This first article is about all the new online sources that much like youtube. These new websites allow ANYONE to post live videos and ANYONE can view them. This has created an environment that allows people to be control of the content that they are making and viewing. Websites like these are making it very easy for people to produce their own work, and therefore, it is not required that we use as many resources. These technologies are allowing people to participate and become more interactive. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/22/will-live-video-catch-on-like-youtube/
These next two articles are about Myspace and are concerned with the issue of privacy. One problem that we discussed in detail in class about technology is that it is easy to lose privacy and especially on social networking sights it is hard to trust what others say. Now, most people have their settings on private so that their profiles and photos are only seen by a selected group of people (their friends). Although many people think that their profiles can't be seen by others, people have figured out ways to get around this. This can be very taunting knowing that strangers can find out all about you, even when you THINK you are being safe and making restrictions on your profiles. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/01/myspace_torrent
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/more-charges-in.html
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Microsoft Demos Next-Gen Web Advertising Concepts
This article talks about Microsoft's new advertising methods, which include contextual video ads and multi-touch interactive advertising to image categorization and advanced advertising analytics to name a few. This would be an example of utopian- based technology because these programs will change the face of advertising and enhance the online user/customer experience.
Monday, 4 February 2008
can cities be annihilated from the air?/blast a home in the moon?
its amazing how so many mid-century views of life in the year 2000 are incredibly wrong. no time-travel, no flying cars and no moon bases. this article from 1962 shows a hypothetical way to build houses on the moon. never mind the fact that we're not even remotely close to making widespread lunar colonization a reality.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/01/28/blast-a-home-in-the-moon/
what is disheartening is the fact that technology fears are more often closer to the mark than triumphs. the fear that an entire city could be obliterated by planes was proven correct in Dresden, within 10 years of this articles publication.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/02/can-cities-be-annihilated-from-the-air/
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/01/28/blast-a-home-in-the-moon/
what is disheartening is the fact that technology fears are more often closer to the mark than triumphs. the fear that an entire city could be obliterated by planes was proven correct in Dresden, within 10 years of this articles publication.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/02/can-cities-be-annihilated-from-the-air/
Announcement for this week's blog
Hi, Since this week's topic is the utopian and dystopian view of technology, please upload one example of each on this blog. We will go around the room and ask each of you to introduce your examples to us. And we would do some anlyses based on lecture contents
BTW, the deadline for assignment 1 is Feb 13th, next Wednesday, if you have any concerns about this,please come to my office hour 2pm to 4pm this Tuesday at the Ph.D. office
Good luck!
Yours
Fan
BTW, the deadline for assignment 1 is Feb 13th, next Wednesday, if you have any concerns about this,please come to my office hour 2pm to 4pm this Tuesday at the Ph.D. office
Good luck!
Yours
Fan
Underwater Marriage Proposal
I have a scuba diving internship at the Aquarium of the Pacific and I go in on Thursdays and Fridays. Last Friday I had to propose to someone. They had me dive down in the tropical reef tank holding a 7 foot sign asking a girl to marry a guy. When the girl saw me the guy got down on his knees and gave her a ring. I have seen marriage proposals in a movie or even on the big screen at a baseball game, but this is the first time I saw one in person and I had an interesting view point at that (being in a tank and underwater). This made me think of all the interesting ways people chose to communicate what is possible the most important message of their life. You would think that proposing via a scuba diver is a very original idea but in fact last year this was request a 100 times acording to my supervisor. But how you ask those four words can tell a person how much you love them, how much you know them (because if they are scared of fish going to an aquarium is probably not the best idea), how shy or personal they like things (a romantic one on one proposal or declaring your love in front of an entire stadium full of people). One of my best friends brother proposed to his wife through geocaching (GPS treasure hunt basically) and at the end she found her ring and he proposed. So I guess post your thought and any good proposal stories you might have if you want. Here is a video of an aquarium proposal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFfTjZuwulM, but this is not the one I did and I must say I was way more graceful and wearing a clown fish hood.
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Facebook can get you suspended.
Facebook photos land Eden Prairie kids in trouble
More than 100 were suspended from activities or reprimanded after being shown drinking at parties.
More than 100 were suspended from activities or reprimanded after being shown drinking at parties.
This happened alot at my school. Kids were constantly suspended from school, or kicked out (it was a private school), because of reveling things on facebook. Of course, the student body though it was morally wrong, that the dean had no right to use facebook for these means, but people did see her surfing facebook in her office...looking for evidence. For the past two years a guest speaker come and talked to us about the danger of facebook and myspace - how practically both where destined to ruin your life. Do you think using such extreme mesaures were effective? Or even necessary?
