pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/psshootout.jpg" width="807" height="415" style="display:block;float:none;" /There are a lot of $200-$300 point and shoots on the market right now, and there's no way the test display at Best Buy is going to tell you which to buy. How is elbowing other shoppers while analyzing your hasty snapshots on a 3-inch, low-rez screen going to help you make an informed buying decision?/p pInstead, I put six of the most popular point-and-shoots on the market through some major testing. Then I decided on the one that you should buy without the hedging BS./p pstrongMeet our competitors/strongbr emEach of these compact point and shoots features optical image stabilization and is priced around $250:/em/p pa href="http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/detail.do?group=camerascamcorderstype=digitalcamerassubtype=tlseriesmodel_cd=EC-TL9ZZBBA/US"Samsung TL9 ($280)/abr 10MP, 5X zoom, 2.7-inch LCD/p pa href="http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoActfcategoryid=145modelid=16718#ModelDetailAct"Canon SD790 ($250)/abr 10MP, 3X zoom, 3-inch LCD/p pa href="http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Digital-Camera/26120/COOLPIX-S560.html"Nikon S560 ($250)/abr 10MP, 5X zoom, 2.7-inch LCD/p pa href="http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551storeId=10151langId=-1productId=8198552921665309170"Sony W170 ($250)/abr 10MP, 5x zoom, 2.7-inch LCD/p pa href="http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-electronics/shop/Cameras-Camcorders/Digital-Cameras/Lumix-Digital-Cameras/model.DMC-FS20K_11002_7000000000000005702"Panasonic FS20 ($250)/abr 10MP, 4x zoom, 3-inch LCD/p pa href="http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=13044pq-locale=en_US_requestid=7962"Kodak M1093 ($200)/abr 10MP, 3x zoom, 3-inch LCD/p pstrongStudio Shoot/strongbr The shots inside were captured under diffused sunlight in full auto mode at max (10MP) resolution. I won't say that it wasn't an extreme disappointment that only one camera, the Kodak, was able to shoot with proper white balance in this situation and offer us colors as they really look (you'll have to trust me on this one). The other cameras compensated poorly, possibly metering the diffused light as tungsten light, and producing a fairly cold image because of it.br script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" galleryPost('camerabattlemodo', 6,''); /scriptbr Other than the color, you can't make out much from the wide shots. But if you blow the images up to their native resolution, there are huge differences. Even in the web-compressed images here, it's obvious that Canon captures the most detail:br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/canoncookies2compressed.jpg" width="807" height="440" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pIt's basically a tie between Sony and Kodak for second place. Here's what Kodak looks like:br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/kodakcookie2compressed.jpg" width="807" height="466" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pAnd then there's a pretty hard drop in quality. Panasonic comes in a solid last place here:br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/panasoniccookie2compressed.jpg" width="807" height="384" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pYou can fix the color by manually choosing a smarter white balance (color temperature), or adjusting the balance in post. But you can't get the texture of those cookies back. Big win for Canon here./p pstrongMotion Photography/strongbr It's no secret that many point-and-shoots are horrible for capturing the spontaneity of a child or pet, in part due to focus lag and often an additional wait before the shot is actually taken. While DSLRs are the best solution, I wanted to see if any point-and-shoots could rise to the challenge of capturing some action./p pSo I put them to the test on a Chicago side street where cars get up to 15-20mph. After repeat testing on each model, once again, we had a clear winner. Trouble is, it's Panasonic, loser of the resolution match! Panasonic features more shooting settings than any of its competitors, so my guess is that they spent a lot of time on optimizing at least this particular preset optimization.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/panasonicmotion.jpg" width="807" height="518" style="display:block;float:none;" /br The remainder of the competition was fairly close, and I can't say that even the Panasonic model will capture any incredible sports action photography. But I will say that the Nikon and Samsung seemed to lag more than the others from button press to shot acquisition. They both tended to have the blurriest shots as well. Here's a typical result of the Nikon:br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/nikonmotion2.jpg" width="807" height="556" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pstrongVideo/strongbr Like high-speed photography, point-and-shoots aren't fundamentally designed for video. But then again, since they all shoot video, people have begun using them more frequently than they ever used their bigger, more specialized camcorders, so a test was necessary./p pAfter playing some billiards, I found Canon's image, though not technically the highest resolution, to be the best. A point as well to its realistic sound capture of ball on ball action.