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Trepia: A Buddy List Of Strangers
An anonymous reader writes "Trepia has released an IM client that automatically populates itself with people who happen to be around you. Something that has been done before by Apple with iChat, but Trepia claims to be 'iChat on crack' in this article featuring the software. This could have potentially revolutionary social effects..."
They can just create an ADD ON for ICQ or AIM.
Spider out the locations... People who want to use it will need to put their own location.
If people don't want to use it, then people don't want it... And then no one needs to invest in your failure of an idea.
God spoke to me
Like with any new technology one has not only got to ask what it can do for you but also what it can do against you. Though the possibilities of this Idea seem very charming for personal use there come up some questions:
Isn't your stored profile a great way to track your movement? As well for "law enforcement" as for "clean his house of everything thats expensive" people?
Won't the marketing guys just love to know, you are close to one of their shops and a young man? As you obviously using a computer you must be the target audience for Viagra.
Like with every new network technology one has to be aware of what informations he gives out to almost everyone interested. Only having the advantages and the disadvantages in mind you can make a good decision on wether you want to use that software or not.
Nils
Okay, just clicked on my own link, and downloaded the program.
Got about 30 people on my list, 4 girls, 26 guys, little less than half with pictures.
The list slowly gets bigger, as Trepia "finds" people close to me. Not a single one was in the same town as me, though a few were about 30-45 minute drives away.
Apparently, the program uses your ip address and prolly trace to figure out how "close" you are to someone. I got a few people who are all the way across the US from me.
It also claims that if you're on a 802.11b network, it'll automatically find other people on the same network as you, that might be running Trepia as well.
Seems like a cool idea, but so far there needs to be way more people using it if you want to find someone down the street with it.
If you notice, the installer obviously uses nullsoft's NSIS, but they recompiled it, and changed the banner at the bottom to "Trepia, Inc.". Isn't that a breech of GPL or whatever license NSIS is out under?
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
What's the average amount of rainfall in this area? Median income? Most popular car? Hippest nightclub? Closest park? Nearest bathroom? Closest 24-36-24 blonde with a love of C templates?
The range of applications in this field is _huge_. Almost all of the pieces are here (GPS, ipv6, web services, wireless), we just need to fit them together.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
In the website of Trepia, it is mentioned "Trepia(TM) is free to use and contains no spyware or ads." But you know what: Jawed Karim, one the authors mentioned in the article, wrote another piece of code called MP3 Voyeur. Now, in MP3 Voyeur, which searches for MP3s and other media files within LANs, there is a feature that connect to his personal web server every time it was run. If it could not connect to the server, it would refuse to run! Now, coming from such an author, this tool looks a bit suspicious.
So, someone might want to fire up Ethereal and sniff those packets flying from your machines.
I think online chatting is a totally lame way to get to know someone, but these online "matchmaking" services can make it easier to locate people that you can meet in person. In fact, that looks like the whole point of Trepia.
;-)
Meeting women or interesting folks in "in real life" is difficult. I agree that it is good to get out and find someone at the gym, but your chance of meeting someone worthwhile that way is very slim. As an earlier poster noted, people like me who have jobs where we are stuck at home or in a cubicle, and don't go to school, have a terrible time finding people. Online matchmaking can be a great way to fix this. My point, though, is that it is not a substitute for a relationship (the idea of an "online relationship" sounds lame to me), it is only a way of finding someone in the first place. Once you find someone, don't waste time with emails, arrange a date at the gym.
I got some data off the wire, here is what I made of it after about 10 min of observation:
... series of <M> ...
... in a series, variations of <b> = 1,2 ...
outgoing message:
<F><a>4181</a><b>testing out</b></F>
incoming message:
<Q><a>4181</a><b>gorgonzola</b></Q>
outgoing message:
<F>
<a>4181</a> remote uid
<b>testing out</b> message
</F>
incoming message:
<Q>
<a>4181</a> remote uid
<b>gorgonzola</b> message
</Q>
incoming member update? [0x0A between each element]
<M>
<a>4141</a> member id
<b>1054626160</b> timestamp
<c>2</c></M>
variations of <c> = 1,2
??