Friday, 1 February 2008
COMM 202
These hacker guys got ahead of themselves in pointing their fingers at the wrong guy (whom they thought was slandering the church of scientology)
Anonymous Hackers Track Saboteur, Find and Punish the Wrong Guy - UPDATED
By Ryan Singel January 29, 2008 7:59:26 PMCategories: Hacks and Cracks
Anti-Scientology agitators have repeatedly harassed and threatened violence against a 59-year-old PG&E worker and his wife, who were mistakenly flagged as pro-Scientology hackers.
John Lawson, who lives in Stockton, California with his wife Julia, began receiving threatening phone calls around 2 a.m. Saturday morning. He didn't know why until THREAT LEVEL explained that a hacking group calling itself the g00ns (goons spelled with zeros, not goons with the letter o) posted his home address, phone number and cell numbers, as well as Julia's Social Security number, online. The obscene and threatening calls have continued through Tuesday, according to Lawson.
SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM FOR G00N's RESPONSE
The calls are just one small offshoot of an ongoing, larger attack on the Church of Scientology by a ragtag group of internet troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous. The group says it is targeting Scientology in part for its use of litigation to suppress unflattering documents on the internet.
Over the weekend, the g00ns thought they had caught a hacker who had busted into a server being used to help coordinate the online attacks and real world protests against Scientology. But Lawson says the callers have the wrong guy.
"I don't even really know how to use a computer," Lawson said.
His phone just keeps ringing, Lawson said, and when he answers, callers spout vulgarities and threats and then hang up. On Monday, he got a call that seemed to originate from the Virgin Islands. The caller threatened to kill him.
"They have got the wife really scared because they have my address," Lawson said. "I think I am going to buy me a gun today just in case."
The Stockton police came out on Sunday to take a report, and Lawson has put fraud protection alerts on his and his wife's credit reports.
Lawson wants his personal information off the internet but doesn't know who to talk to to get it down.
The address of the site with their personal information was shared in online chat rooms where members of a group called Anonymous congregate to plan attacks on the Church of Scientology. The site's URL was also submitted to Digg, where it made it to the front page.
Planning for those attacks was disrupted in the last four days by a counter-hack group calling itself the Regime. That group hacked and severely disrupted 711chan.org, one of the central planning facilities for the Anonymous attack.
According to an e-mail from the hacker to THREAT LEVEL, the Regime's "main objective was to obtain logs and various data including user names and passwords" and "to take down our targets in the best way possible to bring as much embarrassment/shame as we could to the offending organization."
The hacker said his group turned over the purloined data to the Church of Scientology.
Soon after, the g00ns claimed to have found out where the Regime was hacking from, and managed to obtain personal information about the Lawsons. John Lawson believes that information came from Comcast, his ISP.
A Digg commenter suggested that the g00ns tracked down an IP address used in the attack on 711chan and traced it to Lawson. If that's the case, the group overlooked the possibility that Lawson's computer or router had been compromised and was used by the real attacker as a proxy that would hide the attacker's real location.
For his part, Lawson doesn't care about the how or why, he just wants the calls to stop.
"I called three news places in Stockton just to get something out there to let them know they have the wrong guy," Lawson said.
This isn't the first time that the anti-Scientologists have hit the wrong target.
Last week, participants downloaded hacking software that accidentally targeted a school in the Netherlands, rather than a Scientology site. That misfire lasted only a few minutes, but its lesson seems not to have been learned by online vigilantes who think their righteous ends justify illegal means.
UPDATE: 10:50 PST Members of g00n tell THREAT LEVEL that they immediately took down the Lawsons' contact info after seeing this story, but emphasize that they had nothing to do with the harassing phone calls and that they have not been involved at all in the Anonymous attacks on Scientology.
They say their motivation for posting the info was to send a warning to the Regime hacker in order to help their friend at 711chan.org, whose website was repeatedly hacked by the Regime.
They also said that the IP address associated with the Lawsons' had been used in attacks on 711chan for four days, and then later was used to access and probe the site where the Lawsons' info was posted. They say they called the Lawsons before posting the info to verify it, and swear that the person they spoke with sounded much younger than a 59 year-old man.
They further contend that 711chan's server logs showed that the IP address was associated with a computer running the Debian flavor of Linux, which casts doubt on the theory that the attacker remotely taken over the Lawson's computer. If that were the case the OS would have been a flavor of Windows. Another possibility is that the Lawsons have a compromised wireless router.
The g00ns say its clear something isn't right in Stockton and vow to figure out who the Regime is, but blame him for leaving a trail that led to the Lawsons, rather than using some sort of proxy or anonymizing tool such as TOR.
They forwarded THREAT LEVEL a transcript of a chat between 711chan's operator and the Regime hacker, which showed the Regime hacker trying to blackmail the 711chan operator into turning over information about the g00ns, by implying that not doing so would make him turn over more information to the Church of Scientology. THREAT LEVEL has no way of verifying that transcript.
