It may come as a surprise to many that the way computers handle numbers is not very accurate. Indeed, it can be said that error is built into the very foundation of digital computers, and while the end user often does not see the result of these errors, they can be very problematic for programmers, scientists, engineers, and calculation intense industries such as money management and military operations.

At the recent Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore, computer scientist John Gustafson outlined the problems with floating points in his keynote and later in an interview. Given the complexity — and severity — of the problem, it’s worth taking a second in-depth look at the issue.

The Problem

Developer Richard Harris, who wrote a series of articles on the dangers of floating point, said in one post, “The dragon of numerical error is not often roused from his slumber, but if incautiously approached he will occasionally inflict catastrophic damage upon the unwary programmer’s calculations. So much so that some programmers, having chanced upon him in the forests of IEEE 754 floating point arithmetic, advise their fellows against travelling in that fair land.”

Because computers – which are machines of precision and exactness – are often made to deal with unprecise and inexact numbers (such as pi, and irrationals), methods must be devised to compensate for computational error, and to make the end result as close to the correct answer as possible. One solution has been devised that is still in use today: floating point. Floating point is a method similar to scientific notation, which uses a decimal point, sign bit, and a number of exact digits to represent a number.

Since The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic was published in 1985, this standard has come to dominate the mathematical methods used by hardware and software engineers for the basic operations computers perform whenever running an application. Ideally, a one-size-fits-all standard such as this one would minimize error and promote uniformity of results across a broad spectrum of hardware.

Unfortunately, this has not been the practical result. Different processors and software packages, designed to handle floating point operations, often result in slightly different answers, due to rounding errors, and differing orders of operation.

One way that programmers often compensate is to use as many digits as possible to represent a number. In modern computers, this means that 32 – 64 bits of data are almost always used to represent a single floating point number. While modern computers are also very fast at calculations, this many bits must be stored and retrieved from memory, causing significant latency in calculations.

Furthermore, due to compounding error, traditional properties of algebra – such as the commutative and associative property – do not necessarily apply to floating point operations. In other words, (a + b) + c =/= a + (b + c), nor does c * (a + b) = c*a + c*b.

In the case of floating point, using these differing approaches often yields dissimilar results.

The post The Evils of Floating Point, and the Joys of Unum appeared first on VR World.

Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 kicks off March 17 in Singapore and computer scientist Jack Dongarra is set to deliver one of the opening keynotes for the event, titled Current Trends in Parallel Numerical Computing and Challenges for the Future.

Dongarra is well known within academic and commercial high performance computing circles within the United States and around the world.

Dongarra did not start his academic career with the intention of numbering among the foremost supercomputer experts and innovators. Enrolling in Chicago State University in the 1960s, Dongarra majored in mathematics which he intended to teach as a subject.

But Dongarra’s career objectives soon changed after he learned about a brilliant machine that took the human error and tedium out of math altogether: the digital computer. While it was still emerging at the time as a proper tool for academia, Dongarra quickly found that 16 x 16 matrices were much harder to solve by hand than with a machine, which could do them effortlessly.
Dongarra became so proficient at programming the computer to do math problems, that he eventually changed his pursuit from mathematics to computing, and went on to get a masters in Computer Science at the Illionois Institute of Technology.

Math and computers were a harmonious mix, and at the prestigious Argonne national lab, Dongarra worked with a group to develop a software library based on the algorithms of computer scientist James Wilkinson, and the result was EISPACK, a highly influential library of matrix solving routines. Funded by the U.S Department of Defense, Dongarra went on to develop LINPACK, a similar library for numerical algebra.

Linpack went on to become a de facto benchmark for computing power, and in 1993, Dongarra began compiling the TOP500 list, which remains the most influential authority on rankings of supercomputers around the world.

Dongarra currently lives in Oak Ridge Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he works as a researcher. ORNL is home to Jaguar, the world’s second fastest supercomputer. Dongarra is also a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, and director of UT’s Innovative Computing Laboratory.

In the last decade, Dongarra has continued to focus on supercomputers, and more specifically, the future of exascale computing. In 2013, Dongarra received a $1 million dollar grant from the Department of Defense to work on the problem of scaling supercomputers to 1,000+ petaflops of strength.

Seeing the project as vitally important to the understanding and management of weather, climate, and other natural systems, Dongarra has worked to overcome the limitations on traditional computing which prevent them from breaking the 1,000 petaflop barrier.

While exascale computers are not yet possible, that hasn’t stopped Dongarra from planning for the future, and part of his efforts include the Parallel Runtime Scheduling and Execution Controller, or PaRSEC, a project aimed at developing algorithms and solutions to manage exascale computers when they arrive.

The expert that experts consult, arguably nobody is better qualified for the task. After receiving the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)-Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award in 2013, widely renowned “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf said of Dongarra “his innovations have contributed immensely to the steep growth of high-performance computing and its ability to illuminate a wide range of scientific questions facing our society.”

Wayne Davis, dean of the college of Engineering at The University of Tennessee remarked “it is hard to imagine what would have not been discovered without [Dongarra’s] work.”

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Since cryptographers from the IMDEA, IRIA and Microsoft Research found a serious vulnerability in the SSL/TLS security standards that are used to keep passwords and other sensitive information safe in modern browsers, security researchers have been scrambling to uncover the range of everything that has been affected as a result.

Since then, it has been discovered that Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) server software was vulnerable, along with a host of sensitive websites, including those of Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), American Express (NYSE: AXP), the NSA, the White House, and others. Additionally, many and most popular web browsers were vulnerable to the exploit: the extent was, on the whole, very impressive.

Parties using vulnerable computers could quickly find themselves on the receiving end of man-in-the-middle attacks, that could be used to steal payment information, passwords, and other extremely sensitive data. Webmasters fared even worse, as the vulnerability could be used to inject malicious code onto server and web buttons.

Companies were quick to roll out patches and fixes for the attack, but this whole mess could have been mitigated, and definitely should not have happened in the first place.

Who is responsible for the FREAK SSL exploit?

Who is to blame for a flaw in the most commonly used security protocol in the world, that managed to affect more than one-third of websites offering SSL?

According to cryptographer at John Hopkins university Matthew Green, the flaw was built into SSL from the very start. “The SSL protocol itself was deliberately designed to be broken,” Green wrote on his blog.

Back in the 1990s, when (it is fair to say) computers were significantly slower than they are today, and the World Wide Web was still in its infancy, cryptography was not very strong by modern standards. After Netscape revealed it’s new SSL technology, the U.S government was quick to regulate the standard. U.S versions of the browser came with 1024 bit public keys, but these keys could not be exported to other countries. The International edition was significantly weaker, with 512 bit public keys.

Since the government made this rule in the interests of being able to break into other nations’ SSL, the standard was quite literally designed to be broken.

Since the 1990s, of course, computers have moved on, and so have politics. The U.S has relaxed its laws about international encryption, and in 2013, a broad push was made to introduce 2048-bit SSL encryption, which is now the standard across the Internet.

So why, fifteen years later, are we being haunted by SSL’s poor security?

Because of the varying degrees of encryption offered by servers and browsers, ‘cipher suites’ were used to negotiate the strongest available encryption standards between a client and a host. While this is barely used nowadays, the option still exists in the clockwork behind operating systems and browsers. The essence of the FREAK attack is, therefore, very simple: interrupt a vulnerable client, and downgrade its encryption from standard RSA to ‘export RSA’.

The resultant encryption is so weak by today’s standards that it can be cracked in a manner of hours using Amazon Web Services.

FREAK never needed to be an issue, and it’s the classic result of companies failing to keep up with rapidly deprecating technology standards.

Fixing the FREAK SSL vunerability

Here are three ways to prevent another FREAK attack from occurring:

1. The government should not try to regulate Internet security standards. The government should be involved in security, and it should certainly regulate the security of its own systems: but laws should not be in place that will hamper the development of security technologies in the private sector. Criminals will continue innovating, and computers will only get faster. The government cannot shut down the Internet, or control its rate of progress, and it shouldn’t try. When it does, bad things happen.
2. Software and web developers – especially larger ones, like Microsoft and Facebook – must actively curate its software for deprecated standards, and disable it. It can be a pain, and a hassle to keep changing systems when old ones are in place that worked in the past. But a little pain in the present could prevent massive disasters down the road.
3. Consumers must be willing to let go of old, familiar technologies and upgrade to ones that are newer and safer on a consistent basis. Individuals – and especially companies – who insist on keeping software solutions that are deprecated in terms of decades must dedicate the time and money to keep up with the changing environment of threats and dangers by upgrading. At the very least, if they must keep the old solutions, they must seek ways to actively improve and safeguard them from potential exploits (similar to what the active Windows XP community is doing now).

This isn’t a novelty, and it isn’t rocket science. This is common sense, and it’s what people should be doing in the first place.

The post How the FREAK SSL Flaw Could Have Been Prevented appeared first on VR World.

The last two years have been rife with reasons to be concerned about national cyber security in the United States: From Edward Snowden’s leaks regarding NSA domestic and international surveillance, to the allegedly North Korean attack on Sony Pictures, to a recent Russian attack on a White House network, to the GAO’s “high-risk” listing on the terrible gaps in U.S cybersecurity. It should therefore come as no surprise that we find the U.S government flailing to haphazardly establish various and poorly connected initiatives in a desperate attempt to stay above water in a brave new world.

