You made a leap of faith at the beginning of the "If a company..." sentence.
You see, if a company thinks that, it can do as you wrote, or it can talk to the foreign government, or it can do all kinds of whatever it wants.
But we're not talking about a company talking to a government, or talking to its partners in the foreign country, or its customers. We're talking about a government talking to a government. And you can be fairly certain that the words used were not "companies A, B and C have asked us to tell you that the would like to sell in your country, but..."
In a real compromise, both sides would have interests. I fail to see the place where Sweden has put its interests out anywhere. I don't see any movie, book or software company threatening to pull out of Sweden. All that you have written - while it is a good point - remains purely speculative.
The point is that Hollywood continues to sell stuff in Sweden, and even in China. They understand quite well that selling their stuff and accepting a certain level of piracy still brings them more money than not selling their stuff and driving the piracy level to 100% (even if the total reach drops a bit). However, they don't like that they don't get all the money they feel they are entitled to. So they ask the government to mention the problem. That's what has happened. I don't have a problem with that so far.
I do have a problem with calling it a compromise, because it isn't. Not until you point out that actual not the hypothetical advantage for the swedish government.
I can tell you precisely why, at least for Germany:
A fax has the same legal status as a letter. An e-mail does not.
The proper legal terms are "Schriftform" and "Textform". Certain documents, legal papers, applications, paperwork in general by law requires "Schriftform" which basically means "written down". An e-mail or other electronic document does not qualify. A fax does. Yes, it's nonsense since a fax is basically an automated scanner/printer. But it's the law. So for many types of legally relevant communications, you can send a letter or you can send a fax, and that's why the business world still keeps fax around.
my thought exactly. I used mine about twice this year. It's nice having one around in case you need it, but one per home instead of one per computer is good enough.
This is actually a fantastic solution to a good part of the social-network-tracking-you problem - namely that Facebook et. al. are not only tracking what you do on their site, but also a lot of your other activities.
The best part is that Heise has promised to release the source code next week, so other sites can use the same approach. I definitely want to see this everywhere.
However as far as arms-races go, I believe this one is asymmetric. It eventually has only one solution (for the state): outlaw encryption.
At which point we bring out the myriad crypto schemes that make encrypted content indistinguishable from plain text. It is really easy to "encrypt" a text not into bytes, but into english words. Yeah, it won't give you a meaningful sentence - label it as an avant-garde poem and you're good.
There are more refined ways that work even better. I think there even was one that generated Shakespearean sonnets as output.
Then there's the whole stego area. Google for "snow" and have fun.
In the end, outlawing crypto is creating a thought-crime. There are surprisingly strong encryption algorithms that you can do with a pack of cards, or on paper, by hand. You don't even need a computer to do encryption.
Can I program directly on an iDevice? No not really.
I own both an iPhone and an iPad. I wouldn't want to program on either, even if I could. They're good for short texts, an email or a note. For coding? Forget it.
Your complaint is really whining just to make a point. There are tons of devices out there that you can program, but not directly. All the embedded devices, for a start. Every Netgear router ever made. Every Cisco device ever made. The "write on a development machine, then stage to the device" model really isn't new.
All other major operating systems (and most of the minor ones) have been able to mount disc images for at least a decade.
I can't wait what other innovations they will have in this... on second thought, I really couldn't care less. Windows 8 is as important as a sack of rice falling over in China.
The comments on this article are actually the first I've ever heard of Panorama. Now what does that say about this "feature"?
Oh yes, I actually tried it. It took all of 10 seconds to convince me to remove that button from the tab bar again.
Sometimes, a product simply is mature. There's no point in adding bells&whistles just because you can. I would rather prefer they finish HTML5, CSS3 and SVG support and other standards implementations.
Sorry, 90% of the people I add as friends I do so because I've met them IRL. How are you going to predict that?
But, apparently, I'm in the minority and too many people have begun to consider the people they add on Facebook to be their friends instead of the other way around. Am I getting old, or is the world getting stranger?
It certainly is. I do think it's a good evolutionary step. I just don't think it is a revolution. All the stuff (load balancers, redundancy over multiple locations, moving VMs around, etc.) has been around for years before "cloud" was an IT term.
