Since I have been spending a great deal of my time playing in the field of 3D design and printing, I have only recently stumbled upon, and had time to read, “Privacy for Me and Not for Thee,” penned by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, a human rights activist whom I first encountered in the virtual world of Second Life.
Not long ago, someone asked if I liked 3D printing better than virtual worlds. The short answer is, equally but differently.
“Secure web servers are the equivalent of heavy armored cars. The problem is, they are being used to transfer rolls of coins and checks written in crayon by people on park benches to merchants doing business in cardboard boxes from beneath highway bridges. Further, the roads are subject to random detours, anyone with a screwdriver can control the traffic lights, and there are no police.” — Dr. Eugene Spafford, (Web Security & Commerce, p9, O’Reilly, 1997, S. Garfinkel & G. Spafford)
This brings me back to the Hundredpercent American. To some extent he is a pet of mine. I have always rather liked him, because he has some promising qualities. For instance, he has enormous hospitality. I used to feel personally complimented by the amazing warm-hearted hospitality showered on me by Americans.
[…]
When I realized it, I began to say to myself, “This is not a recognition of my own particular merits. Nor is it quite a mania. There is something bigger behind it. An enormous social instinct must be seeking satisfaction through it.”
Then I considered your rage for publicity. An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.
George Bernard Shaw
The future of political science in America
Metropolitan Opera House, NYC
11 April 1933
Pariah, darling, or somewhere in between. Bitcoin has continued to linger in the daily media spotlight since the shuttering of darknet’s black-market drug bazaar, Silk Road, and the subsequent announcement of the arrest of its alleged owner, Ross William Ulbricht (aka DPR), on October 2, 2013. Media mavens have long cast bitcoin as a sort of “geek fantasy” or in this case, a means to launder dirty money, primarily used by criminals engaging in drug trafficking, credit card fraud, or even murder for hire. Just prior to this news, bitcoin market prices had stabilized, hovering around the mid $100s.
“We’re facing a very great threat of loosely-coupled, organizational networks that increasingly rely on IT infrastructure to coordinate their movements and recruit young disenfranchised, apathetic guys as suicidal pawns in a sophisticated, dispersed movement. (…)” (AHM, Usenet, September 21, 2001)
Meet Jim Script Kiddie (skiddie). He is the guy (usually in his early to mid teens) who comes into a hacker forum, asking inane questions like, “how can I be a hacker?” He also tends to over-indulge in “hacker speak” making him look pretty much like a moron to seasoned (and not so) computer netizens.
In 1956, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover initiated a program, code-named COINTELPRO (counter intelligence program) ushering in what would become the mainstay for how intelligence communities dealt with domesitic affairs. The sole directive of this program was “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of various dissidents and their leaders.
“Every era has its dangerous ideas. For millennia, the monotheistic religions have persecuted countless heresies, together with nuisances from science such as geocentrism, biblical archeology, and the theory of evolution. We can be thankful that the punishments have changed from torture and mutilation to the canceling of grants and the writing of vituperative reviews. But intellectual intimidation, whether by sword or by pen, inevitably shapes the ideas that are taken seriously in a given era, and the rear-view mirror of history presents us with a warning.” — Steven Pinker, 2007
It has been stated that tragedies bring out the best in us. They also bring out the worst. This seems especially so when the tragedy involves a child. Unlike adult victims however, child victims are generally shielded from the media spotlight. For several reasons, the least of which involves the basic premise that we, as a civilized society, consider it extremely distasteful to feast upon our children’s pain. Or so we claim…
In his book, “The Sacred Executioner,” Hyam Maccoby notes:
“A figure in mythology that has received little attention is that of the Sacred Executioner. […] By taking the blame for the slaying, he is performing a great service to society, for not only does he perform the deed, but he takes upon himself the blame for it, and thus absolves society as a whole completely from the guilt of a slaying for which they, in fact, are responsible and by which, in theory at least, they benefit.” (Maccoby, 1982, p 7-8)
On Wednesday, April 13, 2006, 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin was reported missing by her father. Investigators thought she may have been abducted by someone she met online. Oklahoma law enforcement suspected her abductor might be heading just across the border to Texas and requested Texas issue an Amber alert.