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/canonvideo.jpg" width="807" height="476" style="display:block;float:none;" /br Second place goes to Kodak. Even though you can make out a great deal of grain on the table's felt surface, it also captures a relatively sharp, pleasantly contrasty image when you examine each ball.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/kodakpicnewsss.jpg" width="807" height="445" style="display:block;float:none;" /br Last place? This title is, once again, reserved for Panasonic. For some reason, the camera interpreted the red table as some sort of blurry pastel. And the sound was a like a fast food drive-through speaker.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/panasonicvideo.jpg" width="807" height="454" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pstrongFlash/strongbr We've all been there. It's late. A friend is in town. Your cameraphone can't hope to capture a shot in your drunken stupor, especially as you're hanging out in a smokey bar. I'd loved to have recreated this scene precisely in its brilliance, but instead I opted to take pictures of my cat with the lights low.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/sonyflash.jpg" width="807" height="529" style="display:block;float:none;" /br It's an unfair challenge for a small-lensed, small-chipped camera to capture a decent picture in low light, even with flash as a crutch, but the Sony did as well as I could have hoped, illuminating my subject and her background alike, lacking the hotspots of most flash photography./p pThe other cameras were predictably mediocre, but the absolute worst at handling flash had to be the Nikon. Not only did it give my cat a washed-out glow, but it didn't even consider properly exposing that obnoxious pile of boxes behind her. The shame.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/nikonflash.jpg" width="807" height="540" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pstrongWeird Features and Gimmicks/strongbr img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/samsung-tl9.jpg" class="center" style="display:block;" /None of these items should probably determine your buying decision, but I wanted to mention a few of the more...interesting features of the cameras. The Samsung TL9 has a set of snazzy analog dials on top that display battery life and remaining memory like a car's dashmdash;plus it plays music and movies. The Panasonic has categorized an Intelligent Auto Mode that gives a lazy but informed user a nice way to tell the camera, "hey, you may need to boost the ISO," without messing with any other controls or gimmicky menus. The Nikon will warn you if a subject's eyes are closed. The Canon has ditched the standard up, down, left, right menu dial for a spinning ring...that's bold, if not always intuitive. And Sony will shoot in 16x9 or stretch images to that ratio for quick HDTV slideshows. Plus, smile/face detectors are everywhere. How did we ever take pictures before boxes enclosed a loved one's face?/p pstrongSo What Should You Buy?/strongbr After all my testing, I'd recommend the Canon SD790. Sure, it didn't win every category, but it won the one that counts mostmdash;detail. It came first in the video category. And it never ever fell flat on its face./p pMaybe this conclusion sounds a little too clinical to you. If so, let me say that there are less tangible elements I appreciate about the Canon SD790: It includes the best built battery charger and it is the only model tested to sync with a computer via mini USB (as opposed to some annoying proprietary cable or dock). On top of those, it always seems quick to capture a shot after I pressed for the shutter, though it's still not nearly as responsive as my prosumer DSLR. The one thing I'd ask for in this camera is a more powerful zoom lens./p pIf you know an extreme technophobe, you might tell them about the Kodak M1093. It offers the simplest shooting experience with one button to choose a photo mode, one button for flash toggling and one button to actually take a picture. Digital cameras don't get simpler than that, and I have to admit, as the cheapest model in this roundup ($200), with the least techie brand name, it performs better than I expectedmdash;though it does have a propensity to bump the ISO, producing some unwanted noise./p pBut as for the Sony W170, while it does feature the widest angle lens with 5x of zoom, it's clunky in the hand and rarely brilliant in quality. As for the Nikon S560, it takes mediocre shots. The Panasonic FS20 is inconsistentmdash;bordering on horrendous much of the timemdash;and features a small screen and a dated interface. Meanwhile, the Samsung TL9 just completely fails to impress me./p pSo go ahead, pick up the Canon. It seems the company's overwhelming market share is well deserved. Or don't. I won't lose sleep or anything. Just don't come crying to me when all your pictures look like crap./p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c1a975b9131882296246399e780f880dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c1a975b9131882296246399e780f880dp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c1a975b9131882296246399e780f880d" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=UD6vGN1K"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Wtdzgbo9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=prZIRpc4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=prZIRpc4" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=z2R519Xk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=z2R519Xk" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/CrXUNBcOjJ4" height="1" width="1"/

