NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Gun-Control Petition Demands Congress to Act

In the wake of the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a somber nation came to a conclusion over the mournful weekend: Something needs to change.

How and where that change will take place was the hot topic on everyone's lips, from the pundits and politicians on the Sunday talk show circuit, to strangers sharing public transportation. Calls for stricter gun control laws and better treatment for the mentally ill ignited a new round of debate that isn't likely to extinguish anytime soon.

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Many citizens took to the Internet to spur direct action. A petition asking President Obama to immediately address the issue of gun control with congressional legislation became the most popular petition ever posted to the White House's "We the People" website in less than 48 hours.

Filed hours after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 27 people dead, including 20 children, the petition collected more than 120,000 signatures as of 1 p.m. Sunday. The petition currently has over 141,000 signatures and rising.

"Powerful lobbying groups allow the ownership of guns to reach beyond the Constitution's intended purpose of the right to bear arms," the petition states. "Therefore, Congress must act on what is stated law, and face the reality that access to firearms reaches beyond what the Second Amendment intends to achieve."

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Any petition posted to We the People that obtains more than 25,000 signatures is guaranteed a response from the Obama administration. Prior to Sunday, the site's most popular petition was one seeking permission for Texas to succeed from the union. That petition has just over 120,000 signatures.

The merit of some petitions that pass We the People's 25,000-signature threshold is questionable, at best. Most recently, one petition demands construction of a Death Star by 2016.

However, nearly two dozen petitions seeking tighter gun control laws have been filed since the Sandy Hook massacre. It's pretty safe to say those where filed without any tongue-in-cheek overtones. 

 via Mashable, Nextgov

Credit: Tim Clayton/TIM CLAYTON/Corbis

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A World Government For The Internet? Not So Fast

On Monday, representatives from 193 governments kicked off an 11-day meeting in Dubai to discuss, among other things, possibly moving oversight of the Internet's basic mechanisms to the International Telecommunications Union. Many people are not happy about that.

Google has taken the exceptional step of using its home page to invite people to sign a petition against the ITU's move. The Obama administration opposes it and so does the Republican Party. And just about every U.S. observer of tech policy also wants the ITU to pull back (as I heard quite a few opine at a gabfest in Washington last week).

What's the deal?

Part of the problem is what might come out of the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications, and part of the problem is how the ITU has conducted this exercise.

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The idea behind WCIT (pronounced "wicket") is to modernize a 1988 treaty governing how telecommunications networks cross national boundaries. The ITU has tackled that kind of standards-setting work since 1865 largely because somebody needs to: Wireless spectrum and wired lines are finite goods in need of some coordination.

But with WCIT, the ITU's menu reaches beyond the physical infrastructure of telecom.

Some countries have submitted far-reaching proposals to shift control of the Internet's domain-name addressing system from its current owner, a non-profit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Russia, for example, proposes that ITU members "shall have equal rights to manage the Internet."

Complaints over ICANN's U.S.-centric background have been a popular pastime for several years running, and ICANN hasn't done its image any favors by authoring such boondoggles as a needless expansion of top-level domains that would let companies register their own brand names as "TLDs."

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But ICANN looks good compared to the prospect of countries with Russia's history of media interference getting a say in Internet governance outside their borders. That may not rank as a U.N. takeover of the Net, but it's definitely not an upgrade.

A group of European network operators, meanwhile, would push websites to pay Internet providers for the cost of the bandwidth consumed by their users. You may have heard big-name U.S. telecom firms try to sell that idea during the height of the net-neutrality debate a few years ago; it remains a dangerous idea that would wreck the economics of popular sites like Netflix.

It also defies business logic. Companies like Netflix and their customers already pay separately for their bandwidth.

The ITU's leadership says not to worry and that it will adopt a "light touch" if it votes in any new rules. But the closed manner in which it's staged this round of negotiations does not invite confidence.

Many of the details noted here are only public because of the efforts of WCITLeaks, a clearinghouse set up by Internet scholars Jerry Brito and Eli Dourado to publish documents shared by participants. And the ITU's process reserves voting for governments, even though much of the Internet's architecture has involved leadership from universities and companies.

If the ITU could point to a pressing problem with the Internet that it could solve, it might have a case for taking a larger role. But a new multilateral treaty won't slow pervasive online ailments like spam and malware, nor will it help country-specific problems like a lack of choice for broadband access.

The ITU has, however, provided a good reminder to anybody who's forgotten last year's SOPA fight: The Internet is not so well established that we can count on it taking care of itself.

Credit: ITU's Flickr page

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How Syria Shut Down the Internet

By Ben Weitzenkorn, TechNewsDaily

The Syrian goverment has cut off the Internet in a novel way.

