virtual eternity

Would you like virtual eternity? A digital simulation of yourself created by sophisticated--and creepy--simulation, gaming and artificial intelligence software. Your digital avatar would interact online and remember conversation and log questions where answers are yet to be added to the database. Intellitar's Virtual Eternity is already in the business. You can interact with co-founder Don Davidson's avatar at the company website. Ms. Smith in a recent blog Digital Cloning: Rise of the Cylons at NETWORKWORLD interviews Don Davidson and asks some of the difficult virtual privacy questions of the co-founder. Intellitar is in the Huntsville, AL area and Davidson's background includes long service at IBM.

tax-funded pentagon software ends up owned by corporations

pentagon is losing the softwar(e)
from defense news: The Department of Defense spends tens of billions of dollars annually creating software that is rarely reused & difficult to adapt to new threats.

Instead, much of this software is allowed to become the property of defense companies, resulting in DoD repeatedly funding the same solutions or, worse, repaying to use previously created software.

The lack of a coherent set of policies and regulations for the DoD’s intellectual property has eroded the U.S. military competitive advantage, leading to compromised missions and lost lives. Improvised explosive device countermeasure systems can’t be upgraded rapidly without replacing entire systems; personnel position systems can’t update in real time; billions are wasted on software radios that don’t interoperate.

The byzantine rules governing the military’s intellectual property portfolio use an antiquated rights structure where the contractor always retains copyright, and therefore effective monopoly, control over taxpayer-funded software ideas. By contrast, commercial industry ruthlessly exercises control over its own software ideas.

related: cia software developer goes open source

defcon 4/22: takedowns, lockups & predictive analytics

google exposes government takedown requests*
google: US demanded user info 3,500 times in 6 months*
google hackers stole source code of global password system*
second banker accused of stealing high-frequency trading code*
mcafee antivirus program locks up pc's worldwide*
crime prediction software is here & it's a very bad idea*
precrime in florida: ibm's predictive analytics*
online game shoppers duped into selling souls*
microsoft's chinese labor scandal:
there's more trouble ahead for the rest of high tech*
cultivated play: farmville*
9 yr-old blamed for US school system hack*
1/3 of US teens with phones 'text 100 times a day'*
wikileaks claims facebook deleted its page, 30,000 fans*
draft of secretive intl copyright treaty leaked -
confirms fears on net freedom*
reverse-engineering artist busts biometric control grid*
'second life' players sue over illegal seizure of virtual property*
video: richard clarke says private firms should spy on net*
clarke says public aversion to regulation prevents govt from defending cyberspace*
facebook steps up lobbying, deepens ties with intel agencies, ftc*