Social Insecurity Part 2
Twitter is a pretty cool web application. In 140 characters or less you ‘tweet’ about what’s going on around you. The service can be used on phones, your PC, from web pages, and dozens of other innovative solutions. The feed can be seen with practically all methods used to post to it. It seemed like a dumb idea to start with, but it’s really taken off. There are countless imitators and a lot of do it yourself kits to make your own site that does essentially the same thing.
You can find a lot of apps for the iPhone, Android and other smart phones that make use of Twitter and similar services. It’s become popular enough that Google has come up with ‘Buzz’ and there’s another service called ‘4Square’ that makes the idea into more of a social game. As a computer geek I see some pretty awesome applications for all this and some annoying side effects of the system that one should be aware of.
First of all I want to talk about the idea of smart phones and geo location. A lot of phones are equipped with some kind of GPS or location capability. Many times this is simply triangulating off of a cell phone tower or towers to give a rough estimate of where the phone is. This method is the most common and can be accurate to several city blocks. Some claim the phone can be located to within just a few meters. So we can reasonably say this method can be used to figure out what part of a town the device is in.
Other phones, including the iPhone and many Windows based phones have true GPS recievers in them, which can potentially be accurate within inches of where you are actually at. I’ve seen and read ‘within three meters’. For us Americans you can guesstimate that being just a little over three yards. This is a really precise location method that can be easily translated into exact longitude and latitude. With some phones I’ve been able to see what part of a building it was in. We can say that true GPS can show the exact location of a device, sometimes within mere inches of where it’s located.
The other less talked about method will actually work on a lot of computers too. By taking information about a person’s IP address on the internet, and some router information it’s not particularly hard to figure out what city the device is in. You can’t trace it down to a specific building very easy but you can get a good idea where it’s at. Google also has a database of wireless router MAC addresses all over the U.S. which CAN be cross referenced to a specific building. This type of location is fairly similar to the cell phone triangulation method but not nearly as accurate. Depending on what city the device is in and several other factors this can be used to locate the device anywhere from a city in general to a specific building.
What does that have to do with Twitter? A lot actually, especially if your phone has the location features turned on. Twitter itself isn’t a huge problem as it doesn’t always store geo-location information, however Buzz and 4Square do. As a demonstration to some friends of mine in the Dallas area I opened buzz up and looked some people up. I decided to single out a young woman I saw since that’s what your average sexual predator would do.
Within minutes I knew the girl’s name, what she looks like, and where she hangs out. I deduced she was either a college student, or someone who liked the lifestyle of a college student. I figured out what her habits were, what kind of coffee she drank, how many pets she had, how many children she had, the genders of those children and the fact that she was a single mom. Had I kept looking and cross referencing her ‘tweets’ to locations I could have probably figured out what park bench she sat at, who her friends were, and probably even where she lived. All from my phone in the span of about twenty minutes. I wasn’t even on her friends list, these were just public tweets!
To me that just screamed potential rape victim. Or victim of any of a number of other crimes. Now what I do want to point out is that Texas does have concealed handgun laws and a very loose definition for self defense. This woman might be extremely capable of defending herself and her children. If so I applaud her.
So what’s the deal? Anyone can just find anyone who uses social networking like that? Pretty much yes. Granted one would have to have a minimum amount of technical savvy and some reasoning skills that not everyone is really in possession of. So how do you prevent this stuff?
Again tightening your security settings, being careful about who you let see this stuff and using common sense about broadcasting your life to strangers. Sites like 4Square and Google Buzz are particularly annoying in that they are supposed to be public, so if you’re worried, don’t use them.
Sites like 4Square and Buzz can be used in a relatively safe manner by only checking in at highly public locations and not posting a picture. Really popular places can serve to give you some anonymity in real life if no one knows what you look like. It won’t guarantee you won’t have a stalker but it might cut down on the chances.
All that being said, most people who will stalk a person or commit a crime are not going to use Twitter, 4Square or Buzz as a primary means of targeting someone. However, in this day and age it is absolutely not out of the question.
Social Insecurity Part 0
I have some credentials that make me at minimum ‘knowledgable’ on the subject.
I have been working in the IT industry in some capacity for over ten years. I have been a denizen of the net for nearing fifteen years. Since day one I’ve been using it as a social tool. I’ve been around since the early days of the web when AOL was still the thing to have.
Social networking sites have changed the whole landscape of the web. Microblogging and status updates are here to stay and with them come a whole new set of things to be careful about.
Social Insecurity Part 1
It got me thinking about what could have happened to me if I’d not cooperated or if no one had seen me knock the mailbox off and the sheriff had been a little more annoying. I paid for the mailbox even though I’m sure he had it stuck too far over the road and had this been my home town I probably would have won in court. But say I hadn’t paid for insurance, no one saw me and I just thought it was funny.
One of the first things I might have done was posted about it on Facebook, or in my blog here. Maybe not right away but later. Then say the owner of the box had found the pieces of the mirror and the rental car company discovered the damage after I’d already gone home. Now, being me I probably would have just admitted to the damage, but I could have easily said that someone smacked the car in a parking lot, or just denied even knowing about it. It was hardly noticeable and on the passenger side.
The rental car company might have investigated further but under normal circumstances likely would have never found the police report about the mailbox. Even if they did, drawing a conclusion that involved me would have been a real stretch. The town I was in was not exactly anywhere close to where I’d rented the car.
What really would have been an issue though is if the car company had decided to go ahead and take me to court over the mirror. I know for a fact that in my own hometown of Amarillo that there are people in our DA’s office that do nothing but check out people on Facebook and other social networking sites. They just search for people on the internet and look for stuff they wrote. This is a town of under 200,000 people and even we have lawyers that do that. Our law enforcement has claimed to have figured a lot of stuff out and caught people just using Facebook.
Now if we have people smart enough to do that, I can reasonably conclude that the lawyers for Enterprise or Budget rental cars do the same exact thing. So they look me up on the internet and manage to find me, not a terribly easy task but hey, I was the one renting the car, not my boss so they even had my social security number that I gave to them like an idiot. They find this nice, well worded story about how I knocked a mailbox off a post in that East Texas town. Maybe I was smart enough not to say the town’s name. They knew where I was that week though so it wouldn’t be hard to start asking county law enforcement about incidents. Then they could see from my Facebook page that I do in fact know a few people in that town.
I could deny it all I wanted, but the pieces of mirror, the fact that I was in the area, and a whole church full of people that would have no reason to cover for me would be pretty damning evidence. The pretty much written confession on Facebook would have not helped me either. There would have been a whole lot of laws broken there and the ensuing fight over the mailbox would have been ridiculous once the legal system was involved. In short I would have been in a lot of trouble instead of just settling the damage like men.
The conclusion I hope you’ve come to from reading this is that social networking and blogging like this can be a very dangerous thing if you’ve broken the law or are involved in a lawsuit of some kind. I hope that no one is, but stuff does happen. You have to understand that law enforcement and the legal system do have people that search you out on the internet. They do look at Facebook pages, they will use deception to get access to your stuff, and they will use it against you. There is no need for a warrant to use something against you that is public knowledge. The Miranda rights are there for a reason when you get arrested. This should be extended to your internet life too. It’s pretty simple and I think any defense attorney would give me a standing ovation for saying this: Keep your mouth shut!
If you are suspected of doing something illegal, or are involved in a lawsuit, you should probably cancel all your social networking accounts. Delete any posts that could be incriminating. At very least lock your privacy controls down so that the prosecution can’t easily snoop into your life. Don’t write about what you did or didn’t do. Do not talk about the incident online, whether you were actually involved or not. Don’t talk about a case if you are on the jury, don’t post about it and don’t write to the paper. Do not make it easy for them to find something that could convict you or get the case thrown out.
Some would argue that it looks suspicious just like it would look suspicious if you didn’t talk to the cops. That is your right to do so though. You not talking can not seriously be used against you in the United States legal system. I don’t have the academic credentials to give legal advice, but I’d have to conclude that removing your presence from the internet so that the prosecution would have to subpoena the account is along the same line of reasoning. They can’t just walk up to the phone company and get your call history for the last several months. They have to get a warrant to search your computer. They would need likely need a separate warrant to access your e-mail account (especially if it web mail and not on the computer). Why let them into your Facebook account without a warrant either?
That’s not to say that law enforcement, lawyers and judges are the enemy and should be subverted, but the whole social networking scene is a relatively new layer of stuff that can be used against you in court. Even if you’re involved in a civil suit it’s possible that a thoughtless Facebook post could get everything thrown out. Or worse yet, someone who might be guilty of a crime against you or your family could go free because the case was dismissed due to recklessness on your part. Why take the risk?
With any of this you should definitely consult with your lawyer first. I tend to think most would agree with at least locking it all down as quickly as possible though.
