Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Gehry Partners, LLP, world architecture news, architecture jobs: "Exclusive images of Gehry's stunning new project, brought to you by WAN
After years of trying to woo Frank Gehry to design a building in Las Vegas, which the architect has refused to do on countless occasions, the city finally gets its Gehry. While the signature steel forms of the Lou Ruvo Center may at first suggest the building is just another Gehry project, think again. What distinguishes this Gehry design from the rest is that it is the only one for hire, not to mention that the building has received critical praise from the Los Angeles Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, as having the most impressive Gehry-designed interior space since the architect’s Disney Concert Hall in 2003.
The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, which officially opened Friday, is a leading research centre for degenerative brain diseases. Gehry agreed to design the building only after discovering he shared a bond with its founder, Larry Ruvo. Both men suffered personal losses to degenerative brain diseases. Ruvo lost his father to Alzheimer’s disease and Gehry’s analyst’s wife succumbed to Huntington’s disease. United in tragedy, the two men set out to design a world-class brain research center in the desert, gambling on the clinic’s excellent reputation and Gehry’s star power to ensure its success.
The $100 million complex comprises two wings connected by an open courtyard: a dedicated research center, located at the northern end of the building, and a ‘for-hire’ event space, dubbed the Life Activity Center, located at the southern end. Architecturally, the two spaces are dramatically different and yet together they form a cohesive whole. The four-storey clinic, which houses medical offices, patient rooms and research space, is rational. Clad in stucco and glass and resembling a series of stacked white blocks, it takes on a conventional, rectilinear geometry. By contrast, the Life Activity Center is a soaring sculptural volume tucked beneath a signature Gehry stainless steel roof. Designed as an event space, it can be rented out for parties, weddings and special occasions with the proceeds going to fund the center’s research.
While the first blush reviews of the building have been good, the expectations for the Center are high and exceed garnering architectural accolades. Las Vegas suffers from one of the highest unemployment rates, 14 percent, in the country. The city sees the clinic, which sits at the far south of Symphony Park, as the catalyst it desperately needs to restart the stalled 60-acre, mixed-use revitalization project. The city also needs to diversify its economy beyond gambling. A major medical centre would be a good start. At the opening, the Cleveland Clinic announced its intentions to expand its focus and its presence in Las Vegas beyond the Ruvo Center, perhaps adding cardiology services next with the future promise of growing a full service hospital there.
Sharon McHugh
US Correspondent
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Monday, May 31, 2010
Providentia: The Kaspar Hauser Mystery (Part 1)
Providentia: The Kaspar Hauser Mystery (Part 1): "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
The Kaspar Hauser Mystery (Part 1)
On May 26, 1828 (Easter Monday), two men were talking together in the Unschlittsplatz near Nuremberg's New Gate when they were approached by a teenaged boy. By all accounts, he was a fresh-complexioned boy of about seventeen years of age and dressed like a peasant. Although remarkably 
After being taken to Captain von Wessenig's house, the boy gave his name as "Kaspar Hauser" and the groom allowed him into the house to await the Captain's return. Asked where he came from, Kaspar replied that he "must not say" and then burst into tears. He claimed that he had been forced to travel day and night and the groom, touched by his story, offered him food and a place to sleep. When the Captain came home, he opened the Kaspar's envelope which contained two letters, both unsigned. The first letter was by a "poor day-labourer with ten children of my own" which said that Kaspar Hauser had been brought to him as an infant on October 7, 1812 by a woman who asked him to raise the child. The letter further stated that he had raised the boy as best he could, teaching him reading and writing, and finally sending him off to become a soldier (the woman had said that he was a soldier's son). The second letter was apparently written by the boy's mother and simply stated that he had been baptized and given the first name of Kaspar. Except that the boy was the son of a Schmollischer trooper, there was no other information. The Captain couldn't find out anything more from the boy and, not being particularly interested in his story, sent him to the police as a runaway. The police, not knowing what else to do with him, threw him into a prison cell.
For the next two months, the boy was relatively well treated in prison. Although he could write his name "Kaspar Hauser", he had difficulty responding to many of the questions asked of him due to his limited vocabulary. Although his jailors noted that Kaspar was more sharp-witted than he appeared to be, rumours grew about the "half-wild man" imprisoned in the local castle tower. Along with curiosity seekers who wanted to see the "wild man", Kaspar received visits from doctors, scholars, and groups of women bringing him toys and other presents. Since Kaspar was assumed to be an idiot, these visitors had no hesitation about discussing his case in his presence, along with all sorts of fanciful theories about his origins. Whether or not hearing these stories inspired Kaspar in his later claims is anybody's guess.
As Kaspar became more at ease with his imprisonment and frequent visitors, he related an amazing story. He said that he had spent his entire life in a cell that was six or seven feet long, four feet wide, and five feet high. The cell was so small that he wasn't even able to stand upright and he lived in almost perpetual darkness since the cell's two small windows had been boarded up. He had been in the cell as long as he could remember and had only learned to write his name by tracing the letters on paper that had been left in his cell. Eventually, the man who had first left the paper in his cell brought him a prayer book and taught him how to read a few words. Eventually, he had been taken out of the cell and told that he would be taken to be a soldier like his father. Based on his story, he somehow learned to walk and understand what the man said to him surprisingly quickly despite having little previous exposure to language. The envelope that he later gave the Captain was placed in his hands and he was eventually sent on his way to Nuremberg.
In November of that same year, Kaspar Hauser repeated his story before a specially appointed Commission of magistrates in Nuremberg (but not under oath). The fact that he able to walk and speak despite having been kept in one cell all his life with no exposure to language or physical exercise was hardly questioned. In fairness, some of his defenders explained away the inconsistencies and suggested that Kaspar had been confused in some of the details in his story. During attempts to cross-examine him or get him to expand on his story, Kaspar would often complain of headaches or deny that he had ever said what he had been heard to say.
Kaspar Hauser's story became widely believed and made him an object of sympathy throughout Germany. Although some skeptics questioned the details of the case (and suggested that the letters in his possession were written by the same person), they were discredited. Doctors who examined him concluded that he was an "animal man" who had been shut away from other people and was only now learning to live as a human being. Although other cases of feral children (including Victor of Aveyron) were relatively well-known, Kaspar Hauser's case seemed to be unique. Not only were his eyes acutely sensitive to light, but loud noises including thunderstorms and regimental bands upset him greatly. He also had an amazing sense of smell and was repelled by the scent of any kind of flower. His body was covered with old scars on his head and legs which were believed to be the marks of early physical abuse and he preferred to drink only water(he never learned to enjoy drinking wine or beer).
In the meantime, police scoured the country trying to find any trace of Kaspar's origins. Nobody matching his description was ever found and no missing person's reports that might have established his true identity ever turned up. By July 1828, Kaspar Hauser was formally adopted by the city of Nuremberg and an annual pension was approved for his maintenance. Kaspar Hauser was formally placed into the care of George Friedrich Daumer, a schoolmaster and philosopher who tried to educate him. Daumer had already begun educating Kaspar in his cell and had noted his amazing progress in learning to read and write. This education didn't go smoothly though and Daumer complained about the steady influx of visitors who were interfering with his pupil's lessons. The visitors were stopped but Kaspar was still free to go out and socialize, especially since he had become the darling of Nuremberg society.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Kindle's future? E Ink shows off color and flexible displays
Kindle's future? E Ink shows off color and flexible displays: "Kindle's future? E Ink shows off color and flexible displays
Eric Engleman on Thursday, May 27, 2010, 1:03pm PDT
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Amazon.com | Devices | Electronic books | Google | Kindle
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos told shareholders this week that color-screen Kindles are still 'some ways out.' But E Ink, the provider of e-paper display technology for the Kindle readers on the market today, is giving a glimpse of what that future might look like at the Society for Information Display Symposium in Seattle this week. Pictured here is a research prototype color e-reader that E Ink featured at the exhibition.
That research version is still about two years away, according to E Ink, but the company is planning to release a version of color screen later this year, and is also working on a flexible plastic display (video below). Will these be part of future Kindles? E Ink staff wouldn't say.
