Author Archive for homer

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Following in the Footsteps of a Suburban Fisher

Published on February 1, 2011 in News. 1 Comment

From the New York Times column “Scientist at Work”,

Today I drove down Central Avenue, the main drag between Albany and Schenectady, parked behind an industrial park, and ran into the woods. I was following the trail of a fisher my student, Scott LaPoint, named Klause. Scott downloaded the data from Klause’s GPS collar a few days ago, revealing where the animal had been the last month. Today I loaded these points into the map on my I-Phone and was now going to see if I could figure out why Klause found this little patch of woods so interesting.

This forest patch is only about 75 acres, and is bounded by an industrial park, the town dump, a neighborhood, and the Albany Pine Bush nature preserve across the railroad tracks. The GPS data show that Klause has spent a good part of the last month in here, but why?

I immediately see deer tracks as I run through the snow and into the woods; their sign is everywhere, there are A LOT of deer back in this little patch of woods. Fisher can’t kill deer, but they will feed on a frozen carcass for weeks.

From the abacus to the iPod: Computer museum opens $19M exhibition

Published on January 12, 2011 in News. 1 Comment

From Lucas Mearian in Computerworld:

The Computer History Museum this week opens a $19 million, 25,000-square-foot building expansion and a signature exhibition titled “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.”

In development for more than six years, the new exhibit represents the world’s most comprehensive physical and online exploration of computing history, spanning everything from the abacus and slide rules to robots, Pong and the Internet.

“Many times, people coming to the museum have very basic questions: ‘How did that computer on my desk get there? How did that phone I’ve used for so long get so smart?’ ” said John Hollar, CEO of the museum in Mountain View, Calif. “It’s an exhibition that’s primarily aimed at a nontechnical audience, though there’s a ton of great history and information for the technical audience as well.”

Happy 107th Birthday Human Flight! Now Let’s Put it All in Context

Published on December 17, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 1 Comment

From Jon Ostrower in Flightglobal/Blogs:

Today is December 17, 2010, 107 years after Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first flight at the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Needless to say, a lot has happened since then. Just 65 years after that first flight, which saw Orville at the controls of the 1903 Wright Flyer, the maiden sortie could have been accomplished in the span of the wings of the Boeing 747-100.

The Wright Flyer, or at least the nearest replica to the aircraft, is enshrined at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum here in Washington, DC. The aircraft, in fact, did not arrive at the museum until December 1948, at the conclusion of a decades-long feud between the Wrights and the Smithsonian surrounding the brothers’ claim of being the true inventors of the airplane.

Aviation is an afterthought for most in the industrialized world, we transit seamlessly from one distant point to another thinking only of the destination or origin. The duration of our journeys are slashed by days, weeks, months, perhaps even years from their original attempt. Today, we are nagged by airport security, bad food, tight economy seats and what we perceive to be long waits. I’ll allow comedian Louis CK to put it all in context.

Happy Birthday, Aviation, you don’t look a day over 100.

Aviation is an afterthought for most in the industrialized world, we transit seamlessly from one distant point to another thinking only of the destination or origin. The duration of our journeys are slashed by days, weeks, months, perhaps even years from their original attempt. Today, we are nagged by airport security, bad food, tight economy seats and what we perceive to be long waits. I’ll allow comedian Louis CK to put it all in context.

Happy Birthday, Aviation, you don’t look a day over 100.

Track Me Not: “Do not track” legislation could simply accelerate the monopolization of Internet advertising

Published on December 14, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Simson Garfinkel in Technology Review:

Last week, Microsoft announced that it would build something called “Tracking Protection” into the next edition of its Internet Explorer Web browser (IE9). Although Microsoft’s proposal got a lot of coverage, including a favorable comment from Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Liebowitz, the new feature is a step in the wrong direction for privacy on the World Wide Web.

IE’s Tracking Protection is technically flawed—it can’t stop websites from tracking you—and its existence will give corporate interests a powerful tool for arguing against government regulations that might actually resolve the problem of pervasive Internet tracking.

Microsoft’s announcement comes amid mounting concern over the ability of advertisers to track people across the Web. The Federal Trade Commission recently endorsed the idea that users should be able to opt out of having their online activity tracked. But the technological and legal frameworks that would make it possible to opt out remain far from clear.

People who haven’t been following the controversy regarding Internet tracking often have a hard time understanding just how invasive today’s Internet has become—and why they should care. Much of the press coverage has just confused the situation further by focusing on the role of third-party Web analytics and advertising companies, rather than on the tracking and tabulation done by industry advertising giants like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook. A paradoxical but entirely possible outcome of Microsoft’s new browser feature might be to increase the ability of such companies to track and record everything you do online.