lkcl writes "The GitTorrent Protocol (GTP) is a protocol for collaborative git repository distribution across the Internet. Git promises to be a distributed software management tool, where a repository can be distributed. Yet, the mechanisms used to date to actually 'distribute,' such as ssh, are very much still centralized. GitTorrent makes Git truly distributed. The initial plans are for reducing mirror loading, however the full plans include totally distributed development: no central mirrors whatsoever. PGP signing (an existing feature of git) and other web-of-trust-based mechanisms will take over from protocols on ports (e.g. ssh) as the access control 'clearing house.' The implications of a truly distributed revision control system are truly staggering: unrestricted software freedom. The playing field is leveled in so many ways, as 'The Web Site' no longer becomes the central choke-point of control. Coming just in time for that all-encompassing Free Software revolution hinted at by The Rebellion Against Vista, this article will explain more fully some of the implications that make this quiet and technically brilliant project, GitTorrent, so important to Software Freedom, from both technical and political perspectives."pa href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/04/1625226amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/12/04/1625226"/a/ppa href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/04/1625226amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/jGuT4-TwLgrhYOcavgDYdnN6zCg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/jGuT4-TwLgrhYOcavgDYdnN6zCg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/C1oVbowrLX0" height="1" width="1"/

Google added an option to their photo gallery app Picasa Web Albums offering you to lock albums. The option is named “Sign-in required to view,” meaning only people you share the album with are meant to access it, after signing in with their Google account. The pictures themselves – like this image from a sign-in album – are still technically public, though the URLs are probably cryptic enough to stop people from simply guessing them (it might still be better to password-protect even the image URL itself).

In the past, Google already offered (and continues to offer) what they call “unlisted” albums, but those were troubled with privacy issues from time to time. For instance, in the beginning you could simply try guessing the album title (say, a title like “Private”) to get to the unlisted album. Recently, Google fixed a vulnerability with how outgoing links were potentially passing on the unlisted album URL’s authentication key to third-party sites due to the referrer field. Also, sometimes sharing just a single photo caused you to potentially share access to the whole album. In fact, this issue remains even for “sign-in” albums: when you select “Share Photo" for a single photo in a sign-in album, the recipient will be able to view your full album.

In other news, Google Picasa software product manager Mike Horowitz has left Google to join Fetch Technologies.

[Hat tip to Brinke, Wonder and Louis Gray!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Locked Picasa Web Albums | Comments]

[Advertisement] Google books at eBay: background info on Google, AdWords, AdSense, Blogger and more...

The world will see the second Android phone in late January 2009 and Australians will enjoy its use on their carriers as Kogan today started pre-orders for the Kogan Agora Pro. For $399 Australian Bucks (US$256) you’ll get the unlocked phone for use on any Australian Carrier and a toned down (not even a camera) Kogan Agora is going for $299 Australian dollars (US$192).

That’s a heck of a price for an unlocked piece of Android, but considering the Kogan brand is relatively unknown it’s a price point that will better lure in more curious mobilists. Those that make the leap of faith can expect some of the following specs:

• 3G Network
• 2.5-inch LCD Touch Screen
• 2MP Camera
• QWERTY Keypad with back lighting
• WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS
• 624MHz processor
• 256MB memory, 128MB Flash, MicroSD expansion

For $100 cheaper you give up the camera, WiFI and GPS. If you’re going to be an Android early adopter, chances are these are things you’ll want these things so dump out your piggy bank and ante up the extra hundy.
The company promised a $199 Android Phone by the end of 2008 - the phone is technically for sale in this calendar year but the price bump was needed due to the “the impact of the global financial crisis on currencies”. We forgive them… and we thank them for coming as close to making good on their promise as possible. The question is… will the phone deliver?
I’m sure half the people reading this are thinking, “Who the heck is Kogan?” Good question… I was thinking the same thing. The company is of an interesting breed - listen to how they define themselves:Kogan is a new business philosophy that places customers at the top of the food chain. We eliminate all the “middle men” and pass the savings directly to you. We are a manufacturer, importer, wholesaler, and retailer all in one. By cutting out all the “middle men”, we provide the best possible products at the best possible price.
This is the kind of ingenuity that Android can encourage and to be honest, I’m wondering why companies all over the globe aren’t flocking to follow suit. Android is the ultimate equalizer. So how come Kogan was able to put out this Android Handset while companies like Motorola have 500 people working on it and will be empty handed until late next year?
It could be a number of reason starting with the possibility that the phone absolutely sucks. We’ll know the scoop on that in a couple months time, but seriously… it makes you wonder why there aren’t a flurry of Android handsets out by now, doesn’t it?
Kogan could use Android to capitalize in a big, big way and the door is wide open for other (relatively) small companies to do the same and compete with the “big dogs” on a global scale. Android is knocking down the barriers of entry for manufacturers which encourages a market where good ideas can out above the battle of the big budgets.
It should be pointed out that this will be the first mobile phone Kogan has ever released with the manufacturing being outsourced to China. For whatever that’s worth.

