New Transparency Project gets $2.5 million

[via Privacy Commissioner of Canada] (emphasis added)

“The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting” received $2.5 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. [...]

The New Transparency has proposed a series of lofty goals – to make “visible the identities of individuals, workings of institutions and flows of information never before seen” – using surveillance as the key to gather this data. The project intends to focus on “three vitally important questions”:

1) What factors contribute to the general expansion of surveillance as a technology of governance in late modern societies?
2) What are the underlying principles, technological infrastructures and institutional frameworks that support surveillance practice?
3) What are the social consequences of such surveillance both for institutions and for ordinary people?

Honda ASIMO Conducts Orchestra and Dances

Honda ASIMO conducts The Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Honda ASIMO Dances, Walks, and Runs at Kennedy Center

Canadian Mars Weather Station

• MDA Solution To Look For Clues Of Water Above And Below The Surface Of Mars
• MDA working with Mars spacecraft
• Local invention to be used on Mars

A neat post about the Mars mission (with links) from an unexpected source.

Here is a neat Google Tech Talk video about a 3D live motion video camera (blogged two years ago) that uses LIDAR. I wonder if we are talking about the same LIDAR technology as the one used in Mars?

Seed Magazine

Seed (subtitled: Science Is Culture) is a science magazine published bimonthly by Seed Media Group (founder and editor-in-chief, Adam Bly). "Each issue looks at big ideas in science, important issues at the intersection of science and society, and the people driving global science culture."

Here are some interesting ones,

• Seed Video Feature: Lawrence Krauss + Natalie Jeremijenko (Full Cut, 45+ mins) - The Star Trek physicist enters the Seed Salon to discuss participation, the politics of knowledge production, and seduction with the artist/engineer.
• The Mandelbrot chat
• The artist/filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson enters the Seed Salon to discuss artifacts, presence, and invisibility with the Stanford archaeologist Michael Shanks. - real neat chat
• Marc Hauser + Errol Morris (and video) - The evolutionary psychologist (Hauser) and the documentary filmmaker (Morris) discuss game theory, Stanley Milgram, and whether science can make us better people.

Richard Florida @ Google & Banff

I was really lucky to watch a CBC National video report and “discovered” Richard Florida tonight. (smile) I am going to pay attention to Rich’s ideas and I have subscribed to his blog. Check out his latest book - “Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.”

Here is a video of Rich interviewed by George on The Hour.

The following is an hour long video of Rich speaking at Google, NYC.

And if you are really keen and have nothing better to do (smile), then check out another hour long video of Rich speaking at Google, Headquater in CA (essentially the same speech but with a different set of Q&A starting at 48:45).

P.S. On a personal note, Rich reminds me of some of the great U of Toronto professors that I had. Great job in bringing Rich to Toronto. And I am looking forward to listening to Rich live at Banff World TV Festival.

P.P.S. Here is one of Rich’s recent blog post on Jane Jacobs.

P.P.P.S. I wonder if Rich gets some money from this BMW ad? (smile) By the way, I think I actually first read about Rich here in this UT magazine article.

May ‘08 Google Search Factory Tour

Interesting and informative Google Search Factory Tour video.

BBC SuperPokes Facebook Privacy Risks

From Privacy Commisioner of Canada’s blog (emphasis added),

And while Facebook says it advises its users to “employ…precautions” when downloading applications, any Facebook user will tell you that most applications simply won’t work if you don’t agree to give the developer access to your information.

BBC’s technology program Click decided to test out this security flaw (with news video) by creating its own Facebook application meant solely to “steal the personal details of you and all your Facebook friends without you knowing”.

Links: 2008-04-12

1. Scrabulous - Scrabbling for Legal Rationalism: No Copyright for Games - a nice legal analysis
2. Stars and their silent partners - Production co. co-toppers keep slates on track
3. IBM Research Spins ‘Racetrack’ Nano-Magnetic Memory
4. really cute video of Contortionist octopus. [via Marc]
5. CJR: Dave Marash: Why I Quit [Al Jazeera International] [via Richard]
6. WSJ Law Blog: Chinese Blogger Sentenced to 3-1/2 Years for Subversion, Libel
7. WSJ Law Blog: Administration Declassifies 2003 Torture Memo

Space technologies stay in Canada (for now)

Hot off the press from Globe and Mail (April 10, 2 AM EST) "Ottawa rejects space firm's sale to U.S.". (Note: also see my earlier blog entry about this sale and a link to a legal opinion.)

