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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.

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

And for clarification on that point compare the previous post with the video below. Draw your on conclusions, of course. I will say how remarkable the difference is. From raw, unbridled, dischordant and unmindful to operatic, orchestrated, precise and controlled.

Pointed out by Ectomo: From the blog Next Nature comes an article discussing Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation surgery and Designer Laser Vaginoplasty. (Caution: If you’re at work, there’s a big picture of a woman’s pubic area at the top of this article. if you turn it sideways it looks like a frowny mouth with a five o’clock shadow!)

This has to be one of the least intelligent surgical developments I have heard in quite a long time. It’s just another item in a long line of things subtly encouraging people to assume that sex has nothing to do with personal happiness and everything to do with how one’s sexuality will be judged by others. Barring any actual deformities, such as those caused by functionally limiting accidents or birth defects, I can see absolutely no reason for this procedure. Anyone who encourages this be performed on healthy women is - to say the least - very disappointingly short-sighted.
As a part of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, sex ranks directly with food, sleep, and breathing as one of the most important needs for a human being. I myself am in agreement with that sentiment.

Esteem? That which would make one desire a purely cosmetic change in the first place is a much smaller piece of the pyramid. Rightfully so, as the interactivity one elects to have with other humans is as optional as this “designer vagina” surgery. I can’t really picture a scenario in which the likeness of my pubic area to that of one seen in a magazine or film would really be that important. Even for those in the habit of posing for said magazine photographs, there is indeed photoshop and other such techniques which would prevent the necessity of voluntary genital mutilation.

Ladies, the next time you start to feel insecure about the appearace of your genitalia, just remember: “Who really has any business giving a shit besides me?”

Relevant to topic:
South Park: Plasty

Add to My Profile | More Videos

This playlist has all but one part (part 7) of the BBC’s Walking With Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs. It’s one of those fascinating historical exploration films with gorgeous CG animals and environments.

I’m watching it right now on the Discovery channel (commercials and all! GADS!), and I came in at the part with the brontoscorpio. Too cool.

Here’s part 7, sorry for missing it earlier!

The Table of Malcontents crew put forth a new header challenge to their readers: Take a famous Russian communist propaganda poster and turn it into another fantastic ToM header!

I seriously went crazy on this because I adored the concept and I already had the propaganda font Worker Poster, and they were kind enough to put not one but three of my revisions into the voting pool! GOGOGO VOTE! (And remember, in communist Russia, header votes YOU!)

Truth be told, conceptually I like #5 from Matt Jordan the best. He fits key elements from the original poster AND managed to work some tentacles for the cephalophiliacs in the ToM pool! (I also think the tentacles look like muscle car flames which is just plain cool.)

If you aren't already a ToM reader, and you enjoy things like: steampunk, weird science, weirder art, Lovecraft, and sometimes making fun of people who deserve it… Then I pretty much guarantee you'll enjoy ToM. I'd recommend signing up for the RSS. 9 times out of 10 those ToMcats keep the place hopping and RSS is the only way to keep up with all the pure, unadulterated awesome.