Today’s post is brought to you by:
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According to a new report, the Internet police are coming… and they’re not wearing badges. Instead, governments are devolving enforcement powers on the ‘net to ISPs.
Here at Ars Technica, we regularly report on the uneasy relationship between Internet Service Providers and the national legal systems under which they operate. This tension surfaces most obviously when it comes to suing individual consumers for illegal file sharing.
Plaintiff lawyers want maximum cooperation from ISPs in tracking down subscribers to be subpoenaed, while providers like Time Warner Cable insist they can only process so many requests at a time. Denounced as permissive on piracy, ISPs and content industry lawyers collide in the courts.
But a new report suggests that nations are slowly turning ISPs into the off-duty information cops of the world. Eager to placate politicians in order to achieve their own goals (like the selective throttling of data), networks are cooperating with governments looking for easy, informal solutions to difficult problems like copyright infringement, dangerous speech, online vice, and child pornography.
Network and content providers are ostensibly engaging in “self-regulation,” but that’s a deceptive phrase, warns the European Digital Rights group. “It is not regulation—it is policing—and it is not ’self-’ because it is their consumers and not themselves that are being policed,” EDR says.
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Census Bureau: Valentine’s Day 2011: Feb. 14 “Valentine’s Day is traditionally a day in which people express their love to one another by presenting gifts, such as cards, candy, flowers and other symbols of love or affection. Opinions differ as to who was the original Valentine but the most popular theory is that he was a clergyman who was executed for secretly marrying couples in ancient Rome. In A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius I declared Feb. 14 as Valentine Day. Through the centuries, the Christian holiday became a time to exchange love messages, and St.Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. Esther Howland, a native of Massachusetts, is given credit for selling the first mass-produced valentine cards in the 1840s. The spirit of love continues today with even young children exchanging valentine’s cards with their fellow classmates.”
On Valentine’s Day, many people buy flowers. Different colored roses have different meanings. Red means love, yellow means friendship, and pink means friendship or sweetheart. Red carnations mean admiration, white carnations mean pure love, red chrysanthemums mean love, forget-me-nots mean true love, primrose means young love, and larkspur means an open heart – Provided by RandomHistory.com
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The Secrets Behind Your Flowers. Did your valentine bouquet do its part to supplant the cocaine trade in South America?
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Tongue Wrestle Mania: The Art and Science of French Kissing. Don’t be one of the many kinds of kissers that could drive your kissee away!
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Statistical Love Poems for Valentines Day. This is so far above my head, I’d be awfully impressed by anyone who understands it. (via Everlasting Blort)
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Today is Jack Benny’s birthday. One of the funniest comedians ever!
Jack Benny (1894)
Benny made his vaudeville debut playing the violin in 1912. After discovering a talent for comedy while in the navy, he returned to vaudeville as a comedian. He made his film debut in 1927 and appeared in 18 films between 1930 and 1945. His weekly radio show—1932 to 1955—and TV show—1950 to 1965—won loyal audiences, and he became famous for a unique comic style characterized by subtle verbal inflection, meaningful pauses, and the stage image of a vain, stingy man. What was Benny’s real name? More…
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An American jihadist who set up the terrorist training camp where the leader of the 2005 London suicide bombers learned how to manufacture explosives, has been quietly released after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence, a Guardian investigation has learned.
The unreported sentencing of Mohammed Junaid Babar to “time served” because of what a New York judge described as “exceptional co-operation” that began even before his arrest has raised questions over whether Babar was a US informer at the time he was helping to train the ringleader of the 7 July tube and bus bombings.
Lawyers representing the families of victims and survivors of the attacks have compared the lenient treatment of Babar to the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
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A porn channel for women blossoms
Dutch station Dusk discovers that women like to watch sex that looks real.
HILVERSUM, Netherlands — The play needs spicing up, and critics have panned the sexual chemistry between actors Daniel and Mariah.
Then in one afternoon performance, she changes the plot, stripping off her silk robe and pulling him on to the bed. Soon they are naked and enjoying real sex in front of the delighted theater audience.
Welcome to the world of Dusk, the Dutch TV channel which claims to be the first in Europe providing non-stop pornography and erotica targeted at a female audience.
“We call it porna, to give the idea that it’s porn made for women, something different from traditional porno,” said Martijn Broersma, the man behind Dusk.
Set up three years ago, Dusk, with its distinctive chili pepper logo, now shows 24/7 on three Dutch networks including the Netherlands’ two largest cable providers, making it available to 1.2 million viewers.
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The Voynich manuscript’s unintelligible writings and strange illustrations have defied every attempt at understanding their meaning.
University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called “the world’s most mysterious manuscript” – the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day.
Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA’s department of physics has found the manuscript’s parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought.
This tome makes the “DaVinci Code” look downright lackluster: Rows of text scrawled on visibly aged parchment, flowing around intricately drawn illustrations depicting plants, astronomical charts and human figures bathing in – perhaps – the fountain of youth. At first glance, the “Voynich manuscript” appears to be not unlike any other antique work of writing and drawing.
An alien language
But a second, closer look reveals that nothing here is what it seems. Alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, are arranged into what appear to be words and sentences, except they don’t resemble anything written – or read – by human beings.
Hodgins, an assistant research scientist and assistant professor in the UA’s department of physics with a joint appointment at the UA’s School of Anthropology, is fascinated with the manuscript.
“Is it a code, a cipher of some kind? People are doing statistical analysis of letter use and word use – the tools that have been used for code breaking. But they still haven’t figured it out.”
A chemist and archaeological scientist by training, Hodgins works for the NSF Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, or AMS, Laboratory, which is shared between physics and geosciences. His team was able to nail down the time when the Voynich manuscript was made.
Currently owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, the manuscript was discovered in the Villa Mondragone near Rome in 1912 by antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich while sifting through a chest of books offered for sale by the Society of Jesus. Voynich dedicated the remainder of his life to unveiling the mystery of the book’s origin and deciphering its meanings. He died 18 years later, without having wrestled any its secrets from the book.
Continue Reading about this fascnation book.
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CultureLab: Photojournalism tells its prizewinning stories.
Short Sharp Science: Today on New Scientist.
Mummies’ false toes put a spring in amputees’ step .
A sweet tooth predicts success of alcoholism treatment.
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spoof!
It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank, whipping up a batch of vegan brownies, and, like an increasing number of American teenagers, teaching her dog to use an iPad.
The Most Emailed ‘New York Times’ Article Ever
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Change your diet. give these recipes a try…might change your life
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Many strange and unexplained events have taken place in history. Peoplehave made discoveries and witnessed bizarre phenomenon. Many historicalstories have been tainted with legend and falsification. It is interesting tolearn about some of the world’s most bizarre events, people, and locations.This list will be examining people such as Frederick Valentich, theCambodian Jungle Girl, and Gloria Ramirez, and events like the Children’sCrusade and the Dancing Plague of 1518. Be sure to visit my other list of10 Bizarre Locations and Unsolved Mysteries. 10 Bizarre Locations & Unsolved Mysterie
Originally posted 2011-02-14 09:43:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter