Everyone is excited about Google’s Lively, a browser-based 3D client. Some are calling it a Second Life killer. I agree Second Life is not the most secure platform out there, however Timeless Prototypespotted a potentially problematic issue around Lively and DEP.
But, if you’re running 32-bit Vista, you’ll find you might have to disable Data Execution Prevention (if you’re like me who enables it by default for all programs) for Lively’s client.exe just to get it to run. *cough*
Erm, that says to all hackers out there “target for buffer overflows” in big red writing
Cough indeed.
Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a security feature included in modern Microsoft Windows operating systems that is intended to prevent an application or service from executing code from a non-executable memory region.
Data Execution Prevention goes a long way to mitigate buffer overflow exploits. Combined with Address Space Location Randomization the odds are heavily against the attacker’s code working successfully and will probably only result in the application crashing as opposed to the computer becoming under the control of the attacker.
It will be interesting to see Google’s response to this one. As I have learned in security work it usually just a matter of time. I do not recommend turning off DEP.
I apologize for the late April Fool’s Joke, but I prefer being out of sync, …(Scott Jangro has a funny video on April Fool jokes and includes some of my own history around jokes). You see why I had to publish something after the day of joking around. I also liked Jen Goode’s Penguin page. However Sam Harrelson sort of blew up every possible neuron I had left for lack of a better word. Hat tip to all you pranksters and story tellers. I laugh and I cry.
So on with my story on collissions and the value of generalization in a world of specialists and why being a specialist isn’t always great…I am thinking out loud because I can. (My Isaac Asimov beard is almost ready for video.)
Attention Serves Many Masters
My recent posts on Twitter and collisions received some play as I found it Stumbled, on many social networking pages and in some RSS feeds. Neat. It also got my attention as I ran through some stats and saw an alarming change in SERPs for my own blog (e.g. Right here.). I admit that I do not pay much attention to SEO because resources are better spent elsewhere and this blog often serves as my own sounding board, or “thinking out loud” place for others I know. I run small and large experiments, try creative approaches, and sometimes just keep an eye out for who (or what) shows up. Primarily I like to explore and share observations or give an opinion. I am not a lawyer.
I do not mean one should disregard SEO best practice- Don’t Be Evil is nice but perhaps too vague or too simple for the here and now. I think best practice might be to try to add to the value of the Internet through participation, discussion, and perhaps some basic common sense.
As a marketer if your site does not follow some basic architecture rules for Search Engines you will miss out on some of the “influentials” (potential collisions) that can happen.
If you rely on “search” as your primary attention tool you are probably missing out on a number of emerging technologies that connect people to people and therefore people to information. There are lots of sources of free information, there are plenty of people, but putting it together takes knowledge, experience and time and perhaps even a bit of luck. (Makes a side note to Ev- what might have caught your attention was not Unicode but perhaps the nature of chance e.g. gambling on Twitter or it could have been pure chance, on a quantum level just about anything “could” be responsible.)
Quick Review
I allready knew that my blog was dated and I have started the processes for cleaning up and proofing it for problems. In short a “force unknown” injected some pretty nasty links into a YouTube video post about self learning and another repeat injection another entry. It was injected in such a way as to be cloaked and the content I found extremely “disturbing”. Having researched, as a trade, some of the shadier sides of the Internet economy it really has to be nasty to make me flinch. This was pretty rude.
I am still tracking down how it happened, but it did get my attention as I realize how difficult it is to make everything secure in a period of hyper-change. The charge of being the steward of one’s own blog is a tough task today. However I realize that exploration means a trade-off in security. I value exploration and the liberty to do so and believe it worth the risk. Life is all about taking risks and the outcomes from those risks determine the future. I am a skeptical optomist.
I am not the only one battling it with issues of security, stewardship and liberty as I note various search engines and large media sites have either struggled, are struggling or trying to find their own way in a very chaotic world or at least one that seems chaotic. Reality is broken to the point of being “fake”. Actually I would argue “reality is not even real”, but that is beyond the scope of this post and my understanding. Remember I am merely thinking out loud.
Quick thoughts for my friends to ponder:
- Assume new rules are in play and have been in play for some time.
- Computers are truly acting and growing exponentially in ability.
- We need to start assuming personal responsability for our actions.
- This will take some time as no one wants to be ultimately responsible.
