Sleepwalking Into Censorship: How Internet Freedom Is Under Threat

In a US Court last week, the concept of net neutrality received a blow to the head from which it may not recover. Why is this important? Net neutrality is the principle that no content gets preferential treatment on the internet. All data is treated and transmitted in the same way, at the same speed, whether coming from a multi-billion dollar company or from a self-hosted blog. This idea has been a guiding principle in the development of the internet to date, but also something that a couple of big digital players have been fighting hard against. The most active of these are American internet service providers (ISPs) Verizon and Comcast. The Federal Communications Commission is the body set up by US government to regulate companies who provide means of communication to people, originally dealing with telephone companies. ISPs now fall under their jurisdiction.
Verizon have long been challenging the rules they are governed by. Last week, they won a major victory in that battle, forcing the FCC to accept that their application of their own regulations was wrong. You can read the ruling here (PDF).

The Quietus

1981 Internet report

50 years later, hotline to Moscow still relevant

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) - The Washington-Moscow Hot Line, used by U.S. and Russian leaders for frank discussions about crises including the 1967 Six-Day War and the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, marks its 50th birthday Thursday with the nations still grappling with competing interests in regional conflicts.
The next crisis could be just around the corner, said Roald Sagdeev, a former director of the Soviet space exploration program who was among the scheduled speakers at Fort Detrick in Frederick, where the Army maintains a satellite link for the hotline.
"It's very important to make sure we can keep this, especially at the time of what's happening in Syria," Sagdeev, now a University of Maryland physics professor, said Wednesday. "We should stay with at least keeping what we have for the rainy day."
Despite popular myth and movie lore, the president doesn't use a red phone to talk with his Russian counterpart. In fact, the connection established in 1963 was for written communications only. A voice component was added two decades later as the system evolved from an undersea telegraph cable to today's exchange of data by both satellite and fiber-optics.

WREX13

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class

"It is time for not just economists but roboticists, like me, to ask, “How will robotic advances transform society in potentially dystopian ways?” My concern is that without serious discourse and explicit policy changes, the current path will lead to an ever more polarized economic world, with robotic technologies replacing the middle class and further distancing our society from authentic opportunity and economic justice."

MIT Technology Review

Throw-Away Society

"Actual sea-battles were rare, and even then were fought close to shore. Ships were roped together in lines to face an enemy fleet and showers of arrows and missiles would have been exchanged. Each side then resorted to hand-to-hand fighting as they attempted to board their opponents' ships. The warriors in the prow were specially selected for this task. The aim was not to destroy enemy craft, but to capture them if possible, as they represented a considerable investment in time, resources and labour."
BBC

This description of the Vikings not destroying enemy ships due to their value made me recall Toffler's theories on Transience and the Throw-Away Society:

"Anti-materialists tend to deride the importance of "things." Yet things are highly significant, not merely because of their functional utility, but also because of their psychological impact. We develop relationships with things. Things affect our sense of continuity or discontinuity. They play a role in the structure of situations and the foreshortening of our relationships with things accelerates the pace of life."
Future Shock, Chapter 4

Arthur Frommer buys travel guides back from Google to keep print editions alive

Google acquired Frommer’s Travel Guides from Wiley in 2012 — and then, last month, reportedly decided to stop publishing them as print editions. Now Arthur Frommer, the 83-year-old founder of the brand, has bought Frommer’s back from Google and will continue publishing the travel guides in print and digital editions.
The AP reported the news Wednesday night and quoted Frommer saying, “It’s a very happy time for me. We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.” Google confirmed the news to Engadget, saying, “We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer’s brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him.”
The purchase price was undisclosed. Google reportedly paid Wiley $22 million for Frommer’s last year. The travel site Skift first reported that Google would stop publishing the Frommer’s guides in print.
Frommer’s had published over 300 guidebooks since its founding in 1957.

paidContent

Goodbye Steve Jobs

Apple

Nuns, a ‘Dying Breed,’ Fade From Leadership Roles at Catholic Hospitals

When Sister Mary Jean Ryan entered the convent as a young nurse in 1960, virtually every department of every Catholic hospital was run by a nun, from pediatrics to dietary to billing. After her retirement on July 31 as the chief executive of one of the country’s largest networks of Catholic hospitals, only 11 nuns remained among her company’s more than 22,000 employees, and none were administrators.

NY Times

The Annotated Toffler

Think you've heard it all about the global financial crisis, the Internet distracting us into stupidity, dysfunctional and self-destructive politics, the demise of the nuclear family, and degenerating cities? Well imagine having predicted, written about, and imagined the consequences of all of these postmodern maladies -- before they ever happened. Meet Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the accidental futurists who have lived to see so many of their foresights become our daily reality.

Foreign Policy

The Modular Man would like to tell you that we told you so.

New graphic cigarette warnings unveiled

The federal government Tuesday unveiled nine graphic images that will be required on all cigarette packs and advertising as part of a powerful new warning strategy.

The images include a picture of a man smoking through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, a horribly diseased lung, mottled teeth and gums, a man breathing with an oxygen mask and a man’s body with a large scar running down the chest. They will be accompanied by messages such as, “Warning: Cigarettes are addictive,” “Warning: Cigarettes cause cancer” and “Warning: Smoking can kill you.”

Washington Post

Rocket Man

About Fallout

Your iPhone's watching you. Should you care?

Researchers announced today that they found what look like secret files on the iPhone that track user location and store it on the device, without the permission of the device owner. It's unclear what the data is used for and why Apple has been collecting it in iOS products that carry a 3G antenna for nearly a year now.

Alasdair Allan, senior research fellow in astronomy at the University of Exeter, and writer Pete Warden, who discovered the log file and created a tool that lets users see a visualization of that data, say there's no evidence of that information being sent to Apple or anybody else. Even so, the pair note that the data is unencrypted, giving anyone with access to your phone or computer where backups may be stored a way to grab the data and extrapolate a person's whereabouts and routines.

To help users understand more about the data that's being collected, what the risks are, and what they can do about it, CNET has put together this FAQ.

CNET

25-story Seattle apartment tower to be demolished

Demolition is scheduled to start next month on a 25-story apartment tower in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. The 10-year-old McGuire building has to come down because of construction defects.

The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reports crews have started salvaging washers, dryers, refrigerators and stoves. It will take more than a year to remove the highrise. Builders plan to reuse 95 percent of the concrete.

Seattle Times

The New Wedding Guest

Gone are the days of capturing a sea of guests with genuine emotion on their faces. Now you have to give an elbow to Aunt Clair who’s blocking the aisle with her Digital Rebel in hand as the bride makes her grand entrance. I used to love capturing guests emotion during the first dance, parent dance, even the toasts. But now my subjects are a handful of guests with point and shoots held up blocking their faces, or the tops of everyones head because they are looking down at the back of the camera to check the photo they just took. My favorite moment so far was a photo of the bride going down the aisle from behind. Everyone in front of the bride has their cameras up, everyone that the bride has past is still facing the back of the church with the heads down looking at the back of their camera. Very few people stopped to enjoy the moment of a father walking his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.



Tiffinbox

Thx, AJ

RIP Comics Code

Wikipedia

Soaps Dissed: ABC Kills 'Life,' Abandons 'Children'

ABC pulled the plug on the classic soap operas All My Children and One Life To Live on Thursday.

The final episode of All My Children will air in September, and One Life To Live will end in January, the network announced.

NPR

Here's to 50 years since Gagarin went into the cosmos: First Orbit - the movie

Why more and more women are using pornography

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Last island prison in U.S. closes