Consulting
Porn net domain name plan revived
Posted by admin March 9, 2010 Leave a Review
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News
A plan to create an internet domain specifically for adult websites could be resurrected three years after it was rejected by internet regulators.
The net's governing body Icann will reconsider the .xxx scheme on 12 March.
Icann had previously given the domain the go ahead in 2005, but reversed the decision two years later amidst protests from US conservative groups.
An independent review recently concluded that decision was unfair and that the plan should be reconsidered.
Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has now confirmed to BBC News that its board will discuss the plan at its meeting in Nairobi, Kenya and could decide to back the proposals.
"If the contract is signed, we could be selling names by the end of the year," said Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, which put forward the plans for .xxx and would sell the domain names.
'Landmark decision'
The idea for a .xxx domain was first proposed in 2001 and was approved by Icann four years later.
The scheme is intended to create a silo for pornography on the internet.
"Those that do want to see it can; those that don't can filter it out," explained Mr Lawley.
A season of reports from 8-19 March 2010 exploring the extraordinary power of the internet, including:
- Digital giants - top thinkers in the business on the future of the web
- Mapping the internet- a visual representation of the spread of the web over the last 20 years
- Global Voices- the BBC links up with an online community of bloggers around the world
However, in 2007 Icann overturned its original decision amidst a firestorm of protest from conservative groups, predominately in the US, which opposed the plan on moral grounds.
Recently an arbitration panel of retired judges at the International Centre for Dispute Resolution ruled that the plan should be revisited after analysing evidence about the alleged interference.
"Our claim was that Icann came up with a lot of different excuses," said Mr Lawley.
The board concluded that Icann's decision to reject the .xxx plan was "not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy" and should be revisited.
Mr Lawley described it as a "landmark" ruling.
The non-binding decision will now be discussed by Icann on 12 March and a decision will be made whether to reconsider its approach to .xxx.
A spokesperson for Icann said there was "no indication what action the ICANN board will take".
However, it is unlikely to overturn the decision immediately without consulting other members of Icann and the internet community.
The news comes as the sex.com domain, often described as one of the most valuable internet domain names, comes up for auction.
The web address is due to be sold in New York on 18 March with a starting price of $1m (
Filed under: Business, Consulting, Sci/Tech, World Tags: article, bbc, british, Business, Consulting, corporation, decision, domain, extraordinary, global-voices, international, internet, kenya, plans
US school soda deal ‘cuts sugar’
Posted by admin March 9, 2010 Leave a Review
The US soft drinks industry says it has dramatically cut the number of high-calorie soft drinks sold in US schools as part of a drive to tackle obesity.
The American Beverage Association said shipments of full-calorie drinks to schools were down 95%.
Nearly one in three children and teenagers in the US are overweight or obese and health experts say sugary drinks are part of the problem.
Several US states and cities are considering taxing soft drinks.
The reduction in sugary soft drinks in schools formed part of a deal between the major companies and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint initiative of the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation.
Under the voluntary guidelines, in place since 2006, full-calorie soft drinks were removed from school canteens and vending machines. Lighter drinks, including low-fat milk, diet sodas, juices, flavoured waters and teas were promoted in their place.
"There's been a dramatic shift toward lower calorie and more nutritious beverages in schools, it could lay the foundation for broader changes in our society," former US President Bill Clinton told a news conference on Monday.
Soda tax
Independent consulting firm Keybridge Research looked at what changes the guidelines had brought about and found that:
- the total beverage calories shipped to schools between the first half of the 2004-05 school year and the first half of the 2009-10 school year has decreased by 88%
- there had been a dramatic shift toward lower-calorie and higher nutrient beverages in schools, including waters, 100% juices, and portion-controlled sports drinks
- shipment volumes of full-calorie drinks were 95% lower in the first half of the 2009-10 school year compared with the first half of the 2004-05 school year.
The soft drinks industry has been a main target of critics who say the sugary beverages they sell are a key factor in the levels of childhood obesity in the US.
The state of California and the city of Philadelphia have introduced legislation to tax soft drinks, while both the New York Governor David Paterson and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are also pushing for such a tax.