- Technology is pacing faster than our legal system and even our human brains can handle.
- A good place to start practicing stewardship is at your home- and online your home is everywhere.
- Wayne should heed the very advice he gives, but he sometimes gets lost in exploration. (Smack- because he is only human.)
- It is ok to make mistakes and learn, but try not to keep making a mistake over and over.
The Outcome and Dust
Over the next weeks you should expect some dust here as I clean-up some things, update Word Press and the various plug-ins I have tested, and continue working on streamlining my own “work processes” for better vigilance, productivity and fun. I add fun because I know I will be a better steward if I really love what I do and I really enjoy games. Make no mistake, as much as I like Word Press, a quick search on any specialist’s sites about various security vulnerabilities and it gives you an idea of how fragile the concept of security can be.
Think about this- There is much talk in game circles about “gold farming” and World of Warcraft. What does it mean when people start outsourcing their fun?
Spammers Kindle Interests
One cannot spend all the time dwelling on the negative- much of the media will happily do this for you. This is a part of the learning process and step one is a reality check. No amount of money, formal education or mentorship can replace experience. I could spend all day, and probably many nights, talking about the nature of reality, but I won’t bore you with mental gymnastics or semantics. I will add that I firmly believe in getting one’s hands dirty. It is important not to accept everything at face value. It is important to remain as explorers and to try to understand that the very construct we operate in shapes what we do or do not do. Even technology can obscure what we do, how we think, and our intent. We are not even aware of this layer.
So a nasty spam injection on an entry about informal learning forced me to open my eyes up further to how Search Engineers might have to cope with this stuff from a pragmatic standpoint, from an engineering standpoint and from an internal and external competition standpoint. I can cite cases like WorldCup Blogspit technique, Spazbox or the Kmeth worm as prime examples of past research I have worked on and just how difficult this can be to sort out. Search Quality Assurance guards another very important ecosystem- SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). It makes me wonder if the philosophy of “Right Livelihood” can, from a pragmatic view, be maintained and who gets to set the rules?
Quality Really is Relative
I admit years of going after spyware pushers and scummy adware makers may have left me blinded from a more “holistic view”. I go on record that I dislike spam. However, I must see spam for what it is- a key parasite that sends signals about our society and our systems.
“Although parasites are often omitted in depictions of food webs, they usually occupy the top position. Parasites can function like keystone species, reducing the dominance of superior competitors and allowing competing species to co-exist.”
To put it bluntly, as much as I hate it- spam, in certain periods, probably serves a more important function than a WII Mote.
Motivations Behind Spam and Stewardship
I would guess that quick economic gain is the primary motivating force behind a spammer’s actions, however this doesn’t mean economic gain is intrinsically “evil”, it could mean that short-term thinking is not healthy for our species as a whole. This has been rehashed over and over recently in the hot debate around affiliates (note Google’s recent moves with Performics and DoubleClick). From experience I know that affiliates are often “the patsy” for spam, lacking resources they will try and test many systems to survive. However, not all affiliates are spammers, nor are all spammers affiliates. Bad apples do exist, but to lump everyone together is a dangerous road to walk down.
It is important to remember gain can be money, influence, social capital, etc. Where and how it is converted is important. “Right Livelihood” is a philosophical concept you can look up in a basic philosophy primer or probably one of those “guides for idiots”. As I examine my own life and experiences I have come to the conclusion that at the end of the day, what I want to strive for is good stewardship. My father taught me this action by example. He maintained very complex communication equipment over a large region, yet he would never hesitate to do the most basic tasks he would ask of other technicians. When leaving a tower site he always took the time to use a broom to clean the site.
It is odd how small actions I see over and over shape my vision and even other’s perception. I am sure in ways I do not know and cannot know. (e.g. Johari Window Communications Theory)
Power of Collisions…
In my interim posts about “collisions”, and a good and constant reason to be a social collider I happened upon a real-life metaphor on how powerful colliders are being built. I found this via Phillip Lessin’s bookmark on his FriendFeed. (Note my FriendFeed and disclosure of using an Amazon “affiliate link” as a crude form of “attention measurement”. This is like caveman era measurement.)
The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.
Wow. That is some heavy stuff, yet companies are spending much more on mobile marketing. That is a constant you can bank on for a little while anyway.
