March 17, 2006
Lifehacks
I recently ran across the New York Times article Meet the Life Hackers. (if you don't have a New York Times account, go to BugMeNot to grab a pregistered account & password. This is not illegal because registration is free). The web meme "lifehacks" is a back to the basics movement among high-tech professionals. These people feel that the culture around technology has led them to frantically multitask and paradoxically get less done (and be more stressed), and advocate simplifying your life- often in the most geeky way possible (like the people who have written programs which prevent them from checking their mail more than once an hour).
"Lifehack" has become synonymous with "tip for making your life easier." Some of the fads in lifehacking take minimizing technology to a hilarious extreme: the HipsterPDA is a personal calendar/data manager you can create yourself; it consists of a stack of (meticulously organized) index cards bound by a binder clip. Others have taken the same idea and written blogs which round up tech tips and nifty productivity software, like lifehacker.
Simplicity is a rare commodity in our wired, up-to-the-minute culture, but if you're not careful, lifehacking can become yet another time-sucking procrastination tool- endlessly entertaining, but ultimately not helping you to get anything done.
Posted by Sophia at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2006
Why the wiki worked and the blog didn't
Most of this has allready been said before, but it is allways good to point this out. The wiki became important in our class because it lent itself well for group work. The ability to change each other work, and thereby allowing people to communicate what they wanted easily to the rest of their group. This helps build a sense of community, which I feel, the blog does not.
Why is that? Because, despite how it was attempted to be in this class the blog is more of an individual concept. In a blog we each make a post, and they are split up from each other. People can make comments, but they still feel seperate from the origional post. In the wiki, I edit a page, but that doesn't make it my page. It makes it our page. That sense of group ownership does not come up in the blog.
In class Christine asked if there was some way to get people to use the blog as much as they did the wiki. After thinking about this for some time, I eventually decided that this really wasn't possible. As I said before, the blog is oriented much more on the level of the individual. It is much more interesting to say something on a wiki and have people change it and edit it. You make something grow. On the blog, the best you can hope for is comments.
Posted by David at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
ISP under fire for hate content
Although we might feel like we are being anonymous and untraceable on the internet, that really is a false sense of security. We discussed in class how people have gotten in trouble because of the content they posted on their blogs, but now it’s not just the people responsible for the content that are to blame. A Canadian court fined an ISP for hosting hate content against blacks, Jews, and Muslims based on the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act prohibits the communication of messages over the Internet likely to expose people to hatred or contempt based on religion or race, treading the line between free speech and security. This was the first time a ruling of this kind was ever made, and is proof that ISPs can no longer pretend to be ignorant of the content that they are hosting.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2006/03/11/1482485-sun.html
Posted by Alina at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2006
A New Science of Love
People in our section have presented really interesting research on meeting people through the internet as well as computer simulations of social interaction. The other day I was reading an Atlantic Monthly article that talks about how a growing number of internet dating sites are relying on academic researchers to develop "a new science of love" and how this could result in an enormous online social experiment.
The article focuses on three dating sites: eHarmony.com, Chemistry.com, and PerfectMatch.com. All of these sites use extensive personality surveys to match users, but their criteria differ. For example, eHarmony.com relies on similarities between users because its founder, a former psychologist, believes that similarities sustain long-term relationship satifaction. Chemistry.com addictionally factors in short-term attraction and physical chemistry, and, in a biochemical approach to love, puts people in categories based on hormones and neurotransmitters. PerfectMatch.com lets users select their own criteria for their perfect match.
With so many people using these sites, massive amounts of data are being generated for relationship researchers. eHarmony recently created a think tank, "sort of like a Bell Labs or Microsoft for love." To give you an idea of the data at their fingertips: over 12,000 people a day take the eHarmony personality survey, and a recent poll showed that the site facilitates about 46 marriages a day. eHarmony and other dating sites are also taking into account user feedback and evolving ways to mimic real-world situations, such as computer simulations of social scenarios--a bar, a party, a dinner date, etc. All this could help develop theories for the science of love and determine what, if any, is the place of science in matters of the heart.
There was also a sidebar listing less prominent, more targeted dating sites and their mottos. They were pretty amusing, to name a few:
www.conservativematch.com
"Sweethearts not bleeding hearts."
www.goodgenes.com
"Helping Ivy Leaguers and similarly well-educated graduates and faculty find others with matching credentials."
www.asexualpals.com
"Because there is so much more to life!"
Posted by Susan at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2006
[SPAM]****:
Recently, I've become more annoyed (or rather... more aware) of an issue
that has snuck its way into our everyday lives. We've been dealing with
this problem for about a decade now, but, in these 10 years, its presence
in our lives has been constantly growing. I am talking about the problem
of e-mail spam. How conscious are we of this issue? Probably... some of us
are more annoyed of this issue than others. Or maybe... this issue has
become so integrated into our e-mail activities that we no longer take
notice of it.