<N>
<a>4141</a> remote uid
</N>
login:
<C>
<a>xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx</a> my MAC
<b1>xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx</b1> my default gateway's MAC
<c>my login</c>
<d>my password, MD5'd and probably salted. 32 bytes</d>
<e>2.0</e> version?
</C>
???:
<L>
<a>0</a>
<b>1054630291</b> timestamp?
<c>2</c>
</L>
request profile?:
<D>
<a>1498</a>
<b>1</b>
</D>
1=full, 2=partial?
profile:
<O>
<a>1498</a> member id
<p>missouri</p> location
<b>1044120269</b> login time?
<d>xxxxx</d> login
<m>99</m> age
<n>F</n> sex
<g>xxx</g> first name
<h>xxxl</h> last name
<o>wardriver</o> profile data
<e>xxxx@xxxx.com</e> email
<i></i>
<j>xxxxx</j> AIM
<k></k>
<l></l>
<f>http://xxxxxxx.org</f> homepage
<r>usa</r>
<s>mo</s> state
<t></t> city
<u></u> languages?
<v></v> school?
<w></w> company?
<q></q> base64 encoded image (not always present)
</O>
It's reality.
Every technological innovation since the stone age has had both positive and negative moral aspects, depending on how one uses it. Nuclear physics can be used to diagnose and treat disease (e.g., x-ray, MRI, radiation therapy) and generate electrical power to light up entire cities... or it can be used to obliterate more people in a second than all previous wars combined.
The choice is yours.
So it is not a shame... we must actively look at every innovation, and determine whether the net effect is negative or positive, and whether we wish to regulate its use in society. Cobalt 60 is a great radioative tracer isotope, and can be widely distributed without many negative side effects. The same cannot be said of Uranium 235.
It is unclear how this new innovation will be used , on average. In an age where people are more widely spread apart, often without the commonality of religion and family, it can potentially bring people together into ad-hoc communities. And yes, it can also be used as a tool for stalkers and child molesters. If one significantly outweighs the other, then it will be a useful innovation. If not...
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Cliff Stoll assumes that one's neighbors and family are interesting, desirable or safe to be around. This is not always the case.
Try living in a small town where your closest (within 5 miles) neighbors are "salt of the land" farmers and look down on you as some sort of budding Satanist, or even better, some large city like Washington, D.C. where you are only a block away from a permanently-stationed police car and people who walk around with planks of wood with nails driven through them, looking unpleasant.
After those experiences, I welcome anything that provides me with a little more "compatible" socialization, even if it's over a computer.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
Sure you have some risk when you eventually do meet the people in real life but you get some chance to screen people before going out with them.
Wow you are easy to bluff.. I've been online forever I was there in the beginnings of IRC and was there as a server op/several channel op/ etc... for years... and I will tell you one underlying fact.
the person you are talking to online is LYING to you. most make crap up, heavily color, whatever. if you think it's any more safe meeting someone you've been chatting with for 2 months than it is meeting someone at a bar then I pity you.
It's no safer, that person still can be a wacko.
It's harder for people to lie in person, facial expressions, actions, etc. give it away. online... Hell..
Hi, I'm one of the players from the Detroit Tigers baseball team..... Yup, one of the new rookie drafts from this year.
I'm not... Best I could ever do is mascot. but some simple things can be done to trick others into believeing.
It's social engineering plai and simple... and online it's massively simple to social engineer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What you say is true, but it doesn't necessarily contradict what the previous poster is saying.
The good liars can fool you, yes, but the bad ones are far less likely too, even online, so once you meet them in person, you're where someone who meets another at a bar, with the exception that you've already eliminated the easy to spot wastes of time.
