Topics: Interesting Tech, The Networked World, Cultures, Education, Mobiles

Nipan Maniar, an academic at the  University of Portsmouth and a games technology expert has devised a mobile phone game to help international students with culture shock. The "C-Shock" game is expected to be avialable for download on the University's Web site later this year.

"C-Shock"challenges the player to reduce the game's international student character's culture shock from 100 to zero. To do this, the player has to complete various tasks on the virtual campus, each task will present a scene, such as public displays of affection, that might be culturally jarring.

For foreign students coming to the UK. the sight of women smoking, drinking and being friendly with the opposite sex can be jarring. But things less obvious to Britons and Americans, like the informality of teacher-student interactions can take a while for adjustment.

Mr. Maniar, himself, knows about culture shock. He arrived in the UK from India five years ago as an international student. Now, he hopes the game will serve as an act as an “e-mother” or “mobile mummy” for new students.

See also the BBC News report on the game.

I believe this type of software will be a help for many students by giving a chance to "process" reactions to various cultural differences in a neutral setting. Much better than having an in-person awkwardness or shock trying to figure out what's going on.

There is a potential, however, for an unintended negative use of such software. Some people railing against the Western ways may use the scenes as exhibits of Western "waywardness and depravity". But, given the popular culture exports of the West, "C-Shock" would be quite tame.

Topics: Privacy & Liberties, Security & Insecurity, Insights, Law, US Bill of Rights, Searches, Police. Privurity

Prof. Orin Kerr recently had an interesting posting on Virtual Analogies, Physical Searches, and the Fourth Amendment at the Volokh Conspiracy blog. He discusses a US court case, United States v. Andrus [pdf], and the implications of the way courts handle the "clash between virtual analogies and physical facts". I won't repeat the issues with the particular case here. I am more fascinated with the broader issues of the "clash".

Prof Kerr explains,

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Most users think of computer searches as occuring at the virtual level, because that's the user experience. But computer forensic software works at the physical level: it treats the hard drive as a physical device that contains millions of zeros and one, not as a virtual "box" of information accessed through an operating system. User profiles and most password protection operate only at a virtual level, so a government forensic analyst operating at a physical level wouldn't even notice the difference unless he was specifically looking for it.

Why does it matter? Well, it matters because the answer to the legal question seems to hinge on whether you apply the Fourth Amendment from a virtual perspective or a physical perspective.
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By the way, Prof. Kerr had explored some of these issues in a 2005 Harvard Law Review paper on Searches and Seizure in a Digital World [pdf].

I found Prof. Kerr's blog entry's closing questions quite notable in an era where courts and other institutions are dealing with science and technology:

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How do you measure the reasonableness of a belief when understandings of what computers are and how they work are so different among typical users and forensic analysts? Should the law follow the understandings of the experts who understand the technology or the general users who don't?
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Good questions! I keep picturing some of the Dilbert and User Friendly comic strips depiction of techies dealing with clueless people. Unfortunately, scientific & technological clueness in law and public policy might not be so funny.

J.D. Abolins

Topics: Weird & Humorous, Insights, Privacy & Liberties, Comics, Censorship

Simple but profound insight in the May 2nd Frank & Ernest comic strip.

It depicts a medieval king and his aide. The king says to the aide:

"The literacy rate is going up? --- I suppose we better start thinking about censorship."

I love it! (The comic strip, not censorship.)

Although there can be censorship in oral cultures, it was the powerful traits of textual literacy that were met by new levels of censorship. Also, low literacy also made it easier to hide information from most of the population.

I believe that general lack of textual literacy was a major reason the Caesar's Cipher worked for many years. Most people would not have been able to understand the writing even in plaintext.

Even with textual literacy, the choice of language was another factor. In European history, the use of Latin usually required a person to not only learn to read but also learn another language.

These days, the global communications present their challenges of information access. Phil Zimmerman, the developer of the PGP cryptography tool, once commented "Perhaps you could think of Arabic as a form of cryptography." (Figuratively speaking, of course.) This applies to other languages as well. Computers have been "speaking" mainly English for many years. But this is changing rapidly. In a decade or so, a large portion of the Internet might be "speaking" Chinese. 你好 (Ni Hao; Hello)

J.D. Abolins

Topics: Security & Insecurity, Privacy & Liberties, Terrorism, International, Reports, US, Reference

The US State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2006 (posted on their Web site Monday 30 April 2007): http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/

Earlier reports and related material: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/

A couple of news reports on the recently released 2006 report:

• Washington Post 1 May 2007
• Christian Science Monitor 1 May 2007
  

Topics: Security & Insecurity, Weird & Humorous, Privacy & Liberties, Languages, Comics, Cryptography

A particularly good comic strip on cryptography from the xkcd site.

I especially like how it plays with a classic information hiding approach -- Navajo Code Talkers, and shows how it can fail to protect when misapplied. Also a poke at the poor application of the "security through obscurity" concept.

Some other Navajo Code Talker sites

• A son's tribute to his father who was a Code Talker
• Navajo Code Talk Dictionary
• NSA Crypto Museum's Code Talker Exhibit and Origins of Code Talkers monograph

If Navajo Code Talk cannot be safely used to encode binary, maybe "leet speak" will work. "0n3 23r0 23r0 0n3..."

J.D. Abolins

Topics: Security & Insecurity, Privacy & Liberties, Terrorism, International, Reports, EU, Reference

The European Police Office (EUROPOL) recently released its first Terrorism Situation & Trend Report --TE-SAT 2007. [pdf] The report examines terrorism from a law enforcement perspective.

According to the 10 April 2007 EUROPOL news release:

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Terrorism is not a new phenomenon in the EU. Nevertheless, in the twenty-first century, the threat posed by terrorism to Member States is more serious than ever. TE-SAT illustrates very well the existence of this continuous threat. It indicates that 498 attacks were carried out by Islamist, separatist, left-wing and anarchist terrorist groups in eleven Member States in 2006. A total of 706 individuals suspected of terrorism offences were arrested in 15 Member States in 2006.

This report for the first time collates all statistical data on the terrorist attacks and plots in the EU as well as provides details on the where, whom and how of terrorist activities. Director Ratzel thanked the Member States' services Eurojust and SITCEN for contributing data and analysis to the report.
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J.D. Abolins

Topics: Interesting Tech, Languages, Translation, Programming

The Register has a fascinating article on how Google Translate service works. The article discusses a couple of ways of doing computer-based translation of human languages: sheer brute-force statistical extrapolation versus "understanding". Google's programmers went the statisitical route.The article also explores the BLEU(Bilingual Evaluation Understudy) metrics.

I particularly liked this comment near the end of the article:

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So why are computers so much worse at language than at chess? Chess has properties that computers like: a well-defined state and well-defined rules for play. Computers do win at chess, like at calculation, because they are so exact and fussy about rules. Language, on the other hand, needs approximation and inference to extract "meaning" (whatever that is) together from text, context, subject matter, tone, expectations, and so on - and the computer needs yet more approximation to produce a translated version of that meaning with all the right interlocking features. Unlike chess, the game of language is played on the human home-turf of multivariate inference and approximation, so we will continue to beat the machines.
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Also, chess itself is not evolving, but languages usually do evolve. The rules aren't changing over the decades or developing regionalisms as do human languages. For example, English has regional variations and forms of slang. E.g.; "He was pissed last night" generally means a different thing in the US (angry) than in the UK (drunk). [Some more more examples of UK-US English differences]

At least Google and others seem to be doing better than the computer translations in an old jokes about a computer to translate English into Russian and back. Somebody suggests putting in "Out of sight, out of mind." That quote is keyed in and out comes something in Russian. The Russian text is put though for a translation back into English. The output is "Invisible insanity".

Still computer tools can be helps for people with some familiarity with the languages involved.

J.D. Abolins