Yet, and I cite the New York Times again:
“The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots,” said Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN theorist who said he was part of the group. The others prefer to remain anonymous, Mr. Mangano said, for various reasons. Their report was due in January.”
Double Wow. This is the New York Times and while we are looking at weird mobile advertising figures while some physicists are potentially creating collisions that could make the earth a black hole, in theory. What next? The cure for cancer? Even if we had such a cure I think it would be important for many people to talk about it first because we probably couldn’t handle it. I would suggest printing it on the back of baseball cards in some sort of statistical code so people could find it later. Everything takes time and time is a finite resource for people. Come to think about it, baseball might not be valuable so I might use rocks or stone.
The Meme Code- Spam or Brilliance?
A game from the creator of FriendFeed…
I think it is quite interesting, yet I worry about diversity. Note how the web pages are encoded to “die”.
The meme code generates a page from a visitor who arrives from Google, the page will create a new modified and randomized version of itself via a database back-end, and creates a link to it in a visible place. The new page will continue do the same as the old page. After some time a page is taken offline or “dies” although how it dies is not made clear.
Over time several pages would be able to specialize on search niches in the Web – word combonations people are looking for that are not yet covered online are created. This makes “evolutionary pages” turn up in the top results which people will actually click on. A search phrase entered by a search engine visitor is just like food in our nature’s ecosystem. Primarily our ecosystem is full of corn- I might add as an aside. The dynamic process of the meme game means there will be specialized or niche pages to catch this “food”.
A page’s “meme code” will lead it to become a successful species with a lot of offspring, or if not popular it will die and be forgotten…this is not new as Lessig’s game has been around for sometime….even affiliates have been doing it with web services and/or datafeeds too only I doubt they encoded a “termination gene” into the pages. Limited resources and financial incentives would probably force smaller publishers to ensure all pages live and to not practice disclosure because it selects against their visability.
See Kids Forbidden to Use Google this is good food for thought. The comments are even more illuminating. As I collide along I start to make some neat connections and new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. I share them because I am able to do so. I think therefore I am.
How Can You Collide with People and Have Fun? Here is a simple and short list. Five simple concepts or exercises.
Break your pattern: This is much harder than it seems because patterns are so ingrained.
Talk with others outside of your core discipline from time to time. Exchange information. Be tolerant.
Spend some time in the humanities, music, or philosophy to find common ground or evaluate new and old views.
Understand that collissions can be bumpy, but you will grow your business and you will grow. That is OK.
Help someone out. I don’t want get into the philosphical arguments about the nature of altruism (selfish or not)- just help someone or take the time to thank them. It simply makes the experience here more fun.
Example Exercise. Think about Music and why you listen to what you do? How does it make you feel? Today my son is using the Wii to play songs on Guitar Hero. The songs or genres he finds “main stream” did not even exist when I was his age, and when I was a foolish teenager they were considered “taboo”. I am an adult, I am still foolish yet wise enough to know I am foolish, but at any age I can appreciate music.
Here is some music via a video (Semi-Random- I selected it from someone’s Last.fm feed) and it is not a band I follow: Faith & the Muse - Burning season. Do you like it or not? What do the images conjure in your mind? Who listens to this? What neurotransmitters change in the brain when you watch or listen to music? I don’t know- that is the downside of being a generalist in a specialized world. I am asking the same questions because I think they are good questions to ask and by building bridges I can find some experts.
So excuse me while I randomly select someone from Twitter or maybe somewhere else for my next experiment. I plan to use a new O/S, and a couple of dice rolls, and the room temperature to help with the randomness- there are some things in life I don’t want to outsource e.g. being random.
Heh. Personally I would probably doodle something that would land me in trouble…they probably figured adults like me shouldn’t be turned loose with crayons. Therefore the kids get a whack at the scholarship.
However, with the Doodle 4 Google competition, we’re making an exception…
Doodle 4 Google gives U.S. students in grades K-12 the opportunity to design a doodle for the Google homepage. Students will be asked to draw a doodle that best represents the theme “What if…?” We ask ourselves this question every day when we build our products, so we thought we would ask the same of the future doodlers.
A panel of expert judges and Googlers will select 40 regional winners, who will be invited to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, in May. Four national finalists will be announced as the result of a public vote. From there, Dennis will select one lucky student whose doodle will be on the Google homepage for a day in the U.S. This winner will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship and a technology grant for his or her school.
Googleplex…ensure your children have security clearance! Seriously I am going to take my own shot at a doodle and try to sneak it in and save a kid (he or she can have the scholarship)…not like my GUID gives away my age…well I know it does, but I will try it anyway.
And for all of you that tried to draw Tippy the Turtle for years…this is your chance to subvert the system since we are going to stop taking it all so seriously.
The Arizona Republic notes an interesting rumor— Google is reportedly working to create a virtual world that will take-on Second Life.
The company may be testing the project at Arizona State University.
While Google isn’t mentioned by name by ASU, its ties with Google suggest a possible connection.
ASU’s solicitation describes the university as the only school asked to collaborate on a new product to be launched publicly later this year.
“This is a truly unique opportunity for you to test-drive the software and provide feedback, which will be used to continuously refine the product before its launch,” according to ASU’s note to students, listed at asu.edu /myworld. “Please submit the questionnaire to see if you will be one of the chosen few picked to participate.”
Not much more than rumor, and I find it rather surprising if they would create a wild-west sort of experience like Second Life. But according to the piece the university is now soliciting students with video-gaming backgrounds for an “unspecified software-testing project“. The questionnaire Arizona State is sending to student applicants asks if they have Gmail accounts…
Sit back and wait. Not sure how Google will manage all the pitfalls of virtual reality (the security hazards alone are unique and interesting from a research angle), but I am sure the hardware will allow the world(s) to scale.
Posted in Google Verse by wayne.porter on August 5th, 2007
With Google’s not-so-shocking acquisition of Feedburner, who recently adopted the Word Press Plugin- Feedsmith-
FeedBurner Adopts Two-Year-Old, Renames it ‘FeedSmith’
It’s official. We’ve signed adoption papers for the popular WordPress plugin that seamlessly redirects requests for an ordinary feed (from self-hosted WordPress blogs) to your super-powered FeedBurner feed. This plugin — a toddler in age, but a prodigy with HTTP requests — will be made available directly from FeedBurner as “FeedSmith.” It was originally raised by the multi-talented Steve Smith, who’s trusting us to ensure its continued well-being.
If you aren’t already familiar with this handy plugin, you should know it’s a reliable way to track your entire feed-reading audience and can even result in that elusive “bump in subscribers” effect when you first activate it. What the plugin accomplishes, in Steve’s own words:
Chris Boyd at FaceTime’s SpywareGuide blog said this has been the shift in tactics by the people who were putting redirects to their sites into compromised blogs. Hundreds of profiles on Blogspot were created in July to host spam blogs and pull in victims.
Some of the blogs in question sent browsers to hardcore content. Others sent people to equally objectionable content, with Zlob trojans awaiting the visitor.
Apparently Googled was notified and offending blogs taken down for “review”.
Chris and Peter at Spywareguide undercover this javascript injection…I am assuming in the header…have not seen source yet.
The question on my mind is that javascript redirects have been an issue before as Peter and I tangled with this complete mess around the World Cup…and Zlob was involved yet again- thrown from a dicey PPCSE arbitrage outfit out of Russia…
The problem has been pointed out before- history should be the teacher.
Wonder if the results Chris and Peter found spilled over into MSFT’s search as in the original World Cup, but with a slightly different setup being a compromise? It looks very similiar.
Paperghost serves up photos (nostalgia) behind our RSA 2007 trek…this post was short enough it should have been a “tweet”. I am beginning to think most communications could be tweets. Instead it got Pownced. Now I am fool enough to accept Sam Harrelson’s test of Grand Central and Spock…Facebook I resist- for now. I look for Google to sweep that up…
ADDENDUM- Why would Google sweep it up? Vinny Lingham’s take is pretty telling.
I have been out of the loop since Sunday. In order to spare my hands, shoulders, and body any more aches and pains answering questions (although thanks for the kind concerns.)- it went like this, more or less-
While driving to Ohio on Sunday via I-77 I struck the right guard rail at a 45 degree angle, (at 60 mph, 96.5 KM/H rate no less), did two or three 360s between several cars and slammed into the side of a bridge or some sort of concrete structure which turned me around and I proceeded to crash against this structure for about 65 feet (almost 20 meters) where the car came to a stop facing on-going traffic (This is all estimate of course). How I missed the cars I have no idea. I do know I hit . As usual it always happens fast. I think that is how it went, again it was a blur.
