This entry is in relation to Science Makes Sex Obsolete and will fulfill my 500 word entry for this week.

Have you ever watched Gattaca? The movie takes place in the future where parents have the option of selecting preferred genetic traits in their children. Society is split into two types of people: the genetically engineered, and the natural born. The problem is that the genetically engineered people have a superior place in society, and the natural born are devalued. The main character in the movie has vast capabilities, but he’s disregarded because he was considered physically weak, and expected to die at an early age. Yet, he goes against all odds, and overcomes society’s predestination for him. Although Gattaca is a movie, it reveals some truth that may be possible in the future.

The article addresses some good points about genetic engineering where bad traits such as disease are weeded out. I think taking a preventive approach to curing disease is the best way to stop something harmful from occurring. But regarding genetic material, there seems to be a thin line between preventive and manipulative genetic outcomes. I do not oppose preventing disease or physical dysfunctions, I am concerned about how this option may disturb a "designed" child's natural growth. Parents will be very tempted to give what they perceive is the best future for their offspring. Making a baby could be like suping a vehicle. As long as your have the basic components, you can add, enhance, and remove the parts to please your taste. All parents want the best for their children, but they might confuse their children’s interest with their own interest.

We must not forget that how a child develops is both a process of Nature and Nurture. Just because the genetics have been modified, doesn’t mean the child will be perfect. Perhaps even modifying the genetics will interfere with how the child will be nurtured because there is an expectation that the child will be perfect. This may inadvertently cause parents to become more careless. This may also have a psychological effect on the child, because he/she may perceive himself as being perfect. In Gattaca, one of the supporting characters was genetically engineered to be a perfect specimen. Growing up “perfect” had a deep impact on his expectations and perception of himself. Throughout the movie, you wonder why he is disturbed. It isn't until the end that you realize he became mentally unstable after he won second place in a swimming competition instead of first.

I’ve made quite a few references to a fictional movie, but I can’t help but see that it could become a reality. We must remember too not take good intentions too far and mutating it into something else. There are physical, social, and psychological risks in genetic engineering.

The Lame encoded MP3 is very luring. I for one accepted the lack of quality so that I may enjoy music more often and with easier access and mobility. I understood the words and caught the beat and I was happy with that, but after listening to the difference between Lame encoded music and that of AAC or just MP3 files alone, I don’t know how long it would be until I appreciated the quality of the older versions if ever.

The gaming world has gone a long way as far as graphics and authenticity are concerned. The game “Brothers in Arms” was so realistic and showed off authentic battle scenes from World War II.

Old Rips: May They Rest in Peace - Members of the Napster generation, who blissfully piled up free tunes while they could, are realizing that the quality of low-bitrate MP3s sucks. Part one of a three-part series. By Dan Goodin. Plus: The Digital Audiophile's Toolbox [Movies & Music]

Finally a breakthrough with mp3s has come about us. An expert team of programmers of computer science and mathematics has been rigorously working on a new compression method called "lame."

Worker Privacy: You Have None - The vast majority of U.S. employers monitor workers' internet use, a practice that goes almost completely unregulated. Here's a look at your privacy rights in the workplace. By Joanna Glasner. [Security Blanket]

According to another recent publication in Wired Online Magazine, there is an upcoming debate on the rights of businesses to track the internet and e-mail activities of their employers, whether or not they are “on the clock.” Many times, the employee may not even be aware that supervisors are reading their personal e-mails and monitoring their websurfing. In fact, only two states require that employees be notified if their actions are being tracked.

The idea that someone can be tracked by their employers without knowledge brings back another familiar question: where does the line of privacy end? When the national government is looking to investigate people that are a threat to national security, they are able to track their activities online and else where, but defense of the tracking is for the purpose of an accurate investigation. When someone is being tracked by their employers, and possibly fired for their actions while online, does this infringe on the privacy rights of the employee?

In my opinion, no. If an employee tries to avoid work or procrastinate, surf the web, e-mail friends while not completing their necessary duties at work, they should be fired. With the development of technologies to allow “play time” at work, there should be a certain amount of surveillance to prevent such actions. With modern computers and PDAs with interactive games, an employee can appear to be intently working on a project on their computer while actually shopping for socks online. The idea seems great to employees who don’t want to work, but for the company, there is a possibility of a huge drop in productivity if their employees spend hours surfing the web instead of working. If a company hires someone to fill a certain position or job, pays them for that job, and grants them access to the internet to complete that job, they should be held accountable for completing it to the best of their capacity.

