raving lunacy - oxymorons for the 21st century

recent events

the head lemur — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:35:10 +0000

this is a pretty good image of what post trauma aphasia feels like.

update test

the head lemur — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:39:32 +0000

update test

Whose Internet is it?

the head lemur — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:27:17 +0000

Rebecca MacKinnon talks about freedom and control in cyberspace.

24 years

the head lemur — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:08:21 +0000

clean and sober 24 years. a personal best. a day at a time.

Apple Phone Tracking and the Massive PR Failure

the head lemur — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:07:28 +0000

The latest lunacy from the web wing nuts is the discovery of the I Phone data collection and home phoning tracking users across the world. Discovering that your phone is spying on you should not come as a surprise especially since connectivity is being provided by the telecom industry who made a fortune charging you by the second and recording the number called and time talking.

The introduction of GPS tech in phones let all those cute apps like where am i , and where do i get condoms RIGHT NOW work. The fact that most smart phone users use their phones for letting the world know they took a successful dump rather than actually calling and speaking to anyone doesn’t make a very convincing case for connecting the dots between ‘smart phones ‘ and any increase in intelligence in the gene pool. Quite the reverse if the popularity of Farmville and stupid bird games sucking up more minutes than folks talking is any indication.

Apple’s failure and by extension the Windows and Google phones which all do the same thing is not that they are collecting this information, or got caught doing so, but not immediately performing a PR Magic Trick. But I will get to that in a moment.

Behind the cute little screens of every mobile phone are ones and zeros which make up the digital universe. The one true thing in the electronic universe is: If you make it with ones and zeros somebody will come along and break it.

From passwords to viruses, if it is binary it is breakable. Think about every data breach you have heard of since the first two web pages went live. Hell, they even have a word for it. Jailbreaking does not mean digging a tunnel out of the big house, but stands for hacking phone operating systems to do more and different things. Like making useful and free apps that do things that folks actually want, rather than being bombarded with commercial messages offering shit you don’t want, need, or could care less about.

The PR Magic Trick or the Massive PR Failure

This was a watershed moment for PR/Social Media companies to continue to justify their existence and they fell down. The solution to the black eye and the creepy factor could have been dialed way down using the time honored gag of misdirection.

BLAME IT ON THE PHONE COMPANY!!!!

Holy Shit! If every there was an opportunity to toss somebody under the bus, this was a golden moment. Everybody hates the phone companies and this could have been a PR Coup sticking it to the telecoms and pleading that the phone company made them do it. Especially in the case of the iPhone being nose to ass with AT&T for years. Think NSA Black Rooms. Some of the data collected are the different cell towers used to make connections between you and whatever the fuck you are doing with your phone. This translates into location data which can give a pretty good indication of where you are when you are using your phone. And what you are doing with it.

The Anonymous data collection excuse is so much bullshit for a number of reasons. The phone company and Apple will never let go of user data for billing and selling apps on your phone. This means that the unique identifiers like your MAC address and phone number nails you to the data crucifix harder than superglue on your fingertips.

Three Card Monte

BLAME IT ON THE PHONE COMPANY!!!! Apple could have said the phone company made them do it. The phone company could have said that they were collecting this data to determine where and how the network needed upgrading,(not that they will spend any money on doing this, preferring data caps, usage plans, extra numbers you don’t need) or better yet, to keep the tinfoil hat crowd happy, blame it on the government! Yeah! AT&T and the NSA Black Rooms at the switching stations.

Apple’s response is so tepid as too be meaningless.

Apple Admits it Botched iPad, iPhone “Location” Code, Says Fix is Coming

Apple Q&A on Location Data

But Wait!! There’s More!!!
IN an effort to prove that they are the peoples representatives, the Congress is gonna grill Google, Apple and Microsoft. This of course after getting their tits slammed in the door of party posturing.
Google, Apple and Microsoft questioned on data tracking

Jesus, you just can’t make this shit up.

Goodbye to the NFL

the head lemur — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:28:52 +0000

Hooray! Now that the owners and players can’t figure out how to cut the cheese on their way beyond sane profits, in whose stadiums were built by taxpayers in boondoggles not seen since the Oil Depletion Allowance, it looks like the NFL will dissolve.

