May 25, 2007
04:36 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Spam… A word-associational psychologist would be disappointed at how predictable the results of tossing this word into a session aimed at unearthing complex emotions are. There are no complex emotions when it comes to spam. Spam evokes pure and undiluted annoyance, irritation and (depending on the quantity and frequency) sometimes even rage.
Spam is one word that is guaranteed to make every email user cringe.
If promises of a new credit card, an instantly better sex life or a 'free' iPod don't get you whooping for joy then you're amongst most Internet users who have become wise to the fact that spam and scam are practically synonymous.
According to the latest Pew Internet Project on spam, although the volume of junk mail is growing in Internet users' e-mail accounts, people are correspondingly less bothered by it. People are reportedly more savvy about blocking their spam -- 71% of users surveyed reported using a filter.
I came across the Pew report at a particularly interesting time -- for the last three days, my inbox at work has been flooded with spam from one particular email address, and no matter how many times I block the originator, the e-mails keep getting through. At first, I wasn't particularly bothered by the emails, thinking that if I kept blocking them they would have to go away. Not quite the case it seems.
Internet users are getting more savvy, but lets not forget these users include spam senders as well. In my particular case, since this unfairly targeted spam siege has originated in the context of the feedback forms that FastCompany.com offers in relation to its resource columns, it is aptly slugged "comment spam." This according to our new Web Developer Tom Achtemichuk, who has helpfully been trying to tackle the problem.
States Tom in a laudable effort to explain things as simply as possible: "A script searches the web for forms to fill out, and when it finds one it automatically fills it out with a bunch of links pointing to their w\Web site. The way that Google ranks a page is by counting how many popular pages link to it. By posting this comment full of links back to their own site, the spammer is hoping that their Google PageRank will increase and that when someone Googles for "credit cards" their page will be in the top few results. The spammer's page is full of ads and keywords -- they're probably making thousands a month in ad revenue from people following links and Google searches to their page.
Unfortunately none of the outgoing e-mail on the server is filtered for spam, so once they've figured out how to exploit one of these forms, they can send whatever e-mail they want. The only way to stop it is making sure that every script on the server that sends mail is written properly and secured. There are over 100 of them so it's no small feat."
No small feat is right. Seventy junked e-mails later I log back onto my account with bated breath. Emptiness. It appears Tom may have nipped the problem in the bud. For now.
An inevitability: as more and more segments of our lives become digitized, spam will metastasize to encroach upon other, currently spam-free, areas of communication. Spam in the form of text messages is still relatively uncommon, but it's out there and as cell phone markets around the world continue to expand, mobile phones are likely to become significant platforms for spammers and unscrupulous advertisers.
With, at least initially, less developed filters to deal with the electronic junk mail that comes through one's cell phone, spam is likely to continue to spread -- in a new, mutated form.
Apart from cell phones, what do you think the next platform for spam will be? Do you think the worries about junk mail through mobile phones are unfounded? Will efforts to combat spam in this form be successful?
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May 16, 2007
10:45 am | 0 recommendations | 3 comments
It's undeniable: the United States is carrying around some pretty heavy baggage. And I don't mean just as a consequence of its political decisions over the last few years.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a person is obese if his or her Body Mass Index is 30 or higher (BMI is a measure of an adult’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of his or her height in meters.)
Obesity is widely acknowledged as being a pretty large (no pun intended) problem in the US. According to the latest obesity trends report available from the Centers, obesity levels have increased sharply over the last 10 years -- in 1995, obesity prevalence was less than 20 percent in all 50 states; in 2005 the same could be said for only 4 states.
Apart from inevitable weight gains during one's freshman year of college, the holiday season, a pregnancy, or perhaps an extremely fulfilling relationship (that insidiously prods one into a state of blissfully oversized complacency,) people often complain of gaining large amounts of weight when they start work due to a sudden dearth of physical activity.
Lucratively tapping into this is the Mayo Clinic in New York, which has developed a work station cum treadmill that allows people to lose weight while working. The machine operates at different speeds and adjusts to allow its users to stand and work, walk and work, and even sit and work.
The treadmill-workstation combo could help obese people lose up to 30 kgs (66 pounds) a year. Priced at $2000, the device, which is comprised of a computer, keyboard, and treadmill, even has space for personal items like pen holders and paper trays. No more having to plod to the gym after a long day at work, or having to give up one's lunch hour to sweat it out -- now people are being offered a way to earn money, lose weight and be productive all at once. Sounds pretty good doesn't it?
The question is: is mixing business with exercise really such a good idea? How many employers are actually going to spring for a device like this? Is it realistic to envision that a treadmill cum work station could be a permanent fixture in offices around the nation, or at least those with high rates of obesity amongst employees? Or is this just another transitory fad?
Also, how many employees are going to be comfortable with the prospect of having a meeting with breathless co-workers perspiring on their treadmill workstations as they talk about the latest stock market crash? And how many people are going to want to earnestly concentrate on burning fat when they're surrounded by an ogling bunch of fellow employees? I, for one, would prefer to drag myself to the gym even after a long day, if it means I can work out away from prying eyes.
