two key questions: Was the new technology associated with city growth? And, if so, how large was the association? I find that cities in which printing presses were established 1450-1500 had no prior growth advantage, but subsequently grew far faster than similar cities without printing presses. My work uses a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to document the association between printing and city growth. The estimates suggest early adoption of the printing press was associated with a population growth advantage of 21 percentage points 1500-1600, when mean city growth was 30 percentage points. The difference-in-differences model shows that cities that adopted the printing press in the late 1400s had no prior growth advantage, but grew at least 35 percentage points more than similar non-adopting cities from 1500 to 1600.
  • The restrictions on diffusion meant that cities relatively close to Mainz were more likely to receive the technology other things equal. Printing presses were established in 205 cities 1450-1500, but not in 40 of Europe’s 100 largest cities. Remarkably, regulatory barriers did not limit diffusion. Printing fell outside existing guild regulations and was not resisted by scribes, princes, or the Church (Neddermeyer 1997, Barbier 2006, Brady 2009).
  • Historians observe that printing diffused from Mainz in “concentric circles” (Barbier 2006). Distance from Mainz was significantly associated with early adoption of the printing press, but neither with city growth before the diffusion of printing nor with other observable determinants of subsequent growth. The geographic pattern of diffusion thus arguably allows us to identify exogenous variation in adoption. Exploiting distance from Mainz as an instrument for adoption, I find large and significant estimates of the relationship between the adoption of the printing press and city growth. I find a 60 percentage point growth advantage between 1500-1600.
  • The importance of distance from Mainz is supported by an exercise using “placebo” distances. When I employ distance from Venice, Amsterdam, London, or Wittenberg instead of distance from Mainz as the instrument, the estimated print effect is statistically insignificant.
  • Cities that adopted print media benefitted from positive spillovers in human capital accumulation and technological change broadly defined. These spillovers exerted an upward pressure on the returns to labour, made cities culturally dynamic, and attracted migrants. In the pre-industrial era, commerce was a more important source of urban wealth and income than tradable industrial production. Print media played a key role in the development of skills that were valuable to merchants. Following the invention printing, European presses produced a stream of math textbooks used by students preparing for careers in business.
  • These and hundreds of similar texts worked students through problem sets concerned with calculating exchange rates, profit shares, and interest rates. Broadly, print media was also associated with the diffusion of cutting-edge business practice (such as book-keeping), literacy, and the social ascent of new professionals – merchants, lawyers, officials, doctors, and teachers.
  • The printing press was one of the greatest revolutions in information technology. The impact of the printing press is hard to identify in aggregate data. However, the diffusion of the technology was associated with extraordinary subsequent economic dynamism at the city level. European cities were seedbeds of ideas and business practices that drove the transition to modern growth. These facts suggest that the printing press had very far-reaching consequences through its impact on the development of cities.
Weiye Loh

Libel Chill and Me « Skepticism « Critical Thinking « Skeptic North - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...libelchillandme

