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Tuesday, January 10, 2006 |
China is number 2,as online population over one billion for the first time.
"China has become the world's second most populous internet nation,with 20 million new users going online last year,according to research announced this week",the China Daily reports."The total number of Chinese surfers reached almost 120 million last year,according to a report from US-based research and consulting firm eTForecasts.
Rapidly increasing internet adoption in Asia's highly-populous developing nations,notably China,India and Indonesia,has helped push the worldwide online population over one billion for the first time."Much of future internet user growth is coming from populous countries such as China,India,Brazil,Russia and Indonesia,"said report author Dr. Egil Juliussen."These countries will also see strong growth of wireless web usage,and for many new internet users the cellphone will be their only internet access device."Chinese surfers are also more likely to be on broadband connections than their US counterparts.Reflecting the relatively recent introduction of the internet to China,shared broadband access is relatively more common than in the US.Data from UK-based Point Topic puts the number of Chinese broadband lines at 35 million compared to almost 41 million in the US.While the number of people online continues to increase in all countries listed,the larger developing nations are seeing their percentage share of the worldwide internet audience grow rapidly while the proportion of users in developed nations,like the US,falls.According to eTForecast's data,the US share of the global online population slid from 19.86 per cent in 2004 to 18.3 per cent last year,while China's share crept up from 10.68 per cent to 11.1 per cent.Market saturation,particularly among easily reachable urban residents, is hobbling further growth in more developed nations.The top internet nation, measured by total number of users,remains the US,with 197.8 million,followed by China,Japan,India,Germany,the UK,and South Korea."
China becomes second largest internet nation [Smart Mobs]
6:21:56 AM 
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Experiments in presentation technology.
As I've mentioned before, I've been looking for a simple way to make presentations that link my slides with my voice. Leonard Lin did it originally with my OSCON speech in 2002. He even built a simple way to take timings from PowerPoint and include them in the import into Flash. But that proved too cumbersome for this sad soul to use, and so for four years, requests for copies of my talks have come in, but I've had no easy way to provide them. I may, however, have made some progress. Phil Pickering suggested (comment 7) the idea at Doug Kaye's Blogarithms. I implemented it, using Keynote and iMovie, as follows:
(1) print the slides from Keynote so you can see what's coming (2) export the slides as JPEGs (3) import the slides into iMovie (4) import the audio into iMovie (5) using the bookmark function, listen to the audio, and bookmark where there is to be a slide change (6) marking all the slides, extend their length to the maximum (30 seconds) (7) then starting from the beginning, advance to the next bookmark; split the image (apple+T); delete the half to the right; and repeat to the end (8) Export to mp4 Once I programmed the keystrokes, this turned out to be pretty easy. The first completed example is a talk I gave about whether Google Book Search is "fair use." Here's a torrent for the (large) mp4 file. The torrent is hosted by Prodigem. (Get your BitTorrent client here. As the BitTorrent beautifully puts it: "BitTorrent is a free speech tool.") The only difficult part about this was listening to myself again (and again) as I built this. The bubbling inarticulateness in it terrifies me. But anyway, in the spirit of the experiment, here it is. My hope is to put every presentation I've made, with audio and the source files, up for anyone to do with as they wish. That turns out to be harder than it should be. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. Meanwhile, here's my wishlist for technology to do this (Keynote developers -- please please please):
(1) The ideal would be a simple SMIL like technology that would make it trivial to synchronize audio and images (2) It would produce a flash-like output that would be small (unlike the MPEG4 video I've produced). In principle, there's no reason it needs to be big, since there's just a smallish number of images and an audio file (3) The tool would enable simple bookmarking of transition points (4) It would then automatically map slides to those transition points (5) It would allow me to dump the resulting presentation in any format (so, e.g., I don't have to watch it across the web) (6) It would run on many platforms (7) It would allow me to run the audio at a slow speed when indicating the bookmarks (8) It would not require me to buy a huge new system to do it.
What's distinctive about my style, as you'll see, is that I have MANY slides. Some are just one or two words. Some are on the screen for just 1 or 2 seconds. Systems that imagine cutting up the audio and attaching it to the slides (i.e., PowerPoint) won't cut it.
[Lessig Blog]
6:14:27 AM
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NUMB3RS.
Among my many vices is television watching, and since NUMB3RS (I wonder if they realize there is a typo in the title?) came out, I have ReplayTV'ed it (man, I need a TIVO) often. I was (am, actually) watching the 12/16 episode where they are trying to lookup the records an environmentalist suspected of arson. Alas, they can't, because
"it looks like Eckworth used a Diffie-Hellman encryption code...basically impossible to crack" on the password for his second screen name.
Hmm, even I may be able to help the FBI on this one: The "technical expert" who reported those details is colluding with the bad guys! Don't listen to her and arrest her immediately! (Man, my Encyclopedia Brown days are rushing at me on this one).
I know there have been many references to crypto and other security tools in television and movies that are amusing. Please feel free to leave your favorite reference in the comments section (or a link if somebody is doing this already). (I think The Net with Sandra Bullock had an IP address in the 500 range...)
[Spire Security Viewpoint]
6:13:37 AM
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FBI Agent's Cell Phone Records For Sale
To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said.
Representatives of Data Find Solutions Inc., the Tennessee-based operator of Locatecell.com, could not be reached for comment.
Frank Bochte, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said he was aware of the Web site.
"Not only in Chicago, but nationwide, the FBI notified its field offices of this potential threat to the security of our agents, and especially our undercover agents," Bochte said.
Funny how the FBI's first reaction is to go on the defensive.
Funny how this is a big surprise to the FBI.
The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number.
Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.
Cheating spouse? Disloyal employees? Need to find out what your competition is doing? Hey, no problem. Telecom services are just information services these days.
Fortunately friend Chris Hoofnagle, of Electronic Privacy Information Center , is on the case.
Thanks to Steve Crandall, who spotted this story first !
[isen.blog]
6:12:25 AM
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Kevin wonders whether he's living a DRM Groundhog Day
Talking to Tim Bray tonight, I realised I've been blogging about DRM for over four years now. Yet, the arguments recur.
I was going to write a post called 'Tyranny of the Storytellers' when I realised I had said it before in my first week of blogging
Too often the best storyteller for a particular audience can win out over someone who is constrained to telling the truth. A current example is the DRM debacle. Any competent engineer knows that the notion of locking up content from those who purchase it and view it on their own computers is technically impossible (setting aside the moral bankruptcy for a minute). The 'content owners' so much want this to be true that they are creating a market for snake-oil that appears to give them what they dream of. Which I suppose is poetic justice of a sort.
let's face it: we're going to have to have some DRM. [...]it's clear that the people who make the consumer technology that ordinary people actually use - the Microsofts and Apples of the world - have already accepted and embraced this. The argument has already moved on.
why the hell does Apple, Microsoft and other Bigs using DRM mean that it's good or that it's "won" a damn thing? Hey, they sucked up to Hollywood for distribution of mass-media Hollywood-type crap. And they're going to screw it up, too. You'll go to Google for your CBS, Apple for your NBC and Microsoft for your ABC. The old sources will be distributed through a mess of incompatible systems, each isolated by their own DRM, and will flush their costly, inefficient and ossified old industry into the hell we've had on the Net with instant messaging for the duration.
Shelley returns with:
by saying that "all DRM is evil" and that only recourse we have is to keep the Internet completely free, and only with independents will we win and we will win, oh yes we will–this not only disregards the actuality of what’s happening now, it also disregards that at times, DRM can be helpful for those not as well versed in internet technologies.
(much more in her comments).
Also Charles Eicher replied to my APIG submission .
His discussion of the Church-Turing thesis is one built on a rebuttal to the extended version of it put forth by Kurzweil and Wolfram to imply that the human brain and the universe are bound by universal computability. While these are fascinating ideas, I am talking about computers, and he concedes that "a computer is defined as a device that can run computer programs.", then handwaves about quantum computing, while misunderstanding that in order to view encrypted media, you need to decode it into a viewable form.
To this I respond "Eppur si muove" - emulation has been doing a fine job in preserving digital works, and will continue to do so, with Moore's law making it easier.
His 'DRM is fine in private contracts' argument would be reasonable were this what is being proposed, but it is not - the DMCA, Broadcast Flag and other proposed legislation privileges DRM with summary powers to limit fair use, and criminalise circumventing it. Many can and do reject DRM contracts , which is why DRM proponents resort to subterfuge and laws attempting to restore the kind of monopoly control of publication the Statute of Anne abolished.
6:12:08 AM
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