Factoids:
a) The airbag did not deploy for some reason, odd since I struck the passenger side front end so hard.
b) It was a miracle I did not hit anyone, I said that, but truly it was incredible.
c) I was wearing my seat belt of course. Having had one near-fatal accident years before. (I was the near fatality.)
d) The only injuries I sustained included a dislocated jaw (which I fixed- manually), cracked or bruised ribs, very bad bruising, mild concussion, and what feels like bilateral sprained shoulders. Overall it feels like being beaten with a 2×4. I can type now, but with difficulty, for short stints and inhaling and exhaling hurts.
e) Yes my car is destroyed, but they can be replaced.
f) Unfortunately I received a citation for “failure to control”.
g) That is it. Having been major accident free since my teens it was dissapointing to destroy a car, but glad nothing else or no one else.
Please forgive me if I am slow in getting to responses, (I may take some leave), and any blogging here will be pre-written material that is prepared before hand for just such occassion. It honestly hurts to type or move.
In the meantime I will enjoy, and hope you do, the fact that Google has a sense of humor with their calculator…For Douglas Adam fans e.g. he wrote Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy among others…
The number of minutes it would take a theoretical “gravity train” to travel to any point on earth.
In one Grand Unified Theory, the Georgi-Glashow model, the inverse of the coupling
constant is approximately this number.
10! (10 factorial) seconds is exactly this number of days.
Messier object M(The Answer), a magnitude 5.0 diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion, also known as the Orion Nebula
The New General Catalogue object NGC (The Answer), a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus
The Saros number of the solar eclipse series which began on 1577 BC April 28 and ended
on 297 BC June 5. The duration of Saros series (The Answer) was 1280.1 years, and it
contained 72 solar eclipses.
The Saros number of the lunar eclipse series which began on 1293 BC January 24 and ended on 59 April 15. The duration of Saros series (The Answer) was 1352.2 years, and it contained 76 lunar eclipses.
Gliese (The Answer) is a magnitude 7.17 K3 V orange dwarf nearby star (14.5 pc) in Sculptor, also known as HD 5133, CD-31°325, G269-049, GCTP 177.00, and LHS 1163.
Ross (The Answer) is a magnitude 11.52 dM4 e red dwarf nearby star (14.1 pc) in Orion,
also known as Gliese 206, G097-047, and GCTP 1259.00.
Jupiter’s moon Io hurtles around its orbit once every (The Answer) hours at a distance
of (The Answer)0,000 kilometers or so from the center of planet.
In January 2005, Asteroid 2001 DA (The Answer) was given the name Asteroid Douglasadams, named for the author Douglas Adams that popularized the number (The Answer) and died in 2001. With even his initials in the provisional designation, Brian G. Marsden, the director of the Minor Planet Center and the secretary for the naming committee, said, “This was sort of made for him, wasn’t it?”
oh yes, Fox Mulder- on X-files- it was his apartment number for awhile.
- I tried iStockPhoto for the first time and I loved the service. Why is it people are very comfortable with selling pieces of video or their photograph, yet when it comes to words people don’t like it? Eitherway I love the fact that many are indy photographers. I really want to see micro-transactions take off…time for avatar photos perhaps.
- Interesting tool reviewed by Heather Paulson. Lots of neat graphs- speaking of which I checked out Google’s Beta Analytics and, aside from a network, ahem, change or two, less really is more. I still cannot find a metrics package that does what I want though. They might reign supreme, but I think Mashable missed it. However, Google has mopped upMeasure Map.
- Ben Edelman checks in on traffic inflation via spyware and Jimmy Daniels also discusses it. ComScore, Alexa, Nielsen- all of these places are tangling with the IAB- at least ComScore and Nielsen…but let’s talk Alexa. Again in an extremely long beta podcast I think Professor Harrelson and I made it pretty clear that gaming a system like Alexa is as easy as pie- unless they fixed it since then. Throw your old metrics out the door.
- Since we are on Alexa- Amazon fires up Web Services in Second Life according to mark Wallace at 3pointd.com, (no surprise given Bezos has a stake) and we learn how to build an Amazon store per the Jnana System- nice try- I am more interested in Jnana’s core software. Sophisticated logic Without coding- Zero code! An inference engine and automated control logic sporting declarative semantics and multiple reasoning tools.
I better post this at Revenews so Trust knows…but I am taking a break…although for Second Life fans this month’s print issue has quite a forray into the metaverse, which is much more plush than my short piece written several months ago. Now we have widgets…or gadgets.
Dodgeball, the text-message based social networking service, seems to have been left for dead.
Dennis Crowley, the founder of Dodgeball, and Alex Rainert have both left the sinking Dodgeball ship. Acquired by Google in 2005, Crowley insists that Google is not providing the resources necessary to innovate their service, let alone keep up with recently popular Twitter and newcomer Jaiku. Crowley and Rainert have decided to quit Google, leaving Dodgeball to fend for itself. An announcement from Crowley says that the whole experience at Google was frustrating, “especially as we couldn’t convince them that Dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.”
In the end, that leaves Twitter the reigning chief. Not that their dominance was in question as of late, but Dodgeball is sure to meet its end very soon. It’s a shame that Google never built up Dodgeball, considering the current and future mobile market, but then again, Google has $3.1 billion deals to tend to.
Much is going on, but here we hear Dodgeballers are leaving…why? In my opinion you might have Google who has developed more of a sweetspot for Twitter…(not to mention the smack down on DoubleClick granted MSFT doesn’t throw in a legal tackle with anti-trust- huh?)…ok I am not counting out Jaiku (now hatching an API), but I dunno…at least the banner might come back…back!
Ha! Steve Rubel and I agree…if you cannot see the value in Twitter or Oxbow lakes- if you cannot see the massive changes that “micro-chunking” will bring. Well…You cannot be helped…really you are doomed. Rumor is that all your Facebook might be curling up with Twitter features???
Then you do you have to wonder…AOL….MSFT, Yahoo, or Google? Who is going to acquire America Online- because you can “feel it”. My money was on MSFT, but after this, I think it might be Google might- who knows…hint to Microsoft- a war chest is not a war chest- unless you use it to go to war- damnit! Makes you wonder about Valueclick and CJ?
Thanks to a Twitter from Steve Rubel who did some probing at Technorati on “Twitter”. (I know- not a perfect process either- no data source is near it.)
Technorati
Any Authority
Posts that contain Twitter per day for the last 30 days.
A Lot of Authority
Posts that contain Twitter per day for the last 30 days.
Some Authority
Posts that contain Twitter per day for the last 30 days.
A Little Authority
Posts that contain Twitter per day for the last 30 days.
Looking at Google Trends for the term Twitter over all time, and perhaps more fascinating the term Twitter for just 2007 you see a steep slope. (No notable traffic for misspellings or twitter.com). A caveat, of course, about Google Trends- “Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it.”
Milan, Italy and London, UK are runaways according to the chart, as it stands now, in terms of type-in traffic.
1. Milan, Italy
2. London, United Kingdom
3. Phoenix, AZ, USA
4. Irvine, CA, USA
5. Austin, TX, USA
6. Helsinki, Finland
7. Montreal, Canada
8. Auckland, New Zealand
9. Bologna, Italy
10. Brentford, United Kingdom
By region- Italy, USA, UK and Canada show strong volume.
1. Italy
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Romania
6. Hong Kong
7. Russia
8. Turkey
9. Israel
10. Argentina
Italy? I wonder if twitter means something else in Italian. I don’t think so.
Technorati, CNN, BBC Video and Google News all have Twitter channels. I find that remarkable on its own given the lack of authentication. At any rate it is worthy to note this entry The Asymptotic Twitter Curve while we are on graphs and trends…
The interesting thing about Twitter-it is conceptually barely touched at all. Last night I spent some time helping a friend work on a metaverse (Second Life- yes of course.) to “Real World” relay service. One or two exist, but not to our liking. It uses the Twitter API, and twitter as an optional and ultimate destination. During testing I could easily so how Twitter, again as a CONCEPT, can be extended to be a whole lot more. The nice thing about Twitter is that you can set your limits. I don’t want SMS, or IMs at all- too disruptive. I am just fine interacting via the web. If there is someone I don’t want to follow- I can leave. Vice versa.
User Control. Experimental Communication. Micro-production. Micro-intake. Niche. Amateur creation. Monetization. Syndication…it is an interesting future- with silly service names and it will be dominated by everyday people- people with a passion.
I greatly edited a piece I did months ago…and I added some radical changes based on recent thoughts. enjoy this transmission for you who read in the post-modern fashion.
To: Brines Grey
From: Pearl Gray
Research Station: Pearl Monk
Re: Revisions to Organizational Control -
Project: Bolted Vine
Our original plan to inject the veil into the dominant operating system has changed. Analysts have determined this will link our project, now dubbed “Bolted Vine”, into a potential point of critical failure. We are unwilling to accept this risk thus “Abaddon” has been deleted. Armed with public capital, we will vault high a new star, a self-sustaining entity that will gather the information that will feed O/C using an array of self-spreading, cognizant technology bolted into the vine as they are formed. All designed to make existence easier- for comfort is the key. We are borrowing inspiration from the ancient panem et circenses* - bread and circuses. Is it cruel if we come bearing light?
We have based “Bolted Vine” upon this inspiration- The vast majority of consumers are willing to accept an exchange as long as they are able to make this trade-off in a currency they find of lesser value at that particular moment. We are the bringer, yes- of convenience, ease of use, and monetary benefit. It is vendible since it is only privacy.
We have new, albeit reluctant, partnerships that provide scalable, redundant, low-cost maintenance, and self-sustenaining systems. It should be relatively easy to realize our goals of broad spectrum, global penetration. We shall be the bringer, yes the bringer of an epic rage against the old media machine. We will give away all that is needed and further the cause of “The Grid”. Naturally the limitations of this project are substantial, encumbered by creative limits and hardware. The needed multi-terraflop speeds will not arrive until 2010 and we cannot wait. However, the project and dark fiber are here. It is only a matter of time before they are joined.
To achieve critical mass we have identified a strategy to evolve, to move like lichen into the underpinnings of every level of the grid and beyond. We will make use of two primary digital goods- online music and online video. We had planned to use known, popular artists to achieve our end goal and continue to grow our own stable of assets, but have found that the users themselves are enamored with their own reflection. They are willing to create what we need.
These goods are especially desired by a young audience who lack the ability to make careful decisions of their trade-offs, like two-liters of soda for a credit card on a college campus. Not that older generations show much ability to make these decisions either. Analysts at the Pearl Monk predict in no more than ONE generation, resistance will be minimal to non-existent- save for a few zealots that no one will heed or believe.
We are in negotiations with the needed distributors and believe we shall be able to strike amicable deals with the digital rights industry to assist them to better monetize their goods. This is especially true in light of the on-going impact of digital piracy eroding their bottom line. Add the threat of user-generated content they have no choice but to acquiesce or partake.
Also of note there have been several laws in Congress that could impact our forms of monitoring. These initiatives have stymied and Congress has taken no demonstrable action. Nor shall the FTC interfere any further except to punish token rogues. We have also made excellent inroads at putting insiders into key positions. It is evident how we must devote our time, so it is veiled and not bedeviled or vetoed by the ones beloved by the masses.
We can achieve critical mass and we will mine interactions on a meta and micro level and couple this with field intelligence. Most importantly, in unique situations, we can utilize customized routines to activate cams, microphones for ambient sound collection and other built-in surveillance equipment up to and including supplanting the means to apprehend problematic individuals before they harm themselves or The Vine. These tools are built into the machines as de facto tokens. This is not only efficacious, but far cheaper long-term.
End Transmission…
Sending Station: Pearl Monk
*Reference Reading for Readers on Bread and Circuses. Latin Term: panem et circenses.
Bread and circuses is a derogatory phrase which can describe either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment, and to the exclusion of things which the speaker considers more important, such as art, public works projects, democracy, or human rights.
It originated as the Latin phrase “panem et circenses” (literally “bread and circuses”), and is thought to have been coined by Juvenal, a Roman satiric poet of the 1st century AD, to describe the practice of Roman Emperors who gave unlimited free wheat to the poor and costly circus games as a means of pacifying the populace with food and entertainment. Juvenal bemoaned that it was a deplorable apathy towards heroism.
In fact, the system of free or heavily subsidized food distribution was limited to a minority of Roman Citizens holding a special token (tessera) entitling them to a monthly supply of grain and olive oil from the reign of Septimus Severus. The rations were probably too small to feed a family and the receivers were not necessarily poor or in need of free food. This does not change the fact that the food supply to a city the size of Rome was of primary concern to the emperors in order to avoid popular unrest.
