The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.

McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.

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There is no cyberwar and we are not losing it. The only war going on is one for the soul of the internet. But if journalists, bloggers and the security industry continue to let self-interested exaggerators dominate our nation’s discourse about online security, we will lose that war — and the open internet will be its biggest casualty.

Wired

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. — Ernest Benn

Introduction

Dans cet essai, nous discuterons de la convergence du numérique vers les téléphones intelligents. Nous commencerons par présenter cette technologie, puis nous expliquerons les liens entre celle-ci et le monde des communications publiques. Par la suite, nous critiquerons la situation avec le regard du public. Nous conclurons ce document en nous questionnant sur ce que nous réserve le futur.

Un téléphone intelligent?

Personne n’arrive à préciser exactement de quoi il s’agit quand on parle de téléphones intelligents. Le marché est très récent et le vocabulaire de vente tente de transformer tous les téléphones cellulaires en machine intelligente. Encore là, le terme « Smartphone » reste un « buzzword » de marketing plutôt qu’une classe particulière d’appareil. (more…)

1. Nodar Kumaritashvili crash at the Vancouver’s Olympics.

A horrific crash during training for the Olympic luge competition, which is scheduled to begin Saturday, killed Georgian athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili.

The 21-year-old was thrown from the track and smashed his head on a metal pole at the Whistler Olympic Park.

Officials immediately closed the controversial track, which is known for its high speeds that often reach 150 kilometres per hour. The rest of the training session was cancelled.

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2. The crash is available all over the world in high definition.

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3. Wikipedia is updated.

Nodar Kumaritashvili (Georgian: ნოდარ ქუმარიტაშვილი; November 25, 1988 – February 12, 2010) was a Georgian luger who had competed since 2008. He finished 55th in the 2008–09 Luge World Cup. Kumaritishvili suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics competition. He was the fourth athlete to die during the Winter Olympics, after British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, skier Ross Milne (both Innsbruck 1964) and speed skater Nicolas Bochatay (Albertville 1992).

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4. Jokes of a curious taste appear.

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All within the same hour.

EDIT: It happened twice today, Huntsville’s University shooting follows the same pattern.

Qu’est-ce que le déterminisme technologique?

Le déterminisme technologique (DT) est une théorie sociale réductionniste. Le réductionnisme étudie les systèmes complexes en les réduisant à des éléments simples et à leurs interactions, dans le cas présent la technologie et son influence. Il  considère la technologie comme moteur principal du développement de la structure sociale et des valeurs (Huster, 2000). Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), un sociologue américain, serait le premier à avoir utilisé ces termes.

Deux idées principales forment cette pensée:

Le développement technologique suit une voie prévisible en dehors de l’influence culturelle ou politique. Il s’influence lui-même. La technologie est considérée comme étant la base de toute activité humaine.
Le développement technologique affecte la société.  Elle s’articule autour de la technologie et de ses possibilités. Le progrès social est une conséquence de l’innovation technologique qui avance de façon inévitable.

Les interactions entre la technologie et la société ressemblent à la question classique : « Est-ce l’œuf ou la poule qui est apparu en premier? »

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La Presse diffuse du contenu digne d’un statut Facebook et on peut obtenir une couverture politique de grande qualité sur un blog. Le professionnalisme ne se définit plus par les diplômes ou l’institution. Le fossé est rempli.

Bonne chance à ceux qui espèrent que le passé des médias traditionnels sera utile encore longtemps.

Being a french quebecer today’s the first time that i read about Black Friday, the “SHOPPING SPREE TIME” call so popular in America. Coverage of the event in incredible, just look at sites like blackfriday.info, it has a 3-days lifetime each year! That’s specialization at its best. This “holiday” presence in Canada so far seems small, with big chains doing sales without talking a lot about it or completely forgetting the Black Friday appellation.

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Why is this even so absent in Canada? Yeah i know, Thanksgiving here doesn’t have the same importance so another “holiday” linked to it has less chance of creating a buzz. Still, with publicity and logistic prepared for almost 75% of the continental market, it would be pretty cheap to extent coverage to Canada. At least, it’s worth trying.

29/11/2009 Update, interesting articles about Black Friday

• Recession doesn’t seem to have that much of an impact on sales
• E-commerce still getting bigger and bigger

by Isaac Asimov

Jehan Shuman was used to dealing with the men in authority on long-embattled earth. He was only a civilian but he originated programming patterns that resulted in self-directing war computers of the highest sort. Generals, consequently listened to him. Heads of congressional committees too.

There was one of each in the special lounge of New Pentagon. General Weider was space-burned and had a small mouth puckered almost into a cipher. He smoked Denebian tobacco with the air of one whose patriotism was so notorious, he could be allowed such liberties.

Shuman, tall, distinguished, and Programmer-first-class, faced them fearlessly.

He said, “This, gentlemen, is Myron Aub.”

“The one with the unusual gift that you discovered quite by accident,” said Congressman Brant placidly. “Ah.” He inspected the little man with the egg-bald head with amiable curiosity.

The little man, in return, twisted the fingers of his hands anxiously. He had never been near such great men before. He was only an aging low-grade technician who had long ago failed all tests designed to smoke out the gifted ones among mankind and had settled into the rut of unskilled labor. There was just this hobby of his that the great Programmer had found out about and was now making such a frightening fuss over.

General Weider said, “I find this atmosphere of mystery childish.”

(more…)

It’s a Free Country, so why can’t I pick the technology I use in the office?

At the office, you’ve got a sluggish computer running aging software, and the email system routinely badgers you to delete messages after you blow through the storage limits set by your IT department. Searching your company’s internal Web site feels like being teleported back to the pre-Google era of irrelevant search results.

At home, though, you zip into the 21st century. You’ve got a slick, late-model computer and an email account with seemingly inexhaustible storage space. And while Web search engines don’t always figure out exactly what you’re looking for, they’re practically clairvoyant compared with your company intranet.

This is the double life many people lead: yesterday’s technology for work, today’s technology for everything else. The past decade has brought awesome innovations to the marketplace—Internet search, the iPhone, Twitter and so on—but consumers, not companies, embrace them first and with the most gusto.

So true! Even Universities are on the “party like it’s 1999″ bandwagon. University Laval’s Capsule seems straight out of a geocities user experience manual. Teluq (a campusless university), who should be a leader in using to internet as an education tool, is more up to date with A(H1N1) than communication technologies.