Service Journalism 2.0

San Diego public radio station KPBS FM was knocked off the air when the wildfires raging in their area burned down the power lines feeding their transmitter.

But they're not only broadcasting again over another area station, they're leveraging technology to create superb, computer-enhanced situational awareness for people in the area.

I've seen the future and it works.

KPBS is maintaining an incredibly useful Google Maps-based data site for people in the area, and also offering regular status updates via Twitter (which can send information to a variety of platforms, including mobile phones.)

This must be a complete godsend for anyone who's trying to keep up with the latest news and understand how it might affect them.

(Here's the link to the KML file if you want to view the area in Google Earth.)

It knows, and it punishes

The Storm worm is fighting back against security researchers that seek to destroy it and has them running scared, Interop New York show attendees heard Tuesday.

The worm can figure out which users are trying to probe its command-and-control servers, and it retaliates by launching DDoS attacks against them, shutting down their Internet access for days, says Josh Korman, host-protection architect for IBM/ISS, who led a session on network threats.

“As you try to investigate [Storm], it knows, and it punishes,” he says. “It fights back.”

As a result, researchers who have managed to glean facts about the worm are reluctant to publish their findings. “They’re afraid. I’ve never seen this before,” Korman says. “They find these things but never say anything about them.”

And not without good reason, he says. Some who have managed to reverse engineer Storm in an effort to figure out how to thwart it have suffered DDoS attacks that have knocked them off the Internet for days, he says.

Storm worm strikes back at security pros (Network World, 24 October 2007)

One for the road

My Last Supper: Famous Chefs and Their Final Meals

Hat tip: Carrie

Related:

And here I thought R2D2 was just a beeping fireplug

John Cloud isn't all that impressed by J.K. Rowling's declaration before a group of Harry Potter fans in New York City that Dumbledore was gay:

Yes, it's nice that gays finally got a major character in the sci-fi/fantasy universe. Until now, we had been shut out of all the major franchises. Tolkien, a conservative Catholic, wrote a rich supply of homoeroticism into The Lord of the Rings—all those Men and Hobbits and Elves singing to each other during long, woman-less quests. The books and their film versions feature tender scenes between Frodo and Samwise. But in the end Sam marries Rose Cotton and fathers 13 children. Thirteen! You'd think he had something to prove.

Other fantasy worlds have presented gay (or at least gay-seeming) characters, but usually they are, literally, inhuman. George Lucas gave us the epicene C-3PO and the little butch R2-D2, and their Felix-Oscar dialogue suggests the banter of a couple of old queens who have been keeping intergalactic house for millennia. But their implied homosexuality is quite safe. There is no real flesh that could actually entangle, just some electrical wiring...

...So along comes Rowling with Dumbledore—a human being, a wizard even, an indisputable hero and one of the most beloved figures in children's literature. Shouldn't I be happy to learn he's gay? Yes, except: Why couldn't he tell us himself?

Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet (John Cloud, Time, October 22, 2007)

Five nuns go into a deli...

Paul Castellano used to come in three times a week for corned beef and pastrami. We had John Gotti. But my favorite was when we had five nuns eating matzoh balls served by a Lebanese waiter — in a kosher deli. That’s New York.

Party like it's 1999

mr bubble
Originally uploaded by Carol Esther.

Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.

Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.

Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.

Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than I.B.M., a company with eight times the revenue.

More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.

There's a lovely symmetry in the choice of Yahoo as the benchmark for 2007 dotcom value vs. Facebook.

Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again (The New York Times)

The Onion nails it, again

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Fallows on Mukasey

...The Administration has proven that it cannot be given the benefit of the doubt on questions of civil liberties, expansion of executive powers, or the conversion of its open-ended, ill-defined, decades-long state of "war" into an excuse for permanent, abusive, often secret changes in the balance of rights and powers that is America's greatest constitutional achievement.

On crucial points, Mukasey's second-day testimony amounted to a request that he and the Administration be trusted to do the right thing. Nothing against him personally, but the time for trust has passed. Unless Mukasey explicitly repudiates the most abusive parts of his predecessor's (and his President's) record, the Senate would be negligent and reckless to approve him.

