1st Workshop on Friend of a Friend,
Social Networking and the Semantic Web

Call for papers, come for the party or just come and hang out.

You can't be a decent standard if you don't have a conference.

Topics

The FOAF (Friend of a Friend) project explores a unique combination of themes from social networking, search engines, knowledge representation and software development. FOAF was designed as a practical experiment that would highlight the technical, social and business challenges raised by the next generation of "Semantic" Web technology. Over the past few years, the FOAF developer community has been working on standards-based techniques for publishing and harvesting machine-readable descriptions of people, the links between them, and the things they create and do. The working assumption of the project is that such techniques will underpin the deployment of the next generation of Web technology, W3C's "Semantic Web". The FOAF project was created in the expectation that these machine-readable descriptions will grow, as the Semantic Web platform matures, to cover companies, organisations, documents, groups, products, file sharing and many other aspects of life, both online and off. The time has come to evaluate these assumptions in the context of the opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of FOAF and the Semantic Web.

Social networking is a recent topic gaining much interest and publicity. Social networking sites are community sites where users can maintain an online network of friends or associates for social or business purposes: whether looking for a job, reconnecting with old friends, moving to a new area, or dating. Most of these sites are based on a centralised architecture: all users' descriptions are stored in one big database. There is, however, growing user and business interest in portability between such sites, and for sophisticated "single sign-on" mechanisms that reduce the need for data re-entry, while allowing users to manifest different aspects of themselves in different contexts. FOAF-based import/export allows such sites to address user demand for control of "their" data; however, many deployment, privacy, authentication and engineering issues have not yet been fully explored. To what extent do mechanisms such as FOAF change the environment they attempt to describe? How can the visibility of personal data be restricted to certain audiences? How can businesses make money when their customers can migrate to new services with increased ease?

This workshop on FOAF, social networking and the Semantic Web provides a first chance to discuss the unusual combination of perspectives - academic and scientific, engineering, social, legal and business - drawn together by these trends. The workshop aims to bring together for the first time researchers interested in the effects, analysis and application of social networks on the (Semantic) Web as well as practitioners building applications and infrastructure. The workshop will also try to give a snapshot of current developments, as well as setting a roadmap for the future of both FOAF and social networking - especially in the context of the Semantic Web.

Topics of interest for full papers include, but are not limited to the following:

* Social network metadata standards
* Trust issues in social networks
* Profiles of FOAF, subsets, mapping to other vocabularies and formats
* Federated digital identity, single sign-on (decentralized identity management)
* Business models for the Semantic Web (life after banner advertisements)
* Integration with desktop and mobile applications (chat, IM, P2P, Bluetooth, address books, RSS/Atom)
* Privacy, etiquette and best practice issues for aggregators
* Infrastructure for social networking
* Applications of online social networking
* Knowledge management with social networks
* Mathematical analysis of social networks
* Exchange of social network information
* Applications of online social networks
* Shared annotations
* Use of digital signatures and encryption with RDF/XML
* RDF-based search engines, data harvesting and syndication
* GUIs (browsers, editors) for FOAF and Semantic Web data
* Formalisms that address practical problems of heterogenous changing data
* Pragmatics of sharing data schemas across subtly different datasets

[it's the danbri and Libby show!]

Patriot Communications, a Toll-Free IVR
and Live Operator Service Provider .
Patriot provides turn-key dealer
locator, store locator, job hotlines,
recall information, sweepstakes, instant
win and catalog request lines.
(800/888/877/866)

Patriot Communications, a Toll-Free IVR
and interactive telecommunications
services. Patriot Communications
provides turn-key dealer locator, store
locator, recall information,
sweepstakes, job hotlines, instant win
and catalog request lines.
(800/888/877/866)

DIY Cruise Missile Grounded

Missile Shield Tests, Take 2

Vandenberg AFB Missile Launches

IBM To Aid in U.S. Missile Testing
Effort

Missile Defense: Ready, Set, Go?

Indefensible missile defense

For two decades now, ever since Ronald Reagan unveiled his "Star Wars" vision, a faction of the defense-industrial complex has been trying to produce a proof of concept for missile defense -- to show that we can, with some level of reliability, defend the U.S. by shooting down hostile incoming missiles.

This week, they failed, again.

As proofs of concept go, this was not a cheap one -- the single test cost $85 million. We've spent $80 billion to date on this program, and President Bush wants to spend another $50 billion in the next few years.

But the real issue is not cost but methodology: The whole point of the proof of concept approach is that, if you can't prove the concept, you pull the plug while you're still in the R&D phase. The Bush administration is instead ignoring the simple reality of the results of its experiments and barreling forward.

