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Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

Don’t surf the web in the nude!

by 1389AD ( 80 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, government at June 14th, 2013 - 9:00 am

PJM: Your computer is bugging your house

Homer Simpson naked and terrified in Treehouse of Horror III

The computer you are sitting at right now probably has a microphone. It probably also has a camera looking at you this moment. Is it sending sound and pictures from inside your house to the PRISM program at NSA?

Who knows? But one thing is for sure — the technology is sitting there, on your desk. Welcome to Winston’s world.

Yesterday we crossed a line. What once seemed kooky is now happening. I figured this would be a fight for a future generation, but it is ours. The frightening future has arrived.
[…]
But no war, no threat, no nothing justifies the National Security Agency obtaining a direct pipeline to the Skype chats of every American. What possible justification is there for the government watching granddad talk to his grandkids in real time back in Laurel, Maryland?
More here.

Think it can’t happen? It already has.

Obama with huge ears: 'As for the Verizon records...It's not like we're listening in or anything'

John Sexton on Breitbart asks: What if it is not just metadata the NSA is collecting?

The claim being made in public right now is that the NSA used section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect metadata on phone calls. However there is some evidence that the NSA is actually recording the content of phone calls.

Last week I published a clip of actor Shia LaBeouf claiming, on the Jay Leno show, that an FBI consultant on the movie Eagle Eye had played him a 2 year old clip of a private phone conversation. I noted at the time that this claim had to be taken with a grain of salt given that LaBeouf was on TV to promote a film about government monitoring of communications. But given that secret information sometimes leaks to Hollywood before the rest of us, it seemed worth mentioning.

But LaBeouf is not the only person who has made this claim about the NSA having access to private calls. Just last month former FBI counter-terrorism expert Tim Clemente appeared on the Erin Burnett show on CNN to discuss the Boston marathon bombing. The discussion turned to the possibility of charges against Tsarnaev’s wife. Burnett wondered if it would be possible to prove complicity given that there would be no way to know what they talked about on the phone. Here’s the exchange (audio is faint so you may need to turn it up)…
More here.

But that’s not all.

Even the most innocent, commonplace snapshots that you take with your smartphone can contain metadata that reveals personal information about your family.

“Smart appliances” including electrical meters, automotive systems such as OnStar, and other devices with embedded computers can be used to collect and extract information about your activities.

How about making sure that the politically disfavored classes will freeze in the dark? Bureaucrat-controlled thermostats are on the way.

Nakedsecurity urges computer users to log out of their profiles when finished with their activities. And don’t have the computer store your passwords. If you’re afraid you’ll forget a password and lock yourself out, you can always write your passwords on a piece of paper and lock it up in a safe that you own.

Then there’s Google Glass (h/t: Gramfan). Dry Bones shows how the device will work in the real world. Just what we need, another tool for cyberstalkers and government snoops!

Nudists beware: Spy drones can see what you’re wearing (or not wearing) from 17500 feet.

Living in a rural area won’t keep you safe from totalitarian spying. Twitchy has the story on that:

Room for one more scandal? Senators probe EPA’s leak of farmers’ personal info

Having so many different Obama administration scandals demanding the public’s attention all at once almost works in the administration’s favor; before the full implications of one scandal sink in, another one erupts. While the NSA has managed to bump the IRS from the headlines this week, it’s worth noting that the Environmental Protection Agency is busy doing its part to erode what’s left of the public’s trust in the government.

The Free Beacon reported this week that 24 senators signed a letter demanding to know why the EPA leaked the personal information of more than 80,000 farms, includes names, phone numbers and personal addresses, to left-wing environmental groups like Earth Justice, the Pew Charitable Trust and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Ten states caught sending the personal data recalled it for redaction and then resent it; Montana and Nebraska, however, ended up mistakenly resending the personal information.

Much more here.

The Conversation Prism (2010 version) by Brian Solis and JESS3:
The grabbermint is watching and collecting it all

We stay tuned.

Tags: Internet, NSA, Privacy
Posted in Barack Obama, government | 80 Comments »

The Age of Narcissism

by Deplorable Martian Overlord ( 98 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, Blogmocracy, Education, Entertainment, Free Speech, Guest Post, Health Care, Media, Political Correctness at January 13th, 2013 - 7:44 pm

We have entered a new era in this country. One I am not proud to be part of nor do I wish for it’s survival into our future. We are now in the age of narcissism. Much was made of the “me” generation several years back, but they had nothing on this current generation of egomaniacs. Things have gotten so bad that even the Psychology/Psychiatric industry have taken notice. A few years ago (during O’s run up to the presidency) they began the process of removing Narcissistic Personality Disorder from the upcoming release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition.

