The Network

[Enki]

I feel like the internet deserves its own thread. I don't want to put this in the robots or the software/hardware thread.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/ ... verything/

If you think the digital world is crowded now, wait to you see what the next few years will bring. Today, there are roughly two Internet-connected devices for every man, woman and child on the planet. By 2025, analysts are forecasting that this ratio will rise past six. This means we can expect to grow to nearly 50 billion Internet-connected devices in the next decade.

Once you digest the sheer size of that number and the tactical challenges of connecting and dealing with all those devices (thank you IPv6), the first question most people want to know is what are all these devices doing and for what end?

A Nervous System for the Planet

Over the next decade, most of the connected device growth will come from very small sensors that are primarily doing machine-to-machine communications and acting as the digital nerve endings for highly dynamic global sense-and-respond systems.

Driven by a revolution in cheap sensor technology, we have, for the first time, the ability to impart a central nervous system on our planet. This fabric of technology will allow us to measure systems on a global scale and at the same time offer a never before seen resolution.

This capability to bring the big picture into sharp focus enables us to provide a real-time digital representation of our constantly changing world. This is the first step in a journey to explain the world will live in, our role in it and our impact upon it. This promise is what makes us all so excited about these sensor networks. If successful, they will help us solve some of the biggest problems facing our society.

Good article.

[Doc]

Good idea Tinker. Now one from the dark side of the internet:

Unfiltered: Photographers React to Instagram’s New Terms

According to the changes, effective January 16, 2013, any photograph posted on Instagram’s service can be repackaged and sold by Instagram for advertising purposes without the user’s knowledge or consent. In addition, by agreeing to the new terms, users are responsible for any legal claims that may result from the promotion or use of their images.

Long story short: Instagram can use your content to increase their revenue, and if a legal claim is brought against the company regarding how these images have been used, you (the user) might be responsible for the damages.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/12/18/unf ... z2FRsaE3s2

[Yukon Cornelius]

I feel like the internet deserves its own thread...

It's called "Twitter."

[Enki]

At this point I am never going to use Instagram.

[Doc]

At this point I am never going to use Instagram.

Facebook's Ham-Handed Handling Of Instagram Portends Mobile Problems

Sorry.

That’s effectively what Instagram founder Kevin Systrom said yesterday after the kerfuffle over the changing of the Instagram Terms of Service that boiled over earlier this week causing users to go irate.

Systrom basically said: “We never meant to sell your photos to advertisers and you’ll see that we’ll sort this out in the future.”

Except of course they meant to sell your photos. If they didn’t their shareholders would be irate.

Facebook (FB) means to sell every aspect of your life (your timeline) to advertisers. LinkedIn (LNKD) wants to sell your resume to companies looking to hire you. Google (GOOG) wants to know every aspect of what you search, how you think, where you go… so they can pump countless ads in front of you hoping you’ll click a few every once in a while.

There’s the old cliche in Silicon Valley consumer Internet companies: If you’re using a service and it’s free, guess what? You’re the service.”

It’s true for Instagram and all the other free services.

So no one should be surprised by what’s happened this week. Anyone mortified is – in the words of a very young and frank Mark Zuckerberg – a “dumb f—.”

The Facebook lawyers came down from on high and laid out those new Terms of Service and pumped them out there. But don’t blame the lawyers. Why would Zuckerberg, who was sued six ways to Sunday by the Winklevii and countless others who claimed he stole their idea, not “lawyer up” every aspect of the company? The lawyers are just doing what their keepers — their owners — are paying them to do.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson ... -problems/

[noddy]

At this point I am never going to use Instagram.

but how will people get to see your hipster tinted food,cat and selfie shots ??????????

[Azrael]

At this point I am never going to use Instagram.

Same here, amigo.

[Azrael]

If Facebook keeps taking their friends for granted they could trigger a Diaspora.

And Twitter could lose its most value-added users to app.net

[noddy]

as someone who comes from a traditional computing and security based mindset i was totally bamboozled by the default-to-public model of facebook et all.

it contradicted everything we did in regards email and other "geek" written messaging systems in regards hiding addressbooks and messages and this was the big difference in these new apps, they didnt care about privacy and nor did all those users.. it could only be done by a non geek, a geek struggles to think that way.

i do wonder now if the public is having its learning curve on such things and if their is fresh new space for a more traditional default-to-private version of facebook just waiting to take over.

no searching for people, you must manually give the contact id across like you do with email addresses etc.. in this sense facebook becomes the whitepages/telephone book.. the place for sharing your public id's and not for sharing details and it also has value as public publishing but not for communicating.