The latest step in these efforts is the establishment of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. During a keynote at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism Lisa Monaco said: “Currently, no single government entity is responsible for producing coordinated cyber threat assessments, ensuring that information is shared rapidly among existing cyber centers … and supporting the work of operators and policymakers with timely intelligence about the latest cyber threats and threat actors. The CTIIC is intended to fill these gaps.”

The “gaps” to which Monaco refers are really tremendous chasms between U.S agencies like the FBI, CIA and NSA which traditionally don’t like talking to one another. In the golden age of espionage, this could be a good thing that aided national security. But in the information age, more information is better, and sharing is the only way to improve national safety.

With an increasingly large number of organizations dedicated to handling the daunting task of keeping the United States safe from outside attacks, it is all the more paramount that they communicate with one another and stay organized and transparent.

“In the cyber context, we need to share threat information more broadly and to coordinate our actions so that we are all working to achieve the same goal,” said Monaco.

Just another agency

But not everyone is convinced that the CTIIC is necessary, or that it will really accomplish its stated purpose. One new member in a sea of acronyms, the CTIIC is considered extraneous by some, or a potential excuse for the government to collate and collect private information: not worth the $35 million it will cost to establish.

A huge influx of governemnt programs to fix a national crisis is an American tradition

Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology is one such skeptic, and has been quoted as saying: “Given the number of other agencies that have cybersecurity threat integration responsibilities, it’s not clear that a new agency is needed.”

Speaking with The Guardian Norjem added, “We are keen to hear from the White House about the measures it will impose to ensure that this new agency operates transparently, with effective independent oversight, and does not become a repository for personal information unnecessary to counter cyber threats.”

What’s more, the CTIIC follows a familiar template, and is modeled after the National Counterterrorism Center which deals with terrorist threats at home and abroad.  The U.S government understands terrorism, and knows all too well how to fight it, and thinks that the same methods will help it to manage a cybersecurity crisis.

But the facts show this strategy is failing miserably. The CTIIC is not the first effort the U.S government has made in the last few years to improve public IT, as the government has already spent billions of dollars to manage the digital frontier – the Pentagon itself spends $5 billion every year on cybersecurity. And according to this month’s GAO report, national cybersecurity is still plagued by terrible problems, and words like “inadequate”, “inconsistent” and “partial” were used to describe the government’s efforts. Since 2006, the number of information security incidents reported by federal agencies to the US-CERT have increased by 1,121%

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Cyber threats and terrorism are apples and oranges: both fruits, but of completely different kinds. The U.S government is trying to manage a 21st century problem with 20th century solutions, much as the FCC has done by trying to regulate the Internet as utility. Leading technology companies are feeling the brunt of these moves, and Verizon released a satirical statement in morse code regarding the FCC’s new rules to emphasize the inadequacy of outdated methods where new problems are concerned.

So is the CTIIC good or necessary? Perhaps, with proper oversight, it could marginally improve the existing nature of U.S cybersecurity. But perhaps the time has come to stop thinking of ways we can glue the old system together, and come up with something better suited for the decidedly unique threats of the modern world.

The post Is the Newest U.S Cybersecurity Agency Necessary? appeared first on VR World.

Since it has been confirmed that the Windows Holographic platform will come baked into every copy of the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft obviously anticipates the possibility of a future filled with “holographic” computing devices.

So is Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) correct to expect this trend, and – more importantly – should we be happy if it is?

HoloLens joins the recent crew of wearable interfaces, which includes Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Glass and Sony’s not-so-smart-glasses. Some people want to include Oculus Rift in this list, but the Rift is neither augmented reality, nor a computer interface – it is a glamorous virtual reality gaming console, that also happens to be really cool, but doesn’t attempt to function as an interface for everyday computing.

A step forward

Augmented reality devices represent the logical step in a trend that began with the unveiling of the original iPhone in 2007.  Much has been made of the way Apple’s iPhone – and later the iPad – influenced the computing world by creating a vast market for portable smart devices. But equally relevant is an extraordinary paradigm shift caused by these devices with the perfection of one simple element: the touch screen.

Since Douglas Engelbart’s “mother of all demos” in 1968, computer interfaces have been dominated by the ingenious mouse-keyboard combo. For a generation of people who lived before computers, the mouse and keyboard represented the perfect interface: a simple and intuitive way to input commands to a computer using direct mechanical motion and tactile feedback. Typing at a computer wasn’t much different from using a typewriter, and using a mouse must have felt a lot like pulling a lever or turning a steering-wheel to get where one wanted to go.