"In these tough economic times, easy fixes to our problems are hard to come by," said Mr Bloomberg at the weekend. "But the soda tax is a fix that just makes sense, it would cut rising health costs."
Susan Neely of the American Beverage Association, which includes major firms like Coca Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper Snapple Group, said such a tax would not solve "a complex problem like obesity".
Filed under: America, Consulting, Health and Fitness, Obesity, Sports Tags: alliance, America, clinton, governor-david, pepsi, philadelphia, president, society
Posted by admin March 9, 2010 Leave a Review
Art is a problem.
Not in the sense that it is a waste of money, often unfathomable and occasionally obscene. It is a problem because of all the things people do it is the activity that cannot be easily explained by consulting their biological urges.
It stands out as a uniquely human activity. No other animal goes to such lengths to produce it, consume it and react to it in the way that people do. That's why it is a problem. And a tricky one at that.
Patrick Tresset and Frederic Fol Leymarie are trying to shed light on it using a system called Aikon that aims to unpick and then copy how an artist works. The artist is Mr Tresset who has almost a decade of practice as a portrait artist to call on.
"We're trying to understand what goes on in the mind of the person performing the act of drawing," said Prof Leymarie.
That understanding, gleaned from watching Mr Tresset at work and drawing on his own insights of how he works, has produced a system that uses a robot arm to sketch faces.
At no point, said Prof Leymarie, was the idea to create photo-realistic reproductions of faces. Instead the roughness of the finished sketches is key.
"It's a cheap robot arm because we are trying to get away from something that's a performance and very well engineered," he said "In part that's because we are trying to capture the different elements and uncertainties that are expected from a human."
One key insight that developing the system has revealed is the difference in the amount of time that artists and non-artists spend looking at a subject when they are drawing.
Non-artists, said Prof Leymarie, spend their time looking at the paper. By contrast, he said, artists look at the subject and trust their hand to do the reproduction.
The collaboration between Mr Tresset and technology has been such that now the robot arm can produce sketches in its own distinctive style.
And, said Prof Leymarie, the collaboration does not end there.
"He can not only use it as a way to explore and understand what he is doing or what other artists are doing," he said. "He can use it as something more powerful.
"It can be used by artists to explore why they end up doing a certain type of art a certain way," he said.
Novel art
Mr Tresset and Prof Leymarie are not alone in using technology to tickle the creativity of artists and others.
At a Digital Expo to show off Goldsmiths College's digital studio, Dan Jones created an installation that helped visitors explore interactive creativity.
It bonded motion capture to a virtual landscape. As a participant moved around the enclosed space, clapped their hands or spoke, the landscape was changed in response.
Mr Jones said the installation was related to the work he is doing to help scientists and artists explore all facets of their creativity.
In a similar way, he said, the creative journey that artists embark on when producing a work is really only one path through the larger landscape of all the things they could create.
"Through a lifetime of practice artists acquire habits and tropes," said Mr Jones. "One way out of that is adopting computational models that supplement their own creative process that can re-shape and re-direct that impulse."
Simulations based around small, smart software programs known as agents can help artists reach those areas of that creative landscape that they would otherwise never visit.
One product of this work is a system that can improvise and jam with musicians.
"What's particularly interesting about it is that it's inherently unpredictable and chaotic," he said. Often it takes musicians to places they have never been before and stretches their ability to improvise, to create.
Mr Jones work is also being applied to the sciences to help a group of researchers tackling leukaemia to understand how stem cells react to the disease. The interaction of visualisation and their deep knowledge of the biology could give them a far greater insight into how that system works.
Dr Mick Grierson, who oversees the work going on at Goldsmiths, said the projects go to the heart of what it means to be a maker, hacker, scientist or artist. And arguably a human. It is all about curiosity, creativity and innovation.
"That's what makes science great, and technology great and art great," he said "It's about playing with ideas.
"You try a few things out and see what happens, then try more and more and you come up with something that is genius," he said.
Only by building it, seeing and shaping it, can they truly understand. Something any and every maker can identify with.
Filed under: Biology, Consulting, Music, Musicians, Sci/Tech, Software Tags: artists, bbc, british, Consulting, digital, landscape, mind, Musicians, robot, technology, things, tresset, work