Cognitive Dissidents

The ongoing row over at TechCrunch about Pay-per-Post is totally viral in nature - it infects anything that comes into contact with it and anyone who comments on it.

It goes like this: I just posted a blog entry about the whole TechCrunch vs PPP thing which is going on - but Pay-per-Post itself is prepared to pay $10 to anyone who is prepared to post about the whole TechCrunch vs PPP thing.

So now I am in a position where (a) I could have earned $10 by blogging about all this stuff, (b) didn't earn $10 by blogging about all this stuff, but (c) need to reassure my audience (trust me - I know you better than you think - but we'll leave that for another time ...) that I am not just a paid shill for either TechCrunch or Pay-per-Post.

Enter the next phase of the viral cycle - the Disclosure Policy - which, in the words of the website involved is important:

Because advertisers are offering bloggers payment or gifts to create content about specific products or services, the blogger's interest in the product or service may be in part the financial gain. Whether the blogger would have included content in his/her blog about the product or service without gift or payment, the fact is the blogger is receiving payment for certain content.

Now the great thing about all this is that Pay-per-Post are also offering $10 for blogging about DisclosurePolicy.org as well - a great double whammy that ensures that anyone who talks about Pay-per-Post is also going to talk about disclosure policies.

There is no choice - the minute I chose to speak about the Pay-per-Post vs TechCrunch viral marketing scam I was open to the charge that I have been paid to post on that topic, so to clear the air I have no choice but to talk about disclosure policies otherwise I leave myself open to the charge that I have been paid to post

But hey - now I've posted twice in one day on a topic that would have earnt me $10 each time - surely I must be a shill for either TechCrunch or Pay-per-Post or DisclosurePolicy.org ...

I think you get the picture - so lets go and search for a nice "Disclosure Policy" ...

Now I find the policy at disclosure policy.org a little strangely worded - along with TechCrunch itself - none of the three options suit me and I don't like the wording of the first one - so it needs editing until it reads like this ...

This blog does not accept any form of advertising, sponsorship, or paid insertions.

Perfect - I'll stick with that ....

Tags: techcrunch, pay-per-post, blogging, advertising, disclosure

Posted by Dr. K at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've already opined that I will review expensive gadgets and sportscars on this blog, but the row now erupting on TechCrunch about the evil menace of Pay-to-Post is the best online row we've had since the last online row ...

To update anyone who doesn't know what is going on: Pay-per-Post offer a service where any blogger can accept money to write about a topic - its called "creating buzz" and "link building" and things like that.

If you slide over to their site and check it out you find you can earn as much as $10 by "creating buzz" or "writing postive articles about" certain web sites and products.

Meanwhile over at TechCrunch the talk is of "pollution of the blogosphere" and other high minded talk that totally ignores the fact that the "blogosphere" is already a cess-pit of spam, cliques and other "link building" and "buzz boosting" activties straight out of Web1.0 ...

The fight is getting quite interesting - especially as you can currently earn $10 from Pay-to-Post by talking about the article involved ...

Yet, apart from that, once anyone places adsense or other advertising on a blog - a clearly marked "sponsored article" should end the matter. Its just more sponsored content - like adsense or amazon or a host of imitators.

Especially if bloggers stick to writing about things they would normally write about.

So if I started praising the virtues of a particular mobile phone you might get a little suspicious - given that regular readers will know that I hate mobile phones with a vengeance

Whereas if I wrote about a new RSS based service that had some novel ideas that would be a little more in keeping if I was writing in News-Machine - but I might get away with it here.

If I write about things in context - then how do you know when I am getting paid or not?

The sticking point here is "disclosure".

Does the blogger concerned announce that this is a sponsored post - or do they write it as they would anyhow and don't tell anyone they are doing it for money?

Would anyone believe them if they said they weren't writing it for money - but could possibly have been paid $10 for writing it?

Does it matter anyhow - given that we all naturally filter out advertisments until we are actually looking for something?

How important is it - given that weblogs are just another type of website and that everyone is urgently being to "monetize" their blogs in some of the largest blog aggregators?

In the end the reader will choose what they prefer - blogs which are sponsored by "tip jars" and Amazon "wish lists" vs blogs that accept advertising and sponsorship vs blogs which publish sponsored articles.

My guess is that they will probably choose a mix of all three, as I think most people accept writing a blog is a time-consuming occupation, and everyone knows about ADSL bills on a monthly basis.

