Quotulatiousness

December 1, 2011

A defence of Jeremy Clarkson’s “strikers should be shot” comment

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

From, of all places, the Guardian:

How are your outrage levels today? Seen a sweary racist on a tram? Heard a TV personality make a bad joke about shooting public sector workers? Retweeted it and carefully added the correct hashtag?

Were you really, genuinely outraged?

Think about how you would have reacted to the story of an obnoxious woman on a tram seven years ago (pre-YouTube — PYT if you like). Would you have told everyone you know? Would you have asked them to tell everyone they know? Or would you have shrugged, mumbled something about the world going to hell in a handcart, and gone back to watching Top Gear, only to be confronted by Jeremy Clarkson making a hilarious joke about Spanish woman gypsy drivers (shrug again, change channel).

YouTube and Twitter are wonderful, wonderful things that have changed how we interact with the world, to the extent that I’m not sure I can remember life PYT. But they have created a mechanism by which we can we can monitor and record behaviour, whether of private citizens or public figures, play them over and over again, and share them with an alarming rapidity. Perhaps this heightened speed also leads us to feel forced into heightened reactions. Without the time to digest context and meaning we can only choose from a range of default reactions, largely based on our own prejudices.

[. . .]

Likewise with angry racist tram lady. My initial reaction to the video was “God, that’s horrible”, but as the storm grew, to the point where even Mia Farrow felt the need to tell us that she thought racism in south London was, y’know, just awful, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman who had become a vessel for everyone else’s outrage. The sheer volume of righteousness becomes off-putting.

And now Clarkson, who has made a dull golf club bar joke about striking public sector workers needing to be shot. God knows the man doesn’t need my pity, but I feel driven towards feeling sorry for anyone who has several thousand people calling for their head simply because they’ve noticed that he’s done the same kind of thing he’s always done. I don’t think there’s a single reasonable person there who actually believes that Clarkson wants people to be shot for going on strike, so why do people feel the need to react the way we do? Lord knows we’re not talking about the most subtle of jokes here, but must we be so literal and unsubtle in our reaction?

Update: Just saw an update from BBCBreaking that Clarkson has apologized for the “should be shot” comment.

November 27, 2011

Scalzi tweets the Lord of the Rings movies

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:28

Stream of consciousness tweets as John Scalzi has an at-home movie marathon:

“The Mimes of Moria” is the name of my next band.

Wife is at a rock concert tonight. I’m watching cable TV at home. Thus are illustrated the differences between us.

OSHA clearly has no jurisdiction in Moria.

[. . .]

The Two Towers now I on. I hold the minority view that it is the best film of the trilogy.

That said, I’d’ve trimmed back the ent scenes pretty severely.

I SWEAR I did not realize I was making a tree pun in that last tweet.

I am suddenly aware of just how little difference there is between Orlando Bloom’s Legolas and certain sparkly vampires one could name.

Orcs vs. Stormtroopers. GO. On second thought, never mind. Neither side aims well enough for it to be interesting.

[. . .]

Fun fact: Shadowfax, the horse Gandalf rides, had a younger, hipper sibling named “Darktweet.”

I wonder what dentists think when they look at Orcs. I suspect “that’s a sailboat right there.”

They could have just distracted the Wargs by throwing a bunch of red bouncy balls and yelling “fetch.”

The orcs would be awesome in a Road Warrior movie. The orcs probably WERE in a Road Warrior movie.

November 20, 2011

If you’re not paying for the service, you are the product

Filed under: Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:07

John Naughton points out that TANSTAAFL still applies, even to “free” services on the internet like Facebook and Twitter:

Physics has Newton’s first law (“Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed”). The equivalent for internet services is simpler, though just as general in its applicability: it says that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The strange thing is that most users of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other “free” services seem to be only dimly aware of this law. Facebook, for example, handles the pages of 750 million users, enables more than half of that number to visit and update their pages every day and hosts more than 70 billion photographs. The cost of the computing and communications resources — in terms of server farms, energy, bandwidth and technical expertise — required to make this happen doesn’t bear thinking about. And my guess is that most Facebookers don’t think about it.

But it costs money — millions of dollars a month, every month. The monthly amount is called the “burn rate”. It comes from investors who make their cash available for burning in the hope that it will eventually pay off in terms of a stock market flotation or the evolution of a profitable business whose shares will be worth holding. In the internet era, the favoured strategy has been to “get big fast” (the title of a famous book about Amazon — that is, add users/subscribers at an exponential rate, and then find a way of monetising the resulting hordes.

