Chinese Corporate Espionage
Google’s decision Tuesday to risk walking away from the world’s largest Internet market may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for U.S. companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China.
It’s a problem that the U.S. lawmakers have complained about loudly. In the corporate world, online attacks that appear to come from China have been an ongoing problem for years, but big companies haven’t said much about this, eager to remain in the good graces of the world’s powerhouse economy.
Google, by implying that Beijing had sponsored the attack, has placed itself in the center of an international controversy, exposing what appears to be a state-sponsored corporate espionage campaign that compromised more than 30 technology, financial and media companies, most of them global Fortune 500 enterprises.
The U.S. government is taking the attack seriously. Late Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement asking the Chinese government to explain itself, saying that Google’s allegations "raise very serious concerns and questions."
Posted: January 13th, 2010
at 6:43pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: apple,web,business
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Documentary: Google in China

Part 1 - Kai-Fu Lee, Google’s Greater China President, visited the Seattle area Google office on January, 17, 2007 to talk about the current status of Google’s offices in China. He spoke about the challenges and opportunities facing Google China as well as about collaboration between the Seattle/Kirkland and China offices.
Posted: January 13th, 2010
at 1:25am by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: documentary
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What is a smart athlete?
Posted: January 12th, 2010
at 11:36pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: the column
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A Dozen : Mark Dilks
Pile On Looking
We are back with a new edition of A Dozen, this time with the man himself, Mark Dilks. Dilks has provided his artist statements which can be read below this piece entitled Take Out My Eyes. Following this portion, you will then find the interview that MNP conducted with the artist. Enjoy.
ARTIST STATEMENTS by Mark Dilks
Stuff, piles up, gets lost in a pile.
Unknowingly, we point out the mass and not its parts.
The construction may not be the definition.
Why define?
What if the definitions we grow up learning are wrong?
Words
form to make sense
out of what?
I want my art to be free of definitions.? But, I wonder if that is even possible.? Painting, for example, is bound to art history and has set parameters and biases for creation attached to it.? To paint with no expectations must be liberating.? I study art and art history but art with different origins than mine inspires me.
In art history, DADA excites me because it playfully accepts chance collisions and the equality of all forms of creation.? A painting holds as much artistic weight as a collage, table, fork or engine and vice versa.? Prior to DADA, being an artist meant being in control of a particular medium or skill.? As embodied through their usage of collage, the Dadaists rationalized the benefits of learning from a lack of control.? No single medium, application or style defined DADA.? They ignored previous definitions in order to create their own.?? For me, an object can be moving and still, surface and space, beautiful and ugly all at the same time.? What do you call an image object that consists of both paint and video?? It is all in one, without hierarchy.
Aesthetic democracy was directly related to serious political, social and ideological reevaluations.? The Dadaist were from all over the world, all classes and practiced all artistic forms.? They were not limited by place, society, politics, or material.? DADA said it was everything and nothing at the same time.? It was thought that fought against the history of thought.? Through an intellectual rationalization of non or anti-intellectual behavior, DADA inherently denies the rationality it uses to define itself.? Still, it accepts itself for what it is DADA.
DADA inspires my outlook on art and on life.? But, could I make a DADA painting now?? Would it even be one?? No.
To reference DADA, I set up a Still Life with a wooden horse, dada is french for hobby horse, but quickly painted it into a bird which I called DODO.? A Dodo is an extinct bird which could not fly.
It is also a poo.? In my painting, a wooden bird attempts to fly out, of congealed ooze.
Parameters for perception are useful when trying to define but can get in the way when trying to create.? I enjoy looking into the muck to discover new beginnings, but I honor my teachings by using traditional genres, Still Life, Landscape, Portraiture, as a starting point for my paintings, a staged reality as ground for a departure.? Through painting I try to capture my experience of observation through dissecting the parts of the observed.? There is an archeological mining that gets played out in the application of paint and the scraping away of surface.? Digging through paint to find an experience of looking.? Reality is destroyed, reassembled and animated into a new life.
In a Still Life, I assemble inanimate objects that depict real live things, a wooden horse, a hand sown doll, a foam eyeball, a figure made out of clay, and paint them into a world that they inhabit.? The Still Life objects are usually quaint toys or innocent objects found around the house.? The world I paint often tears these kitsch objects apart.? The painting embodies a collision between the innocent and the violent, the clean and the tarnished, the trained and the untrained.? PEACE in pieces.
