Truth and Honesty on Wikipedia

A beginning graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, Virgil Griffith, invented Wikipedia Scanner, a tool that exposes the anonymous edits in Wikipedia. The tool can trace the IP address of those who make edits which does not exactly specify who did the edits but it obviously reveals the person at least had access to the respective IP addresses: close enough most of us would say to reveal who is responsible for the shenanigans.

While there are meticulous records of changes on Wikipedia, a person can make changes without identifying themselves, but the changes often create digital fingerprints that provide information about the user, such as the location of the computer used to make the edit.

Many of the changes are innocuous, but the scanner also traced entries to people at several large companies who appear to have altered potentially damaging content for concerns such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Diebold Inc. Someone at the BBC poked fun at George Bush, Al-Jazeera's edits were fairly extensive, and someone at the CIA changed some wording as has the Vatican in one instance.

The Mormons changed a couple things, the Episcopals didn't like some of the word on them, and numerous Christian groups and colleges revised as they saw fit as well.

Wired collected an extensive list of the edits which is handy to see who wants what changed and we can figure out the embarrassing whys in most instances.

As an example, someone at the Vatican edited the Wikipedia entry on Gerry Adams.

Source: Wikipedia

Gerry Adams
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==Fresh murder question raised== ==Fresh murder question raised==

- In October 2006, it was alleged that Adams's finger- and hand-prints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-2383263,00.html Paisley, Brady in historic meeting] by Christopher Morgan and Liam Clarke, ''The Times'', 1 October 2006[http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1698223&issue_id=14715 Adams Prints Murder Link] by Alan Murray, ''The Sunday Independent'', 1 October 2006 However, no link between Adams and the killings has been shown. + In October 2006, it was alleged that Adams's finger- and hand-prints were found on

==References== ==References==

NSA Scrutinized

The post-911 National Security Agency (NSA) spying program has been argued at a U.S. appeals court hearing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) questioned AT&T's no-warrant monitoring of citizens' communications. The court agreed on Wednesday to weigh a government motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the NSA monitored phone lines and e-mails without a warrant. The EFF filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T Inc. claiming the company violated the privacy rights of its customers when it cooperated with an NSA program of monitoring AT&T customer phone calls and e-mail traffic without warrants.

Liberal Says War Can Be Won

"A War We Just Might Win"

That is what liberal commentators Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution stated in the New York Times following their recent visit to Iraq.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.***
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

Open source Alternative to Project

Graphic source: Projity Inc.

Projity Inc. released its OpenProj software as an Open source project. This alternative to Microsoft may take market share away from their Project product. OpenProj is compatible with Microsoft Project though and seems to have most of the same features. OpenProj plays with Linux (in fact it is bundled with various Linux distributions) and Macs as well as Windows. The final version will be released in Q4.

Too Much Face (book)

The popular social networking site Facebook showed a bit too much face recently. The source code that drives the site was leaked to the Internet due to a misconfigured Web server. I guess there is such a thing as too much face.

Positive Middle East Trend

A report on Defensenews.com related how India seeks Israeli assistance to fill their need for an unmanned combat helicopter. The story outlined how the Indian Navy is exploring collaboration between local and Israeli defense companies. Admiral Sureesh Mehta, chief of the Indian Navy, and Vice Admiral David Ben Bashat discussed the possible joint development and other defense programs Bashat’s visit to India, the first official visit to India by an Israel Navy chief.

The Indian Navy projects 30 to 50 unmanned combat helicopters reflecting a greater cooperation between India and Israel since 1999. Israel is working on a the co-production of nuclear-capable cruise missiles, air defense systems and anti-ballistic missile systems. The country is the largest supplier of UAVs for the Indian Defence Forces.

In terms of great Middle Eastern security this is a positive development in that Israel is not isolated in the region by reaching across the Middle East to India, India is stepping up its greater regional role which as the world's largest democracy it should be doing. Two democratic regional powers flanking the Middle East is a good thing.