OTTAWA — The federal government has said no to selling Canada's leading space company to U.S. interests, concluding that the deal would not be in the best interests of the country, The Globe and Mail has learned.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice made the decision to issue an initial rejection of the deal on Tuesday, when he wrote a letter to the potential buyer, Alliant Techsystems Inc. of Edina, Minn., that said the takeover of MDA Corp. would not provide a “net benefit” to Canada.

Under Canada's investment-review law, the company has 30 days to make new arguments to the minister, and Mr. Prentice must then confirm his rejection. But Mr. Prentice's move signals his intention to take the unprecedented step of blocking a major corporate takeover, in an issue that has been fraught with controversy as opponents argued that the sale of MDA could impair Canadian sovereignty.

A spokesman for Mr. Prentice, Bill Rodgers, confirmed Wednesday that the note had been sent, but he was unable to provide further details. When contacted by The Globe and Mail Wednesday night, Alliant officials responded with a two-sentence statement that indicated that they are not willing to declare the deal dead. [...]

The proposed sale of MDA Corp.'s Information Systems Unit has raised nationalist sentiment and fears that Canada could lose control of the data from Radarsat-2 in a dispute over Arctic sovereignty. [K: I agree the Radarsat-2 data has an important role in our national interest and won't trust any US companies (which has to follow US government directives in case of national security related issues). At the same time, I reject the unfair negative implication associated with using words like "nationalist sentiment".] Alliant, also called ATK, is a U.S. weapons and space contractor. The systems unit is responsible for most of MDA's operations and 1,900 employees. [...]

Some of the staunchest criticisms came from within the Conservative Party. Tory MP Art Hanger voiced sharp concerns, and Conservatives on the Commons industry committee treated the sale with skepticism.

One Conservative MP, speaking on condition he not be named, said the sale had raised a surprising backlash among Canadians, who saw it as a point of pride being peddled to the United States – which might possibly use it against Canada's claim to Arctic waters.

I think Minister Prentice did the right thing here in rejecting the sale.

*******

Update: See report by CBC (with video report) and Reuters.

Canadarm stays Canadian - for 30 more days

Vancouver-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. is an amazing world class company. I know from personal experience as I worked there for a few years in the early part of my career. So it was sad to see negative news of MDA planning to sell its Information Systems and Geospatial Services business (including technical teams and know how that built the iconic Canadarm, the newly launched Dextre, and the Radarsat 2 satellite) to Alliant Techsystems (an advanced weapon and space systems company).

Here are some news about the recent delay and an interesting and seems valid legal opinion from Rideau Institute,

• Ruling on sale of Canadarm delayed - TorStar
• Time to ground space firm's sale - National Post
• Ruling on sale of Canadarm, Radarsat to U.S. arms-maker delayed 30 days - Canadian Press - "Nobel laureate John Polanyi delivered a devastating critique of the sale this week: "There are many forms of short-sightedness. Selling your eyes is a rare form," observed one of Canada's most decorated scientists."
• Legal Opinion from the Rideau Institute - ACCESS DENIED: U.S. Law Will Limit Canadian Access to RADARSAT-2 Data if Sale of MDA’s Space Division Proceeds - PDF file
• Access Denied: U.S. Law Will Limit Canadian Access to RADARSAT-2 Data if Sale of MDA's Space Division Proceeds - from Fox Business of all places
• as an aside and for the record, here is a link to MDA Shareholders approve proposed sale transaction

When asked about this potential MDA divisional sale in Calgary recently, the well respected Senator Roméo Dallaire answered that it will be worst than the sale of the Canadian Avro Arrow. Here is an excerpt from the Arrow Wikipedia entry,

Following the Canadian government's cancellation of the Avro Arrow project in 1959, CF-105 Chief Aerodynamicist Jim Chamberlin led a team of 25 engineers to NASA's Space Task Group to become lead engineers, program managers, and heads of engineering in NASA's manned space programs—Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. This team would eventually grow to 32 Avro engineers and technicians, and become emblematic of what many Canadians viewed as a "brain drain" to the US. Many other engineers, including Jim Floyd (whose design studies at Hawker Siddeley (Avro Aircraft's UK parent) on the HSA.1000 SST design studies were ultimately influential in the design of the Concorde^[20]) found work abroad in either the UK or the United States.

