Well, I realize its been nearly 2 weeks since my last post, and all I have to defend myself is the fact I've been up to my neck in college work, including creating a final website. You can see what I have so far here.
Something soon, I PROMISE!
3/29/08
3/12/08
Big Brother Is Watching You: Web Privacy
As a lot of you know, I'm a college student, majoring (hopefully) in web design and computer programming. For one of my courses, I was asked to discuss privacy on the web. What I wrote I really liked, so... I want to share it. So here you go:
The biggest catch to the internet, from either a developer's standpoint or just a casual user's standpoint, is that there is no such thing as absolute privacy. The paper trail you leave is a mile long, tracking your actions across cyberspace. Depending on how secure the sites you create or visit are, you leave behind as little as your IP, or as much as your name, address, credit card numbers, and even more.
The idea of internet anonymity is a pipe dream. No matter what advances are made, this will not change, simply because it is far too profitable, either on the personal level or beyond, to mine for personal data, either to use for personal gain, or to sell or distribute to advertising/spam/otherwise destructive agencies.
One of the main problems with internet privacy is the concept of the cookie. A cookie is a piece of information, stored on the user's PC, that contain information about a user's use of a given site or domain. This may include information for login authentication, saving an online "shopping cart", and site preferences. These can be sniffed out and hijacked with a packet sniffer. A site can fool the browser into sending a cookie to a site that is not supposed to get them. Or worse yet, scripts can be made and utilized that just outright steal a user's cookies. Of course, then there's always bad programming, which can lead to insecure sites, which can lead to isues with cookies.
Another issue is the concept of the Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs are businesses, pure and simple. They're not above such breaches of privacy as combing all incoming and outgoing data, throttling speeds for certain programs or protocols (I'm looking at you, Comcast!), or collecting extraneous information for whatever use they may have. On top of all this, they are left to their own discretion when it comes to information they may or may not surrender to the government during inquiries. There is no legal precedent for what they have to surrender, its quite easy to deny the government information based on the idea that an ISP refuses to undermine its user's privacy. Google did it, although they're not an ISP, but then again, Google is bigger than a fair share of ISPs. The government does not control ISPs at the business level, so whatever information is surrendered is surrendered voluntarily. However, ISPs can't know what you're sending, if its encrypted right. At least, not without violating their own Terms of Service and/or laws. Its a nifty and powerful bit of knowledge to have.
Spyware is, without a doubt, the most ANNOYING detriment to internet privacy and computer health. I mean, just look at this image. That is not a healthy PC, and frankly the fact it loaded the browser that far surprises me. (On a side note, I find it funny that an AOL program is considered Spyware, and I agree with this wholly. But another discussion for another time.) Spyware is nasty, software installed on a PC (without the user's informed consent), that monitors user behavior, and manipulates it into malicious things like tracking user across the net, collecting personal information, change computer settings, or solving CAPTCHAs for rogue servers, bots, or users. This is easily defeated, however, by utilizing anti-spyware programs like Spybot. However, some gets really rooted into the system, and can be a pain to remove from memory, then from the PC itself.
Add to these concepts things like phishing (fraudulently getting personal information by faking being a trustworthy entity in or on a site, forum, messenger, etc) and social engineering (a sociology idea turned to a net practice, a series of techniques used to manipulate users into giving away information or performing actions they normally would not do.) and the internet is hardly what anyone would consider a secure place. Its more of a wild frontier, really, and if you take the wrong steps, it will swallow you (or your personal information) whole.
The biggest catch to the internet, from either a developer's standpoint or just a casual user's standpoint, is that there is no such thing as absolute privacy. The paper trail you leave is a mile long, tracking your actions across cyberspace. Depending on how secure the sites you create or visit are, you leave behind as little as your IP, or as much as your name, address, credit card numbers, and even more.
The idea of internet anonymity is a pipe dream. No matter what advances are made, this will not change, simply because it is far too profitable, either on the personal level or beyond, to mine for personal data, either to use for personal gain, or to sell or distribute to advertising/spam/otherwise destructive agencies.