Yes, I agree it's "advanced virtual hosting with a different name". But it didn't break its promises.
That depends on what promises you mean.
"The Cloud" has been hyped as this mystical thing that means you just move your servers "into the cloud" (whatever that means) and mystically physical location ceases to matter.
And that promise was broken. You need to worry about things like redundancy, multiple data centers, etc. etc. - just like you did before. I've designed HA systems myself many, many years ago when "cloud" was something in the sky. We set up our own redundant upstreams and taught our routers BGP. Outsourcing that doesn't magically turn it into a mystic entity.
It's the same stuff under a different name, that's all. That doesn't mean it doesn't work - far from it. But you still have to worry about the same things. Because the real world doesn't change just because marketing has come up with a new campaign. Some of these days I swear that everyone in marketing has gone to lala land and they actually believe that by changing names they can change the world. Confusing the menu with the meal, the old problem.
It requires an already jailbroken device. So you need to be root already. What additional functions does this allow you to access that you don't already can?
Except that nobody cheers, and when you look up you realize there's nobody there, because the real game is being played next door, in the other arena.
Politicians don't care about the possibility to circumvent. That isn't their problem at all. These guys pass laws every day that are trivial to circumvent. They outlawed stealing once, and all I have to do is grab that car key you left on the table and run for it. See? Easy to circumvent, what a ridiculous law, they should abolish it!
But they don't, and they are right and we are wrong. It's not about it being easy to circumvent, it's about a proscription being there now, and passing new laws for stronger enforcement is a lot easier than getting the law itself passed in the first place. And it's about setting cultural standards. While politics has long lost that game and the general public doesn't see them as guidance anymore, but as corrupt crooks, due to dissonance they don't see themselves that way.
And there is the marketing bullshit revealed. All the promises of the cloud - down by one lightning strike.
Because, let's face it, the whole "cloud" thing as they sell it is just advanced virtual hosting with a different name. The only real cloud capabilities are those the big companies build for themselves, and they did things like that 10 years ago already, when nobody had ever heard the term "cloud" used in computing contexts.
In the end, it's about selling something to people who already have the older version and convincing them to buy the new one. So you give it a different name because a "new" product sells easier than the upgraded version of an "old" product.
Anyone remember when "Web 2.0" was all the hype? It really wasn't a 2.0 as we all know. There was nothing new in it, all components had been around for a long time. It was a conceptual bundle, but not a new version like the name suggested.But "we're doing more Javascript" now doesn't sell nearly as good as "we're moving to Web 2.0 now".
It's not that editing is so difficult, you fools. It really isn't - I have set up MediaWiki installations for several purposes and even the people who have very little affinity with markup languages, etc. are doing ok editing content. Theirs isn't as polished and they certainly don't write new templates, but they certainly have no trouble putting content into the wiki.
The reason people are losing interest in contributing to Wikipedia is twofold: a) the easy picks have been picked. There are very few common topics where much editing is needed anymore. Your home town, your country, your favorite sports team and TV series already have their WP entries. As do your hobbies and the species of your pets. b) if you do contribute, chances are high that your edits will be reverted or your pages deleted. Part of the reason is a) - your page was likely a duplicate - and part of the reason is the incest, crazy admins, deletionists, power-mongers and all the other fucktards who consider WP as their personal playing ground that needs to be defended against newcomers.
So between not being able to contribute anything worthwhile and being treated badly when you try, anyone is actually surprised editor counts are going down? Seriously? The only surprising thing is that it took so long for that to happen.
Actually, our brains really evolved. [...] Not everything is genetics.
No, but evolution is. You are, again, talking about adaptating, education, or some other method of change. I didn't say those don't exist. But evolution is a specific concept that pretty much requires genetics (or something similar).
The important difference is that evolution passes changes on to the next generations, while training (education, etc.) must be repeated by the next generations.
In an extended sense, this can be called evolution too.
You can't simply extend the meaning of scientific terms beyond recognition. They have a defined meaning for a reason.
Unfortunately it had side-effects, like the ability to say "I like saving the planet." while at the same time throwing a soda can and plastic wrap out of the car window. That kind of dissociated thinking.