For me, this last scenario was the case. I had become so accustomed to
receiving spam mail that I had established this automatic process of spam
filtering. Every time I checked my inbox, I would quickly scan through my
e-mail lists to find only the important ones while ignoring all spam. I
only recently became frustrated when important e-mails began to get
overlooked among the sea of spam, an occurrence which I’m sure has happened
to us all.
So, I decided to do some investigation into how much spam has really
affected our lives. I ended up finding the anti-spam website,
spam.abuse.net. spam.abuse.net is a website that has been dedicated to
fighting internet spam since 1996.
Here are some interesting facts that I found while reading through the
articles featured on the site:
-The first spam e-mail was sent in 1978, but spam did not become a major
problem until the 1990's.
-Spam e-mail now accounts for 90% of all e-mail activity
-In 2004, 15% of e-mails contained viruses. Today, this percentage has
dropped down to 2% in large part because of the widespread implementation
of anti-virus software.
-18 states now have anti-spam laws, but these laws only prohibit spam which
sells fake products, advertises pornographic content, or try to gain
personal information for the purpose of other illegal activities.
Spam today has become a profitable industry. Companies are benefiting from
two ends, one from using spam as an advertisement tool and another from
selling anti-spam tools. From the information on this website, it seems
that the problem of e-mail spam will not be completely eliminated, at least
not anytime in the near future. Enacting laws that prohibit spam will limit
the freedom with which people communicate over the internet and will
definitely infringe upon our rights. Spam.abuse.net proposes that people
fight spam by disregarding spam, complaining to companies that implement
spam, and lobbying for anti-spam laws. I’ll leave it up to you guys to
decide whether or not these solutions are realistic or potentially
effective.
Posted by Lee at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
Free books
I don't know if any of you have heard of Project Gutenberg. It is a public domain database of eBooks. Its been around for a while now, but in the past it was still in its prematured form. The database contains electronic versions of classics and other historical documents that are free to the general public. Yesterday, the Gutenberg Project released a CD/DVD image project, in which they compiled selections of their database on ISO formate. I've downloaded the CD version and its very cool. Like wikipedia, Gutenburg Project puts so much information at our finger tip. I'm really looking forward to seeing more development of this kind and perhaps one day we can really transition to electronic books just out of convenience.
Posted by Ruidi at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2006
The State of Macintosh Security
Before last month, Macs were indisputably the safest computers to own and use. Note that I am not arguing that they were inherently the most secure; I am saying they were the safest to use: there were no known Mac viruses. Before last month, the last Mac virus was written sometime in the early nineties. The only things Macs could be infected with were M$ Office macro bugs. Mac infections were so rare that it was the official policy of Chesapeake Systems, Inc., the Apple reseller I work for in Baltimore, to disable or remove any antivirus software installed on a Mac a client brought in for repair. The "protection" these programs provided was simply not worth the ridiculous slowdowns they caused. The antivirus makers like Symantec and Virex extorted money from Mac users who naively believed that viruses were as much of a problem on Macs as on PCs.
And then, on February 15, 2006, an anonymous poster uploaded a file called "latestpics.tgz" to the MacRumors.com forums...
...and all hell broke loose. The poster claimed that the file contained top-secret screenshots of Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.5), Apple's next operating system. This was not the case. Other forum readers had downloaded the file and decompressed it, and were experiencing strange behavior.
Within hours the file was sent by arn, the guy who runs MacRumors, to Andrew Welch, the founder and president of Ambrosia Software (an awesome Mac software company whose games I've written editors for). Andrew immediately began disassembling the file, and passed it along to two of his employees for more in-depth analysis. By that night, Andrew posted a highly-detailed analysis of the file's exact behavior and effects. They had completed their disassembly and knew the function calls it made so well that they pinpointed a fatal bug in the code that effectively prevented it from accomplishing its intended actions. The "virus" (actually a non-virulent trojan) was named Oompa-Loompa (or OSX/Oomp-A) because of weird characters strings present in its hex codes. And the entire thing was declared a non-event. You simply could not be infected by this file without manually decompressing and executing it. It exploited zero flaws in Mac OS X. It spread only through social engineering.
By the next day, however, news of the "virus" had saturated the Internet. Sensationalized reports began appearing on tech news sites and articles ran in many of the nation's print newspapers. And what they all conveniently failed to mention was that this was not really a virus. And that you could not really be infected by it.
The story blew over in about a week, but not without inciting completely unnecessary fear in the minds of tech neophytes and casual users. The antivirus companies, sensing a unique opportunity to exploit for marketshare gain, issued updated definitions (and press releases to this effect!) to "block" the "virus".
The media made it seem that was the beginning of the end for Mac security, when in fact *nothing had changed*.
