Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 09:12:54 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: gleanings
>From the Guardian Online section, Thursday 4 June 1998, for which see
<http://online.guardian.co.uk/>.
(1) Duncan Campbell, "Hiding from the spies in the sky", a story in the wake
of the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan about how the Internet was and
can be be used to determine when operations on the ground cannot be detected
by the US spy satellites. "Images from space used to provide advance
warnings, but not any more. Indian technicians simply calculated when the
satellites would be overhead so they knew when to hide... as any nation with
data from the Internet can now do." So, if you wish to get up to any
potentially very interesting hanky-panky under the open skies, you can now
use the Internet in a way you may not have considered. "Whether you're
skinny-dipping in Somerset, or harvesting dope plants in the Sierra Nevada
[that Californian stereotype again!], or just want a reason to take up
watching the sky at night, programs and data about satellites of every kind
can be taken from the Net." URLs are provided.
If, in consequence of this public exposure, the US were to give up on the
shroud of secrecy keeping us from the latest in visual pattern-recognition
technology, art history and related fields might take an enormous technical
leap forward.
(2) Jack Schofield, "The World Cup on the Web", for those of you who care.
(3) idem, "Computing and the Net: Netwatch", lists
-- URLs for agencies tracking the India / Pakistan nuclear arms race;
-- 1998 finalists in the Yell Web-site awards,
<http://www.yell.co.uk/yell/yellawards/>;
-- Edtech, a WebRing of sites about the use of technology in higher ed,
<http://iml.umkc.edu/web-ring/edtech/>;
-- EuroPrix Multimedia Art 98 prize contest, <http://www.europrix.org>. Etc.
(4) Jane Gregory and Steve Miller, "Making knowledge public property", on
how the public is finding out about and making sense of current scientific
information, the featured subject being the infamous BSE/CJD (Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy, a.k.a. "mad cow disease", and its human
correlative, Creuzfeld/Jacob Disease) scandal in the U.K. The Internet had
and is continuing to have a significant role in the fascinating spread of
information, misinformation and propaganda surrounding this and similar
issues, e.g. tobacco and, far more politically hot, "post-traumatic stress
disorder" (e.g. Gulf War Syndrome).
(5) Douglas Rushkoff, "Tilting at Windows", about the US Government's
anti-trust suit against Microsoft's "hyper-competitive" practices in the
light of the latter's much more ambitious game-plan, at least as Rushkoff
reads it. "What will serve the public interest is not greater competition
between information architects but greater co-operation.... Protecting the
marketplace will not prove nearly as important -- or popular -- as promoting
the values that competition doesn't address."
(6) Robert Alstead, "Director's cut", a review of Adobe Premiere 5.0. I
presume that most Humanists know what a fine piece of work Photoshop is. Has
anyone here used Premiere?
There's more, but Evelyn the cat wants her breakfast.
Yours,
WM
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer, King's College London
voice: +44 (0)171 873 2784 fax: +44 (0)171 873 5801
e-mail: Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/>
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