That's got nothing whatsoever to do with advertisement. This phenomenon is called dissonance in psychology and has been well-researched for the past 50 or so years. We can be pretty certain that people in other ages suffered from the same, except that the context was different. You can't throw plastic cans out of car windows in 1500 AD, but you can burn a witch at the stake in the name of a holy book that tells you that killing is a definite no-no.
Well, just look at the worst of all delusions: The delusion that there would be an absolute reality.
We apparently differ in our subjective evaluation of what the worst delusion is. To me, delusions about yourself are the worst kind. For external reality, you can always explain differences between mental image and reality away by limited interface. But if you're not the expert on yourself? That one is hard to swallow, so most people refuse to do it, even though we have at least 40 years of studies proving conclusively that people are constantly in error about even simple facts about themselves.
Does it still feature the "you, the player, are your superheroes secret identity" gimmick? I'd buy a copy just for that. It was an unbelievably cool idea.
I don't defend our government much, in fact I think it's the current one is the worst this country has ever had (i.e. since WW2).
So it's no surprise that I don't have to. The real truth is that the stupid government hasn't done anything. Including here.
What has happened is that one of the privacy watchdogs (yes, we actually pay people to watch out for privacy invasions. Guess who they call out regularily? Yes, that's right, the government!) has raised the issue formally, declaring that in his opinion the facial recognition and some other features violate existing laws.
That's got nothing to do with the government. In fact, if they had their way, we wouldn't be having this much privacy anymore, they've been undermining it for years.
What it will go to if Facebook doesn't cave in is the courts.
The real world is, of course, a little more complicated than that. Usually, complications start with marketing not knowing nor caring what a firewall even is or why you need it.
Ok, maybe it's 2011 and they've learned that by now. Replace "firewall" with some slightly more advanced technology.
And don't get me wrong, in business there are other things to consider besides security. The problem isn't that security risks are taken. The problem is that the common case is not one of conscious risk-acceptance based on a solid risk analysis. But some kind of "ah, we'll risk that" gut-feeling based on basically hot air. And we have scientific facts backing us up when we say: Your gut feelings suck - and the worst part about it is that the same brain that makes them up also convinces you that they're solid and that you've usually been right in the past. Unless you've kept notes, you are almost certainly wrong about that memory.
Yeah, right. "evolved" - in less than one generation. Someone here desperately needs to go back to evolution 101 and figure out what the term means.
So you really mean "adapt", yes? Maybe you should do less Twitter checking while you're writing blog postings. Because so far, all the studies that I have read or read about strongly indicate that so-called multitasking is highly detrimental to all the covered tasks. Flow and concentration remain as powerful tools as they are, because - surprise, surprise - the human brain really hasn't changed all that much in the last 1000 or so years. It is, however, much more adaptable than we thought for a long time, and if you give it the same tasks over and over, it will learn to cope with them. Somehow. That doesn't necessarily mean good.
Oh, and then there are all these little psychological facts that we've uncovered over the past century or so, that all indicate that one of the strongest and most reliable powers of the brain is the ability to delude itself. It is more than fascinating what people believe inside their heads and how little that sometimes has to do with outside reality. Book hint "Mistakes were made (but not by me)".
So you may think that your brain has evolved to cope with the demands of modern multi-channel communication. Now be scientific and make the test whether a) anything critical really is different in your brain compared to someone who doesn't do this kind of attention-hopping b) what you believe about yourself and your ability to handle multiple inputs simultaneously or in rapid succession is at all true
check your assumptions first. Then, and only then, write something that requires them to be true in order to make any sense at all.
Apparently, all these youngsters have no idea what a real online community looks like. Back in the BBS days, everyone had a "handle". Since we rarely changed them, it was closer to pseudonymity than anonymity, but it served a purpose.
That's what these piles of garbage who've gotten filthy rich over breaking other people's privacy and then telling the world that's the new black don't get: Purpose of seperation.
I have a couple hobbies where I change identity. In LARP or online gaming, I'm known under a different name than my family knows me as. And while I go as "Tom" in various social circles, they often do not overlap. The same three characters do not express the same identity.
I would, in fact, prefer to have several linked accounts on Facebook, Google+, etc. - because what I post, write or comment as the "Tom" of my own online games isn't all that interesting to my real-world friends. And vice-versa, the players of my games probably don't care what I'm doing this evening. Most of them don't even understand the postings I make in my native language. This is not even about hiding anything. It's about being better than blarring everything about you on broadcast, whether or not anyone cares.