One of the main problems with internet privacy is the concept of the cookie. A cookie is a piece of information, stored on the user's PC, that contain information about a user's use of a given site or domain. This may include information for login authentication, saving an online "shopping cart", and site preferences. These can be sniffed out and hijacked with a packet sniffer. A site can fool the browser into sending a cookie to a site that is not supposed to get them. Or worse yet, scripts can be made and utilized that just outright steal a user's cookies. Of course, then there's always bad programming, which can lead to insecure sites, which can lead to isues with cookies.
Another issue is the concept of the Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs are businesses, pure and simple. They're not above such breaches of privacy as combing all incoming and outgoing data, throttling speeds for certain programs or protocols (I'm looking at you, Comcast!), or collecting extraneous information for whatever use they may have. On top of all this, they are left to their own discretion when it comes to information they may or may not surrender to the government during inquiries. There is no legal precedent for what they have to surrender, its quite easy to deny the government information based on the idea that an ISP refuses to undermine its user's privacy. Google did it, although they're not an ISP, but then again, Google is bigger than a fair share of ISPs. The government does not control ISPs at the business level, so whatever information is surrendered is surrendered voluntarily. However, ISPs can't know what you're sending, if its encrypted right. At least, not without violating their own Terms of Service and/or laws. Its a nifty and powerful bit of knowledge to have.
Spyware is, without a doubt, the most ANNOYING detriment to internet privacy and computer health. I mean, just look at this image. That is not a healthy PC, and frankly the fact it loaded the browser that far surprises me. (On a side note, I find it funny that an AOL program is considered Spyware, and I agree with this wholly. But another discussion for another time.) Spyware is nasty, software installed on a PC (without the user's informed consent), that monitors user behavior, and manipulates it into malicious things like tracking user across the net, collecting personal information, change computer settings, or solving CAPTCHAs for rogue servers, bots, or users. This is easily defeated, however, by utilizing anti-spyware programs like Spybot. However, some gets really rooted into the system, and can be a pain to remove from memory, then from the PC itself.
Add to these concepts things like phishing (fraudulently getting personal information by faking being a trustworthy entity in or on a site, forum, messenger, etc) and social engineering (a sociology idea turned to a net practice, a series of techniques used to manipulate users into giving away information or performing actions they normally would not do.) and the internet is hardly what anyone would consider a secure place. Its more of a wild frontier, really, and if you take the wrong steps, it will swallow you (or your personal information) whole.
3/5/08
Bury My D20 at the Temple of Elemental Evil
Yesterday morning, a gaming legend died. The creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax, passed away of a heart attack, he was 69.
D&D and the games that have come out of it have been a major part of my adult life. Between the countless weekly gaming nights and the over 1,000 hours I've spent in the Neverwinter Nights series, D&D really has been a defining thing in my adult life. Some of my best memories involve me sitting at a table, character sheet in front of me, a Mountain Dew in one hand, a D20 in the other. D&D really opened my eyes to a new type of gaming. Before that, I just was stuck on console and PC gaming, bound by the imagination of the creators. D&D opened up my imagination, and opened up my life.
I didn't want to ramble on about Mr Gygax, because nothing I can ever say can do the man justice, nor can I outspeak the masses of D&D fans.
D&D and the games that have come out of it have been a major part of my adult life. Between the countless weekly gaming nights and the over 1,000 hours I've spent in the Neverwinter Nights series, D&D really has been a defining thing in my adult life. Some of my best memories involve me sitting at a table, character sheet in front of me, a Mountain Dew in one hand, a D20 in the other. D&D really opened my eyes to a new type of gaming. Before that, I just was stuck on console and PC gaming, bound by the imagination of the creators. D&D opened up my imagination, and opened up my life.
I didn't want to ramble on about Mr Gygax, because nothing I can ever say can do the man justice, nor can I outspeak the masses of D&D fans.
3/4/08
The "Stoned Monkey Artist" Theory
There's been a set of questions plaguing me lately. About art, both the word and the picture forms. The first has become a driving point, a point of true madness for myself. Its very simple:
"Is creativity dead?"
That is to ask "is there anything new left to create?" It seems that these days there is nothing left to make. Nothing left to do. No new trails to blaze, that the creative landscape has been uprooted, plowed, and paved over. A hundred years ago, Metropolis was not yet thought up, and now it is all but reality. Robots are real, cyborgs are slowly becoming feasible. Next stop, Ghost in the Shell. So what is left? What is still new enough that no one has gone down the route and come back with word that the other side is already being assimilated.