*******

March 23rd update: Marc Garneau, first Canadian astronaut and former head of the Canadian Space Agency, against sale of space technology - from CTV with video.

March 25th update: Here is a 1st March, 2008 CBC Quirks and Quarks program about Dextre (mp3 audio).

Links: 2008-03-07

1. What Are the Lessons of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Battle?
2. A challenge from the New York Times?
3. Patent Office Will Now Require Biological Deposits Before Publication
4. The Best Defense is a Breast Defense - Too funny to ignore (smile)
5. News of two Canadian companies got picked up and some entrepreneurial insights
6. $100,000 for your thoughts - Bill Gates foundation seeking ‘unorthodox’ health ideas - interesting way to start 60 projects that can lead to ideas to prevent HIV infection or help protect against infectious diseases

Cancer Chip

From ScienCentral (with video),

Thanks to new microfluidics and nanotechnology, cancer doctors may be able to design custom therapies for patients by analyzing just a teaspoon of their blood. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Engineering Medicine and its Cancer Center have now shown that they can capture the rare cancer cells shed by tumors into the bloodstream using a new high-tech chip the size of a credit card. Counting and analyzing these wandering tumor cells could mean better early cancer detection and an improved method for monitoring whether treatments are working.

Links: 2008-03-03 1.5 hour with Obama, Nuclear Chinese Nature, Gender Gap, Buffett’s letter, RFID Good Use, Facebook Banishment, rock-solid VoIP call

1. 1.5 hour with Barack Obama - interesting piece
2. Nature scene in Chinese Children's book include nuclear power plant and giant dam
3. The New Gender Gap in Education - Becker, and Posner's comment
4. Buffett’s State of the World: There’s Folly in Wonderland - good for a scan. Of course, reading the original from the master is better.
5. Good Use for RFID Chips
6. Facebook Banishment and Due Process
7. Intel demos rock-solid VoIP call on MID - Love that bit about them crashing the OS deliberately and still have the VoIP call keeps on kicking!
8. Woz finds flaws in Apple's latest offerings - nice frank take on things by Woz co-founder of Apple
9. Google Summer of Code is back

Cambridge Breaks Chip and PIN (Debit card) terminals

[R]esearchers at the University of Cambridge, have shown how to compromise supposedly tamper-proof Chip and PIN terminals. With a paperclip, off the shelf electronics, and basic technical skills, fraudsters can capture card details and PINs, then create counterfeit cards. The full results of the team are published their academic paper and were featured on BBC Newsnight (Google Video).

[hat tip: Cory Doctorow]

Bill Buxton to deliver opening keynote at nextMEDIA

It is wonderful to know the insightful Bill Buxton will be delivering the opening keynote at nextMEDIA (June 6 - 8th, 2008 at Banff),

Bill Buxton, Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research will deliver the opening keynote address at nextMEDIA - The Future of Digital Content. In his keynote address Bill will speak to emerging trends around physical computing and a human-centered approach to technological design and innovation.

I consider Bill Buxton one of the Great Minds of Our Time and have featured him in the series. I look forward to attend the keynote.

Here are two of Bill's recent work,

• A Familiar Problem. BusinessWeek.com, February 6th, 2008.
• Surface and Tangible Computing, and the "Small" Matter of People and Design. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers, Vol. 51, 24-29.

Fran Allen - first female Turing Award winner

Quoting her Wikipedia entry,

Frances Elizabeth "Fran" Allen (born 1932) is an American computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers. Her achievements include seminal work in compilers, code optimization, and parallelization. She was the first female IBM Fellow. In 2006, she became the first female to win the Turing Award.

Here is a link to her 2006 Turing Award Lecture (streaming .mov file) which I quite enjoy.

Disk encryption not so safe - New results from Princeton

Quoting from the Princeton research site,

Abstract Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access. We use cold reboots to mount attacks on popular disk encryption systems — BitLocker, FileVault, dm-crypt, and TrueCrypt — using no special devices or materials. (K: This is a general hardware issue with the DRAM chip that is not going to be easy to solve, I think.)

[via Boing Boing]

Self-healing rubber not afraid of cut

From BBC (with video),

A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.

