PEDES3ANTECH

In this post I will try to explore the history and future of media streaming services. I got interested in this topic recently when Taylor Swift took on two major streaming service providers - Spotify and Apple Music. She caused a huge media frenzy when she told the world what she thought about music streaming services. As I read through her comments and peoples reaction to her, I felt there was something missing in the discourse. Her comments felt like she was over simplifying the whole issue and that she was missing something more important. Taylor Swift seemed to think that music streaming is bad for artists because it devalues their product by not charging listeners enough and not paying artist enough. Spotify CEO defended streaming services as the future of music distribution and saying they are paying a lot ($2 Billion) in royalties for the music they stream online and will only get bigger. This was basically the two main camps in the Taylor Swift vs Music Streaming debate a

The  Mars Desert Research Station  - a step towards colonizing the Red Planet.  Mars is the next frontier in human space exploration. In order to make this a reality, a group of scientists are actively doing research on how to live on Mars here on Earth. It sound very counter-intuitive at first but how they do it is actually very interesting. The key is finding a location on Earth that has conditions closely analogous to those in Mars and set-up a Human habitat called MARS (Mars Analog Research Stations).  "Mars Analog Research Stations  (MARS) are laboratories for learning how to live and work on another planet. Each is a prototype of a habitat that will land humans on Mars and serve as their main base for months of exploration in the harsh Martian environment. Such a habitat represents a key element in current human Mars mission planing." Lay-out of a Mars HAB unit Testing these prototype HAB units is essential in the success of a manned Mars mission. The unit n

From the  Intercept : US Appeals Court won't block the release of Guantanamo force feeding videos of  Abu Wa’el Dhiab.  This decision gets us a step closer to seeing more clearly the kinds of abuse Guantanamo detainees are subject to. We have seen pictures of abuse - both physical and psychological - committed against detainees in the past. The US Senate recently published a report stating that the US government engaged in torture and a lot of them happened in Guantanamo. Just these two things would be enough to justify calls to permanently close down Guantanamo but the Obama administration continues to refuse to set a solid deadline for its closure.  If these videos are released it will renew calls for the closure of Guantanamo with more vigor and outrage. The Obama administration will certainly fight the release because they do not want to be put in a corner about Guantanamo. They cannot risk the public having a renewed outrage over Guantanamo as it will only make their curre

Imagine a world where everyone is happy because nobody is happier than the other. Imagine a world where everyone belongs to everyone because nobody belongs to someone. This may sound confusing but this is the world that Aldous Huxley creates in this book. The world that Huxley creates is one where technology has complete control over society. This control is shown from the beginning of the book where the story opens inside the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre. Here we are shown how technology is used to engineer human beings into different classes each with their own unique conditioning. Each class is conditioned to act, think and feel in a certain way that contributes to the overall harmony of society. Technology's control over society is very evident from the very beginning. Although technology today is not as intrusive as the technology portrayed in the book, the question on whether technology is controling us is still very much relevant today. From th

B altimore - Shortly after midnight on March 5, 1976 Mrs. Patricia Mcdonough was robbed just outside her home. She was able to take a good look at the robber and his 1975 Monte Carlo automobile. A few days after the robbery, Mrs. McDonough started receiving threatening phone calls from the man claiming to be the robber. Mrs. McDonough started recording some of these threatening phone calls and notified the police. On March 13, the police asked the telephone company to install a terminating accounting equipment on Mrs. Donough's telephone line to determine the origin of the calls she was receiving. The police found out that most of the calls were made from pay-phones near McDonough's residence.  On March 16, in the general vicinity of Mrs. McDonough's home, someone asked a police officer for help in opening the locked door of his 1975 Monte Carlo. The officer helped the man, took down his plate# and notified the investigating officer.  The police ran the plate # and tra

General David Petraeus was sentenced to two years probation and a $100K fine for leaking classified information (link to  plea deal ). This sentence is nothing short of an insult to the justice system in the United States. It is a clear example of how the justice system in the United States is rigged.  Let us recall what got Petraeus into this mess by looking at two things - i. What did he leak? ii. What was intention for leaking the information?  What did he leak? Petraeus leaked names of covert operatives, war plans for US forces, and detailed discussion with senior officials including the US President. This information was contained in notebooks that Petraeus kept for himself. He then gave Paula Broadwell access to these notebooks to help her write his biography. The information contained in those notebooks are highly classified by any standard and had the potential of endangering US covert operatives.  When Chelsea Manning leaked the Afghan war-logs to WikiLeaks th