[Enki]

I think that at some point people are going to recognize that Facebook is a set of features, and that if you combine those sets of features you can own your own node and then connect to others. I think it's about time I started figuring that out and getting it properly setup.

[Doc]

Instagram outrage reveals a powerful but unaware Web community


Instagram outrage reveals a powerful but unaware Web community

Video: Instagram, the photo-sharing website owned by Facebook, is backing away from a plan that would give advertisers more access to photos on the site after the new policy sparked a protest on social media.

But there is a more complicated story line — one that is much harder to score, and more worrisome for those who regard personal privacy as something of a sacred right.

The tip-off for me came when I interviewed Fordham University law professor Susan Scafidi on Tuesday. She was quite certain that the things users feared most — namely that their images could end up on billboards or other kinds of ads — was made legally possible by Instagram’s planned changes to its “Terms of Use.” But she also said that the old “Terms of Use,” which most of us Instagram users blew past when we signed up for the service, likely allowed the same behavior.

The difference, she said, was a matter of explicitness. Scafidi considered either version of the policy remarkably expansive because Instagram conveyed “non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service.”

That language is still in Instagram’s “Terms of Use” today, even after the photo service announced the reversal in a company blog post Thursday night.

In other words, the issue was never that Instagram could sell your images. The issue was that, under the “Terms of Use,” they could license them to anyone, anywhere, for virtually any purpose.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.html

[Doc]

Big Data gets creepier.

http://rt.com/usa/news/google-internet- ... fline-500/

Google starts watching what you do off the Internet too

The most powerful company on the Internet just got a whole lot creepier: a new service from Google merges offline consumer info with online intelligence, allowing advertisers to target users based on what they do at the keyboard and at the mall.

Without much fanfare, Google announced news this week of a new advertising project, Conversions API, that will let businesses build all-encompassing user profiles based off of not just what users search for on the Web, but what they purchase outside of the home.

In a blog post this week on Google’s DoubleClick Search site, the Silicon Valley giant says that targeting consumers based off online information only allows advertisers to learn so much. “Conversions,” tech-speak for the digital metric made by every action a user makes online, are incomplete until coupled with real life data, Google says.

“We understand that online advertising also fuels offline conversions,” the blog post reads. Thus, Google says, “To capture these lost conversions and bring offline into your online world, we’re announcing the open beta of our Conversions API for uploading offline conversion automatically.”

The blog goes on to explain that in-store transactions, call-tracking and other online activities can be inputted into Google to be combined with other information “to optimize your campaigns based on even more of your business data.”

Google is all but certain to ensure that all user data collected off- and online will be cloaked through safeguards that will allow for complete and total anonymity for customers. When on-the-Web interactions start mirroring real life activity, though, even a certain degree of privacy doesn’t make Conversions API any less creepy. As Jim Edwards writes for Business Insider, “If you bought a T shirt at The Gap in the mall with your credit card, you could start seeing a lot more Gap ads online later, suggesting jeans that go with that shirt.”

Of course, there is always the possibility that all of this information can be unencrypted and, in some cases, obtained by third-parties that you might not want prying into your personal business. Edwards notes in his report that Google does not explicitly note that intelligence used in Conversions API will be anonymized, but the blowback from not doing as much would sure be enough to start a colossal uproar. Meanwhile, however, all of the information being collected by Google — estimated to be on millions of servers around the globe — is being handed over to more than just advertising companies. Last month Google reported that the US government requested personal information from roughly 8,000 individual users during just the first few months of 2012.

[Enki]

Combine that with the fact that the government can subpoena Google for information about you, but Google is not allowed by law to inform you.

[Doc]

Combine that with the fact that the government can subpoena Google for information about you, but Google is not allowed by law to inform you.

Calling it Government, or Private misses the power. For this exercise they are the same thing. The question is who is pulling your strings? That is what Big Data is all about, and you can be sure that unopposed it will lead to something much worse. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[YMix]

[Enki]

Combine that with the fact that the government can subpoena Google for information about you, but Google is not allowed by law to inform you.

Calling it Government, or Private misses the power. For this exercise they are the same thing. The question is who is pulling your strings? That is what Big Data is all about, and you can be sure that unopposed it will lead to something much worse. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Agreed. Precisely why Libertarian notions terrify me. Imagine if we rolled back the government suddenly, but companies like GE were still in their position. Then we'd just be ruled by GE, they'd still not be paying taxes, but they also wouldn't have to pay for the lobbyists.