...[A]s is now becoming famous, Mukasey said this, when asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse whether waterboarding was constitutional:

“I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Either way you slice it, this answer alone is grounds for rejecting Mukasey. If he really doesn't "know what is involved" in the technique, he is unacceptably lazy or ill-informed. Any citizen can learn about this technique with a few minutes on the computer.* Any nominee for Attorney General in 2007 who has not taken the time to inform himself fits the pattern of ignorant incuriosity we can no longer afford at the highest levels.

So, if Mukasey was telling the truth in this answer, he is too lazy for the job. If he was lying, he's too dishonest.

Mukasey: No (James Fallows, 19 October 2007)

A Beeb Rugby Primer

The story goes that rugby was born in 1823 at Rugby School when William Webb Ellis disregarded the rules of football, took the ball in his arms and ran with it. It has evolved a long way since, into a very technical sport, but you only need to know the basics to enjoy a match.

As rugby fever sweeps Europe, the BBC sends diminutive reporter Sarah Campbell (no relation) to interview New Zealand All Blacks star Craig Dowd and get the lowdown on the game.

All you need to know about rugby (BBC News)

Related (all BBC links):

• Rugby World Cup
• Rules of the game in full
• Jonny Wilkinson's kicking masterclass
• Rugby Union - Get involved

Holding the future of computing in your hand

At this very moment, in a building somewhere in Silicon Valley, I guarantee you that a team of engineers from Google and Apple are designing a set of devices that, hooked up as terminals to Google's "supercomputer," will define how we use computers in the future. You can see various threads of this system today - in Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, its dot-mac service, its iLife and iWork applications as well as in Google's Apps suite and advertising system, not to mention its vast data-center network. What this team is doing right now is weaving all those threads together into what will be, for most of us, the fabric of cloud computing. (This is so big, you need at least two metaphors to describe it.)

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog - Google, Apple and the Future of Personal Computing

(via GigaOm)

Supporting tyranny for fun and profit

US lawmakers accused Yahoo of giving false information to Congress and asked that chief executive Jerry Yang appear before a committee to explain the internet search company’s role in the imprisonment of a Chinese dissident.

Tom Lantos, the Democratic chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, said a congressional probe had established that Yahoo provided “false information” to Congress during a hearing last year in which the group said it knew nothing about the nature of an investigation into an activist when it gave Chinese authorities information about his e-mail account and contents of his e-mails. Shi Tao, the activist, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment after Yahoo divulged the identifying material.

Financial Times: Yahoo accused over Chinese dissident

Because nothing says "security" like a 12-gauge under the covers...

...a gun rack for your mattress.

My people, my people.

The perfect day in New York

Marc Maron: "The perfect day is, if the weather's right, to just walk around all the downtown neighborhoods and feel it."

Amen.

Yesterday was a Perfect Day in New York City.

The weather was more than right - 60 degrees, bright and sunny.

I had been down with something worse than a cold but not quite as bad as the flu for more than a week, had worked straight through it (me at the office on Wednesday: "No, I'm not having a heart attack, thanks for your concern, I'm sweating like this because my fever just broke") and had finally turned the corner on Friday and started to feel better.

Saturday, Carrie and I spent a leisurely couple of hours in the park with the dogs, and bought lavishly at the greenmarket (New York State apples! Artisanal cheeses and breads! Sweet potatoes, leeks, onions and garlic! Carrots that actually tasted like carrots, with dirt on them and everything!)

After lunch, we went our separate ways, she to get her bicycle repaired and ready for the winter, and I to shop for a replacement for a pocketknife I'd lost somewhere a month ago.

My wanderings took several hours of brisk walking downtown in the gorgeous early fall weather, and involved culinary stops along the way for items as varied as Dean and DeLuca coffee and dirty-water streetcart hot dogs.

I was feelin' it. It was amazing.

And the lovely coda to the day: at four o'clock, as I was heading back to the house, I called Carrie on her cell phone to see what her ETA was... and we found that we were less than six blocks apart on Fifth Avenue.

We walked home together.

