Friday, February 21, 2003

About time somebody got around to fighting supermarket tracking systems At least 4 years ago I used to harass supermarket clerks because EVEN IF I bought groceries with cash, they would not SELL the groceries to me without me giving my phone number or a zip code. Motherfuckers. Miasma CASPIAN - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering. [Privacy Digest] Breaking news: RFID is on the way! RFID tags, tiny tracking devices the size of a grain of dust that can be inserted in virtually any product, are about to enter the retail world. Industry insider comes clean Insurance companies seek card data THE CASPIAN mailbox always makes for interesting reading, and we thought you might enjoy an excerpt from one email that was recently sent to us. The writer, who wished to remain anonymous, was employed in software development and worked on a data mining system to be used with card programs. The most interesting comments concern other businesses that were closely watching the project: [...] one of my jobs was to wow potential customers. I had to take them through my data center and development labs and show them our stuff. The usual suspects were there - various marketers and database mongers. But the most interesting were the reps from the insurance companies. we had a BUNCH of 'em." The reason they were interested is that they wanted to collect lifestyle information on people so that individuals can be charged according to their lifestyles. "We see that you eat too much red meat so your life insurance will be higher than the norm". "We see that you've bought a lot of electrical supplies which means you're doing unauthorized electrical work on your house. Therefore we're canceling your homeowners policy." that kind of stuff. He goes on to predict that the companies will publicly deny this, especially since it would be difficult to prove their involvement at this stage. Then he makes this astute observation: Once stored in a database, data has a nasty habit of not ever going away so even if they don't do something in the near future, all this data is out there just waiting to be exploited. Consumers should also keep in mind that It doesn't matter how "innocent" a purchase might be; when twisted in whatever manner is to the benefit of someone else it can come back to haunt you. 11:57:12 PM    Comment [] Ted Nelson better duck, Google is upstaging ol' Vannevar Vannevar spent too much time chasing aliens with MJ-12. I wonder if his Memex machine would have been as dynamically shifting, as well-modulated as a thermostat up to the minute as some of the blog ecosystem measures are becoming by using Google APIs to shape constant evolving hyperlinked images of the blogosphere. Wouldn't it be cool if there were a way to visualize that thermostatic shifting, live and in a 3-D mapping system? Miasma The Google Memex. On the Trail of the Memex: Vannevar Bush, Weblogs and the Google Galaxy "While blogs are creative and often charming tools in the hands of individual bloggers, by harvesting the collective power of armies of bloggers, the power Google stands to wield in online publishing begins to stagger the imagination.... If Google[base ']s PageRank algorithm is the shimmering star of the cyberspace firmament, it presides over a vast array of fellow travelers and hangers-on. For all intents and purposes, Google owns the Web, by virtue of its superior and highly popular search engine. It owns the history of the Internet, thanks to GoogleGroups, which searches over 20 years of Usenet archives. It owns the present, thanks to GoogleNews, which constantly scans the front pages of thousands of online newspapers, deduces which stories editors around the world consider the most important, and snags the headlines and lead paragraphs from those sentences to assemble a patchwork quilt that exposes news readers to a wide variety of editorial and political opinions.... The future of intellectual life, as mediated by hypertext, may well be defined by collaborative, member-driven [base "]writerly[per thou] communities such as Slashdot (where extremely brief [base "]articles[per thou] are drowned out by hundreds posts, which are then sorted and rated by volunteer moderators who separate the wheat from the chaff) or Wikipedia (a user-created encyclopedia, created two years ago and recently collecting its 100,000th user-authored article)." [dichtung-digital] And one ring [Google] to rule them all? Will it own the past, present, and future (breaking news, "where should I go next")? Dennis G. Jerz sent me the link to his article, saying that he had already written the article and submitted it to his editor when the big news broke. A few modifications, and voila - serendipity. It's an interesting article, so read the whole thing. [The Shifted Librarian] 1:52:53 AM    Comment [] Forget Samuel Pepys, what if God had a blog?! God's Blog "I think I'll make one more minor change before I go. I'm going to designate one of the new Mammal species as the Planet caretakers during my absence. I'm going to program them a slight appendage modification, called an 'Opposable Thumb' and I'm going to boost their CPU capacity a little.  With these enhancements, this species (which I've decided to call 'Primates') will have dominion over the rest of the Planet so they can keep things under control while I'm gone.  Oh, and blogging will be light for a few millennia until I get back from the Seventh Dimension." [via Jarrett House North, via McGee's Musings] [The Shifted Librarian] 1:44:06 AM    Comment [] The Three Stages of Blog-awareness The Three Stages of Blog-awareness "One of my lawyer friends who is tech-savvy and runs a cool website has recently been made aware of blogs.  After a few weeks of studying the blog phenomenon he sends me an E-mail and reports the following: 'OK, a couple of weeks ago I knew nada about the subject of blogs. Here is my take on the 3 stages of blogging: 1) There must be something to blogs because so many people are into it, but I don't have a clue. 2) OK, it does seem kind of cool and there is much, much more to it then I expected. I just don't see any really practical applications. 3) Oh my God, the things I can do with this are coming to me faster than I can keep up with.' Well, looks like another one has been assimilated.  We who have already been assimilated know that resistance is futile.  Apparently, he's working hard in his laboratory on some new fangled way of doing things that will revolutionize the world.  Man, I love it when the complete absence of a plan comes together." [Ernie the Attorney] This is so true! Come to the SLS Tech Summit about blogging on Thursday, February 27, and skip directly to step three. Pass GO and collect $200!  :-) [The Shifted Librarian] 1:40:31 AM    Comment [] Now Bloggers Can Hit the Road Question: How can SmartMobs mobilize when they gotta sit and tap out the letters on their phone? I keep coming back to a thing I saw at the MIT Media Lab some years ago, one of the guys developing wearable computers. He had a SWEET way of typing, better than handrwriting, better than these keypads. Chording. That's right, it was a thing you held in your fist, no visual contact with the "keys," you TYPE like chording a guitar, a variation of how braille words, I think, or Sign Language, the alphabet kind, or even like Morse code. Very simple system where you do one-handed chording and by doing it, type letters. The guy with the computer battery in the sole of his shoe and the screen in the corner of his glasses (what Neal Stephenson would call a "gargoyle") said he could do it faster than keyboard typing. He said sometimes if he was just thinking, his hand just automatically started chording. Now what ever happened to that device?! Miasma Now Bloggers Can Hit the Road. Mobile weblogging, or moblogging, is the latest trend in the world of blogs. New software allows users to update their weblogs remotely with cell phones and other handheld devices. By Peter Rojas. [Wired News] 1:36:04 AM    Comment []

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