November 15, 2011

Salman Rushdie: Facebook is run by morons

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:09

There’s this chap on Facebook called Ahmed Rushdie. He’s a tad unhappy with Facebook over their naming policies:

Facebook has upset Salman Rushdie after the company initially refused to let the controversial author use his common name rather than his first name when signing up to the network.

The writer, who is a newcomer to the Web2.0 game, explained on Twitter that his full name is Ahmed Salman Rushdie.

“Amazing. 2 days ago FB deactivated my page saying they didn’t believe I was me. I had to send a photo of my passport page. THEN…” he tweeted, “they said yes, I was me, but insisted I use the name Ahmed which appears before Salman on my passport and which I have never used.

“NOW… They have reactivated my FB page as ‘Ahmed Rushdie,’ in spite of the world knowing me as Salman. Morons. @MarkZuckerbergF? Are you listening?”

The author of The Satanic Verses, who was forced into hiding in 1989 when a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie was issued against him by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, continued to rant about his Facebook plight on Twitter.

November 9, 2011

Recapping World War 2 through Twitter updates

Filed under: History, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:56

It’s a huge undertaking, but Alwyn Collinson will be sending out frequent Twitter updates with 72-year-old “breaking news”:

The account, @RealTimeWWII, features up to 40 tweets each day and has attracted almost 45,000 followers as German forces tear across Europe in the autumn of 1939.

It covers major military and political developments, as well as featuring eyewitness testimony from the battlefield, contemporary photography and newsreel footage.

Created by 24-year-old Alwyn Collinson, the project is an attempt to “help people feel like they’re there”.

“I’m hoping to use Twitter to help bring the past to life, helping people understand the past as people at the time saw it, without the benefit of hindsight,” he said.

“I want them to see that people then were just like they are.”

I’d follow this myself, but I’m already overwhelmed with all the Twitter accounts I currently follow. This is a much bigger undertaking than the “live tweeting” of the Battle of Britain by the Imperial War Museum.

November 7, 2011

Charles Stross on “evil social networks”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

You could say that Charles Stross isn’t a fan of social networks in general, and Klout in particular:

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

In the past I’ve fulminated about various social networking systems. The basic gist is this: the utility of a social network to any given user is proportional to the number of users it has. So all social networks are designed to tweak that part of the primate brain that gets a dopamine reward from social activity — we are, after all, social animals. But providing a service to millions of customers is expensive, and your typical internet user is a cheapskate who has become accustomed to free services. So most social networks don’t charge their users; they are funded indirectly, which means they’ve got to sell something, and what they’ve got to sell is data about your internet usage habits, which is of interest to advertisers.

So the ideal social network (from an investor’s point of view) is one that presents itself as being free-to-use, is highly addictive, uses you as bait to trap your friends, tracks you everywhere you go on the internet, sells your personal information to the highest bidder, and is impossible to opt out of. Sounds like a cross between your friendly neighbourhood heroin pusher, Amway, and a really creepy stalker, doesn’t it?

So what is it about Klout that sets it apart from the other social networks?

Klout operates under American privacy law, or rather, the lack of it. If you created a Klout account in the past, you were unable to delete it short of sending legal letters (until November 1st, when they kindly added an “opt out” mechanism). More to the point, Klout analyse your social graph and create accounts for all your contacts without asking them for prior consent. It also appears to use an unwitting user’s Twitter or FB credentials to post updates on their Klout scores, prompting the curious-but-ignorant to click on a link to Klout, whereupon they will be offered a chance to log in with their Facebook or Twitter credentials. So it spreads like herpes and it’s just as hard to get rid of. Is that all?

[. . .]

Anyway: if you sign up for Klout you are coming down with the internet equivalent of herpes. Worse, you risk infecting all your friends. Klout’s business model is flat-out illegal in the UK (and, I believe, throughout the EU) and if you have an account with them I would strongly advise you to delete it and opt out; if you’re in the UK you could do worse than send them a cease-and-desist plus a request to delete all your data, then follow up a month later with a Freedom of Information Act request.

October 9, 2011

Is this the beginning of the end for Bernard Berrian as a Viking?

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

Tom Pelissero has the story:

Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Bernard Berrian was a surprise inactive for Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals at the Metrodome.

Cornerback Antoine Winfield also was inactive, but that doesn’t come as a surprise given that he did not practice last week because of a neck injury. Chris Kluwe, who was bothered by a hamstring injury and missed two days of practice last week, will handle the punting duties for the 0-4 Vikings.

Berrian was not listed on the injury report during the week and although he has only two receptions this season, the move almost certainly comes as punishment for Berrian’s exchange on Twitter last Sunday with Rep. John Kriesel, R-Cottage Grove.

[. . .]

Frazier clearly was not pleased and made that clear on Monday.

“I have talked to Bernard and we do … matter of fact Bob (Hagan, the Vikings director of public relations) and some of our PR people actually talk with our team once we come to training camp,” Frazier said. “Just about social media and what our relationship should be with social media.

“It’s something we’ve talked about, something we’ll continue to deal with and talk about. Bernard kind of knows where we stand on that issue and we’ll move on from there. … We want to make sure that our focus is on football and trying to win football games. I think going forward he’ll handle things the right way.”

September 13, 2011

QotD: Responding to the “Climate Reality Project”

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Today begins the 72-hour observance of the Climate Reality Project’s “24 hours of reality” info-event on the so-called “climate crisis” on Facebook and Twitter. I know, I know. Why call it “24 hours of reality” when you’re going to spend 72 hours doing it? Because SHUT UP YOU DENIALIST NAZI SYMPATHIZER!

I’m not on Twitter, but let me share what I’ve communicated to my friends on Facebook:

If ANYONE allows that fat bastard access to their Facebook account in order to spam me with their “THE SKY IS FALLING AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, WINGNUTZ” crap; not only will I de-friend you and refuse to speak to your dumb ass strictly out of principle, I solemnly vow that I will mail a LIVE OPOSSUM to your house in a big box full of styrofoam peanuts.

LIVE. OPOSSUM.

Please don’t test me. I’m serious here. Much like me, live opossums don’t care about fake science. They’re more interested in breaking stuff and having panicked bowel movements on the top shelf of your china hutch.

“Russ from Winterset”, “My Response to ‘The Climate Reality Project'”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2011-09-13

September 10, 2011

Opposing the EDL as a way of expressing class hatred?

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:50

The English Defence League (EDL) has come in for a lot of criticism for its provocative approach to expressing their concerns about issues like immigration. The critics, however, are not all pure in their opposition, however:

This video, currently causing a stink on Twitter, rather confirms what draws many young middle-class liberals towards anti-English Defence League campaigning: it provides them with a semi-legit cover for expressing their fear and loathing of the white working classes.

In the video, two well-bred kids say things about working-class EDL supporters that could have been lifted straight from the pages of John Carey’s The Intellectuals and the Masses, that exposé of early twentieth-century snobs’ disdain for vulgar little people. The anti-EDL campaigners describe a female supporter of the EDL as “the most tattooed, horrible scrote of a woman” they have ever seen and then laugh as they talk about how she was “kicked up the arse” by a left-wing protester. It’s not normally okay to hit women, they admit, but you can make an exception when it comes to female EDL supporters because “they aren’t women — they’re dogs”.

The video has proved enormously embarrassing for Left-wing campaigners against the EDL, who are desperately trying to distance themselves from the naked class hatred expressed by these two twits. Yet the fact is that a great deal of anti-EDL protesting is driven by a barely disguised hatred for that apparently ugly, uncouth, un-PC blob of white flesh that inhabits inner-city council estates. The two guys in the video have only stated it in a more explicit fashion.

August 18, 2011

The comfortable myth that the London rioters were “incited” by Facebook and Twitter

Filed under: Britain, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:41

Brendan O’Neill points out the absurdity of the notion that the rioters in London and other English cities were organized and co-ordinated by use of social media like Facebook and Twitter:

The nonsense notion that the riot was orchestrated by thugs on social media is exposed in the fact that Twitter and Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger were stuffed with rumour and misinformation during the nights of rioting, rather than with clear instructions for where and how to cause mayhem. The use of social media was secondary to the violence itself, which sprung from the fact that urban youth now seem to have so little moral or emotional attachment to the communities they live in that they are willing to smash them up, and the fact that the police, the so-called guardians of public safety, had no clue how to respond and therefore stood back and let it happen. Incapable even of acknowledging, far less discussing, this combination of urban social malaise and crisis of state authority which inflamed the riots and allowed them to spread, our rulers prefer instead to fantasise that England was simply rocked by opportunists who love a bit of violence. And to fantasise that taking away their BlackBerries or restricting what they can say on Facebook — that is, curtailing youths’ freedom of speech — will make everything okay again.

