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Here's why definitive words about the risk, security, etc., etc. of digital identity, particularly viz. identity theft and so on trouble me. I've never heard of UK's IT Contractor site before, but it's carrying a story about a Norwegian hacker who cracked Google's video software in less than a day (Norway's finest cracks Google Video). The lead:
Only a day after rolling out free software that lets users watch video clips from its servers, search giant Google has had its latest service hacked by prominent computer cracker, DVD John.The air mass is always moving and direction can only be relative.Known outside the industry as Jon Lech Johansen, the computer specialist from Norway has successfully reverse engineered Google Video Player, effectively allowing short film clips to be played on any server.
The Globe & Mail -- like every other media outlet is carrying this story: Homolka seeks ban to protect her new life. A couple pulls from the piece:
Convicted killer Karla Homolka is seeking broad and unprecedented limits on the press's right to tell the public about her new life outside of jail.Yup.and
Ms. Homolka says she knows full well that she is still deeply reviled, and believes someone will make her pay for that with her life. . . . "I have lived in a climate of hatred and revenge for more than 12 years," she says. "I have the conviction that individuals would like to do a public service by assassinating me."
We knew it was coming; nobody knew when. The Toronto Star is carrying a story about an announcement from Visa Canada and Moneris (payment processor): Visa card with chip fights fraud. Rather than comment, here are a few excerpts:
Canada's largest credit card processor says it will start rolling out machines that can read microchip-based credit cards on July 11, the first step in revolutionizing the consumer's wallet.Digital identity gets a boosts right in the wallet.. . . Moneris announced that it would provide dozens of retailers with the readers in July. . . . It will be another year before Visa Canada starts issuing cards with chips, however. . . . The rollout will take three to five years, [Visa Canada president, Derek] Fry said, as credit cards expire and are replaced with chip cards and card readers are replaced.
All of which is great except -- again -- how will it all fit together with integrity?
Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates are both in the Orient; the former in China, the latter in Japan. ZDNet Australia is carrying a story Ballmer reveals Microsoft's biggest threat and it's not Google or open source. Ballmer's story is that Microsoft's biggest threat is its own inability to incite customers to upgrade. Yup, computer and software technology is so solid (at least Microsoft's, I guess) that there is little or no incentive to trade up or change. That's my experience too, so maybe he's on to something. In the piece though, there is an inciteful little quotation, that ought to be tattooed on the forehead of every "customer-close" business person in the world:
"I find at our end customers expect us to show them things that they never thought about. They don’t expect us to just listen to them."On the other hand, if we don’t listen to our customers, if we’re not paying attention and being responsive to their needs, we’re also way off track," he [said] [Emphasis mine, although who knows how he actuallysaid it.
I live in a new and relatively upscale, high-density community. It is marked by single family dwellings with footprints approximately the same size as the properties and by multi-unit dwellings on even smaller spaces. I'm from the country: this is not enjoyable. Because my neighbourhood is so new, though, the backyard area has been generally open. A few neighbours have gotten together in little pockets and fenced themselves in (more below). And in the safety of their cages (or, as some prefer) within their "defined spaces," they have everything they need . . . except sun, breeze, 25-foot depth of field . . .
Anyway, this summer appears to be the summer to define one's space. These things tend to go like dominos as a result of economics, peer pressure, and God knows what other psychopathy that informs the need to imprison oneself. One "good neighbour" (who hasn't spoken to anyone . . . well, ever . . . and rarely if ever uses their exterior space -- probably because there's no fence, I guess) will get a quotation to build a fence. The fence builder then points out that if the adjoining neighbours all participate, the cost of the fence gets cut in half because everybody shares. (For all I know, a crafty fence builder will give the first guy a commission of some sort to get things rolling.) So it begins, and ripples outward with each committed neighbour seeking help from the other side of his/her yard.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to fences. Not at all. Robert Frost said it all:
What I do disapprove of is being under house arrest, which is the feeling I get in a walled garden (literally) that is so small. What's with the six or seven-foot "privacy" fences? Nobody in this neighbourhood is going to put in a pool of any consequence.Mending Wall
by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
I wonder if, assuming nobody comes outside into their yards because there's the possibility of others seeing what they're doing -- maybe eating or bar-b-queing or just sitting with their friends and enjoying the oppressive heat -- given that they don't have a wall around their yard, these same people have a challenge eating in a restaurant or going to a beach or park or shopping mall. It's all very peculiar to me. But then again, I kind of like the sentiment here:
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commencesAnyway, I took the trouble to document the process.
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me inOh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies, Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, Don't fence me in
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please, Don't fence me in
to be continued . . .
I spent about a year creating a market test for a very cool consumer response (to advertising) capability. Not doing it any more, but this sort of news still interests me: Advertisers want to see what kind of bang their buck buys. One of the adjunct values of the system is that advertisers get to see right into the real return on their (typically) broadcast advertising: they see the results in terms of consumer response to their offers. One graf:
"Advertisers want to understand: What am I getting for my money?" said Doug Checkeris, president and chief executive officer of Media Co. in Toronto. ". . . Our measurement tools -- what we measure, how we're able to measure it -- are still pretty rudimentary."Does mainstream media attention give the idea legitimacy? Does it mean the curve is close
Apparently MSN is joining Yahoo! and Google in the local search business, according to this TechSpot item: MSN to offer search results narrowed to local geographies. Why?
The move is seen as an important one, since there is a growing industry focus on the ability to search within individual communities.I would say the "focus" is probably more of a "realization" or coming back down to earth (so to speak) of an industry that presumed it had ridded the world of the merely physical.
We are corporeal. We live in a physical world. We eat physical things. That's not going to change -- even with Internet 2.0.
I love this, from a post by Tim O'Reilly on O'Reilly Radar: Planck knowledge and chauffeur knowledge. Here's the small taste:
. . . there are two types of knowledge, the kind of rote knowledge that the chauffeur had, and the deep knowledge that Planck had.Read the whole thing.
Don't know why I didn't think of this earlier [d'oh]. I'm hoping that one of the three of you reading this knows something about (a) connecting to the Internet, (b) Mac and OSX, and (c) why the latter would suddenly have issue with the former, and be able to advise.