Libel Slander Law New Media Skepticism Science Communication

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Skeptics may by now be very familiar with recent attempts in Canada to ban wifi from public schools and libraries.  In short: there is no valid scientific reason to be worried about wifi.  It has also been revealed that the chief scientists pushing the wifi bans have been relying on poor data and even poorer studies.  By far the vast majority of scientific data that currently exists supports the conclusion that wifi and cell phone signals are perfectly safe.
  • So I wrote about that particular topic in the summer.  It got some decent coverage, but the fear mongering continued. I wrote another piece after I did a little digging into one of the main players behind this, one Rodney Palmer, and I discovered some decidedly pseudo-scientific tendencies in his past, as well as some undisclosed collusion.
  • One night I came home after a long day at work, a long commute, and a phone call that a beloved family pet was dying, and will soon be in significant pain.  That is the state I was in when I read the news about Palmer and Parliamentary committee.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • That’s when I wrote my last significant piece for Skeptic North.  Titled, “Rodney Palmer: When Pseudoscience and Narcissism Collide,” it was a fiery take-down of every claim I heard Palmer speak before the committee, as well as reiterating some of his undisclosed collusion, unethical media tactics, and some reasons why he should not be considered an expert.
  • This time, the article got a lot more reader eyeballs than anything I had ever written for this blog (or my own) and it also caught the attention of someone on a school board which was poised to vote on wifi.  In these regards: Mission very accomplished.  I finally thought that I might be able to see some people in the media start to look at Palmer’s claims with a more critical eye than they had been previously, and I was flattered at the mountain of kind words, re-tweets, reddit comments and Facebook “likes.”
  • The comments section was mostly supportive of my article, and they were one of the few things that kept me from hiding in a hole for six weeks.  There were a few comments in opposition to what I wrote, some sensible, most incoherent rambling (one commenter, when asked for evidence, actually linked to a YouTube video which they referred to as “peer reviewed”)
  • One commenter was none other than the titular subject of the post, Rodney Palmer himself.  Here is a screen shot of what he said: Screen shot of the Libel/Slander threat.
  • Knowing full well the story of the libel threat against Simon Singh, I’ve always thought that if ever a threat like that came my way, I’d happily beat it back with the righteous fury and good humour of a person with the facts on their side.  After all, if I’m wrong, you’d be able to prove me wrong, rather than try to shut me up with a threat of a lawsuit.  Indeed, I’ve been through a similar situation once before, so I should be an old hat at this! Let me tell you friends, it’s not that easy.  In fact, it’s awful.  Outside observers could easily identify that Palmer had no case against me, but that was still cold comfort to me.  It is a very stressful situation to find yourself in.
  • The state of libel and slander laws in this country are such that a person can threaten a lawsuit without actually threatening a lawsuit.  There is no need to hire a lawyer to investigate the claims, look into who I am, where I live, where I work, and issue a carefully worded threatening letter demanding compliance.  All a person has to say is some version of  “Libel.  Slander.  Hmmmm….,” and that’s enough to spook a lot of people into backing off. It’s a modern day bogeyman.  They don’t have to prove it.  They don’t have to act on it.  A person or organization just has to say “BOO!” with sufficient seriousness, and unless you’ve got a good deal of editorial and financial support, discussion goes out the window. Libel Chill refers to the ‘chilling effect’ that the possibility of a libel/slander lawsuit has.  If a person is scared they might get sued, then they won’t even comment on a piece at all.  In my case, I had already commented three times on the wifi scaremongering, but this bogus threat against me was surely a major contributing factor to my not commenting again.
  • I ceased to discuss anything in the comment thread of the original article, and even shied away from other comment threads, calling me out.  I learned a great deal about the wifi/EMF issue since I wrote the article, but I did not comment on any of it, because I knew that Palmer and his supporters were watching me like a hawk (sorry to stretch the simile), and would likely try to silence me again.  I couldn’t risk a lawsuit.  Even though I knew there was no case against me, I couldn’t afford a lawyer just to prove that I didn’t do anything illegal.
  • The Libel and Slanders Act of Ontario, 1990 hasn’t really caught up with the internet.  There isn’t a clear precedent that defines a blog post, Twitter feed or Facebook post as falling under the umbrella of “broadcast,” which is what the bill addresses.  If I had written the original article in print, Palmer would have had six weeks to file suit against me.  But the internet is only kind of considered ‘broadcast.’  So it could be just six weeks, but he could also have up to two years to act and get a lawyer after me.  Truth is, there’s not a clear demarcation point for our Canadian legal system.
  • Libel laws in Canada are somewhere in between the Plaintiff-favoured UK system, and the Defendant-favoured US system.  On the one hand, if Palmer chose to incur the expense and time to hire a lawyer and file suit against me, the burden of proof would be on me to prove that I did not act with malice.  Easy peasy.  On the other hand, I would have a strong case that I acted in the best interests of Canadians, which would fall under the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on protecting what has been termed, “Responsible Communication.”  The Supreme Court of Canada decision does not grant bloggers immunity from libel and slander suits, but it is a healthy dose of welcome freedom to discuss issues of importance to Canadians.
  • Palmer himself did not specify anything against me in his threat.  There was nothing particular that he complained about, he just said a version of “Libel and Slander!” at me.  He may as well have said “Boo!”
  • This is not a DBAD discussion (although I wholeheartedly agree with Phil Plait there). 
  • If you’d like to boil my lessons down to an acronym, I suppose the best one would be DBRBC: Don’t be reckless. Be Careful.
  • I wrote a piece that, although it was not incorrect in any measurable way, was written with fire and brimstone, piss and vinegar.  I stand by my piece, but I caution others to be a little more careful with the language they use.  Not because I think it is any less or more tactically advantageous (because I’m not sure anyone can conclusively demonstrate that being an aggressive jerk is an inherently better or worse communication tool), but because the risks aren’t always worth it.
  • I’m not saying don’t go after a person.  There are egomaniacs out there who deserve to be called out and taken down (verbally, of course).  But be very careful with what you say.
  • ask yourself some questions first: 1) What goal(s) are you trying to accomplish with this piece? Are you trying to convince people that there is a scientific misunderstanding here?  Are you trying to attract the attention of the mainstream media to a particular facet of the issue?  Are you really just pissed off and want to vent a little bit?  Is this article a catharsis, or is it communicative?  Be brutally honest with your intentions, it’s not as easy as you think.  Venting is okay.  So is vicious venting, but be careful what you dress it up as.
  • 2) In order to attain your goals, did you use data, or personalities?  If the former, are you citing the best, most current data you have available to you? Have you made a reasonable effort to check your data against any conflicting data that might be out there? If the latter, are you providing a mountain of evidence, and not just projecting onto personalities?  There is nothing inherently immoral or incorrect with going after the personalities.  But it is a very risky undertaking. You have to be damn sure you know what you’re talking about, and damn ready to defend yourself.  If you’re even a little loose with your claims, you will be called out for it, and a legal threat is very serious and stressful. So if you’re going after a personality, is it worth it?
  • 3) Are you letting the science speak for itself?  Are you editorializing?  Are you pointing out what part of your piece is data and what part is your opinion?
  • 4) If this piece was written in anger, frustration, or otherwise motivated by a powerful emotion, take a day.  Let your anger subside.  It will.  There are many cathartic enterprises out there, and you don’t need to react to the first one that comes your way.  Let someone else read your work before you share it with the internet.  Cooler heads definitely do think more clearly.
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Two View on Science and Politics - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...w-on-science-and-politics.html

