Underage Tobacco Crackdown
Source: Wired 04.08 “Japanese Schoolgirl Watch: Birthday Card”
Much like America had for the longest time, Japan has cigarette vending machines. I remember buying them for myself as a schoolgirl. The machine can’t verify your age… but wait, maybe it can. Japan is issuing cards (“taspos” short for tobacco passports) that are inserted into the new “smart” vending machines to verify age before purchase. I say this is pretty silly since the machine won’t be able to tell who the card really belongs to. In my opinion, this is just ridiculous. There are still “dumb” vending machines, and as I mentioned, the smart ones don’t seem too bright. Buying, borrowing, or stealing the cards won’t take long. Also, counterfeit ids don’t sound like they’ll be too tricky. My suggestion is investing a little more resources upfront and using biometrics. For example, the taspo could be reliable if backed up with a fingerprint. On the other hand, maybe Japan should remove these vending machines, and acknowledge that it was a bad idea to start with.
New Type of Gaming
Source: Wired 03.08 “Passive Aggression: A new type of game turns Web surfing into all-out information warfare.”
This is crazy! For those who “can’t devote 30 hours a week to World of Warcraft,” there is a new kind of gaming emerging. The new toy: PMOGs (passively multi-player online games) are installed as a browser plug-in. The idea is that you can play while you use the internet normally.
“A PMOG adds an extra layer of data and interactivity to the sites you visit.” Even though it does not sound like fun to me, it is compared with SuperPokes on Facebook, which have a large audience. I would hate to be interrupted while typing this blog by a virtual bomb planted by another user. Sure you get points for disarming the booby-trap, but I would rather get points for the blog.
Don’t Forget to Use Your Hands!
Source: Wired 03.08 “Take Up Thy Tools”
As the world changes and advances technologically, we begin to adapt. Computer programming and CAD variety classes are being offered in many secondary schools. People are flocking towards computer-based training, and training themselves for jobs that consist of staring at a monitor for hours on end. What happened to Popular Mechanics and Shop Class?
We are becoming passive and vulnerable consumers. Sure, more people know what the specs of the product they’re buying indicates, which electronic manufacturer has the highest marks from Consumer Reports, and how to setup their new IPhone to perform feats that were thought impossible in the not so distant past. The problem is that when our IPhone starts powering down randomly, we are apt to believe that we need to replace it because we don’t know how to fix it.
Clive Thompson, of Wired, believes that losing “our Everyman ability (is) making it harder to solve the countries nastiest problems, like oil dependence, climate change, and global competitiveness.” If that’s not bad enough, we may actually be altering our brains – different parts of the brain are active when working with your hands. Engineers are relying more on software to design in a virtual sense rather than designing hands-on. What happens if the “Everyman ability” vanishes from our brains altogether?
Blogs get around…
Source: Wired 02.08 “The Secret Life of a Blog Post: Mapping the journey from servers to scrapers to suits – to the world.”
It seems fitting to acknowledge this article when my medium is a blog. This is not even close to a lesson on the technicalities of a blog, but an interesting jaunt through a surprising amount of databases. Following is a list and breif explanation of all of the friends a blog makes.
-Text Scrapers: bots looks for text to use elsewhere (i.e. listpics and spam)
-DataMiners: analysts gather demographics on countless topics (i.e. for polls and marketing)
-Search Engines: post is indexed and searchable by keyword
-Spam Blogs: scraped text is dumped into spam blogs to fool search engines
-Corporations: use data miners’ information to evaluate their business plan
-Ad Servers: contextual ad networks scan for keywords; then they may insert an advertisement
-Aggregators: algorithms analyze who’s linking to what and determine “what’s hot”
-Social Bookmarks: readers critique your blog
-Online Media: other bloggers and news sites may link to your post – if they like it
…and of course…
-Readers: they write comments or join the discussion and set off ping servers, starting the whole process over again!