And then, the next week, a security company posted a proof of concept virus that it claimed exploited a hole in Mac OS X. Once again, the media drove itself up into a frenzy, pointing out that this was the second in so many weeks to effect the Mac platform. But they didn't mention that more than two PC viruses come out every day. What they also didn't make clear: this was a *proof of concept*. Nobody was actually infected! The security hole they made public was closed by Apple within days. Nothing actually happened!
And then this past week, just when we thought everything had calmed down, a quintessentially moronic user revealed that he ran a "hack my Mac" competition and that his machine had been compromised in less than 30 minutes. And to the average computer user, this sounds terrifying...
But what the average user does not understand is that he contacted the hackers, told them about the competition, and provided them LOCAL SSH ACCOUNTS ON THE MACHINE. In other words, he explicitly provided them with (yes, unprivileged) command-line access to the computer.
Yes, the winning hacker is highly skilled and exploited an unknown (and still extant) hole in Mac OS X 10.4.4/5. So yes, there is something to worry about. BUT IT FIRST REQUIRES LOCAL COMMAND LINE ACCESS. In other words, this is turned off by default. You can't enable it unless you turn it on explicitly and then provide the hacker with a working username and password on your computer. In other words, there is nothing to worry about.
So, in summary, in the last month, the Mac platform has been compromised by:
1. An amateur attempt at a virus that exploits no vulnerabilities and has fatal flaws in its code. (People infected: < 50)
2. A security company that needlessly posted a proof of concept virus that did nothing but inspire fear. (People infected: 0)
3. And an idiot who let his computer be hacked. (People infected: 1, him)
In other words, nothing has changed in the state of Mac security. Yes, as we move forwards and the platform gains in popularity, yes, we will have to be vigilant, but as of right now, nothing has changed.
And when something does change, we have Mac users, one of the greatest, most supportive, communities there is, and people like arn and Andrew, to discover the truth.
And reassure us that the light is still there.
:: Jeff
Posted by JeffSeibert at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
Wikis and collaborative writing
What I've been really obsessed with lately is wikis and the act of collaborative authorship. Again, I would love to hear your insights into this topic. What has it been like to do group work centered around a wiki site? How has it changed your assumptions or practices of authorship? How can wikis be best used in the classroom?
Again, any insights you have on the subject of the relationship between wikis and writing, especially in an academic context and as a mode of collaboration, would be greatly appreciated!
Posted by calfano at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)
Collaborative blogging
I know that everyone's busy and focused on their individual projects ... and, tonight, so am I -- focused on my own project, that is, rather than all of yours :). Right now, my individual project is an evolving presentation/article on the use of collaborative blogs as well as wikis in the writing classroom.
If you have a few minutes, I would really appreciate your feedback on the issue of collaborative blogs. How useful are they in an academic context? How can they be best used in the PWR classroom? How does participating in a collaborative blog -- a blog with multiple authors -- affect your experience of writing and your practical understanding of authorship? Does the collaborative blog differ at all from a coursework forum discussion? How? For the better, for the worse? Any other related insights?
I would appreciate any feedback that you have the time to give ...
Posted by calfano at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2006
Bookmarks are del.icio.us!
My secret mission is to get everyone tagging bookmarks on del.icio.us. Tagging involves putting multiple labels on items; Gmail labels & facebook picture tags both work off the same principle.
Why tag bookmarks, you ask? If you like to surf the web, del.icio.us is a place to quickly dump things that you might want to refer back to. You'll find that its ease of use will have you quickly racking up many more bookmarks than you keep in your browser folders. Since you tag based on whatever pops to mind, it's likely that you'll be able to find an item easily, based again on the first things that comes to mind. You can access your bookmarks from anywhere that you have an internet connection, instead of having it restricted to one computer. And you can easily share bookmarks with friends (whether or not they have an account); just point them to your user page. You can even stalk someone's del.icio.us collection obsessively through RSS feeds.
There's also a social discovery aspect. You can see who else has tagged a page you like, and explore their collection. Or you can see what else people have labeled with tags that you're interested in. Del.icio.us is a fantastic time suck.
How to get started tagging:
1. sign up for an account
2. follow instructions after registration to install browser buttons, allowing you to post bookmarks easily. You don't have to do this to tag, but it'll save you a lot of time.
3. start tagging! you can't mess anything up, and you can always go back and edit your tags.
If you use Firefox and want to make your del.icio.us bookmarks accessible in your browser, you can add a live bookmark of the RSS feed.
Have more questions? Here's a more detailed guide to getting started. If you want to see an example of tagging, my username is soph2.
Del.icio.us has a lot of other nifty features like tag bundles for grouping related tags and an inbox for seeing what other people have tagged recently. Other goodies: If you fall in love with del.icio.us you might enjoy some tools and bookmarklets.
Happy tagging!