I agree that companies should have the right to monitor the actions of their employees online – but only while the employee is on company time. If for some reason, the employee has to take work home and access certain company intranets or use company laptops, they should not be monitored. At that point, there is a certain amount of privacy that should be granted. Once the employee leaves company time or location, they are on their own personal time that they may or may not use as time to catch up on work. If they do choose to access work data off time, they should not be tracked and should not face consequences for personal use of computers, etc.

On the same principal, an employee should be allowed to blog or chat about their company freely while not on company time. While it may not be a wise decision to speak poorly about your company in any public forum, there is a certain amount of freedom of speech that should be considered. However, once again these blogs should not be posted while on company time.

(In response to “Science Makes Sex Obsolete”)

Out of all the different sections in this article, such as “Designer Babies” and “Ovarian Transplant”, the section “Manufactured Eggs and Sperm” captured my attention the most, particularly the prospect of homosexual men being able to have babies with genetic make-up from both men. For mammals, nature’s rules indicate that a female’s egg and a male’s sperm fuse together and exchange genetic material to eventually create an embryo, which grows into an individual. Dr. Gianpiero Palermo of Cornell University announced in 2001 that he and his team had used cloning techniques to create artificial haploid eggs. Regular cells have two sets of chromosomes, or are diploid. In order to receive a sperm’s chromosomes, the cell must go through haploidization, where half a cell’s chromosomes are ejected. The team of scientists removed the nucleus of a donor eggs and inserted an adult body cell, which fused to the egg. Once fusion occurred, the egg was fertilized with sperm. Although “fifty-two percent of the reconstituted eggs fertilized normally”, others did not develop as they should have. To fix this, the team inserting embryonic stem cells into the donor eggs instead of inserting the adult body cells. By doing this, the haploidization of the cells occurred and became sperm, creating embryos. Now imagine this process being used for gay men to make their very own babies; one man’s cell could be turned into an egg, which can then be fertilized by his partner’s sperm. The four main ways gay men can have children is through adoption, co-parenting, donor insemination, and surrogacy. It seems as if men will be able to have babies of their own (not that the babies obtained in the above mentioned ways were not the men’s) with both partner’s genes. Although this issue will undoubtedly be a controversial one and a much-heated topic, allowing homosexuals to create offspring is a beautiful thing (life in itself is beautiful), and I would very much give my support. I understand that there are thousands of children up for adoption in which homosexuals in relationships could adopt, but I think homosexuals should truly consider their options, especially if science makes it possible for them to have their genetically made babies.

RFID (radio frequency identification) tags have stirred up quite a bit of controversy and debate. RFID tags are small wireless devices that emit unique identifiers when requested by RFID readers or sensors. Both the government and the private sector are supporting the use of RFID tags for many purposes, from government identification cards to consumer products. The controversy over the proposal to embed RFID chips into United States passports is mainly heated by concerns over privacy and security. Privacy advocates were concerned that passports would reveal a person’s identity without their knowledge or consent. These concerns were applied to other realms such as police surveillance and the ability of stores to identify their customers. In response to the overwhelming amount of negative feedback by the public, the State Department issued new regulations for the RFID passports.

These new regulations contain two features that address the concerns over privacy and security. Criticism and disruption are key aspects to innovation and progress. The government properly accepted this criticism and worked to improve the situation by including a radio shield in the cover of passports, as well as an access control feature, so the passport holder has control over who access the information on the chip. The only feature that the passports lack is a “collision-avoidance system not based on unique serial numbers.” It is important that the criticism continues so that this lack of technical skill illustrated in the collision-avoidance ID can be improved upon. As Schneier says, “The only way to vet its design, and convince us that RFID is necessary, would be to open it up to public scrutiny.”

It is extremely important for these RFID systems to be secure because they will most definitely become increasingly common. Technology only improves, so the increased use of RFID chips and tracking devices is inevitable. Currently, RFID tags are still expensive so they aren’t widely used in consumer products. However, as companies strive for more sophisticated means of tracking products and profiling consumers, the increased demand and production of RFID technologies will decrease prices. The market for RFID tags is rapidly developing, estimated to reach $10 billion annually within the decade. Of course, there should be proper legislation which guarantees that consumers be informed of products with these tracking chips before they buy them.