Wow! Exhausting to even think of the journey this post is getting ready to embark on.
the Internet is serious business
Source: Wired 02.08 “Griefer Madness”
I’ve always known they existed, but found myself surprised and disappointed to hear that they have numbers and they’re organizing. Basically, a “griefer” is someone that gets joy from others’ grief. “Griefer Madness” discusses an organized online community of users who play games of every sort with their own mission: destroy the game for all others. Destroying the game may be as simple as harrassing individual players or as complex as bringing down a game’s servers. Something Awful has more than 100,000 members, which are referred to as “goons”. This online humor site is said to be a “semi-mythic place of origin” of the griefer culture. Griefers seem to be very contradictory… they believe that people should not take the internet or games seriously… they take this so seriously that they feel they must convert all others to their side… their catchphrase: “The Internet is serious business.” The founder of Something Awful, Rich Kyanka, puts up with serious death and torture threats towards his daughter and himself; he also makes his living from the site. This article reminds me of how many potential threats there are to a database’s security. When you think you’ve finished your list of risks… don’t forget to add those whose only motivation is to make others miserable.
Blog Propaganda
Source: Wired 02.08; “Hawker Media: Advertisers paid me to blog about them. Is that so wrong?”
Turns out you don’t need a degree in marketing to get paid for advertising. Apparently, PayPerPost is willing to pay its “members” to write endorsements for anything from the Alzheimer’s Foundation to an electric mixer. These endorsements come in the form of blogs by seemingly normal users. Members can earn money by blogging about how great liposuction worked out for them. The really deceiving part of these blogs – it doesn’t matter whether the member has had, or knows anything about liposuction. Bloggers are suppose to “disclose their relationship with PayPerPost”, but some have “accused (them) of destroying the authenticity of the blogosphere by disguising paid messages as candid blog posts.” By the way, Murphy recently changed the name of the company from PayPerPost to Izea.
The way this ties into databases… I’m getting there. It all boils down to the mighty databases of Google and other search engines. The companies paying Ted Murphy are getting potentially useful advertising from member blogs, but they’re really paying “just to win links to their sites and boost their search-engine rankings.”
I’m beginning to feel that Izea may be a bit sneaky. It seems to me that they are trying to use what they know about how these online databases sort information and sell it cheaper. Rather than paying Google top dollar for a top ranking, Murphy is offering a way to essentially get rankings in a cheaper (and arguably shady) way. “In an attempt to protect the integrity of its search results, Google has launched a search-and-destroy on all paid links, demolishing the PageRanks of Posties everywhere.” So, this stage of spam may be over, but database administrators should stay on their toes. There are always people looking for new ways to get rich quick.
Scraping What!?
Source: Wired 01.08 “Just After 10 am on June 7, 2007.”
The term “scraping” is defined in this Wired article as, “the act of automatically harvesting information from another site and using the results for sometimes nefarious activities”. Scraping has been a primary tool for social networks like MySpace and FaceBook, however, not all sites welcome scraping. The example referenced on June 7, 2007 is Craig’s List. The founder of a listpic site drawing from Craig’s List was notified that he was infringing on copyright regulations. Some companies welcome listpics because they feel they give them more exposure and happier clients. Others, like Craig’s List, complains that it causes high demands on the site and, in this particular case, the listpic was selling advertising space, which is what Craig’s List was created to avoid. The listpic creators do not necessary take performance optimization into consideration, which can create overloads on the parent sites. Security needs to be placed on these databases if scrapers are to be kept out. API’s (application protocol interfaces) are one way sites are banning scrapers. API’s allow developers to use the site under a watchful eye, and their individual rights can be taken away at any time, for any reason. The cost to prevent scrapers, however, can sometimes be greater than the cost to allow them, which is another reason why some companies turn a blind eye.
What Will We Learn From Music Piracy?
Source: Wired 03.08 “Let My Video Go”
DVDs, Blue-ray, Tivo, DVR… all indicate our desire to have video on demand. Video files are available to download, but it is in the same stage music files were in several years ago. Music executives were so concerned with piracy that they didn’t offer any convenient download options in the beginning. Hollywood execs should have a feeling like deja-vu, since piraters are the only ones offering convenient video downloads for the time being.
Wired makes the point that the music industry has lost enormous revenue over the years by focusing on prosecuting piraters, rather than focusing on competition. There is strong speculation that many users have downloaded pirated music only because there was no legal alternative – same boat for video files today. Sure there are options, but they are mainly “rentals”, bulky encoded files, and limited availability of titles.