Streaming Anime and Podcasts
I’ve been listening to the Anime Pulse Podcast for a couple of months or more now and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with it. I like the Manga Pulse better, even though I don’t read huge amounts of manga in general, although I do get cravings. I find Tim and Weltall to be a lot funnier and informative than Ichigo and Batou. So if you read this, you should be listening to Anime Pulse. I’m not a subscriber yet, I don’t find getting the podcasts two weeks early to be a huge benefit, but I may in the future should I want to win some contests or something. It’s $5 a month, so not a big deal there.
Can check them out here: www.anime-pulse.com Of course, I found them on iTunes when looking for some long involved stuff to listen to on the way to Dallas. Listening to music makes me irritable for some weird reason.
I am a subscriber for Crunchyroll.com. A site I thoroughly enjoy. Lots of anime there, and they apparently simulcast stuff as it comes out in Japan, so they have new episodes of several series that are on currently. Naruto Shippuden in particular. So for $6 a month you can get pretty well current episodes of anime as it comes out. I have been able to find a few shows I like pretty well during the two seasons or so that I’ve been a subscriber. Worth every penny. Plus it’s ad free.
Of course not being a subscriber gets you the episodes about a week after they come out, with ads. They’ve got a ton of archived stuff too that you can watch too. So I usually pick a few new anime that look interesting, and then casually watch some older shows.
In particular I’ve been following Naruto Shippuden, Omamori Himari, Hanamaru Kindergarten, Durarara, Chu-Bra, and Tagami Bachi. Last season I was pretty into Tagami Bachi, Girls High, Charger Girl, Happiness, Sora No Otoshimono, and Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu – Purezza. I’ve watched a few episodes of other stuff here and there, but the only thing I could find myself coming back to was Fist of the Northern Star. Lots of great stuff, just so much to choose from. A lot of ecchi titles I know, but Girls High in particular had a good story, as did Nogizaka Haruka.
I found out Crunchyroll has an iPhone app. I haven’t played with it, but that’s really cool. Get some streaming video I assume in 3g enabled places.
Hulu has been another great choice. They don’t have near the Anime selection Crunchyroll has but they do have a fair amount of Funimation stuff, as well as Naruto if you need another way to keep up with it. I’ve watched some Death Note, and finished up Samurai Champloo on it. Some of their stuff is even the english dubs, so if that’s your thing (some anime just seems better with it honestly, especially if done well) Hulu is the place to look. They’ve got some english versions of Naruto there too, and from what I’m told the captioning and translations, especially on the song is a far cry better than Crunchyroll. Gotta be careful on Hulu though, they do have some uncensored stuff so if you have kids watching anime, it’d be a good idea to check that out.
Media Center PC
Finally got the blu-ray player to integrate within Windows Media Center, and if the Crunchyroll plug in for Boxee would actually work, I’d be set.
Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites are something I never really saw coming, at least not in the form they came in. My first foray into the internet was on AOL in 1995, if you can really call AOL the internet. At least in the early days it was pretty cool, I have no idea how it is now. Never really did the BBS thing or any of that but as far as I can figure AOL was the social networking service of its time. Tons of chat rooms, places to go for every interest. Eventually the started providing instant messaging. I’m not sure if they were the first or not but I know at one point ICQ and AIM were the only messaging clients out there.
That’s what I saw social networking as. AOL-esque chat rooms, forums and messaging. The whole status and comment thing that Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and others do just never appealed to me as much as the AOL chat rooms did. Would rather talk to people over the phone or instant messages and e-mail or even in chat rooms then what I consider to be a regression back to the old BBS’s of the 80′s and 90′s. That’s really what it boils down to, giant bulletin boards with our lives posted on them for all to see in bite size pieces.
They aren’t exactly the same but the idea is pretty similar. Instead of the longer posts of the old bulletin boards, we now make more, smaller posts that are more about what’s going on or what’s on our minds at that point in time. Certainly you can meet new people that way. Just doesn’t seem the same to me.
Anime on Blu-Ray
- The disks are overly protected, you only get the full benefit of them if you use HDMI, otherwise you are throwing away your money. To play it on a computer you’ll need one of only two licensed players and Sony won’t license anyone else, harming the open source ideal. While none of the disks currently in productions actually have the restrictions for analog signals like they say, Sony can flip a switch and turn these restrictions on at any time. They only want to use digital signals, you have to have specific compatibilities to play them and so forth. Basically evil film companies are infringing upon the rights of the people and are basically forcing people to buy a lot of unnecessary new TV’s and such to enjoy high definition. Blu-Ray should be boycotted. Buy DVD’s instead because their protections are easy to bypass.
- The movie companies are well within their rights to protect their intellectual property and try to prevent piracy. Other technologies have virtually forced people to buy new equipment as they’ve come out. No one is forcing anyone to use Blu-ray and DVD sales are still pretty strong. Get it if you want, wait a few years and it will be cheaper and easier.
