• Technology

    UK Government Plans to Monitor Social Networks, Chatrooms, and Online Games

    By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.9.2009 12 Comments

    UK netizens may find their online activities under ever-greater scrutiny in the near future. The UK government has pushed ahead with a proposal to require monitoring of Internet usage, including social networks such as Facebook and conversations within online games. The new UK law would require communication firms to hold records of who contacted whom, rather than the actual contents of online conversation. About £2 billion ($3.34 billion) would go toward compensating the firms for the technical challenge of collecting the data.

    11.9.2009 at 02:59pm - Comment by Polish

    This is so stupid. Since terrorists and criminals know that they are being monitored they will talk as if they are being monitored. They will probably just meet up in person because it would be easier to plan and untraceable. That 3.34 billion dollars could go to help poor countries upgrade their infrastructure. This would probably lower the number of terrorists. They could also use the money to educate criminals so they can have a positive benefit to communities. I am surprised that only 40% is opposed to this. I think that the general public is becoming like cattle. They just do what they are told and do not actually understand the issues. That 60% of the population to me is way more of a threat than terrorists because they are the cause for devolution of society. They care more about feeling safe than actually being safe and are willing to give away they're rights. As Benjamin Franklin said "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" this is true. The only real problem in the world is an incompetent society.

  • Technology

    Robots That Hunt in Packs

    By John Brandon Posted on 11.7.2008 20 Comments

    The Department of Defense has put out a call: design a pack of robots. A so-called Multi-Robot Pursuit System would be used to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject." Each robot has to weigh 100 kilograms or less, act autonomously (with a human squad leader), negotiate obstacles, and provide immediate feedback. The robots would report back to a human operator, and defer to that human when the robot AI determines that a "difficult decision" is required.

    11.5.2008 at 01:21pm - Comment by Polish

    I think that they should design these robots to help out with farming and disaster clean up and other things of this nature with the capability of armed force because then the robots could help the civilians out and still have the capability to take on people that try to remove this help.



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