Interestingly, two Google employees, one of them a hardware engineer, were engaged in detailed discussions at the E Ink booth today, taking measurements of some of the displays and asking about the touchscreen features. They declined to discuss their interest in the technology.
E Ink product director Lawrence Schwartz walked through some of the new E Ink technologies coming to market (sorry for the intermittent glare from the lights above):
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Eric Engleman on Thursday, May 27, 2010, 1:03pm PDT
Comments
| Permalink
Amazon.com | Devices | Electronic books | Google | Kindle
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos told shareholders this week that color-screen Kindles are still 'some ways out.' But E Ink, the provider of e-paper display technology for the Kindle readers on the market today, is giving a glimpse of what that future might look like at the Society for Information Display Symposium in Seattle this week. Pictured here is a research prototype color e-reader that E Ink featured at the exhibition.
That research version is still about two years away, according to E Ink, but the company is planning to release a version of color screen later this year, and is also working on a flexible plastic display (video below). Will these be part of future Kindles? E Ink staff wouldn't say.
Interestingly, two Google employees, one of them a hardware engineer, were engaged in detailed discussions at the E Ink booth today, taking measurements of some of the displays and asking about the touchscreen features. They declined to discuss their interest in the technology.
E Ink product director Lawrence Schwartz walked through some of the new E Ink technologies coming to market (sorry for the intermittent glare from the lights above):
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Buzz by John Hardy
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So. fucking. naive.
Taylor: 'Personally — and these are my own personal beliefs, not those of the company — I believe our society is becoming more open and accepting. I would never want to work for an employer who found my personal identity unappealing. I think that’s an antiquated notion. I hope our culture changes so that people become accepting both on the inside and outside.'
Reshared post from Michael Sean Wright.
Q & A: Bret Taylor on his impact at Facebook, post FriendFeed-acquisition - VentureBeat
It’s been 10 months since Facebook bought FriendFeed, which arguably was its most significant acquisition since the company was founded. (Parakey was the other influential acquisition.)
The deal brought several senior hands on-board including Gmail creator Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, who shepherded a number of significant products through Google including Maps. Since then, both of them have taken very visible roles at Facebook with Taylor launching the company’s social plug-ins last month at the company’s f8 developer conference.
We caught up with Taylor to get his take on how he’s fit in with the company so far:
VentureBeat: How do you think you’ve influenced Mark’s thinking and the trajectory of the company?
Taylor: One the reasons we decided to join was we actually had a shared vision of how we wanted these social services to be integrated across the web. As for my own personal impact, it’s hard to say. In all of our conversations, it just became clear how our visions basically dovetailed. You could say I was in violent agreement with Mark.
On a practical level, I came in thinking the Facebook platform was too complex. There were too many application programming interface calls needed to accomplish basic social functionality. I thought the APIs had to be much simpler, and it turned out that a lot of my personal concerns about the product were shared. The product and platform have grown enormously and there’s been a need to simplify things, whether that’s fixing privacy controls or the API. So the simpler API is what we built and shipped at f8.
VB: How would you say Mark and Facebook’s culture has changed your thinking about the social web?
Taylor: One thing that Mark and I have talked a lot about is how the services that will be the most successful in the future will be ones that are built with social functionality in mind from day one. That’s what we’ve seen with the gaming industry. My favorite game growing up was Sim City. If you were to build that socially, you’d make all these changes — neighbors would make a difference, you’d build cities that are competitive to your friends’ cities. Social experiences in products can create an immense amount of value. Products like the Wii took something that was previously solitary and made it fun by involving family.
If you look at the partners we launched with at f8 like the Washington Post, we gave them plug-ins that would let you see articles your friends have liked. It gave your friends an editorial voice that wasn’t there before. If you build products with social connections in mind from day one, you’ll produce much better and more genuine experiences for users.
VB: What do you think is preventing Google, where you worked before, from launching more successful and mainstream social products?
Taylor: I left just before Google’s social efforts really began. I don’t have any personal insight into what is going on. When we develop products at Facebook, we don’t really focus on what our competitors are building. I can tell you that the reason why Facebook builds good social products is that this is just culturally what we do. It is our first order of business. And in general, it’s hard for companies to be successful at anything that’s not their core focus.
I will also say that you are ultimately a product of your surroundings. I was at Google for most of my career and the culture was very academic. We were focused on infrastructure and scalability. Facebook, from day 1, has been about social interactions, which has definitely colored the way I think.
My favorite example, which you already know about, was Facebook Photos. It was not a great photo product by any standard measure. There were no original-sized photos. There was no printing. It wasn’t developed like a traditional photo service. It just had this core piece of functionality — tagging– that made it the biggest photo product on the web.
VB: With the “like” buttons and the social plug-ins that you helped launch at f8, you’ll suddenly be collecting an immense amount of data — both explicit and implicit — on how people use the web –
Taylor: Let me clear something up. We are 100 percent focused on explicit data. We have pretty strict data retention policies. The implicit data is anonymized after 90 days. We use it to measure something called “like-through” rate so we understand how the buttons and plug-ins are used and how we can improve them.
VB: Are the “likes” factoring into ad targeting now?
Taylor: I don’t know. That’s not my area of expertise.
VB: Where do you think behavioral norms around privacy are heading over the next 10 years?
Taylor: In general, I think if you look at many products that are being developed in Silicon Valley right now, they’re all very disruptive to the way that people think about sharing. They’re disruptive in the way that the Internet was very disruptive to journalism or in the way that the printing press affected how people consumed information. These products are changing peoples’ expectations and they inherently create tension in the way we think about openness and privacy. I think it’s a very healthy dialogue we’re having as a culture.
One of the things we learned from this is that we have to be very good about offering controls. But because we built so many controls, actual control was lost in the complexity.
VB: But the defaults you’ve established over time have become more public. There was this viral infographic showing the defaults making basic information becoming ever more public over time….
Taylor: We’re trying to make our settings reflect behavioral norms. I don’t think the graphic reflects reality for most of our user base. The majority of our users have customized their privacy settings.
If you think about Mark’s talk, when we first went international, people joined regional networks. And that meant that for Turkish users, their network was the entire country. So all Facebook users in that country could see their information. We had to change that. Furthermore, most of our users have signed up in the past year. People have signed up in vastly different environments with vastly different expectations. We’ve attempted to have our defaults reflect the norms of usage of the product.
VB: Mark has said in the past that people have a single identity no matter where they are, whether they’re with their friends or in the workplace. Can you elaborate on that?
Taylor: We’ve made this commitment to have one single real identity in the product and I think our long-term success will bear that idea out. Some people use it as a professional network; others use it for their friends.
Personally — and these are my own personal beliefs, not those of the company — I believe our society is becoming more open and accepting. I would never want to work for an employer who found my personal identity unappealing. I think that’s an antiquated notion. I hope our culture changes so that people become accepting both on the inside and outside.
VB: If you take the way space in the physical world is divided as a metaphor for online space, in the real world, there are very overt visual cues for where you are and who you’re communicating with.
The furniture and look of your office tells you to behave one way and the coffee shop where you’re talking to your best friend tells you behave another way. But on Facebook, all of that space is compressed to a single white status update bar and the only visual cue a user has that tells them who they’re communicating with is the tiny image of a lock.
Taylor: That’s an insightful way of looking at it. We have different communication channels on Facebook.
Your inbox might be your coffee shop and your wall is the place where your friends can reach out to you and instigate serendipitous communication with others.
We’ve talked about communication channels a lot and we’ve tried friend lists. Honestly, they’re not perfect but we’ll definitely get there.
Companies: Facebook
People: Bret Taylor
2 people publicly reshared this - ShowSadagopan S and Stefan Ålund
6 people liked this - =GoogleBuzzMan=Y.Shintaro=Jsonicboom =, Feng David, Marko Škember, Sigi Mueller, Yoav Givati and tima vida
Marko Škember - Taylor seems like a very bright person.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Alex Covic - VB: Are the “likes” factoring into ad targeting now?