So, will "Pay-for-Post" eat the "Blogosphere"?

It depends on what you mean by the "blogosphere".

If you are referring to 90% of the self-referential blogs that exist for a short time until their owners realise they have nothing to say - then giving these writers something to write about (other than their dietary and sleeping habits and their latest lost and found loves) will actually improve the "blogosphere" no end.

Tags: techcrunch, pay-per-post, sponsorship, bloggers, advertising, adsense, blogosphere, disclosure

Posted by Dr. K at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Wired has an article on the possible suppression of a draft report by the Department of Homeland Security

RFID chips, which either have a battery or use the radio waves from a reader to send information, are widely used in tracking inventory or for highway toll payment systems.

But critics argue that hackers can skim information off the chips and that the chips can be used to track individuals. Hackers have also been able to clone some chips, such as those used for payment cards and building security, as well as passports.

The draft report concludes that "RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity" -- a finding that was widely criticized by RFID industry officials when the committee met in June.

Hmmm . I wonder why RFID privacy concerns are being "widely criticized" by the RFID industry ....

Jim Harper, one of the commitee members who prepared the report believes that:

There's such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do.

Is it just that? Or are the people in favour of RFID enabled systems well aware of how these systems can be used to undermine privacy - and are backing it because they enable the sort of personal tracking that would make "Big Brother" green with envy ...

The suppressed draft report isolated some problems that have been concerning privacy campaigners for some time.

In a visual check environment, a person may be briefly identified but then forgoitten, rendering them anonymous for practical purposes.

In a radio ID-check environment, by contrast, a person's entry into a particular are can easily be recorded and the information permanently stored and repreatedly shared.

In this way, RFID my conver identification based security into an effective survellance program of all people passing certain locations.

Without formidable safefguards, the use of RFID in identification cards and tokens will tend to enable the tracking of individuals' movements, profiling of their activities and subsequent, non-security-related use of identification and derived information.

This is coming straight from the horses mouth from a committee working for the Department of Homeland Security, so you'd think they'd have their finger on the pulse - yet the report is still in draft stage - and as Jim Harper points out "If we don't have a report out before the (PASS card) comment period ends, then we are irrelevant".

One of the conclusions is that:

The use of RFID in identification would predispose identification systems to surveillance uses.

Tags: rfid, identification, privacy, surveillance, wired, dhs, cato institute

Posted by Dr. K at 11:54 AM | Permalink

This made its way to the top of the pile on the Digg Space Page - but I wondered about the comment at the beginning of the article about Telling Time by the Stars

Telling time by the stars is not really very useful.

Surely - the ability to tell time by the stars would have been very useful indeed for anyone who was involved in any kind of seamanship.

The problem of longitude was a thorny problem for mariners all over the world.

Longitude can't be obtained that easily. The method that is considered the most reliable and practicable is by using a chronometer which keeps the local time at a point of known longitude, say, the home port of the ship. By judging the local time of the ship2, the navigator computes the time difference between home port and ship. Because good old Earth does one full rotation (360°) in 24 hours, one hour corresponds to 360 /24 = 15°. One hour time difference from the home port means 15° longitude difference (east or west).

Having determined latitude and longitude in the described ways, the ship's captain knew where he was and in which direction he had to sail.

Now suppose ancient mariners also knew how to "tell the time" from the stars - wouldn't that enable them to predict how far they had sailed across the globe? - while knowledge of latitude from the rising and setting of the sun would enable them to know roughly how far up or down the globe that they had travelled.

The "ancient mariner" theory means that people would have been able to sail a long way with a degree of accuracy.

If they travelled from America from Europe, for example, that would explain a lot of "misplaced" archaeological artefacts found in the "New World" - like the Lake Superior Copper Mines, the Newport Tower, Mystery Hill, the New England Stone Chambers, the San Francisco East Bay walls.

But accepting that ancient man had a degree of sophistication about matters astronomical would undermine the whole accepted history of the world.

Conventional history tells us "it was impossible" to sail across the world because it was necessary to have a reliable chronometer first, and that the first accurate chronomter was not constucted until 1770 (or thereabouts) - and then leaps to the conclusion that because it was "impossible" before this it must have been impossible beforehand.

Subsequently - any evidence or data that suggests anything else becomes - in Charles Fort's words - "Damned Information" - and is subsequently ignored because it doesn't fit in with any theories.