What has brought this on? How about a school system that rewards mediocrity? How about sporting events that no longer even keep score in the fear of alienating someone? How about a culture that embraces relativism at any cost? Also much damage has been done by an internet culture that convinces every teen out there that his/her opinion is not only equal but actually superior to all others. Twitter, Facebook, and many others have convinced teens that they are wise beyond their years, they consider their follower counts as proof of their abilities and importance. Now we have a President in this country that represents what they have always believed about themselves, that the “cool factor” is all that matters. It doesn’t matter one whit that he has accomplished nothing of substance, it doesn’t matter that he continues to destroy any chance of a future that any of these kids could ever have. All that matters is that he is cool. He’s not a boring, old, white man with too much money and not enough coolness.

The Age of Narcissism is upon us, may it die soon.

We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists

By Dr. Keith Ablow

Published January 08, 2013

FoxNews.com

A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing.

Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30 percent in the last thirty-odd years.
This data is not unexpected. I have been writing a great deal over the past few years about the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.

On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they “like.”

Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth “following,” as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame.

A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored

By CHARLES ZANOR

Published: November 29, 2010

Narcissists, much to the surprise of many experts, are in the process of becoming an endangered species.

Not that they face imminent extinction — it’s a fate much worse than that. They will still be around, but they will be ignored.

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due out in 2013, and known as DSM-5) has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition.

Narcissistic personality disorder is the most well-known of the five, and its absence has caused the most stir in professional circles.

Most nonprofessionals have a pretty good sense of what narcissism means, but the formal definition is more precise than the dictionary meaning of the term.

Our everyday picture of a narcissist is that of someone who is very self-involved — the conversation is always about them. While this characterization does apply to people with narcissistic personality disorder, it is too broad. There are many people who are completely self-absorbed who would not qualify for a diagnosis of N.P.D.

The central requirement for N.P.D. is a special kind of self-absorption: a grandiose sense of self, a serious miscalculation of one’s abilities and potential that is often accompanied by fantasies of greatness. It is the difference between two high school baseball players of moderate ability: one is absolutely convinced he’ll be a major-league player, the other is hoping for a college scholarship.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/views/30mind.html?_r=0

Watch this video on YouTube.

Tags: children, computer, Culture, Culture Wars, ego, Internet, narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, psychiatry, Psychology, self-esteem, teens
Posted in Academia, Blogmocracy, Education, Entertainment, Free Speech, Guest Post, Health Care, Media, Political Correctness | 98 Comments »

Nobody is posting terrible rumors about you on Twitter. Beware of the spambot!

by 1389AD ( 54 Comments › )
Filed under Open thread at May 14th, 2012 - 8:00 pm

‘Is someone REALLY saying nasty things about you?’ It’s a Twitter scam

By Robb Hicken/ chief storyteller

Got a email in my personal account the other day. It read: “Someone is saying nasty things about you on Twitter.”

Come on! I’m not going to fall for that. And, neither should you. Does it really mean that much that someone is saying something nasty about you?

This is a classic phishing scam!

Clicking on the bit.ly link took me to a fake twitter login. It said that my current session had expired. (I don’t remember ever being knocked off Twitter).

I typed in my login and password, and BBB’s virus scammer stopped me there. “YOU’RE NOT PERMITTED TO ENTER THIS PAGE.”

This week I read further about the scam. It explains this was a phishing scam, and installs malware that would send out direct mail from my Twitter account with similar statements. If anyone received these, my apologies. Our IT department said the virus protector we use should have stopped any items from going out .

A similar Twitter attack was launched in August, October, and December of last year.

If you did click though, take the following steps:

Change your Twitter password.

Verify the email address for your Twitter account was not changed.

If you’ve used the same e-mail address and password on other web sites, then immediately check them out and change their passwords.

If your Twitter account is sending out phishing messages, you should also visit the Applications tab in “Account Settings”, and Revoke Access for any third-party application that you don’t recognize.

Remember, you should always be suspicious of links that you are sent in an email, tweet or social networking site. If you are ever in doubt, DON’T CLICK!