Taylor: I don’t know. That’s not my area of expertise.
Bret Taylor sure is a great engineer (never met him - only know him from his blog, speeches). Building Friendfeed in 6 weeks time - that's impressive.
I was naive too, thinking, he could help swing FB to the better. He's helping FB become faster, bigger, more connected (not just what we users see, but the partner-servers/ad-services in the background).
Reminds me of the physicists & engineers in the beginning of the 20th century. I know, it's a far stretch comparison. All engineers think they are building these amazing new things for the better of humanity. But in the end, all technology is and will be used as weapons, eventually. Today's weapons are virtual and API based and I am glad less likely to kill people. Still, they don't see the bigger picture?May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - I don't care about Facebook, I don't use it but Taylor seems to be o.k.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - yes Bret Taylor is certainly a talented guy and certainly worth listening to. I just think that his view of everybody knowing everything about everybody is not going to work. people are only just starting to realise that they need to start thinking about protecting themselves from data mining, exploitation and identity theft. Taylor's hope for a change of culture is hopelessly utopian and naive. Either that or I don't think he is being completely honest with us.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - What's the big deal about privacy and identity? If you don't have nothing to hide, you don't need to fear.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Michael Silverton - I had the privilege of meeting Bret very briefly at an MIT/Stanford VLAB (pre-FB) and he seemed sincere and authentic. At that same event, it was Leah Culver (Pownce, Six Apart, and secret alpha IRC-powered leafychat.com) who most 'stood up to the man' (The Man being represented by WSJ's Kara Swisher) at that event. It's a huge task and responsibility to lead these social companies. To my mind, it's all back to Qui Bono? To what degree? By what means? WE are the content on all these networks, yet the platforms aggregate all the economic returns. There's something just fundamentally out of whack about that, IMHO [ff.im/7uNZv | goo.gl/2OpC], yet nobody seems to want to talk about where the money goes.
This ambivalence strikes me as beyond peculiar in the context of our society. But then, consensus ambivalence over the fundamental enabling role of internet bandwidth in the access network during the 1990's puzzled me, too.
The Skember Curriculum: goo.gl/hXPq
Leadership can and does change over time; hopefully for the better in this case. Check out The Social Developer Summit, June 29, San Francisco. goo.gl/7KVAMay 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Sean Brady - People need to realize that a) not everything they put on FB is kept private and b) not everything they do should be public. I agree with Bret that society has changed, and what is now considered public information about me is different that it was 5 years ago. As long as people are allowed to set their own level of privacy, and they understand what can be done with the information they make public, I think this increased level of information acceptance is fine.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - All information should be public and universally accessible. That is crucial for benefit of society and human kind.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - lovely and idealistic.
which is why i maintain several identities online and will continue to do so and will probably add more over time.12:27 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Dan Morrill - Wait, are you saying this isn't the REAL John Hardy?! I feel so cheated.1:02 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Why are people so paranoid? Unfounded fear only produces more fear and confusion.1:08 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - Yes these words are the true utterances of the entity whose personal brand is 'John Hardy'.
It's not paranoia, Marko, a better question is why all the trust? Has there even been an instance where credulity has been justified when it comes to the interests of big corporations?
There are strong reasons to protect one's privacy however you are welcome to live as publicly as Robert Scoble if you wish. Scoble however has an advantage of being a celebrity in the tech world so for him its a trade off against the benefits he receives. That's a luxury that not everyone shares.1:18 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Baker - @Marko Škember Sorry must disagree.
ALL information can by definition ever be public, and that is not what people in Zuck's camp want. They want All marketable information they can get from their customers.
People in, say, financial market makers, governments, and large-scale investors really do want ALL information which has value only if it is exclusive. People of this bent will sell 'open' with intent to get as much as possible, and be 'open' with a subset of that.
Users who say they want to share all information are and I say this charitably, naive and have not thought this through fully.
@Sean Brady - @John Hardy - and of course @Alex Covic - +11:32 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - I am willing to give plenty of information, I don't care about that. To me, knowledge and truth are way more important than a bunch of data.2:05 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Gord Wait - Call me a cynic, but I don't believe the Facebook team are naive, I think they are sociopathic, and after the usual - almighty dollar and power. I think this 'gee whiz everyone should accept Zuckerberg's Law' is just smoke and mirrors.
Marko - study history and you will find there are lots of reasons to be careful. No point in going to extremes, but one thing new with the internet age is that it can bring both new friends and new enemies within your social circle at light speed.
In the real geographical world I'm surrounded by people in approximately the same culture, who all have to live in the same cultural and legal environment, 'on average'.
On the internet you can easily come into contact with people who would so disagree with any single aspect of your own world view, that they would want to cause you harm, or kill you for your beliefs to silence your opposing view.
The internet can (and probably is to some extent) turn into a giant melting pot of world culture (limited by how much information individuals can ever consume) , but there will be lots of turbulence as barriers come down. No point in getting smashed on the rocks by pursuing an ideal of complete openness.2:10 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Kathi [d/b/a fuzzyscorpio] - +10 @Gord Wait. Zuck's Law is nothing more than fabricated rationale for the pursuit of profit and world domination. :)2:25 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Facebook will not dominate the world. It is just another social network just like Myspace or Orkut, nothing special.2:46 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Gord Wait - Facebook's page views already exceed Google search itself. I think it's now the #1 web site. Their new 'Facebook Likes Everywhere' extends their reach more.
Sounds dominant to me..
Agreed Kathi, but I also think it's the perfect meme to describe Facebook's corporate culture. Facebook will have you believe they do this for the benefit of the world :)
I realize I may be sounding confrontational, (not trying to be) - I'm not worried that Facebook are some sort of cultural or techno threat, I think they will (and already are) have some serious issues with the good old 'unintended consequences' problem and fall flat in a couple years, then everyone will be on to the next big thing (See the articles of fundamentalist Muslims tracking down non believers for persecution using the new open Facebook as a resource for example).
Their user interface is actually quite bad, and randomly changes every few months to add more confusion. In short (I believe) the only thing Facebook has going for it is that 'everyone uses it'. All these new issues which seem to show a callous disregard for their users show that they don't agree. They have the user base, it's theirs to loose..
Personally I will keep my Facebook account open, so people can find me, but even before this latest round I wasn't really engaged on there. Now I take a look about once a week, and occasionally post a Buzz link for fun..3:05 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Facebook is way behind Google. It cannot even be compared to Google. I even like Twitter more than Facebook.3:21 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Kathi [d/b/a fuzzyscorpio] - @Gord Wait 'I think they will (and already are) have some serious issues with the good old 'unintended consequences' problem and fall flat in a couple years, then everyone will be on to the next big thing'
I hope and believe you're right.
'Their user interface is actually quite bad, and randomly changes every few months to add more confusion. In short (I believe) the only thing Facebook has going for it is that 'everyone uses it'.'
Couldn't agree more.3:23 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Facebook has only managed to create a mass hysteria.3:39 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Michael Silverton - canofworms.is_open();
Scenario: Imagine you woke up one morning and some guy was sleeping in a car just outside your house.
Maybe he's just a harmless homeless guy, down on his luck, (maybe just like you might have once been) living in his car, looking for a quiet place to sleep for a few hours. Maybe he's casing your neighborhood. Maybe he stole the car last night and just fell asleep exhausted right there. Maybe he's a P.I. keeping an eye on the wayward desperate housewife five doors down.
In any case, being a conscientious member of your Neighborhood Watch group and active citizen, you decide to call the police and alert the neighborhood with a Buzz on the map, something like goo.gl/W7TL
Now, imagine this bad guy also has Buzz on his smart phone. He also sees that you just announced his location. He clicks over to your Profile, over to your Facebook, finds out where you kids go to school, where your wife or husband works, etc.
So, yeah. Can you say use case for Accountable Anonymity goo.gl/CP6M? Can you say citizen-enforcement extensions to citysourced.com where a picture of the license plate brings back a 'stolen' or 'no data' status -- with zero personally identifying information about the vehicle owner -- and immediately alerts local police with (your previously opted-in) GPS location of your device?