I guess it's just being consistent: If you don't accept simple budgetary arithmetic and you don't accept the results of weapons inspections in Iraq and you don't accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, why should you break the pattern and accept the data from your missile-defense experiments? After all, that might be inching uncomfortably close to the "reality-based community." (See Fred Kaplan in Slate for a more detailed argument: "We can't even count on the rocket getting out of its launch silo, much less the millions of minute operations that must follow. President Bush fielded a half-dozen antimissile missiles and called them 'operational.' But they're a ruse.")

What we have here, aside from a massive and repeated technical failure, is a proof of concept for our government's new, proof-of-concept-free approach to spending our money. If we can get away with this reality-denial, the Bush administration's logic goes, let's keep doing it on a bigger and bigger scale! And indeed that's what's unfolding as the comic opera known as the Bush economic plan plays its overture to Act Two.

Let's see, we had enough money to support Social Security until we cut taxes repeatedly and manufactured a crisis, which is now being used to justify a ridiculous privatization scheme. But we still have enough money to pour into the black hole of missile defense.

I hate to be cynical, and certainly a lot of this is being driven by stupid blind ideology, but there is a common thread here: There's profit to be made by parking billions of Social Security money on Wall Street. And there's money to be made in missile defense.

Hey, maybe some of that money will be kicked back in 2008, when it's time to find and fund another Republican to keep this con game going!

Missile Defense Is A Cult

Airport Missile Protection

Ra ytheon developing technology to divert missiles aimed at airliners: This is a competitor to the current plan of installing missle-avoidance systems in the airplaces themselves.

Called the Vigilant Eagle system, it would position a grid of infrared sensors on cellphone towers and buildings around airports.

When it detected a heat-seeking missile launched at a passenger jet, it would steer an electromagnetic beam at the missile to divert it. It would also determine the launch point and quickly notify security officials.

The theory is that the biggest threat comes from shoulder-fired weapons, since terrorist don't have jets or SAMs that could shoot down a plane at crusiing altitude. What this means is that the "danger zone" for a commercial airliner is when it's close enough to the ground to be hit by a Stinger — so essentially when it's landing and taking off. (Stingers are only good to 12,500 feet.)

By installing these at the airports, all the planes that fly in and out are protected, instead of protection being plane-by-plane, depending on the manufacturer. It's certainly more efficient, plus there are less points of failure than tens of thousands of individual systems installed on the planes themselves.

Palestinians: Missile Strike Kills 3
(AP)

Do It Yourself Cruise Missile Project
Shut Down

Making airplanes missile-proof

US Muslims held in missile sting

Missile case 'could be scrapped'

Alleged Missile Plot Uncovered in N.Y.
(AP)

Pakistan test-fires missile

Two U.S. Muslims Held In Missile Sting

Missile strike in northern Gaza

'Satan' Missile Now Launches Satellites

first legal missile has been fired at
ISP collaboration

news.com.com/Comcast+sued+for+disclosing+customer+info/2100-1 030_3-5671438.html?tag=nefd.top
track this site | 4 links

For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went
Sour

nytimes.com/2003/12/01/international/middleeast/01MISS.html?ex=1 071255650&ei=1&en=711c0684d7f4ab52
track this site | 6 links

The patriot

EFF: Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT

eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/PATRIOT/sunset
track this site | 3 links

Patriot Act II

Cheap missile launcher kills US troops

This cheap little dealie, nothing but a launcher tube and a few rockets shaped like two ice-cream cones glued together, has kicked our ass (and Russia's too) all over the world since back when the Beatles were still together. In fact, more and more guerrilla armies are making the RPG their basic infantry weapon, with the AK used to protect the RPG gunners, who provide the offensive punch. The Chechens fighting the Russian Army are so high on it that they've switched their three-man combat teams from two riflemen and an RPG gunner to two RPG gunners with a rifleman to protect them.

There's another stat that's even more important right now: the RPG has inflicted more than half--half!--of US casualties in Iraq. This is the weapon that's hurting us. And it's been doing that for one hell of a long time.

N. Korea Missile Site Movements Said
Continuing

Israeli Helicopter Missile Attack Kills
7 (AP)

Gaza missile strike kills 2 Palestinians

Congress Weighs Money for Missile
Defense (AP)

2 Killed, 17 Hurt in Gaza Missile Strike
(AP)

Soviet missile deleted from eBay
(Reuters)

Israel Missile Strike Kills Palestinians
(AP)

Israeli Missile Hits Car, Militants
Escape

DIY Cruise Missile Designer Turns
Freelance

Patriot missile: friend or foe?