A few questions worthy of discussion:

• Hey Australians, what is your experience with Kogan and what do you expect from the Kogan Agora Pro?
• Hey Australians, will you pre-order the Agora, wait for reviews and then decide or simply not consider it?
• Hey Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan, hook us up with a review copy that we can either rock on WiFi in the states or give a trusted Australian phandroid an early peek, will ya?
• Hey everyone else, I didn’t want to leave you out so I made a 4th bullet, feel better?

INTERESTING FACT: We dug this up and didn’t find it elsewhere but the name Agora not only sounds cool but was chose for an obvious reason - it is defined as, “The public open space that formed the heart of ancient Greek cities and it’s the origin of most western conceptions of public, or civic, space as center of for social interaction for ceremony and democratic life on a pedestrian scale.”
Discuss
[Via Kogan, ITWire, Engadget]


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In our guide to the best gifts for Grandparents we mentioned the Peek, a non-phone that allows you to check e-mail for $19.95/month.  Yes, just e-mail.  Well, technically email and texting and the ability to see image attachments.  It#8217;s fine for someone who doesn#8217;t need a full-blown smartphone or the data usage charge that comes [...]div class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?a=XOdE5zyi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?a=ZHEUzul2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?a=2KxHnm8F"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?d=198" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?a=qG5gU2cO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?i=qG5gU2cO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?a=KIuwxNRv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/LaptopMagazineNews?i=KIuwxNRv" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LaptopMagazineNews/~4/Xk1H7pRt7ws" height="1" width="1"/

Any competent developer who tries to automate the selection of news headlines will inevitably discover that this approach always comes up a bit short. Automation does indeed bring a lot to the table -- humans can't possibly discover and organize news as fast as computers can. But too often the lack of real intelligence leads to really unintelligent results. Only an algorithm would feature news about Anna Nicole Smith's hospitalization after she's already been declared dead, as our automated celeb news site WeSmirch did last year:

Instantly obsolete news isn't the only hazard. A fundamental component to any news organization program is the determination of whether two stories are related. Deciding is often rather easy: if two stories hyperlink each other or both use the words Apple, Psystar, and DMCA repeatedly, they're probably related. Unfortunately, the clues are sometimes far too subtle for the most advanced algorithms to notice. This leads to bad "related" grouping, and even the failure to surface breaking news in the first place. Even giant, technically-accomplished corporations have had trouble breaking news using algorithms.

It's time for a more "edited" Techmeme

In 2005 it was clear to me that an ideal news aggregation site would need to combine automation with direct, hands on editing. In a rare departure from my usual reticence, I even stated in comments to a blog post "I'm planning extensions to my system to enable a hybrid man+memeorandum." This "planning" turned out to be rather long term, since we made no major headway on this idea until 2008.

Early on, when our system was less technically refined, the clearest path toward improvement involved simply iterating algorithmic development. Later, as the automation reached a certain degree of maturity, we recognized that direct editing could now improve news results by leaps and bounds. Though our roadmap contains a number of novel future algorithmic enhancements, introducing editing now appears to be a no-brainer.

So what exactly will change?

Humans have always edited Techmeme of course, just implicitly. For instance, when a blogger links to a story, the headline might move higher on Techmeme. What's different now is that an additional human editor will carry out changes explicitly to directly improve the mix of headlines on Techmeme. Though the implicit edits conveyed via algorithm outnumber the explicit edits perhaps by 1000 to 1 or more, the impact of the human editor is nonetheless pronounced. What will that effect be?

The news will just get faster and more interesting. Obsolete stories will be eliminated sooner while breaking stories will be expedited. Related grouping will improve. Most of this will happen only on Techmeme, though other sites (like memeorandum and WeSmirch) will increasingly benefit from the direct human touch as well.