I knew you could.5:29 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Yoav Givati - The issue with Facebook is not that any app or 3rd party site can access all your private data regardless of privacy settings and control your profile without consent, which they can, and have, and do.
The issue with Facebook is that Facebook takes perpetual ownership of your identity and likeness, and they abuse those rights. Signing up for Facebook is like giving them power of attorney over your identity, and the right to pass those rights on to whoever they want with no obligation to tell you who, forever, without any way to opt out or cancel your agreement with Facebook to take those actions in the future.
Facebook scams people out of controlling their identity. They lock you in, and take the digital 'you' hostage. They flat out lie about what's private and what's not, and they profit off divulging your data and personal information to unknown unnamed 3rd parties.6:26 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - OK it's only one incident but it happened only a few weeks ago in my country during the middle of the initial Facebook furore http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/facebook-teen-lured-and-killed/story-e6frewt0-1225867233760
As Yoav says people are losing the ability to control their identity and this can have unfortunate consequences in terms of identity theft, fraud and exploitation. I'm going to say it again: Learn whatever it takes to protect your identity online and teach your kids how to be aware. It's not just Facebook that is the problem here.9:06 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Michael Silverton - A fundamental problem is that there are absolutely no pedestrian or retail measures available to people to protect themselves against someone or group that becomes determined to do harm. We can take all the preventative measures we'd like; there are simply no 100% effective identity or personal safety measures.
Informed by that awareness, advocating for more openness and transparency in both software and society need not be synonymous with gullibility and naivete.
Number of simple, straightforward, and effective domestic intelligence solutions == 0.
Our perpetual challenges is to engage with the world as it is, while working to shape environments, norms, and institutions toward practical sustainability and security while maximizing individual and collective liberty.
If adaptive futuretechture were easy, perhaps everyone would do it.
I find myself asking, 'What if best practices were at least teachable for a mass audience?'9:41 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - I agree with this @Michael Silverton .
At the moment I think we are all just starting to learn and as you say this situation is in a continual state of flux. I imagine different sections of society will react in different ways ranging ranging from open acceptance of all things regardless of risk through to building high protective walls and locking themselves away.
My personal favourite coping strategy is to try to subvert the machine but the machine itself is subversive of the status quo so wish me luck on that one.11:07 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
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John Hardy - Buzz - Public - Muted
So. fucking. naive.
Taylor: 'Personally — and these are my own personal beliefs, not those of the company — I believe our society is becoming more open and accepting. I would never want to work for an employer who found my personal identity unappealing. I think that’s an antiquated notion. I hope our culture changes so that people become accepting both on the inside and outside.'
Reshared post from Michael Sean Wright.
Q & A: Bret Taylor on his impact at Facebook, post FriendFeed-acquisition - VentureBeat
It’s been 10 months since Facebook bought FriendFeed, which arguably was its most significant acquisition since the company was founded. (Parakey was the other influential acquisition.)
The deal brought several senior hands on-board including Gmail creator Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, who shepherded a number of significant products through Google including Maps. Since then, both of them have taken very visible roles at Facebook with Taylor launching the company’s social plug-ins last month at the company’s f8 developer conference.
We caught up with Taylor to get his take on how he’s fit in with the company so far:
VentureBeat: How do you think you’ve influenced Mark’s thinking and the trajectory of the company?
Taylor: One the reasons we decided to join was we actually had a shared vision of how we wanted these social services to be integrated across the web. As for my own personal impact, it’s hard to say. In all of our conversations, it just became clear how our visions basically dovetailed. You could say I was in violent agreement with Mark.
On a practical level, I came in thinking the Facebook platform was too complex. There were too many application programming interface calls needed to accomplish basic social functionality. I thought the APIs had to be much simpler, and it turned out that a lot of my personal concerns about the product were shared. The product and platform have grown enormously and there’s been a need to simplify things, whether that’s fixing privacy controls or the API. So the simpler API is what we built and shipped at f8.
VB: How would you say Mark and Facebook’s culture has changed your thinking about the social web?
Taylor: One thing that Mark and I have talked a lot about is how the services that will be the most successful in the future will be ones that are built with social functionality in mind from day one. That’s what we’ve seen with the gaming industry. My favorite game growing up was Sim City. If you were to build that socially, you’d make all these changes — neighbors would make a difference, you’d build cities that are competitive to your friends’ cities. Social experiences in products can create an immense amount of value. Products like the Wii took something that was previously solitary and made it fun by involving family.
If you look at the partners we launched with at f8 like the Washington Post, we gave them plug-ins that would let you see articles your friends have liked. It gave your friends an editorial voice that wasn’t there before. If you build products with social connections in mind from day one, you’ll produce much better and more genuine experiences for users.
VB: What do you think is preventing Google, where you worked before, from launching more successful and mainstream social products?
Taylor: I left just before Google’s social efforts really began. I don’t have any personal insight into what is going on. When we develop products at Facebook, we don’t really focus on what our competitors are building. I can tell you that the reason why Facebook builds good social products is that this is just culturally what we do. It is our first order of business. And in general, it’s hard for companies to be successful at anything that’s not their core focus.
I will also say that you are ultimately a product of your surroundings. I was at Google for most of my career and the culture was very academic. We were focused on infrastructure and scalability. Facebook, from day 1, has been about social interactions, which has definitely colored the way I think.
My favorite example, which you already know about, was Facebook Photos. It was not a great photo product by any standard measure. There were no original-sized photos. There was no printing. It wasn’t developed like a traditional photo service. It just had this core piece of functionality — tagging– that made it the biggest photo product on the web.
VB: With the “like” buttons and the social plug-ins that you helped launch at f8, you’ll suddenly be collecting an immense amount of data — both explicit and implicit — on how people use the web –
Taylor: Let me clear something up. We are 100 percent focused on explicit data. We have pretty strict data retention policies. The implicit data is anonymized after 90 days. We use it to measure something called “like-through” rate so we understand how the buttons and plug-ins are used and how we can improve them.
VB: Are the “likes” factoring into ad targeting now?
Taylor: I don’t know. That’s not my area of expertise.
VB: Where do you think behavioral norms around privacy are heading over the next 10 years?
Taylor: In general, I think if you look at many products that are being developed in Silicon Valley right now, they’re all very disruptive to the way that people think about sharing. They’re disruptive in the way that the Internet was very disruptive to journalism or in the way that the printing press affected how people consumed information. These products are changing peoples’ expectations and they inherently create tension in the way we think about openness and privacy. I think it’s a very healthy dialogue we’re having as a culture.
One of the things we learned from this is that we have to be very good about offering controls. But because we built so many controls, actual control was lost in the complexity.
VB: But the defaults you’ve established over time have become more public. There was this viral infographic showing the defaults making basic information becoming ever more public over time….
Taylor: We’re trying to make our settings reflect behavioral norms. I don’t think the graphic reflects reality for most of our user base. The majority of our users have customized their privacy settings.
If you think about Mark’s talk, when we first went international, people joined regional networks. And that meant that for Turkish users, their network was the entire country. So all Facebook users in that country could see their information. We had to change that. Furthermore, most of our users have signed up in the past year. People have signed up in vastly different environments with vastly different expectations. We’ve attempted to have our defaults reflect the norms of usage of the product.
VB: Mark has said in the past that people have a single identity no matter where they are, whether they’re with their friends or in the workplace. Can you elaborate on that?
Taylor: We’ve made this commitment to have one single real identity in the product and I think our long-term success will bear that idea out. Some people use it as a professional network; others use it for their friends.
Personally — and these are my own personal beliefs, not those of the company — I believe our society is becoming more open and accepting. I would never want to work for an employer who found my personal identity unappealing. I think that’s an antiquated notion. I hope our culture changes so that people become accepting both on the inside and outside.
VB: If you take the way space in the physical world is divided as a metaphor for online space, in the real world, there are very overt visual cues for where you are and who you’re communicating with.