August 11, 2011

You have to wonder why it took them this long

Filed under: Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

The New York City police department announced that it’s setting up a group to monitor Facebook, Twitter, and other social media in order to detect criminals who are stupid enough to boast about their crimes online:

According to The New York Daily News, freshly-appointed assistant commissioner Kevin O’Connor — styled as the NYPD’s “online and gang guru” — will head the new unit, which will trawl Web 2.0 for information on “troublesome house parties, gang showdowns, and other potential mayhem”.

The idea is to pinpoint net-savvy un-savvy juveniles who divulge their criminal plans on the web or boast about crimes already committed. You might think of them as Idiots 2.0.

In his former post with a north Manhattan gang unit, O’Connor apparently tapped the net for vital information on “a number” of shooting cases. In March, the Daily News says, the NYPD nabbed an eighteen-year-old who was part of a fatal beating after he boasted about the killing on Facebook.

July 22, 2011

Has Twitter entered the political sphere?

Filed under: Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

There has to be more to the story, but Erick Erickson is quite concerned:

Today, Twitter not only shut down the Empower Texans twitter feed, but it also shut down the twitter feeds of every individual who works for Empower Texans.

Twitter is a private organization. It can do what it wants. But I am very troubled that it did so without explanation and without anyone for Empower Texans to contact.

If this was an orchestrated effort on the part of others to flag Empower Texans as a spam account such that Twitter’s computer system would automatically can it, Twitter has a serious security problem.

It was a man made decision, Twitter has even bigger problems.

July 1, 2011

Guardian contributer learns not to confuse “sociopathy” with “social network”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:40

Kia Abdullah will think twice before letting her inner sociopath out on Twitter in future:

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, three young British men were killed in a bus crash in Thailand, just days after starting their gap year travels. A deeply tragic case — and one that will have left many British parents sick with worry. Annually about 100,000 young Brits take gap years.

But here’s a Twitter reaction from Kia Abdullah, a Guardian contributor:

Even if you think this sort of thing, sending it out immediately over Facebook or Twitter is just asking for a landslide of public abuse to land on your head. People who work in media have the least excuse for this kind of absent-minded faux pas, as they often pounce on celebrity or politician errors of exactly this sort.

June 23, 2011

Your social media reputation and your future employment prospects

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

Chris Greaves posted this link, which should be a warning to everyone to be (even more) careful about your online reputation:

Camille Cacnio, a part-time receptionist at a car dealership, was caught in a 3-second video clip, stealing clothing from a looted store during the Stanley Cup riots.

She was fired.

Professional mountain biker Alex Prochazka posed in front of a burning car, while wearing a T-shirt from his sponsor Oakley.

The sunglass company promptly dropped him.

Carpenter Connor Mcilvenna declared the riots “awesome” on his Facebook page, and posted several pro-riot status updates, such as “atta boy vancity!!! show em how we do it!!!” and “vancouver needed remodeling anyway….”

RiteTech Construction was listed as his employer on his Facebook profile, and the next morning, Mcilvenna was fired.

His boss said he was flooded with emails and didn’t want the company’s reputation linked to the man.

“I think this will be a turning point in how employers look at social media,” said Peter Eastwood, a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais in Vancouver. “This is an extremely powerful tool that has potentially enormous and immediate consequences for a business.”

This is something the early bloggers had to face, that what you post online (or what is posted about you) will be there forever. No rational employer is going to offer you a job in future without at the very least running a Google search on you, and there’s already a niche market for employers to explore (doing a deeper search on prospective employees). Background check and personal references? I’m starting to wonder why employers even bother going through the motions any more.

June 22, 2011

Carr: LulzSec versus the CIA

Filed under: Government, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

Paul Carr is somewhat dismissive of the hacking exploits of the LulzSec group:

For the past few weeks, a hacker collective called LulzSec has been leading American and British authorities a merry dance. The group’s targets are seemingly random – Sony, the CIA, contestants of a reality TV show, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) – but their stated motive has remained constant: “we’re doing it for laughs”, or, to put it in internet parlance, “lulz”.

If one is to believe the media coverage – particularly here in the US‚ no one is safe from the ingenious hackers and their devilishly complex attacks. The truth is, there’s almost nothing ingenious about what LulzSec is doing: CIA and Soca were not “hacked” in any meaningful sense, rather their public websites were brought down by an avalanche of traffic — a so-called “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attack. Given enough internet-enabled typewriters, a mentally subnormal monkey could launch a DDoS attack — except that mentally subnormal monkeys have better things to do with their time.

Even the genuine hacks are barely worthy of the word. Many large organisations use databases with known security holes that can easily be exploited by anyone who has recently completed the first year of a computer science degree: it’s no coincidence that so many of these hacker collectives appear towards the end of the academic year.

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