The use of RFID tags in consumer products may seem alarming, but it would have beneficial aspects and would probably be much more efficient. Manufacturers prefer RFID because the technology offers more convenience and durability than bar codes, and holds more useful information. Businesses using RFID tags claim no interest in gathering information on consumers; they simply want to use the devices to increase efficiency and reduce data entry. RFID tags could be manufactured so that they are eradicated once they leave a store. And without access to a store database that connects the data to a person, it would be hard for law enforcement to obtain personal information about someone based on RFID tags embedded in consumer products. Through proper legislation, privacy could be ensured. Again, this vision of chips embedded into many various things that we use every day may sound alarming, but it is already happening, so there is no stopping it. All we can do is continue to scrutinize its faults, so that it can be improved and used to our benefit and not harm.

Face It: Privacy Is Endangered - A new photo-tagging service uses facial-recognition technology to identify the people in your party pix. When similar systems start crawling the web, we'll all be looking for a change of face. Commentary by Jennifer Granick. [Security Blanket]

With the privacy concerns that is already started to become prevalent as it is easier and easier to find everything about a person online, including their birth certificate (vitalchek.com), credit history (equifax.com), and even background checks that’ll tell stuff like addresses, property ownership, legal judgments, etc. (intelius.com), and of course whatever other random facts you could find on google. This is already bad enough, but now there is this new threat on our already near-extinct notion of having any privacy.

It comes in the form of a new technology that can recognize faces in pictures. This is first being used on a photo-sharing site called Riya, but it can be easily deployed throughout the Internet. So even if you have been careful to keep information about yourself from being easily accessible online, such as not joining facebook.com or keeping your blog anonymous if you have one, you would end up online anyways if people took pictures with you in it, and upload the pictures online. Even if you don’t upload pictures of yourself online it might end up there anyways because of camera-happy friends and acquaintances. So in the future it might be possible to know what a person looks like just by simply googling for them. You would also know who they hang out with, and what places they have been. It is intimate details like this that I don’t what to be spread all around the Internet, and makes me fear about the future of privacy.

Some people might say that this technology would be good for law enforcement, allowing computers to sort through images captured on the cameras that’s becoming increasing ubiquitous over the years, and identify criminals and terrorists. This couldn’t have been possible before because its simply too time consuming for humans to look through that many images and video feeds. But even if the technology is 99 percent perfect at identifying someone, this will still cause thousands of false positives, and greatly inconvenience both citizens and law enforcement. Somehow I am just not satisfied with trading away my personal rights of privacy, just to be a little safer from criminals. With the way things are going now, privacy, as we know it, may not even exist in the near future.

Wanting to have your personal information private isn’t the only reason to be concerned about privacy. If you have too much information online it makes that much easier for people to use that data to masquerade as you to apply for credit cards under your name, withdraw money from your checking account, get a loan using your name, etc. Then they would spend all the money and leave you with a whole bunch of bad credit under your name. This crime, called identity thief, has become the fastest growing crime in the United States. People that have this happen to them often need to spend considerable time and money to clean up the mess, to get their credit rating back to the right place.

(In response to "Science Makes Sex Obsolete". Also fulfills the 500-word requirement.)

Lisa and Jack Nash were both carriers of a gene mutation that resulted their first daughter, Molly, to be born with a rare and fatal genetic disorder called Fanconi Anemia. In order to continue living, Molly needed a bone marrow transplant but it was impossible for the Nash's to find a match.

(In response to “Printing Organs on Demand”)

“Wow!” This one word basically sums up all my thoughts about the organ printing issue introduced to be in the article. I had no clue there was a research group funded by the National Science Foundation (amongst others) that grew organs. Of course, this research is still in its preliminary stages. Tissue engineering technology has been around and promises to solve the organ transplantation crisis, but the assembly of vascularized 3D soft organs remains a big challenge…until now. Growing organs and other tissue using the previous tissue engineering technology seemed to scientists to be taking to long; organ printing is computer-aided, jet-based 3D Tissue Engineering of living human organs and offers a possible solution to the slow growing organs by enabling rapid assembling of tissues and organs. Organ printing involves three sequential steps: pre-processing or development of ‘blueprints’ for organs; processing or actual organ printing; and post-processing or organ conditioning and accelerated organ maturation. Although, organ printing is still in its infancy, its prospects look good in solving the organ transplantation crisis. But how far will this go? The idea of printing organs, creating organs, seems to be a controversial one. If tissue can be grown, if organs can be grown, what else is can be grown? Could brains eventually be grown? If so, how soon or later will the technology be capable of growing man? Growing man (or woman) is a scary concept, but we can’t throw the possibility of it from happening completely out the window; at least, not with the ever-advancing technologies. To bring up another idea, if organ printing does work, could foods such as meats like steak cuts, eventually be printed?