The furniture and look of your office tells you to behave one way and the coffee shop where you’re talking to your best friend tells you behave another way. But on Facebook, all of that space is compressed to a single white status update bar and the only visual cue a user has that tells them who they’re communicating with is the tiny image of a lock.
Taylor: That’s an insightful way of looking at it. We have different communication channels on Facebook.
Your inbox might be your coffee shop and your wall is the place where your friends can reach out to you and instigate serendipitous communication with others.
We’ve talked about communication channels a lot and we’ve tried friend lists. Honestly, they’re not perfect but we’ll definitely get there.
Companies: Facebook
People: Bret Taylor
2 people publicly reshared this - ShowSadagopan S and Stefan Ålund
6 people liked this - =GoogleBuzzMan=Y.Shintaro=Jsonicboom =, Feng David, Marko Škember, Sigi Mueller, Yoav Givati and tima vida
Marko Škember - Taylor seems like a very bright person.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Alex Covic - VB: Are the “likes” factoring into ad targeting now?
Taylor: I don’t know. That’s not my area of expertise.
Bret Taylor sure is a great engineer (never met him - only know him from his blog, speeches). Building Friendfeed in 6 weeks time - that's impressive.
I was naive too, thinking, he could help swing FB to the better. He's helping FB become faster, bigger, more connected (not just what we users see, but the partner-servers/ad-services in the background).
Reminds me of the physicists & engineers in the beginning of the 20th century. I know, it's a far stretch comparison. All engineers think they are building these amazing new things for the better of humanity. But in the end, all technology is and will be used as weapons, eventually. Today's weapons are virtual and API based and I am glad less likely to kill people. Still, they don't see the bigger picture?May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - I don't care about Facebook, I don't use it but Taylor seems to be o.k.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - yes Bret Taylor is certainly a talented guy and certainly worth listening to. I just think that his view of everybody knowing everything about everybody is not going to work. people are only just starting to realise that they need to start thinking about protecting themselves from data mining, exploitation and identity theft. Taylor's hope for a change of culture is hopelessly utopian and naive. Either that or I don't think he is being completely honest with us.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - What's the big deal about privacy and identity? If you don't have nothing to hide, you don't need to fear.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Michael Silverton - I had the privilege of meeting Bret very briefly at an MIT/Stanford VLAB (pre-FB) and he seemed sincere and authentic. At that same event, it was Leah Culver (Pownce, Six Apart, and secret alpha IRC-powered leafychat.com) who most 'stood up to the man' (The Man being represented by WSJ's Kara Swisher) at that event. It's a huge task and responsibility to lead these social companies. To my mind, it's all back to Qui Bono? To what degree? By what means? WE are the content on all these networks, yet the platforms aggregate all the economic returns. There's something just fundamentally out of whack about that, IMHO [ff.im/7uNZv | goo.gl/2OpC], yet nobody seems to want to talk about where the money goes.
This ambivalence strikes me as beyond peculiar in the context of our society. But then, consensus ambivalence over the fundamental enabling role of internet bandwidth in the access network during the 1990's puzzled me, too.
The Skember Curriculum: goo.gl/hXPq
Leadership can and does change over time; hopefully for the better in this case. Check out The Social Developer Summit, June 29, San Francisco. goo.gl/7KVAMay 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Sean Brady - People need to realize that a) not everything they put on FB is kept private and b) not everything they do should be public. I agree with Bret that society has changed, and what is now considered public information about me is different that it was 5 years ago. As long as people are allowed to set their own level of privacy, and they understand what can be done with the information they make public, I think this increased level of information acceptance is fine.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - All information should be public and universally accessible. That is crucial for benefit of society and human kind.May 29DeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - lovely and idealistic.
which is why i maintain several identities online and will continue to do so and will probably add more over time.12:27 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Dan Morrill - Wait, are you saying this isn't the REAL John Hardy?! I feel so cheated.1:02 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Why are people so paranoid? Unfounded fear only produces more fear and confusion.1:08 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - Yes these words are the true utterances of the entity whose personal brand is 'John Hardy'.
It's not paranoia, Marko, a better question is why all the trust? Has there even been an instance where credulity has been justified when it comes to the interests of big corporations?
There are strong reasons to protect one's privacy however you are welcome to live as publicly as Robert Scoble if you wish. Scoble however has an advantage of being a celebrity in the tech world so for him its a trade off against the benefits he receives. That's a luxury that not everyone shares.1:18 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Baker - @Marko Škember Sorry must disagree.
ALL information can by definition ever be public, and that is not what people in Zuck's camp want. They want All marketable information they can get from their customers.
People in, say, financial market makers, governments, and large-scale investors really do want ALL information which has value only if it is exclusive. People of this bent will sell 'open' with intent to get as much as possible, and be 'open' with a subset of that.
Users who say they want to share all information are and I say this charitably, naive and have not thought this through fully.
@Sean Brady - @John Hardy - and of course @Alex Covic - +11:32 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - I am willing to give plenty of information, I don't care about that. To me, knowledge and truth are way more important than a bunch of data.2:05 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Gord Wait - Call me a cynic, but I don't believe the Facebook team are naive, I think they are sociopathic, and after the usual - almighty dollar and power. I think this 'gee whiz everyone should accept Zuckerberg's Law' is just smoke and mirrors.
Marko - study history and you will find there are lots of reasons to be careful. No point in going to extremes, but one thing new with the internet age is that it can bring both new friends and new enemies within your social circle at light speed.
In the real geographical world I'm surrounded by people in approximately the same culture, who all have to live in the same cultural and legal environment, 'on average'.
On the internet you can easily come into contact with people who would so disagree with any single aspect of your own world view, that they would want to cause you harm, or kill you for your beliefs to silence your opposing view.
The internet can (and probably is to some extent) turn into a giant melting pot of world culture (limited by how much information individuals can ever consume) , but there will be lots of turbulence as barriers come down. No point in getting smashed on the rocks by pursuing an ideal of complete openness.2:10 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Kathi [d/b/a fuzzyscorpio] - +10 @Gord Wait. Zuck's Law is nothing more than fabricated rationale for the pursuit of profit and world domination. :)2:25 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Facebook will not dominate the world. It is just another social network just like Myspace or Orkut, nothing special.2:46 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Gord Wait - Facebook's page views already exceed Google search itself. I think it's now the #1 web site. Their new 'Facebook Likes Everywhere' extends their reach more.
Sounds dominant to me..
Agreed Kathi, but I also think it's the perfect meme to describe Facebook's corporate culture. Facebook will have you believe they do this for the benefit of the world :)
I realize I may be sounding confrontational, (not trying to be) - I'm not worried that Facebook are some sort of cultural or techno threat, I think they will (and already are) have some serious issues with the good old 'unintended consequences' problem and fall flat in a couple years, then everyone will be on to the next big thing (See the articles of fundamentalist Muslims tracking down non believers for persecution using the new open Facebook as a resource for example).
Their user interface is actually quite bad, and randomly changes every few months to add more confusion. In short (I believe) the only thing Facebook has going for it is that 'everyone uses it'. All these new issues which seem to show a callous disregard for their users show that they don't agree. They have the user base, it's theirs to loose..
Personally I will keep my Facebook account open, so people can find me, but even before this latest round I wasn't really engaged on there. Now I take a look about once a week, and occasionally post a Buzz link for fun..3:05 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Facebook is way behind Google. It cannot even be compared to Google. I even like Twitter more than Facebook.3:21 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Kathi [d/b/a fuzzyscorpio] - @Gord Wait 'I think they will (and already are) have some serious issues with the good old 'unintended consequences' problem and fall flat in a couple years, then everyone will be on to the next big thing'
I hope and believe you're right.
'Their user interface is actually quite bad, and randomly changes every few months to add more confusion. In short (I believe) the only thing Facebook has going for it is that 'everyone uses it'.'
Couldn't agree more.3:23 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Marko Škember - Facebook has only managed to create a mass hysteria.3:39 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Michael Silverton - canofworms.is_open();
Scenario: Imagine you woke up one morning and some guy was sleeping in a car just outside your house.
