RKNet Blog... Thing

It’s been a very Twitter-heavy weekend, as previous posts will demonstrate. I had a brief spat with some woman named Amanda Chapel because I had issues with the idea of arguing against the merits of internet culture on the internet. Particularly on such a limited platform such as Twitter. I really need to think and do some research before I discuss that whole situation at length. And I do want to discuss that at length. However, in the interest of being fair I intend to read more of Strumpette and see if I can get a proper bead on the philosophy at work here. At that time, I’ll share the archive of the Twitter conversation, and get into depth on what the internet means to me and what I feel it means to our culture as a whole. More on that later though.

One of the other Twitter discoveries I made this weekend was FlypeClub. I’d been followed (and followed them in return) a little while back, but it seemed to only produce an increased percentage of self-promotional fluff scrolling through my gTalk twitter window. This weekend however I got at least a minor peek behind the curtain and figured out that some other followers I’d picked up were authors and conspirators of this mysterious FlypeClub. For the record, I still have no idea what the deal is with it, but now I’m intrigued instead of annoyed by their updates.

A little basic reading, a little paying attention showed me who all is working on the FlypeClub project. (And I KNOW I’m breaking the first and only rule here, but I can’t help it. There is a reason why, you’ll see.) Not so mysterious after all on one hand, but more mysterious on the other. Who exactly are these guys? What was the draw to make something like this? Why the seemingly aggressive promotion when it appears they don’t really have anything to sell? They do claim to offer Alligator & Python swallowing courses for $20,000 a pop, but that doesn’t strike me as a business plan that would best be supported by intense social outreach. Yet there is something to this band of cheeky irreverents that has captured my attention, and gotten me to really thinking.

I have a love for the obscure, and for the obfuscated, for the inscrutable. Although I confess that this love does not extend to businesses who cannot be buggered to explain who they are and what their services entail. That is the exact opposite of good service and should be frowned upon. This is what got me to thinking when FlypeClub came on my radar. Who the hell are these guys? Were they a business or a set of individuals? What are the rules for marketing in the “social” world if they are a business?

Generally speaking, it is up to me to decide what a thing is, what it is worth, whether or not it is valuable or true. That was the challenge posed to me, more or less, by a mysterious Flyper - who I won’t name unless it’s approved - in regards to FlypeClub. That it is up to ME to decide what it is. I liked that. I appreciated greatly the direct outreach, and I appreciated more the admission that it is in fact up to me (and you, and you, and everybody who won’t read this) to decide “what is FlypeClub”.

Seems to me that this has always been the guiding principle of business, and of life. Experts, professionals, self-appointed social leaders can all tell me exactly what they want me to know. Media and corporations have the things which they feel will be liked by the largest amount of people. The great unwashed mobs of people I see on a day to day basis, and the scores of people who write opinions on the internet also provide information on what there is to like about this, that, and the other thing. That is all fine and dandy. I tend to prefer the opinion of someone experienced with a subject or a product to tell me about that subject or a product, and I always attempt to get opinions from other, ostensibly unbaised sources. Yet the thing that so many people do not seem to grasp is that ultimately it is absolutely, one hundred percent my decision (and yours, and yours, and everybody not reading this) as to what is hip, what is worth buying, and what is true.

Really, it’s always been that way. Influence only goes so far. The task of a business, an organization, a person who wishes attention from many is to do this: provide the public with something they cannot get from anyone else. Or, if they can get the product/service/opinion from someone else, give them very good reason to embrace yours over someone else’s.

This is one of the reasons I signed on to be an affiliate of TorsoPants. Yes, they (technically) sell tshirts. Yes, there are dozens of “witty” tshirt companies abroad, particularly on the internet. But I saw these guys and immediately liked everything about their site and what they had to offer. (For the record I have not yet bought my very own pair of TorsoPants, but I am also pretty broke.) It’s something that everyone needs (clothing) and it’s got a shine to it that no one else really has.

Another fine example of providing something unique is Scarlet Imprint. I have purchased two books from them so far, The Red Goddess, and Howlings. They provide something that no one else does, and they do it well. Their books are well written, and well made (I was expecting much less from such a small press), and they are rare. Not only are they rare (very limited print runs), but they make it very clear that they take their work very seriously, and they are willing to communicate directly with those who would buy from them.

I am a decision making machine, and I am primed by the words and actions of others, but I don’t fire until my internal system of checks and balances has had its say. What kind of decision making machine are you?

Poking about as I am wont to do, I discovered this Flickr account chock full of vintage Valentine’s Day cards. User Valart2008 has procured (at the time of this writing) 58 vintage card designs from the good old days. You know, when children were all extraordinarily hydrocepalic and wore thicker eyeliner and more rouge than a room full of goths.

I believe I’ve also found the culprit behind the shortening of the word “you” into the letter “u”. It all started back in the 50’s, with a little girl and a lamb.

Enjoy!

I’m back in the humid, smelly Northeast and I figured I’d flex the ol’ guest-blogging muscles before they dwindle into insignificance… anyway, I was at SES San Jose 2007 last week. I must have made friends out there, since I noticed a LinkedIn invite in my inbox the morning after the Google Dance (I drink a lot so my autopilot is somewhat developed by this point).