Most importantly, this interface maintained a clear distinction between the user and the machine: there could not be a less ambiguous boundary than the four corners of a computer monitor, and the pronounced grid of a 1980s keyboard. This distinction was a comfortable one for those accustomed to reading text from the pages of a book, or the folds of a newspaper.

But it also turned out to be an unnecessary one, because computers are not books. The touchscreen was not merely a cool gimmick, but a fundamental change in the way people interacted with their devices. Gone was the distance, or the need for mechanical proxies. Users could now directly manipulate the digital environment by touching it, and interacting with it in a way so intimate that it could arguably be called “magical”.

Since a capacitive touchscreen was included in Apple’s original iPhone, touchscreens have appeared everywhere: tablets, laptops, desktop monitors, televisions, cars, and even refrigerators. It’s a well established fact that a small niche for touchscreens existed before 2007, as exemplified by Microsoft’s Palm PC. But besides being inaccurate and cumbersome, these screens focused on the use of a stylus, and so continued to emphasize the mechanical boundary between machine and user.

Changing paradigms

Google went a step beyond the touchscreen with Glass, by changing the very screen from a physical one to one existing virtually in a user’s line of sight. But this was more of a gimmick than anything significant. Glass still functioned almost exactly like a mobile device. The glass interface was just a screen – a screen constantly floating in front of one’s face, but a screen nevertheless.

HoloLens represents an even more dramatic reduction in the distance between user and interface. By virtually transforming the physical world into a tangible representation of programs and controls, HoloLens is more invasive than glass, which at least preserves the distinction between what is virtual and what is real.

The effect – theoretically, at least – is awesome. What could be cooler than literally stepping into a Martian biome, or the bounds of a video game environment, or to pick up a virtual model and turn it around, all within one’s office?

The question of whether these theoretical features will actually function as intended can be ignored in lieu of the more dramatic question, which is: should this distance be breached in the first place? Digital environments are not realer than the ones in books or other fantasies, which we comfortably consign to the boundaries of our imagination, or pages, or stage, or screen – the boundaries of something.

But should we willingly lie to our senses until they are confused what is actual, and what is virtual? HoloLens is the first time this has actually been attempted, so there are no past failures to learn from, or debates to draw on. This is a question that must be worked out by the consumer, whose answer will ultimately determine the fate of augmented reality, and Microsoft’s HoloLens.

The post Is Microsoft HoloLens the Future of Computing? appeared first on VR World.

This Week in Tech History is a weekly column looking back at a significant technological or scientific achievement throughout the course of history, and examining the outcome it has on modern society and industry.

This week in history, on the 24th of August, it is thought that Johannes Gutenberg finished a completed copy of his famous 42-line Bible, which has since been regarded as one of the most important works in the history of the printed word. Important to Christian and literary heritage, the Gutenberg Bible also marks a turning point in history which had profound effects on the world politically, philosophically and technologically, which we feel today in its greatest offspring: the Internet.

The Dark Ages

Before there was ever the printed word, there were scribes in both the West and the East. Through their tireless care and devotion, precious pieces of the ancient past have survived to see the modern world. Handwritten manuscripts, impeccably penned, tattered and worn with the passage of time sat upon the scribal desk, copied letter for letter with meticulous precision.

Thanks to the efforts of these learned men, ancient Greek, Chinese and Indian works have survived long after the death of their authors who have often slipped during this time into obscurity.

A quintessential example of a scribe was Saint Bede, a monk who lived between the seventh and eighth centuries. Widely known as “the Father of English History”, Bede serves as a precious link to that country’s ancient past which is hidden in shadow from the eyes of the modern historian.

St. Bede in his monastery

Penning with his own hand works like the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede went about the task of copying down ancient works word for word inside voluminous “Codices”, a recent innovation at the time which had come to replace the antiquated scroll as the preferred medium for storing books and records.

Bede was uniquely privileged in this respect, for he had access to what was perhaps the greatest library on the English continent at that time. In the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery, where the scribe carried out his duties, there was a collection of about two-hundred books. And for this collection which is extremely modest by modern reckoning, Bede’s monastery was highly esteemed as a center for education.

It’s understandable, then, why books were not to be found in the house of the common man. They were so scarce and valuable, that they were treated with reverence and protected dutifully. Thus, it is an inaccuracy that the church at that time was responsible for stifling the intellectual climate – indeed, it was patrons of the church like Bede who ensured that fine literature and works of philosophy were preserved and passed down.