“The lessons from the music fiasco are clear: Trying to limit the inherent advantages of digital files is a losing strategy.” Entertainment executives need to understand that they will never have a chance against piracy if they are not offering customers a solution. “The way to stop piracy is to make everything available – easily, legally, and at a fair price.”
AI Tragedy
Source: Wired 02.08 “Like Minds”
David Kushner follows a series of strange coincidences in the lives of Push Singh and Chris McKinstry. Though these men had different backgrounds, they shared a passion for the advancement of artificial intelligence. Both relied on extensive databases to “teach” their machines. Also, “Both Canadian. Both coders. Both obsessed with tapping the Web to create a true artificial intelligence. And both found dead in the same strange way.”
McKinstry hoped ”to train a neural network into something resembling human using a database of binary propositions.” In other words, he wanted to use questions with “yes/no” responses to “teach” his machine. Famed AI researcher, Marvin Minsky, allegedly acknowledged McKinstry’s dream could be possible with a large enough training corpus. This lead to Mindpixel- McKinstry’s collaborative AI database. He asked people to help by submitting questions and answers on-line. Participants were awards shares in Mindpixel’s stock in exchange for their submissions. McKinstry believed that enough (about a billion) valid submissions could “be combined to create a society of mind,” and ultimately “create a functioning digital brain.”
Singh “teamed with Stanford researcher David Stork to create a database of commonsense knowledge through open submissions.” This project was called Open Mind Common Sense, and it also depended on on-line users to build its database. Instead of “yes/no” questions like Mindpixel, Open Mind Common Sense “compiled factual statements like ‘every person is younger than their mother.’” Singh believed this project would help understand the structure of a human mind. He even suggested that giving a computer common sense could solve all the world’s problems
Singh believed Mindpixel’s interface paled in comparison to his own, and McKinstry conceded. However, McKinstry pointed out a much more serious flaw in Open Mind Common Sense – data validation. Mindpixelrelied on participants to verify one another’s entries; this is part of their agreement in order to receive shares. Open Mind Common Sense, on the other hand, had no validation mechanism.
Singh and McKinstry were both making progress in the field of artificial intelligence research, unfortunately, neither got to see their project’s to the end. First, McKinstry committed suicide. He had a history of mental health issues, and had attempted suicide in the past. He even posted something like a play-by-play suicide note on his website. The weirdest part was that he tried to overdose on pills, but was found with his stove’s gas line connected to a bag around his head. This part wasn’t so weird until four weeks later, when Singh was found dead with a hose connecting a helium tank to a bag around his head. He did not share McKinstry’s troubled past, and the article did not make mention of a suicide letter, but it is being treated as one. These two men were not friends – they shared a handful of emails over the years, but nothing ever developed out of them. The coincidences are eerie – especially considering their somewhat unusual area of study.
Identitiy Harvesting
Source: Wired 02.08 “Unmasked by Facebook”
There is a fine line between data gathering for marketing purposes and invasion of privacy. With the increasing popularity of on-line purchasing, one may be surprised to discover how much companies know about them. There are many thriving companies whose service is to provide businesses with leads (potential buyers). Scott Brown of Wired describes some of these companies as tracking regimes who “dissect you site by site, purchase by purchase.”
The term “identity harvesting” sounds uncomfortably similar to “identity theft” to me, but there is a key difference: the perpetrator. Identity theft is an act of criminals whose main purpose is to steal money from victims. Identity harvesting is an act of marketers whose main purpose is to persuade you to spend your money on specific products. Both perpetrators seem to share a common goal of remaining anonymous.
Its easy to understand why criminals want to remain anonymous, but why do marketers care? Don’t they think people would willingly submit their on-line purchase history to anyone who cared to know it? Not me. I must not be the only reluctant buyer, or the tracking regimes wouldn’t be surviving. We must be agreeing to broadcast our on-line history as part of some fine print somewhere, or it could easily seen as invasion of privacy. Then again, if there is not a line being crossed already, why is it slipped into the fine print? Facebook was called out for compiling users’ purchase histories, so they backed off… maybe we should all keep shouting.