On Thursday, all Internet traffic in and out of Syria suddenly stopped.

Syria isn't the first country to have suddenly cut its population off from the Internet, but the manner in which it did so may be unprecedented.

"Since the beginning of today's outage, we have received no requests from Syrian IP space," network-reliability provider CloudFlare wrote on its blog last night. "That is a more complete blackout than we've seen when other countries have been cut from the Internet."

Video Service Streams Live Reports From Syria"

The Syrian Minister of Information blamed the outage on terrorists, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"It is not true that the state cut the Internet. The terrorists targeted the Internet lines, resulting in some regions being cut off," he reportedly said, citing a cut cable.

As far as CloudFlare could tell, that was not the case. Instead, evidence suggests it was a planned shutdown by the government.

CloudFlare said when the outage occurred, connections to Syrian IP space were all withdrawn at the same time, effectively blocking all Internet traffic to and from the country.

Internet access in Syria is provided solely by the government-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment.

There are four telecommunication cables that connect Syria to the Internet. Three are underwater and the fourth runs overland through Turkey.

However, CloudFlare doubts that the disconnect was performed physically.

"The systematic way in which routes were withdrawn suggests that this was done through updates in router configurations, not through a physical failure or cable cut," the CloudFlare blog said.

CloudFlare provided a video of the shutoff occurring in real time, letting viewers watch an entire country lose Internet access.

Nationwide Internet cutoffs were among the last-ditch efforts by Libya's and Egypt's former dictators to save their regimes before both fell during the Arab Spring uprisings last year.

More from TechNewsDaily.com

• 10 Ways the Government Watches You
• Amnesty International Blog Hacked by Syrian Government Backers
• 10 Best Wireless Routers

 

Copyright 2012 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Statistician Scores One for the Geeks

President Obama wasn't the only one who did a metaphorical mic drop last night. So did Nate Silver, the New York Times' statistical wizard behind the political analysis blog FiveThirtyEight.

In case you forgot, Silver's audacious predictions of an Obama victory caused quite a stir among political pundits in media both big and small. Last week, when most talking heads where predicting a neck-and-neck horse race between Obama and Romney, Silver predicted Obama had 74.6 percent chance of winning reelction. By Nov. 6, that number had risen to 90.9 percent.

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Naturally, Silver's mathematical model, an election simulator based on past elections, polling data and economic figures, didn't sit well with some of the pundits on the right claiming the race was too close to call.

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Dylan Byers' POLITCO hit-piece called Silver a "one-term celebrity" and quoted Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," calling Silver an ideologue and "a joke." New York Times columnist David Brooks dismissed Silver's predictions as "not possible" and that they came from "silly land."

However, Dean Chambers of the right-wing blog Unskewed Polls wears the crown of King of the Silver-bashers. Chambers minced few words in his outright attack on the openly gay Silver, calling him a "thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice" and of "average intelligence."

Despite facing an imminent swirlie as jock-bully pundits held him by the ankles over the toilet bowl, Silver stood his ground. He even challenged Scarborough to $2,000 bet to which Scarborough declined.

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Well, Silver got the last laugh when he correctly predicted the outcome in all 50 states. He said Obama would get 332 electoral votes, and assuming Obama holds his lead when Florida is done counting votes, that's exactly what the outcome was. Silver wasn't the only one throwing bull's-eyes last night. So too did Josh Putnam, Donna Brazile and Sam Wang. Slate has a nice graphic showing just how close or far off the pundits were.

However, the messianic media beast has spoken and Silver stands to be anointed, though something tells me that's already happened. The day before the election, FiveThirtyEight was responsible for 20 percent of visitors to the New York Times website. Google Silver's name and see if your computer doesn't catch on fire.

Regardless, score one for data-driving journalism and geeks everywhere.

 via Mashable

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Landslide Victory! For Infinite Bacon

When all the receipts are tallied, it's estimated that this year's presidential election campaign's tab will come to $6 billion, making it the most expensive election in history. Bacon sales, on the hand, were only $2.5 billion in 2011. There may be a lot of pork in Washington, but most meat-eaters agree that there's room to grow.

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Now, thanks to the 3D-printing wizards at Shapeways, there may be more bacon to go around. That's because they've created a Mobius strip of bacon that goes on and on and on...to the break of dawn.

However, like politics, you don't always get what you think you're voting for and nothing ever is quite what it seems. Sadly, this Mobius strip of bacon is not made of meat, but of sandstone. It's really more of a gift idea for that bacon lover who has everything.

The good news is that it's vegan and kosher. And if we've learned anything from those that enjoy the subtle mercury flavor and sharp texture of fluorescent light bulbs, it's that anything can technically be edible.

