Author Archives: tacit

Meme madness: The street finds its own uses for things

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So, according to the latest viral meme, I belong to two cliques of size 9:

I am a member of 2 cliques of size 9

Find the largest clique containing:
(Enter your livejournal username here).

This is interesting for its own reasons (there are some common denominators in all the names listed, which I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader to describe), but I think what’s more interesting is how it works, which is described here.

Discovering these two threads of nine users in my friends list required a couple of minutes of activity on a server of unknown capacity and about 6,000 database search steps, and turned up lists of people with several significant things in common with me. Yes, it’s a toy, but it also demonstrates the power of data mining.

Now, let’s suppose the same thing were to be done to, say, social or political networks in government databases. Let us further assume that the government were looking for people with, say, subversive political views. I’m sure you can figure out where this is going…

The software is dumb. It knows nothing about me and it knows nothing about the people on my friends list, yet it teased out a list of people with very unconventional social views, based on nothing more than the fact that like-minded people tend to gravitate toward one another. The software doesn’t have to be smart in order to be able to reveal patterns of social activity that a human observer might not see.

So. Fred is in a government database. Fred is being scrutinized by the government, because he has Dangerous and Unacceptable Ideas–that Iraqshould be left alone, say, or that George W. Bush is a miserable failure. Or perhaps he’s a Communist–who knows?

So. The database plots Fred’s social contacts–who he talks to, who he goes to the movies with, who he has lunch with. The government wants to find a list of other subversives like Fred, but it doesn’t want or can’t afford to spend the manpower to knock on all of Fred’s neighbors’ doors. Well, hey! Who needs that, when all you really need to do is search the database of social contacts?

As a LiveJournal meme, the cliques list is kind of neat. As a proof-of-concept for social database mining, it’s slightly disconcerting.

Everything I really needed to know about life…

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…I learned from the movie Maximum Overdrive. For example:

– An ATM machine printing the word “asshole” on its screen over and over again is really pretty funny.

– If you’re ever attacked by a killer gasoline nozzle that’s been animated by sinister forces in the tail of a comet, step back. The hose is only, like, six feet long or something.

– Same goes for animated killer carving knives. They stop attacking when they reach the end of the power cord. Evil extraterrestrial animating forces can make knobs and levers move on their own, but can’t make the blade of a knife move without electricity. Or something.

– The redneck owners of out-of-the-way diners can always be counted on to have a cache of weapons in the basement.

– Coca-Cola is bad for you. Especially when fired at you from a vengeful vending machine.

– Don’t let Stephen King direct anything.

And most importantly:

– If you’re a truck driver in a Stephen King horror flick, it’s never, never, never a good idea to put a gigantic, demonic Green Goblin face on the front of your semi rig.

Back home…

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…from what may easily be the Least productive Business Trip Ever.

Still, it could easily be worse…choose your path wisely, sex drone! (work-safe, funny)

Thoughts from the convention floor…

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* * * * * M E M O * * * * *

FROM: Homo Sapiens Sapiens

TO: The other members of the animal kingdom

Re: Some changes

As you may or may not have noticed, the primate family has given rise to a new species. We’d like to take advantage of this opportunity to introduce ourselves.

We are small, hairless, and lacking in armor, scales, fangs, claws, or hides. What we do have, however, are big brains , opposing thumbs, tools, and language. Some of you may believe that these don’t count for much. This memo is here to set the record straight.

Over the next seventy thousand years or so, our numbers will explode, and we plan to dominate every climate and every geographical region.

Many of you will be hunted into extinction, either for food or for sport. Many of you will be exterminated as we encroach on your habitat. A few of you will be domesticated, as food animals, beasts of burden, or (if you are cute and fluffy enough) companions. All things considered, domestication is probably your best bet.

Some of you are dozens of times bigger, stronger, and faster than we are. You may think that this gives you an advantage over us. We have a different way of looking at it; we seet it more as “one of you will feed fifty of us for a week.”

Some of you currently inhabit areas that very remote geographically, or seem to have climates inhospitable to a naked ape, or both. We’re more adaptable than you, though. We’ll get there eventually, trust us on this. Again, all things considered, domestication is probably your best bet.

Regards,
Adam

PS: Homo Neandertalis: Yes, we’re aware you also have tools, language, and opposing thumbs, and you’re gifted with a higher cranial capacity than we are. However, we breed faster than you do, we form larger social groups than you do, and we’re more aggressive than you are. Just sayin’.

PPS: Did I mention that we’re really, really, really aggressive?

Leaving, on a jet plane…

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I will be in Washington, DC on a business trip from today (Friday) through Tuesday. Most likely, I’ll have this afternoon and evening free, and Saturday and Sunday evening as well. Anyone have any recommendations for things to do/people to meet? Any good clubs in DC?

Well, hell.

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The Xero site is down, and will be down for the next couple of days at least. Earthlink is moving it to a new server, and assigning a new IP address, which will take some time to propogate.

This means that, among othe things, all the LJ entries which I had placed pictures hosted on the Xero server won’t show. They dumped the contents of the server wholesale; i had backups of the site itself, but not of the LJ directory where the images were being served. (I also serve images from a different server, so many of the pics are still showing.)

On the good side, however, I have a credit card merchant account; the site’s being transferred to a different server so that the merchant acocunt processing gateway software can be installed on it.

This is fate’s little punishment for being an early adopter. 🙂 The site originally went live in the mid-1990s, and was being hosted on a DEC Alpha server using DEC’s Unix. The ecommerce software doesn’t run on Alpha servers; Earthlink had to transfer the site to a Sun server to make it work.

Wait, did I say “transfer the site?” I meant “wipe the site completely and let me upload it again to the new server.” I lost all my Apache configuration files and all my links to my Perl scripts and SSIs, many of which will now have to be rewritten, or at least modified. Lost all the feedback in the guestbooks, too.

*sigh*

Well, it was bound to happen…

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The first-ever cell phone virus has been reported by antivirus research firm Kaspersky Labs.

It’s still quite primitive, infects only Symbian phones, carries no payload, and spreads via Bluetooth. As such, it’s a proof-of-concept, not a dangerous virus. Unquestionably, however, cell-phone viruses have been demonstrated to be technically possible and feasible…pretty scary, when you consider that Microsoft, makers of notoriously insecure operating systems and Web server software (IIS is so well-known for its security holes that a lot of people call it “Inherently insecure Server”) is getting into the cell-phone operating system business.

It’s all about perception, not about reality

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Observation: The Air Force operates a highly secure facility in Groom Lake, Nevada, known as “Area 51.”
Observation: Area 51 is used to test supersecret experimental aircraft and prototypes of new figher and reconaissance planes.
Observation: There are things in the sky over Area 51 that I can’t identify.
—–
Conclusion: They must be extraterrestrial space aliens.

*headsmack*

Perspective

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Sometimes, in the middle of hurt and anger, in the middle of being overwhelmed by work stress and IRS audits and relationship changes, it’s easy to lose track of the things that really matter.

I’ve just discovered that someone I know personally is dying. She’s been given only weeks to live. kattaryna, you are in my thoughts.