I rolled into the office this morning, and I noticed another LinkedIn invite in Thunderbird. I clicked through from the link in the email and this is what I saw:

Facts:

• my name isn’t Jon,
• I know for a fact that I’m a major LinkedIn n00blar, and
• this account has like seven bazillion contacts associated with it

There’s no way this is my account. What’s more, the page clearly states: “you are not the intended recipient of this email”. It’s nice that they let me know, but why did I receive it in the first place? Beyond a doubt, I was logged into some guy’s LinkedIn account. I could have sent horse porn to all of his contacts (assuming I happened to have some lying around, which I didn’t, *ahem*). I could have ruined his life if I was so inclined. The implications are truly frightening. An entire network of professional contacts stood teetering, like a house of cards. Fortunately, I’m not that much of a douchebag, so I snapped a quick screenshot and closed Firefox.

So what happened? Discounting any server-side problems that might have caused this, maybe the URL I clicked was not a complete URL. Long URLs sometimes break in most email clients, so maybe whatever truncated version I clicked on ended up being a link to someone else’s account. If this is what happened, this is disturbing to contemplate. Someone smarter than me could play around with the URL parameters and probably gain access to all kinds of stuff in this fashion.

I’m likely to dismiss this as a possibility. LinkedIn probably obfuscates those URLs in some manner. I mean, everyone uses LinkedIn. They wouldn’t use it if it was fraught with security issues, right?

Then again, when one applies that kind of logic to things like Microsoft-built operating systems, that whole argument disintegrates like diarrhea in a chemical toilet.

I don’t feel like it’s LinkedIn’s fault. Yeah, something went wrong, but it is the kind of thing that can happen to anyone. If anything is to blame it is the nature of the internet itself.

There is an inherent fault in the way people view web-based applications these days. Caught up in the exuberance of “Web 2.0″, people sometimes talk about moving “beyond the desktop”. As if someday everything that we do with computers will happen independently of our own client machines. All of our data will be stored remotely on servers, and catalogued according to various folksonomies.

This vision of the future fails to take into account the intrinsically vulnerable state of any node in the www. Any site can be hacked. It is largely a question of how much time and expertise available to the hacker. Often those who assert the contrary, that a particular site is “hacker safe“, are somewhat disingenuous, to put it mildly.

Google would do well to consider the inherent vulnerability of all data on the Web, as several Google products, including Gmail, have been hacked in the past. When a web-based application is compromised, accountability becomes vague. Especially in the case of Google, whose employees are divided into a number of teams which often don’t have sufficient clearance to pass information between one another. Sure, they might have a flawless internal process for dealing with this kind of thing, but to an outsider visiting the ‘Plex, Google’s methods can appear bureaucratic and protocol-heavy at best, obfuscatory at worst (on the positive side, they do make a terrific tofu scramble with extra green onion).

In general, any attempts to divorce a user experience from the concept of the “desktop” are misguided. If anything we should be fortifying, streamlining and improving the desktop environment. Thankfully, this is already happening (download Xubuntu 7.04 for a scintillating example).

I don’t mean to propose we all become e-hermits either. I still plan on using LinkedIn, and I would recommend it to other people too. Simply put: don’t believe the hype, and don’t put sensitive information somewhere where you cannot personally oversee its physical security.

Play safe, kids.

Just when you thought the day’s news couldn’t get any more ridiculous, New Haven, Connecticut comes through with the whopper of the day.

A couple members of the Hash House Harriers - “A drinking club with a running problem” - were charged with first-degree breach of peace, which is a felony.

Their crime? Siblings Daniel and Dorothee Salchow used flour to mark the trail for the group’s other runners for that day’s jog and party. The flour was used because it’s noticable and biodegradable.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re in the mood to unearth evidence of spin control and disinformation on that internet bastion (or bastard depending on one’s viewpoint) of information, Wikipedia, then Wired’s blog Threat Level has just the post for you.

Here they provide links to Virgil Griffith’s Wikipedia Scanner. A tool specifically designed to out a lot of the suspect editors out there in the Wikiverse.

The commentors on the Wired post have dug up tons of dirt already.

Here’s a goody from their “Wall of Shame”:

scientology removes criticism by Anonymous

removed: Its relationship with the city has repeatedly moved between “friendly” and “hostile,” as the church has worked with the city to establish better relations; while at the same time actively opposing the local ”[[St. Petersburg Times]]” and even protesting the Clearwater police department

I don’t usually pay attention to the Biodemocracy newsletter, but I was skimming it, and read this:

With the Bush Administration’s reduced funding for education, many school districts have been forced to seek other sources of income, including widespread installation of junk-food vending machines. School districts can make up to $100,000 per year under these contracts, but as a result of increased access to unhealthy foods, the childhood obesity and diabetes epidemics are on the increase. In response, two dozen states are now considering banning junk food vending machines in
schools. The National Soft Drink Association is contesting this ban, claiming that high levels of junk food consumption are okay, and placing the blame on schools for not teaching the kids to exercise more.

It’s funny ~and~ sad.