Short story: in the middle of converting favourite CDs to MP3s in iTunes for my ipod, iTunes stops being able to access the CD database. Strange. Then, everything on the Mac (Safari, Mail, MSN) stops being able to access the Internet. I'm running a wireless network and despite my work PC being attached and talking just fine with the outside world, I go through the process of getting the ISP's tech support guy on the phone and cycling the modem, router, computer, etc., etc. Bupkis! A little more hunting and I find out that the router is still allowing the correct MAC address for my Mac through. Also, the computer is no longer able to get an IPaddress from the router or modem. It's giving itself only the 169... IP address.
So I thought, "Firewall!" Trouble is I don't remember having one except the kid-proofing demo software I didn't like and uninstalled some time ago (well before upgrading to Panther). Yet System Prefs says I have another -- i.e., not Apple's standard -- firewall installed and running. Hmmm . . . router?
Anyway, if any of the few of you out there is running a Mac and seen anything like this happen before, some hints for diagnostics or repair would be very appreciated. In fact, anybody technical who can suggest something regardless of your computer religion would be a hero to me today . . . the wife's email inbox is sure to be piling up right now.
A while back, I took aim at The Laws of Identity with a critique that missed the mark, I'm sure, because I opted (well, truly, I had no choice) not to evaluate it with through the lens of a technologist. One of my comments in regard to Law 2: Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use was:
I think that minimal disclosure for a constrained use is essential for privacy and user control, which, presumably, is what drives Law no. 2. The statement, "There is no longer the possibility of collecting and keeping information 'just in case' . . ." [emphasis mine] is, however desirable and logical an outcome of a need-to-know minimal distribution of information, not part of technical mechanics. It is, as everyone doubtlessly knows, a matter of policy and practice. Somewhere I read not all that long ago that two of the non-obvious forces that are driving the creation of massive directories and databases -- about people -- are that (a) thanks to computing capability it's easy to accumulate rich records over time and (b) thanks to cheap storage there's no disincentive to keep accumulating information. These together with the underlying belief that "information is power" and all the other marketing and security-driven forces for creation of directories may be a little bit more than the principle of minimal disclosure can overcome, methinks.Today, MSNBC (among others) is carrying a story about data mishandling by a credit card processing firm in Atlanta (Processing firm: Credit card data mishandled - Consumer Security). This situation speaks to digital identity generally, and at least from one angle to Law 2. Here's the money quote to support my earlier statement:
Oops. Broken law. Technology -- architecture or otherwise -- may or may not have been able to avoid it.
He [John Perry, chief executive of Atlanta-based CardSystems Solutions Inc., which was hacked] said the data was being stored for "research purposes" to determine why some transactions had registered as unauthorized or uncompleted. "We should not have been doing that," Perry said in Monday's editions of The New York Times.Under rules established by Visa and MasterCard, processors cannot retain cardholder information after handling transactions.
"CardSystems provides services and is supposed to pass that information on to the banks and not keep it," Joshua Peirez, a MasterCard official, told the Times. "They were keeping it."
I love irony, and this cup overfloweth. Still, nobody -- particularly the sinoic mentality [not a real word as far as the OED is concerned, but my own adjectival form for "sino-"] likes to lose face. There will be repercussions; whether we hear about them or not. Story from the FT: Hackers deface Beijing's security websiteSnip:
Chinese hackers have defaced the website of a police-run security company that is leading a new effort to strengthen the Communist government's control over the internet.
There's a line of logic -- rural wisdom, I suppose -- I've heard though most of my life that goes kind of like this (in this case regarding deciminalization of certain recreational drugs): The drug trade is run by criminals who get all their ill gotten gains tax free and outside the bounds of any kind of regulation [ed. which, I suppose sort of defines the "criminal" portion of the description]. Instead of using good money to fight the war on drugs against an enemy that has a lot of money and power, legalize their business. Then it can be regulated, they'll have to submit to taxation (and an immediate decrease in their wealth by some 50%), and the fun will be gone. Mostly this conversation would centre on the taxation aspects and the regulation. Force compliance with quality levels, advertising forms, etc. brings the whole thing into the open where it can be fought in an area where civilized society's assets and strengths are more potent. Similar lines of thought would underlie discussions about prostitution and other social challenges.
So what? Well, I see this announcement (Microsoft Aims Avalanche At BitTorrent) that Microsoft is "enhancing" the peer-to-peer process of BitTorrent with its own "Avalanche" system as a step in that direction. A snip from the piece:
. . . developers in the UK have been working on Microsoft's version of the fast file sharing system known as BitTorrent. Those R&D people say they can make it easier to share large data files, such as movies, television programs, and software packages like the forthcoming Longhorn operating system.
A point of view in three parts:
First: We have a sport here in Canada that will never make it to the Olympics. Its core is the creative use of the Constitution and other legal frameworks to avoid prosecution by process. The most frequent, so simultaneously boring and increasingly creative, approach is through the requirement for bilingual services. Canada as a whole and specific regions and areas have made commitments to provide all services, including traffic tickets apparently, in the recipients' choice of English or French. Using the absence of one of those languages, however partial or immaterial its absence might be, is the approach. A progressive Manitoba judge has upheld the sports integrity and issued what appears to be a 6.0 average score (most of it on technical merit rather than artistry): Unilingual traffic tickets thrown out
Second: Another child is suing a minor sports organization. I blogged about another one of these situations a while back, here. So, my views about children and their parents suing recreational sports clubs because they didn't get their way is out there. In this case the poor boy was punted to a lower-grade squad because daddy was a pain-in-the-ass. So counsel is claiming that "the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the sons." Get real. Daddy, if you really want to do something for your child's development, hiding your own unwarranted sense of ENTITLEMENT is a good start. There are rules and ways that social structures are constructed. Live with them or go someplace else. [As a note, the best part of blogging from the wilderness is that there is absolutely no requirement to be impartial, well-informed, or judicious in opinion ;-).]
