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Weiye Loh

Do avatars have digital rights? - 20 views

hi weiye, i agree with you that this brings in the topic of representation. maybe you should try taking media and representation by Dr. Ingrid to discuss more on this. Going back to your questio...

avatars

started by Elaine Ong on 16 Sep 09 7 follow-ups, last by Weiye Loh on 18 Sep 09
Jody Poh

Subtitles, Lip Synching and Covers on YouTube - 13 views

I think that companies concerned over this issue due to the loss of potential income constitutes egoism. They mainly want to defend their interests without considering the beneficial impact of the ...

copyright youtube parody

started by Ang Yao Zong on 25 Aug 09 1 follow-up, last by Jody Poh on 25 Aug 09
Weiye Loh

Why YouTube Adopting Creative Commons Is a Big Deal Online Video News - 0 views

gigaom.com/...creative-commons-is-a-big-deal

Youtube Creative Commons Commons Law Copyright Remix Culture

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Creative Commons-licensed videos can be found from within YouTube’s video editor through a special CC tab. These videos can then be trimmed, combined with other clips and synchronized to music, just like users have been able to do with their own uploads ever since YouTube launched its video editor a year ago. “It’s as if all the Creative Commons videos were part of your personal library,” explained Product Manager Jason Toff when I talked to him on the phone yesterday.
  • YouTube’s catalog of Creative Commons clips is being seeded with more than 10,000 videos from partners like C-SPAN, Voice of America and Al-Jazeera. Users also now have the ability to publish any of their own videos under CC-BY simply by selecting the licenses as an option during the upload process.
  • CC-BY only requires that users credit the original videographer, and YouTube is automating this process by adding links to the original work next to every mashup video. Toff said that the site might add additional Creative Commons licenses in the future if there was strong demand for it.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Creative Commons has in the past been struggling with the fact that the majority of users tends to adopt more restrictive licenses. The organization estimated that two out of three Creative Commons-licensed works can’t be reused commercially, and one out of four can’t be reincorporated into a new work at all.
  • CC-BY on the other hand allows commercial reuse as well. This doesn’t just open YouTube and its producers new revenue opportunities it also makes it possible to reuse these videos in a much wider variety of contexts. Wikipedia, for example, demands that any videos posted to its site can be reused commercially. Combine that with the fact that YouTube has been converting its entire catalog into the open source WebM format, and there’s little reason why tens of thousands of Creative Commons-licensed YouTube videos shouldn’t show up on Wikipedia any day now.
Weiye Loh

Justin Bieber Swears Off YouTube For Facebook, Unwittingly Steps In Copyright Minefield... - 0 views

blogs.forbes.com/...y-steps-in-copyright-minefield

Copyright Youtube Social Social Media

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Internet pop sensation Justin Bieber went to upload the music video of his new song called “Pray” to his personal YouTube site. He was in for a rude surprise: YouTube automatically blocked his video upload on “copyright grounds” that the video contained content from Universal Music Group (UMG), parent company to Bieber’s record label, Island Def Jam records.
  • “yo youtube…how u gonna block my own song?!?!?!” wrote an outraged Bieber on his Twitter account. In another Twitter update, he wrote, “dear youtube…we started this journey and now u r cheatin on me with this vevo chica…i see how it is…i will be over here with facebook [sic].” (Vevo is the music video website responsible for Bieber’s official YouTube syndication, and is a joint venture between music giants Sony Music Entertainment, UMG and Abu Dhabi Media.)
  • YouTube wrote back to Bieber on its Twitter account, “sorry about the upload pain around ‘Pray’. That’s between you and your label but we love you [both] so let’s figure this out!”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Frustrated with the Google-owned video site, Bieber instead uploaded his video using Facebook’s video app onto his Facebook page. “no one keeps my music from my fans. nobody,” he wrote on Twitter.
  • There’s a level of irony to the situation. Bieber got his start on YouTube, where home videos of him on his account singing covers of hip-hop songs
  • You would think if anyone deserved to be able to upload his own music videos to YouTube, it would be Bieber. So why couldn’t he? The answer lies in the complicated legalities behind copyright law and new media. It comes down to the question: who owns the video? In Bieber’s case, the answer depends on who you ask.
  • According to the YouTube website where Bieber’s upload was blocked, it appears that UMG has ownership. YouTube has a Content ID copyright protection system in place. Content ID automatically detects whether new content being uploaded to the website infringes on any copyrighted material in YouTube’s vast video database, using video and audio recognition techniques. The rights-holder can preselect what YouTube should do to the video in response: A) block it outright, B) monetize it by overlaying an ad on the video or C) do nothing, but be able to track the video’s viewership.
  • And why was Bieber able to upload his video to Facebook with no problems? Facebook also says it has a copyright protection scheme in place. But if it has a similar Content ID system to YouTube, it doesn’t have the same amount of video content that YouTube does, meaning a given uploaded video to the social network is less likely to automatically ring warning bells.
Weiye Loh