Science Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • My father is testifying before the House Energy & Committee today in what will inevitably be a show hearing using climate scientists as props
  • I did note a stark contrast in how Richard Somerville presented the role of science and policy and that presented by my father.  Here is what Somerville says (PDF): [T]he need to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is urgent, and the urgency is scientific, not political. Mother Nature herself thus imposes a timescale on when emissions need to peak and then begin to decline rapidly. This urgency is therefore not ideological at all, but rather is due to the physics and biogeochemistry of the climate system itself. Diplomats and legislators, as well as heads of state worldwide, are powerless to alter the laws of nature and must face scientific facts and the hard evidence of scientific findings.
  • Contrast that with what my father says (PDF): Decisions about government regulation are ultimately legal, administrative, legislative, and political decisions. As such they can be informed by scientific considerations, but they are not determined by them. In my testimony, I seek to share my perspectives on the science of climate based on my work in this field over the past four decades.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Doug said... 1 If legal, administrative, legislative, and political decisions that are allegedly based on science are not determined by the science than they are not based in science. They are scientifically unsubstantiated. I find this a very poor way to govern, rejecting science when it doesn't meet your political agenda.
  • True science is apolitical and non-ideological. Only the use of science is politicized.
  • I totally agree with you about the distinction between science and policy. I'm also fascinated by the concept of urgency. In the case of a developing disaster, "urgent" is logically a fairly short space on the time line. Before that, it's not yet urgent. After that, it's too late. Any analysis that does not acknowledge this basic logic is likely to strain credibility. And any uncertainty about future climate (and impacts) implies uncertainty about where on the time line the "urgent" window is or will be located. The uncertainty has to be small, or there is no way to know we're inside that short time period. And "maybe it's urgent" or "maybe it's too late" are not very persuasive arguments.
Weiye Loh

YouTube - I'm A Climate Scientist (HUNGRY BEAST) - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Climate Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 May 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 19 May 11
     
    yo....we're climate scientists.. and there's no denying this Climate Change Is REEEEALL.. Who's a climate scientist.. I'm a climate scientist.. Not a cleo finalist No a climate scientist Droppin facts all over this wax While bitches be crying about a carbon tax Climate change is caused by people Earth Unlike Alien Has no sequel We gotta move fast or we'll be forsaken, Cause we were too busy suckin dick Copenhagen: (Politician) I said Burn! it's hot in here.. 32% more carbon in the atmosphere. Oh Eee Ohh Eee oh wee ice ice ice Raisin' sea levels twice by twice We're scientists, what we speak is True. Unlike Andrew Bolt our work is Peer Reviewed... ooohhh Who's a climate scientist.. I'm a climate scientist.. An Anglican revivalist No a climate scientist Feedback is like climate change on crack The permafrosts subtracts: feedback Methane release wack : feedback.. Write a letter then burn it: feedback Denialists deny this in your dreams Coz climate change means greater extremes, Shit won't be the norm Heatwaves bigger badder storms The Green house effect is just a theory sucker (Alan Jones) Yeah so is gravity float away muther f**cker Who's a climate scientist.. I'm a climate scientist.. I'm not a climate Scientist Who's Climate Scientists A Penny Farthing Cyclist No A Lebanese typist No A Paleontologist No A Sebaceous Cyst No! a climate scientist! Yo! PREACH~!
Weiye Loh