Anonymous Hackers Track Saboteur, Find and Punish the Wrong Guy - UPDATED
By Ryan Singel January 29, 2008 7:59:26 PMCategories: Hacks and Cracks
Anti-Scientology agitators have repeatedly harassed and threatened violence against a 59-year-old PG&E worker and his wife, who were mistakenly flagged as pro-Scientology hackers.
John Lawson, who lives in Stockton, California with his wife Julia, began receiving threatening phone calls around 2 a.m. Saturday morning. He didn't know why until THREAT LEVEL explained that a hacking group calling itself the g00ns (goons spelled with zeros, not goons with the letter o) posted his home address, phone number and cell numbers, as well as Julia's Social Security number, online. The obscene and threatening calls have continued through Tuesday, according to Lawson.
SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM FOR G00N's RESPONSE
The calls are just one small offshoot of an ongoing, larger attack on the Church of Scientology by a ragtag group of internet troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous. The group says it is targeting Scientology in part for its use of litigation to suppress unflattering documents on the internet.
Over the weekend, the g00ns thought they had caught a hacker who had busted into a server being used to help coordinate the online attacks and real world protests against Scientology. But Lawson says the callers have the wrong guy.
"I don't even really know how to use a computer," Lawson said.
His phone just keeps ringing, Lawson said, and when he answers, callers spout vulgarities and threats and then hang up. On Monday, he got a call that seemed to originate from the Virgin Islands. The caller threatened to kill him.
"They have got the wife really scared because they have my address," Lawson said. "I think I am going to buy me a gun today just in case."
The Stockton police came out on Sunday to take a report, and Lawson has put fraud protection alerts on his and his wife's credit reports.
Lawson wants his personal information off the internet but doesn't know who to talk to to get it down.
The address of the site with their personal information was shared in online chat rooms where members of a group called Anonymous congregate to plan attacks on the Church of Scientology. The site's URL was also submitted to Digg, where it made it to the front page.
Planning for those attacks was disrupted in the last four days by a counter-hack group calling itself the Regime. That group hacked and severely disrupted 711chan.org, one of the central planning facilities for the Anonymous attack.
According to an e-mail from the hacker to THREAT LEVEL, the Regime's "main objective was to obtain logs and various data including user names and passwords" and "to take down our targets in the best way possible to bring as much embarrassment/shame as we could to the offending organization."
The hacker said his group turned over the purloined data to the Church of Scientology.
Soon after, the g00ns claimed to have found out where the Regime was hacking from, and managed to obtain personal information about the Lawsons. John Lawson believes that information came from Comcast, his ISP.
A Digg commenter suggested that the g00ns tracked down an IP address used in the attack on 711chan and traced it to Lawson. If that's the case, the group overlooked the possibility that Lawson's computer or router had been compromised and was used by the real attacker as a proxy that would hide the attacker's real location.
For his part, Lawson doesn't care about the how or why, he just wants the calls to stop.
"I called three news places in Stockton just to get something out there to let them know they have the wrong guy," Lawson said.
This isn't the first time that the anti-Scientologists have hit the wrong target.
Last week, participants downloaded hacking software that accidentally targeted a school in the Netherlands, rather than a Scientology site. That misfire lasted only a few minutes, but its lesson seems not to have been learned by online vigilantes who think their righteous ends justify illegal means.
UPDATE: 10:50 PST Members of g00n tell THREAT LEVEL that they immediately took down the Lawsons' contact info after seeing this story, but emphasize that they had nothing to do with the harassing phone calls and that they have not been involved at all in the Anonymous attacks on Scientology.
They say their motivation for posting the info was to send a warning to the Regime hacker in order to help their friend at 711chan.org, whose website was repeatedly hacked by the Regime.
They also said that the IP address associated with the Lawsons' had been used in attacks on 711chan for four days, and then later was used to access and probe the site where the Lawsons' info was posted. They say they called the Lawsons before posting the info to verify it, and swear that the person they spoke with sounded much younger than a 59 year-old man.
They further contend that 711chan's server logs showed that the IP address was associated with a computer running the Debian flavor of Linux, which casts doubt on the theory that the attacker remotely taken over the Lawson's computer. If that were the case the OS would have been a flavor of Windows. Another possibility is that the Lawsons have a compromised wireless router.
The g00ns say its clear something isn't right in Stockton and vow to figure out who the Regime is, but blame him for leaving a trail that led to the Lawsons, rather than using some sort of proxy or anonymizing tool such as TOR.
They forwarded THREAT LEVEL a transcript of a chat between 711chan's operator and the Regime hacker, which showed the Regime hacker trying to blackmail the 711chan operator into turning over information about the g00ns, by implying that not doing so would make him turn over more information to the Church of Scientology. THREAT LEVEL has no way of verifying that transcript.
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