[Doc]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/online-re ... 00827.html

Online Retailers Vary PricesBased on a User's Location
The Wall Street JournalBy Jennifer Valentino-DeVries | The Wall Street Journal – Sun, Dec 23, 2012 10:49 PM EST

It was the same Swingline stapler, on the same Staples.com website. But for Kim Wamble, the price was $15.79, while the price on Trude Frizzell's screen, just a few miles away, was $14.29.

A key difference: where Staples seemed to think they were located.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the Staples Inc. website displays different prices to people after estimating their locations. More than that, Staples appeared to consider the person's distance from a rival brick-and-mortar store, either OfficeMax Inc. or Office Depot Inc. If rival stores were within 20 miles or so, Staples.com usually showed a discounted price.

"How can they get away with that?" said Ms. Frizzell, who works in Bergheim, Texas.

In what appears to be an unintended side effect of Staples' pricing methods—likely a function of retail competition with its rivals—the Journal's testing also showed that areas that tended to see the discounted prices had a higher average income than areas that tended to see higher prices.

Presented with the Journal's findings, Staples acknowledged that it varies its online and in-store prices by geography because of "a variety of factors" including "costs of doing business."

For years, the Internet, with its promise of quick comparison shopping, has granted people a certain power over retailers. At the click of a button, shoppers could find a better deal elsewhere, no travel required.

But the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people. Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens.

The Journal identified several companies, including Staples, Discover Financial Services, Rosetta Stone Inc. and Home Depot Inc., that were consistently adjusting prices and displaying different product offers based on a range of characteristics that could be discovered about the user. Office Depot, for example, told the Journal that it uses "customers' browsing history and geolocation" to vary the offers and products it displays to a visitor to its site.

Offering different prices to different people is legal, with a few exceptions for race-based discrimination and other sensitive situations. Several companies pointed out that their online price-tweaking simply mirrors the real world. Regular shops routinely adjust their prices to account for local demand, competition, store location and so on. Nobody is surprised if, say, a gallon of gas is cheaper at the same chain, one town over.

But price-changing online isn't popular among shoppers. Some 76% of American adults have said it would bother them to find out that other people paid a lower price for the same product, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

[Doc]

Combine that with the fact that the government can subpoena Google for information about you, but Google is not allowed by law to inform you.

Calling it Government, or Private misses the power. For this exercise they are the same thing. The question is who is pulling your strings? That is what Big Data is all about, and you can be sure that unopposed it will lead to something much worse. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Agreed. Precisely why Libertarian notions terrify me. Imagine if we rolled back the government suddenly, but companies like GE were still in their position. Then we'd just be ruled by GE, they'd still not be paying taxes, but they also wouldn't have to pay for the lobbyists.

The data should be controlled you don't need big government for that. Teddy Roosevelt managed to reign in the trust with a government that was miniscule compared to its size today. IF fact I would say that the bigger the government the more advantage big corporation can take of it. Big government protects big corporations. Look at your example -- GE a company that paid no US income tax year before last.

[Endovelico]

Precisely why Libertarian notions terrify me. Imagine if we rolled back the government suddenly, but companies like GE were still in their position. Then we'd just be ruled by GE, they'd still not be paying taxes, but they also wouldn't have to pay for the lobbyists.

Don't you worry. If (socialist) libertarians ever come to power, you may be sure that GE would no longer be run by its present shareholders...

[noddy]

its absurd to put libertarians scary spin on this and its not private or public, its both and the only choice you have left is not to put much of your life on the network and anything private is just a legal sneek n peek away, we gave up our rights for privacy a long time ago.

it started with drink driving laws and them being able to stop people going about their own business and demand body samples, its just been increments since then and those increments will just become more so now all your conversations,movements and purchases are being recorded.

fear driven freedom as safety mentality is setting the agenda and libertarians are the loons in the corner saying you shouldnt be so scared of your fellow people, nasty people they are.

[Typhoon]

Amusing bit of history:

Wired | How the Queen of Britain Beat Everyone to the Internet

[Doc]

Randi Zuckerberg loses control on Facebook (and Twitter)

Randi Zuckerberg loses control on Facebook (and Twitter)

The Facebook CEO's sister is peeved that a photo she thought she'd posted privately is exposed publicly. It's quite a photo.

CS we need more smilies to express ourselves !!!

Anyway the article is hilarious

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57560 ... d-twitter/

[Doc]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... picks=true

Bruce Sterling on Why It Stopped Making Sense to Talk About 'The Internet' in 2012
By Alexis C. Madrigal

Dec 27 2012, 2:56 PM ET 1

Five simple reasons: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft.