Life Almost as Real as the Gaming World

Screenshot Source: Morteza Nikoubazl, Reuters.

A screen shot from the Iranian-made computer game shows an Iranian commander (unseen) killing a U.S. soldier.

Designed by the Union of Islamic Students a game released in July, Rescue the Nuke Scientist, is sure to be jihadically correct. Once an American game company released Kuma\War's Assault on Iran, the students responded with a game of their own. Rescue's basic premise is that U.S. troops capture a husband-and-wife team of nuclear engineers during a pilgrimage to Karbala, a holy site for Shiite Muslims, in central Iraq. Game players take on the role of Iranian security forces carrying out a mission code-named "The Special Operation," which involves penetrating fortified locations to free the nuclear scientists, who are moved from Iraq to Israel. In this way both the U.S. and Israel can be attacked by Iranians.

All this from a country whose president has already denied the reality of the Holocaust.

College Hijinks?

Campus Technology today ran a story about Professors building an Open-Source educational gaming engine. Washington State University Vancouver professor Scott Wallace and University of Puget Sound computer science professor Andrew Nierman were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to build a gaming engine designed to make learning computer science more absorbing for students. If only this were available across the board to make all education more involving.

Turkish Trio Hacks UN

Photo source: Giorgio Maone screenshot from his blog.

Hackers formerly associated with Turkey defaced a UN site with anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli messages. The attack was chronicled by an Italian software developer Giorgio Maone on his blog and later reported by the BBC. The hacker trio, "Kerem125," "m0sted" and "gsy," claimed responsibility for the defacement which forced the UN site down and the site was still unavailable by Sunday evening. According to Maone the incident is a SQL injection exploit, which let the attackers add their own HTML code to the site. SQL injection attacks are a common tactic by defacers. Maone expressed surprise because "this is a very well known kind of vulnerability, fairly easy to avoid and very surprising to find in such a high-profile site."

In the past, "Kerem125," "m0sted" and "gsy," are names that have been used by would-be hackers claiming to be from Turkey,

Secure Flight Not all that Safe

Today's IDG News Service ran a story about the Department of Homeland Security air passenger screening program which is changing procedures.

The DHS announced plans for an overhaul of its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff stated. The Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will check domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines.

I appreciate an advance on privacy issues, but in contrast to Marc Rotenberg, executive director of privacy advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), I don't think the DHS is correct in its focus on matching passenger names to terrorist watch lists instead of trying to predict behavior.

The terror in terrorism is that it is unpredictable. by focusing on previously drawn up lists, the terrorist in the making will slip through.

Rotenberg states: "Instead of open-ended profiling ... the revamped Secure Flight focuses on the problem at hand," which is precisely the problem. The problem of today surely will not catch the innovative would-be terrorist. Another effective screening process is needed, profile based I would imagine.

As difficult as the task is, I believe we precisely need to develop tools that predict behavior.

Notwithstanding the Secure Flight program suspension in February 2006 due to two government reports that outlined security and privacy problems the revised program does not address the security concerns of behavior profiling.

It's All Greek to Me

The new translation tools are being implemented with some sucess in business applications although I have previously expressed my skepticism with the effort. A Computerworld story online today illustrates how the new efforts are going. Most results to the present have been sketchy requiring human translators.

Ford Motor Co. has used “machine translation” software since 1998 and has translated 5 million automobile assembly instructions.

Ford uses Enterprise Global Server from Systran Software Inc. but this is just the beginning. English instructions are written by engineers and then parsed by a homegrown AI program into unambiguous detailed directions, such as, “Attach bracket No. 423 using six half-inch bolts.” Each instruction is then stored as a record in a translation database.

Systran’s tool uses a reliable translation technique called rules-based translation. Such systems use bilingual dictionaries combined with electronic style guides containing usage and grammar rules. The commercial translators are then supplemented with assembly line application-specific glossaries from Ford.