Within a painting rules are off.? A form is made out of ooze.? A line rests in space and surface.? A chair becomes a talking hippopotamus mouth.? A shadow becomes a ghost.
DADA helps me liberate my own theories of painting, my process, my paint.? It allows me to breathe life into objects never thought to be alive and to keep options open.
But I paint,
Dodododododododododo.
The Couple and You
Are you in Boston?
No, I went to college in Western Mass, at Hampshire and moved back to my home town, Philly, after I graduated five years ago.
Please describe your professional background and aspirations.
Over the last few years I worked part time for a variety of art institutions in Philly doing whatever I could get work in. ?Then I got a job as the Arts Coordinator at Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia’s Childrens Museum. ?The job consisted of designing and implementing open ended process driven activities for our visitors. ?After doing a residency at Vermont Studio Center this past April,? I decided to focus more on art and get back to VSC as quickly as possible.? I left my job and went back to Vermont in September.
Now, unemployment is the rage and I am raging away.? Working on projects. Grad school apps. ?Looking for part time work. ?All that fun stuff. ?I have a studio with some buddies who are starting a website, A United Front, which intends to unite local creative communities from a variety of cities.? The website goes live mid January 2010,? www.aufphilladelphia.com, check it out!? We are in the process of working on a video documenting a large painting and some public readings of collage books, I’ll be doing.
I’m also in a band, Deep Possum.? If anyone wants a loud rock band for a show or party, holler.?? http://www.myspace.com/deeppossum
On the road to making it big or being happy, never forget to do you. ?Stay true.
Can you tell us a little about your relationship to Dadaism?
It fucked and birthed you, me and everyone. ?It is everything and nothing. ?It is political and it is full of shit. ?It is about never being right because it is impossible and you’re wrong. ?You need to except life for what it is, uncontrollable, lived. ?Besides that, I’m not really sure. ?I’m not a Dadaist and this is all wrong.
What categories do you mesh in your work?
I paint a lot and am trying to get better at it. ?I do collage and am trying to destroy it. ?Sometimes these two things overlap in the same piece. ?Collage books mesh a lot of elements; text, paint, printed matter, illustration. ?I want to do performances, public readings, of these books and document them. ?At Hampshire College, I projected live video streams of the studio, the painting, me and the audience onto my painting surface and painted on top of it.? This process has stopped because I don’t have the equipment any more. ?Bummer. ?I think it is very important to mesh categories, and I will continue to push possibilities.
Some other factors of my work… thoughts upon the original and the copy, texture, touch, image and object.
Equation
Which artists have influenced you the most?
Friends, strangers, plumbers, machinists, contractors, city planners, etc. ?Everything and everyone I encounter, it is hard to pick.? Here is a few: Tristan Tzara, Dana Schutz, James Castle, Dubuffet, Diebenkorn, Forrest Bess, David Hockney, Duchamp, CF, Jay DeFeo, Peter Doig, Lynda Barry and Ryan Trecartin.? The list goes on and I didn’t even include musicians.
Is the Dodo bird really extinct?
Yes.? It was last spotted in 1690.? The bird couldn’t fly.? The name Dodo comes from the Portuguese word for simpleton.
Where are you trying to travel through your chosen artistic mediums?
I’m not sure; although I know I’ve only scratched the service.? I once said I wanted to make paintings that engaged the viewer like video games do.? I don’t think my paintings do that, but it is an interesting idea to strive for.
How do you view collectives/operatives/groups in contrast to art non-profits/foundations?
I like them both.? It is important to have a group for support as well as pressure.? But, all groups can start to be insular or shut off.? It is good to be public and be seen by people who don’t go to galleries.
Dodo Head
Do you believe that once you reach a certain skill level in the arts, the chances of your "success" are seemingly random?
I think it is hard.? I don’t know what "skill" level means because it is subjective.? Of course "talent" has something to do with it but maybe drive is most important.? In the end it may come down to being in the right place at the right time.? So, make yourself visible and seize opportunities as they arise.
Where would you like to see new or emerging art to come out of next in the world?
Any place I’ve never heard of, or somewhere I’d never expect.
How do you think most artists have reacted to transitioning from the Bush era to the Obama doctrinocity?
Kept working.? I think the recession is important though.? There is less money for the arts but art quality is up.? Also, when people aren’t buying as much, artists feel more comfortable experimenting (Or, so I’ve heard).?? Times are tough all around though.
What makes memorable art stand out and why does some art reach out to more consumers than others (is pop art dead?)?