Maybe you have to be a celebrity like Mark to lose touch with this basic reality: That your life is seperated into various roles you play. Heck, that's sociology 101. Few things about our social lives are as fundamental as that. So how can a social network ignore basic facts about what it means to be social?
There's also some information theory 101: Too much information becomes indistinguishable from noise. If our connection is because we share some online hobby, then I usually don't care about your personal life because it has no impact on me. I don't care where you go this evening because I couldn't join you there anyways, you're hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from me. And even if you're my friend, I don't give a flying fuck about your latest accomplishment in FarmVille!
Basically, what social networks lack to be actually social instead of just being the most simple and primitive kind of network imaginable is the ability to classify "friends". Google+ has a good start with its circles, but that's one baby step up from Facebooks unbelievably stupid binary friendship concept.
Twenty years from now, we'll look at Facebook the way we look at hand-copied bibles today, shaking our heads in disbelief that people went to all that effort for so little gain.
And the fact that you simply aren't the same person to different people is one of the things that will change in those social networks, because it's a fact of human nature and human nature doesn't adapt to toys, it forces the toys to adapt or changes them as soon as a better one comes around.
Heck, I'd work for the NSA if I were an american. If you're a security freak, wouldn't you want to go work for someone who takes security serious for a change? Where your request for a firewall isn't overruled by marketing because they fear (without substantiating facts, of course) that it'll slow down the website and impact the "user experience" ?
Sure you have other pressures to bow to (politics) - but, as has become a frequent saying in several companies I worked for, often accompanied with a sigh: Working with professionals, just once.
Blackhat is the name of the conference. The people who are there are much closer to the industry than the Defcon people. If you're looking for people to hire, Blackhat is the better choice.
Slashdot Mirror
You made a leap of faith at the beginning of the "If a company..." sentence.
You see, if a company thinks that, it can do as you wrote, or it can talk to the foreign government, or it can do all kinds of whatever it wants.
But we're not talking about a company talking to a government, or talking to its partners in the foreign country, or its customers. We're talking about a government talking to a government. And you can be fairly certain that the words used were not "companies A, B and C have asked us to tell you that the would like to sell in your country, but..."
In a real compromise, both sides would have interests. I fail to see the place where Sweden has put its interests out anywhere. I don't see any movie, book or software company threatening to pull out of Sweden. All that you have written - while it is a good point - remains purely speculative.
The point is that Hollywood continues to sell stuff in Sweden, and even in China. They understand quite well that selling their stuff and accepting a certain level of piracy still brings them more money than not selling their stuff and driving the piracy level to 100% (even if the total reach drops a bit).
However, they don't like that they don't get all the money they feel they are entitled to. So they ask the government to mention the problem. That's what has happened. I don't have a problem with that so far.
I do have a problem with calling it a compromise, because it isn't. Not until you point out that actual not the hypothetical advantage for the swedish government.
I can tell you precisely why, at least for Germany:
A fax has the same legal status as a letter.
An e-mail does not.
The proper legal terms are "Schriftform" and "Textform". Certain documents, legal papers, applications, paperwork in general by law requires "Schriftform" which basically means "written down". An e-mail or other electronic document does not qualify. A fax does. Yes, it's nonsense since a fax is basically an automated scanner/printer. But it's the law. So for many types of legally relevant communications, you can send a letter or you can send a fax, and that's why the business world still keeps fax around.
my thought exactly. I used mine about twice this year. It's nice having one around in case you need it, but one per home instead of one per computer is good enough.
This is actually a fantastic solution to a good part of the social-network-tracking-you problem - namely that Facebook et. al. are not only tracking what you do on their site, but also a lot of your other activities.
The best part is that Heise has promised to release the source code next week, so other sites can use the same approach. I definitely want to see this everywhere.
However as far as arms-races go, I believe this one is asymmetric. It eventually has only one solution (for the state): outlaw encryption.
At which point we bring out the myriad crypto schemes that make encrypted content indistinguishable from plain text. It is really easy to "encrypt" a text not into bytes, but into english words. Yeah, it won't give you a meaningful sentence - label it as an avant-garde poem and you're good.
