March 13, 2009

Cop's "Devious" MySpace status helps get ex-con acquitted

From Ars Technica:

What you post on MySpace or Facebook may not just embarrass you in front of your colleagues, it could also be used against you in court. If that's not a scary enough thought, just imagine if you were a police officer and your credibility came down to a few words snarkily posted on MySpace. This is what's happening to officer Vaughan Ettienne, whose MySpace and Facebook profiles—along with comments made on various videos—have been subpoenaed by the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn as part of a case accusing him of police brutality.

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China Condemns U.S. Warship Deployment as Tensions Mount



WASHINGTON — Chinese Navy officers reacted with annoyance today when it emerged that the United States had sent a destroyer to back up a surveillance vessel in the South China Sea after it was harassed by People’s Liberation Army sailors.

The decision by President Obama to send an armed escort for U.S. surveillance ships in the area follows the aggressive and co-ordinated manoeuvres of five Chinese boats on Sunday. The vessels harassed and nearly collided with the unarmed USNS Impecccable.

One unidentified officer quoted in the China Daily newspaper said that the decision was disproportionate. While China’s Foreign Ministry has so far kept tight-lipped on the latest development, the decision to run such a comment so swiftly in the state-run English-language newspaper was a signal of Beijing’s concerns.

More here...

British scientists work on mind reading

LONDON, March 13 (UPI) -- Scientists at University College London are working on developing a form of mind reading using virtual reality and magnetic resonance imaging.

Their experiment, outlined in the journal Current Biology, involves looking at neural activity to determine what someone is thinking, the Financial Times reported Friday.

The scientists had volunteers navigate around a room in a computerized virtual reality game while an MRI scanner was used to examine their hippocampus, the region of the brain that is used for navigation.

"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality room," said Eleanor Maguire, project leader.

The experiment is significant because it shows for the first time that memories are laid down in specific structures or patterns in the hippocampus, the newspaper says.

The study's co-author Demis Hassabis, predicts it would be at least 10 years before the technique could be used in criminal investigations.

UPI.com

March 12, 2009

MTV


Via LP Cover Lover

Who Watches the Watchmen?

From Ars Technica:

Google's newest advertising strategy, behavioral targeting, has finally arrived. The strategy, referred to as "interest-based" advertising, will go beyond current targeted advertising practices and track your Internet usage habits in order to serve an ad that the search giant hopes is better suited for you. This means that, instead of visiting a music site and simply getting music-related ads, you might visit a music site and getting ads for the newest "Cats Meowing Christmas Carols" album—because Google knows you spend 95 percent of your Internet time at Catster.

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If you would like to avoid Google's Orwellian tendencies try Scroogle.org. Scroogle uses Google's search engine, but scrubs Google's cookies and ads. More on Scroogle at Wikipedia.

March 10, 2009

Sexting

Aaron Koblin's Haunting Flight Paths Project


Flight Paths over the northeast US from Aaron on Vimeo.

More at Jaunted