I prefer sensible explanations for archaeological anomalies - and the idea that ancient mariners were able to sail around the globe is much more sensible than any ideas about "Alien Intervention" or "Lost Supercivilisations" - especially when we already know from the evidence that ancient man had a very good grasp of astronomy.

Tags: archaeology, astronomy, navigation, longitude, ancient mariners, forteana

Posted by Dr. K at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I should explain why everyone is being redirected from the old blog URL.

Due to circumstances beyond our control this blog has had to find a new home, new hosting platform. I've also changed the URL to the hackershandbook.net domain - where it will remain for the foreseable future.

You can now find this weblog at:

drk.hackershandbook.net

SYNDICATION

RSS:

Atom:

Please update your RSS readers and bookmarks.

Note that this blog is still with SpyBlog - which suits me fine as I regard it as one of the best political weblogs in the UK at the moment ...

Posted by Dr. K at 10:31 AM | Permalink

Neckties, liberty & democracy make strange bedfellows - but seeing this article after writing about neckties being deemed un-Islamic - one starts to wonder what certain religious fundamentalists from a certain community might have in mind …

Generally speaking, it is not permissible to wear a tie, or other kinds of clothes that are considered as the attire of non-Muslims, in such a way that their wearing will promote vile Western culture. The ruling is not confined to people of the Islamic Republic.

If this had come from an “Islamaphobic” site I would have thought it was a joke - but actually it comes from The Office of the Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei in Qom - which, I would argue, is pretty authoritative as these things go.

It turned out that I shouldn’t have been worried after all - it wasn’t just that a necktie was the sign of “vile western culture” - it because it was also a symbol of the cross - so that’s OK then - because its Christian symbols the “Supreme Leader” hates and not just “vile western culture” in general …

But then - when I read this today - I wondered again - is there anything that these guys don’t disapprove of?

Liberty & Democracy “Satan’s Tools”

Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi - one of the current hardline government’s key reference points - has described Western values such as freedom and democracy as “the instruments of Satan.” Addressing the faithful in the holy Iranian city of Qom, he said: “The devil presents himself in many forms, and employs every means to convey his message. He uses each concept such as liberty and democracy to achieve his plans.”

Interesting that its “the devil” that promotes “liberty and democracy” - as opposed to a “god” which promotes something that isn’t actually specified here ..

- but wait - the best bit is to come …

“Only in appearance have human rights been invented to safeguard the rights of the people. In actual fact, they are just a way of spreading immorality,” the revered cleric added

Neckties a promotion of “vile western culture”, “human rights” a method of “spreading immorality” and “freedom and democracy” the “instruments of Satan”.

Crikey - what will they think of next? This is almost as bad as relabelling Pluto a “non-planet”.

All these years I’ve been encouraged to wear a necktie to work and believe that such things as human rights, freedom and democracy were important - and it turns out that I’m promoting the “instruments of Satan” and “vile western culture”

But what really gets me - I mean really, really annoys me - is that all the people who normally rally in droves to defend “human rights, freedom and democracy” - are totally silent - even about the proclamation about neckties being an expression of “vile western culture”.

Now if somebody, e.g. the Fundamentalist Christian Right, expressed the view that “human rights, freedom and democracy” were the “tools of Satan” - then I can imagine the howls of rage and subsequent seething and whining.

But in this case all I hear is a deafening silence. Why?

Tags: iran, islam, new cold war, khamenei, shirazi, human rights, western culture, satanic instruments

Posted by Dr. K at 11:29 PM | Permalink

This is the second time in the last day that I've written about Performancing for Firefox.

It's all to do with the blog move which you can read more about here.

Anyway I came to setup Performancing and could not remember where the API key for the XMLRPC interface was stored in Moveable Type

Luckily for me I had made an entry in my internal weblog for future reference when I first setup Performancing earlier this year.

The commonest Movable Type & Perfomancing problem is fixed by this.

I suspect that most MT users don't have an API password set at all for their user.

Enter your author username, and the API password that you just set. PFF will now add your blog with no problems.

It works like a charm too ....

Tags: performancing, firefox, moveable type, api, xmlrpc

Posted by Dr. K at 2:42 PM | Permalink

This is a spooky tale with Fortean overtones - from Daily Lobo

About 120 miles east of Albuquerque, on the eastern edge of the town of Santa Rosa, N.M., lies a tiny oval of blue water - a spring-fed sinkhole about 80 feet wide and 81 feet deep - known as the Blue Hole.

Sometime ago a group of scuba divers dove into the Blue Hole, eager to explore every nook and fissure of the smooth-walled sinkhole. After climbing out, they realized one of their divers had
disappeared.

Six months later, the body of that diver finally surfaced, but not in Santa Rosa. It was discovered, the story claims, in Lake Michigan - more than a thousand miles away - naked, waterlogged and with much of its skin scuffed off, as if it had been pushed and scraped through miles of rocky tunnels.

If the story is true, one of the longest underground waterways in the world could lie directly beneath us. Perhaps the direct water route across the continent searched for by the explorers Lewis and Clark actually exists - underground. Andrea Sachs, in a Dec. 19, 2004, Washington Post article, wrote that there is a protective metal grate covering a spring that produces about 3,000 gallons of fresh water per minute on the Blue Hole's limestone floor. And, she wrote, that grate also seals off an elaborate network of caves that twists southward 200 miles, down to Texas.

Tags: cave diving, strange death, fortean, underwater passages, foaf

Posted by Dr. K at 10:31 AM | Permalink

This must be the the funniest piece of link bait I have read in a while - almost everything in it is designed to offend FOSS and LINUX advocates and get them seething and whining.

These are just a few of the insane highlights - I recommend anyone to go and read Linux: A European threat to our computers

Like most things that are worth owning, Computers are an American invention. Look at any modern computer and you will see that the whole thing is the product of American brilliance.

Best not to mention those English pionerers, Babbage and Turing, nor the early experiments with computers at Manchester and Cambridge universities. It also managed to neatly ignore the fact that most of the silicon chips that power these computers are made in China, Taiwan and other places.

Nice opening sentence that gives a flavour of things to come - should have blood pressure levels rising among Linux advocates already.

I’m talking about a project called ‘Linux’, something you may not have encountered, but might do some day.

It’s a computer program that was initially developed in Finland as a means of circumventing valuable copyrights and patents owned by an American company called SCO Group.

What a great troll - pure flamebait. Claiming the only reason Linux was invented was to circumvent copyright should have the Linux advocates apopleptic with rage - but there is more.

This would be certainly true were in not for the Linux project’s seductive Marxist ideology and the effect that it has on ‘Blue-State’ liberals. Indeed, Linux is so pervasive amongst the blue states and many liberal universities that a leading computer expert Steve Balmer (from Microsoft) described Linux as cancer.

Not content with enraging Linux advocates with selective FUD - the next step is to brand Linux "Marxist" software used by "liberal universities".

If Linux advocates were apopleptic before - they should be frothing at the mouth by now.

And guess what software Osama Bin Laden uses on his laptop?

If you guessed it was Linux you would be 100% right. Osama uses Linux because he knows designed to counterfit DVDs, curcumventing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and defraud companies like Disney.

Next time somebody asks you how Al Queda agents pay for their rifles and rocket launchers, you can tell them that foreign hackers make software called Linux which helps them steal from Americans.

Having applied the "Marxist" smear to Linux - its now time to play the "War on Terror" card.

Yes folks - 9/11 was all your fault because Osama Bin Laden uses Linux to watch Disney movies and you use Linux too.

By now the Linux crowd should be rioting in the streets, burning images of the author, and issuing fatwas demanding that the author recant or die ...

If you see a company using Linux, it may be that they have not paid for this software. Report them to the Business Software Alliance who have the legal authority to inspect any company’s computers for illegal programs like Linux.

This is a masterpiece of FUD - trying to suggest you report people using free software to the BSA because they have not paid for it. Brilliant!!

Finally, remember to include Linux users in your prayers tonight. As individuals we may not be able to change people’s minds, but the Bible teaches that God can make any sinner repent.

You'd think the author had laid it on so thick that even the slowest wits amongst us would have caught on and set their irony filters to maximum - but this is hilarious.

Apparently Linux user are sinners - therefore they must be in league with the devil and we should pray really, really hard to save their souls from hell

This is so funny - but wait until you read the comments - I just hope the poor guys server (Linux, Wordpress, MySql & PHP) can take the load from dishing out the ever growing file.

Great bit of link bait, gets my digg and gets an extra link on my blog - what more can a piece of link bait ask for?

Tags: linux, windows, foss, oss, link bait, irony

Posted by Dr. K at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)