Posted by Sophia at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2006
Thoughts on Apple's Hi-Fi, and a broader movement
My individual blog post has to do with the latest news from Apple, announcing the Sunnyvale-based computer giant's foray into home entertainment. The iPod Hi-Fi music system is basically a single unit: three high quality drivers (two wide-range and one woofer) inside a compact black box that has a "dock" on top for the iPod. The primary advantage, Apple advertises, is the unit's compact size while providing high quality sound.
Mark Cuban, billionaire, technocrat, and most famously the obstreperous owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, argues that in a few years we'll get everything on hard-drives. Storage capacity is still increasing rapidly, he correctly points out, while prices are going down. I think he's trying to say that for example, if you do end up going to Best Buy to buy last season’s "Lost", you'll just pick up a small multi-terabyte hard drive with the files on it, instead of those packs of 6 DVD's. And since media technology and file formats are constantly improving, the video or audio quality of data we can put on a hard drive is not limited by the constraints of a DVD disc and one day the quality of DVD's won't be good enough. But we won't ever have to worry again about constantly updating our home equipment when another new format of discs or cassettes come out.
There's so much going on right now in the entertainment/media industry in terms of potential models of transmission, storage, production, and so forth. Everyone and their grandma, from Cuban to Steve Jobs, seem to have a vision they want to make into reality. Even after all these weeks of cramming all this cutting edge technology news and ideas for my research project, I'm still confused all the time. I wouldn't admit it in my paper or presentation, but it feels almost hopeless to try to understand it all and make nice and neat predictions and decisions. But like I did say in my presentation, probably the only thing we can do is to sit tight and wait and see what happens.
Posted by Gerry at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2006
I got arrested because of my MySpace!
A month and a half ago, in the middle of January, we discussed an example of a woman who lost her job because of the risque and explicit content on her personal blog. That is old news.
But Wednesday, during Josh's presentation on MySpace.com and Facebook.com as well as the Q&A session that followed, I couldn't help but wonder if these two websites were also having significant offline effects on the lives of their users.
As I was investigating online, I came across the article "Teen arrested over MySpace photos" on CNN.com. The article covers a high school student who posted pictures of himself with guns on his MySpace website, which is generally viewed as an online social community that largely attracts adolescents and teenagers. After his school administration became aware of the pictures, he was arrested and charged with three misdemeanor counts of "juvenile possession of a handgun".
A question that I'd like to raise regarding his arrest is this: is it right for something such as a MySpace photo to have ramifications like this in real life? In this case, you might say that it's perfectly fine, because it is a potential threat to public safety.
But what about another example, such as a student losing the bid for a potential job because of unattractive elements in her Facebook.com profile? (The Stanford Daily ran an article on this some time ago, but I can't remember exactly when.) Is it right, ethically or morally, for employers to view her Facebook.com profile, which is a website intended for social networking usually in the non-professional context, and then base an employment decision on that knowledge?
Part of me wants to say that websites such as MySpace and Facebook are fair game, because it reveals a bit more about a person's true character. However, at the same time, I feel that the character in a social context is often different from the character in a professional or work context, and that there really isn't that much overlap.
What do you guys make of this? To what extent should online information from a social, maybe even recreational, context apply to decisions made in a work or school environment?
Posted by Charlie at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
Persuasive videogames
Remember at the beginning of the quarter when we looked at persuasive computer games (think Esuvees and September 12th)? Well, I was doing some research for my upcoming presentation on collaborative blogs and wikis (yes, PWR instructors write too), and I stumbled across a link through Matt Barton's TikiWiki (a wonderful site, worth exploring in it's own right).
Here's the link -- it's what he calls a Rhetoric Videogame about McDonald's. I don't quite get how to play it, but I completely agree with his assessment that it will be taken down shortly. In any event, it's interesting to look at right now and to think about the ways in which it is using eRhetoric, computer graphics, and the user interface to make an argument about the McDonalds corporation.
Posted by calfano at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
Oxymoron? The Resurgence of Paper in the Internet Age
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/03/01/pen.to.paper.ap/index.html
Despite the increasing importance and ease of internet correspondence, paper still retains its place in society. This article is pretty much about this; its main argument is that the position of paper as a medium for writing is the same, and even enhanced by the onset of electronic media. To a large extent, I feel that the author has a really strong case for this argument. He brings up the important point that even though emails are extremely convenient, there are certain situations where emails are definitely no-no (like for offering condolences or congratulations). People also clearly place a premium on the physical possession of writing; as mentioned in the article, the feeling of getting a note from a friend is "so much more satisfying". The key message that this article brings to writers and internet enthusiasts is that the choice of a media depends entirely on the rhetorical situation that one finds himself in; ease and efficiency of use are not the only factors that one should consider when making a choice about the media that one uses.
Posted by YF at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)