I have other articles I planned to finish however in browsing tonights news, I was distracted by the recent flurry over myspace. Here are just a few headlines culled from the last two weeks:
Last weekend, the HOPE Number Six was held in the Big Apple. The HOPE convention–the east coast version of the Vegas hackers convention, defcon–was founded by Eric Gorden Corley, who goes by the nym, Emanuel Goldstein, after Orwell’s 1984 cult classic.
While the United States was introduced to ritual murders via cult dabblers, and basically, rather psychotically sociopathic individuals, beginning in the 1960s, it was not until the early 1980s that allegations of ritual murder began to evolve, indicating that a far more sinister plot might be afoot.
Ruben Bolling may have been on to something…
In his book, “The Sacred Executioner,” Hyam Maccoby notes:
“A figure in mythology that has received little attention is that of the Sacred Executioner. […] By taking the blame for the slaying, he is performing a great service to society, for not only does he perform the deed, but he takes upon himself the blame for it, and thus absolves society as a whole completely from the guilt of a slaying for which they, in fact, are responsible and by which, in theory at least, they benefit.” (Maccoby, 1982, p 7-8)
Trench of MyCrimeSpace posted an interesting tidbit regarding Massachusetts AG Tom Reillys challenge to myspace. I say interesting simply because I do not have a great deal of faith in myspace’s alleged commitment to tighten up security in an attempt to make their venue safer for teens.
On Wednesday, April 13, 2006, 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin was reported missing by her father. Investigators thought she may have been abducted by someone she met online. Oklahoma law enforcement suspected her abductor might be heading just across the border to Texas and requested Texas issue an Amber alert.
I have other articles I planned to finish however in browsing tonights news, I was distracted by the recent flurry over myspace. Here are just a few headlines culled from the last two weeks:
Seventeen year old Kehaulani Omakalapua Roberts of Eureka, California disappeared on January 26th, 2006. Police found her in Fremont, California, with a man she met on myspace. She was safely returned home and no charges were pressed. Omakalapua was lucky.
Blogging began as an online journal of sorts whose initial goal created a means for jotting down thoughts or memorable moments and sharing them with family and friends. There were always the lone blogger, of course.
Childhood is deemed by our society to be the age of innocence–free from the adult burdens of working to meet physical and psychological needs. Optimistically, a child need not worry about whether they will have shelter, where their next meal will come from, whether or not they are loved. Or safe, for that matter.
“For some insane reason some people in Government have allowed a pedophile organisation called Nambla to exist, whose members are actually organising, planning, and financing an ongoing campaign designed to kidnap, rape, and then murder our children.” — rikijo, jedi of ro0t, alt.hackers.malicious
While non-verbal cues can come into play when observing social interaction, words are the very essence of human communication. With words, we can paint pictures of our subjective experience, share intimate and not so intimate information with others, identify common interests, provide consolation, and even entertainment.
Instead of spending the weekend in my usual code warrior mode, I spent it discussing various obscurities with visitors. Among these was the subject of time. I had made an offhanded comment that time does not move, in fact, does not exist, to which my visitors proclaimed, “But of course it does!”
The Internet, by its very nature, provides a means for individuals from around the world to come together to share societal, political, religious, and other views. The court of public opinion is migrating (some might say, leveled) to online communication. In an increasingly mobile society, this is the new community, the new frontier.
When the first murmurings of recovering memories of childhood sexual abuse appeared society was gripped in an almost religious fervor. Hardly a day went by when at least one talk show had a guest who claimed to have been sexually abused or yet another celebrity went public about their sexual abuse as a child.