Which leads to the next:
"Is art dead?"
This is more of a question of culture. Has the world moved beyond the art and the artist? The internet has shown that more people style themselves as "artists" than the amount of people that consider themselves a part of any major religion. Has the mass of inane copycats and deranged outcasts (who are in themselves a group, which they all belong to. It boggles.) who have nothing better to do that force their cynicism and madness upon the masses taken over art and killed it with a sock full of hot nickels?
The last, I admit is a bit more selfish.
"Am I, in part, to blame?"
I admit, I've gone through the loner phase, the goth years, the punk, the anarchist, the god-complexed megalomania. Now here I sit in a sort of quarter-life crisis. 1/4 the way through life, and I'm struggling to find who I am and what I want. Who do I want to be? The artist, the writer, the starving struggling soul trying to find life and love among the wastes? This is a question (or a variation thereon), I believe everyone asks themselves. And I believe there is no correct way for everyone to find the answer, it all comes down to the individual.
There is no handbook on becoming an adult, just there is no handbook on what constitutes art, or what makes an artist. The journey is the answer, really. There are no easily-defined pieces or anything like that. Art takes time, patience, and dedication. And in the end, I think becoming an adult worth more than their weight in horse shit takes the same.
A friend of mine made an interesting statement while I wrote this. He liked me to Terrence McKenna, the man who theorized that our primitive ancestors evolved the way they did because of psilocybin. While I admit that I don't do much research for this blog, its just me editorializing and giving my opinions, I do know and read enough to formulate my own beliefs and not feel completely ignorant.
On that note, I don't think psilocybin caused all this. Nor do I think its all an act to impress the opposite sex. If anything, it is mankind coming to term with the fact we are indeed alone, the sole intelligent, sentient, and cultured lifeform on this planet. This is also why I believe religion came about. But thats another rant for another time.
"Is creativity dead?"
That is to ask "is there anything new left to create?" It seems that these days there is nothing left to make. Nothing left to do. No new trails to blaze, that the creative landscape has been uprooted, plowed, and paved over. A hundred years ago, Metropolis was not yet thought up, and now it is all but reality. Robots are real, cyborgs are slowly becoming feasible. Next stop, Ghost in the Shell. So what is left? What is still new enough that no one has gone down the route and come back with word that the other side is already being assimilated.
Which leads to the next:
"Is art dead?"
This is more of a question of culture. Has the world moved beyond the art and the artist? The internet has shown that more people style themselves as "artists" than the amount of people that consider themselves a part of any major religion. Has the mass of inane copycats and deranged outcasts (who are in themselves a group, which they all belong to. It boggles.) who have nothing better to do that force their cynicism and madness upon the masses taken over art and killed it with a sock full of hot nickels?
The last, I admit is a bit more selfish.
"Am I, in part, to blame?"
I admit, I've gone through the loner phase, the goth years, the punk, the anarchist, the god-complexed megalomania. Now here I sit in a sort of quarter-life crisis. 1/4 the way through life, and I'm struggling to find who I am and what I want. Who do I want to be? The artist, the writer, the starving struggling soul trying to find life and love among the wastes? This is a question (or a variation thereon), I believe everyone asks themselves. And I believe there is no correct way for everyone to find the answer, it all comes down to the individual.
There is no handbook on becoming an adult, just there is no handbook on what constitutes art, or what makes an artist. The journey is the answer, really. There are no easily-defined pieces or anything like that. Art takes time, patience, and dedication. And in the end, I think becoming an adult worth more than their weight in horse shit takes the same.
A friend of mine made an interesting statement while I wrote this. He liked me to Terrence McKenna, the man who theorized that our primitive ancestors evolved the way they did because of psilocybin. While I admit that I don't do much research for this blog, its just me editorializing and giving my opinions, I do know and read enough to formulate my own beliefs and not feel completely ignorant.
On that note, I don't think psilocybin caused all this. Nor do I think its all an act to impress the opposite sex. If anything, it is mankind coming to term with the fact we are indeed alone, the sole intelligent, sentient, and cultured lifeform on this planet. This is also why I believe religion came about. But thats another rant for another time.
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