Meet Techmeme's new scapegoat

Last month we hired Megan McCarthy to help with a variety of editorial tasks. Chief among them was taking up this new editing role. We haven't settled on a job title yet, but perhaps "news maestro" is a fitting moniker, given her new role in conducting the symphony of voices that flow through Techmeme each day. Her name may sound familiar to you: Megan has worked at institutions ranging from Wired.com to The Rose and Crown. She mentioned some other place too which I can't recall at the moment. Appropriately, Megan is quite familiar with the workings of tech news on the web.

Writers and publicists unhappy with the headlines on Techmeme are encouraged to transfer the bulk of their resentment to Megan. I'm pleased to report she's looking forward to this. Though Omer Horvitz and I will share some of these editorial tasks, Megan will focus on this much more than us.

Doesn't this make Techmeme even more unfair and biased?

If that question makes any sense to you, you're probably a frustrated blogger. Otherwise, feel free to skip to the next section! I'd like to note here that Techmeme isn't fair because life isn't fair, and Techmeme will always be biased because humans have built Techmeme. And because news judgement, by definition, is bias. For background, please see this post from last year in which I state "Techmeme is biased".

Ultimately, Techmeme will succeed based on whether it interests a significant readership. While fairness and balance probably affect this interest, I need to stress that bloggers will never agree on what's fair. Why not? To generalize and perhaps exaggerate somewhat, many bloggers feel that in the fairest scenario, Techmeme prominently features all of their posts. So it's hard to be fair.

Image by tartx There's something happening here

I should note that the experience of introducing direct editing has been a revelation even for us, despite the fact that we planned it. Interacting directly with an automated news engine makes it clear that the human+algorithm combo can curate news far more effectively that the individual human or algorithmic parts. It really feels like the age of the news cyborg has arrived. Our goal is apply this new capability to producing the clearest and most useful tech news overview available.

New contact info

We always want to know how we can do a better job, and are now better staffed for listening. Please send complaints or news suggestions to this new email address: editorial at site domain Though we'll realistically reply to almost nothing sent there, we'll read it all, and appreciate your thoughts!

Provision in the Constitution technically bars Sen. Clinton from becoming Obama's secretary of state | FOX INTERACTIVE
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• THE STRATEGY ROOM: Judge Andrew Napolitano Hosts FOX News' Online Political Talk Show — STREAMING LIVE

This guest post is written by Matt Rutherford, Web Strategist and technology producer for Charlie Rose. Matt focuses on the macro themes affecting the internet and the wider world. You can read Matt’s previous guest post, Larry Lessig Defends Copyright, Loves Charlie Rose Remixes, here.

Who protects the internet? In part, it’s this man – General Kevin Chilton, US STRATCOM commander and the head of all military cyber warfare. We’re broadcasting an interview tonight with General Chilton, in which he discusses the threat of cyber warfare, along with his other remits of space warfare and the US nuclear deterrent. Chilton is fascinating, and amongst other things has been a NASA space shuttle pilot, logging over 700 hours in space. You can watch the full interview here (and it is embedded below).

The discussion with General Chilton brings to light a crucial question, however. Is the internet actually protected? The military remit is to defend the .mil networks, prevent online espionage, and develop offensive strike capabilities. But who’s protecting the rest? Given its integration with every aspect of our lives and economy, it’s surprising just how little we know about who defends our electronic nervous system.

The Threat

There’s copious discussion about exactly how vulnerable the US is to online attack. The alleged Russian DoS attacks on Estonia in 2007, and on Georgia this summer, highlighted the potential damage of state sponsored attacks. China has also been developing cyber warfare capabilities for some time, mounting online intelligence operations against Taiwan, and almost certainly against the US. The Chinese military has openly stated that it plans to be able to win an “informationized war” by the middle of this century. Russia, Israel and Romania are also alleged to have high-level cyber warfare capabilities.

This developing threat from state actors led Sami Saydjari, CEO of Cyber Defense LLC, to testify (pdf) to the US House Committee of Homeland Security in 2007, saying: “The US is vulnerable to a strategically crippling cyber attack from nation-state-class adversaries.” Such an attack has the potential to turn the US “from being a superpower to a third-world nation practically overnight.”

I should point out that many have disputed the apocalyptic nature of Saydjari’s statement. Kevin Mitnick, the reformed hacker, noted in a recent phone call:

“Could we face a mass DOS attack, as in Georgia and Estonia? I don’t think so. I think it would be more of a surveillance operation to get intelligence. Technically you could have a mass attack against the thirteen root nameservers around the world. But as for cyber war, I don’t think we’re at that point yet, I think it’s over-stated.”

