Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 13, 2002 at 11:40:05 AM CET

USA Planning Surveillance of the Whole Internet ...

... and without doubt they are planning to do this also in in foreign sovereign territory. The plan has been established under the Information Awareness Office and officially fights the terror. In german Telepolis and Spiegel reports, in english there is some information at Infoworld.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 12, 2002 at 10:07:38 AM CET

The Other Side of Windows

Bill Gates did spend 100 Million Dollars for the fight against AIDS in India, reports IPS. But the indians are skeptical, because they feel domineered by the americans. [Yes, even a 100 Million donation could have cultural implications.] Addendum by zephyrin: I just had a conversation with our institute's head who has read this story and gave an interpretation to me which at first glance seems rather cynical -- but it's grounded on his insight into indian society: The indians may feel to be dominated, because they fear that it's looked after by the Americans that the $100 million donation by Bill Gates really are put into the fight against AIDS. They themselves hope to channel the money into the construction industry or what they fancy. In this context domination means: People from outside India are bypassing the informal distribution-system inside India.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 10, 2002 at 9:28:00 PM CET

Cognitive Science: Away from Step by Step Semantics

In this interesting paper (only for subscribers/universities) the 'neurophilosopher' Patricia Churchland is thinking about a different way of cognitive theory that sees the brain not as something identifying objects in the world by assigning them to one abstract model in the brain, but by embedding them into a larger neural model of the world. As I think, Cognitive Theorys play a huge role in cyberethnology. This article is not the big thing, but it's interesting to know, that there are also nature scientists with philosophic bachground thinking about this topic. You can read a hasty excerpt on my private german weblog.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 8, 2002 at 11:19:52 AM CET

Interview with the God of the Web

The inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee was a 1 November guest on National Public Radio (NPR) Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. Host Ira Flatow and callers from the United States discussed inventions, the Semantic Web, privacy, patents, broadband, "always on" connections, openness, trust, and spam. NPR provides a three-quarter hour audio archive of the show, as well as Mr. Berners-Lee's previous visit to Science Friday in 1999. Berners-Lee is still a important personality, having some influence on the development of the technology and the standards of the internet. Via W3C.org

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, fabulous, November 8, 2002 at 12:42:44 AM CET

TCPA - The Death Of Internet As We Know It ?

Today I was at a friend's and he told me about TCPA and a part of the new Microsoft OS, Palladium. TCPA isa plan of big companies that links hardware, software, and data into a neat package that allegedly is more secure and convenient for users. Or, putting it in simpler terms, it's Microsoft's answer to fixing everything that's wrong with computing today. This changes, if made true, will have an immense impact on the current way we use our computer. And it's also an attack to the GPL (General Public License - a form of Open Source Software) as the first article shows. So - and thats an really interesting cyberethnological aspect - it's an provocation to the ethical elite of the ICT-World. The Open Source people, the Open Information people, the hackers, the privacy defenders, all of them will probably attack this strategies and will offer alternative solutions - if they can. Which way the consumer will go? Which force is stronger? Here are the three links, which I read and afterwards I was really shocked. Unfortunatelly the first link is in german.

Der versiegelte PC TCPA/Palladium FAQ 1.0 - english Preparing For The Digital Dark Age

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 7, 2002 at 8:41:54 PM CET

How You Should Treat Your Robot

Funny: There is an American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots. They say: "Robots are people too! Or at least, they will be someday." My comment: Of course, this is a fun-site. But maybe there is some seriousness in the idea, at least it could be. The autor points to the The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and realises, that they were also ridiculed in 1890. So, it is possible that we, that our culture, is changing the idea we have of an robot in the future - in the same way we changed the concept of an animal. Via ITW

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 6, 2002 at 1:21:55 PM CET

Rheingold's Next Strike

Wired did another interview with the cyberspace-thinker Howard Rheingold about his new book "smart mobs". In eight chapters, Rheingold chronicles how "smart mobs," defined as "people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other," are reshaping the way societies organize and interact. My comment: He always cooks the things too hot. And the praise of the mobile internet he does: I don't believe this hype. Nobody is watching TV although we have mobile TV-devices. We're just not a mobile society - so why should the internet get us to be more mobile? Would be something different, if you give mobile internet devices to nomads.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 6, 2002 at 1:16:24 PM CET

Cyborg Comes True

A half century of artificial-sight research has succeeded. And now this blind man can see. Wired with an impressive, well written (but long!) story about an american lab, that is working with cameras that bring vision directly by cables into the brain of a blind.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, zephyrin, November 5, 2002 at 3:22:55 PM CET

Xenophilia

Forarea, a bavaria-based, interdisciplinary community of about 200 scientists, concerned with the understanding of 'other cultures', has launched a computer game called Xenophilia [= "the liking of the other"]. The game's aim is to mediate an understanding of people who were socialized in cultures different from the 'western' one. Children and teenagers are to be reached by the game's message. Xenophilia was presented at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair and instantaneously was awarded the Giga-Maus, a german software award. Two versions of Xenophilia are available: One for everyone and one specially designed for the use in schools.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 4, 2002 at 10:35:04 AM CET

Panama Blocks Some Internet Services

The government of Panama decided to block all ports of Internet Providers that are used for making phone calls via internet. The purpose is apparently to stem telephone company revenue losses due to Internet telephony, writes Slashdot.

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, fabulous, November 4, 2002 at 12:37:42 AM CET

A UNIX family tree :: Software's genealogy

I just got this link from a good friend of mine. It perfectly illustrates where todays unix-es come from, where it all started and where the connections are to each other. So there you can see a genealogical tree of unix and see if there is a link between a linux, a solaris and a freeBSD :)

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Dept. of cyberethnologica, kerlone, November 3, 2002 at 5:47:01 PM CET

Linux gets in the clash 'China vs. Taiwan'

The old conflict between China and Taiwan about flag and name of both countries is coming to your computer desktop now - or should we better say it's coming not: As Salon reports, a distributor of the alternative Operating System Linux, Red Hat, did remove the flag of Taiwan from the country settings of all their distributions (screenshot). They even commented the removing in the system files:

Mon Aug 5 2002 Than Ngo than@redhat.com 3.0.2-7.2
- add patch file to fix kicker segfault (bug #69688)
- get rid of Taiwanese Flag in KDE (bug #70235)

Hehe. A "bug" was that. Interesting. But people using computers sometimes take it very serious with configuring desktop and settings, even if there is no impact for the working of the computer, so soon there was big protest.

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