Screenshot: A Weblog

There's a very nice summary and assessment of a proposal for a web of surveillance cameras around Pittsburgh over at Pittsblog today. The proposal is presented as an anti-terrorism measure and has multiple phases of cameras being installed, starting with major infrastructure but over time extending the web of cameras into "high-risk neighborhoods". Besides just a general sense that this much surveillance without a specific justification is problematic, Pittsblog offers the following criticism of the proposal:

The Pittsburgh plan is completely silent on what I call "the human back end." So Pittsburgh arranges to collect all of this surveillance data. What then? Who sees the data? What's done with the data? When? And why? For the dystopian version, watch Enemy of the State. It's not just local law enforcement watching. It's the bad side of the National Security Agency.

Posted by Amanda at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If I knew any woodworking, I would absolutely make myself one of these beautiful binary marble adding machines. It's a six-bit binary adder, implemented with marbles and wooden toggles that allow for carrying. The page describes in a good bit of detail how it works, but if you just want the high-level overview, scroll to the bottom and watch the video demonstration. It's really pretty amazing.

Posted by Amanda at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomb Chess is pretty fun - it's like chess, without all of the complicated rules, more randomness, and undead pieces. Basically, the board is a graveyard, and the pieces are "buried" until you decide to release one without knowing what type of piece it is - or even if it is your or your opponents'. There are no tricky moving rules - just left/right or up/down. With the simplicity and the randomness, you can't think too much, so it moves a lot faster - it truly is the internet version of chess....

Posted by Amanda at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are tons of ways in which the law doesn't keep up with technical developments, but this is an interesting example of technology perhaps pushing too far ahead of the law. A company was found guilty of unauthorized practice of law by virtue of their online legal expert system. The system was focused on bankruptcy law, and the sales pitch used stressed that this was "an expert system and knows the law. Unlike most bankruptcy programs which are little more than customized word processors the Ziinet engine is an expert system."

It seems that this use of "expert system" in the description was key to the ruling against the company, as it implied that more was done that simply filling out forms. I'm guessing that's where the distinction lies between this case and the huge number of tax preparation programs out there. I haven't seen tax software cross the line into claiming to have AI in them, though I'm sure such an approach would be as fruitful there as in bankruptcy law - and actually suspect that the "AI" in the bankruptcy system is not any more sophisticated than that in most tax preparation software. It's, in fact, interesting to consider how much of this is about the sales pitch of the system versus the actual behavior of the system.

Interestingly, on the legal side, the American Bar Association actually has a document on Best Practice Guidelines for Legal Information Web Site Providers, though it's focus is primarily on helping lawyers determine how much information and assistance they can provide through the internet, particularly considering jurisdiction issues of where one is authorized to practice law.

Posted by Amanda at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been a bit slow recently on the contentful updates, but X-Entertainment is holding a summer megaparty, meaning that Matt is going to post at least something every day between now and August 1. Which means, if you aren't an X-Entertainment reader, now's a fine time to check it out. The weblog is fun, but the mainstay is the articles, reviewing pop culture cruft such as sodas, snacks, old TV ads and movies, and of course lots of toys - scroll through the list of articles on the front page to get a taste.

Posted by Amanda at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't tried this out yet, but Frucall lets you comparison shop by calling them on your cell phone from a store and entering the bar code of what you're thinking of buying. [via Physics Geek] Their system will check in their database of products, providers, and prices and let you know a range of prices, where you can get that item, etc. It's a free service, from what I can see, except for whatever your cell phone provider charges for the call. If you are at your computer, you can also just search their database directly. I tried that much out with a couple of things I had lying around with bar codes on them, and it seemed pretty useful, when it actually had the product listed. It seems to tend towards electronics products, and not so much foodstuffs or random household goods.

Posted by Amanda at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm back from traveling for a couple of weeks and am digging out from a backlog of real and electronic email and feeds that I've fallen behind on. So, that is going to just be a hodge-podge link dump today of what caught more than my passing attention...

I don't think I would use the Polar Clock in a web browser or even on my computer, but this would make an awesome digital clock to hang on the wall. The only thing that is a little odd is that the outer ring is the day of the week instead of the year, though that would raise the question of what to use as the starting and ending points, and I suspect haveing an outer ring that changes more frequently than the month ring is aesthetically nice.

This Consumer Reports page lets you watch crash test videos from a wide variety of cars - use the pull down menus to find your car or look for cars that don't fair so well (Jeep crashes seem pretty dramatic).

Sort of a variant on Galaga with gun upgrades and better graphics, Lone Starship: Defender of the Planet Game is fun and a good balance of challenge with easy controls - I'm usually playing these things on my laptop with a trackpad so games with tricky controls usually don't work for me.

Don't go Googlewhacking - go Wikigroaning: my favorite pairs listed in the article are probably "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" versus "Black Mesa research facility" and "List of conflicts in the Middle East" versus "List of furry role-playing games".

Posted by Amanda at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)