The Rembrandt Code - Identifying true old masters - and spotting the fakes - is a rarefied art. By Bijal P. Trivedi. [Wired]

I came across this article on Wired discussing a new high-technology method for identifying paintings which are the authentic works of Rembrandt van Rijn and which are products of his students or even outright reproductions. Though this technology is being applied to a low-tech medium, I think this quest for authenticity has bearing on many issues facing digital media products.

Machinima Marches Toward Amusing - A film festival hits New York City this weekend, but do you really want to go? Machinima -- making movies from games -- has been long on hype and short on watchability, but that's starting to change. By Jason Silverman. [Joystick]

Recently, I found myself taking interest in independent film production. The latest medium of production takes a most unlikely form, and a production process more “weirdly democratic” than anything I have ever seen. Have I finally put down the joystick in exchange for a more socially-accepted, culturally-rooted medium of entertainment? Not a chance. In fact, the joystick itself is what led me to this wonderful new form of animation. The “machinima” movement in independent film production involves the use of video-gaming systems as the tool for creating animated movies. Rather than trying to achieve the goals of the game, the player uses the characters and the game enviorment to play out premeditated scenarios. The game play is recorded to a digital video format, and then voiceovers are then added – consistent with the physical actions of each character – to provide for the audio portion of the animation. Fellow WIRED columnist Jason Silverman’s recently wrote an article on the enormous growth of the movement – in production and popularity – since it first took shape in the early 90s. Silverman’s article promotes the idea that machinima is “finally growing up,” in that it’s evolving from “self-indulgent, sophomoric” animated clips into “more sophisticated, nuanced storytelling.” To develop his case, Silverman notes the establishment of the “Machinima Film Festival” and the “Mackies,” held at the Museum of Moving Pictures in Queens early last month. I actually wrote a piece for the New York Times a few months back, so naturally I was curious what Silverman had to say. When I come across an article pertaining to a subject I’ve recently had published, I tend to critique the writing and writer’s central ideas to get a better sense of the quality of my own work. This is especially true when the article is written by a co-worker and friend!! Anyways, Silverman mentions Tom Palmer’s “Bot,” a machinima film developed using the first-person shoot RPG titled “Unreal Tournament.” While the intended plot of the game entails a mecha warrior’s *violent* struggle for victory, Palmer directs the avatar toward the opposite direction to “craft the story of a warrior who forsakes violence and embarks on an existential quest.” This is a classic example of machinima general tendency to lead the game’s characters in the direction opposite that of the intended goals. This is the beauty and creativity of machinima. The gamer, who normally interacts with an action game on a ludological level - as intended – shifts their attention to the game’s narrative and symbolic elements. The gamer isn’t playing the game, but rather “altering” the narrative into an entirely different context. It’s a transformation from game play with accordance to physics, where one strives the reach the goals of the avatar based on ability, to playing for the sake of creation. Another best-picture nominee, Freidrich Kirschner used the same game to create “The Journey.” Very different from Palmer’s “Bot,” Kirschner instead focused on the game’s visual-style in order to create what Silverman describes as a “museum-ready piece of art animation, with shadowy, Giocometti-like figures floating through a Dali-esque landscape.” By creating film from the given elements of a video game, machinima’s ability to transform violence into art widens the spectrum of emotional impact that a game exerts on a gamer. Played in accordance to physics, it’s all just vectors and motion; the cognitive and emotional content of the game revolves around achieving ones goals in a fun, fast-paced environment. By ignoring the intended physical goals of a game in favor of the narrative and symbolic features, the degree of emotional impact changes. Unlike static media, video games attempt to create a sense of play, engineering a “new breed” of emotion that movies and novels cannot provide. Machinima transforms a game more into the likes of more traditional static media, such as movies, novels, music, etc. In “Videogames: The Impact of Emotion,” market researcher Huge Bowen conducted a poll of gamers on the emotional impact of video games; all agreed that movies, novels, and music, all had greater emotional impact than video games, respectively. By shifting games to a static medium, the potential emotional impact is increased, as are the nature of these emotions.

The controversial aspect of machinima, which Silverman details in the latter half of his article, relates to copyright infringement resulting from releasing a machinima work to the public without the consent of the game’s manufacturer. He notes that “as the films become commercially viable, machinima filmmakers are going to butt up against copyright laws.” While there has been much hype in the media lately about how advances in technology have increased copyright infringement and piracy, game makers have shown very little resistance to the machinima movement. Thus far, these companies overlook the notion copyright infringement, finding value in the machinima movement as means of gaining free publicity. Many game makers have even embraced upon the idea, some even incorporating machinima capabilities within the games provided set of tools. Among them are Valve Software’s “Half-Life 2,” and Electronic Arts’ “Sims 2”. Electronic Art’s was so intrigued by the concept that they hired my buddies over at “Rooster Teeth Productions” – the creators of the Red vs. Blue (Halo) series – to create a reality-TV parody called “The Strangehood,” using the Sims 2 gaming environment. While the concept of promotional machinima was a revolutionary, it didn’t take off like the Red vs. Blue series did. Why? According to Rooster Teeth founders Michael Burns and Matt Hullum, (not “Matt Mullen” – an apparent typo in Silverman’s article) attributed the relative failure of The Strangehood to difficulty controlling the Sims 2 characters with ease and precision, at least in respect to that allowed in Halo. The ability to produce machinima does depend significantly on the game, and the extent of control the player has over the avatar(s). As mentioned in Silverman’s article, graphic designer Friedrich Kirschner chose the RPG “Unreal Tournament” to produce “The Journey” specifically because the game allowed for the creative control that Kirschner desired. While Microsoft has not yet incorporated recording abilities into Halo, its programmers did add a command to the latest version that allows the player to lower their weapon to prevent “accidental shooting,” making it easier for the production of machinima in the Halo environment.

While I can only hope that the machinima movement continues to grow without any obstruction, I fear that copyright laws will eventually become an obstacle for machinima producers. Eventually, just as the “Grand Theft Auto” sex-scene cheat created great controversy, someone will likely cross the line, and abuse the creative control that machinima allows. As far as these laws go, and any other attempts at digital rights management, I feel that any laws implemented to prevent us from being able to sort and mix the vast, ever-expanding digital world around us is just plain ridiculous, as this ability had created a new, super cool way of thinking, necessary in today’s world of rapid technological growth.

“Fuel Up with Banana Peels,” is an article that contains a lot of wasteful product with great information. Considering our place in time and the limit of resources we have now, this article is not promoting such a bad idea. Now, it is not saying to throw banana peels into your gas tank. The idea that researchers have shown in a single step is that they can take pulverized coal or any other product that contains carbon and directly transform the fuels chemical energy into electricity by electrochemically oxidizing the carbon. The byproduct of this is carbon dioxide. Not to worry, it is emitted in such a pure form that it is easy to contain. There are many other products that contain carbon, including: banana peels, human waste, coal, coffee grounds and much more. Think of all the stuff that could produce energy for the world. There is so much human waste we could light up the whole world for years!! Obviously products for this new energy option are also very easy to find. We would finally have a place for all of the carbon based trash to go. There would not be a problem with burning trash or city dumps. Many problems would be solved. This new technology can help reduce the dependence on foreign oil as well. There are of course problems with this idea. The process is only seventy percent effective and it is very costly. Carbon fuel cells cost a lot. Plus, if it is so expensive it will be hard to find people who are going to want to switch to the new technology if the traditional energy is still working just fine. The only way that they will switch is if we finally run out of resources and they have too. Like stated in the article, it might take a decade for a carbon fuel system to pay for itself, which is probably longer that most users are willing to wait.
I believe that this technology like any technology is a great idea. The scientists are trying to find alternate ways to fuel the world are doing a great job. People are going to have to start realizing that we are running out of resources. Yes, there are down sides to the fact that it is expensive and I do not want to pay for it myself. And probably won’t have too. The financially stable will be the ones to try it out and see for them selves. Not the Imaginary goods seller. The poor will not be able to afford the new inventions, technologies and alternate ways of living. So what about them? What do they do? How do they survive? As researchers continue to research and explore new ways to keep this world surviving I am confident they will figure out something, even if it means using our own human waste to fuel our cars and light up our houses.
http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,69713,00.html?tw=rss.PLANET

Pick up the custom guitar controller and live out your rock-star fantasies -- no matter whether you prefer Ozzy, Queen or Clapton. Game review by Chris Kohler.

Sun Powers Loon-y Pontoon Boat - A new, eco-friendly powerboat costs pennies to run and doesn't pollute. But will America's giant powerboat industry climb on board? By Stephen Leahy. [Planet Earth]

I applaud the Gisborne family for their efforts to help minimize the pollution in this world. Monte Gisborne is a man who actually cares about the future of this planet. Gisborne has made an entirely solar-electric pontoon boat which he plans to build and distribute. The Loon is a twenty foot, twin hull party boat, designed to be a leisure cruiser instead of a speed boat. When the sun is out the boat is powered by a 738-watt solar panel and when the clouds are out it is powered by several batteries. After a recent 100 mile cruise, Gisborne was glad to say that the cost of fuel was zero along with the amount of pollution his creation had released into the environment.
It is true that most people, who buy boats, buy them to go fast, but some people do not care about the speed as much as having a good time out on the water. This is the crowd Gisborne plans to market towards, the 50 and older crowd. He hopes the people who want to spend time with the family out on the lake one weekend will choose his pontoon party boat over a loud, expensive, gas guzzling power boat. Gisborne not only has converted this pontoon boat from a gas powered vehicle to a solar electric but in the winter time you can find him riding his electric snow mobile, and in the summer he rides his electric lawn tractor. Gisborne is a man with his sights on the future, and is actually doing something about it. With the rising prices of fuel and rising pollution people will soon have no choice but turn to alternate sources of energy. These people will turn to Monte Gisborne for this solution.
Boaters do not believe Gisborne will have much success with his pontoon boat due to people’s “need for speed.” With over 220,000 power boats sold each year in America, people do not care for a boat that has a top speed of about 9 miles per hour. The problem with trying to revolutionize the boating industry is people who buy boats are typically higher income families. A person who is willing to spend half a million dollars on a 45 foot power boat is not going to care how much gas costs go up, they are going to continue to buy their power boats and continue to pollute. This brings me back to the idea that the people who could have the most affect on reducing pollution do not care to do anything about it. The rich are the people who could reduce pollution the most. They have the resources to help engineer newer, cleaner forms of energy but choose not to. They also are part of the population that pollutes the most with their power boats and other large vehicles. If the higher income group of America gave up some of their unnecessary power and invest some money in people like Gisborne to help build more efficient vehicles such as the Loon, the future for this planet would be a lot brighter. People need to stop being selfish and start caring a little about the environment they live in.

Judges Reject Cell-Phone Tracking - Law enforcement's attempts to keep tabs on suspects by following their mobile-phone signals face scattered resistance in court. Could this be the start of a judicial backlash? By Ryan Singel. [Security Blanket]

How much government accessibility into our lives is too much? Currently, litigation is taking place to allow federal investigators to track citizens using their cell phones, “in real time,” without agents having to show “probable cause.” Normally, investigators need to show probable cause to a judge if the tracking device they are using discloses facts pertaining to private places. This new law would change all that. Two cases, one near where I live, in Long Island and another in my home state of Texas have been launched regarding the use of cell phones as tracking devices.

Luckily, for the third time in recent months, Wired Magazine article reports, another federal judge has been hesitant at granting federal agents such open access to tracking. Basically, judges have concluded that as with normal searching or tracking of any suspect or citizen, investigators utilizing cell phones as tracking devices must “jump through the same hoops,” that are required for getting a regular search warrant. Countering the decision, assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Brown stated that “a cell phone user voluntarily transmits a signal to the cell phone company, and thereby ‘assumes the risk’ that the cell phone provider will reveal to law enforcement the cell-site information.” Personally, I think that while this is true, it does not make it acceptable for law enforcement to begin tracking individuals with reckless abandon, which is what they seem to want to do. As the laws stand right now, when investigators utilize cell phone towers as a means of tracking individuals, they are only given an approximation of a user’s location and movements in public areas. More often than not, this is perfectly sufficient and investigators are able to get all the information they need. Increasing the access would open up a whole new era of government surveillance reminiscent of Orwell’s “1984.”