Art and Attribution: Who is an "Artist"? » Sociological Images - 0 views

thesocietypages.org/...what-is-an-artist

Art

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • NPR short on artist Liu Bolin.  Bolin, we are told, “has a habit of painting himself” so as to disappear into his surroundings.  The idea is to illustrate the way in which humans are increasingly “merged” with their environment.

  • So how does he do it?  Well, it turns out that he doesn’t.  Instead, “assistants” spend hours painting him.  And someone else photographs him.  He just stands there.  Watch how the process is described in this one minute clip:

    So what makes an artist?

  • One might argue that it was Bolin who had the idea to illustrate the contemporary human condition in this way. That the “art” in this work is really in his inspiration, while the “work” in this art is what is being done by the assistants. Yet clearly there is “art” in their work, too, given that they are to be credited for creating the eerie illusions with paint. Yet it is Bolin who is named as the artist; his assistants aren’t named at all.  What is it about the art world — or our world more generally — that makes this asymmetrical attribution go unnoticed so much of the time?
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • historically it probably goes back to the master/apprentice, atelier setup of the Renaissance era and earlier. And then with the cult of the “genius” that surrounds artists nowadays, it’s no wonder that assistants would be invisible.
  • In my art history classes about Renaissance and other classical painting, we talked about how often the “artist” would be the master painter, but had a lot of help from one or more assistants when executing the painting. Every now and then one of those assistants/apprentices would be considered good enough to go off and be recognized as an artist on his own, but in general, those guys were pretty nameless despite sometimes decades of service.
  • similar to the way that businesses and organizations have public faces – CEOs, etc. – and the efforts of everyone who works for them are often credited to the CEOs themselves, for better or for worse, whether they deserve the accolades or not. There’s some asymmetrical attribution for you!
Weiye Loh

Chaos, Levels of Explanation and Interdisciplinarity « Ockham's Beard - 0 views

ockhamsbeard.wordpress.com/...levels-of-explanation

Inter-disciplinary

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • It seems to me this implies two broad approaches to interdisciplinarity: 1) Facilitate communication between disciplines at the same level of complexity in the hope they can cross pollinate and learn from each other, given their base level of explanation. For example, politics, sociology and economics all operate in roughly the same level, where the element is groups of people. I call this horizontal interdisciplinarity. 2) Facilitate the sharing of systems, models and abstract tools between disciplines at different levels of complexity, even if they’re separated by a complexity barrier. For example, natural selection as a model operates on phenomena as disparate as biology, economics and neural networks. I call this vertical interdisciplinarity.
  • the disciplines we have aren’t randomly distributed. It seems as though there are certain points on the reductionist sliding scale where it makes sense to have a discipline, and others where it doesn’t. Physics makes sense, as does chemistry, as does biochemistry. But why carve up the phenomena at these particular points? And here’s the crux: because these points, marked out by disciplinary focuses, represent those points where we can concoct parsimonious explanations of phenomena, and this is because they represent points where nature itself coalesces into fewer moving parts which are, in turn, easier to describe.
Weiye Loh

