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News & Public Affairs Archive
Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
The tech world is fast moving but, oddly enough, as we began doing a year-end review and look ahead for 2012, it sounded very similar to the 2011 version, so here is the 2011 year-end again. See what yo you think.
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
Today, a remembrance of Ada Lovelace, who helped design the first computer back in the 1840’s, and a list of neat web sites you may want to take a look at:
www.ala.org/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/bestlist/bestwebsitestop25
www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses
nea.gov/podweb/podCMS/podlist.php
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
Let’s do some catch up with recent developments of topics we’ve looked at recently: Pentagon directives on killing using robots and drones; a Supreme Court ruling regarding the freedom to videotape police in public places; an update on the “six strikes” process that ISPs will be using when a customer supposedly shares copyrighted materials without authorization; and, for the holiday season, an E-Book Privacy Chart, courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to help us understand what kind of information about us and our reading habits e-book readers and books collect. You can find it at www.eff.org/pages/reader-privacy-chart-2012.
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
Robots are no longer science fiction imaginings. While killer drones are still controlled by human beings, autonomous killer robots that can make their own decisions about when and where to fire are under development. Should we develop such robots? If so, under what ethical and legal principles will they work. These are big questions, and questions that many say we should try to decide before the fact, not after. Alas, we don’t have a very good record in that department.
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
On this day to be thankful, let’s look at some of the things that the web has brought us that we can be grateful for, one of which is the emerging phenomenon of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses. If you’d like to see some of what is available for free in this fast-growing MOOC world, take a peek at www.class-central.com
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
Been hearing a lot about The Cloud lately – as in cloud computing? Wondering what what the heck The Cloud means? Here’s a quick review along with a few things to cogitate on if you are thinking of moving your digital life to The Cloud.
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
Computers have gotten very good at recognizing faces. That can be very helpful in, for example, tagging photos on your own computer. But the same technology can be used in lots of other ways, too. And for better or worse, it will change our relationship to the world we live in. Here’s why.
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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell
As we clean up in the physical world from Hurricane Sandy, let’s do a little clean up in the digital world as well by looking at some recent developments in research on smart meter privacy hazards, and on Amazon’s occasional forays into removing stuff from your Kindle that you bought and paid for.
And if you’d like to find out how to avoid having Amazon “repossess” books you have bought, you may want to take a look at arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/drm-be-damned-how-to-protect-your-Amazon-e-books-from-being-deleted/
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