Also, according to the article, investigators would like not only to be able to track individuals without seeking search warrants, but they are also petitioning to be able to retrieve the “dialing information of incoming and outgoing calls.” The magistrate in the Long Island case, James Orenstein, wrote in his decision, “"When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause." To me, this sums it all up perfectly. It’s about privacy and our right as Americans to enjoy it. In the information and digital age, it seems more and more difficult to maintain the high levels of privacy we once enjoyed. Now people can “google” us and find out our entire history. Hackers can get into our computer systems to find out all our personal information, and now investigators are trying to extended and push their already far-reaching limits, to gain information on people’s lives without having to ask first. It’s really as simple as that. How much privacy do we really have? The judiciary is becoming more and more invasive by the year. Do you feel like Big Brother is watching you?

Film fans can expect more advertising on big screen - Ad forecasters at ZenithOptimedia said on Monday that spending on in-theater ads, usually shown before the trailers, rose by 18% this year to $400 million — and likely will go up by about 15% each year through 2008. By Laura Petrecca and David Lieberman. [Movies & Music]

The three biggest movie theatre companies in the US, Regal, AMC, and Cinemark, have all decided to use cineMedia as their primary outlet for advertising during movies.

HACKING THE HYBRID VEHICLE

Yet another answer to the high gas prices is the hybrid car (ex: CalCars, EDrive); an automobile that can alternate between battery charged-electricity and fuel. The creation of an alternate plug-in vehicle is not new news, as it was created and rejected by consumers in the past. As mentioned with the high gas prices, hybrid technology is stepping up to the market plate with confidence that their products will hit home with consumers. The production of new hybrid prototypes will be created within the next year! The future for these batteries does not look very bright, however, due to the risk involved with selling them and the lack of interest in a new way of replenishing the fuel for a car.

One reason why hybrid cars won’t take off in the marketplace is because distributors will not trust the potential for an already failed experiment. Even though gas prices are high, financiers will always keep in mind that consumers are usually very stubborn in changing to a new device. Prices are bad for gas, but not bad enough to hinder drivers from changing their views on transportation and riding a bike or taking the bus for work; the number of “on-the-road” drivers has almost been unaffected by the increase in gas! The testing for the vehicles have made the experts a tad sketchy with the practicality of the vehicles as well. Perry Carter, an associate professor at BYU who witnessed the tests, explains the impracticality of the battery type for the hybrid (the ultracapictor), “the drag racer used $22,000 worth of ultra capacitors for a 14-second run on a track." Apparently, the hybrid will save customers money but only under certain conditions concerning the endurance of the trip and the speed desired. Consistent, simple car drives with the hybrid will save money with customers who had used gasoline, but other driving scenarios may change the price comparison.

Not only do hybrid batteries have a bad reputation for failing in the market, but people seem to prefer burning fuel over recharging fuel; the idea of recharging a car battery every night does not sound appealing to a lot of customers. As lazy as it sounds, the use of ultracapacitors seems like too much of a mental hassle for the typical customer. In my opinion, this battery reminds me of some of the wind-up cars that motorists would have to use. Even if batteries become popular, they might become a small fad to that of 3-D glasses and people will move onto a cheaper fuel-type (whenever that comes around). Once more efficient, aesthetic, fuels are developed and marketed, people will return to a more familiar engine-charging type.

Although the hybrid car seems dissatisfying to potential consumers and financiers, I do believe that the hybrid battery does have a promising life with truckers (18-wheelers and cross-country shipping vehicles). These motorists do not have much time for pleasure cruising, and the battery suits their automobile needs: they’ll be driving for weeks and then take long breaks (a good schedule for a 5-week, rechargeable, battery). This will also benefit the truckers financially (whether or not the cash for gas comes directly from their paychecks), because they will not have to rely on the VERY expensive diesel fuel at the gas station.

Thinking Outside the Box Office - Director Steven Soderbergh talks about the copyright cops, the remixing underground, and why he'll debut his new movie on DVD, cable, and in theaters all at once. By Xeni Jardin. [Movies & Music]

In a recent interview with film director Steven Soderbergh, Wired collected his thoughts on piracy, copyrights and the release plan for his new film. Sodebergh shared a common frustration with restrictive copyright laws when asked whether manufacturers should be forced to build copy protection mechanisms into their devices (DRM). Soderbergh replied, "It's a tricky question. I don't think somebody who creates something should have their rights violated. Yet we have a culture in which creating something like [Danger Mouse's] The Grey Album can get you thrown in jail. That's sad. It's an astonishing, amazing piece of work that should be heard."

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