The glossaries are cumulative in that they are combined with “translation memories,” databases of previously translated text in the form of source and target sentence pairs. These memories are usually compiled over time by users. If the translation system (or a human) finds an exact match for the sentence it’s trying to translate, it just retrieves the corresponding sentence in the target language from the database. Near matches or “fuzzy,” matches are flagged for review by a human translator.

Statistical machine translation is a newer technique. It uses collections of documents and their translations to “train” software. Over time, these data-driven systems “learn” what makes a good translation and what doesn’t and then use probability and statistics to decide which of several possible translations of a given word or phrase is most likely correct based on context.

The systems as a result develop their own rules and fine-tune them over time.

Google Inc. uses Systran’s rules-based software but is also developing its own statistical-based systems to translate to and from the more difficult and non-Western Romance languages due to their significant differences from Western languages.

Sites may include a link to Google’s system at Google translation for free.

Other large companies are in need of translations and use them such as Microsoft Corp. which incorporates a rules-based natural-language parser in its Word software.

FedEx Corp. rolled out Trados GXT, a product of Maidenhead, England-based SDL International. It consists of translation memories integrated with an enterprise translation workflow system but has not obviated the need for human-based translation services.

A new development and increasingly sophisticated translation systems combine multiple methods. A statistical machine translation product from Language Weaver Inc. in Marina del Rey, Calif., can now be used with translation management software called WorldServer from Idiom Technologies Inc. Customers can tap into WorldServer to retrieve previously translated content in a translation memory or generate new translations — through Language Weaver’s algorithms — when no matches are found.

At SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. researchers are working with the U.S. Department of Defense to automate the translation of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese — structured and unstructured text as well as real-time speech — into English.

It's all Greek to me; but, actually I do know Greek so if I can learn perhaps machines can as well.

Democracy Is Not Built in a Day

Peter Kenney of Denver relates his experience of building local democracy in Baghdad.

Do you think freedom is free?

China Not "Red" Anymore

The adventure with the Chinese-made lamp looks like it has taken China out of the red and into the black. So far, the replacement lamp is doing fine. The low cost is the attraction and the website, Made in China, demonstrates the wide variety of goods available. Differences between manufacturing standards predominates, but the Food and Drug Administration is working with Chinese officials to address issues of quality. The consumer activist, Ralph Nader, weighs in with his opinion.

The OLPC: Should Not a Controversy Be

On 23 July 2007 eWeek ran a story that has been controversial for too long. The story discussed the ongoing battle about the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project which is ambitious, has potential benefits for many computer users across the board, and is timely. The project should garnish a great deal of attention but this really should not be contentious. The project though gained attention not only for its humanitarian goals and the groundbreaking technologies it's introducing but also negativity is connected to it for the wrong reasons, a fixation on product pricing, and assumptions about capabilities.

The OLPC and its founder, MIT iconoclast Nicholas Negroponte was in a segment of "60 Minutes." The segment unduly focused on the OLPC's XO laptop (more commonly although not completely accurately known as the $100 laptop) and the organization's goal to provide inexpensive computing resources to children in the developing world.

First Intel and then Dell has taken potshots at the project. Intel has since gotten on board.

The XO system is close to its final release state and although on paper the posted specifications of the XO seem underpowered: a midrange AMD processor, 256MB of RAM, and a small, flash-based drive. The XO is actually a powerful system.

The display technology is innovative and is readable even in bright sunlight, and its environmentally conscious power management and provision capabilities to its wireless mesh capabilities allow an entire village of children to connect. The XO will have a huge impact on the lives of the children who use it. I know countless kids who could use it now.

The compact laptop technology is ahead of the curve which should usher in a competitive wave of more efficient and capable mobile systems.

The laptop is a helpful marriage of Linux-based Sugar software that runs on the XO laptop. The basic programs in Sugar are simplified versions of ordinary desktop tools such as word processors, including though a collaboration environment.