Regardless of the impact of an offensive cyber attack, everyone appears to agree on the insidious danger from online intelligence gathering. Former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke eloquently summarized this in Foreign Policy recently:

“People tend to think about attacks that change things—turn off power grids, or whatever. And while that’s possible, what is happening every day is quite devastating, even though it doesn’t have a kinetic impact and there are no body bags. What’s happening every day is that all of our information is being stolen. So, we pay billions of dollars for research and development, both in the government and the private sector, for engineering, for pharmaceuticals, for bioengineering, genetic stuff... and all that information gets stolen for one one-thousandth of the cost that it took to develop it.”

Who protects us?

The problem is that it isn’t clear who has the remit for comprehensive defense of the internet. The US military and intelligence agencies defend government networks and track targets online, both domestically and abroad. A new Bush-ordained funding boost in January this year will help them become more coordinated. However, as Richard Clarke goes on to note, “the problem is that much of what we need to protect is not in the U.S. government; it’s in our private companies and our private networks”.

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division operates various public-private initiatives, such as the rather prosaic National Cyber Security Awareness Month. But beyond this, the general response appears highly fragmented with little grand oversight or public-private coordination. I emailed Jonathan Zittrain to ask his opinion on ‘who protects the internet’. He replied:

“Basically no one. At most, a number of loose confederations of computer scientists and engineers who seek to devise better protocols and practices — unincorporated groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the North American Network Operators Group. But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls — a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.”

Hackers to the rescue?

When Obama appoints a white house CTO, there will at least be an official figurehead in charge of this matter. Proposed candidates for the role currently include Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos and Julius Genachowski from IAC.

However, perhaps the future of internet security really lies in the hands of the community. Indeed, Jonathan Zittrain talked about ‘good hackers’ on our show in May, and he argues the importance of community policing in The Future of the Internet. The last few years of the internet have been about empowering the masses, and removing intermediary apparatus – so why not leverage the community to defend its cyber territory? Indeed, this is already happening, to a certain extent. Just look at Dan Kaminsky, a computer consultant who discovered a fundamental flaw in DNS, allowing him control over any website online. This flaw was astounding in what it gave access to – yet Dan Kaminsky didn’t turn to a government agency or organization, or abuse the hack himself. Instead he made a phone call to Paul Vixie, one of the creators of the BIND9 DNS routing software, and they assembled a team of civilians and private companies to resolve this apocalyptic vulnerability.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here. And whilst it’s certainly entertaining to envision vigilante hackers and rag-tag groups of high school kids overcoming nation states, I think there’s more serious matters at stake. The way that the internet community reacts and operates with state apparatus in defending against cyber threats will be a crucial indicator of our future society. How reliant are we on the nation-state to protect us? Will it ever be possible for internet communities to erode the relevance of the nation state? Or will the internet turn out to be just as Hobbesian as the real world has been?

Charlie Rose’s discussions with General Kevin Chilton and Jonathan Zittrain are available at our website, charlierose.com. Matt Rutherford can be reached at matt@charlierose.com.