Third: This is a sad story from Oakville. A young boy died on the weekend mountain-biking and doing stunts on a landfill pile. No lawsuit . . . yet. I'm not one to scold those who are or have been hurt. Especially those that are feeling guilty. Consider the words of a neighbour or friend interviewed in the story:
"We tell them not to go up the hills," said Gill, a mother of four whose son Sheldon fractured his wrist riding his bike on the same hill last year.So they've been after the city to raze the hill. I guess it's somebody else's responsibility to make sure that boys will not be boys -- or if they are, it'll be OK."But you know boys. If there's a hill, they'll go on it."
Silly bugger process and procedural games; false entitlements; abdicated responsibility. [ed. I speak my truth as I see it. Still, I understand why people might not care to be around me much.]
Johannes Ernst has been -- with some shouting out of the wilderness from me and others -- crystalizing his thinking about "Why digital identity matters." His most recent posting in the thread is here: More Feedback on my Why Digital Identity Matters piece. I'm on board. I've bought it all. I've drunk the Kook Aid. And, like Johannes (not to put words in his mouth), I think digital identity's potential impact on business and life could be extraordinary. Probably though, because digital identity is a structure that will enable other capabilities, it's impact will be felt in unanticipated -- perhaps even unintended -- ways. That's the danger.
While we all (this band of merry identity prankgang-sters) argue over "laws" and "standards," and bun-fight about what's open v. proprietary; while we wax about readily visible applications to help business particularly do more better, and fret about whether the identified person is a "user" or a "market" or an "employee" or a "citizen," and cringe over the many, many other minutae of how this system could or should work, it's full breadth moves further out of our grasp. Which sounds vaguely Eastern. But, for all you scientific rationalists out there, there is an axiom from physics -- don't remember its name nor the exact wording (Bohr or Heisenberg, perhaps) -- that says that you can either know the velocity or position of a body, not both. I see the same thing happening in its own way with digital identity.
Maybe it has to happen. The devil's in the details as they say. Somebody -- maybe everybody -- has to get deep and dirty into the how the system has to work to address all the known potential issues and concerns. That would ensure we were creating a "best practice." And, in point of fact, only in that way can the architecture be created. Most engineers find it difficult to implement sweeping generalities: bridges fall down under those conditions. And we don't want a system that has the potential to be foundational for so much in the future to be unstable.
But what if it's a strong foundation for the wrong things? What if in looking hard at the details and working diligently to identify the requirements, constraints, and conditions of what we know today (i.e., the position in space) we are successful? What if smart people like Kim Cameron and so many others architect and build against all that we know? That would be great wouldn't it? Except of course because we know the position, we have foregone knowing the direction and velocity. That could be a problem.
Nothing is at rest, relatively and truly. Digital identity is not at rest. In fact, we tend to all agree that it's just beginning to pick up speed. And, it picking up speed has the collateral effect of causing shifts to the understanding of identity and social systems more broadly -- more philosophically, if you will. The whole system is complex and it moves. That movement in the broad environment is as or more important than the movement of digital identity alone. Why? Well, consider: Athough I'm not a pilot, I've read a lot about flying (in preparation to take lessons, I think) and understand that a pilot can follow the correct directional vectors, putting on the right amount of throttle, and still end up way off course. Why? The air moves and the plane moves right along with it so that the directional vectors are themselves valid only at a particular point in time . They become increasingly wrong, to the point of being detrimental, as time passes. There are so many obvious examples of the environment within which digital identity exists moving. Somebody -- maybe everybody -- has to keep an eye on it.
Why have I gotten all allegorical and indirect? I think it's because there's no easy and direct "business-like" answer to the line of thought Johannes has raised. At least none that will be valuable for very long, despite there being an excellent opportunity to use extensive pseudo-language to communicate the urgency of activity. But the questions might illuminate the essential need to keep a broad field of vision (i.e., check up on the direction and velocity) about what we're doing even as we narrow in on the details of the activities at hand (i.e., focus on the position). Or we might be furiously creating an irrelevancy.
Or maybe I'm full of shit. It's happened before. Not often, but it's happened.
I just completed my first eBay sale, and it's good. Got rid of a few of the kid's Disney videos to somebody who wanted the whole bundle at a decent price. They paid immediately through PayPal (raising my faith in humanity in general just a little) and I shipped it out today. If it weren't for the ridiculous cost of the parcel post, I'd say it was perfect.
Does raise back up to the front of my mind a paper I'm working on about how critical geography is to the world (i.e., to societies), including -- surprise, surprise -- the Internet. I'll post a draft sometime soon when it's nearing done.
So an innocuous conversation this afternoon sparked a tinderbox of thoughts that I have to exorcise -- here. Sorry. My question is, "What happened to civility?" Or, in other words, why have we largely come to accept rudeness as being alright?
It's way to easy to jump on the pedestrian sort of rudeness like the broad but noticeable absence of "please" and "thank you," "excuse me" and so forth. Almost as easy is to observe that almost never does a man give up a seat to a woman in a public place, and absolutely never does a youth do that same courtesy for anyone their senior. (You will, of course, prove me wrong with complaints that just last week some teenager or another did just that. Well, OK. But it's not common.) Even the day in day out "me" approach to guiding a six ton propelled missile on the street is far too easy: when was the last time you watched somebody come up the obviously wrong lane and merge inappropriately in order to avoid the long line-up everyone else has to sit in? Dave Rogers, in examining his own "anger problem" lines up the possible valid excuses for this last commonplace action. My response is, "Maybe, but I doubt it. Not everyone has an emergency."
But, at the end of the day this is all in its own right small beer. That might be the problem. I'm on a roll about the widespread ignorance of what is, in fact, rude.
From my own life's experience I draw the following anecdotes.
When I was young, in a small town in Western Canada, there was a pecking order and it cost nothing to be polite. The people were mostly not wealthy nor -- given that it was a farming community -- preoccupied with their perceived station in life. (Note that this would be key differentiating factor exhibit one.) No matter how little affluence, one could have pride in being clean, standing straight, and being polite. There wasn't a lot of change to the community in terms of who came and when. It was like I once read about some Germanic description of the "right people": they were of the blood and the soil. Here, at least in Quebec, they would be described as pure laine (literally, pure wool). Pretty much everyone knew their place in the pecking order. Adults -- any adult -- were treated with respectful deference by juniors (especially small children). I could go on.