Colbert pinch-hits for MoDo

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!) - Stephen Colbert, The New York Times, 14 October 2007

What Kind of Reader Are You?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Literate Good Citizen You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you're not nerdy about it. You've read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two.
Dedicated Reader
Book Snob
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
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What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Al gets his Nobel

Just moved over the wires at a little past 5 Eastern time (yes, I'm an early riser these days):

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hey, the guys at the Financial Times are awake:

Mr Gore has given the hour-long lecture which gave rise to the film to thousands of audiences around the world, from students to heads of state. His performances are occasionally free but more often he charges up to £50,000 a time.

Mr Gore is also a prominent investor in environmental technology, chiefly through Generation Investment Management, a fund management company he helped to set up in 2004 with David Blood, former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The choice of Mr Gore will give rise to concerns - for US conservatives at least - about the perceived politicisation of the prize, previously awarded to Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei. It raises questions about the broadening of the prize’s criteria beyond the traditional understanding of peacemaking.

The prize also added to speculation that Mr Gore would be persuaded to have another attempt at the US presidency.

WSJ: Income inequality gap widens

The richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market, and underlining the divergence of economic fortunes blamed for fueling anxiety among American workers.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.

The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000.

[...]

The IRS data go back only to 1986, but academic research suggests the rich last had this high a share of total income in the 1920s.

Income Inequality Gap Widens (Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2007; subscription required)

Related:

"Long-term problems [in the U.S. economy] include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups." (Source: CIA World Factbook, "United States - Economy")

Al-Qaeda Intranet goes dark after leak

For years, the private terror-hunters at the SITE Institute have been infiltrating jihadist chat rooms, and spying on the extremists congregating online. Now, the [group's] digital cover has been blown -- and Al-Qaeda online communications channels have gone dark -- thanks to a ham-handed move by the Bush administration, it seems. "Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," SITE's Rita Katz told the Washington Post.

[...]

As we've noted before, today's jihadists don't just use the Internet, occasionally. "They don't exist without the Web," says Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla. Everything from recruiting to training to propaganda is handled online. According to the New York Sun, the video disclosure effectively shut down the window into those activities.

Al-Qaeda "Intranet" Goes Dark After Leak (Updated) - Danger Room, Wired Blog Network

CSI: Mississippi

If your blood pressure is a little -- or a lot -- low, Radley Balko can take care of that for you:

In a remarkable capital murder case earlier this year, the Mississippi Supreme Court, by an 8-to-1 vote, tossed out the expert testimony of Steven Hayne. The defendant was Tyler Edmonds, a 13-year-old boy accused of killing his sister’s husband. Hayne, Mississippi’s quasi-official state medical examiner, had testified that the victim’s bullet wounds supported the prosecution’s theory that Edmonds and his sister had shot the man together, each putting a hand on the weapon and pulling the trigger at the same time.

“I would favor that a second party be involved in that positioning of the weapon,” Hayne told the jury. “It would be consistent with two people involved. I can’t exclude one, but I think that would be less likely.”

Testifying that you can tell from an autopsy how many hands were on the gun that fired a bullet is like saying you can tell the color of a killer’s eyes from a series of stab wounds. It’s absurd. The Mississippi Supreme Court said Hayne’s testimony was “scientifically unfounded” and should not have been admitted. Based on this and other errors, it ordered a new trial for Edmonds.

But it wasn’t the doctor’s dubious claim that made the case unusual. It’s the fact that the court explicitly renounced his testimony. It was the first time that had happened to Hayne in hundreds of cases dating back nearly 20 years.

By any sane standard, the decision was long overdue. Hayne’s career in court is an egregious example of what happens when the criminal justice system fails to adequately oversee expert testimony. He may be unusually careless, but he is not unique—not in Mississippi, and not in the United States.

CSI: Mississippi (Radley Balko, Reason magazine, November 2007)

Talking sense on global warming

Bjorn Lomborg, writing in the Washington Post:

We must accept that climate change is real and that we've helped cause it. There is no hoax. But neither is there a looming apocalypse.

To some people, cutting carbon emissions has become the answer, regardless of the question. Cutting emissions is said to be our "generational mission." But don't we want to implement the most efficient policies first?

Combating the real climate challenges facing the planet -- malaria, more heat deaths, declining polar bear populations -- often requires simpler, less glamorous policies than carbon cuts. We also need to remember that the 21st century will hold many other challenges, for which we need low-cost, durable solutions.