World Bank Institute: We're also the data bank - video | Media | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...orld-bank-institute-data-video

Open Open Government Data World World Bank Transparency Collaboration

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11
     
    Aleem Walji, practice manager for innovation at the World Bank Institute, which assists and advises policy makers and NGOs, tells the Guardian's Activate summit in London about the organisation's commitment to open data
Weiye Loh

California ban on sale of 'violent' video games to children rejected - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Violence Children Video Games

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • "The First Amendment does not disable government from helping parents make such a choice here -- a choice not to have their children buy extremely violent, interactive games," he wrote. At issue is how far constitutional protections of free speech and expression, as well as due process, can be applied to youngsters.
  • Justice Clarence Thomas also dissented, saying the law's requirement of having parents purchase the games for their underage children was reasonable. "The freedom of speech as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors, without going through the minors' parents or guardians," he said.
  • The motion picture industry has its own self-monitoring ratings system, imposed decades ago after complaints that some films were too explicit for the general audience in what was seen and heard. The gaming industry says its ratings system roughly follows the same self-imposed guidelines, and ratings are clearly labeled on the packaging.
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  • Efforts in at least eight other states to restrict gaming content have been rejected by various courts. Video game makers have the support of various free-speech, entertainment, and media organizations. Nine states also agree, noting California's law has good intentions but would compel law enforcement to become "culture critics" and "distract from the task of policing actual violence." But 11 other states back California, saying they have enjoyed a traditional regulatory power over commerce aimed at protecting children, including such goods as alcohol and cigarettes.
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11
     
    The Supreme Court has struck down a California law that would have banned selling "violent" video games to children, a case balancing free speech rights with consumer protection. The 7-2 ruling Monday is a victory for video game makers and sellers, who said the ban -- which had yet to go into effect -- would extend too far. They say the existing nationwide, industry-imposed, voluntary rating system is an adequate screen for parents to judge the appropriateness of computer game content. The state says it has a legal obligation to protect children from graphic interactive images when the industry has failed to do so.
Chen Guo Lim

YouTube - Mika - Lady Jane - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

shared by Chen Guo Lim on 26 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Chen Guo Lim on 26 Aug 09
     
    while I was watching this video, I suddenly had a desire to share this video with my friends. Then I realised that there are serious ethics issues here. Such is the life of a NM4204 student. 1. Is it alright to video a clip of a live performance? Seeing as I have just spent a couple of hundreds on a ticket, surely I am allowed to bring home some memories. Leaving uploading online aside, is the act of recording infringing on rights? Seeing as it does not harm either party if the clip is stroed in my device, and I viewed at my own time. 2. By us (me that is to say) sharing this file while everyone in the class, have I stepped into the boundaries of infringing on copyrights, seeing as the playback of this clip asynchronously can constitute as a public performance right? In any case, enjoy this song first before you think about these. One of my favourite artist.
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: Some animals are more equal than others - 0 views

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...re-more-equal-than-others.html