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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/38354?ns=guardianpageName=Art+and+design%3A+%27I+was+shocked+by+the+hatred%27ch=Art+and+designc3=The+Guardianc4=Mark+Leckey%2CCulture+section%2CTurner+prize%2CArt+%28visual+arts+only%29%2CArt+and+design%2CAwards+and+prizes+%28Culture%29c5=Art%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Charlotte+Higginsc7=2008_12_03c8=1127709c9=articlec10=GUc11=Art+and+designc12=Mark+Leckeyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FArt+and+design%2FMark+Leckey" width="1" height="1" //divpMark Leckey has been handed two kinds of hangover cure the morning after winning the Turner prize - a packet of ibuprofen and an orange tube of Berocca. But the hangover doesn't show: the artist is neat as a pin in dandyish pink jeans, delicately polka-dotted shirt and a bleached-gold mane straight out of the George Michael school of haircare. /ppWhen the Turner prize is not being decried as insanely controversial, it is written off as dull and well past its sell-by date. This year's show fell into the latter category. Leckey, like many a winner before him, has discovered the hard way that a cheque for pound;25,000 and an instantly improved career come at the price of a public mauling. The Independent yearned for something that wasn't "about wearing your theory-stuffed brain on your sleeve". The Telegraph wrote off the entire show as "technically competent, bland, and ultimately empty". /pp"What I was warned to expect, but still shocked me, was how much obloquy and hatred the prize generates," he says. "I love the Stuckist conspiracy theory, that Nicholas Serota is a kind of machiavellian Skeletor who manipulates the government and the people." He will have had good advice, too: at Monday night's ceremony he was hand-in-hand with a Tate curator who has overseen previous Turner prize exhibitions; one of this year's judges, Daniel Birnbaum, is a colleague at the Frankfurt art school where he teaches. ("I know it looks ropey," he says of this last fact. "But it won't have helped me. He would have had to make a more convincing case for me, if he argued for me - and I don't know that he did.") Even so, he has been caught off guard. "I certainly wasn't expecting my work to be called boring and over-intellectualised. People wrote about me who don't know me, don't know my work, made an opinion based on one piece of work. They just steamed in."/ppFor some artists, the payback for this "obloquy" is the experience of having 60,000 members of the public come to see their work at Tate Britain. Not for Leckey. He accepted the nomination partly "because I wanted to see what it was like outside the sometimes constricted art world. It's small and can be very self-congratulatory." But, he says, "I am not interested in my work being democratised." What he'd really like, now, is for some doors to open. In particular, he wants his own television series - a variety show, with his band, Jack Too Jack, as the house orchestra. It would have musical numbers, and a little play or sketch, and Leckey sitting in a leather armchair agrave; la Ronnie Corbett telling an anecdote - except the chat would be "about art and ways of seeing". John Berger meets the Two Ronnies, he says. Would the BBC be remotely interested? "Well, there'd be no swearing," he says. "This would be good, old-fashioned, light entertainment."/ppLeckey takes me through his room in the Turner exhibition. Here is a little model of his flat, also his studio, which often appears in his films, marking the liminal space between the "real" world and the world of images in which he operates, or loses himself. Over there is Felix the Cat, spinning endlessly on a screen; there is something almost pornographic in the camera's pitiless gaze. Over here is a film that, by sleight of hand, appears to show Jeff Koons' Bunny, a metal sculpture of an inflatable rabbit, taking pride of place in Leckey's apartment. But it's all smoke and mirrors - the piece was never there. /ppLeckey is an admirer of Koons. "I like the idea of something that's almost inhuman in its perfection, like Bunny. It's as if it just appeared in the world, as if Koons just imagined it and it appeared. I always get too involved in the work." He also likes the notion that Warhol made his art unselfconsciously, "that he produced this work and went, 'Ah, really?' I like the idea that you let culture use you as its instrument. What gets in the way is being too clever, or worrying about how something is going to function, or where it's going to be. When you start thinking of something as art, you're fucked: you're never going to advance."/ppLeckey, 44, is the son of working-class parents who met while they were both working at Littlewoods. He was a "woollyback", someone from outside metropolitan Liverpool. "Ellesmere was an overspill town. I grew up with a sense of feeling inadequate, with the idea that the real action was going on over the river." He became a casual. "It was a working-class style, a genuine subculture. It was lads who adopted middle-class leisurewear - golfwear, sportswear - that you could see in magazines worn by the jetset. Ultimately, another word for casual was football hooligan. It was a kind of drag, a disguise. A means of using style to transform yourself." /ppThis was the era of the new romantics, but "casuals were more stylish, and smarter". You could say that Leckey's early negotiations between image and substance, his early attempts at self-transformation, were a kind of preparation for life as an artist. But art was a long time in the future. At Whitby comprehensive, now Whitby high school, he dyed his hair. "Like a skunk. And I used to jump out of windows: my effort to escape. My record was two floors." He left at 16 with one O-level, in art. He can't remember what grade he got. /ppThen there was a period when "I was a scally. A bad lad." What kind of a scally? "I scallied around," he says, evasively. "A bit of this, a bit of that." He went on various YTS schemes. Then, at 19, "I suddenly got deeply fascinated in trying to find out when civilisation began. In Ur and Babylon. I started going to the library. I am an autodidact - that's why I use bigger words than I should. It's a classic sign." Leckey's obsession with the beginning and the end of things has stayed with him. "It's the terror of infinity. I'm not convinced about the solidity of anything. Everything seems ephemeral." Sometimes images "seem more authentic than what they represent": this is a theme of his filmed lecture, Cinema-in-the-Round, part of the Turner prize show./ppFinally, Leckey says, his stepfather sat him down in the kitchen, and said: "Everything in this room has been designed and made by someone. You could do that." He took A-levels and went to art college in Newcastle, which he hated. "It was the early 1990s, when critical theory had swept the nation. The place was full of hippies from down south who were reading Mervyn Peake and Tolkien, and suddenly they were made to read Barthes and Derrida. It was like a Maoist year zero. I became very suspicious of the merits of critical theory, which is why I have been shocked at being accused of being over-academic. I've never seen myself as theoretically minded."/ppWhen Leckey collected the Turner prize cheque from Nick Cave on Monday night, he declared himself "chuffed to bits", and said that he was sounding more and more scouse. Then, surveying the room, he declared rather elliptically: "This is all good." I wonder what he meant. The prize? The party? The art world? "I was trying to say, not very well, that the art world in London, in Britain - that this is my world. It's good you can get acknowledged by your peers and that there is a sense of community. OK, that sentimentalises it, because it can be a bitter world, it can get factionalised, and lots of us can be sitting there scowling about White Cube gallery. /pp"When you read about the Turner prize in the press, and about the art world in general, you get the wonky idea that it's all about Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Banksy. I get riled by Damien Hirst's skull and by Banksy. It just irks me. The work is trite. And then it comes to represent culture and art, it becomes totemic. And I don't understand that." /pp· The strongTurner prize exhibition/strong is at Tate Britain, London SW1, until January 18. Details: 020-7887 8888./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/mark-leckey"Mark Leckey/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/turnerprize"Turner prize/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/art"Art/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/awardsandprizes"Awards and prizes/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4kmT88Dmgmj2mKMdIydVjFfQTsk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4kmT88Dmgmj2mKMdIydVjFfQTsk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Apple released the iTunes top-seller and best-of lists for 2008 this week, and Ask A Ninja was once again took top honors on the “Classics” Video Podcast list. On the more traditional media side, Gossip Girl was the top-selling TV season on iTunes while The Dark Knight (which hasn’t even been released yet on iTunes) came in at No. 1 on downloaded movie chart.

