December 2008 - Techbreak

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Techbreak - December 2008

Semantic Web Technology in Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex

December 30th 2008 05:03

After installing Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex earlier this year, I noticed a strange setting lurking in the background...

It was called Nepomuk, and I turned it off, then quickly turned it back on when I read about the project.

"NEPOMUK brings together researchers, industrial software developers, and representative industrial users, to develop a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both the personal information management and the sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations."

Honestly, I didn't understand that blurb, either, so I took a look at the MIT Tech review's article on Nepomuk. They suggest that Nepomuk tries to draw links between different objects on your computer, and across networks.

It's an interesting idea, but how does it work?

"The software generates semantic information by using "crawlers" to go through a computer and annotate as many files as possible. These crawlers look through a user's address book, for example, and search for files related to the people found in there. Nepomuk can then connect a file sent by a particular person with one related to the company that person works for, making Nepomuk a particularly useful way to search a computer, Bernardi says. "

Ah... that's a little creepy, to be honest. Nepomuk sifts through your address book then makes connections with files? It's like the CIA, busting your own bad self, and you voluntarily installed it.

It comes as a default app with KDE 4.2, but I still haven't seen how it could be useful. Why do I want my files to be linked like that? How is it improving my life?

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Posted By: Cibbuano - Category: No Category

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Is the US slipping as the center of the internet?

December 23rd 2008 04:40

The Internet remains one of humanity's great inventions and it was formed primarily in the United States, where the American military sponsored research in a telecommunication network. No one ever imagined that it would see unprecedented growth and beomce such an integral part of our lives.

As the birthplace of the net, the US has held much of the control over the net, adminstering the root servers and acting as a global transtation for global traffic.

According to the Guardian, there's less and less traffic going through the US backbone, which suggests that other countries are handling their own traffic.

"It found that dramatic shifts have led to a decline in America's involvement in overall internet traffic. In 1999, 91% of data from Asia passed through the United States at some point on its journey. By this year that number had fallen to just 54%.

The change was even more pronounced in Africa. Nine years ago the US was involved in 70% of internet traffic coming from the continent, but that number has decreased to just 6% as more can be directed internally, or through Europe and the Middle East."

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing; the forefathers of the net would have watned as much autonomy built into it as possible - routing traffic through other parts of the world is not only efficient, but great for security, as we discovered when undersea cables in the Middle East were severed, cutting off parts of India.

Still,. this seems to be a dangerous portent of the waning influence of the American technology sector, which, for years, has driven innovation and progress.

The article also notes that China has recently overtaken America as the country with the greatest number of people online, which suggests that we miught see a change in the structure of the net, allowing domain names to be written in Chinese, Japanese or other languages.

*this image is from gnome.org

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Facebook used to catch diners that skip out on expensive meal

December 12th 2008 22:49

Ah, these young punks - a young man, his girlfriend and three others sat down at Seagrass restaurant in Melbourne, ordering expensive dishes and fine wines, running up a tab of over $500, only to run out on the bill, leaving the restaurant holding the doggy bag.

The crafty owner rolled up his sleeves and pulled a Sam Spade - he remembered that one of the guests asked for a waitress by name. She told him his name, he facebooked the name and found the cheeky monkey's page.

Then, the confrontation when he found out that the man worked at another restaurant in Melbourne

"Angered that it was workers from his own industry who had perpetrated the scam, he stormed down to the restaurant and confronted the restaurant owner, who promised to deal with the matter. Within hours, the restaurant manager arrived at Seagrass with the ringleader, who not only paid the bill, but left a generous tip for staff."

Later, he found out that the man and his girlfriend had been fired from the restaurant, but news of this was suprisingly omitted from the man's facebook page.

What? No status update?

"xxx is a thief who stole from a restaurant"

"xxx is a worm of a man that thought it'd be fun to run out on a bill"

My guess is that they thought they'd be 'wild' and 'crazy' by pulling a movie-style stunt like this, assuming that they'd never get caught. Of course, in real life, the police don't always get shot before they retire and do, in fact, catch simple-minded criminals.

Obviously, the lesson here is: never use Facebook.

Well, actually, the lesson is that the Internet holds a lot of information about you - watch what you release out there, or you'll get stuck in a position like this:Cool Wand!

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