But it would certainly have been disastrous to distribute such scarce and irreplaceable volumes to the hands of the laity, and so the books were locked within such places, and many normal men never saw a book in all their lives.

The invention of movable type

More than 700 years after Bede, another man on the same continent was busy creating a machine that would change the fate of everybody. Johannes Gutenberg was a very clever man, to say the least, and using existing technologies such as the screw press and flat plane, he developed the machine that we now call ‘the printing press’.

Gutenberg’s printing press was an incalculably faster and more economic method of reproducing written information. In the time that it would take for a scribe to copy a handful of pages manually, Gutenberg’s press could stamp out thousands, all perfect, without mistakes or differences between them.

Gutenberg’s printing press

Some challenge the notion that Gutenberg invented movable type, since similar technologies already existed in China. But this observation is not really fair – while there were indeed methods that could be used to reproduce the written word in Asia about seventy years before Gutenberg came along, these methods were very cumbersome, difficult, and extremely expensive.

The Asian counterpart to the printing press was a novelty, not a practical technology, and with alphabets containing thousands of individual characters, the Asian languages have never been conducive to printing, and it was not until the digital age that reproducing these alphabets became comparably simple.Separated from this innovation by thousands of miles, and a nearly impenetrable cultural and linguistic barrier, the invention of the Chinese had no influence on Gutenberg, who could not have been aware that it even existed.

Thus, it is both safe and fair to credit Gutenberg with the invention of movable type, especially since it was his invention that lived on to change the course of history.

Gutenberg’s Bible

Besides his printing press, Gutenberg is best known for one specific item produced by it: the 42-line Gutenberg Bible.

Using the text of the Latin vulgate – for the Bible had not yet been translated into the romantic languages – Gutenberg produced a printed copy on his press, and then made many more sometime in the 1450s.

It is not known for certain when Gutenberg produced his Bible, but a note has been found in one of Gutenberg’s many Bibles suggesting that it was created on St. Matthew’s day (August 24^th) of 1456.

One of Gutenberg’s Bibles

His Bible is regarded by many bibliophiles to be the finest book of all time, as Gutenberg spared no attention to detail in producing his Bible, treating the paper, using very fine inks, and paying very close attention to the margins and dimensions of the masterpiece.

Never before had there been a Bible – or any book, for that matter – created with such precision, perfection, and symmetry. It was as perfect a copy as the world had ever seen.

Detail of decoration from a Gutenberg Bible

The book was an instant sensation, and Gutenberg quickly sold every copy of his book to various wealthy buyers. It was not yet cheap enough to be afforded by a regular common man, but it was snatched up by various church parishes, schools, and members of the rich class. Still available only in Latin, Gutenberg’s Bible was not accessible to the unlearned.

It was the first bestseller in world history, and many new printers were yet to take up shop, following in the example of Gutenberg, printing classical literature and contemporary publications as well.

Future pope Pius II wrote glowingly of the book, and Gutenberg’s ingenuity, showing that it is yet another historical misconception that the Church was ever opposed to the printing press or the production of Bibles. This error may be explained by a controversy that was yet to come.

The Renaissance, and the Reformation

The advent of the printing press, which led to a previously non-existent market for books that could be afforded – though barely – by the common people made a very hospitable climate for intellectual curiosity, education, and a revival of interest in classical literature and philosophy. Thus, the invention of the printing press has often been credited as the cause of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance was a blast furnace for scholasticism, which was already developing at a steady rate during the medieval times with only the aid of transcribed works and learned teachers. With books becoming readily available, educational institutes flourished, and new ones were established.

A medieval university

And so it came to pass, in this climate of inquiry and deep thought that a new voice of controversy sprang from the newly founded University of Wittenberg. There, a monk named Martin Luther was questioning certain abuses in the church, and accusing its doctrine of being in error with Christian teaching.

Luther summarized his complaints in a long handwritten document now called his ’95 theses’. On October 31^st, 1517, he nailed his work to the door of Wittenberg – a common practice at the time – for everyone to see. Word quickly spread of the theses, and they were taken to a nearby print shop where they were copied, and disseminated.

Luther nailing his theses

The theses spread like wildfire, and word eventually got to the Pope. Luther was eventually tried before royalty for heresy, but by that time, it was too late: his idea had got out, and people were not going to forget it. Despite attempts to burn all Luther’s work, there were too many copies in existence, and they continued to spread through Europe.

This upheaval in the church, and the establishment of new Christian denominations which rebelled against the Papacy in Rome has come to be known as the Reformation. The effects of the Reformation would soon influence the powers of the world.