Maybe he's just a harmless homeless guy, down on his luck, (maybe just like you might have once been) living in his car, looking for a quiet place to sleep for a few hours. Maybe he's casing your neighborhood. Maybe he stole the car last night and just fell asleep exhausted right there. Maybe he's a P.I. keeping an eye on the wayward desperate housewife five doors down.
In any case, being a conscientious member of your Neighborhood Watch group and active citizen, you decide to call the police and alert the neighborhood with a Buzz on the map, something like goo.gl/W7TL
Now, imagine this bad guy also has Buzz on his smart phone. He also sees that you just announced his location. He clicks over to your Profile, over to your Facebook, finds out where you kids go to school, where your wife or husband works, etc.
So, yeah. Can you say use case for Accountable Anonymity goo.gl/CP6M? Can you say citizen-enforcement extensions to citysourced.com where a picture of the license plate brings back a 'stolen' or 'no data' status -- with zero personally identifying information about the vehicle owner -- and immediately alerts local police with (your previously opted-in) GPS location of your device?
I knew you could.5:29 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Yoav Givati - The issue with Facebook is not that any app or 3rd party site can access all your private data regardless of privacy settings and control your profile without consent, which they can, and have, and do.
The issue with Facebook is that Facebook takes perpetual ownership of your identity and likeness, and they abuse those rights. Signing up for Facebook is like giving them power of attorney over your identity, and the right to pass those rights on to whoever they want with no obligation to tell you who, forever, without any way to opt out or cancel your agreement with Facebook to take those actions in the future.
Facebook scams people out of controlling their identity. They lock you in, and take the digital 'you' hostage. They flat out lie about what's private and what's not, and they profit off divulging your data and personal information to unknown unnamed 3rd parties.6:26 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - OK it's only one incident but it happened only a few weeks ago in my country during the middle of the initial Facebook furore http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/facebook-teen-lured-and-killed/story-e6frewt0-1225867233760
As Yoav says people are losing the ability to control their identity and this can have unfortunate consequences in terms of identity theft, fraud and exploitation. I'm going to say it again: Learn whatever it takes to protect your identity online and teach your kids how to be aware. It's not just Facebook that is the problem here.9:06 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
Michael Silverton - A fundamental problem is that there are absolutely no pedestrian or retail measures available to people to protect themselves against someone or group that becomes determined to do harm. We can take all the preventative measures we'd like; there are simply no 100% effective identity or personal safety measures.
Informed by that awareness, advocating for more openness and transparency in both software and society need not be synonymous with gullibility and naivete.
Number of simple, straightforward, and effective domestic intelligence solutions == 0.
Our perpetual challenges is to engage with the world as it is, while working to shape environments, norms, and institutions toward practical sustainability and security while maximizing individual and collective liberty.
If adaptive futuretechture were easy, perhaps everyone would do it.
I find myself asking, 'What if best practices were at least teachable for a mass audience?'9:41 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
John Hardy - I agree with this @Michael Silverton .
At the moment I think we are all just starting to learn and as you say this situation is in a continual state of flux. I imagine different sections of society will react in different ways ranging ranging from open acceptance of all things regardless of risk through to building high protective walls and locking themselves away.
My personal favourite coping strategy is to try to subvert the machine but the machine itself is subversive of the status quo so wish me luck on that one.11:07 amDeleteUndo deleteReport spamNot spam
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Saturday, May 29, 2010
Flipping the Death Switch | Institute For The Future
Flipping the Death Switch | Institute For The Future: "Flipping the Death Switch
A couple days ago, I was listening to a typically brilliant episode of RadioLab when I heard about a fascinating, niche service: The Death Switch. The name is morbid, but surprisingly apt. Users receive periodic emails prompting them to sign in and prove that they're, well, still alive. And if they fail to sign in after a few prompts, it triggers the death switch, sending emails that the user wrote while living to friends, family and colleagues. They market themselves as 'information insurance.'
The site was developed by Neuroscientist David Eagleman who wrote a fascinating article about the concept of deathswitches in Nature a few years ago. In it, he writes:
Individuals began to use death switches to reveal Swiss bank account numbers to their heirs, to get the last word in an argument, and to confess secrets that were unspeakable during a lifetime.
It soon became appreciated that death switches provided a good opportunity to say goodbye electronically. Instead of sending out passwords, people began programming their computers to send e-mails to their friends announcing their own death. “It appears I’m dead now,” the e-mails began. “I’ll take this as an opportunity to tell you things I’ve always wanted to express...”
Soon enough, people realized they could program messages to be delivered on dates in the future: “Happy 87th birthday. It’s been 22 years since my death. I hope your life is proceeding the way you want it to.”....
In this way, death switches have established themselves as a cosmic joke on mortality. Humans have discovered that they cannot stop Death, but at least they can spit in his drink.
As we've been looking at the future of well-being in health this year, I've been thinking about what it might mean to 'die well.' The Death Switch strikes me as both as a tool with enormous potential and danger, in this regard. Eagleman's example of sending a birthday greeting from beyond the grave is just one of the wide variety of thoughtful messages a person could pass along to loved ones.
But I'm also reminded of another excellent NPR story, this one on This American Life, about a woman in her forties who was dying of cancer in the early 1990s and left a series of letters for her daughter to be delivered on her daughters birthdays. While the daughter described feeling incredibly loved by the letters, they also made her feel distraught for a variety of reasons. For example, the mom had been a Mormon in her life, and while the daughter drifted away from the church, her mother focused on Mormonism in many of her letters. In effect, the daughter received an annual reminder from her dead mother that she was breaking one of her dying mom's last wishes.
It's likely, of course, that had the mom lived, she could have adjusted her expectations about her daughter. But dead people lack that ability.
In this sense, concepts like the Death Switch suggest, as my colleague Jason Tester likes to say, our ability to think about the future is still in beta. A death switch, is, in a very real way, a path to communicate with a future that we're not part of. How to do that well--to help give solace to loved ones, for example--is a concept that's still very much in beta.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
A couple days ago, I was listening to a typically brilliant episode of RadioLab when I heard about a fascinating, niche service: The Death Switch. The name is morbid, but surprisingly apt. Users receive periodic emails prompting them to sign in and prove that they're, well, still alive. And if they fail to sign in after a few prompts, it triggers the death switch, sending emails that the user wrote while living to friends, family and colleagues. They market themselves as 'information insurance.'
The site was developed by Neuroscientist David Eagleman who wrote a fascinating article about the concept of deathswitches in Nature a few years ago. In it, he writes:
Individuals began to use death switches to reveal Swiss bank account numbers to their heirs, to get the last word in an argument, and to confess secrets that were unspeakable during a lifetime.
It soon became appreciated that death switches provided a good opportunity to say goodbye electronically. Instead of sending out passwords, people began programming their computers to send e-mails to their friends announcing their own death. “It appears I’m dead now,” the e-mails began. “I’ll take this as an opportunity to tell you things I’ve always wanted to express...”
Soon enough, people realized they could program messages to be delivered on dates in the future: “Happy 87th birthday. It’s been 22 years since my death. I hope your life is proceeding the way you want it to.”....
In this way, death switches have established themselves as a cosmic joke on mortality. Humans have discovered that they cannot stop Death, but at least they can spit in his drink.
As we've been looking at the future of well-being in health this year, I've been thinking about what it might mean to 'die well.' The Death Switch strikes me as both as a tool with enormous potential and danger, in this regard. Eagleman's example of sending a birthday greeting from beyond the grave is just one of the wide variety of thoughtful messages a person could pass along to loved ones.
But I'm also reminded of another excellent NPR story, this one on This American Life, about a woman in her forties who was dying of cancer in the early 1990s and left a series of letters for her daughter to be delivered on her daughters birthdays. While the daughter described feeling incredibly loved by the letters, they also made her feel distraught for a variety of reasons. For example, the mom had been a Mormon in her life, and while the daughter drifted away from the church, her mother focused on Mormonism in many of her letters. In effect, the daughter received an annual reminder from her dead mother that she was breaking one of her dying mom's last wishes.