Your statement that "online it's massively simple to social engineer" is only true if someone relies on another to be 100% honest about themselves, something which is dangerous to do both online and off.
I would say that both you and the previous poster are correct on some points, but the net effect is that there are equal, but different, dangers and benefits to both online and offline meeting of people early in any relationship.
I've been online forever too and I still disagree with you. ;)
I'm a stupid geek boy with the social skills of a turnip and even I can spot people who are full of shit. If someone can't pick out the shitheads then they probably will be hurt no matter how they go.
Besides I'm paranoid. I backtrace most the people I chat with for any length of time so that I can find out who they really are. Of course not everybody knows how to do that but it is a useful tool. I've tried to do that in real life but it takes more work. No useful IP addresses or other clues to let you trace them.
I can fool just about anybody in person. Sociopaths are very good at faking facial expressions, tones of voice, emotional responses, etc to fit their needs.
It's much harder to carry on such a dialog over the period of months without the aid of the emotional ploys you can use to distract people as in real life. It's difficult to even disguise who you are online. Even if you change your alias and try to change your style of writing and fake being someone else a good many people that know you will still recognize you. People seem to be very good at recognizing such patterns.
If people believe implausible claims without LOTS of proof then they are morons best weeded out of the genetic pool.
It's much easier to social engineer in person. Most people you can begin working on before you even open your mouth. Body language, cloths, etc are easy ploys to use.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Since this is basically an IM crossed with a personals site, let's make it useful:
- A profile that's separated into individual interests that you can search on, or at least individual keywords
- Option to list only members of your preferred gender, a certain age group, sexual orientation, etc.
- A "hot-or-not" rating where, to be fair, you can only vote if you allow others to vote on you
- The ability to FORGET YOUR PASSWORD WHEN YOU DISCONNECT. For gods' sake, how about some basic security here?
balloon, just what I need, my IM populating itself with people I have to ignore. It is hard enough with a OLD ICQ account...Next will be a client with a feature that shares all your info with the national consumer agency so they can find you a friend :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I met my current GF online. Spent a couple days making sure she could write complete sentences, was mostly sane, had friends, etc, then went on a date and did things the old fashioned way from there.
Can people lie to you online? Sure - but they can't lie about being crappy writers, they can't lie about having dumb political opinions, or not knowing who the President is, having never read a book exceeding 100 pages in length, or not being able to think. Smart people can pretend to be someone else, but dumb people will always be dumb.
And you can eliminate lots and lots of dumb people in a very short amount of time in an online environment.
paintball
I just tried your IM program
First off, I want to say your method of locating people "near" me is clearly using a definition of "near" with which I am not familiar. While in the cosmic sense, the UK is a stone's throw from the US East coast, it's not what I had in mind when I read your ad copy.
Second, you desperately need code with which to block users, or at the very least their pics.
In five minutes of use, I was presented with two people using the main pic from goatse.cx as their pic, and while censoring pics is not practical, I would have loved to right click on the image and "Block images from this user," "Block this user's pic," or best of all "Block this user completely."
Third, it really is a mind numbingly primitive IM program. Aside from the alleged location technology it has no features to separate it from the pack.
Chat is little more than what I saw in the VAX "talk" program back in my college days.
The fact that it stores your password and can't be dissuaded form doing so is a major security issue.
It has no user search feature, even for finding things as rudimentary as the user name of someone you already talked to in the past.
I could go on, but it would be tiresome.
To be perfectly blunt, my ex girlfriend coded together a more advanced IM program while completing a free "Learn to program in networked Java" course she downloaded off the web. I'm not joking and I'm not exaggerating.
Next time, try asking users for some geographic location data, like their city and state or their ZIP code.
And by the way, using the IP address as a way of accurately locating users is dicey at best. I recommend your developers look through the web for more information. You'll find you've already set yourselves up for failure.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA