Isotropic

Where ever you go, there you are.

Archive for the 'Life-Society' Category

07 Sep 2008

SMS Spam

More candidates for hell …
Just as I was finishing my previous post, my phone announced I’d received a new text message. Even though it was 05:29, I wasn’t surprised because my friends know I keep unusual hours.
However, it was SMS spam; in particular, stock spam. Who in their right mind would buy any [...]

14 Aug 2008

Eliminate Infrastructure Kinetically

“… they could have [...] eliminated the infrastructure kinetically”, according to Gadi Evron in “Internet Attacks Against Georgian Websites” (and followup).
There is a plethora of commentary on the Georgian situation, so I’m not going to discuss it here. However, the concept of eliminating infrastructure kinetically did ping my interesting phrases meter, so I’m [...]

09 Aug 2008

Ouch!

When someone’s post consists of only “Creepy. Deeply, deeply creepy.“, you just have to check it out.
Maybe “It’s No Boo-Boo - Bandages as Fashion Accessories” is creepy, but my first impression was “this is silly”. But if you then lie and say it’s just a cut instead of proclaiming your bleeding-edge fashion [...]

04 Aug 2008

Social Connectivity Constant

As I’ve said before, I like interesting phrases. Here’s another one:

What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity. –Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Messenger project

Wow, that sounds profound. See the BBC News article “Study revives six degrees theory” for the full story. Background information is available in the [...]

03 Aug 2008

Information Seizure

Ultimately, if you are allowed to travel at all, it will be in a pod, naked and sedated.
Regulations already prohibit starting out with a variety of innocuous materials (shampoo), over-zealous policy enforcement prohibits “inappropriate” dress (Transformer t-shirts) , and economic pressure is exerted to limit the amount of luggage you carry.
If you carry electronic [...]

02 Aug 2008

The Nadir of Advertising

In Quirky Spam I described a special corner of hell for email spammers. Well, I’ve found them some neighbors.
I occasionally look through my spam for a few moments of entertainment — or is it more like gawking at car wreck as you drive by? Well, whatever. I recently came across one [...]

15 Jul 2008

Carebots

“Who doesn’t long for household help at times? Service robots will soon be able to relieve us of heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks. Research scientists have now presented a new generation of household robots, the ‘Care-O-bot® 3′.” — ScienceDaily, New Generation Of Home Robots Have Gentle Touch
It is interesting that (according to the [...]

15 Jul 2008

Memory and the Law

The post “Guidelines on Memory and the Law” at Neurophilosophy summarizes a report, commissioned by the British Psychological Society, regarding the implications of memory research for the legal profession. “These guidelines, which are available as a PDF, are intended to inform those who work in criminal and civil law - for example, the police [...]

12 Jul 2008

Choosing Unique Baby Names

No, I’m not.
In Name Scrapers I mentioned the non-uniqueness of my name in an example. That must have sensitized me to pick up on Kevin Kelly’s GoggleUnique Names.
After mentioning several well-known strategies for choosing names, he goes on to discuss two new strategies, which he calls “global branding” and “GoogleUnique”.
The first is about names [...]

08 Jul 2008

Name Scrapers

The Slashdot headline “How to Fight Name Scraping Scammers?” caught my eye, and I had to follow it up. Curt Monash discovered his name on a dating site, but he’d never registered there. It appears that the site paired up first and last names at random and then presented them as being [...]

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