The disappearing Yale-NUS article « The Mind Game - 0 views

findmuck.wordpress.com/...-disappearing-yale-nus-article

Censorship Education

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • I saw: “Comparing Yale in NUS and Cornell in Qatar“. Sounded quite interesting since I did read a bit about this Cornell in Qatar thing — uhh, in case I wanted to go somewhere where I could meet some oil tycoon’s daughter. So I clicked on the link and got:
  • Truth be told, I wasn’t thatttt interested — until it was taken down and hidden. I had to get my hands on those forbidden fruits! There was this other article that compared USP and YNC to show that there wasn’t much real difference in substance — only in surface packaging. And EVEN THEN, that five page of criticism wasn’t removed. So if this one got removed, it must be bleeding bleeding nasty. I had to see it. I just had to see it
  • I figured the most asshole thing I could do would be to reproduce the entire article here. But the crux of the article is essentially this: According to Cornell University’s own site, “Cornell is the first American university ever to offer its M.D. degree outside the United States.” The degree of involvement of Cornell in its Qatar campus differs markedly in two aspects. Firstly, the same degree is awarded to students from both campuses. Secondly, the Qatar campus is featured both on cornell.edu/visiting/qatar and on qatar-weill.cornell.edu — both sites hosted by Cornell University. As of the time of writing, we know that YNC degrees will be awarded by NUS, and the only website featuring YNC is hosted by NUS (ync.nus.edu.sg).
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Three questions: 1. How Yale will the Yale-NUS thing be? 2. Why does Yale seem so much more reserved and passive, as compared to Cornell in Qatar? 3. Above all — Why did the article disappear suddenly? I can’t quite grasp the implications of this article — unless there was a really gross factual error. Normally, mistakes are just edited out later on anyway — unless there is something wrong with the core of the article. ….Of course, it could have just been a technical failure.
Weiye Loh

MARUAH media monitoring: Day 4 (1 May 2011) « Maruah Singapore - 0 views

maruah.org/...ia-monitoring-day-4-1-may-2011

Censorship Singapore media bias Newspaper Politics Election

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 May 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 02 May 11
     
    MARUAH is conducting an election watch project. Part of this project includes monitoring the election coverage by the mainstream media, specifically the Straits Times, TODAY and The New Paper. (We are unable to cover the other languages and other media, e.g. TV and radio, because of resource constraints.) Our findings on Day 4 are set out below. You can also download all of the findings as a PDF file.
Weiye Loh

Cut secrecy down to a minimum - 0 views

www.lowyinterpreter.org/...secrecy-down-to-a-minimum.aspx

Government Secrecy Censorship Open Government Open Information Information Divide Wikileaks Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • This is not an anarchist call for the ransacking of government files, in the manner of Julian Assange. WikiLeaks has raised the issue of whether the unauthorised and anarchic acquisition and leaking of government records is legally or ethically defensible. I don't wish to embark on that debate. I believe it is a distraction from a much more important debate about how to enhance the quality of political and public deliberation while drastically reducing secrecy.
  • If public policy is sound, it must be possible for the grounds of such policy to be made public without caveat and to withstand public scrutiny. We should not be left guessing, as we too commonly are; and deploring the evasions of politicians and their minions.
Weiye Loh

Probing the dark web | plus.maths.org - 0 views

plus.maths.org/...probing-dark-web

Internet Network Network Analysis Twitter Social Media Politics Terrorism

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • We spoke to Hsinchun Chen from the University of Arizona, who is involved with the dark web terrorism research project which develops automated tools to collect and analyse terrorist content from the Internet. We also spoke to Fillipo Menzcer from Indiana University about Truthy, a free tool for analysing how information spreads on Twitter that has been useful in spotting astroturfing.Listen to "Probing the dark web"
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Feb 12
     
    Information on the web can help us catch terrorists and criminals and it can also identify a practice called astroturfing - creating the false impression that there's huge grassroots support for some cause or person using false user accounts. It's a big problem in elections and other types of political conflicts.
Weiye Loh

On the Media: Survey shows that not all polls are equal - latimes.com - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...edia-20100703,0,7715000.column

Survey media bias

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Internet surveys sometimes acknowledge how unscientific (read: meaningless) they really are. They surely must be a pale imitation of the rigorous, carefully sampled, thoroughly transparent polls favored by political savants and mainstream news organizations
  • The line between junk and credible polling remains. But it became a little blurrier — creating concern among professional survey organizations and reason for greater skepticism by all of us — because of charges this week that one widely cited pollster may have fabricated data or manipulated it so seriously as to render it meaningless.
  • founder of the left-leaning Daily Kos website, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Oakland on Wednesday charging that Research 2000, the organization he had commissioned for 1 1/2 years to test voter opinion, had doctored its results.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The firm's protestations that it did nothing wrong have been loud and repeated. Evidence against the company is somewhat arcane. Suffice it to say that independent statisticians have found a bewildering lack of statistical "noise" in the company's data. Where random variation would be expected, results are too consistent.
  • Most reputable pollsters agree on one thing — polling organizations should publicly disclose as much of their methodology as possible. Just for starters, they should reveal how many people were interviewed, how they were selected, how many rejected the survey, how "likely voters" and other sub-groups were defined and how the raw data was weighted to reflect the population, or subgroups.
  • Michael Cornfield, a George Washington University political scientist and polling expert, recommends that concerned citizens ignore the lone, sometimes sensational, poll result. "Trend data are superior to a single point in time," Cornfield said via e-mail, "and consensus results from multiple firms are superior to those conducted by a single outfit."
  • The rest of us should look at none of the polls. Or look at all of them. And look out for the operators not willing to tell us how they're doing business.
  • Weiye Loh on 04 Jul 10
     