The New World, and the print culture

About a century later, a group of Reformed Christians called the Puritans were tired of persecution by the Catholic church. In the time since Luther, Christians who spoke against Rome had been tortured and killed by the Church throughout Europe.

They boarded a ship called the Mayflower with other dissenting thinkers, seeking a free life in the New World. They eventually reached it, and established a colony there. Despite the hardships they famously faced during that hard winter, they successfully began the European colonization of the North American continent, and by proxy, the development of the American nation.

Over a hundred years after the pilgrims settled in what is now the United States, the colonies of America were ready to declare themselves an independent nation. Men who are now renowned as the nation’s ‘founding fathers’ wrote a document that would govern the laws of the state. And the document would sit in a place of higher authority than the country’s rulers – this was the foundation of a ‘constitutional republic’.

A culture had been started by Gutenberg – one dominated by the eye, and by the letter. Before his time, stories, history, information and even law had been passed down the generations orally. Even at the time that America was becoming a country that was governed by the written word, England – in stark contrast – was mostly powered by ‘common law’, a form of oral law that didn’t depend so much on written statues as it did tradition.

What would become one of the world’s greatest superpowers would be founded on this print culture, and pioneer its greatest territory so far.

Even before the American colonies united into a nation, colonists were using the printed word to their advantage. Newspapers made by local printers rapidly spread updates on the war with Britain, and did much to inform colonists, and influence their opinions.

But far more important than that, printed publications created a way for ideas to spread, and for a person’s thoughts to influence other people.

Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s founding fathers, famously wrote to his brother’s newspaper under the alias of ‘Silence Dogood’. His advice and anecdotes were greatly appreciated by his many readers, and spread rapidly.

But more importantly, Thomas Paine penned a pamphlet with his opinions about the war with Britain called ‘Common Sense’. The pamphlet was published by printers, and quickly became a bestseller in the colonies, doing much to affect sentiments regarding independence throughout the colonies.

George Washington read the pamphlet to his troops aloud, in order to inspire them for battle.

Gutenberg’s invention was changing the whole world, by giving people a way to spread their ideas which they didn’t have before.

The Internet

Over two hundred years later, the natural evolution of Gutenberg’s technology which has granted men similar abilities is the Internet – a medium for communication, expression, and the permanent storage of perfectly copied information.

In 2011, Frank La Rue submitted 88 recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council, and in recommendation #67, he noted “Unlike any other medium, the Internet enables individuals to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds instantaneously and inexpensively across national borders. By vastly expanding the capacity of individuals to enjoy their right to freedom of opinion and expression, which is an “enabler” of other human rights, the Internet boosts economic, social and political development, and contributes to the progress of humankind as a whole.”

A visualization of the known Internet from The Opte Project

This week, celebrate the achievements of a German printer who made a single book, and changed the history of mankind.

Were it not for Gutenberg and his Bible, this website and the technologies we use to access it – and perhaps the very country from which you are visiting it – could very well not exist.

The post This Week in Tech History: The Gutenberg Bible and Printing Press appeared first on VR World.

Dystopia themed works have come to rival the wizarding world of Harry Potter, and the vampiric machinations of Stephanie Meyers as the current trend in young adult literature and films. The current glut of post-apocalyptic and dystopic works with anti-establishment sentiments can in some part be credited to the wild success of Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games. But years before Hunger Games, there was The Giver, which has since become a staple on middle school bookshelves. And years before the latter was adapted into a film, Jeff Bridges – “The Dude” – was already making plans to turn ‘Giver’ into a movie.

Finally out of production hell, and (perhaps) inconveniently surfacing at a time when people are getting tired of sixteen year old heroes single-handedly conquering oppressive regimes, Giver is thankfully not the Hunger Games ripoff that it had looked like it would be to many long-time fans of the book. Though perhaps it slightly tones down its source material (which was on many banned reading lists for its controversial nature), The Giver is still a thought provoking film with a deep strata of underlying messages and philosophical themes.

Giver begins, suspiciously enough, in a black and white world of white washed buildings, in a symmetric and orderly society perched atop a vast plateau. This is our first glimpse of the film’s wonderfully effective but subdued visuals, which convey an impressively convincing futuristic world with cool technologies that seem believably evolved from our own, and which never distract from the story. Any feelings of offness that we get from the unexpected use of monochrome quickly fade away in a world of polite people who co-operate in a seemingly perfect society, where citizens of a community meet to celebrate the achievements of local children who are graduating to higher grades, and the lives of senior citizens who proudly stand in a row waiting to be released to “Elsewhere”.