Animal Rights Morality Vegetarianism Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • society's answer to the question “Is it acceptable to hurt animals for our pleasure?” isn't always “No.” Odds are that most of the people who objected to the dog fighting and crush videos are frequent consumers of meat, milk, and eggs from industrialized farms. And the life of an animal in a typical industrialized farm is notoriously punishing. Many spend their lives in cages so confining they can barely move; ammonia fumes burn their eyes; their beaks or tails are chopped off to prevent them from biting each other out of stress; and the farm's conditions make many of them so sick or weak that they die in their cages or on the way to slaughter. As a society, however, we apparently believe that the pleasure we get from eating those animals makes their suffering worth it.
  • many people will object that eating animals isn’t a matter of pleasure at all, but of the need for sustenance. While that may have been true for our ancestors who survived by hunting wild animals, I don’t think it has much relevance to our current situation. First, it's questionable whether we actually do need to eat animal products in order to be healthy; the American Dietetic Association has given the thumbs up to vegetarian and even vegan diets. But even if you believe that some amount of animal product consumption is medically necessary, we could still buy from farms that raise their livestock much more humanely. It would cost more, but we could always compensate by cutting back on other luxuries, or simply by eating less meat. By any reasonable estimate, Americans could cut their meat consumption drastically with no ill effects on their health (and likely with many positive effects). Buying the sheer amount of meat that Americans do, at the low prices made possible by industrialized farms, is a luxury that can’t be defended with a “need for sustenance” argument. It’s about pleasure — the pleasure of eating more meat than strictly necessary for health, and the pleasure of saving money that can then be spent on other things we enjoy.
  • there are several reasons why people regard consumers of industrial farming differently than consumers of crush videos and dogfighting. The first has to do with the types of animals involved: pigs, cows, and chickens simply aren't as cute as dogs, bunnies, and kittens. I don't know how many people would explicitly cite that as the reason they're willing to inflict suffering on the former and not the latter, but it seems to play a role, even if people won't admit as much. People who have no qualms about a pig spending its life in a small, dark crate would nevertheless be outraged if a dog were treated in the same way.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Cuteness is a pretty silly criterion by which to assign moral status, though. It's not as if unappealing animals are less intelligent or less sensitive to pain.
  • And if you have any trouble seeing the absurdity of basing moral judgments on cuteness, it helps to try out the principle in other contexts. (Is it worse to abuse a cute child than an ugly one?)
  • But I think the biggest reason that different examples of hurting animals for pleasure elicit different reactions from people is not about the types of animals involved, but about the types of pleasure.
  • One objective difference people might cite is the fact that a desire to eat meat is “natural” while a desire to watch kittens being crushed is not. Which is true, in the sense that our species did evolve to eat meat while a fetish for crushing kittens is an aberration. But using naturalness as a criterion for moral rightness is a dubious move. First, it seems rather arbitrary, from a logical perspective, which is why it's often referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. And second, it would justify some pretty unsavory “natural” urges, like rape and tribalism, while prohibiting other “unnatural” urges, like the desire to wear clothing or to refrain from having children.
  • The closest thing that I can find to a morally relevant distinction between industrial farming, dogfighting, and crush videos is this: While it’s true that all three acts cause animal suffering in order to give people pleasure, the nature of that tradeoff differs. The consumers of crush videos and dogfighting are taking pleasure in the suffering itself, whereas the consumers of industrially-farmed meat are taking pleasure in the meat that was produced by the suffering. From a purely harm-based perspective, the moral calculus is the same: the animal suffers so that you can experience pleasure. But the degree of directness of that tradeoff makes a difference in how we perceive your character. Someone whose motive is “I enjoy seeing another creature suffer” seems more evil than someone whose motive is “I want a tasty meal,” even if both people cause the same amount of suffering.
  • And I can certainly understand why people would want to call a crush video enthusiast more “evil” than a person who buys meat from industrial farms, because of the difference in their motivations. That's a reasonable way to define evilness. But in that case we're left with the fact that a person's evilness may be totally unrelated to the amount of harm she causes; and that, in fact, some of the greatest harm may be caused by people whose motivations seem unobjectionable to us. Apathy, denial, conformity; none of these inspire the same outrage as sadism, but they've caused some pretty horrible outcomes. And if you believe that it's wrong to make animals suffer for our pleasure, but you reserve your moral condemnation only for cases that viscerally upset you, like dogfighting or crush videos, then you're falling prey to the trap that Isaac Asimov famously warned us against: “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
Weiye Loh

Can Flip Cams & Online Video Help Stop Violence in Slums? | The Utopianist - Think Bigger - 0 views

utopianist.com/...eo-help-stop-violence-in-slums

Violence Camera Anonymity

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • people are more prone to despicable behavior if it’s masked by a crowd. So could widespread knowledge that the identity of mob participants might be made known via portable technology help reduce crime?
  • Weiye Loh on 06 Jun 11
     
    The knowledge that the protesters in Egypt were equipped with hand held video cams and cellphone cameras is thought to have prevented brutality in many instances. And certain nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations have deemed distributing cheap video-recorders like Flip-Cams and helping to train citizen journalists in desperate parts of the developing world a priority. Cisco donated 1 million of its Flip-Cams to NGOs around the world to do exactly that. Bill Clinton has even endorsed the idea.
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

Don't Miss this Video: "A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? N... - 0 views

climatecrocks.com/...nge-and-joplin-tornadoes-never

Climate Science Causation Correlation Uncertainty

shared by Weiye Loh on 12 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 12 Jun 11
     
    The video takes Bill Mckibben's recent editorial from the Washington Post, sets it to music and powerful video of the last year's weather events. If you haven't seen the editorial, give that a look first. It starts out - Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week's shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn't mean a thing. It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas - fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they've ever been - the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they're somehow connected.
Weiye Loh

Smithsonian's Crowdsourced "The Art Of Video Games" Exhibition Comes Under Fire | The C... - 0 views

www.thecreatorsproject.com/...es-exhibition-comes-under-fire

Crowd-Sourcing Video Games Crowd Curation Art

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • My initial concerns about the current show were its sort of lack of perspective. The strength of a curated show comes from the choice and arrangement of the works, and I worried that with a crowdsourced show like this, it would be hard to form a central thesis. What makes each of these games influential and how will those qualities come together to paint a moving picture of games as an art medium? I wasn’t sure this list particularly answered those questions.
  • They’ve avoided directly addressing the question of why are video games art, and instead danced around it, showing a number of wonderful games and explaining why each great. Despite this success though, I feel that the show was still damaged by the crowdsourced curation approach. While I agree that the player is a major component of games (as Abe Stein recently posted to his blog, “A game not played is no game at all”), the argument that because games are played by the public they should be publicly curated doesn’t necessarily follow for me, especially when the resultant list is so muddled.
  • Despite Chris’ apparent love for the games, the show doesn’t feel as strongly curated as it could have been, overly heavy in some places, and completely missing in others, and I think that is a result of the crowdsourcing. Although I’m sure Chris has a fantastic perspective that will tie this all together beautifully and the resulting show will be enjoyable and successful, I wish that he had just selected a strong list of games on his own and been confident with his picks.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • perhaps it would have been nice to not side-step the question of why are these games, as a whole, important as art. Considering this is the first major American art institution to put on a video game show, I would have liked to see a more powerful statement about the medium.
Weiye Loh

Nick Davies on phone hacking, Murdoch and News of the World - video | Media | guardian.... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ck-davies-rupert-murdoch-video

NotW News Journalism Politics Tabloid

shared by Weiye Loh on 10 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • The investigative journalist Nick Davies on how the phone-hacking scandal has escalated, leading to News of the World's announced closure
  • Weiye Loh on 10 Jul 11
     
    Nick Davies explains phone hacking, Murdoch and News of the World - video http://bit.ly/r3EpNl #NotW
Weiye Loh

Connecticut Law Tribune: Child Porn Decision Turns On Downloading Intent - 0 views

www.ctlawtribune.com/getarticle.aspx

Law Pornography Internet Child Pornography

shared by Weiye Loh on 27 May 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 27 May 12
     
    Generally speaking, when you go to a web site, images are downloaded to temporary storage on your computer - whether it's a personal computer, pad, laptop or certain smartphones. This temporary storage is called "cache." The pictures and video are temporarily stored to make it easier for your computer to display those images from the web site if you go back. It makes the processing time faster. This is an automatic process conducted by your computer's operating system. Yes, that means you or a client can accidentally access child pornography unknowingly. There may be pictures or videos that depict child pornography that you haven't viewed that get automatically downloaded and stored in temporary Internet storage or cache. Yes, that means that even if you or a client accidentally access child pornography and try to delete it, if the police find out about it, they will make an arrest, push to prosecute and the resultant conviction will garner a mandatory minimum sentence of incarceration.
Karin Tan