WikiLeaks cyberbrawl is battle of amateurs

Published on December 14, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

From the Associated Press:

The Internet drama precipitated by WikiLeaks’ release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables has been called the first “global cyberwar.” But at closer look it’s really more of an amateur brawl.

Although big businesses such as Mastercard and Visa were ensnared, the so-called “Hacktivists” didn’t do serious harm. And while one of the “big boys” of the Internet —Amazon.com — was an obvious target after it snubbed WikiLeaks, the hackers held off, fearing Amazon was too difficult to get.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks revealed itself to be less than sophisticated when it came to maintaining an online presence.

The secrets-spreading site was caught flatfooted when attacks and legitimate traffic overwhelmed it on Nov. 28, the day it started releasing the cables.

It reacted by moving the website from a Swedish base to Amazon.com‘s hosting facility. Because Amazon is self-service, WikiLeaks didn’t need any pre-established relationship with the company. Amazon has ample capacity and can withstand hacker attacks.

But there was a major downside: Moving the site to the U.S., where the cables originated, exposed it to political pressure.

Congressional staffers called Amazon.com Inc. on Nov. 30 to ask about its relationship with WikiLeaks. The next day, the company shut down the WikiLeaks site for distributing documents it didn’t own. That sent WikiLeaks scrambling to re-establish its Web presence in Europe.

Google revives ‘network computer’ with dual-OS assault on MS

Published on December 13, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Wireless Watch in The Register:

Google goes after Microsoft on two fronts, with cloudbook and Android tablet Microsoft denies slow start to sales of WP7 devices

One of the great ironies of this year is that Google and Oracle – now owner of Sun and Java – are locked in legal combat. The irony stems from the fact that, even as they bicker, the concept they did more than anyone else to create is back in the limelight. This is what we used to call the thin client, which then morphed into the netbook and now the cloudbook.

In previous iterations, the vision was stymied by the lack of reliable broadband connectivity everywhere, and effectively hijacked by Microsoft. Will the Windows giant, this time around, lose out to the approach conceived by Sun, Oracle and Google – a stripped-down device with long battery life and minimal local storage or apps, connecting for its data and services to the cloud (which we used to call the server)? Google pitched its latest definition of the thin client, with the launch of Chrome OS and a next generation netbook, just after Microsoft shipped its latest – and probably strongest – attempt at finally gaining a position in the mobile world, where the cloud will increasingly have its heart.

WikiLeaks nearly immune to takedown, says researcher

Published on December 9, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Jaikumar Vijayan in Computerrworld:

Massive network attacks and other punitive actions taken against WikiLeaks over the past few days only appear to have made the site and its contents far more resilient to takedown attempts, a security researcher said.

In the 10 days since WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables from the U.S Department of State, wikileaks.org was hit with massive denial of service attacks, the termination of its its domain hosting service, the loss ofAmazon.com as a host, and the loss of PayPal, MasterCard and Visa Europe services.

Yet, in what’s becoming an interesting case study in Internet resilience, WikiLeaks not only continues to serve up its controversial content, it appears to have bolstered its ability to do so, said James Cowie, chief technology officer at Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm.

Hackers Give Web Companies a Test of Free Speech

Published on December 9, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Ashlee Vance and Miguel Helft in The New York Times:

A hacking free-for-all has exploded on the Web, and Facebook and Twitter are stuck in the middle.

On Wednesday, anonymous hackers took aim at companies perceived to have harmed WikiLeaksafter its release of a flood of confidential diplomatic documents. MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, which had cut off people’s ability to donate money to WikiLeaks, were hit by attacks that tried to block access to the companies’ Web sites and services.

To organize their efforts, the hackers have turned to sites like Facebook and Twitter. That has drawn these Web giants into the fray and created a precarious situation for them.

Both Facebook and Twitter — but particularly Twitter — have received praise in recent years as outlets for free speech. Governments trying to control the flow of information have found it difficult to block people from voicing their concerns or setting up meetings through the sites.

Mixed Reaction to F.C.C. Internet Plan

Published on December 2, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Edward Wyatt in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The plan from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to ensure an open and neutral Internet drew mixed reviews on Wednesday from consumer advocates and Internet service providers, presenting the agency with an uncertain way forward as it considers new broadband regulation.

The proposal, by Julius Genachowski, would forbid both wired and wireless Internet service providers from blocking lawful content. It would also require broadband Internet service providers to give consumers basic information about how the companies manage their networks and would forbid discrimination in transmitting lawful content.

But it relies in part on a novel legal interpretation of how much authority the agency has over the Internet, one that some critics think is almost certain to invite Congressional opposition and court challenges. And it drew lukewarm support from one of the most important voices in the debate, Michael J. Copps, an F.C.C. commissioner, who has advocated stricter regulation and whose vote the chairman will need in order to get an order approved by a majority vote of the five-member commission.