Remember, remember

/ Poetry

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, twas his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England’s overthrow.

By God’s mercy he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and lighted match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King.
Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.

Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!

(That would be 400 years ago, today…)

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Amazon harvesting natural intelligence

/ Uncategorized

By way of John Battelle’s SearchBlog:

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate “artificial, artificial intelligence” directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call: the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this artificial, artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

The service is legit — http://mturk.amazon.com/ redirects to the main site.

On first blush it sounds similar to OpenMind (which was started by David Stork, a coworker of mine). OpenMind has especially been used to gather human knowledge for training up AIs (especially common-sense knowledge) — I wonder where Amazon expects to go with the idea.

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Demo of xMax 1000 times more efficient than WiMax

/ Wearable Computing

Wow. Techworld is reporting on a demonstration of wireless communications sent at 3.7Mbit/s to a radius of 18 miles using just 50mW and an omnidirectional antenna using a technology called xMax, developed by xG Technology. If this is for real, that’s on the order of 1000 times more efficient than GSM, CDMA or WiMax. The company plans to target long-range wireless, but Princeton EE professor Stuart Schwartz claims he has seen it also demonstrated as a personal-area network, giving 2Mbit/s over 40 feet using just 3 nanoWatts.

If this is all true then it’s revolutionary. To his great credit, Techworld reporter Peter Judge has a full companion article laying out the several places where reporters have to take the company at its word about the technology and the honesty of the demo, as well as remaining potential hurdles such as preemptive regulation and the possibility of reflections or interference once other transmitters start using the same system. But we’ll know soon enough whether it’s more than just snake oil, and if so it’s going to be darned impressive.

(Thanks to Kurt for the link.)

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Understanding science in the popular press

/ Science

Ben Goldacre’s latest Guardian column Bad Science has a nice look at how journalists fail to correctly interpret scientific studies, in particular looking at a recent flap over the (lack of a) link found between autism and vaccines. His concluding advice to science journalists and presumably the rest of us:

…if you don’t get it then you have only two choices: you can either learn to interpret data yourself and come to your own informed conclusions; or you decide who to trust. Choose wisely.

(By way of Mind Hacks.)

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Sony BMG installing rootkits when you play a CD

/ Intellectual Property

So what marketing genius over at Sony BMG decided that rootkitting the PC of anyone who plays their CDs is a good way to attract customers?

Every time I think the recording industry is going to get a clue, they just go further off the deep end. Next thing you know they’ll be secretly bugging our bathrooms to keep us from illegally singing “their” songs in the shower…

Update 11/2/05: Declan McCullagh over at Politech asks an interesting question: Does this rootkit constitute a “technological measure that effectively controls access to a [copyrighted] work?” If so, would removing the rootkit from your own system constitute a violation of the DMCA?

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ISWC 2005 Fashion Show Pictures

/ Wearable Computing

iswc05-led-umbrella.jpg

I just posted pictures from the wearable-technology fashion show that was part of the ISWC 2005 program, sponsored by the KANSAI IT Synergistic Society. This was the third ISWC to include such a show, the first being Beauty and the Bits hosted by the MIT Media Lab at the first ISWC, and the second hosted by Komposite at ISWC 2002 in Seattle.

There were a few practical application garments being shown at this show, but most leaned towards the fashion end, with dance, music and LEDs playing prominent roles. My apologies for the quality of some of the pictures — my little hand-held camera doesn’t work well in low lighting.

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