It's likely, of course, that had the mom lived, she could have adjusted her expectations about her daughter. But dead people lack that ability.
In this sense, concepts like the Death Switch suggest, as my colleague Jason Tester likes to say, our ability to think about the future is still in beta. A death switch, is, in a very real way, a path to communicate with a future that we're not part of. How to do that well--to help give solace to loved ones, for example--is a concept that's still very much in beta.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
John Graham-Cumming: Inside the RFID 'virus' that 'infected a man'
John Graham-Cumming: Inside the RFID 'virus' that 'infected a man': "Friday, May 28, 2010
Inside the RFID 'virus' that 'infected a man'
Earlier this week the BBC reported on a man who had 'infected' himself with a computer virus. The story, of course, is rubbish. The man wasn't 'infected' with anything, he had simply reprogrammed a chip that had been inserted under his skin and then stated that the code in the chip could 'infect' a machine.
There's nothing at all surprising in this. The idea that one machine could infect another is just the run of the mill virus story. The idea that a piece of data (for that is what is stored in his subcutaneous chip) could cause a machine to misbehave is nothing new either: many, many attacks are based on subverting the difference between data and code to take control of machines.
So, the BBC should never have run with the story since it was sensationalist bollocks.
The story states: 'In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems. If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.' So what is this virus? I tried emailing the scientist involved, Dr Mark Gasson but have not received any response.
For coders the BBC did happily show two screen shots of the 'virus':
The top shot shows that ASCII version of the virus, and the bottom the hex. If we concentrate on the top shot we'll see that the contents of the virus on the chip are (I used § to indicate a character I can't read):
41207§§§676e206f66207§§§696e677329746§§§636f6d65202d2§§§
7220476173736§§§',NewProfile =(select SUBSTR(SQL_TEXT,1)FROM v$sql
WHERE INSTR(SQL_TEXT,'',0)--
So what you have is a SQL injection attack (note the first ' mark) which then executes a SQL statement (against an Oracle database because it's using the special v$sql table). The SQL itself is rather odd because it's looking for a piece of JavaScript in the currently running database query and then returning the query.
Since I don't have access to the machine that is running this code this is where a guess is needed, but it look like he's causing the machine to insert JavaScript that will force a web browser to visit a site he owns kablamm.com.
So, in summary, the sum total of this is that the RFID scanner has a SQL injection vulnerability. Big deal. SQL injection is everywhere, it hardly takes a 'researcher' to realize that unchecked input from the user (in this case in the form of a passive RFID tag) could have a consequence.
The entire demonstration stinks, and worse the BBC has reported on this type of vulnerability (the data in an RFID tag could corrupt a host system) four years ago in a sensible and calm manner. A quote from that article:
In their research paper Mr Tanenbaum and his colleagues Melanie Rieback and Bruno Crispo detail how to use RFID tags to spread viruses and subvert corporate databases.
'Everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong,' wrote the trio in their research paper.
The researchers showed how to get round the limited computational abilities of the smart tags to use them as an attack vector and corrupt databases holding information about what a company has in storage. To test out the theory the group created a virus for a smart tag that used only 127 characters, uploaded it and watched it in action.
The sensible article which the BBC is talking about back in the 2006 is The Evolution of RFID Security.
PS Eagle eyed ASCII loving readers may have wondered about the block of hex code at the start of Dr Gasson's RFID tag: 4120 7§§§ 676e 206f 6620 7§§§ 696e 6773 2974 6§§§ 636f 6d65 202d 2§§§ 7220 4761 7373 6§§§. If, like me, you think this looks a lot like English text in ASCII you'd be right. It reads 'A sign of things to come - Dr Gasson'. So, Dr Gasson signed his 'virus'. All he needs is a leet h4x0r name to complete his transition to script kiddie.
Now script kiddie might seem a bit rude until you go back and look at the virus above. It's using a technique called 'self referential SQL queries'. Their use in 'infecting' RFID systems is detailed here and also in the 2006 paper Is your cat infected with a computer virus?.
So Dr Gasson's virus looks less and less clever: he used a four year old technique to infect a machine and got himself on the telly because he 'infected himself' (an audible gasp from the audience).
There's a nice description of how the attack works here. Notice the incredible similarity between Dr Gasson's 'virus' and the code on this page.
Oh, and by the way, v$sql isn't accessible unless the user is a database administrator. So you need a machine running as database administrator, and a SQL injection vulnerability to make this happen.
PPS What annoys me most about this story is that Dr Gasson didn't invent the clever bit (the self-referential SQL query), he just got himself on the telly with a bit of grandstanding four years after the original, interesting report on the subject.
Labels: rants and raves, security
posted by John Graham-Cumming at 08:35 Permalink
1 Comments:
Blogger Heds said...
I left Reading University's Cybernetics Department in 1997 with a degree of which I was proud.
Then Kevin Warwick started showboating. Now Gasson is.
I dread to think what employers think of new graduates from the department. Poor sods.
3:55 PM
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Inside the RFID 'virus' that 'infected a man'
Earlier this week the BBC reported on a man who had 'infected' himself with a computer virus. The story, of course, is rubbish. The man wasn't 'infected' with anything, he had simply reprogrammed a chip that had been inserted under his skin and then stated that the code in the chip could 'infect' a machine.
There's nothing at all surprising in this. The idea that one machine could infect another is just the run of the mill virus story. The idea that a piece of data (for that is what is stored in his subcutaneous chip) could cause a machine to misbehave is nothing new either: many, many attacks are based on subverting the difference between data and code to take control of machines.
So, the BBC should never have run with the story since it was sensationalist bollocks.
The story states: 'In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems. If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.' So what is this virus? I tried emailing the scientist involved, Dr Mark Gasson but have not received any response.
For coders the BBC did happily show two screen shots of the 'virus':
The top shot shows that ASCII version of the virus, and the bottom the hex. If we concentrate on the top shot we'll see that the contents of the virus on the chip are (I used § to indicate a character I can't read):
41207§§§676e206f66207§§§696e677329746§§§636f6d65202d2§§§
7220476173736§§§',NewProfile =(select SUBSTR(SQL_TEXT,1)FROM v$sql
WHERE INSTR(SQL_TEXT,'',0)--
So what you have is a SQL injection attack (note the first ' mark) which then executes a SQL statement (against an Oracle database because it's using the special v$sql table). The SQL itself is rather odd because it's looking for a piece of JavaScript in the currently running database query and then returning the query.
Since I don't have access to the machine that is running this code this is where a guess is needed, but it look like he's causing the machine to insert JavaScript that will force a web browser to visit a site he owns kablamm.com.
So, in summary, the sum total of this is that the RFID scanner has a SQL injection vulnerability. Big deal. SQL injection is everywhere, it hardly takes a 'researcher' to realize that unchecked input from the user (in this case in the form of a passive RFID tag) could have a consequence.
The entire demonstration stinks, and worse the BBC has reported on this type of vulnerability (the data in an RFID tag could corrupt a host system) four years ago in a sensible and calm manner. A quote from that article:
In their research paper Mr Tanenbaum and his colleagues Melanie Rieback and Bruno Crispo detail how to use RFID tags to spread viruses and subvert corporate databases.
'Everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong,' wrote the trio in their research paper.
The researchers showed how to get round the limited computational abilities of the smart tags to use them as an attack vector and corrupt databases holding information about what a company has in storage. To test out the theory the group created a virus for a smart tag that used only 127 characters, uploaded it and watched it in action.
The sensible article which the BBC is talking about back in the 2006 is The Evolution of RFID Security.
PS Eagle eyed ASCII loving readers may have wondered about the block of hex code at the start of Dr Gasson's RFID tag: 4120 7§§§ 676e 206f 6620 7§§§ 696e 6773 2974 6§§§ 636f 6d65 202d 2§§§ 7220 4761 7373 6§§§. If, like me, you think this looks a lot like English text in ASCII you'd be right. It reads 'A sign of things to come - Dr Gasson'. So, Dr Gasson signed his 'virus'. All he needs is a leet h4x0r name to complete his transition to script kiddie.