Pornography as a living? - 8 views

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/104278 This article illustrates the profitability of the pornography market today, and also claims that about 12 percent of the websites available on...

pornography

started by Karin Tan on 02 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Can Real-Life $150 Spy Glasses Make Societies More Transparent? | The Utopianist - Thin... - 0 views

utopianist.com/...ake-societies-more-transparent

Spying Privacy Camera Transparency Panopticon

shared by Weiye Loh on 10 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The Roy Orbison looking Eyez will feature a 720p HD recording camera, microphone, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, 8 GB flash memory, and three hours of battery life. Using an iPhone or Android app you can transmit what your Eyez record directly to the web, or you can save and upload it later using a microUSB port. Here’s a promo clip of the glasses from ZionEyez, the start-up company developing them:
  • At $150 a pair, these glasses are cheap enough to become invaluable tools for journalists in volatile regions, especially those living under regimes who restrict free speech and press — where being seen recording video can be dangerous
  • the notion of more and easier surveillance will draw the inevitable comparisons to Big Brother — and certainly, the notion that our deeds could be surreptitiously captured by strangers, even friends, without our knowledge is an uncomfortable one. But some would argue that given the amount of surveillance we now face by the state, the amount of information we willingly volunteer about ourselves to corporations and on social media sites anyways, pervasive video-taking goggles seem like a natural stage in the evolution towards something like David Brin’s transparent society.
  • Weiye Loh on 10 Jun 11
     
    So what's Utopianist about some fairly snazzy, semi-affordable spy glasses that allow their users to furtively record video of the goings-on around them?
Weiye Loh

BrainGate gives paralysed the power of mind control | Science | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ain-implant-paralysis-movement

