In early April, Patrick Peterson, a research fellow at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., gained some intelligence about the authors’ interests. He studies nasty computer programs by keeping a set of quarantined computers that capture and observe them — his “digital zoo.”

He discovered that the Conficker authors had begun distributing software that tricks Internet users into buying fake antivirus software with their credit cards. “We turned off the lights in the zoo one day and came back the next day,” Mr. Peterson said, noting that in the “cage” reserved for Conficker, the infection had been joined by a program distributing an antivirus software scam.

Der Kampf gegen Conficker markiert den Eintritt in eine neue Ära. Und liest sich sehr schön:

If the misbegotten computer were reactivated, it would not have the problem-solving ability of supercomputers used to design nuclear weapons or simulate climate change. But because it has commandeered so many machines, it could draw on an amount of computing power greater than that from any single computing facility run by governments or Google. It is a dark reflection of the “cloud computing” sweeping the commercial Internet, in which data is stored on the Internet rather than on a personal computer.

The industry group continues to try to find ways to kill Conficker, meeting as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Joffe said he, for one, was not prepared to declare victory. But he said that the group’s work proved that government and private industry could cooperate to counter cyberthreats.

“Even if we lose against Conficker,” he said, “there are things we’ve learned that will benefit us in the future.”

The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. For computer scientists, this fast-growing mountain of data is opening a tantalizing window onto the collective consciousness of Internet users.

An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world’s unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data.

This is more than just an interesting programming exercise. For many businesses, online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency that can make or break a product in the marketplace.

Yet many companies struggle to make sense of the caterwaul of complaints and compliments that now swirl around their products online. As sentiment analysis tools begin to take shape, they could not only help businesses improve their bottom lines, but also eventually transform the experience of searching for information online.

Ein Anwendungsbeispiel:

In early May, the ticket marketplace StubHub used Scout Labs’ monitoring tool to identify a sudden surge of negative blog sentiment after rain delayed a Yankees-Red Sox game.

Stadium officials mistakenly told hundreds of fans that the game had been canceled, and StubHub denied fans’ requests for refunds, on the grounds that the game had actually been played. But after spotting trouble brewing online, the company offered discounts and credits to the affected fans. It is now re-evaluating its bad weather policy.

“This is a canary in a coal mine for us,” said John Whelan, StubHub’s director of customer service.

Und hier eine Ahnung, welche Macht zur Produkt– und Imagegestaltung das den Unternehmen gibt — am besten vor dem Hintergrund meiner Ausführungen zur problematischen Rolle von Information in der modernen Marktwirtschaft zu lesen:

Using Newssift, a search for Wal-Mart reveals that recent sentiment about the company is running positive by a ratio of slightly better than two to one. When that search is refined with the suggested term “Labor Force and Unions,” however, the ratio of positive to negative sentiments drops closer to one to one.

Such tools could help companies pinpoint the effect of specific issues on customer perceptions, helping them respond with appropriate marketing and public relations strategies.

Und zur Aufheiterung ein kleiner Blick in die konstruktivistische Zukunft:

Ms. Pang envisions a search engine that fine-tunes results for users based on sentiment. For example, it might influence the ordering of search results for certain kinds of queries like “best hotel in San Antonio.”

As search engines begin to incorporate more and more opinion data into their results, the distinction between fact and opinion may start blurring to the point where, as David Byrne once put it, “facts all come with points of view.”

Ganz einfach: Das Gemälde hat eine verräterische Ähnlichkeit zu dem schon früher geposteten Grafitti auf dem Kelburn Castle:

Eine kurze Internet-Recherche enthüllt, dass die Brasilianer tatsächlich auch hier in Schottland tätig waren. Und ich bin in der Lage, ein Video der Entstehung nachzureichen:

Und über deren Blog finde ich ein krasses Graffiti-Animations-Video, das ich hier auch teilen möchte:

Die Welt ist so klein!

Unglaublich schnell! Startet schnell, öffnet neue Tabs schnell, lädt Seiten schnell. Schlank — im Gegensatz zu meinen beiden „Großen Alten“ Safari und Firefox, die im Normalbetrieb meine größten Arbeitsspeicherfresser sind und sich über die Zeit immer mehr aufblasen, wird hier der Speicher wirklich wieder frei, wenn man Tabs schließt. Ein mehr informatives als lustiges Comic von Google erklärt ganz anschaulich die neuen technischen Ideen unter der Haube.

Der Download ist für Windows-Benutzer ganz einfach, für Mac– und Linux-Freunde ziemlich gut versteckt — einfach den aktuellsten „build“ auswählen. Alternativ (habe ich nicht probiert) gibt es auch die Möglichkeit die Windows-Version auf dem Mac (oder Linux) zu verwenden, hat vermutlich mehr Features.

Sehr vielversprechen dieses Projekt! Ob wir uns wohl damit fühlen, wenn Google so bald unser komplettes (virtuelles) Leben in der Hand hat muss jeder für sich entscheiden…

Hier:

Quelle (und bessere Qualität): http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/cinematic.php

Das ganze ist übrigens die Werbung für ein Computerspiel, das aber glaube ich ziemlich fad ist…

Immer beliebt sind natürlich Katzen …

… dicht gefolgt von tiefsinnigen Schnappschüssen …

… und einfach bewunderungswürdigen Taten.

Gut kommt auch, den Computer und Menschen, deren Leben um ihn kreist, selbst in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen …

… besonders wenn es dann noch was mit Sex zu tun hat.

Hier zunächst das Ergebnis vor Wikipedias Schiedgericht, der höchsten Instanz dort:

And it can be hard to expect neutrality on some topics. For example, the 430 Wikipedia articles about all aspects of Scientology represent a free-floating civil war, a “miasma,” in the description of Ira Brad Matetsky, a corporate litigation lawyer in New York. He is a member of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, which last month waded into the sniping over the Scientology entries.

In a sweeping ruling with little precedent in the eight-year history of Wikipedia, the committee blocked editing from “all I.P. addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted.” The ruling did allow users from those addresses to appeal to be reinstated on a case-by-case basis.

[…]

The decision has a range of sanctions for dozens of users, including outspoken critics of Scientology and Wikipedia administrators, from mild chiding for poor behavior to bans on editing about Scientology to total bans. Among the violations were name-calling and repeated nullifying of the editing of others without any discussion first.

[…]

The Church of Scientology accepted its ban in that spirit, saying in a statement: “More importantly is the fact that Wikipedia finally banned those who were engaged in unobjective and biased editing for the purposes of antagonism as opposed to providing accurate information. We hope the decision will result in more accurate and useful articles on Wikipedia as the site evolves.”

Die Entwicklung in Wikipedia gibt Anlass zu soziologischen Überlegungen:

The discovery that Wikipedia is not the anarchic paradise some might imagine can be a shock. Others see hypocrisy, evidence that there is a class of users who control what appears there, people who benefit from Wikipedia’s huge public clout with little public scrutiny.

But taking the longer view, it is apparent that in its brief history, Wikipedia is quickly replicating the creation of society, from an Eden (no rules, no need for rules) to a modern entity.

“Bureaucracy is inevitable,” said Joseph Reagle, whose Ph.D. thesis was about the history of Wikipedia and collaborative culture, crediting the German sociologist Max Weber. “Even if you have a supposed anarchy or collective, that doesn’t mean the rules aren’t there, just that they are implicit.”