Now script kiddie might seem a bit rude until you go back and look at the virus above. It's using a technique called 'self referential SQL queries'. Their use in 'infecting' RFID systems is detailed here and also in the 2006 paper Is your cat infected with a computer virus?.
So Dr Gasson's virus looks less and less clever: he used a four year old technique to infect a machine and got himself on the telly because he 'infected himself' (an audible gasp from the audience).
There's a nice description of how the attack works here. Notice the incredible similarity between Dr Gasson's 'virus' and the code on this page.
Oh, and by the way, v$sql isn't accessible unless the user is a database administrator. So you need a machine running as database administrator, and a SQL injection vulnerability to make this happen.
PPS What annoys me most about this story is that Dr Gasson didn't invent the clever bit (the self-referential SQL query), he just got himself on the telly with a bit of grandstanding four years after the original, interesting report on the subject.
Labels: rants and raves, security
posted by John Graham-Cumming at 08:35 Permalink
1 Comments:
Blogger Heds said...
I left Reading University's Cybernetics Department in 1997 with a degree of which I was proud.
Then Kevin Warwick started showboating. Now Gasson is.
I dread to think what employers think of new graduates from the department. Poor sods.
3:55 PM
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profligate - Wiktionary
profligate - Wiktionary: "profligate
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary
Jump to: navigation, search
WOTD - 13 October 2007
Contents
* 1 English
o 1.1 Etymology
o 1.2 Pronunciation 1
+ 1.2.1 Adjective
# 1.2.1.1 Synonyms
# 1.2.1.2 Derived terms
+ 1.2.2 Noun
# 1.2.2.1 Synonyms
o 1.3 Pronunciation 2
+ 1.3.1 Verb
# 1.3.1.1 Synonyms
o 1.4 Related terms
o 1.5 External links
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Latin prōflīgātus (“‘wretched, abandoned’”), participle of prōflīgō (“‘strike down, cast down’”) < pro (“‘forward’”) + fligere (“‘to strike, dash’”)
[edit] Pronunciation 1
* (RP) IPA: /ˈprɒflɪgət/
* (US) enPR: prŏʹflĭgət, IPA: /ˈprɑːflɪgət/
*
Audio (US)
Play sound
(file)
[edit] Adjective
profligate (comparative more profligate, superlative most profligate)
Positive
profligate
Comparative
more profligate
Superlative
most profligate
1. Inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly.
2. Overthrown; beaten; conquered, especially by vice.
[edit] Synonyms
* (inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly): wasteful, extravagant
* (overthrown; beaten; conquered, especially by vice): overthrown, beaten, conquered
* See also Wikisaurus:prodigal
[edit] Derived terms
* profligateness
[edit] Noun
Singular
profligate
Plural
profligates
profligate (plural profligates)
1. An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person.
2. An overly wasteful or extravagant individual.
[edit] Synonyms
* (overly wasteful or extravagant individual): wastrel
* See also Wikisaurus:spendthrift
[edit] Pronunciation 2
* (RP) IPA: /ˈprɒflɪgeɪt/
* (US) enPR: prŏʹflĭgāt, IPA: /ˈprɑːflɪgeɪt/
*
Audio (US)
Play sound
(file)
[edit] Verb
Infinitive
to profligate
Third person singular
profligates
Simple past
profligated
Past participle
profligated
Present participle
profligating
to profligate (third-person singular simple present profligates, present participle profligating, simple past and past participle profligated)
1. (obsolete) To drive away; to overcome.
* 1840, Alexander Walker, Woman Physiologically Considered as to Mind, Morals, Marriage, Matrimonial Slavery, Infidelity and Divorce, page 157:
Such a stipulation would remove one powerful temptation to profligate pennyless seducers, of whom there are too many prowling in the higher circles ;
[edit] Synonyms
* (to drive away; to overcome): overcome
[edit] Related terms
* profligacy
* profligately
* profligateness
* profligation
[edit] External links
* profligate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
* profligate in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
Retrieved from 'http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/profligate'
Categories: Word of the day archive | Latin derivations | English adjectives | English nouns | English verbs | Obsolete
Hidden category: Entries with Pronunciation n headers
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- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary
Jump to: navigation, search
WOTD - 13 October 2007
Contents
* 1 English
o 1.1 Etymology
o 1.2 Pronunciation 1
+ 1.2.1 Adjective
# 1.2.1.1 Synonyms
# 1.2.1.2 Derived terms
+ 1.2.2 Noun
# 1.2.2.1 Synonyms
o 1.3 Pronunciation 2
+ 1.3.1 Verb
# 1.3.1.1 Synonyms
o 1.4 Related terms
o 1.5 External links
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Latin prōflīgātus (“‘wretched, abandoned’”), participle of prōflīgō (“‘strike down, cast down’”) < pro (“‘forward’”) + fligere (“‘to strike, dash’”)
[edit] Pronunciation 1
* (RP) IPA: /ˈprɒflɪgət/
* (US) enPR: prŏʹflĭgət, IPA: /ˈprɑːflɪgət/
*
Audio (US)
Play sound
(file)
[edit] Adjective
profligate (comparative more profligate, superlative most profligate)
Positive
profligate
Comparative
more profligate
Superlative
most profligate
1. Inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly.
2. Overthrown; beaten; conquered, especially by vice.
[edit] Synonyms
* (inclined to waste resources or behave extravagantly): wasteful, extravagant
* (overthrown; beaten; conquered, especially by vice): overthrown, beaten, conquered
* See also Wikisaurus:prodigal
[edit] Derived terms
* profligateness
[edit] Noun
Singular
profligate
Plural
profligates
profligate (plural profligates)
1. An abandoned person; one openly and shamelessly vicious; a dissolute person.
2. An overly wasteful or extravagant individual.
[edit] Synonyms
* (overly wasteful or extravagant individual): wastrel
* See also Wikisaurus:spendthrift
[edit] Pronunciation 2
* (RP) IPA: /ˈprɒflɪgeɪt/
* (US) enPR: prŏʹflĭgāt, IPA: /ˈprɑːflɪgeɪt/
*
Audio (US)
Play sound
(file)
[edit] Verb
Infinitive
to profligate
Third person singular
profligates
Simple past
profligated
Past participle
profligated
Present participle
profligating
to profligate (third-person singular simple present profligates, present participle profligating, simple past and past participle profligated)
1. (obsolete) To drive away; to overcome.
* 1840, Alexander Walker, Woman Physiologically Considered as to Mind, Morals, Marriage, Matrimonial Slavery, Infidelity and Divorce, page 157:
Such a stipulation would remove one powerful temptation to profligate pennyless seducers, of whom there are too many prowling in the higher circles ;
[edit] Synonyms
* (to drive away; to overcome): overcome
[edit] Related terms
* profligacy
* profligately
* profligateness
* profligation
[edit] External links
* profligate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
* profligate in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
Retrieved from 'http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/profligate'
Categories: Word of the day archive | Latin derivations | English adjectives | English nouns | English verbs | Obsolete
Hidden category: Entries with Pronunciation n headers
Views
* Entry
* Discussion
* Edit
* History
Personal tools
* Try Beta
* Log in / create account
Search
Navigation
* Main Page
* Community portal
* Wiktionary preferences
* Requested entries
* Recent changes
* (by language)
* Random entry
* (by language)
* Help
* Donations
* Contact us
Toolbox
* What links here
* Related changes
* Upload file
* Special pages
* Printable version
* Permanent link
In other languages
* Eesti
* Ido
* Magyar
* తెలుగు
* Tiếng Việt
* 中文
Powered by MediaWiki
Wikimedia Foundation
* This page was last modified on 27 March 2010, at 01:48.
* Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
* Privacy policy
* About Wiktionary
* Disclaimers
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Subscribe to:
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