Singularity Summit

Here are some videos of the singularity summit?  Some are fairly interesting, are there any that you would like to discuss in class?

http://www.kurzweilai.net/singularity-summit-2011-videos

Ethical or not?

Is it ethical to take down child porn websites via "hacking"?

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1325238/anonymous-hackers-take-down-child-porn-websites

GPS tracking and the constitution

This is the first of three articles looking at a case before the supreme court concerning gps tracking.

http://volokh.com/2011/10/21/my-view-of-the-first-question-presented-in-united-states-v-jones-the-fourth-amendment-gps-case/

Surveillance technology

Here is a link to the story about seeing through walls
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/19/0333215/seeing-through-walls

Here is the van based one
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2004/02/16/daily42.html?jst=b_ln_hl

There was some controversy about these being used in the US, but I didn't see those stories in my initial searches.

Telepresence medicine

I didn't realize that telemedicine, in this case video-chatting with a doctor was starting to become widespread.  I'm surprised that the quality of care is just as good.  If something like this takes off it would really change how we view healthcare.

http://singularityhub.com/2011/10/16/welcome-to-rite-aid-the-virtual-doctors-will-see-you-now/

What are the ethical issues involved in a change like this?

Privacy

Slashdot has a discussion/article on privacy today.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/16/1247207/a-day-in-the-life-of-privacy

Often times the comments are more interesting than the original article.

Copyright case before supreme court

There is a case before the supreme court about whether it is ok to take works out of the public domain and place them back into copyright.

http://chronicle.com/article/Equal-Protection-for/129287/

Size of the law

I found this an interesting followup to our discussion Friday.  About 6:45 into the video he describes a law that makes it illegal to violate an aspect (fish possession) of any other country's law.

http://volokh.com/2011/09/30/prof-duane-dont-talk-to-the-cops/

There is a followup/response video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE