Keeping myself honest

Once again it has been a while since my last blog post but at this point that is par for the course here. So this blog focuses on this idea a little as I have found a trend in my own habits surrounding social media. Currently if I look on my computer I subscribe to 14 RSS feed, follow 50 people on twitter, have 136 friends on Facebook and have 11 podcasts streams in my ipod. Now this might not seem like a lot and I’m sure there are a ton of people out there with more friends, feeds and followers but that isn’t the point.

The point is that there is so much information out there these days and it’s almost a full time job to keep up with it. I know personally I use the weekend to catch up on news through RSS, usually skim the headlines and only read a few of stories that really interest me. U.S. President Obama recently addressed this during a convocation speech by saying all this technology turns information into a distraction.

“And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy”

I’m not sure I would go that far but there is a good discussion about it on This Week in Tech #247 and I will say that I often find the amount of information I can get overwhelming and it looses some of it’s importance when there is so much of it. Also for a president who was going to have a white house jump through hoops so he could use his blackberry I’m not sure how much I believe the statement that he doesn’t know how to use an ipod, but thats another argument for another day.

So going back to the title of this blog I am bored with social media and don’t constantly check facebook or write blog posts as often as I used to. Part of this is obviously because of the amount of free time I have but a lot of has to do with the information overload as the smaller the amount of information the easier it is to engage with it. I wonder if this trend of having too much information to have meaningful discussion will continue to be a problem or if people will start to filter things out; or maybe it’s just a problem with the way I consume information by non traditional means.  I guess as the landscape changes it’s up to us to make sure this wealth of information (like all changes brought on by technology) becomes an advantage and doesn’t diminish the power that the technology can bring.

Scotty B Commentary, Technology

I’ve been meaning to blog for a while and have even missed my modest pace of blogging once a month that I’ve been on since the summer.  This week a few things caught my interest while catching up on news over the weekend and listening to this week’s episode of This Week in Tech (also know as TWiT and probably the best technology podcast around).

The stories that were most concerning were Facebook once again changing their privacy settings in such a way that if you haven’t looked at the settings before you could potentially now be sharing all of the information you thought was private to the world. If you really want to see a breach of what you thought was private try taking the What Do Quizzes Really Know About You? Facebook quiz and prepare to be shocked as to what you’re friends can give away without you knowing. The second somewhat infuriating story stems from comments by Google’s CEO.

Eric Schmidt said this last week in an interview: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities”.

This has prompted more than a little uproar including one Mozilla exec urges Firefox users ditch Google for Bing (Which I’ve done). Now either he is totally naive when it comes to privacy or actually believes that people don’t deserve to have any and Google’s motto of ‘Do no evil’ sounds more than a little glib after a statement like that. Google is quickly turning into a giant that seems to have little regard for the toes that they are stepping on and I am continually dumbfounded by the unconditional love they get from the public while Microsoft is often labelled as being an evil corporate empire.

Now people might say I’m overreacting to this but considering how much information Google has and how much they have the potential to save without user consent this could pose a huge risk. Imaging all your search results, IM conversations, email, news feed, photos, location of your cell phone, maps looked up and more all being used against for any number of reasons; and not just from yesterday this information could be saved for years. The point is this the majority of people who use the “If you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about” defence are the heads of police states and those who want to spy on you all the time in order to use that information against you.

The bottom line is that even though the internet is a new frontier where we could easily monitor everything that someone does, privacy is still a basic human right that we should hold on to and not give up because some guy in a suit from Google thinks we should be ashamed of not wanting the world to know everything about us. Privacy is about trust and decency and Google apparently doesn’t deserve the former or have the latter.

Links:

• John C. Dvorak has an interesting spin on this story saying that it is less about you and more about the people in power and their ability not to be blackmailed here: Eric Schmidt, Google and privacy
• There is also a good article here on the topic of privacy: Facebook and Google: Contrasts in Privacy
• And for those looking for one Ixquick is a great search engine that stores no information about you or your searches.

Stay safe out there because apparently you never know who is watching you.

Scotty B Commentary, Technology

Like usual it has been a while since I blogged but a few things came up this week (Now technically last week) that caught my attention enough to make me want to write up something here. The second issue is going to send me off on a rant so I’ll save that excitement for later in the week.

There were a few stories related to Net Neutrality this week which gave me a wide range of emotions from optimism, to disappointment, to pulling out my hair frustration. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Net Neutrality is basically the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally and none of it should be blocked. This is somewhat of an oversimplification of terminology but also underscores one of the problems with Net Neutrality in that it means different things to different people but in general the IT community and end users are in favour of it and internet providers are against it.

The First article from Ars outlines the CRTC’s ruling that traffic shaping (the act of slowing down certain types of traffic or all traffic to a specific user) should be a last resort for ISPs who are having network issues. The ruling says that economic measures like investing in network infrastructure, data caps and discounts should be taken before any shaping occurs. While it doesn’t lay down strict net neutrality rules the ruling does set out a framework for traffic management measures which gives me optimism that the telecommunication companies won’t get free rain to do whatever they want if it isn’t in their best interest. Also this week the FCC announced that it had come to an agreement with most of the US ISP’s about implementing a new net neutrality proposal which is also great as it looked like everyone was coming to an agreement that would be mutually beneficial for both the users and the ISPs.

Then we get to the to the paragraph that should be titled “Don’t quit your day job Senator because you obviously don’t have any idea what you’re talking about here.” In the midst of all of this Senator John McCain introduces a bill that would ban all internet regulations (except when the government needed them for security). In his words the bill looks to:

“allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment,” and that  “Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy.”

This statement is more then a little absurd as one of the goals of net neutrality is to continue to allow for innovation that could be stifled if the ISPs get to control what traffic is allowed. It is true that up until now there has been no government regulations on ISPs but there also hasn’t been any traffic shaping and block (or not on a wide scale). Normally laws don’t get created until there is a problem as there is no way when something new (the the internet) is created to anticipate everything that may happen and to create a set of laws for proper usage.

I could go on about this but I’ll leave here with two final ideas. The reason why the internet has had so much creativity is because it is an open platform and letting the big telecommunication companies decide what works best for the internet will probably mean they decide to do what is best for them and not the end user. If Rogers (my internet provider) has the ability to block me from streaming TV shows on my xbox so the only way I can watch my shows is by buying their cable subscription that is an inherit conflict on interest and definitely not good for me as a consumer. Also it seems like McCain is doing the same and only looking out for himself as the reason he is backing this bill is most likely because AT&T (a large US ISP) is such a large contribute of his.

Nice to see politics never change even in the digital age.

Scotty B Commentary, Technology

Just to quickly show what I mean about programming something that works vs programming something well this is a perfect example of something that should have been tested better.

(For those who don’t understand this is after I tell them I’m in Canada which only has 6 digit postal codes)

Scotty B Commentary, Technology

Seeing as I just won a ‘Diplomatic’ victory in my game of Civilization 4, I decided I should sit down and do something productive (other than specing my new links management system) and write about something that has been on my mind to put on the blog for a while; and that is a question of how people use the internet and what their digital footprint is.

I first starting thinking about this a lot while listening to the first episode of the Out of the Game podcast entitled ‘Born Before Digital’ as one of the topics brought up is how life will be different for kids growing up in this age when a large chunk of their life will be recorded online for everyone to see indefinitely with things like myspace, facebook, blogs, twitter and message boards.

Like some of the member of the podcast I too did many a thing in my youth that I don’t think I’d want to be on the internet when they happened and certainly wouldn’t want to be reminded of now. That’s not to say there a great deal of things that I regret doing in my life but there are many things that people do (and some of the most entertaining) that you don’t want or need an exact record of.

I remember in late university cleaning up some files on my computer and coming  across some 5 year old msn conversations that I usually save so I can go back and find information I might have been sent. It was nostalgic and also weird as many of the conversation were very intimate and private and while I had a vague memory of them it was a much different thing to see them line by line completely correct and unbiased by the passage of time right in front of me.

This would be amplified if I had facebook from the time I was 10 and I (or anyone else) could look back and see the dates I started going out with (and then broke up with) past girlfriends, the social events I attended in high school, the fads I thought were cool and the people I used to associated with. Now I wouldn’t consider any of this information privileged and would tell it to almost anyone who asked me about it but there is a difference between that and it being right there for everyone to see.

This is probably only a matter of perception but that can make all the difference in the world. If I tell my grandmother about the crazy bachelor party I just attended (this is hypothetical, way to go Josh and James for having no strippers) she’ll probably just laugh and say that’s part of life, whereas if I post pictures of me on stage with a face full of boobs I’m guessing her reaction is along the lines of disowning me.

—- Woo once again almost at 500 words and not really into my main topic, so continuing on after a Call of Duty 4 break—-

My main thought for this blog is the idea of a person’s digital footprint and how it gets used both by that person and by the rest of the world.  For a long time I didn’t have a blog or get on facebook or twitter because it seemed ominous that the information could be out there for everyone to see until the end of time. As I’ve matured I’ve taken on an attitude of being very open and honest with everyone I meet as I found trying to satisfy everyone and change your attitudes in different situations was a recipe for disaster.

Earlier in the year I figured that as a programmer I should have a professional and public profile, hence the creation of my website and the blog along with it. While the website doesn’t have a lot of things on it right now I’m statisfied with what it is for now and I’m working on some Silverlight applications and a links manager to keep me busy. The blog is a more interesting entity as it exists and a lot of the time I’m not sure what I should be talking about (although when I come up with something it’s usually long) as I feel like I should be writing for a broad audience (anyone on the internet) and should say something both insightful worth reading.

It takes a certain kind of ego to start up a blog or twitter feed as you need to believe that you have something worth while to write and it it sometimes hard for me to get into that mindset as there is so much good writing out there that I often don’t have time read so why would any of my stuff be worth it for someone else. For anyone about to send me a ’snap out of depression’ email the last statement isn’t meant as a ‘woe is me’ statement but to bring some insight on how I view my writing.

So to bring this conversation full circle to make my blog something that I feel is worth reading I decided to use it for long form, more formal writing about topics that interest me or are important to and at the same time I feel I can talk intelligently about and bring something interesting into the conversation with the reader. Twitter is where I like to write quick little tidbits of information and opinion, while also trying to keep it interesting for anyone reader. I’m still learning the ‘performance’ part of writing online but I can’t be doing all that bad cause you just read to the end of this blog post.

Scotty B Commentary, Personal, Technology