Office Hours

I'll have office hours Monday 12/12 from 9:00 -11:30 am at Espresso News. Otherwise, I'll be available by appointment this week. Good luck with your projects. See you Friday morning!

Tuesday 11/22

No class meeting today. Have a great break!

Morphing

Singularity

From Time Magazine.

Money

From the EFF:

The Stop Online Piracy Act: A Blacklist by Any Other Name Is Still a Blacklist

... First, the new law would allow the Attorney General to cut off sites from the Internet, essentially “blacklisting” companies from doing business on the web.  Under section 102, the Attorney General can seek a court order that would force search engines, DNS providers, servers, payment processors, and advertisers to stop doing business with allegedly infringing websites.  

Second, the bill encourages private corporations to create a literal target list—a process that is ripe for abuse.  Under Section 103 (cleverly entitled the “market based” approach), IP rightsholders can take action by themselves, by sending notices directly to payment processors—like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal—demanding that they cut off all payments to the website. Once notice is delivered to the payment processor, that processor has only five days to act. The payment processor, and not the rightsholder, is then responsible for notifying the targeted website. So by the time Visa or Mastercard—who will no doubt be receiving many of these notices—processes the notice, informs the website, and the website decides whether to file a counter notice, the five days will almost certainly have elapsed. The website will then be left without a revenue source even if it did nothing wrong. 

Third, section 104 of SOPA also allows payment processors to cut websites off voluntarily—even if they haven’t received a notice. Visa and Mastercard cannot be held accountable if they cease processing payments to any site, as long as they have a “reasonable belief” that the website is engaged in copyright violations of any kind. Hmm, wonder how long it will take big media to publicly post a list of allegedly infringing sites, and start pressuring payment processors to cut them off? As long as the payment processors are willing to comply, the rightsholders can essentially censor anyone they see fit. Even well-meaning payment processors might do this to avoid liability down the road. ... 

More on the bill here.

------------------

Bitcoin via Motley Fool:

 ... Bitcoin is essentially a cryptography-based peer-to-peer currency that functions independent of any central bank.  The creation of cryptographer Satoshi Nakamoto, and currently administered by Gavin Andresen, the Bitcoin system is designed to function as a genuine alternative to the dollar and other modern-day currencies. ...  

When I first wrote about Bitcoin in June, it had recently gone parabolic, first crossing the $1 mark, and then rapidly shooting up to the $9 range (if you don't know a Bitcoin from a Malaysian ringgit, see my previous article). The ascent, however, was still in the middle innings. Not two weeks later, the Bitcoin was trading at more than $30, having appreciated 10,000-fold since dollar-denominated trading began in 2010.  

Then, of course, the inevitable occurred. Exuberance gave way to sanity and profit taking, and the Bitcoin first plummeted, then more gradually but steadily slid, eventually finding its way back down to the current trading range of $2-$3