Brain Transhumanism

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • brain-computer interface, or BCI
  • is a branch of science exploring how computers and the human brain can be meshed together. It sounds like science fiction (and can look like it too), but it is motivated by a desire to help chronically injured people. They include those who have lost limbs, people with Lou Gehrig's disease, or those who have been paralysed by severe spinal-cord injuries. But the group of people it might help the most are those whom medicine assumed were beyond all hope: sufferers of "locked-in syndrome".
  • These are often stroke victims whose perfectly healthy minds end up trapped inside bodies that can no longer move. The most famous example was French magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who managed to dictate a memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by blinking one eye. In the book, Bauby, who died in 1997 shortly after the book was published, described the prison his body had become for a mind that still worked normally.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Now the project is involved with a second set of human trials, pushing the technology to see how far it goes and trying to miniaturise it and make it wireless for a better fit in the brain. BrainGate's concept is simple. It posits that the problem for most patients does not lie in the parts of the brain that control movement, but with the fact that the pathways connecting the brain to the rest of the body, such as the spinal cord, have been broken. BrainGate plugs into the brain, picks up the right neural signals and beams them into a computer where they are translated into moving a cursor or controlling a computer keyboard. By this means, paralysed people can move a robot arm or drive their own wheelchair, just by thinking about it.
  • he and his team are decoding the language of the human brain. This language is made up of electronic signals fired by billions of neurons and it controls everything from our ability to move, to think, to remember and even our consciousness itself. Donoghue's genius was to develop a deceptively small device that can tap directly into the brain and pick up those signals for a computer to translate them. Gold wires are implanted into the brain's tissue at the motor cortex, which controls movement. Those wires feed back to a tiny array – an information storage device – attached to a "pedestal" in the skull. Another wire feeds from the array into a computer. A test subject with BrainGate looks like they have a large plug coming out the top of their heads. Or, as Donoghue's son once described it, they resemble the "human batteries" in The Matrix.
  • BrainGate's highly advanced computer programs are able to decode the neuron signals picked up by the wires and translate them into the subject's desired movement. In crude terms, it is a form of mind-reading based on the idea that thinking about moving a cursor to the right will generate detectably different brain signals than thinking about moving it to the left.
  • The technology has developed rapidly, and last month BrainGate passed a vital milestone when one paralysed patient went past 1,000 days with the implant still in her brain and allowing her to move a computer cursor with her thoughts. The achievement, reported in the prestigious Journal of Neural Engineering, showed that the technology can continue to work inside the human body for unprecedented amounts of time.
  • Donoghue talks enthusiastically of one day hooking up BrainGate to a system of electronic stimulators plugged into the muscles of the arm or legs. That would open up the prospect of patients moving not just a cursor or their wheelchair, but their own bodies.
  • If Nagle's motor cortex was no longer working healthily, the entire BrainGate project could have been rendered pointless. But when Nagle was plugged in and asked to imagine moving his limbs, the signals beamed out with a healthy crackle. "We asked him to imagine moving his arm to the left and to the right and we could hear the activity," Donoghue says. When Nagle first moved a cursor on a screen using only his thoughts, he exclaimed: "Holy shit!"
  • BrainGate and other BCI projects have also piqued the interest of the government and the military. BCI is melding man and machine like no other sector of medicine or science and there are concerns about some of the implications. First, beyond detecting and translating simple movement commands, BrainGate may one day pave the way for mind-reading. A device to probe the innermost thoughts of captured prisoners or dissidents would prove very attractive to some future military or intelligence service. Second, there is the idea that BrainGate or other BCI technologies could pave the way for robot warriors controlled by distant humans using only their minds. At a conference in 2002, a senior American defence official, Anthony Tether, enthused over BCI. "Imagine a warrior with the intellect of a human and the immortality of a machine." Anyone who has seen Terminator might worry about that.
  • Donoghue acknowledges the concerns but has little time for them. When it comes to mind-reading, current BrainGate technology has enough trouble with translating commands for making a fist, let alone probing anyone's mental secrets
  • As for robot warriors, Donoghue was slightly more circumspect. At the moment most BCI research, including BrainGate projects, that touch on the military is focused on working with prosthetic limbs for veterans who have lost arms and legs. But Donoghue thinks it is healthy for scientists to be aware of future issues. "As long as there is a rational dialogue and scientists think about where this is going and what is the reasonable use of the technology, then we are on a good path," he says.
  • Weiye Loh on 18 Apr 11
     
    The robotic arm clutched a glass and swung it over a series of coloured dots that resembled a Twister gameboard. Behind it, a woman sat entirely immobile in a wheelchair. Slowly, the arm put the glass down, narrowly missing one of the dots. "She's doing that!" exclaims Professor John Donoghue, watching a video of the scene on his office computer - though the woman onscreen had not moved at all. "She actually has the arm under her control," he says, beaming with pride. "We told her to put the glass down on that dot." The woman, who is almost completely paralysed, was using Donoghue's groundbreaking technology to control the robot arm using only her thoughts. Called BrainGate, the device is implanted into her brain and hooked up to a computer to which she sends mental commands. The video played on, giving Donoghue, a silver-haired and neatly bearded man of 62, even more reason to feel pleased. The patient was not satisfied with her near miss and the robot arm lifted the glass again. After a brief hover, the arm positioned the glass on the dot.
Weiye Loh

The Great Beyond: Lab sabotage deemed research misconduct (with exclusive surveillance ... - 0 views

blogs.nature.com/...otage_deemed_research_m_1.html

Academic Research Sabotage Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Yesterday, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, issued a finding of research misconduct for Vipul Bhrigu, a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, debarring him for three years from involvement in US federally funded research and from serving as an advisor to the US Public Health Service. The federal register carried the note today. Bhrigu, now in India, was caught on videotape sabotaging the experiments of a graduate student in his lab at the univeristy last year. And today, Nature releases exclusive surveillance tapes, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in Michigan.
  • Video: This video, obtained by Nature via the Freedom of Information Act, shows Vipul Bhrigu carrying a spray bottle full of ethanol into the refrigerator where Heather Ames had stored her cell culture media and contaminating her reagents.
Weiye Loh

Report: Piracy a "global pricing problem" with only one solution - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...lem-with-only-one-solution.ars