I caught this video piece by Michael Wesch at Docu-Blog/ Steve’s POV…although I have seen it passed around before this time I watched it several times and let it simmer…sure Web 2.0 is all about sharing, collaboration, and interaction. We tag, we recommend, we organize, and we create more at an even faster rate. The barriers have come down. Data is no longer constrained and thus the rise of the “mashup” as they are blended together into something new and move like kudzu into the Net.
Then I began thinking beyond “Google” and mere search queries as the feared, future tyranny of:
one database to rule them all
one database to bind them
one database to fool them
and in the darkness blind them…
and the realization was simple. We really are feeding “the machine” by what we do- and by what we don’t do.
I began to think about the Googleplex as one example, and the vast array of machines they build- yes they build their own low-cost boxes sporting some unknown-to-me breed of linux…and when one machine goes dead, they leave it there and the systems route around it or so I read.
God do they really leave the dead to lie forever gathering dust?! Is THAT Google Death? If you think about it- is that a nascent form of network A.I.? self-healing, self-patching- self-routing….
I wonder *who* walks behind those sacred walls?
What kind of technicians have access to this grid?
How in the hell do they cool it all down- this linux-driven hellfire?
I went beyond just queries…because queries are only part of it… a cheesy ballad came to me…
Every click you make…
Every route you take…
Any one you forsake…
Anything you fake…
It will be watching you….
And “it”, whatever “it” is- will. Taking note of what you click, what you DO NOT click, what interaction you make, what interaction you pass on, what you build, and what you destroy, what you recommend and what you rate…all roads lead to knowledge for the “machines” and the knowledge is cumulative. The more you feed it, the more it knows you. Perhaps until it knows you better than yourself.
One of my favorite to read, and quite handy, resources is celebrating their 400th issue today. Congratulations Tara! (Tara Calishain, an Internet search expert and author or co-author of over a dozen books, including the 2003 New York Times bestseller Google Hacks. Her latest book, Information Trapping, was published by New Riders Press in December 2006.
ResearchBuzz, a free weekly newsletter that covers search engines, databases, and other online information collections has been online since April 1998, ResearchBuzz.com is celebrating their milestone issue with several new offerings on the Web site plus a venture into a metaverse. (I peeked at earlier when it wasn’t quite done.)
Naturally I find a foray into Second Life quite neat.
Their virtual location in Second Life makes the newsletter and RSS feed available to Second Life citizens who wish to read in that medium. Plans include a classroom and in-world directory of educational, search, and museum resources in Second Life. Check out this page for a map of the ResearchBuzz location or here is the SLURL if you want to head in direct or here to sign up for Second Life for free.
The new features include:
Updated Tools
Kebberfegg is a one-stop site for generating keyword-based RSS feeds. You can generate keyword-based feeds from over 50 different sites in over ten categories. Lists of feeds are available in HTML or OPML. Kebberfegg is free!
New Search Engines
ResearchBuzz has several specialty Google search tools available, including one of Time’s Top 50 Web sites for 2004, Cookin’ With Google. It uses Google’s new Custom Search Engine program, to provide two new specialty search tools:
- Search Official Blogs — Search Official Blogs does just what it says — searches the official blogs of over 150 celebrities, politicians, companies, educational institutions, musicians, and public figures. Search the blogthoughts of the rich and famous. Easy to use remember URL at http://www.searchofficialblogs.com.
Other books written by or co-authored by Tara. Some are a bit dated, and I am sure I may have missed some, but if you want to sharpen your research or information handling skills- especially with Google- Tara is truly a master at Net research.
I have had to do some reading lately, while propped up again with the flu, and I can think of nothing more dry than SEC, NASD, NYSE, FDIC, FCC, FERC, HIPAA regulations….really- thank goodness for theraflu. I can’t really talk thanks to the infection, so I can’t questions, thus I am left alone to read what only lawyers would find fun.
While surfing around with the (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google Toolbar I considered installing the translation service. In short, the Google WordTranslator offers translations from English into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German, Russian, and Spanish right from the toolbar, suddenly SOX reading kicked in. Interesting…a note!
Google DID, to their credit, which is more than I can for most, alert me to some potential privacy implications of doing this- and I could press a help button to take me to the complete policy….let’s take a look and the help button…..
Posted in Gaming, Google Verse, Lively, Second Life, Security, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds by wayne.porter on July 15th, 2008 
