All posts by Paul Raven

Blog

Offshore abortion boat defies Spanish laws

In a world that is increasingly flattened by technology and transportation, it’s getting harder for nation-states to impose restrictions on their citizens. Spain’s abortion laws are the latest to be challenged by Holland’s “Women on Waves” ship, which anchors in international waters offshore from countries with prohibitive stances on abortion to allow women the right of choice without fear of legal repercussions. [via Pharyngula]

When climate change turns entire nations into refugees and/or migrants, will geography cease to determine which legal system constrains you? Or will the notion of physical territory simply become atomised to the micro-scale, like the turf demarcations of London teenagers?

Blog

Win Wyndham’s five cozy catastrophes

The Midwich Cuckoos - John WyndhamGood news if you’re a fan of classic British sf novels – Penguin Books have just republished five of John Wyndham‘s “cozy catastrophe” books with fresh new artwork, and there’s a competition over at Forbidden Planet where you can get the chance to win them all by answering a ridiculously easy-to-Google question.

The only catch is that you have to sign up for a Forbidden Planet account (if you don’t already have one), but there’s worse outfits to get the occasional email from than a comics and genre fiction specialist, AMIRITE?

Blog

Schneier slams quantum crypto as ‘pointless’

bank vault doorSecurity maven Bruce Schneier (who’s an active science fiction fan, by the way) has a column up at Wired that gives quantum cryptography a vigorous kicking. Evidently he’s been noticing the same stories as myself, because he points out that “headlines like the BBC’s “‘Unbreakable’ encryption unveiled” are a bit much.” O RLY?

The big difference between Schneier and me, though, is that he really knows how this stuff all works… and as such, he’s not seduced by quantum cryptography’s golden promises:

Security is a chain; it’s as strong as the weakest link. Mathematical cryptography, as bad as it sometimes is, is the strongest link in most security chains. Our symmetric and public-key algorithms are pretty good, even though they’re not based on much rigorous mathematical theory. The real problems are elsewhere: computer security, network security, user interface and so on.

Let’s not forget the weakest link of all, either – the users themselves… [image by the anonymous collective]

Blog

Spam-trap Turing tests train smarter software

Email and comment spam is one of those constant low-grade annoyances that simply becomes part of the furniture if you spend a lot of time on the ‘net, as are the CAPTCHA puzzles you have to take to prove you’re a human. [image from Wikimedia Commons]

Signs are that they won’t be much use much longer, though; a UK researcher has been using the ‘twisted letters’ type of CAPTCHA to train his visual recognition algorithms, while a chap at Palo Alto has a program that can correctly identify cats and dogs 83% of the time – which, lets face it, is probably a better success rate than the average YouTube user can manage.

Sadly, training algorithms against Turing test spam-traps is no more likely to produce a recognisably intelligent piece of software than the Loebner Artificial Intelligence Prize is. But maybe one day we’ll be able to combine all the pieces… if they don’t beat us to it and combine themselves, of course. 😉

Blog

Billboards to make advertising more personally touching

I imagine most of you have heard of Body Area Networks by now – the theoretical layer of communications protocols and devices that will surround your person as portable computing devices become more ubiquitous. And I imagine none of you will be surprised to hear that plenty of folk are working on ways to use BAN to advertise to you more effectively.

A South Korean research institution has come up with an idea that is meant to circumvent the perennial problem of the billboard – namely, that a goodly percentage of the people viewing it will have no interest in the product currently being advertised. The solution?

The Korean patent gets around this problem by suggesting that people using a body area network could touch an electronic poster to tune it to their interests. The display would download details about that person’s interests and recent activities, and display a relevant advert. Downloads like detailed product brochures could also be offered.

If you’ve spotted the obvious flaw there, don’t worry, so has New Scientist – and the researchers have, too:

Whether people would want to interact with ads in this way is another matter. To address this, the patent suggests goodies could be offered too – for example special-offer coupons, or even music and films. Billboards in places where people wait for buses or trains would be ideal spots to get people interacting, suggest the team.

Hmm. I might tentatively predict a new sport among the young and anarchic that involves developing a false personal profile that triggers, ah, rather specialist products and services from such devices… [image by numberstumper]