Meryl Streep as the Chief Elder

Main character Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites, stands with his fellow students awaiting assignment to the roles they will play in society – this evokes a comparison to The City of Ember, although it turns out that this work was also written long after The Giver. It’s probably fair to believe that most seemingly dystopic tropes you witness in this film were actually invented by the material it is adapted from. Jonas is skipped by the Chief Elder played by Meryl Streep, who apologizes for her seeming mistake after the entirety of Jonas’ graduating class have already been assigned their jobs.

It turns out that Jonas has been selected for the society’s most revered position: the receiver of memories.

Told that he is now allowed to disobey the society’s many mandatory stipulations (such as taking certain medications and never lying) as part of his training, Jonas’ life is turned upside down as he begins to learn about the vast world of experiences outside of his society’s collective consciousness. Jonas reports every day to the former receiver of memories played by Jeff Bridges, who begins to share with Jonas memories of the world before there was “sameness” — hence the titular “Giver”.

Jeff Bridges as ‘The Giver’, and Brenton Thwaites as ‘Jonas’

As it turns out, the society in which Jonas lives has used technologies such as climate control, genetic manipulation and medicine to strip away differences in the world, including snow (it’s always warm and idealic, even in the winter), emotions, religions, and — to Jonas’ shock — color, which he begins to see. Jonas stops taking his morning injection which seems to stifle feelings — especially romatic ones – and begins to experience love and loss.

Thus begins a dark turn. A society which seems perfect on the outside is slowly revealed to have a very sinister core, as Jonas learns that eldery people released to ‘Elsewhere’ are in fact euthanized, and infants that seem unfit to live are given the same treatment.

Jonas’ horror grows in volumes as he realizes the clockwork society around him that doesn’t even see the wrongness in their way of life.

The rest of the movie is a tale of love and peril, as Jonas tries to teach his muse Fiona — played by Odeya Rush — what it means to love, and embarks on a journey to restore to his society what it has lost.

The performances in this movie are all very high quality as a whole, but Bridges — as expected — steals the show with his battered yet vulnerable interpretation of the ‘Giver’ character. Streep, who plays the antagonistic Chief Elder, is a close second.

The Giver has its flaws, and ardent fans of the book will find reason to criticize it. Certain minute details have been changed, such as the book’s morning pill which has been replaced with an injection (perhaps to avoid comparisons with The Matrix). But more important details are changed as well, as Jonas casually experiences music halfway through the movie, when in the book, this joy did not occur until the final page.

The cinematography, while brilliant in most regards, certainly isn’t perfect either. The gradual transition from black and white to color, which was used to great effect in classic film The Wizard of Oz is interesting as a plot device, but spoils the reveal that the book easily manages to hide as a work of literature. But this change is perhaps inevitable in a book to screen translation – a more important complaint is that while the makers of ‘Oz’ knew how to film in black and white, the makers of The Giver clearly do not. The black and white scenes were obviously filmed with color methods, and seem to have been cheaply desaturated, and come across as overly bright and exposed.

But in the end, The Giver – unlike some recent book to film adaptations, such as The Hobbit – is very faithful to the spirit of the book. Its mastery as a work of dystopia translates successfully from book to screen.

In The Giver, black and white is a visual metaphor for what its society is not.

Like real life evil societies, such as Hitler’s National Socialist Party, things do not seem amiss from the inside, except by a very few. Not only do people in this society seem happy, and content, but things seem pretty good — if questionable — to viewers as well. There is no oppressive government murdering children in gladiator-esque massacres a la Hunger Games, or government sanctioned days when all crime is legal a la ‘The Purge’.

In its place is a real world with real people, who have a definable but skewed Ethos that has come to guide their lives (“If it’s against the rules”, asks Jonas’ best friend Asher, “How can it be right?”)

‘Giver’ moves past the mindless rebelliousness that has come to mark teenage fiction, and asks us to contemplate the fundamental components of our society.

The post ‘The Giver’ Review appeared first on VR World.

Dystopia themed works have come to rival the wizarding world of Harry Potter, and the vampiric machinations of Stephanie Meyers as the current trend in young adult literature and films. The current glut of post-apocalyptic and dystopic works with anti-establishment sentiments can in some part be credited to the wild success of Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games. But years before Hunger Games, there was The Giver, which has since become a staple on middle school bookshelves. And years before the latter was adapted into a film, Jeff Bridges – “The Dude” – was already making plans to turn ‘Giver’ into a movie.

Finally out of production hell, and (perhaps) inconveniently surfacing at a time when people are getting tired of sixteen year old heroes single-handedly conquering oppressive regimes, Giver is thankfully not the Hunger Games ripoff that it had looked like it would be to many long-time fans of the book. Though perhaps it slightly tones down its source material (which was on many banned reading lists for its controversial nature), The Giver is still a thought provoking film with a deep strata of underlying messages and philosophical themes.

