Eideard

Sock it to ‘em, Howard!

Virgin TV have apologised after new profanity checking software starred out perfectly innocent TV and film titles for containing ‘inappropriate language’.

The new system, which automatically checks the Virgin TV programme guide, went into over-drive over the weekend with programmes such as the BBC Four show: The History of Canals showed up as ‘The History of Ca**ls’.

The censorship also spread to the Will Smith film ‘Hancock’ – which became ‘Hanc**k, the popular BBC Two show, ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ – which showed up as ‘Never Mind the Buzzc**ks’ and even the middle of the name of London football club, ‘Arsenal’, was blocked out in a bid to remove inappropriate language from the TV menu.

Even in the description of a BBC Victoria comedy adventure, The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, which is in the style of Charles Dickens, the famous author’s name was censored, appearing as ‘Charles D***ens’ on the menu…

The piece of software is understood to have now been fixed, allowing Virgin Media’s 3.8 million television customers to see the titles of all TV shows in full…

A Virgin Media statement said: “Over the weekend a temporarily over-zealous profanity checker took offence at certain programme titles.

“The altered titles have been swiftly an*lysed and we’re fixing any remaining glitches.”

Har!

 
The crash of a CIA drone in Iran has brought into the open what U.S. intelligence agencies would prefer kept secret: intense spying efforts in a country where the United States has no official presence.

Iran on Thursday aired with great flourish footage of the captured drone, which appeared largely intact. Pentagon and CIA spokesmen would not comment on whether it was the missing U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft. A person familiar with the situation confirmed that the drone that crashed was on a surveillance mission over Iran. [This is how the Pentagon admits their screw-ups]

It is believed to have crashed because of a malfunction and not from being shot down or computer-hacked by the Iranians, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. [More on this in my comment below]

Although there are risks that Iran could attempt to reverse engineer the technology, or sell it to other countries, like China, U.S. officials believe that Iran will not be able to mine the drone’s computer systems to learn details of the U.S. surveillance mission.

U.S. surveillance of Iran through various means has been going on for years, U.S. officials and others with direct knowledge of the situation say…

Drones in the class of the RQ-170 are supposed to have a homing pigeon software module onboard. If contact is lost, the critter has the capability of flying itself back to the base where it was launched. So, that didn’t work.

So, what happened? Eh?

Dan Jurafsky of Stanford teaching computers to spot deception, anger, friendliness, flirtation

She looks as innocuous as Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s famous detective. But also like Miss Marple, Julia Hirschberg, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, may spell trouble for a lot of liars. That’s because Dr. Hirschberg is teaching computers how to spot deception — programming them to parse people’s speech for patterns that gauge whether they are being honest.

For this sort of lie detection, there’s no need to strap anyone into a machine. The person’s speech provides all the cues — loudness, changes in pitch, pauses between words, ums and ahs, nervous laughs and dozens of other tiny signs that can suggest a lie…

Programs that succeed at spotting these submerged emotions may someday have many practical uses: software that suggests when chief executives at public conferences may be straying from the truth; programs at call centers that alert operators to irate customers on the line; or software at computerized matchmaking services that adds descriptives like “friendly” to usual ones like “single” and “female.”

The technology is becoming more accurate as labs share new building blocks, said Dan Jurafsky, a professor at Stanford whose research focuses on the understanding of language by both machines and humans. Recently, Dr. Jurafsky has been studying the language that people use in four-minute speed-dating sessions, analyzing it for qualities like friendliness and flirtatiousness. He is a winner of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship commonly called a “genius” award, and a co-author of the textbook “Speech and Language Processing.”

“The scientific goal is to understand how our emotions are reflected in our speech,” Dr. Jurafsky said. “The engineering goal is to build better systems that understand these emotions…”

The practical political goal – from those most likely to fund this research – is to better spy on citizens of any nation.

For her continuing research, Dr. Hirschberg and two colleagues recently received a grant from the Air Force for nearly $1.5 million to develop algorithms to analyze English speakers and those who speak Arabic and Mandarin Chinese…

David F. Larcker, an accounting professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, audited a course in computer linguistics taught by Dr. Jurafsky and then applied its methods to analyze the words of financial executives who made statements that were later disproved.

These executives were, it turned out, big users of “clearly,” “very clearly” and other terms that Joseph Williams, the late University of Chicago professor who wrote the textbook “Style,” branded as “trust me, stupid” words.

No mention of political campaigns, budgets developed by Congressional hearings.

Cyber criminals use Trojans to steal information, but are the same techniques of electronic surveillance being used by the agencies set up to protect us?