That does not seem to stand any longer. Children have the misguided notion, apparently propagated by their self-absorbed parents, that they are equal in every standing. Parents beat on teachers to defend their (often culpable) children against the tyranny of "the system" that dare to punish them for some transgression of good form -- let alone reprehensible act -- in even the most lax way. In concert with this zeitgeist, the school system organizes and operates itself in a way that doesn't harm the child's self-esteem. That means, they never know real discipline and that the teachers/administrators really are in charge. Dear angels. How can they possibly understand that the world is not yet their oyster?
Eventually these self-absorbed, unguided children become self-absorbed, unguided adults. They are the "me only" generation and they reproduce like upon like. But I'm digressing.
The trouble is the rude adults probably don't even know they're being rude. Nobody tells them. Everybody else seems to be the same way. It might require a visitor from another planet to say, "Hey what's wrong with you people? Don't you know that you're not special? You don't deserve to get to the front of the line just because you're the fattest person to belly up to the teller? Don't you realize that your little world of half a dozen people who are "your friends" is fragile? Have you yet to be in the shoes of those people you dismiss because they're not part of your group?" That visitor won't come. And if she does, she'll likely not bother with the warning. What's the point: nobody will listen anyway.
Another anecdote and simple illustration of how rudeness doesn't even seem to be noticed. Let's say that you received some tickets to a show and were looking for someone to go with you. You decided to invite someone you spend a little time with and with whom you know there is a mutual friendliness. You call. Answering machine: everyone is so busy these days. You don't get a response until the morning of the show. And what you get, utterly unapologetically is, "Yeah, I didn't want to go, so I didn't bother calling." Nice. Only person in the world, I guess. Couldn't possibly be that you would want to invite someone else . . . I won't even get into the standard ambivalence toward responding to an invitation -- obviously not to commit just in case a better offer comes up.
Further anecdote. Just to show how little regard you have for people who might host you in their home, once you arrive (inexplicably and unapologetically forty-five minutes late) you proceed to spend the better part of the evening on the cell phone with your children, their care-giver, or anybody else who has your number. And, of course, the evening is cut short because even before the flambe dessert has gone out you've got a coat on and are on the way out the door. Well, thank you for the wine.
I mentioned that in the small town where I grew up there wasn't a lot of ebb and flow with the population. Not so in our transient urban times. Most of us move once or twice -- or more -- these days. Well, back in my home town if somebody moved in, everybody knew about it and acknowleged it. I'm not talking about bringing over baking, etc., although that did happen -- a lot -- but general hospitality. Newcomers, as we were (for about eleven years we'd hear "Oh they're the new people.") once, received many invitations for dinner, to social events, to be part of things. And this was in an inward looking little community that had a challenge with "outsiders."
[This was feeling like a rant, and my wife wanted me to come watch "Hitch" last night. So I've slept on it. No change in my feelings. Hitch was worth the 90 minutes invested. So . . .]
Yet, it's been my experience in the seven or eight moves across town and between cities in the past five or six years that it's not the way of the much more cosmopolitan ;^) urban world. We've moved to a new city and in the course of 48 months had 3 (!), yes that's correct -- three -- invitations to be a guest at someone's home. If it weren't for the few people that we knew before arriving in that town, it could have been quite lonely in the cocoon. I won't get into any more of the details. Suffice it to say that everyone (including us, admittedly) has so much already planned that it's near impossible to work things out. (I'm relatively certain this fully scheduled crap is just that: crap. It's spin. It's what we believe is expected: sort of like how the Japanese company man stays at work until 8:00pm whether he's busy or not. But that's another post altogether.)
What the night off did effect is my desire to continue with more anecdotes. I think the point is made: it seems that every day I see another example of what used to be considered rudeness delivered in public and accepted as commonplace usage. I find myself occasionally (sp?) falling into the same habits. And they are just habits. They can be undone. I, for one, am a little tired of it. Be fierce; be aggressive; be direct; be yourself; be polite God dammit! Letitia Baldridge where are you now?
I don't ordinarily blog about things that go on here around work -- nobody really cares that much and it's sort of a policy of mine. Still, we had a fun day that my electronic products team was in on. It was raining; we could all melt. It turned into lunch with a "rain check." By the end of lunch it was only drizzling -- kind of like Seattle on a day by day basis, I think. Anyway, scenes from the bar-b-que:
Just happy to get outside and pretend we live in Vancouver. (You don't have to shovel it, anyway.)
The boss surveying the situation:
While Jill remains in complete control.
Now we get to the main event . . . bar-b-que.
Hey, come on "chef" -- it's a bar-b-que . . . in the rain. What's with the get-up?
Simon surprised by my sneak attack papparazzi move.
Susanne and Mike not as surprised, although that's surprising.
Gary, who was fully expecting to get caught with a spoonful of sundae going in.
And, finally, the price to be paid for wearing a suit to a pic-nic, bar-b-que party. Stylist Cal "Arrojo" (for those unfamiliar, TLC's What Not to Wear has a stylist that can make anybody look good. His name is Nick Arrojo) applies the product (read: Cool Whip) to Nantais.
And fun was had by all. Now get back to work.
The horror stories about the non-responsiveness of credit bureaus to pleas that a stolen identity has created an untenable situation for an innocent victim are legion. Wonder how Equifax and TransUnion, et al, will deal with any such fallout from their second breach in a year here in Canada, as described in this Globe and Mail item: Criminals breach Equifax security for second time.
The story points to one of the principle challenges of making a business case for a digital identity management operation: the largely unquantifiable liabilities that could arise. One of which is the real potential that such a breach could deflate a business very fast as pointed out by network security consultant Claudiu Popa, president of Informatica Corp., "For a credit reporting agency, this is a huge hit. . . . All the trust goes out the window."
Oops.
Far be it from me to poke gratuitously at Microsoft -- or anyone else for that matter (after all, you never know who you might want to pay you at some point in the future), but this bears comment. ComputerWeekly has a story today (Corporates still hold onto W2K) about the installed base of Windows op systems. I think the survey was done in the UK, but I'm not sure. The statistics are as follows:
AssetMetrix found that 48% of corporate IT environments were running Windows 2000 desktop -- only four percentage points less than in the fourth quarter of 2003.There is, of course, more in the short piece. And . . . ?Windows XP has risen in popularity from 6.6% to 38% during the same period. Windows 95 and Windows 98 have fallen from a collective 28% to less than 5%, and Windows NT has dropped from 13.5% to about 10%.
Many of us have been waiting for the promised applications, upgrades, fixes, and so on -- for identity and otherwise -- that are "coming in Longhorn" according to Microsofties at every level. Which is great except . . . what these data show is that just this past quarter has deployment of XP grown to a significant level. And only 4% of it comes at the expense of W2K. XP deployment could grow a little bit more in the next quarter or two -- maybe at the expense of W2K as the service period on W2K expires. Maybe at that point will the dominant OS version be XP.
Based on this history it would be reasonable to expect that better than 40% of the market will not have Longhorn for 3 or 4 years having "just" upgraded to XP. How many upgrades from the remaining 60%ish of Windows systems will go to Longhorn? (Are those remaining 1 out of 2 business still on W2K waiting with bated breath for Longhorn to come out?) More importantly, how quickly will they move?
Still dicey for anybody waiting for the functionality of Longhorn to drive their own capabilities.
Just food for thought.
There are so many topics that the headline I just made up could lead me to. In this instance, it's an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail entitled, Business needs to do more to stop cybercrime. The essay addresses an (informed) question about the development of eCommerce in Canada and, by extension, around the world. Using data from a recent Pollara poll conducted for Symantec, Don McLean, editor-in-chief of ITWorldCanada.com, asks whether the online commerce world is simply too "seedy" to succeed.
He extrapolates and questions what it'll take for eCommerce to become a commercial place of choice for the average joe. I like his choice of the summarizing word "seedy" because of how it evokes the notion of a downtown shopping district that is a little dangerous, pushing the timid masses to the apparent safety of a sterile suburban mall. The dearth of shoppers means the locals don't bother to upgrade (clean) their surroundings, so the area gets "seedier," propelling more of the fat middle-class purchaser market away. The spiral continues.
So, it's a chicken and egg situation. Or, switching metaphors, just chicken. Who'll blink first: the eCommerce-striving businesses that need to invest more to make their district less seedy overall, or the consumers who need to suck it up and go there for the quality and value of the product (increasing the merchants' revenue, incenting upgrade investment)?
Ironically, this chicken and egg description has a lot to do with a form of "the tragedy of the commons." Consider: there can't be much of an incentive for a store-front retail operator in a "seedy" district to clean up and brighten his/her space because the entire district is gloomy. Investing to do so won't necessarily bring in more customers nor incent the neighbors to do the same. It might, on the other hand, create a shiny new target for vandals and thieves.
The parallel comes up a little short in the online world: after all nobody sees the neighbours. More than that, nobody has to walk through that common neighbourhood. Any single business can spruce up and make passage to their offerings safer at purely their choice irrespective of the neighbourhood.
Regardless, McLean presents some interesting information, which is excerpted below:
A survey of 1,250 Canadians by Pollara on behalf of security product vendor Symantec Corp. observes that 45 per cent of B.C. residents and 41 per cent of those surveyed in Ontario don't feel safe from threats such as hackers and identity theft while shopping on-line.In fact, four in 10 Canadians feel "unsafe" when shopping on-line, and similarly, nearly one in four say likewise when banking on-line. The survey was conducted in early May and researchers say the results are accurate to a total of plus or minus 3.2 per cent.
Given that Canadians are among the more Internet-connected and IT-savvy folks in the world, these observations lead one to wonder whether there might a real danger of people turning their backs on cyberspace business and commerce.
and
Pollara survey observes that 58 per cent of on-line Canadians have been a victim of a computer virus or worm -- a number that may be significantly higher, given that some people won't admit to falling prey to such activities . . . Yet IT security remains a marginal investment for most businesses and something they're inclined to spend money and time on only when they have to.
and
Canadian companies are dragging their heels even in areas where they are legally required to take action to secure information. . . . Still, the . . . survey results show more than half of small businesses required to be in compliance with the Canadian Privacy Act are in fact not, and 43 per cent of small businesses in Canada that must be compliant with PIPEDA are not.
Dave Rogers (Groundhog day) points to Steve Jobs's commencement address at Stanford, here: 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says. It would be too easy to be cynical about the message and its messenger. I choose not to be because its his truth and it may even be universal truth. Here's a sad fact, he points out:
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
I love the iPod. But, as usual, every wonderous technological advance (go with me here, I know it was just cool packaging of a bunch of available parts for the most part) created for a noble -- or at least consumer-benefitting purpose has a darker potential. This Guardian piece points to one identity (and other) fraud application for the iPod: Fraudsters use iPods to steal company information. The money shot:
"Ipods are not a new toy, but whereas corporates still don't know much about their capabilities, individuals do. In a recent case, after we got a court order, we found the data the employer said was missing on a former employee's iPod," added Mr Carratu [president of the Certified Fraud Examiners].
Honey, I'm bringing home a truckload of canned salmon and 3% milk. WebMD, via FoxNews: Calcium, Vitamin D May Prevent PMS. Not for you; for me.
It's been fascinating for me to watch the US and Canadian media fixate their worry on the "housing bubble." It started as a little bit of dripping here and there about four months ago or so. I attributed the rapid spread of this story to and among other media outlets to be bandwagon jumping. But, the nuance of the stories has changed a little: it's gone from wonder (i.e., "What if. . .?") to prognostication (i.e., "When . . . because . . . and so . . ."). A recent piece from the Globe and Mail points this way: The latest worry: A housing slump leads to economic bust.
