Youtube Debut

Here is my semi naked youtube debut via a teaser trailer of my wife's photography. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu1Guxa2928

[Creative Commons Reviews] Rainbows End

Thought I would start the blog off with a winner.

http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html

Buy the book dangit!

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-0092500-2005558?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rainbows+end&x=0&y=0

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Posted By John Michael to Creative Commons Reviews at 12/17/2007 11:52:00 PM

[Creative Commons Reviews] What it's all about

Creative Commons Review reviews creative commons materials.  Nouf said.

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Posted By John Michael to Creative Commons Reviews at 12/17/2007 11:42:00 PM

[Geek to English] The End of Privacy

The End of Privacy

I am beginning with three assumptions:

1. That anything that has been digitized on any network that is not encrypted is accessible by government investigators.

2. That anything that has been digitized on any network that is not encrypted can be accessed and or sold to any corporation in order to sell you things.

3. That anything that has been digitized on any network that is not encrypted can be stolen by criminals for various malicious ends.

Basically, what is happening is an assault is your privacy.  There are various dangers these assumptions imply, and I think that you will fear one over the other depending on your own individual makeup.  Over the next few days, I am going to explain what i feel are the three best strategies for dealing with the current reality.
 

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Posted By John Michael to Geek to English at 12/17/2007 11:35:00 PM

Elephants are really afraid of mice...

Just thought you should know...

Oh and before you ask, they did three trials one with mouse+fake dung, one with fake dung no mouse and finally one with mouse no dung... the elephants always were wary of mice but didn't react when dung was present alone.

Strange days...

One of the strangest things I have to do at my job at the bank is escort customers to and from our nonpublic restroom. Because our bathroom is behind locked doors I have to chaparon people to and from our bathrooms, twiddling my thumbs and trying hard -and failing- to not hear what's going on beyond . Which brings me to a conundrum...

How should I refer to this essential job function on my resume?

Is it 'Personal sanitation facilitator'?
Is it 'expressing the synergy of classic water waste management with 10 star customer service'?
Personally I think my resume should read
-learning and selling whole suite of bank products
-multitasking and prioritizing management, customer and personal development tasks
-followed people to the bathroom

Yeah, that ought to get me hired.

The various veliance

I did a post over at www.journal.steelandink.com About sousveilance Surveliance and equivalence. If you're only familiar witht the middle of those terms you might want to check it out.

Limitations

Twice now my Internet has been blocked, and then twice it has been reactivated.

This is because my wife and I went well beyond my bandwidth limits, which I take as a badge of honor.  Up until two days ago I thought my internet access was unlimited.  To whit, in the last thirty days we used 10 gigabytes of downloaded information and 4 gigabytes of uploaded information.  My plan limits were 4 gigabytes and 1 gigabyte respectively. 

So yeah, I will probably take it easy on the uploading for now (no pictures or videos) as i really enjoy having high speed internet access and don't feel like paying more then 26 dollars a month for it.

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Wikileaks

Wikileaks describes itself as "a place for journalists, truth tellers and everybody else; global defense of sources and press freedoms, circa now."

Basically a wiki for leaks.  Powerful stuff, although as a wiki take everything with more then your usual dash of salt.  This is the article I am currently reading.  Link Seems credible to me, though that may just be because of my own biases.

Got anything to leak?  Seems like the place to post it.

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The End of all that is Private

Science fiction story via the incomparable Cory Doctorow about the day Google turned evil http://radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2007/09/google_fiction_evil_dangerous_surveillance_control_1.php followed by the real thing, right now at our borders http://www.montrealmirror.com/2007/070507/news1.html .

To summarize where my head it at, if enough info about you courses through the internet somebody will find something to suspect and investigate you with. Or as the Cardinal De Richelieu wrote, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."  With so much info out there, the potential for abuse is huge.

Personally, I still trust Google insofar as I use their services. It is worrisome to me that I can't permanently delete my search history, my gmail history etc. The crux of the issue is, should I cease using what is in many ways a superior product because of fears about the future? Even beyond this, I place a considerable information about myself on the Internet at large. As soon as it is posted it never goes away... if you ever needed to see the futility of trying to get something permanently off line take a look at the wayback machine http://www.archive.org/web/web.php or google cache http://www.googleguide.com/cached_pages.html.

Most of our networked generation tends to think of publishing personal info as no big deal, their lives are open webpages to be read. Then there are the people who lock down their data so tight, they have no room to make or sustain relationships beyond simple person to person contact. I think there is a third option, but that is a post for another time.

What information do you choose to make unavailable? What information can you make unavailable?