infoneer-pulse:

When U.S. authorities shuttered sports-wagering site Bodog.com last week, it raised eyebrows across the net because the domain name was registered with a Canadian company, ostensibly putting it beyond the reach of the U.S. government. Working around that, the feds went directly to VeriSign, a U.S.-based internet backbone company that has the contract to manage the coveted .com and other “generic” top-level domains.

EasyDNS, an internet infrastructure company, protested that the “ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc. needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers.”

But despite EasyDNS and others’ outrage, the U.S. government says it’s gone that route hundreds of times. Furthermore, it says it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.

» via Wired

(via lipsyourloversleave)

vowelsme:

From a post on Reddit:

Chomsky as a professional linguist was one of the founders of the “cognitive revolution”. Following up on the ideas of Pāṇini, in the 1970s he proposed the idea of grammar and syntax as being based on structured rules in a series of books on the subject.

He…

(Source: )

dirtytucson:

a voice within me by kathrynfiona on Flickr.

Sylvia Plath

(via lipsyourloversleave)

(via infoneer-pulse)

infoneer-pulse:

Wireless spectrum is a finite natural resource, and all it takes is a look at recent deals like Verizon’s $3.6 billion and AT&T’s $1.9 billion purchases to see that it’s in high demand. Since we can’t make more spectrum, all we can do is use it more effectively, and researcher Fabrizio Tamburini and his team think they know just how to do it. They say that by twisting radio waves we’ll be able to send multiple discrete signals over the same frequency, giving us, in theory, “an infinite number of channels in a given, fixed bandwidth.” The technique uses a modified transmitting dish that’s shaped like a portion of a corkscrew to send out signals called radio vortices with different orbital angular momentmum states (i.e. degrees of spin), each carrying different sets of data.

» via The Verge

anti-teachings:

Robert Anton Wilson on Language and Reality

infoneer-pulse:

Reading the Privacy Policies You Encounter in a Year Would Take 76 Work Days

One simple answer to our privacy problems would be if everyone became maximally informed about how much data was being kept and sold about them. Logically, to do so, you’d have to read all the privacy policies on the websites you visit. A few years ago, two researchers, both then at Carnegie Mellon, decided to calculate how much time it would take to actually read every privacy policy you should.

» via The Atlantic

infoneer-pulse:

The argument that if consumers care about their privacy they shouldn’t use these technologies is a cop-out. This technology is now completely woven into every part of society and business. We didn’t tell people who wanted safer cars simply not to drive. We made safer cars.

Well, safety advocates, consumers and the government dragged the automobile industry toward including seat belts, air bags, more visible taillights and other safety features. Christopher N. Olsen, assistant director in the division of privacy and identity protection at the Federal Trade Commission, expects that as the privacy violations pile up, Congress could enact laws to protect consumers. “Industry should redouble its efforts to focus on privacy issues, or they may face additional pressure in form of legislation from Congress,” he said.

Such legislation would not be ideal for anyone. As technology companies rightly argue, more legislation and regulation stifle innovation.

But the current system of self-regulation is clearly not working. “The F.T.C. has been very active on the enforcement front; we’ve recently entered into consent decrees with large companies like Facebook and Google, and we have pushed other companies too,” Mr. Olsen said.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)