I agree with both sides of the argument, honestly. That’s a topic for another post though.
What does it have to do with anime though? The whole high definition thing is a pretty valid argument for not buying anime on blu-ray or HD in general. As cartoons they’re easier to upconvert and have a higher tolerance against pixilation when stretched out higher than their normal resolution. So the cheaper DVD format is quite sufficient for the purpose of storing anime. Theoretically there should be little difference between an anime on blu-ray and one on DVD. Except price, the blu-ray is probably more expensive.
In my experience that’s not entirely true. I found box sets of Basilisk and Witchblade on sale on Amazon for a few dollars less than their DVD box sets. I have a home built blu-ray player so it worked out really well.
The quality of the anime was noticeably better on the blu-ray than it was on the DVDs. Quite a bit sharper than it was on a TV similar to mine at my parents house on the normal 480p resolution. Fit the screen better, and the sound was higher quality too. I don’t know if the anime was the full 1920×1080 or not but it was definitely better.
Another good thing was that each set only has three disks for twenty six episodes rather than six, or eight or twelve like some box sets have on DVD so there was much less switching of disks. A full ten episodes fit on the disk, which is very cool if intend to watch more than about two or three hours of anime at a time. Not having to store a lot of disks is a real bonus too. If I get the Naruto sets, I’ll be getting them on blu-ray because of the sheer number of episodes involved.
The only drawbacks I see are a slight lack of bonus features, and the disks don’t have a lot of the extras that other blu-ray movies have. Some titles have games, interactive features, and other extras. Other companies may add these to their anime, but the two Funimation titles I have did not. No offense to fellow Texan, Clarine Harp (who produced at least Basilisk’s disks), but come on, have your crew pick another template for the menus. Other than that, they are excellent and do have one feature that you don’t see much on other titles: they work with the mouse on a computer. So excellent thinking there!
So, my mind has been changed about buying anime on blu-ray. It’s definitely worth a few dollars more, or in the case of some, significantly less, than the DVD sets.
Death Note
The plot appears to be a pretty straightforward boy-with-special-powers story. It started out as a manga, and I can just imagine the first one starting off something like, “Hi! My name is Light Yagami and I found this notebook that kills whoever’s name I write in the book. Here are some of the rules!”. Or some scene on the street with him witnessing a crime, and an internal monologue. Pretty standard stuff for manga.
I’m looking up a scan of the manga just to see how close I was.
Ok pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t start out like that. It starts out more like what one would expect from an American comic.
So the plot is this, a college student named Light (Raito) Yagami finds a book called the “Death Note”. The notebook is a powerful relic/item from the realm of the “Shinigami” (translated loosely ‘god of death’). It has one basic function: Whoever’s name is written in the Death Note dies. The writer can control the time and cause of death so long as it is physically possible. The writer has forty seconds to write cause of death, and four hundred seconds to fill in the details. If that doesn’t happen the person will die of a heart attack.
After experimenting with it a bit and proving to himself that the notebook is the real deal, Light goes on a crusade to ‘rid the world of evil’ by killing criminals who he decides should die. Because he is a genius, he does this in what he considers to be a clever fashion and thinks things through so he won’t get caught.
On the flip side of all this, once the murders are noticed, is a detective known only as L. L, we find out later, is about the same age as Light and has a serious sweet tooth. He’s also as much of a genius as Light is, which is no small thing.
It’s pretty cool to have an anime where the ‘weird crap’ is actually not terribly important to the story. The real story is the battle of wits between Light and L, and later two replacement detectives. Certainly the Death Note is a great plot device, but the story would be just as good with a normal serial killer and detective.
There are three live action movies based on the story, two follow the anime/manga loosely and the third is about L’s final days alive. I’ve got the first one, it’s pretty cool but they really should have got a white guy or at least someone taller to play L I think. The actor is good, but doesn’t quite fit the character in my opinion. The guy who plays L is spot on though.
I highly recommend watching it all. Hulu has streaming episodes here: http://www.hulu.com/death-note
Honestly though, Death Note has some of the strongest English voice acting I’ve seen in any anime. Watch the English dub if you can. You’ll really appreciate it if you watch the movie with the dub as most of the voice actors are the same and nail their characters in my opinion.
The Nothing Day
On a sweet note, Amazon is now selling Kindle’s for $299. I want one pretty bad and knocking off $80 or so has enticed me. Still dunno if it or the Sony e-reader is better though. Amazon does have a huger library and the Kindle is the ‘thing’ to have. Saving $25 on the e-reader and not being able to order from Amazon is kinda a drawback. Debating pretty hard on it.
