just act like you know what you are doing
99 showed me this site with adverts from all over the world. Sport Factory Outlet has a few zingers as does a publication in the Ukraine called Novynar.
Sport Factory Outlet: Books | Ads of the World: Creative Advertising Archive & Community
So that’s your Friday distraction for this week, enjoy.
Filed under: Real Life, The InternetIt has been out for a few days, but I’d like to draw your attention to a recent article in The Guardian newspaper about the Hunt for Russia’s web criminals. There are lots of levels of Bad Guys making trouble on the Internet, this group just happens to be among the baddest. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
Filed under: Security, The Internet
Some of you out there might be wonderin’ how I get my kicks so fly. I’ll let you in on a l’il secret. It’s the laces. And, because it’s Friday, payday, and I’m feellin’ a l’il extra special generous I’m gonna show you how I do it. I learnt it all here:
http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/
Filed under: Funny, Real Life, The InternetDo you ever wonder why you get so much junk email? Do you ever wonder how many people actually buy pills based on those advertisements? Do you ever wonder where the money goes? Ever wonder where it comes from? What about all that scary talk where your social security number and identity can be stolen from your computer (or off of the servers of any site you share that information with)? It is all part of what one guy I know calls “the underground economy”. I think that’s an accurate assessment. Here’s a link to a fairly academic, very thorough paper on how it all works.
http://www.icir.org/vern/papers/miscreant-wealth.ccs07.pdf
Spoiler alert: they do it for money.
There are exactly two things that make “the world go ’round” and influence the majority of human behavior; money and sex. In this case, it’s the former.
Filed under: Security, The InternetYou may find it amusing that NBC News anchorperson Brian Williams did a cameo on Sesame Street telling the childrens that “Today’s Word Is Squid”. Sure, that’s worth a smile. :)
But is it just me, or is it truly one of the amusing facets of the Internet that there’s a whole blog devoted to squid stuff? And what’s more, there’s enough stuff that it gets posted to regularly — sometimes multiple posts in a day! Every post is worth a look, too. No junk here. I know that squid are (the recent word of the day and) something of a regular red herring (pun intended), but when they are immortalized in the lolcat cannon, you know it is a meme to stay.
After browsing this site, I think you’ll agree that its creators, Scott Beale and Mike Monteiro are totally deserving of the “inordinately fond of invertebrate” badge from the Order Of The Science Scouts.
And you could even get it on a t-shirt, if you were so inclined. It comes from the diesel sweeties.
Filed under: images, The InternetToday real life familiarized me with the work of Benjamin Edelman, who works at the Harvard Business school where he has put together a good collection of links and information about Internet filtering worldwide, up at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/.
If you’re interested in this topic as I am, you will find the links there useful.
Filed under: Real Life, The InternetI have a new one for you. By one I mean web-comic. By for you I mean that you should check it out now.
Here in America we make big talk about the freedom of speech and the Internet as a means to equalize all voices. But once again research is showing us that for much of the world that just simply isn’t true. The latest is this article in Dark Reading explaining the forthcoming OpenNetInitiative’s research on how many countries restrict Internet content (25 out of 41 studied).
To be clear, I’m not talking about the kind of network access restrictions that prudent network directors put in place to ensure that people aren’t visiting goatse.cx while they are supposed to be working, I’m talking about blocking everyone in the country from accessing certain content based on political or “moral” decisions made by the regime (or “administration” depending on your point of view) in power.
Now, as a technical matter savvy Internet users will be able to get around these filters without much trouble. So once again, you can’t defeat the geeks. And as a practical matter once the leading edge folks figure out how to do it they’ll make a simplified method for the average folks.
So why, then, do these countries continue in this way? Is it the case that those in power don’t understand the technology, or perhaps they are misled by those who wold benefit by supporting implementation of such a plan? Certainly such hubris requires tons of hardware and software and labor and consulting and bandwidth and … it is a big, expensive effort this stifling of information flowing through the network (just ask any CIO).
In my limited experience of the world, (and to be sure, I’m neither a psychologist nor a persuader) it is easiest to shape someone’s opinion by letting them form their own opinion. To do that you have to enable them to access all of the information about a topic (even if they only access very little of it in reality). You also have to let them decide to dissent, to form their own opinion different from yours if that’s what happens. I guess what I’m describing here is freedom. Freedom of information, freedom to digest that information (think), and freedom to live their lives in response to the truth they find out about this world.
Realistically I suppose that perspective isn’t going to fly very well in places like China and Iran.
Filed under: The Internet