Internet crime “is no longer the elephant in the room. It is the room,” Sir Ian Andrews, chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), told this week’s London Conference on Cyberspace. The rapid increase in the cost of cyber-crime means police and governments are having to protect themselves from a threat that is often nearly impossible to trace. But the web has also become a vital space to gather evidence on suspects for traditional crimes…

There was controversy earlier this month when the German state of Bavaria admitted using a Trojan – a malicious program sent to a digital device covertly to collect data – to gather intelligence on suspected criminals. The R2D2 malware received criticism for it potentially allowing officials to launch software and capture images on the infected computer…

Ironically, the Trojan is not believed to have been sophisticated enough to beat antivirus software so would only be able to infiltrate unprotected computers – something unlikely amongst experienced computer users.

But there seems to be an emerging trend of governments going on the offensive…

In the UK, senior officials have not ruled out doing something similar. “In terms of the sensitivities around particular Trojans, it wouldn’t be something that we would particularly like to talk about,” says Lee Miles, head of cyber at the UK serious crime agency, SOCA.

Cybercrime expert Professor Peter Sommer, of the London School of Economics, believes that adding software remotely to a suspect’s computer would probably be illegal under current UK law. And the introduction of new powers for the police is something that is often picked over with a fine-toothed comb before its introduction is even proposed.

“We do need to exercise care embarking down this path [of using new techniques] because of the unintended consequences – it’s something that has to be considered very carefully,” says UK Minister for Crime and Security James Brokenshire.

Will police expand the use of malware to catch cyber-criminals? Short answer? I hope so.

We’ve already had instances of counter-measures fired back at zombie servers used by hackers. That can be turned to trojan techniques in any number of ways. But, then, if I have thought of doing this – someone in computer security is probably already doing it.

Futurists like Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have argued that the world is rapidly approaching a tipping point, where the accelerating pace of smarter and smarter machines will soon outrun all human capabilities. They call this tipping point the singularity, because they believe it is impossible to predict how the human future might unfold after this point. Once these machines exist, Kurzweil and Vinge claim, they’ll possess a superhuman intelligence that is so incomprehensible to us that we cannot even rationally guess how our life experiences would be altered…Kurzweil, who is a bit more optimistic, envisions a future in which developments in medical nanotechnology will allow us to download a copy of our individual brains into these superhuman machines, leave our bodies behind, and, in a sense, live forever. It’s heady stuff.

While we suppose this kind of singularity might one day occur, we don’t think it is near. In fact, we think it will be a very long time coming. Kurzweil disagrees, based on his extrapolations about the rate of relevant scientific and technical progress. He reasons that the rate of progress toward the singularity isn’t just a progression of steadily increasing capability, but is in fact exponentially accelerating—what Kurzweil calls the “Law of Accelerating Returns…”

By working through a set of models and historical data, Kurzweil famously calculates that the singularity will arrive around 2045.

This prediction seems to us quite far-fetched. Of course, we are aware that the history of science and technology is littered with people who confidently assert that some event can’t happen, only to be later proven wrong—often in spectacular fashion. We acknowledge that it is possible but highly unlikely that Kurzweil will eventually be vindicated. An adult brain is a finite thing, so its basic workings can ultimately be known through sustained human effort. But if the singularity is to arrive by 2045, it will take unforeseeable and fundamentally unpredictable breakthroughs, and not because the Law of Accelerating Returns made it the inevitable result of a specific exponential rate of progress…

The amazing intricacy of human cognition should serve as a caution to those who claim the singularity is close. Without having a scientifically deep understanding of cognition, we can’t create the software that could spark the singularity. Rather than the ever-accelerating advancement predicted by Kurzweil, we believe that progress toward this understanding is fundamentally slowed by the complexity brake.

In between the beginning and end of this post is a great deal of well thought-out reasoning. Like his peer, Ray Kurzweil, Paul Allen is one of the critical spurs to the march of technology over recent decades. The debate between the two – in print and in person – is stirring. One which only time and progress shall decide.

Meanwhile, RTFA for much more detail on Paul Allen’s analysis. I happen to hope for Kurzweil to win because that might give me some life extension – old geek that I am. But, I’m only a spectator to this contest.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Apple’s Find My iPhone feature led searchers to find a Chilean Air Force airplane that crashed and is believed to have killed 21 people.

Search and rescue teams were unable to find the airplane, which prompted one of the victims’ relatives to try locating them with the Find My iPhone functionality, which uses an iPhone’s GPS receiver to track the device’s location. According to infobae.com (via Gizmodo), the relative shared the location data with military officials in charge of the search operation.