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May 8, 2007
01:41 pm | 0 recommendations | 3 comments
Apart from being just about the best place to advertise, New York's subway could be a goldmine both for sociologists and for market research professionals. Of course, I'm not suggesting that the subway is representative of all of New York but it does provide an almost compulsory window shopping experience that can be very revealing, particularly for those with commercial or academic purposes.
Living in Queens and making the commute to downtown Manhattan everyday, I've often felt that I spend half my non-working life underground. I've got all the exits figured out, I've begun to recognize people on my commute (I recently got asked to dinner by a fellow commuter,) and I even know that at 11p.m. on Thursday nights, I am likely to hear an Indian accent telling me that my next stop is Queensboro Plaza. My iPod and a Poland Spring are now my constant companions -- The Economist makes an appearance on special occasions.
And yet even without these distractions, it's rare that I find myself bored on New York's subway.
My slightly more upscale, or perhaps just more lethargic, Manhattan dwelling friends emphatically announce that they could "just never do it." They'll take living in a closet sized apartment any day over spending all that time in a tubular shaped capsule that is constantly delayed, crowded, and basically a royal pain in the ass.
For me though, it’s different. Apart from the fact that the commute clears my mind and allows me, or perhaps forces me, to just sit, think, and have internal conversations with myself, riding the subway every morning is like getting an extended snapshot of New York's culture at its most diverse.
Scowling Goths, aloof Armani suits, clean shaven college students, overtly lascivious construction workers, naively enthusiastic tourists, and the occasional bewildered geriatric -- I watch them all with an equally voyeuristic interest, dispelling my boredom, expanding my knowledge, and picking up on cultural nuances along the way.
Sure I'm missing the leaves, snow, and sun outside, but I've watched fall turn into winter, and winter turn into spring underground, as knit dresses and knee-high boots turned into white cashmere coats and thick comfy scarves, which in turn gave way to linens, chiffons, long belted shirts, and tights.
My commute has confirmed certain stereotypes (for fear of being extremely un-PC I won't spell these out) and disconfirmed others. The public perception is that the common New Yorker is just plain rude. Not from where I'm sitting. The number of times that men on the subway have given up their seats for me, or at least let me cut in front of them so that I'll get to sit down, has restored my faith in men (well partially anyway.)
There's also an unexpected sense of solidarity with fellow commuters that develops when a matter of fact announcer calmly informs us that our train is delayed due to train traffic ahead, or when a drunken man reels into our compartment yelling about Bush being the spawn of Satan (rhetoric like that occasionally spurs me on to feel some solidarity with him too.) In that one moment, when everyone is tired, everyone wants to get home, and everyone is in that one carriage -- together -- there's a strange flicker of community, one that is of course immediately dispelled when we exit the train and go our separate ways.
For me, there really is no better way to learn about what gets New York going. For the most part, unless extremely rich or excessively poor, everybody takes the subway. As an objective observer, on a most basic level I've found that the coffee from Dunkin Donuts seems as popular as that from Starbucks, obscuring one eye with a thick fringe of hair is the way to go, breakfast sandwiches seem to be widely loved, sunglasses are getting bigger by the second, yoga is no longer confined to the village, and tights and ballet shoes have really caught on.
Sure these observations may seem like the most obvious thing in the world for many, but as someone who is relatively new to the US, catching on that it's okay to pair a denim skirt that looks like it survived World War II with tights that look like they’re meant for someone several inches shorter than me, was far from intuitive. By wandering the streets I would have come to the same conclusions eventually, but sitting across from dozens of New Yorkers for large amounts of time leads me to make better observations and inevitably soak in more information,
If I came back here years from now, and I wanted to see what had changed -- what trends had been dropped, which ones had developed, and which were in the process of emerging -- I would buy a metro card, take a ride and watch an ever bustling New York enter and exit the doors.
In the last few months, I've learned a lot about what makes New Yorkers tick by riding the subway: what they wear, where they go, what they use, and occasionally even what they think. And, if they aren’t already doing so, I think people with more commercial interests in these topics might do well to draw some 'deeper' knowledge from below the soil themselves.
What's your take on the subway as a cultural and sociological phenomenon? Have you had any experiences on your everyday commute that are worth sharing?
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April 30, 2007
03:36 pm | 0 recommendations | 3 comments
I've spent the last few days trying desperately to get into my hotmail account and being unable to do so. That irksome error message -- this page cannot be displayed -- is so exasperatingly embedded in my brain that I've caught the words dancing unrestrainedly through my head on the long subway ride to and from work.
The sneak preview of new email messages that MSN tantalizingly flashes at me when I sign onto messenger is the closest I can get to finding out who responded to my Craigslist posts, what my dad had to say about yesterday's abominable cricket final, whether my movie plans for tonight have been confirmed, and of course who posted on my Facebook wall. My whole week (not to mention my mood) is affected; this currently ranks pretty high on my list of the most inconvenient of inconveniences.