[SOURCE]

Tags: Internet, malware, Open thread, security, spam, spambot, Technology, Twitter
Posted in Open thread | 54 Comments »

Caturday: The Crazy Edition

by 1389AD ( 161 Comments › )
Filed under Caturday, Golden Age of Television, Open thread at July 30th, 2011 - 7:30 pm

Lolcat at computer: 'I are not a crazy'

PJM: Tips for Not Appearing Crazy on the Internet

…In a recent column, I touched on the topic of conspiracy theories, which of course brought in lots of crazy people to the comments section. As I looked through the responses, I noticed how easy it was to scan them or just read the first sentence and say, “Well, this one is a crazy person.” And lots of people scan like this, because crazy people have this habit of self-identifying on the internet that allows sane people to skip over what they have to say before even getting to the crazy point. Thus crazy people never even get heard.
[…]
Now, I’m not going to try to tell people how not to be crazy anymore. That’s a long, involved process of correctly identifying the internal things making them angry in their own psyches that they instead project onto external things. And it sounds hella boring. Instead, I’m only going to tell you how to conceal your craziness. I’m going to teach you how to take your freak flag and fold it up and put it in your back pocket. If you’re successful, people are going to have to really read your points before understanding that you’re crazy. They might even miss your crazy entirely and really consider what you have to say (e.g., “This guy makes some interesting points; maybe I should find out more about this ‘Ron Paul’ person”). Doesn’t that sound great, you social outcasts and conspiracy nuts?

I see some crazed nodding. Let’s get started.
[…]
i can haz proper grammar?

Here’s another pretty basic one: no lolcats speak. Write actual English sentences using real words and proper grammar. Capitalize the first word of each sentence. Use punctuation. there is no reason ur comment 2 a blog or column shud look lik ur a n00b at texting. You’re not writing these things from a old cellphone with just a number pad that lacks auto-complete; there is a big keyboard in front of you.

You save like 0.1 seconds writing “u” instead of “you” at the cost of making yourself look like an absolute idiot. Is there any reason you’re trying to shave off this time? Are there wild dogs bearing down on you as you write why we need another look at Obama’s birth certificate? If so, run from the wild dogs and write your comment later. Your whole sentence shouldn’t scream, “I’m a useless idiot with nothing important to say.” You should never write like that unless you actually are a cat expressing your desire for a cheeseburger.

No Long Screeds
[And no manifestos, either! – 1389]

On the other end of the spectrum from the lolcats speak is the guy who apparently has hours to spare writing pages of response as the 200th comment to some blog post. There are people who have long things to say, and they do it by writing columns or writing in their own blogs. But if you can’t get your column published and no one reads your blog, maybe you’re thinking you’ll get exposure by putting the long screed in the comments section of something people actually will read.

Don’t.

Sane people know that the only people who have hours to spend writing pages of text in a comments section are crazy people. And that’s why no will read what they write except other crazy people with way too much time on their hands. So keep it short. Pick one point, and write no more than a couple of sentences. Keeping it short also helps you police your crazy. I’ve seen comments where I’ve read the first paragraph and thought maybe the person was just a little over-enthusiastic, and then I started the second paragraph and realized, “Oh, this is a super crazy person.” So keep it pithy, and avoid the crazy.
[…]
Respond to an Actual Point and Not Just Something That’s Been Mentioned

Ever watch a paid partisan shill who, no matter what is said, will go to his couple of talking points? Now that has less to do with being stupid or crazy than just being soulless, but lots of crazy people are the same way, going back to the crazy stuff they really want to talk about no matter what subject people are actually on. And often crazy people will just read until they see a word or phrase that sets them off and then go off on a big, crazy rant before even reading the whole thing they’re reacting to. Often, then, they’re completely missing the point or missing that something is satire and taking it seriously.

Now, I know when people have crazy in their brains, it is really impatient to be let out. Still, you need to teach your crazy to wait and make sure you are actually listening to and understanding what you’re responding to. Like if someone mentions when Hanukkah is this year and you respond with a rant about Jews controlling the banks, you’re not actually having a sane person conversation. You’re just reacting to words someone is saying, which, despite the similarity, is leagues different.

Now, this is really advanced hiding-the-crazy. In fact, it’s at the borderline of trying not to look crazy and actually not being crazy. If you can actually read and understand what non-crazy people are saying and still keep your own crazy, that’s a really advanced state of crazy you’ve achieved. Be proud.
[…]
More tips here.