Piracy Pricing Capitalism Globalization Income Inequality

shared by Weiye Loh on 14 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Over the last three years, 35 researchers contributed to the Media Piracy Project, released last week by the Social Science Research Council. Their mission was to examine media piracy in emerging economies, which account for most of the world's population, and to find out just how and why piracy operates in places like Russia, Mexico, and India.
  • Their conclusion is not that citizens of such piratical societies are somehow morally deficient or opposed to paying for content. Instead, they write that “high prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap digital technologies are the main ingredients of global media piracy. If piracy is ubiquitous in most parts of the world, it is because these conditions are ubiquitous.”
  • When legitimate CDs, DVDs, and computer software are five to ten times higher (relative to local incomes) than they are in the US and Europe, simply ratcheting up copyright enforcement won't do enough to fix the problem. In the view of the report's authors, the only real solution is the creation of local companies that “actively compete on price and services for local customers” as they sell movies, music, and more.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Some markets have local firms that compete on price to offer legitimate content (think the US, which has companies like Hulu, Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft that compete to offer legal video content). But the authors conclude that, in most of the world, legitimate copyrighted goods are only distributed by huge multinational corporations whose dominant goals are not to service a large part of local markets but to “protect the pricing structure in the high-income countries that generate most of their profits.”
  • This might increase profits globally, but it has led to disaster in many developing economies, where piracy may run north of 90 percent. Given access to cheap digital tools, but charged terrific amounts of money for legitimate versions of content, users choose piracy.
  • In Russia, for instance, researchers noted that legal versions of the film The Dark Knight went for $15. That price, akin to what a US buyer would pay, might sound reasonable until you realize that Russians make less money in a year than US workers. As a percentage of their wages, that $15 price is actually equivalent to a US consumer dropping $75 on the film. Pirate versions can be had for one-third the price.
  • Simple crackdowns on pirate behavior won't work in the absence of pricing and other reforms, say the report's authors (who also note that even "developed" economies routinely pirate TV shows and movies that are not made legally available to them for days, weeks, or months after they originally appear elsewhere).
  • The "strong moralization of the debate” makes it difficult to discuss issues beyond enforcement, however, and the authors slam the content companies for lacking any credible "endgame" to their constant requests for more civil and police powers in the War on Piracy.
  • piracy is a “signal of unmet consumer demand.
  • Our studies raise concerns that it may be a long time before such accommodations to reality reach the international policy arena. Hardline enforcement positions may be futile at stemming the tide of piracy, but the United States bears few of the costs of such efforts, and US companies reap most of the modest benefits. This is a recipe for continued US pressure on developing countries, very possibly long after media business models in the United States and other high-income countries have changed.
  • Weiye Loh on 14 Mar 11
     
    A major new report from a consortium of academic researchers concludes that media piracy can't be stopped through "three strikes" Internet disconnections, Web censorship, more police powers, higher statutory damages, or tougher criminal penalties. That's because the piracy of movies, music, video games, and software is "better described as a global pricing problem." And the only way to solve it is by changing the price.
Weiye Loh

Designing Minds: Uncovered Video Profiles of Prominent Designers | Brain Pickings - 0 views

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Design Art Mind

shared by Weiye Loh on 01 Jun 11 - No Cached

  • My favorite quote about what is art and what is design and what might be the difference comes from Donald Judd: ‘Design has to work, art doesn’t.’ And these things all have to work. They have a function outside my desire for self-expression.” ~ Stefan Sagmeister

  • When designers are given the opportunity to have a bigger role, real change, real transformation actually happens.” ~ Yves Behar

  • Weiye Loh on 01 Jun 11
     
    In 2008, a now-defunct podcast program by Adobe called Designing Minds - not to be confused with frogdesign's excellent design mind magazine - did a series of video profiles of prominent artists and designers, including Stefan Sagmeister (whose Things I have learned in my life so far isn't merely one of the best-produced, most beautiful design books of the past decade, it's also a poignant piece of modern existential philosophy), Yves Behar (of One Laptop Per Child fame), Marian Bantjes (whose I Wonder remains my favorite typographic treasure) and many more, offering a rare glimpse of these remarkable creators' life stories, worldviews and the precious peculiarities that make them be who they are and create what they create
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