There are more refined ways that work even better. I think there even was one that generated Shakespearean sonnets as output.
Then there's the whole stego area. Google for "snow" and have fun.
In the end, outlawing crypto is creating a thought-crime. There are surprisingly strong encryption algorithms that you can do with a pack of cards, or on paper, by hand. You don't even need a computer to do encryption.
Can I program directly on an iDevice? No not really.
I own both an iPhone and an iPad. I wouldn't want to program on either, even if I could. They're good for short texts, an email or a note. For coding? Forget it.
Your complaint is really whining just to make a point. There are tons of devices out there that you can program, but not directly. All the embedded devices, for a start. Every Netgear router ever made. Every Cisco device ever made. The "write on a development machine, then stage to the device" model really isn't new.
All other major operating systems (and most of the minor ones) have been able to mount disc images for at least a decade.
I can't wait what other innovations they will have in this... on second thought, I really couldn't care less. Windows 8 is as important as a sack of rice falling over in China.
Strange, interesting idea to get in touch with total strangers. Except that waking up is the exact time I don't want to talk to strange people.
and presenting them visually as part of Panorama.
The comments on this article are actually the first I've ever heard of Panorama. Now what does that say about this "feature"?
Oh yes, I actually tried it. It took all of 10 seconds to convince me to remove that button from the tab bar again.
Sometimes, a product simply is mature. There's no point in adding bells&whistles just because you can. I would rather prefer they finish HTML5, CSS3 and SVG support and other standards implementations.
So Facebook has become self-referential now?
Sorry, 90% of the people I add as friends I do so because I've met them IRL. How are you going to predict that?
But, apparently, I'm in the minority and too many people have begun to consider the people they add on Facebook to be their friends instead of the other way around. Am I getting old, or is the world getting stranger?
It certainly is. I do think it's a good evolutionary step. I just don't think it is a revolution. All the stuff (load balancers, redundancy over multiple locations, moving VMs around, etc.) has been around for years before "cloud" was an IT term.
Yes, I agree it's "advanced virtual hosting with a different name". But it didn't break its promises.
That depends on what promises you mean.
"The Cloud" has been hyped as this mystical thing that means you just move your servers "into the cloud" (whatever that means) and mystically physical location ceases to matter.
And that promise was broken. You need to worry about things like redundancy, multiple data centers, etc. etc. - just like you did before. I've designed HA systems myself many, many years ago when "cloud" was something in the sky. We set up our own redundant upstreams and taught our routers BGP. Outsourcing that doesn't magically turn it into a mystic entity.
It's the same stuff under a different name, that's all. That doesn't mean it doesn't work - far from it. But you still have to worry about the same things. Because the real world doesn't change just because marketing has come up with a new campaign. Some of these days I swear that everyone in marketing has gone to lala land and they actually believe that by changing names they can change the world. Confusing the menu with the meal, the old problem.
Hm, what am I missing here?
It requires an already jailbroken device. So you need to be root already. What additional functions does this allow you to access that you don't already can?
Yeah, feels like a victory for the IT crowd.
Except that nobody cheers, and when you look up you realize there's nobody there, because the real game is being played next door, in the other arena.
Politicians don't care about the possibility to circumvent. That isn't their problem at all. These guys pass laws every day that are trivial to circumvent. They outlawed stealing once, and all I have to do is grab that car key you left on the table and run for it. See? Easy to circumvent, what a ridiculous law, they should abolish it!
But they don't, and they are right and we are wrong. It's not about it being easy to circumvent, it's about a proscription being there now, and passing new laws for stronger enforcement is a lot easier than getting the law itself passed in the first place.
And it's about setting cultural standards. While politics has long lost that game and the general public doesn't see them as guidance anymore, but as corrupt crooks, due to dissonance they don't see themselves that way.
And there is the marketing bullshit revealed. All the promises of the cloud - down by one lightning strike.
Because, let's face it, the whole "cloud" thing as they sell it is just advanced virtual hosting with a different name. The only real cloud capabilities are those the big companies build for themselves, and they did things like that 10 years ago already, when nobody had ever heard the term "cloud" used in computing contexts.