Alan Greenspan, the human starting gun, poured gas on the embers last week by raising the issue of real estate and the "wealth effect" problem with a pull-off. So, from the Globe article, we end up with business school professors providing both deep detail and colour commentary:
"Housing wealth tends to have a much more dramatic impact on consumer spending than equity wealth does," [UCLA's] Mr. Thornberg says. "The consumer spending impact of housing wealth seems to be about six to seven times larger than equity wealth.Psychologists and practitioners of certain Eastern religions will tell you that you are what you think. That happens if for no other reason than because others will generally respond to you as you project yourself: be a schmuck, they'll treat you like a schmuck; be a mensch . . . You get the drift. That's at the micro level. Watching the storyline unfold viz. real estate might be an excellent -- if not costly for those fortunately enough to have generated wealth from real estate gains on their home(s) -- opportunity to see if it works at the macro level as well.
I hardly know the sordid details, although I won't let that keep me from commenting: The Globe and Mail: Michael Jackson found not guilty on all counts. OJ, Robert Blake, Teddy Kennedy, and oh so many more I just don't know or care about . . .
Fat and ugly. On the playground they go together (or at least they did when I was a kid). Now "fat" implies "and old," at least according to a group of researchers with nothing better to do: TheStar.com - Fat speeds up signs of aging, study shows.
A team of researchers from the U.S. and Britain found that the more a person weighs, the older their cells appear on a molecular level, with obesity adding the equivalent of nearly 9 years of age to a person's body.So does that mean that a hugely overweight teenager (a) is less likely to be carded buying cigarettes or beer, and (b) should pass the test because s/he is over age at a molecular level?
Johannes Ernst, in a blog post entitled Why Digital Identity Matters, poses the broad question answered by the post's title. In the text though, he redirects the message to wonder, "Why this, not that?" In response to his invitation for comment and feedback, I offer the following.
Johannes, to answer your question:
Is Digital Identity only important to a small minority . . . who have drunk the Cool [sic] Aid, or is the Digital Identity cause inevitably going to take over the world at some time?Yes. But it's not an either/or question situation. Digital Identity ("d-ID") is now only important to those of us who have quaffed the Kool Aid. It will be important to increasing numbers of others over time. Whether it "takes over the world" all depends on what that means. If the question is whether identity -- especially for/of people -- will be manifested broadly in some digital form, then the answer is self-evidently "yes." It has and is moving that way already. If the question is whether some accepted standard form for representing "identity" -- whatever that turns out to be when we've finished our fun fights -- on the Internet and in other ethereal worlds will eventually supplant pervasively all other forms and systems around the world, only a fool (not a visionary) would stake more than a nickel on the guess.
But that's not really where you were hoping to go with your post, I suspect. Your appropriately more earnest question is, I think, "Why are we splashing around in the shallows of an institutionally-framed, banal discussion about security, costs, and efficiency rather than rising to a visionary one focused on the power for d-ID to have a transformational effect on humans and society as we know it?" (My apologies for the hyperbole.) Well, to be glib, d-ID just isn't quite as significant as the move from foraging to agricultural society; it isn't the wheel, moveable type and the printing press, or the steam engine. As much as I too believe in the game-changing value of d-ID to unlock greater potential of Internet-based Electronic Communications, I can't see it. And that is why the visionary discussion can't happen yet beyond the ranks of the believers and the faithful.
I have to admit that I'm at a bit of a loss to imagine how your tool of empowerment (no. 5 in your list) would or could catch hold. These things tend to arise organically. Perhaps it's merely my cynical eye, but would "quixotic" not be as apt a description for "If you and me could claim our place in cyberspace, just like corporations . . . we could create a shift in the relative distribution of power from big companies to the individual," as it is for where you've used it appropriately in reference to stirring up excitement for the mundane? People generally die or get hurt on such campaigns and so far there hasn't been much success -- which is not to suggest that the battles are unwarranted but merely that what sounds great as a vision gets ugly on the battlefield.
You say you want a revolution . . .
John Lennon
More than pedantic jibing though, I fail to see "transformational" value in the three examples you list toward the end of the post. With all due respect to Marc Canter's idea and the personal value digital lifestyle aggregation could bring to people, it sounds like a relatively trivial convenience (think: all-in-one remote control). Hardly lives up to the billing of being "potentially tremendous and tremendously valuable consequences all across society" [emphasis mine]. Your own Situational Software strikes me similarly. Quite likely of significance to the creation of an anyhow, anywhere capability for device, application, and service use, but probably won't shift society too much. As for PeopleWeb, I find the idea interesting but can't get a hold on the practicalities of it whether in the health record domain or the online buying-selling paradigm. Wasn't the premise of Priceline the same sort of inversion? Does anybody know how they're doing or if the business model has migrated anywhere else? Did Priceline require d-ID to work?
In any event, let me take a stab at the reasons why we collectively might be focused on the first four of your listed application areas and not the fifth. (Although I suspect you were being a little disingenuous and well understand why. You may be disappointed by and disagree with it, but I'm sure you understand.)
It's not sexy, but it pays the bills.
Will a society-changing impact be felt? Maybe, but only after the various immediate corporate interests are served and there is an easy (and obvious) potential for profit. Don't expect too much either as it is a (non-existent) highly-enlightened corporation that would willingly cede power to the masses.
It is up to the believers to keep the faith and follow the vision while doing what's necessary between now and then. Viva la revolucion!
Contrary to philosophical questioning, sounds like God runs Sun: Vatican starts Sun worship (from The Inquirer). "THE VATICAN bureaucracy has announced that its secure messaging operating is going to be run on Sun Microsystems kit."
If the Vatican's IT bears the Sun or Java logo and words "Powered by Sun," do you think McNealy and Schwartz obtained a reciprocal right: "Sun, powered by God"?
Not that you, my reader, noticed but the "tag line" for this blog, up there in the window frame is, "looping right along." I'm thinking of changing it to better reflect what's going on at this blog. What do you think:
1. Barking at the moon
2. A voice in the wilderness
3. The sound of one hand clapping
4. Going in circles but getting much better at it
5. Who cares?!
6. A requiem for John Kennedy O'Toole
7. Aw screw it, it doesn't really matter and nobody's listening anyway
I find the last one a little nihilistic, but put it out there anyway.