It won’t save money honestly. But every so often I order about $30 worth of books from Amazon and those books take up a LOT of space. Also sometimes I forget I have them. The Kindle takes up very little and I’ve been more prone to read it all on my iPhone. Plus I can take notes which might help my Bible study out tremendously. I also might actually read newspapers if I had one. I think a lot of people are in the same boat with me on that one. Newspapers kill trees, take up space, get wet, and the only read advancement in newspaper technology in ages has been ink that doesn’t rub off on your hands -as bad-.
On the home server front I’m about ready to throw Fedora 10 on that bad boy and redo it entirely. Something is screwed up with the mySQL installation and it won’t allow me to add some of the new apps I want to try.
If you have not checked out Amahi you really should. It’s awesome and free, and does darn near everything Windows Home Server does, and then a lot more on top of that. Good web GUI and all kinds of stuff. It works really when you compliment it with Windows Live OneCare and make a Backup Share. If you have a lot of hard drive space you can backup your entire hard drive over the network with Portable Backup Appliance, it requires System Restore CD though. There used to be a PXE boot setup for it but I think they took it off because a lot of home grade machines don’t support PXE booting.
I am sorely tempted to cobble together a good basic machine and set it up with Amahi and then do a sort of value-added service and sell them, possibly with a good solid extenal hard drive for backups. I know a lot of people don’t see the need for a home server, but you could SERIOUSLY save a lot of money in the long run and generally speaking never have to worry about their data. They could work well for a small business or home office. Remote VPN access is pretty sweet too.
Reading wise I’ve been pretty into the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. Pretty nice ideas about the whole vampire/werewolf thing and doesn’t seem to be going in the same basic direction as the Anita Blake books have. It’s just as well written too in my opinion, probably better written. For me to say that is something, as I am a fairly solid fan of Laurell K. Hamilton, just not the direct her books took.
Yeah I know, what am I, a guy, and a straight one at that doing reading vampire/lycanthrope/magic romance/horror books. I’d have to say I don’t really know the answer to that question but I have been enjoying them ever since my friend Nita got me hooked on Anita Blake. I will say to all the authors of such books out there, it does not have to be about the sex! Come on! Yeah I know what vampires are all about, yes eroticism does play a big part in the genre but it isn’t necessary to a good story. I’d like to see more without all that and more smacking down on the bad guys or mystery solving, like Jim Butcher has done with the Dresden Files. I’d also like to see more from a guy’s point of view. Check out Mercy though, guys can get into those books even if it is from a woman’s point of view.
Also no I have not read the Twilight books, do not want to read them and vampires should under no circumstances sparkle in the sunlight except as they catch on fire.
Cats and Mythology
My dog Dilios has taken to protecting me from the cat by making sure he is securely up against me whenever possible or at least between me and the cat at all times. This makes for some interesting evenings sometimes.
I’ve been watching Introduction to Classical Mythology from the University of Missouri, a semester worth of lectures by Professor Joseph Hughes and some of his fellow professors. It’s really incredible. I thought I’d read a LOT of books on mythology, Greek, Egyptian, Middle Eastern, and some Asian but apparently my education has been lacking and quite one sided. Maybe because I didn’t draw conclusions from those books, I simply read the stories for what they were and went on, didn’t really give them huge amounts of thought. Dr. Hughes is a lot more thorough in his examinations, and pretty funny too. Never heard a professor just flat out say, “I really don’t care at all about [topic]“.
The pop culture references are a bit dated, as best I can figure the videos were shot in about 1998-2001. I think it might say, but at any rate they are roughly ten years old. That isn’t extremely relavent but unless you were growing up in the 1990′s you might be confused by some of the references. You can download the whole set on iTunes for free. Personally I listen to them in the car during long drives for work or whatever. I have to say I have learned a lot and have been really inspired by them. Definitely will be looking on iTunes and elsewhere for more stuff like that.
I have to say I never really was one of those bookworms (though I am a bookworm) that just went out and read the classics or poetry in general but I’m actually reading Euripides and am looking for some free downloads of the Illiad and The Odyssey. I can honestly say that if it were not for Dr. Hughes lectures I’d pretty well have absolutely no interest in reading actual ancient Greek literature (well english translations of such). So thanks Dr. Hughes, new world of reading has been opened up for me.
Making a mental note to eventually change the coffee cup on the banner. The weird china just isn’t me. I’m more of a plain mug kind of guy, and I’m really more of a hardcore tea drinker anyway.
-
Google+