Oh happy days! The revulsion I have for all pro sports cannot be measured but may be reduced by the extinction of pro football. Just think, Universities can get back to education, High Schools can stop carrying such large liability policies, and that money can go toward teacher salaries, and better infrastructure. The argument that ‘team’ sports build strong character is so much bullshit.

Imagine how much home improvement can be done when a 60 minute event consumes over 4 hours on TV is no longer part of one’s day. Or three with Saturday, Sunday and Monday Night events. I could go on , but you probably get the idea.

Don’t worry about those empty stadiums. We can seal the doors, fill them up with water and stock them with fish.

HuffOL – AOHuffington – HuffCrunch

the head lemur — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:38:53 +0000

Arianna Huffington payout …$18 million

HP Purchase …$300 million

Arianna Huffington is now Mike Arrington’s Boss … PRICELESS

why-you-should-never-search-for-free-wordpress-themes-in-google-or-anywhere-else

the head lemur — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:43:10 +0000

WordPress is a great tool for creating blogs, especially for housebloggers who have a desire for show and tell like me. There is a vibrant community that supports WordPress and there are also assholes. Free is not necessarily without cost.

A great but technical article on the hidden dangers of using “free” WordPress themes.

Link

customer service and the web

the head lemur — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:29:51 +0000

Probably the best post describing what the web is and does.
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

Facebook’s latest Privacy Violations, History Sniffing and Web Journalism.

the head lemur — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:06:30 +0000

The latest discovery in Facebook Privacy Violations is the Facebook ‘like’ button seen on websites. Over at Thinq.co.uk is this article:

Facebook’s ‘Like This’ button is tracking you Whether you click it or not
This is ‘drive by’ technology,which only requires you to view the page with the button, and the privacy violation begins. You do not have to click on the button or have a Facebook account. Drive by is a technique that virus writers and malware authors use to infect your machine by just visiting their pages.

The argument that this is not malware, but merely marketing data, is bullshit in my view. History tracking is no different than keystroke logging, or user name password theft. The idea that they should be happy just visiting their sites instead of thieving from us like an electronic TSA strip search, genital grab shows how far the web has been corrupted by marketeers. The standard disclaimer by websites that they are pure as the driven snow, and it is those third party sites who pay them money are to blame is also bullshit, because this is not passive information, but aggressive theft and privacy violation. Because at the end of the day, this information’s value is not to enrich your experience on the web, but is all about spending the least amount of money to sell you shit you can probably do without.

Arnold Roosendaal, a Dutch university researcher, is the author of the paper that this article is based on and is available here. [PDF]
If you have a Facebook account, this gets added to your hidden profile on their servers, regardless of being logged in or not. Even if you do not have a Facebook account, you are tracked. Yet another reason not to have a Facebook account.

Next up is this gem from Forbes.
History Sniffing: How YouPorn Checks What Other Porn Sites You’ve Visited and Ad Networks Test The Quality of Their Data
This article outlines how websites and the companies behind them use Javascript to sniff your browser history to determine where you have been before. YouPorn , described as a “a YouTube for porn enthusiasts” uses a javascript to hijack your browser history to see where else you have been in the porn universe. They use encryption to try to hide this behaviour.
Other sites use similar scripts to do the same thing. Here is the research paper that demonstrates this.
“An Empirical Study of Privacy-Violating Information Flows in JavaScript Web Applications.” [PDF]

This is not limited to rogue sites running home brewed scripts, but some of the major destinations on the web.
In the case of Interclick, it is a business tailored to tracking you. When asked by Kashmir Hill, the author of the forbes piece, their reply was:

“Interclick purchases anonymous audience data from several vendors for the purpose of targeting advertising campaigns. Consequently, it has a number of quality control measures in place to understand the quality and effectiveness of this data. The code observed in the paper was a quality measure being tested,”
Source Forbes.com History Sniffing: How YouPorn Checks What Other Porn Sites You’ve Visited and Ad Networks Test The Quality of Their Data

I had to laugh reading that. First they get caught, then they admit that they don’t trust what they paid for, and then they run their scripts without telling folks. Here is company using these privacy violating scripts to ‘check’ the data that they are buying from companies that are selling this data out the back door while posting signs on their front doors saying that they do not sell this data.
No honor among thieves, indeed!

JavaScript, the darling of the AJAX whizz band school of web design, utility is being overshadowed by its use as a data mining and privacy violating tool.

The one thing that both of these articles have in common, is links to source material used to write these stories. This is the new face of journalism web style.