The EFF provides a little item about an old (say a year or so) online activity, first documented by people who found Amazon charging different prices for the same thing to different people: Websites Invade Your Privacy to Charge You More (link courtesy of Boing Boing). The thrust of their piece is that, "Yep -- it's good old-fashioned price discrimination, the inevitable result of an increasingly 'personalized' Internet." The attachment to the "'personalized Internet" is understandable, considering the source, but spurious. It has everything to do with anonymity, but has only tenuous ties to privacy. That is, (and they note), ". . . the site does not need to know your specific identity, just that you are the consumer who is willing to pay X for Y." [Emphasis mine]
So how is that different from the car salesman or trader in a bazaar sizing you up based on the artifacts you carry -- style of haircut, clothes that are au courant, watch brand, car you drove up with, etc. (all of which correspond more or less to the cookies and data these Sites use to profile customers for price presentation)? Besides which, is that information "private?" Could be: but is the information even yours to keep private? That is, to whom does the information about your past purchases belong: you or the other party? Most trivial actions -- like buying airline tickets or books -- rarely fall under terms of non-disclosure or secrecy. Yes, it's in your possession, so maybe it's yours. But the credit card that is also in your possession will have somewhere on its back, "This card is the property of
What this pricing activity is proving out is the glory and magnificence of capitalism in action [ ;-^) ] in a world of more perfect information. Given that we are all capitalist democrats, we ought to be admiring it. Yet we aren't because it seems like unfair advantage. So, we react (well, the EFF reacts) by changing the framework of the game to include a new or at least alternative constraint.
Ultimately, the story is just more proof that this whole business of identity, privacy, anonymity, information distribution, etc. is exceedingly complex and defies single-perspective-based simplification. The forces upon it are broad and often unanticipated. Therein is the challenge.
Talk about skewing the results. A guy like this in North America would do more for the development of SMS than American Idol and all the aggregators on the continent. Too bad he's in India and rate plans here would make it infeasible. A Ludhiana guy sends 1,82,689 SMS in one month) Snip:
He has sent 1,82,689 SMS in one month. Deepak Sharma aims to increase the number to 3,00,000 in the coming month. Reference from Boing Boing.
The connection to 'digital' in the case of the missing 3.9-million Citifinancial customer records is that they were on data backup tape. That seems to be where it ends because as Newsday (Data lost for 4M Citi clients) -- among so many others -- says,
The Manhattan-based company [Citi] said that UPS lost the tapes containing information on 3.9 million customers from branches of its CitiFinancial consumer-finance division, as well as those with closed accounts. That represents all of the customers served by CitiFinancial branches.Under the snarkier and relevantly-pointed headline What can brown do for you? GMSV points to at least one other media outlet that is squarely pointing at UPS:Atlanta-based UPS acknowledged it has been unable to find the package, although a spokesman said a search is continuing.
Company video cameras show United Parcel Service Inc. picking up the box of computer tapes May 2 at a CitiFinancial facility in Weehawken, N.J., according to Kevin Kessinger, executive vice president of Citigroup's Global Consumer Group. But he said the driver did not scan the box when he picked it up, in violation of extra security measures UPS had agreed to take.andCitiFinancial did not know for nearly three weeks that the box failed to arrive at its destination. [Technews.com]
Norman Black, a UPS spokesman, said, We're very proud of our record of reliability . . ." [Newsday again].I was, of course, a little premature and glib in the first paragraph because there is a second connection to "digital" here. It's that Citi is preparing and near ready to make the transition to electronic transmission of this information. Let's hope at the very least they'll figure out its missing faster than all that. ;-^)
I'm not sure what's most intriguing about this banal headline (The Globe and Mail: TV ads try to zip past the zap) and the story behind it which describes some attempts by advertisers to not fall prey to consumers' facility for avoiding ("bad" it's important to acknowledge right up front) television commercials. Years after this "problem" of ads not being watched because they're being "zapped" became a problem it's still being given front-page coverage by the mainstream media (which in the Globe & Mail's case means it's covering the problems of CTV, it's television sibling); sad. Years after this structural shift because jet-fuelled by personal DVRs and the Internet (rather than just by the low-octane powered standard VCR), the industry is still trying to accommodate itself within that inhospitable structure: unimaginative.
The Globe & Mail reports that a recent survey of Canadians proves identity theft (and the subsequent fraud and cash theft from associated bank account) from debit cards is [Shock! Horror!] underreported: Debit card fraud more widespread than banks believe. Key details:
About 4 per cent of people surveyed by Environics Research for the Industry Department last fall said they had been a victim of fraud through their debit card in the previous year.andThat figure is a great deal larger than the official fraud statistic of 1/10 of 1 per cent publicized by the banking sector and the debit card association.
The poll, with a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20, also suggests the incidence of fraud may be underreported and not well-known.All of which is interesting, but proves exactly what? That the body which reports theft and fraud on its system would tend toward perpetuating a general perception of safety in that system? That the system is vulnerable [like any other isn't]? That its a user error (i.e., it's kind of up to the card user to ensure that s/he protects his/her card and PIN) rather than a system problem per se?
I'm not one to weigh in with views on religious tolerance and accommodation -- generally. But this item from the Toronto Star makes me wonder. Particularly the quotes below. (Story: 'Muslim-style' meals won't fly) Apparently there is question about whether the meals -- even the special-order meals for Muslims are up to religious code for dietary requirement (halal). As this article is about Muslim meals, there's no mention whether the meals for Jews are truly kosher. The best paragraphs, from my POV, are these:
Air Canada should get its meals certified by religious scholars, said Sheikh Omar Subedar, head of the halal department of the Canadian Council of Muslim Theologians, an organization representing more than 100 Islamic scholars in Canada.Let me see if I've got this straight: Getting food at all on many flights is a challenge. There are "strict dietary requirements" for many religions in the world, for which an airline -- whose business is moving people not feeding them in proper religious form -- ought to have religious scholars ensure compliance for each religion's peculiarities. This sounds like the start of an argument toward zero meals at all on any flight at any time. As the airline cuts costs and services, why bother dealing with this when it would just be simpler to discontinue all meals?Muslim consumers "should demand" to know if the food they are served is up to halal standards, he said.