Graphic source: OLPC

This is a product that looks like a toy but it is not. In the hands of impoverished children, this can be an effective digital tool that helps to close the digital divide. Hopefully, Dell's objection is not only that OLPC is a competitor of theirs.

Graphic source: Wikipedia, showing the mesh mode in Sugar software which makes it possible to interact with other users and systems on the XO's wire mesh network.

Is Aunt Betty on MySpace These Days?

Spock.com is a new people-focused search engine that aims to compile profiles based on info from social networking sites. I'm looking for Aunt Betty but I don't think she's on MySpace.

CEO Jaideep Singh claims the search will include every person in the world within the next nine months. A search will provide biographical information including age, city of residence and job title as well as tagged descriptions and images aimed at providing a complete picture of a person. It ranks search results based on the amount and relevance of information.

Come to think of it, maybe that's how we can find Osama.

Is a USB Port Good for Anything Other Than a Massage?

Computerworld ran an interesting survey on USB ports and their accessories. A USB port is handy even if you don't need a massage or a beverage heater, or cooler. All three devices are available though if you would like.

Hello? Is this Johnny's Teacher?

Source: Center For the Digital Future

According to the Center For the Digital Future, teachers have embraced newer ways of communicating with constituents. More so than government officials and health care professionals, teachers in K-12 situations use electronic means of communication. Before the Internet, teachers rarely had telephones in their classrooms, and most communication between teachers and parents occurred through infrequent conferences or notes carried by the student.

Today over half (50.3%) of all Internet users have used email to communicate directly with teachers.

Reach out and a teacher will be there.

Another Blow to Microsoft and Digital Rights

Computerworld ran a story from the IDG News Service about a hacker who released a way to strip DRM (Digital Rights Management) from streaming Netflix Inc. movies. This is another blow to Microsoft's technology designed to prevent people from saving the content. Many hackers object to the design of DRM which limits how music and movies can be used. Netflix's Watch Now service allows people to watch movies and TV shows immediately on their computer. Users can watch a certain number of hours of streamed content per month depending on their subscription.

However, hacker Dizzie wrote on the Rorta hacking forum against Netflix and words of his exploit made the rounds of various blogs and Web sites.

The exploit is not for the unitiated since it is a detailed 14-step process that uses FairUse4WM, a program created by another hacker, to remove Microsoft's DRM from the content. The involved process removing the DRM may take several attempts, and the process does not remove the time limit imposed by Netflix on viewing the content.

Microsoft revised its DRM technology twice before to block the threat of FairUse4WM but last month hackers on the Doom9.org forum announced they defeated Microsoft's DRM again.

The violation of rights is clearly wrong but a large deal of the problem is the murkiness and inapplicability of current copyright law. The various less proprietary and more open copyright options that have emerged, are a step in the direction.

The shakeout is far from clear. Universal Music Group, the world's largest music label, sells songs DRM-free.

Challenge to FedEx and DHL, File Transmittal Services

It must be that setting up an FTP server on your home/work computers and providing your intended recipient with log-in information is really beyond the grasp of most computer users.

As a challenge then to the big mailing companies, FedEx or DHL, some companies have an online alternative for the really big, or digital files.

In contrast, file transmittal services all let users send files of up to 100MB for free, and many will go higher. Driveway, whose motto is "Size really does matter," lets users send files up to 500MB for free. Pando has a 1GB limit for nonsubscribers, while Civil Netizen is currently the most generous, with a 4GB limit.

Iran's Blood for Oil

What Tehran and Baghdad have in common is trading for oil. Tehran and Baghdad are expected to agree on a deal on a pipeline soon to transfer crude oil to refineries in Iran from oilfields in Iraq.

I take it Iran is willing to trade blood for oil.

Meanwhile, many Iranian young people, especially women strive for their freedom.