Bruce Sterling (flickr/webmink, with some fiddling).
Many people use, as a kind of shorthand, The Internet to mean a wide variety of things related to this series of tubes. The Internet could mean the culture made and distributed on the Internet, the LOLCATZ, memes, etc. ("The Internet loves this kind of stuff.") The Internet could mean the infrastructure itself, its speed and distribution. ("The Internet is so sloooow right now.") The Internet could mean the industry that builds it, the consumer and B2B companies that effectively own all the quasi-public spaces through which we traipse. ("The Internet wants to disintermediate blahblahblah.") And there are a thousand other times when we find it easier to say, "The Internet does" or "It feels like the Internet is" or whatever rather than attempt to identify the specific actors of the play.

And maybe that was helpful. Maybe in such a distributed system it makes sense to use "The Internet" as a stand-in for causal agents that seem to inhere in the network without belonging to any individual node. Maybe it's like a mob or a gatheration of starlings; the dynamic relationships between the individuals turn out to be more important than the things themselves.

But in 2012, that way of talking, if it was ever helpful, is no longer.

And there are five reasons for that: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft. Now, when we say, "The Internet" or "smartphones" or "computers" we usually mean something shaped by one of these entities, or all of them.

At least that's how Bruce Sterling is thinking about things. In his annual conversation with Jon Lebkowsky on the WELL about the state of the world, he classed in "The Stacks," as he called them, with "some interest groups of 2013 who seem to be having a pretty good time."

Stacks. In 2012 it made less and less sense to talk about "the Internet," "the PC business," "telephones," "Silicon Valley," or "the media," and much more sense to just study Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. These big five American vertically organized silos are re-making the world in their image.

If you're Nokia or HP or a Japanese electronics manufacturer, they stole all your oxygen. There will be a whole lot happening among these five vast entities in 2013. They never compete head-to-head, but they're all fascinated by "disruption."

What will the world that they create look like? Here's what I think: Your technology will work perfectly within the silo and with an individual stacks's (temporary) allies. But it will be perfectly broken at the interfaces between itself and its competitors.

That moment where you are trying to do something that has no reason not to work, but it just doesn't and there is no way around it without changing some piece of your software to fit more neatly within the silo?

That's gonna happen a lot: 2013 as the year of tactically broken bridges.

[Typhoon]

BoingBoing | Potential Prostitutes

"Potential Prostitutes" site lets users label women as prostitutes, charges "removal" fees.

[Doc]

BoingBoing | Potential Prostitutes

"Potential Prostitutes" site lets users label women as prostitutes, charges "removal" fees.

Good find CS. More and more of this type of thing is going on all the time.

Ransomware scammers push panic button with bogus claims
No sign that newest cyber extortion racket wipes Windows PCs' hard drives, says Symantec
By Gregg Keizer
December 26, 2012 12:43 PM ET
14 Comments
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Computerworld - Cyber extortionists shilling "ransomware" have upped the ante by pushing users' panic buttons with claims that their malware will wipe hard drives, a security firm said Monday.

The claim is bogus, said Symantec, and is simply a ploy by scammers preying on people's fears.

"This is an attempt to extort money from computer users by taking advantage of human weakness when under panic and pressure," wrote Symantec researcher Jeet Morparia in a Dec. 24 blog post.

Ransomware is a long-standing label for malware that, once on a personal computer, cripples the machine or encrypts its files, then displays a ransom note that demands payment to restore control to the owner. The technique, flatly called "an extortion racket" by Symantec last month, has been in use for at least six years. Until relatively recently, it was rare and ineffective and seen mostly in Eastern Europe.

The new ransomware variant, which Symantec identified as "Trojan.Ransomlock.G" but is called "Reveton" by other antivirus vendors, claims that any move to circumvent the lockdown will trigger disaster.

"An attempt to unlock the computer by yourself will lead to the full formatting of the operating system. All the files, videos, photos, documents on your computer will be deleted," the on-screen message reads.

Not true, said Morparia, who added that Symantec's analysis found no disk wiping capability in the malware's code. More importantly, Symantec was able to remove Ransomlock.G and unlock the machine without any formatting taking place or files deleted.

The new version also featured other changes, Morparia said, including a $100 price hike, from $200 to $300, to "unlock" the PC, and a fake deadline of 48 hours shown by an on-screen countdown timer.

More

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... rd_edpicks