In the event that they do keep serving meals on selected routes, I think it should be fish on Friday flights.
A lot of people I know don't like going to cocktail parties. It's not that they don't like meeting people or that they are particularly shy. With smoking banned from most public places they don't even complain about the environment. What most people find distasteful about these events (and it can be a 'mixer' or a 'gala' or a bar-b-que) is that the crowd breaks into little groups appearing to know one another, having a good time. Maybe these things are so predesigned and it is a fact; maybe it just looks that way. Since most of the people I've talked to about it feel the same way and they all can't be on the outside looking in, it's probably an illusion. But perception is reality, as they say.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, to continue, the challenge for most people is that at one of these things, sooner or later you'll want to join a conversation. It might just be getting revved or it might be long started. You may have been encouraged and asked to join explicitly or by some surreptitious signal. Regardless, breaking in to that conversation is as difficult as learning to surf. Got to catch the wave just right or -- wipe out. Only difference is that on the water, the wave is the only opposition. In a group, not only is each individual its own challenge, the group collectively has a dynamic that doesn't like disruption.
To be part of any conversation one must first listen to get a feel for the flow, then volley up a verbal offering. Two schools of thought here:
The problem with the first option is that there is a long lead-time for everyone to feel satisfied that you are "one of them" and not merely pandering (which is what you're doing). You aren't contributing and there is the real possibility that the crowd will see no value in keeping you. If your goal is to be an "insider," this is the safe strategy without a doubt. If your want to be meaningful, it's still the safe choice but a longer-term strategy with a lower likelihood of achieving the goal.
The second alternative is riskier. If you're lucky and the timing of your pithy comments is just right -- perhaps a supporter or someone open-minded and ready to engage is in the crowd -- there is a good chance of being catapulted from obscurity to the centre of the scene. More than that, your position is genuine: based on your contribution and some level of respect for what you can add to the discussion. Very long odds but a pretty good reward regardless of which goal you desire: acceptance or relevance. More likely, however, is that you will be greeted with either closed-rank scorn or stony silence.
Scorn is valuable, if not enjoyable, because it's feedback. You can assess what to do next: stay and try again, shift to a strategy of fawning, quietly skulk away tail between legs, or tell everyone off and make a scene before storming away and telling everyone who'll listen about the bunch of closed-minded Neanderthals that think they're just soooo goood. . . . This last alternative is otherwise known as taking a flamethrower to the rope bridge.
Silence is more troubling because there is no feedback. You don't know whether maybe they didn't hear you, were ignoring you, didn't understand, didn't like, don't speak the language, are *so* beyond those ideas -- maybe you're breath is bad . . . The decision about what to do is infinitely more difficult. This is particularly so if you have been encouraged to join and so have nothing else to go on.
Frankly, to answer the question you've posed, I don't know what to do either. My default position appears to be the second strategy, and it's been successful as often as not. What I do know is that it's hard to join a conversation when nobody acknowledges that you've opened your mouth and said something let alone respond to it. I don't let it stop me and it doesn't mean you should clam up either.
Especially in the areas I've been working in for the past several years: business/product development of consumer marketing and digital identity services (both with a healthy dose of "privacy" and "anonymity" concern), trust has become a non sequitur. Any time there is no other value or reason behind why an endeavor will or would be successful in the real world, someone will simply play the trust card. As in: "Well, because they trust us," or "The system requires trust," or "Trust is a key differentiator . . ." etc., etc. Then, as if to win and settle the argument, some study pointing to relative levels of trust among businesses or market survey indicating consumer/customer trust value importance will be dropped to the table with a thud. It is not impossible to refute; in fact, not much effort at all is required to find offsetting data that suggests the value of "trust" is typically overstated in commercial matters. What is impossible is to effectively refute the argument and not be left a pariah for a while: sacred cows are not to be eaten.
Well, excuse the modest glee of a trust skeptic when he reads that modern science has identified a hormone that controls trusting. It's called oxytocin and these same scientists can bottle it so that a little snort from an inhaler (or, say from air impreganted with the hormone like Las Vegas casinos saturate the pits with oxygen through the HVAC) and you're way more trusting. Story from Globe & Mail (although it's everywhere today): Building trust via nasal spray. A few snips from the story:
The results suggest trust can be bottled and used to forge commercial relationships.All very interesting, no doubt. And there's plenty of difference between a lab experiment and the real world. But, and I hope the point isn't lost, relying on trust -- or any other significantly uncontrollable intangible -- as a core part of the value proposition and unique competitive advantage for a business is poor judgment. It could go right up your nose."We find that intranasal administration of oxytocin causes a substantial increase in trusting behaviour," a research team said.
Oxytocin -- not to be confused with Oxycontin, the increasingly popular painkiller gaining a reputation as "hillbilly heroin" -- has long been linked to sex, reproduction and motherhood. [ed. Imagine the fun that could be had as a result of a little dyslexia ;).]
Discovered my Technorati listing and I'm down a place to 184,437. Maybe next week -- could stand a few inbound links though ;^)
Apparently air travel complaints are rising again (in Canada, but I'm sure in the U.S. and elsewhere). The Air Travel Complaints Agency is pointing to higher traffic and lower-priced fares (??) according to this Toronto Star story: Air travel complaints on rise, report shows.
* Low-cost fares apparently bring with them customers who can't appreciate that low price generally equally poorer quality.
Notably, Westjet (the small airline that could, modelled on Southwest for my American friends) received only 3 of the approximately 450 complaints recorded during the period. Air Canada is proud that it finally received less than 50% of all complaints. And that's something to post on the bulletin board over at Dorval.
Canadians are tolerant, welcoming, etc., etc. as the numbers quoted by the Commissioner for Official Languages's note (Most favour bilingualism, language report finds):
. . . eight out of 10 Canadians support bilingual government services and preserving both official languages. But between 40 and 50 per cent of Canadians believe too much effort goes into the national program.So, there's no mention of how many people are officially bilingual. I would expect that it is substantially lower than even the 40-50% who think too much money is spent on official languages.