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Wednesday, May 03, 2006 |
Microsoft Is Pushing for Privacy?. Like a diaper in a swimming pool, Microsoft makes an impression at a privacy conference. This time, the company isn't collecting a Big Brother Award. Kevin Poulsen reports from the Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conference in Washington, D.C. [Wired News: Top Stories]
7:37:12 PM 
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How the Gorlok was born. The Gorlok, the cheetah-buffalo-Saint Bernard mascot of Webster University, has a dark history. Its name has been ridiculed through the decades, and its cuddly, sunshine yellow appearance began as nothing more than a joke. [The Journal]
7:35:19 PM
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Lecture Notes Dump.
Another set of Quantum Optics notes, dealing with entanglement, superposition, EPR paradoxes, and quantum cryptography. A whole bunch of really weird stuff...
- Lecture 11: Superposition and entanglement.
- Lecture 12: EPR "paradox," introduction to Local Hidden Variables.
- Lecture 13: Local Hidden Variable theories, Bell's Theorem/ Bell's Inequalities.
- Lecture 14: Bell's Inequality experiments.
- Lecture 15: Cryptography, quantum key distribution.
Also, don't forget to suggest people to fill the Teddy Roosevelt spot on the Mount Rushmore of Science... [Uncertain Principles]
7:27:50 PM
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The Explanation.
Jeff Taylor puts on his irony hat and figures out why it's okay for Jon Secada to sing the national anthem in Spanish at George W. Bush's inauguration but also not okay to sing the national anthem in Spanish [Pajamas Media]
7:27:17 PM
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Three Benton Headlines:
FIGHTING WORDS
[SOURCE: Slate, AUTHOR: Jack Shafer]
[Commentary] About a year ago, Salon's Eric Boehlert and The Nation's
Eric Alterman argued in separate pieces that the Bush administration
was waging "war" against the press. This week, Alterman revisits his
thesis to include FBI efforts to inspect and sanitize columnist Jack
Anderson's papers before George Washington University catalogs and
makes them publicly available. Over the weekend, the New York Times'
Adam Liptak gave credence to the idea of a war in his Page One Sunday
piece about using leak investigations and other techniques to
criminalize national-security reporting. Boehlert, Alterman, and
other administration critics assert a lockdown on and manipulation of
information the likes of which we've not seen since the Nixon
administration. But rather than crying "war" over the Bush-press
disputes, I subscribe to Jay Rosen's more modest idea that the
Bushies ambition was to "decertify" the press from its modern role as
purveyor of news and portray it as just another special interest.
VNRs: TELEVISION STATIONS RESPOND... AND IT'S WORSE THAN YOU THINK
[SOURCE: Center for Media and Democracy, AUTHOR: Diane Farsetta]
[Comentary] Hours after the Center for Media and Democracy released
our study on television stations' widespread and undisclosed use of
corporate video news releases (VNRs), a major organization of
broadcast news executives issued its response. "The Radio-Television
News Directors Association strongly urges station management to
review and strengthen their policies requiring complete disclosure of
any outside material used in news programming," read the statement.
RTNDA went on to caution that decisions involving "when and how to
identify sources ... must remain far removed from government
involvement or supervision." Unfortunately, RTNDA's statement
conflates "sources" with broadcast material funded by and produced
for outside parties. It also conveniently ignores that the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission, under its authority to regulate
broadcasters' use of the public airwaves, already has disclosure
requirements on the books. But RTNDA's stance does point to an
important, underlying issue: how to ensure both news audiences' right
to know "who seeks to influence them," and the editorial freedom of
newsrooms. The Society of Professional Journalists also responded to
our study, strongly condemning TV stations' "irresponsible" and
"misleading" use of VNRs. Their statement, similar to RTNDA's, "urges
broadcast companies to set their own house in order by using extreme
caution and full disclosure when airing VNRs." However, such
admonitions fail to take into consideration the continuing confusion
over video feeds' origins, the history of TV stations' failure to
disclose VNRs, the harsh realities of resource-strapped TV newsrooms,
and the embarrassment factor that likely makes newsrooms reluctant to
identify VNRs as such. Is it reasonable, within the context of the
current system, to expect TV stations to meet the disclosure
standards that we all agree on -- and that the FCC is charged to
uphold? After hearing the explanations and delving into the records
of many of the TV stations that we documented airing fake news, I would
say no.
OSCAR-WINNER DREYFUSS CAMPAIGNS AGAINST "SHAPED NEWS"
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Astrid Zweynert]
Richard Dreyfuss star says an obsession with delivering instantaneous
news and images provides too little context for audiences to reflect
and understand what is happening in the world. "There is no room to
pause, no room to think," Dreyfuss said. "We don't build into our
system of thoughts the need to explain, the media doesn't build that
into its transmission of knowledge and information." That creates
what Dreyfuss calls "shaped news" -- a version of events according to
how the mainstream media want audiences to see what happened, and a
violation of journalism's core value of objectivity. Citizen
journalism is playing a vital part in broadening news coverage, as
well as scrutinizing professional journalism, Dreyfuss said.
"Information from more than one source is good. I'm totally in favor
of it, even if people send propaganda. In the aggregate you can find
more truth than in one opinion." But despite an explosion in blogs,
people's views of the news is still shaped by what powerful media
corporations print, broadcast and put on their Web sites, Dreyfuss said.
10:35:51 AM
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