    On the Media: Survey shows not all polls equal
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: Liberal Democracy's Constant Tension: The Openness of Debate - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...mocracys-constant-tension.html

Democracy Debate Philosophy

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 Jul 10 - Cached
  • These questions essentially get at the issue of openness of debate. Openness includes at least two aspects, which are inevitably closely related, indeed hard to separate: who (or, whose ideas) can enter the debate; and how long should debate last before it ends (and people move to the next topic, or act on conclusions from the past debate).
  • The first issue would seem an easy one: no person, nor any person’s ideas, can be barred from debate.
  • ohn Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, which is a cornerstone work of the modern liberal society: “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. … To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolutely certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. …” (Mill, 23, 28).
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • how long should political liberals have let debate last? Here we reach another issue to parse, that of dividing the spheres of discourse of politics and society.The political sphere includes lawmakers, who have their name for a reason: they make laws. They cannot sit around and debate endlessly. They must, at some point, push legislation through (which is at the center of the debate over filibuster reform).
  • take note of another passage from Mill: “It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them on others unless they are quite sure of being right. But when they are sure … it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions. ... Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life." (Mill, 25-26, emphasis added).
  • Yet our division of spheres of discourse means passage of a bill – or even defeat – does not mark the end of debate. Indeed, many Americans continued to discuss the merits of the legislation, with some even filing lawsuits arguing it was unconstitutional (I think these stand little chance of going anywhere). American society at large can and will continue to have the conversation about health insurance reform. Then, in the next election, they will bring their beliefs to the polls. They will expect those voted in to act. And then, the conversation will continue. Politics is a continuous process. By dividing up spheres of discourse into political and societal, we see that debate never really ends – it’s just that sometimes lawmakers need to get on with their job, and leave debate to the public.
  • Weiye Loh on 06 Jul 10
     
    TUESDAY, JULY 06, 2010 Liberal Democracy's Constant Tension: The Openness of Debate
Weiye Loh

Rights of Conscience vs. Civil Rights - Pew Research Center - 0 views

pewresearch.org/...ion-protections-in-health-care

Health Care rights

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Should doctors, pharmacists and other health care workers have the right to refuse to provide services that conflict with their religious beliefs?
  • n March 2009, Julea Ward, a student at Eastern Michigan University (EMU), was dismissed from her graduate-level counseling program when she refused to counsel a gay man about a same-sex relationship.
  • The supervisor claimed that Ms. Ward's refusal violated the ethical obligations of a counselor not to discriminate against clients based on sexual orientation or to impose one's personal beliefs on clients. Based on this judgment, the school expelled Ms. Ward from the counseling program.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Ms. Ward filed suit in federal district court in the Eastern District of Michigan, alleging that the school violated her constitutional rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech.
  • she argued that counselors do not have a professional obligation to counsel all clients about all issues. Instead, she said, they are permitted to refer clients to other counselors if a client's needs conflict with the counselor's moral convictions.
  • Weiye Loh on 06 Jul 10
     
    Rights of Conscience vs. Civil Rights Are Health Care Workers Obligated to Treat Gays and Lesbians? June 3, 2010
Wing Yan Wong

Copyright Chief Lines Up With Google Book-Deal Opponents - 1 views

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/68095.html In summary, there were protests over Google scanning and selling books online. This includes out-of-print books. Google rivals Microsoft, Amazon and ...

digital rights

started by Wing Yan Wong on 16 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Magdaleine

Workplace Surveillance - 5 views

Link: http://news.cnet.com/Judges-protest-workplace-surveillance/2100-1023_3-271457.html Summary: A panel of influential judges are taking a closer look at the issue of electronic monitoring at ...

workplace surveillance

started by Low Yunying on 09 Sep 09 1 follow-up, last by Magdaleine on 10 Sep 09
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