The as-yet-unnamed material - a form of artificial rubber - is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine.

The substance, described in the journal Nature, produces surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each other.

Pieces of the material join together again as if never parted without the need for glue or a special treatment.

[via Boing Boing]

The Last Lecture - read it in April

After watching and felt deeply touched by Prof. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, I check up on Randy’s site once in a while to see how is he doing and happy to see him well at his last update (Feb 15, 2008) jokingly holding up a copy of the New York Times.

I noticed that his book is done and will be published by Hyperion in early April. Read it. I know I will.

Mike Dillon, General Counsel of Sun Microsystems, at Kempton’s Virtual Cafe

I’ve been a regular reader of Mike Dillon’s blog “The Legal Thing” since it was launched on Aug 9, 2006. Mike, a lawyer with over 20 years experiences and Sun Microsystems‘ General Counsel, has been very generous in sharing his insights and wisdom. It was my great pleasure to chat with Mike about ideas he talked about in his blog and follow up with him on a few topics raised.

You can listen to my audio chat with Mike in mp3 format (or you can download or stream the interview here). The following are the time codes with topics, including links to the related blog entries.

00:00 - 04:54 : Welcome Mike to Kempton’s Virtual Cafe and talking about Reebok Rules and Mike’s experience of being an in-house lawyer. Mike talks about writing his own updated set of rules to include new requirements from acts like SOX.

1. This should be interesting - Mike’s first blog entry. Joining 3,000 of fellow employees at Sun and their CEO to blog. Mike also explained how he got the name of his blog from the “Reebok Rules” (PDF file).
2. Thanks, ACC - This is where Mike first linked to the wonderful “Reebok Rules” for in-house counsel. Now, I think we all have something to learn from these rules even you may not be a lawyer. You may be pleasantly surprised. Reebok Rule #15 is — Do “The Legal Thing” (see page 8 of the PDF file).

04:54 - 07:25 : Not having an office and its impact. And the tools Mike uses (including SunRay and his Treo 680).

1. Where do you work? - A few more benefits are discussed here.

07:25 - 10:54 : The work to simplify contracts at Sun.

1. Mr. Edison’s Lawyer - Check out the cool Sun Grid as well.
2. Contracts with Clarity - Check out the difference between the old contract and the new and simplified one.

10:54 - 17:51 : On patents and patent trolls. And taking internal intellectual property and open sourcing it.

1. The “Tax” On Innovation
2. On Litigation … (AZUL)
3. The NetApp Litigation
4. The NetApp Litigation (Continued)

17:51 - 20:24: About Regulation Fair Disclosure and the ground breaking blog and comment exchange between Chairman Cox and Sun CEO Jonathan.

1. Reg FD - Setting some cool example.
2. Sunlight on a Cloudy Day - Cool, a blog comment from SEC Chairman Cox.
3. Free Virtualization, and Sun’s Q2 Results - Check out the bonus at the end of the “Safe Harbor Statement”. (smile)

20:24 - 24:52 : Building and evaluating leaders. Giving and sharing.

1. Building Leaders
2. Planting seeds during the holidays - Mike talks about teaching his children the idea of giving and sharing.
3. Kiva Update - an update on the “Planting seeds” entry

24:52 - 26:44 : Sun’s Project Blackbox (modular data center). About the Google patent on similar idea.

1. During the next “big one” - has a really cool YouTube video about Sun’s Blackbox (modular data center)

26:44 - 28:51 : About Sun’s diversified workforce and “Day in the Life” videos of employees around the world. I asked Mike to see if Sun will consider posting and sharing these videos which I think are very informative presentation.

1. Working to be unnoticed

28:51 - 33:13 : The issues and benefits of allowing comments in blogs. Other companies’ request of Sun’s help with respect to blogging policies, work environment, and flexible working arrangement.

1. A Nice Decision for Bloggers - good to know it is safe to have comments (at least in California (smile))
2. FYI: Here is my entry and unsuccessful effort to help CBC. “CBC Blogging guidelines“

33:13 - 34:47 : Creating online contents under licenses like Creative Commons.

1. Have a question about licenses - ask your teenager

34:47 - 36:03 : Sun’s involvement in the Peer to Patent project

1. A Different “P2P”

36:03 - End : Mike’s experiences in blogging so far and how will he blogs in the future.