In the end, it's about selling something to people who already have the older version and convincing them to buy the new one. So you give it a different name because a "new" product sells easier than the upgraded version of an "old" product.
Anyone remember when "Web 2.0" was all the hype? It really wasn't a 2.0 as we all know. There was nothing new in it, all components had been around for a long time. It was a conceptual bundle, but not a new version like the name suggested.But "we're doing more Javascript" now doesn't sell nearly as good as "we're moving to Web 2.0 now".
It's not that editing is so difficult, you fools. It really isn't - I have set up MediaWiki installations for several purposes and even the people who have very little affinity with markup languages, etc. are doing ok editing content. Theirs isn't as polished and they certainly don't write new templates, but they certainly have no trouble putting content into the wiki.
The reason people are losing interest in contributing to Wikipedia is twofold:
a) the easy picks have been picked. There are very few common topics where much editing is needed anymore. Your home town, your country, your favorite sports team and TV series already have their WP entries. As do your hobbies and the species of your pets.
b) if you do contribute, chances are high that your edits will be reverted or your pages deleted. Part of the reason is a) - your page was likely a duplicate - and part of the reason is the incest, crazy admins, deletionists, power-mongers and all the other fucktards who consider WP as their personal playing ground that needs to be defended against newcomers.
So between not being able to contribute anything worthwhile and being treated badly when you try, anyone is actually surprised editor counts are going down? Seriously? The only surprising thing is that it took so long for that to happen.
Actually, our brains really evolved. [...] Not everything is genetics.
No, but evolution is. You are, again, talking about adaptating, education, or some other method of change. I didn't say those don't exist. But evolution is a specific concept that pretty much requires genetics (or something similar).
The important difference is that evolution passes changes on to the next generations, while training (education, etc.) must be repeated by the next generations.
In an extended sense, this can be called evolution too.
You can't simply extend the meaning of scientific terms beyond recognition. They have a defined meaning for a reason.
Unfortunately it had side-effects, like the ability to say "I like saving the planet." while at the same time throwing a soda can and plastic wrap out of the car window. That kind of dissociated thinking.
That's got nothing whatsoever to do with advertisement. This phenomenon is called dissonance in psychology and has been well-researched for the past 50 or so years. We can be pretty certain that people in other ages suffered from the same, except that the context was different. You can't throw plastic cans out of car windows in 1500 AD, but you can burn a witch at the stake in the name of a holy book that tells you that killing is a definite no-no.
Well, just look at the worst of all delusions: The delusion that there would be an absolute reality.
We apparently differ in our subjective evaluation of what the worst delusion is. To me, delusions about yourself are the worst kind. For external reality, you can always explain differences between mental image and reality away by limited interface. But if you're not the expert on yourself? That one is hard to swallow, so most people refuse to do it, even though we have at least 40 years of studies proving conclusively that people are constantly in error about even simple facts about themselves.
I didn't even know it was back. Wow.
Does it still feature the "you, the player, are your superheroes secret identity" gimmick? I'd buy a copy just for that. It was an unbelievably cool idea.
I don't defend our government much, in fact I think it's the current one is the worst this country has ever had (i.e. since WW2).
So it's no surprise that I don't have to. The real truth is that the stupid government hasn't done anything. Including here.
What has happened is that one of the privacy watchdogs (yes, we actually pay people to watch out for privacy invasions. Guess who they call out regularily? Yes, that's right, the government!) has raised the issue formally, declaring that in his opinion the facial recognition and some other features violate existing laws.
That's got nothing to do with the government. In fact, if they had their way, we wouldn't be having this much privacy anymore, they've been undermining it for years.
What it will go to if Facebook doesn't cave in is the courts.
Some very close to it that I can't disclose, yes.
The real world is, of course, a little more complicated than that. Usually, complications start with marketing not knowing nor caring what a firewall even is or why you need it.
Ok, maybe it's 2011 and they've learned that by now. Replace "firewall" with some slightly more advanced technology.
And don't get me wrong, in business there are other things to consider besides security. The problem isn't that security risks are taken. The problem is that the common case is not one of conscious risk-acceptance based on a solid risk analysis. But some kind of "ah, we'll risk that" gut-feeling based on basically hot air.