Dodo Grin Face
Pop art will never be dead in a consumer society (which? America certainly is).? This question is tough.? What’s memorable to me is different for you.? Do we like an image or do we like hype and how it snow balls?? We like both snow balls and art with ballz too.? For what it’s worth, a challenge is exciting.
How do you view the traditional roles that galleries, critics, agents and fairs have held in the past with the convergence of digital new media and commerce?
Galleries, critics, etc. are as strong as ever and they wont go away, just change slowly.? They are trying to catch up to the speed of digital media and commerce.? It is important to realize that although you can see tons of images on the internet, it is far from the experience of the event or object.? That is why galleries, fairs, etc. will always be around.? Go see art and music live!? But don’t forget to check in on My Ninja Please and be well.
::Images courtesy of Mark Dilks::
Posted: January 12th, 2010
at 3:58pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: contemporary,a dozen
Comments: 1 comment
Mapping the Republic of Letters
Historians and other humanities scholars are increasingly seeking to develop and use visualization tools, methods, and theories for making sense of patterns in large sets of heterogeneous historical data with multiple dimensions. For example, theAElectronic Enlightenment database of over 55,000 letters and documents exchanged between 6,400 correspondents in the Republic of Letters presents a typical challenge confronting the emerging field of digital humanities. How can humanities scholars trained in close reading of individual documents make sense of patterns in large sets of data?
The new challenges posed by an exponentially growing corpus of online historical data also present an opportunity for collaborations with computer scientists interested in data visualization, interpretation, and human-computer interaction. Computer scientists are deeply interested in how users interact with visualization tools to explore, explain, and engage with data to create meaning. We engaged in an iterative, collaborative effort that brought together historians, computer scientists, and an academic technology specialist to design data visualizations to represent the intellectual network of the Republic of Letters.
The above visualization was developed in 2009 by Stanford Computer Science professor Jeff Heer’s students, Yuankai Ge, Daniel Chang, Shiwei Song in collaboration withAMapping the Republic of Letters,ATooling Up for Digital Histories, and theAElectronic Enlightenment Project. We engaged in an iterative, collaborative effort that brought together historians, computer scientists, and an academic technology specialist to design data visualizations to represent the intellectual network of the Republic of Letters.This mapping tool stands apart from the collection, providing a visual browsing tool with direct links to the digitized content in EE available to subscribers according to EEP’s subscription rules. (SHIFT drag over lines to see links.) The visualization depicts connections between cities for over 55,000 letters and documents exchanged between 6,400 correspondents from the Electronic Enlightenment.
Mobiles to gain greater capacity
The mobile-phone industry will gain access to vital wireless capacity under the proposed reallocation of a chunk of radio spectrum.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority yesterday released a discussion paper recommending that the spectrum be largely turned over to mobile phone companies hungry for the capacity to service the rising number of smartphone users.
The 2.5 gigahertz band is at present used by media companies for electronic news gathering, particularly outside broadcasts by free-to-air television stations. But there is an international push to turn the band over uniformly to mobile use.
Posted: January 12th, 2010
at 2:58pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: cell phones
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California Emission Credits Auction
While Congress dithers, California is moving ahead with its cap and trade plan. Today the state’s Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee, which is comprised of economists and environmental experts, made a series of recommendations for the program, including that it auction 100 percent of its emissions allocation allowances. The California Air Resource Board must now decide whether to accept to Committee’s recommendations.
Posted: January 12th, 2010
at 2:55pm by Koookiecrumbles
Categories: green,politricks
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Moving to a Post-Disclosure Era
Is the FTC moving to a "Post-Disclosure Era," in which consumer online privacy would be regulated in a radically different manner than the status quo? That was a suggestion made by the chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, and David Vladeck, chief of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, during a recent on-the-record discussion about online privacy, reported in the New York Times.
For some time, I have been asking the question, "Is Consent Dead, and Should We Even Care?" Now it appears the FTC is asking the very same question. According to FTC Chair Leibowitz, companies haven’t given [online] consumers effective notice, so they can make effective choices about the privacy of their online information. Mr. Vladeck similarly views traditional advise-and-consent privacy notice models as dependent upon the fiction that people were meaningfully giving consent. The literature is clear that few people read privacy policies.
What, if anything, will this new way of thinking mean in terms of future regulation of consumer online privacy by the FTC? More information may be forthcoming at the FTC’s next privacy roundtable, to be held on January 28 (and available to the public via webcast).