Apple doesn’t spell out whether the video podcast list is editorially created or based on hard numbers, but either way, new media shows are well represented on both the 2008 and Classics video podcast lists. Making the cut this year are:

2008

• Who What Wear - 60Frames
• Best of Current TV - Current
• Beginning Guitar 101 - ivideosongs.com
• ill doctrine - Jay Smooth (a NewTeeVee Top 10 Breakout Video Star!)
• Scam School - Revision3
• Howcast Food & Drink - Howcast
• Project Lore - Deca
• SuperNews - Current TV
• TPMtv - TPMtv (Talking Points Memo)

CLASSICS

• Ask A Ninja - Beatbox Giant
• Onion News Network - The Onion (which held the newcomer top spot last year)
• Wine Library TV - Wine Library TV
• Channel Frederator - NextNewNetworks
• Diggnation - Revision3
• Cool Hunting Video - coolhunting.com
• Hawaii Surf Session Report - surfsessionreport.com
• Geekbrief.TV - Cali Lewis
• Beautiful Places in HD - ON Networks
• Terra: The Nature of Our World - lifeonterra.com
• CHTV: College Humor Originals - CollegeHumor
• shralp!//snowboarding video podcast - shralp.com/snow
• Tekzilla - Revision3

Over on the oldteevee side of things, Gossip Girl Season 2 was the top-selling TV season. Joss Whedon’s uber-popular Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (which technically isn’t a TV show) also cracked the top 10, beating out shows like House and Desperate Housewives. Of course, if NBC’s iTunes numbers are any indication, none of these shows are being downloaded in huge numbers.

TOP SELLERS: TV SEASONS

• Gossip Girl, Season 2
• Family Guy, Season 7
• South Park: Uncensored, Season 12
• Grey’s Anatomy, Season 5
• Mad Men, Season 2
• Heroes, Season 3
• The Office, Season 5
• Lost, Season 4
• Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
• Grey’s Anatomy, Season 4

The Top Movie Downloads for 2008 on iTunes is ruled by The Dark Knight, a movie that as of now, can only be pre-ordered. Whereas you can kind of understand the popularity of certain shows on the TV side, some of the top movie downloads are a bit unexpected. Sure, WALL-E and Iron Man make sense, but Shooter? National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets? Jumper? Really?

TOP MOVIE DOWNLOADS

• The Dark Knight
• WALL-E
• Kung Fu Panda
• Iron Man
• Shooter
• National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets
• Superbad
• Jumper
• Enchanted
• No Country for Old Men

What, no Zoolander?