“One of the passengers carried (an iPhone). When it fell into the sea, it was located and one of the relatives sent us that information,” the military official reportedly said.

Unfortunately the remains of the CASA 212 vehicle were found with no survivors. Parts from the destroyed plane were found floating in the sea near Tierra Banca and Playa Larga.

The plane was said to have been severely damaged by the crash, with no pieces larger than 20 inches recovered from the crash site thus far.

iPhones and iPads are built to be tough – but, not that tough. Outstanding software and hardware. Too bad the point was proven in such a sad context.

A Brooklyn-based artist has caught the attention of the Secret Service after installing a computer program on Apple Store computers that takes Webcam photos every two minutes, and posting those images on the Internet…

Kyle McDonald took the photos and posted them on a Tumblr blog called “People Staring at Computers.” He told Mashable that he got permission from Apple security guards to take photos in the store, but it’s unclear if they were aware that McDonald also meant installing software and snapping Webcam shots. Given that it attracted Secret Service attention, it’s safe to say that not everyone was excited by the project.

When asked on Twitter if he got permission from every person whose photo appeared on his blog, McDonald said no because “as i understand, photography in open spaces is legal unless explicitly prohibited.” He will, however, remove any photos if asked, he said. Well, duh?

It appears McDonald was committed, however; Apple wipes its computers every night, so he had to reinstall the program every day he took photos, Mashable reports. That program focused only on photos…

McDonald said the warrant he received from the Secret Service said his actions violated 18 USC section 1030. That deals with “fraud and related activity in connection with computers,” and covers, among other things, accessing a computer without authorization…

He took 1,000 photos over three days at computers in New York Apple Stores…

Sounds like a creep to me. Wonder if he considers public restrooms to be public spaces, too?

“Flying wing” designs that offer reduced weight and drag when compared to traditional “tube with wings and a tail” designs are theoretically the most efficient aircraft configuration. However, true flying wings are inherently unstable and difficult to control. To aid in the design of future aircraft that utilize such a design, researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have been performing tests to study the flight characteristics of large flying wing configurations using what has been dubbed a flying “chameleon”.

The DLR’s Advanced Technologies Testing Aircraft System (ATTAS) research aircraft resembles a conventional small passenger aircraft, but it has been fitted with special hardware and software to give it the flight characteristics and performance of an entirely different aircraft…

The simulated aircraft consists of a triangular fuselage with two vertical stabilizers at the tail that are tilted slightly outwards to replace the conventional tail fin/rudder and tailplane/elevator combination. There are also four engines under the additional wing area and a wide body designed to accommodate up to 750 passengers on long-haul flights. The simulated flying wing boasts a wingspan of nearly 100 m (328 ft), length of 65 m (213 ft) and maximum take-off weight of roughly 700 tons. Together, its four engines provide a maximum thrust of 1,425 kilonewtons…

“The flight test confirmed our assumptions,” said Leibling about the results. “There is a limit to handling a modern, completely uniquely-shaped aircraft without coordinated flight control laws. We can only achieve the flight characteristics we want by using appropriate computer and control technology.”

Hey, fly by wire done correctly works just fine. Although I’ve never seen it attempted on a vehicle as large as the projected flying wing they discuss in the article.

A memo speech, subsequently posted on Nokia’s internal blog, from Nokia’s new chief executive Stephen Elop warning the staff that it is “standing on a burning platform” has leaked from the company and indicates that the former Microsoft executive is planning radical action to revive the company’s fortunes…

The memo post likens the company’s situation to that of a man standing on an oil platform in the North Sea and facing a raging fire on multiple fronts – who has no choice but to jump into freezing water to survive…

Elop is expected to make a significant announcement this Friday about what Nokia will do to stem the loss of market share, notably in the smartphone market, where despite being the biggest player it has been unable to compete with incomers, notably Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS…

Elop points to a number of problems for the company…

• the “battle of devices has become a war of ecosystems” (such as Apple’s App Store and Google’s Marketplace) and “our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem”

• “Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.”

• “we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us” – from Apple, Android, and from Chinese competitors that can produce a device “much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, ‘the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.’ They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.”

• “we’re not fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.”

RTFA for the text of the whole speech, details of the internal criticism.

Yes, you will probably see me use it, again, discussing American politics.

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building or two.

With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”

Questions persist, however, about whether the military has the capability to sift through huge quantities of imagery quickly enough to convey useful data to troops in the field.

Officials also acknowledge that Gorgon Stare is of limited value unless they can match it with improved human intelligence – eyewitness reports of who is doing what on the ground.

RTFA. Consider when this technology is coming to a city near you?

Can’t happen here? It is to laugh.