Giver begins, suspiciously enough, in a black and white world of white washed buildings, in a symmetric and orderly society perched atop a vast plateau. This is our first glimpse of the film’s wonderfully effective but subdued visuals, which convey an impressively convincing futuristic world with cool technologies that seem believably evolved from our own, and which never distract from the story. Any feelings of offness that we get from the unexpected use of monochrome quickly fade away in a world of polite people who co-operate in a seemingly perfect society, where citizens of a community meet to celebrate the achievements of local children who are graduating to higher grades, and the lives of senior citizens who proudly stand in a row waiting to be released to “Elsewhere”.

Meryl Streep as the Chief Elder

Main character Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites, stands with his fellow students awaiting assignment to the roles they will play in society – this evokes a comparison to The City of Ember, although it turns out that this work was also written long after The Giver. It’s probably fair to believe that most seemingly dystopic tropes you witness in this film were actually invented by the material it is adapted from. Jonas is skipped by the Chief Elder played by Meryl Streep, who apologizes for her seeming mistake after the entirety of Jonas’ graduating class have already been assigned their jobs.

It turns out that Jonas has been selected for the society’s most revered position: the receiver of memories.

Told that he is now allowed to disobey the society’s many mandatory stipulations (such as taking certain medications and never lying) as part of his training, Jonas’ life is turned upside down as he begins to learn about the vast world of experiences outside of his society’s collective consciousness. Jonas reports every day to the former receiver of memories played by Jeff Bridges, who begins to share with Jonas memories of the world before there was “sameness” — hence the titular “Giver”.

Jeff Bridges as ‘The Giver’, and Brenton Thwaites as ‘Jonas’

As it turns out, the society in which Jonas lives has used technologies such as climate control, genetic manipulation and medicine to strip away differences in the world, including snow (it’s always warm and idealic, even in the winter), emotions, religions, and — to Jonas’ shock — color, which he begins to see. Jonas stops taking his morning injection which seems to stifle feelings — especially romatic ones – and begins to experience love and loss.

Thus begins a dark turn. A society which seems perfect on the outside is slowly revealed to have a very sinister core, as Jonas learns that eldery people released to ‘Elsewhere’ are in fact euthanized, and infants that seem unfit to live are given the same treatment.

Jonas’ horror grows in volumes as he realizes the clockwork society around him that doesn’t even see the wrongness in their way of life.

The rest of the movie is a tale of love and peril, as Jonas tries to teach his muse Fiona — played by Odeya Rush — what it means to love, and embarks on a journey to restore to his society what it has lost.

The performances in this movie are all very high quality as a whole, but Bridges — as expected — steals the show with his battered yet vulnerable interpretation of the ‘Giver’ character. Streep, who plays the antagonistic Chief Elder, is a close second.

The Giver has its flaws, and ardent fans of the book will find reason to criticize it. Certain minute details have been changed, such as the book’s morning pill which has been replaced with an injection (perhaps to avoid comparisons with The Matrix). But more important details are changed as well, as Jonas casually experiences music halfway through the movie, when in the book, this joy did not occur until the final page.

The cinematography, while brilliant in most regards, certainly isn’t perfect either. The gradual transition from black and white to color, which was used to great effect in classic film The Wizard of Oz is interesting as a plot device, but spoils the reveal that the book easily manages to hide as a work of literature. But this change is perhaps inevitable in a book to screen translation – a more important complaint is that while the makers of ‘Oz’ knew how to film in black and white, the makers of The Giver clearly do not. The black and white scenes were obviously filmed with color methods, and seem to have been cheaply desaturated, and come across as overly bright and exposed.

But in the end, The Giver – unlike some recent book to film adaptations, such as The Hobbit – is very faithful to the spirit of the book. Its mastery as a work of dystopia translates successfully from book to screen.

In The Giver, black and white is a visual metaphor for what its society is not.

Like real life evil societies, such as Hitler’s National Socialist Party, things do not seem amiss from the inside, except by a very few. Not only do people in this society seem happy, and content, but things seem pretty good — if questionable — to viewers as well. There is no oppressive government murdering children in gladiator-esque massacres a la Hunger Games, or government sanctioned days when all crime is legal a la ‘The Purge’.

In its place is a real world with real people, who have a definable but skewed Ethos that has come to guide their lives (“If it’s against the rules”, asks Jonas’ best friend Asher, “How can it be right?”)

‘Giver’ moves past the mindless rebelliousness that has come to mark teenage fiction, and asks us to contemplate the fundamental components of our society.

The post 'The Giver' Review appeared first on VR World.