We’re aliens, kind of.
Link: We’re all aliens, says scientist
Scientists believe life on earth travelled here on comets millions of years ago.
There are so many puzzling things about life and the universe and we don’t devote nearly enough resources to figuring them out. The sheer scale of the universe should be a much bigger deal to everyone.
No Internet Police – iiNet wins court case.
Good news for the Internet in Australia, iiNet was found to be innocent of promoting copyright infringement by not taking action against users suspected of breaking copyright law.
Recently the big movie studios teamed up to take on iiNet, one of Australia’s largest Internet Service Providers for not policing copyright infringement on their network. Currently the movie studios attempt to track peer to peer file sharing and record the IP Addresses of users transferring data related to copyrighted materials. They then track these IP Addresses back to the ISP’s and ask them to forward letters advising users of their breach of copyright law. Some ISP’s pass these letters on while others refuse. Unfortunately the movie studios don’t see this as going far enough and seeing as taking individual users to court is time consuming, expensive, and potentially damaging to the movie studios plans for policing the internet, they’ve decided that their best course of action is to force the burden of monitoring and enforcing copyright law onto the ISP’s.
The major problem with this methodology for cutting down on piracy is that it cuts out the judicial system and gives private companies the responsibility of being both accuser and judge. It’s fundamentally flawed.
In the current case Justice Cowdroy ruled in favour of iiNet - “The evidence establishes that copyright infringement of the applicant’s films is occurring on a large scale … however, such a fact does not necessitate or compel … a finding of authorisation, merely because it is felt that ’something must be done’ to stop the infringements” (SBS news & The Australian).
Michael Gist does a great job covering Justice Cowdroy’s explanation as to why the three strikes policy proposed in other countries, where the user is warned three times of copyright infringement and then banned from the internet, isn’t reasonable here. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has come out and publicly stated that it won’t promote with three strikes polices adding that “Australia already has copyright laws to encourage ISPs and copyright owners to work together to deter copyright infringements over the internet” (ITNews).
This is great news for the Australian people and now all we have to do is ward of that ridiculous Internet filter and keep fighting for our internet rights and the opportunity to innovate.
- Update: Proof reading welcomed.
Immorality before we die?
Article: Immortality only 20 years away says scientist
Ray Kurzweil thinks improving technology and a deeper understanding of how the human body works will improve everything from our physical abilities to our mental capacity by repairing and enhancing our organs using nanobots.
The world is changing so quickly that every day brings a new miracle. Never stop inventing!
Plannet Spotter
Link: Super-Earth shortens odds on finding life
Exciting that we found another earth like planet. Disappointing because the -200C to 2000C daily temperature range would make landing there difficult. When you think about it, life on earth is horribly fragile. Keep looking fellas!
Never looking back
Article: A One-Way Ticket to Mars
Human space travel is so expensive and so dangerous that we are going to need novel, even extreme solutions if we really want to expand the range of human civilization beyond our own planet. To boldly go where no one has gone before does not require coming home again.
A really interesting piece on some of the problems associated with sending a maned mission to Mars. The point raised is why is it so important to bring the astronauts home again? Plenty of people are willing to go even with no chance of ever returning.
Thinking about this put me in a highly reflective mood. In order to go where we’ve never gone before, do what we’ve never done before and truly change the world, maybe we need to take steps so drastic that the possibility of return doesn’t exist at all. Success and failure measured in the legacy we leave behind.
Considering pretty women
Article: Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women.
Psychologists at Radboud University in The Netherlands carried out the study after one of them was so struck on impressing an attractive woman he had never met before, that he could not remember his address when she asked him where he lived.
Researchers said it was as if he was so keen to make an impression he ‘temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources.’
I continue to stand by my arguments in favour of considering cognitive load as a massive factor in application design.