Wondering about how I -- a single individual -- am so disturbed by this temporary (I hope) lapse in one of my daily communication mechanisms leads me to marvel at the inordinately high levels of my dependence on my email, my cell phone, the Internet, and basically any form of digital communication/information gathering in general. It also leads me to wonder about the effect that such lapses can have on larger groups and their ability to function.
In the last decade or so, the control of fundamental processes like banking, manufacturing, communication, electricity and others have transitioned into having a heavy dependence on cyberspace for their functioning. This has undeniably decreased costs and increased productivity, but in the process it has also altered the logistics of day-to-day functioning.
The alteration has created security risks that are different and far more serious: information in the 'real world' can be locked up or stored away -- unless you can grab a key or steal someone's letters, access is restricted. In cyberspace, the possibilities are endless and the pervasive worry nowadays is that cyberattacks can cause serious disruption of critical operations on a national, possibly global scale.
A US government report on Cyberspace vulnerabilities explains: “Not only does cyberspace provide the ability to exploit weaknesses in our critical infrastructures, but it also provides a fulcrum for leveraging physical attacks by allowing the possibility of disrupting communications, hindering U.S. defensive or offensive response, or delaying emergency responders who would be essential following a physical attack.”
So what happens if one of the country's most trafficked websites is disrupted? Like Google maybe. One of Business Week's regularly obsessive articles about Google evokes the worries of George Dyson, author of Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence, that Google, "the crude oil of the Information Economy," may pose a national security concern due to its function as a massive storehouse of vital information.
As far as I know there haven't yet been any catastrophic attacks on US information network systems so far, but I'm pretty convinced that if there were to be, the ramifications would be huge. The aforementioned government report ends with a caveat about how it cannot and should not be expected to secure networks for private enterprises and for individuals: "Each American who depends on cyberspace, the network of information networks, must secure the part that they own or for which they are responsible."
With regard to my own minor situation: admittedly, I'm not particularly tech savvy but I wouldn't call myself completely clueless either. In fact I would say a large chunk of cyber users out there possess similar knowledge to mine. When I can't even get my hotmail account to work, I'm at a loss as to how I can be expected to ready myself against potentially malicious attacks on my day-to-day communication mechanisms.
It's easy enough for the government to spout rhetoric like 'each American must do his own part,' but without any active effort to equip people with the tools and the knowledge to do so, the fundamental question that grand statements like this elicit for me is what we as individuals can really do to protect ourselves and the country’s infrastructure against such attacks.
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April 26, 2007
11:15 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
At a meeting yesterday of China’s Communist Party Politburo, President Hu Jintao warned that more stringent controls on internet content must be put into place. Over the last week, the Chinese media has been leading a campaign to underscore the negative effects of “unhealthy” internet content. It’s no news to anyone that in large part the “healthiness” of online content is defined according to the parameters of what the Communist Chinese government finds palatable.
Last year a report published by Reporters Without Borders revealed that more than 60 “cyber dissidents” in China are in jail for comments they made online. According to an Amnesty International spokesperson, some of those imprisoned have been jailed for offenses as petty as disseminating information about the SARS virus or signing an online petition.
The country uses key word blocking technology to restrict access to “dangerous” websites (including the BBC’s and Wikipedia,) and monitors cyber café activity by taking screen shots at periodic intervals.
The internet was ignored for a long time, as governments focused more on print journalists, authors, and real live protesters rather than those prominent in movements centered on cyber specific dissent in the form of blogging or online petitions. Of late however, conservative governments have woken up to the dangers that the unbounded nature of the internet poses to their regimes. Write a piece or stage a protest in cyberspace, and all of a sudden you’re gathering support from England, Australia, and even Sri Lanka.
I personally believe that the Chinese will continue to find a way around these regulations, and that cyber dissidents, although quashed temporarily, won’t be easily eliminated. In cyberspace, rules can be broken far more easily, and innovation is proceeding at a far quicker pace than in real life.
Just as digital rights management technology is constantly being eroded by a few small groups who circumvent the latest DRM protection, the efforts on the part of the Chinese government to control access to content could also be eroded by a motivated few. The BBC lists sites like Peacefire, Anonymizer and WebWarper, which aid in circumventing blocking technologies.
Earlier this year, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and Google were accused in a Congressional hearing of censoring internet content in order to be able to enter the Chinese market. There are two sides to this issue- both of which have some credit to them.
The first, advocated by politicians like Tom Lantos, condemns Google and the rest. This side accuses the corporations of caving to Beijing’s demands for their own selfish business incentives without any sense of social responsibility. The second, advocated by the relevant corporations and their supporters, is that it is better to offer the Chinese some access to information than restrict their opportunity to interact with the world outside China by denying them of their services altogether. This side could conceivably argue that they are in fact facilitating a movement toward democracy within China by allowing some exchange of information as opposed to a total ban.
Whatever stance one takes, the situation at hand is a real eye-opener regarding the power that the Chinese government has gained over the content that enters and leaves the country. As China’s economic influence continues to increase, it is extremely important for democratic governments that have relations with China to not buckle under pressure. It is just as important for us, as citizens of less restrictive states, to not ignore the fact that “free” expression comes at a heavy price for many.
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