And we have scientific facts backing us up when we say: Your gut feelings suck - and the worst part about it is that the same brain that makes them up also convinces you that they're solid and that you've usually been right in the past. Unless you've kept notes, you are almost certainly wrong about that memory.
Yeah, right. "evolved" - in less than one generation. Someone here desperately needs to go back to evolution 101 and figure out what the term means.
So you really mean "adapt", yes? Maybe you should do less Twitter checking while you're writing blog postings. Because so far, all the studies that I have read or read about strongly indicate that so-called multitasking is highly detrimental to all the covered tasks. Flow and concentration remain as powerful tools as they are, because - surprise, surprise - the human brain really hasn't changed all that much in the last 1000 or so years. It is, however, much more adaptable than we thought for a long time, and if you give it the same tasks over and over, it will learn to cope with them. Somehow. That doesn't necessarily mean good.
Oh, and then there are all these little psychological facts that we've uncovered over the past century or so, that all indicate that one of the strongest and most reliable powers of the brain is the ability to delude itself. It is more than fascinating what people believe inside their heads and how little that sometimes has to do with outside reality. Book hint "Mistakes were made (but not by me)".
So you may think that your brain has evolved to cope with the demands of modern multi-channel communication. Now be scientific and make the test whether
a) anything critical really is different in your brain compared to someone who doesn't do this kind of attention-hopping
b) what you believe about yourself and your ability to handle multiple inputs simultaneously or in rapid succession is at all true
check your assumptions first. Then, and only then, write something that requires them to be true in order to make any sense at all.
oh gosh what a pile of bullshit.
Apparently, all these youngsters have no idea what a real online community looks like. Back in the BBS days, everyone had a "handle". Since we rarely changed them, it was closer to pseudonymity than anonymity, but it served a purpose.
That's what these piles of garbage who've gotten filthy rich over breaking other people's privacy and then telling the world that's the new black don't get: Purpose of seperation.
I have a couple hobbies where I change identity. In LARP or online gaming, I'm known under a different name than my family knows me as. And while I go as "Tom" in various social circles, they often do not overlap. The same three characters do not express the same identity.
I would, in fact, prefer to have several linked accounts on Facebook, Google+, etc. - because what I post, write or comment as the "Tom" of my own online games isn't all that interesting to my real-world friends. And vice-versa, the players of my games probably don't care what I'm doing this evening. Most of them don't even understand the postings I make in my native language.
This is not even about hiding anything. It's about being better than blarring everything about you on broadcast, whether or not anyone cares.
Maybe you have to be a celebrity like Mark to lose touch with this basic reality: That your life is seperated into various roles you play. Heck, that's sociology 101. Few things about our social lives are as fundamental as that. So how can a social network ignore basic facts about what it means to be social?
There's also some information theory 101: Too much information becomes indistinguishable from noise. If our connection is because we share some online hobby, then I usually don't care about your personal life because it has no impact on me. I don't care where you go this evening because I couldn't join you there anyways, you're hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from me.
And even if you're my friend, I don't give a flying fuck about your latest accomplishment in FarmVille!
Basically, what social networks lack to be actually social instead of just being the most simple and primitive kind of network imaginable is the ability to classify "friends". Google+ has a good start with its circles, but that's one baby step up from Facebooks unbelievably stupid binary friendship concept.
Twenty years from now, we'll look at Facebook the way we look at hand-copied bibles today, shaking our heads in disbelief that people went to all that effort for so little gain.
And the fact that you simply aren't the same person to different people is one of the things that will change in those social networks, because it's a fact of human nature and human nature doesn't adapt to toys, it forces the toys to adapt or changes them as soon as a better one comes around.
Definitely the choice for recruitment.
Heck, I'd work for the NSA if I were an american. If you're a security freak, wouldn't you want to go work for someone who takes security serious for a change? Where your request for a firewall isn't overruled by marketing because they fear (without substantiating facts, of course) that it'll slow down the website and impact the "user experience" ?
Sure you have other pressures to bow to (politics) - but, as has become a frequent saying in several companies I worked for, often accompanied with a sigh: Working with professionals, just once.
Blackhat is the name of the conference. The people who are there are much closer to the industry than the Defcon people. If you're looking for people to hire, Blackhat is the better choice.
mod parent up. That one is highly impressive.