But a wise butcher once told me "Before you stick a piece of bacon in your mouth, make sure it came from a pig that wasn't wearing lipstick."

BLOG: New Jersey To Allow Voting By Email, Fax

Good advice. The same could be given for election day. So before you cast your ballot, don't just drop any vote into you mouth into the box. Know where your swine politician is coming from and do your research.

But if you're sick of all this political talk and want a new topic to gnaw on, you can purchase the Mobius strip of bacon for $19. It may not fill you up, but it's a heck of a conversation starter.

via dvice

Credit: Shapeways

 

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Why Betting Markets and Polls Don't Agree

According to election polls, the presidential race is neck and neck. According to election polls, our country is split right down the middle. According to election polls, it's anyone's guess who will be the next president of the United States.

But if you follow betting markets like Intrade and Betfair, Obama's win is a better than two in three chance of winning. Both of these websites allow users to bet money on everything from sporting events to Academy Award winners and everything in between, including the presidential election. Players who guess correctly about the outcome of some future event win money. Because a lot of people play and because money is involved, the predictions tend to be accurate.

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Intrade, which has been around since 2001, began allowing investors to bet on political outcomes in 2004. It gained notoriety when in 2008, it not only predicted that President Obama would win the election, it predicted that he'd receive 364 electoral college votes. He received 365. (To win, a candidate needs 270, by the way.)

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This year, Ireland-based Intrade (which accepts bets from Americans) shows that Obama has about a 67 percent chance of winning over challenger Mitt Romney. Britain-based Betfair (which doesn’t accept Americans' money) thinks Obama has a 77 percent chance of winning.

So why are the betting markets so different from the polls?

For starters, polling isn't perfect: people change their minds or the sample might not reflect the population as well as you'd like. That's why polls have a margin of error of typically 3 to 4 percent. So a candidate who is ahead in the polls isn't a lock.

A candidate could poll very badly in some states, and do well in the states that add up to 270, even if he is behind in the national polls. And if the polling is good in crucial states, then the probability of winning can be quite high, even if the national polls are tied. Obama, for example, polls extremely poorly in Utah and Idaho and Romney doesn't crack 40 percent in Massachusetts or Rhode Island. None of those states matters much as a result -- they are not part of the electoral college math.

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But polling is all about asking people who they'll be voting for. Prediction markets like Intrade and Betfair ask people to put money on who they think will win. This is where the wisdom of the crowd comes in. Because now you're asking thousands of people to put money on the answer to a question: Who will be the next President? And the bettors aren't betting because they want to lose. And the majority of them aren't betting from their hearts.

Not everyone's perfect though. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight points out that in everything from sporting events to presidential elections, people like to bet on the underdog. Silver's own analysis of the presidential election, incidentally, doesn't just measure the popular vote.

He also takes into account the way a candidate will do in various states. Given that in the United States we have the Electoral College, that makes a huge difference in the calculated odds. Right now, Silver has Obama's probability of winning the election at 92 percent, even though he is only projecting a popular vote margin of 2.7 percent for the incumbent.

Candidates with minorities of the popular vote have won before. George W. Bush beat Al Gore in 2000, Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Grover Cleveland lost  to Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Bill Clinton won with only a plurality of the vote in 1992. That doesn't look as likely this time around, though SIlver has Romney with a 4.9 percent chance of winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college. (The chances of this happening to Obama are smaller because of the configuration of states where he polls well). 

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This is why in the United States, the news coverage focuses a lot on battleground states.The two biggest states up for grabs are Ohio and Virginia, and the former has shown small, but consistent leads for Obama. If Obama carries Ohio, then Romney would have to win at least four of the six remaining battleground states: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin. That's not impossible, but it would be difficult to do -- Wisconsin hasn't gone for the GOP since 1984, leaving Romney with even fewer winning combinations.

Obama, meanwhile, could win without Ohio. There are simply more plausible combinations that work for him. All this is to say it isn't just about the headline percentage in the polls. But while the probabilities are with Obama, that doesn't mean it's a sure thing.

Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

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New Jersey To Allow Voting By Email, Fax

On Saturday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's administration announced that voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy will be allowed to vote via email or fax.

"This has been an extraordinary storm that has created unthinkable destruction across our state and we know many people have questions about how and where to cast their vote in Tuesday's election. To help alleviate pressure on polling places, we encourage voters to either use electronic voting or the extended hours at county offices to cast their vote," said Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno in a press release.

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To cast their ballot electronically, displaced voters must submit a mail-in ballot application either by e-mail or fax to their county clerk. Once the application is approved, the clerk will send a ballot back to the voter, either by email or fax. Voters must email or fax their e-ballots no later than 8 p.m. on election day.

E-voters will also be sent a "waiver of secrecy form" that essentially waives their right to privacy since election officials will have to crosscheck names on the e-ballot application with voter registration lists.

New Jersey is not expected to be a close race, as Barack Obama is currently polling approximately 10 points higher than Mitt Romney.

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Had New Jersey been a swing state, considering e-voting's vast potential for fraud, this initiative surely would have come under more scrutiny. But for now, score one for state officials making sure Sandy's fallout doesn't destroy New Jersey citizens' right to vote.

via NJ.com

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App Lets You Banish Politics On Social Media

If you're sick of your friends and family using social media as a soapbox to uncork all their political wind-baggery, you can finally stop rolling your eyes and do something about it.

From Buzzfeed and the creators of Unbaby.me comes another Chrome extension, Unpolitic.me, which removes any and all political banter from your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Even more, it replaces the BS with awesome stuff, like photos of cats.

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"Install the app," explains its website. "Refresh your Facebook newsfeed. Enjoy an Obama- and Romney-free life."

As election season bottlenecks into the last week and the race turns into a clawing, tooth-and-nail sprint, this app may help you "maintain your sanity." That is until a couple weeks after election day when you'll be stuck sitting next to your conservative uncle or liberal aunt at the Thanksgiving table.

via Google Chrome

Credit: Google Chrome

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Device Detects Range Of Political Emotions

So, how do you feel when you see President Barack Obama or Republican nominee Mitt Romney stumping on the campaign trail? Which one of their perspectives, talking points, gestures, sound bites or -- God forbid -- wardrobe choices could lead you toward the blind faith of support or the blind rage of rejection?

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To gauge these emotions, Spanish business and research firms FIK and TECNALIA have designed Sentient, a "feelings detector" that provides campaign managers with feedback they can use to adjust or enhance their candidate's platform.

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The device is, at its core, a heart rate monitor with a TECNALIA-created system that gauges the intensity and emotional value of person at a specific moment. That data can then be transmitted wirelessly via Bluetooth or a smartpone for processing.

Its developers envision Sentient being used in targeted focus groups of undecided voters, where their initial reactions to -- say, the effectiveness of a speech -- can be quantified into positive and negative denominators.

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All fine and dandy, but if you're a campaign manager and you have to hook up a heart rate monitor just to read the pulse of your target demographic, not only have you obliviously lost touch with the voting populace, your campaign will be flatlining come election day.

Besides, at this late in the game, are undecided voters really the ones you want to go after? Judging by this focus group video, you may want to reconsider.

via Alphagalileo

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Anti-Islam Video Will Remain On YouTube

Yesterday a judge in California ruled against actress Cindy Lee Garcia's plea that YouTube take down footage from "Innocence of Muslims," the preposterously amateurish, nearly unwatchable hack-job of a film responsible for sparking a firestorm of violence and anti-U.S. protests in the Middle East.

Garcia, who starred in the film, requested that a Los Angeles County judge remove the film because she's received death threats, been fired from her job and been barred from seeing her grandchildren. Garcia said that she was hoodwinked into starring in the "hateful anti-Islamic production" and was originally under the impression she was starring in an adventure film about ancient Egyptians.

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Superior Court Judge Luis Lanvin ruled in favor of Google, owners of YouTube, who argued that movies are fictional, thus not entitling personal privacy to role-playing actors.

"[Were] Arnold Schwarzenegger's statements as a cyborg [in the movie 'Terminator'] factual statements about Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, that's not correct," lawyer Timothy Alger told the court, according to NY Daily News.

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"Our laws encourage free speech, especially with matters of public concern. We don't allow people with private interests to trump that," he said. "No matter how we view the content, whether it's reprehensible or mocking, the fact is, it's a subject of wide debate on a topic of interest for people around the world."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Garcia's lawyer, Chris Armenta, argued that this case is "not a First Amendment issue. This is an invasion of privacy issue." Armenta has vowed to push forward until the video is removed.

The film's schlocky 14-minute YouTube trailer -- full of fake beards, atrocious acting not worthy of civic theater and special effects on par with those of a high school AV class -- sparked a wave of violent protest across Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and later spread to two dozen countries around the world.

The U.S. backlash that erupted possibly led to to the killing of U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens along with approximately two dozen others in the last week. The death toll continues to rise. Today the New York Times reported that Pakistan's leading television station reported as many as 19 people were killed in cities across the country on Friday in a day of state-sanctioned protests.

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The White House asked YouTube and Google to review the film's footage to make sure it fell within the company's terms of service.

Google responded, saying the video "is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube." However, the video has been blocked in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

via Wired

Credit: YouTube screen grab

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