127.0.0.1

Dicen que la iglesia católica es una brújula moral, esto es falso. Si fuera verdad, a día de hoy veríamos como la iglesia siempre hizo el bien. Pero vemos que esto no es así. Su excusa? La ignorancia. Para ser portadores de un mensaje divino, o lo portan muy mal o tienen un dios muy cabrón… En resumen, si la iglesia es incapaz de saber dónde está el Norte Ético, para qué coño sirve? La historia, por cierto, nos muestra que no saben dónde está.

Foto cortesía (cc) de Andrew Magill

A raíz de la comparación de ¡Esto es precisión!, cgredan nos envió el enlace Where Do Hard Drive Heads Come From? en el que se habla del proceso de fabricación de los discos duros y de la precisión de funcionamiento del cabezal de lectura y escritura de éstos, el cual planea sobre los platos del disco a 40 átomos de altura.

Comparativamente, si la cabeza del disco fuera un Boeing 747 y los platos fueran la Terra,

Volaría a una velocidad 800 veces la del sonido,

a menos de un centímetro del suelo,

contaría cada brizna de hierba,

cometería menos de 10 errores irrecuperables para una superficie del tamaño equivalente a Irlanda.

As promised, Wikileaks is releasing on to the ‘net more than half a million confidential pager messages sent around September 11, 2001. The data includes pager messages sent by officials from the NYPD and the Pentagon, as well as citizens who witnessed the collapse of the twin towers. As I scroll through the archives, though, what strikes me as most fascinating is the jumbled mix: plaintive, automated cries from printers who’ve gone offline, or servers begging for a reboot — those pings are jammed up against urgent ALL-CAPS messages from wives asking their husbands to please call and let them know they’re still alive. There are commands for officials to “meet in the situation room.” And texts from disgruntled corporate employees, asking why their bosses don’t just give them the day off already. There’s not much fodder for conspiracy theorists, but there’s a lot of random weirdness:

2001-09-11 09:15:38 Arch [1376997] B ALPHA (27)Hey Honey! Can you bring some bagels when you get back? The pork chop is now crying about the World Trade Center plane crash. Geez! It is scray but no reason to cry. Talk to you later! I love you!

And personal messages like this, odd in the context of great tragedy:

Good morning sexy man!! Got my zebra thongs on!!! Feeling a little animalistic!!!

Others make you stop and think — did this person die moments later? Did this person narrowly escape death?

2001-09-11 07:51:33 Skytel [002691994] C ALPHA TAKE YOUR TIME. I WILL NOT BE AT 1WTC UNTIL 9:30 A.M. THANKS, SHAWN

The mundane, the mechanical, the meta, all in one data dump.

Some media coverage: Guardian, Telegraph.

The people at Wikileaks say they published the intercepts as a “completely objective record of the defining moment of our time”.

As Kevin Poulsen at Wired News points out, it sounds like the data may have come from an organized, collaborative effort — not just one person.

“While we are obligated by to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11.”

So many messages from so many different network sources — all carriers? Where did this data come from? My bet is on a military or government agency, or a firm that provides commercial analytics services. Or, some combination thereof.

Declan McCullagh, whose politech email list I stayed glued to on 9/11/2001 and on the days following, has the best last word on the pager intercepts. Snip from his report for CBS News:

This should be a lesson to anyone who would prefer their personal details not go on public display: Without end-to-end encryption, and perhaps even with it, your correspondence is vulnerable to interception and publication. And if you’re the Secret Service responding to threats against the president, or FEMA organizing an evacuation to an underground bunker, why are you letting anyone with a $10 pager and a Windows laptop watch what you’re doing?

9/11 tragedy pager intercepts. (Wikileaks)

Related: Reddit thread is here.

Lot salió de la casa y se dirigió hacia ellos, cerrando la puerta detrás de sí, y les dijo: “Les ruego, hermanos míos, que no cometan semejante maldad. Miren, tengo dos hijas que todavía son vírgenes. Se las voy a traer para que ustedes hagan con ellas lo que quieran, pero dejen tranquilos a estos hombres que han confiado en mi hospitalidad.” Pero ellos le respondieron: “¡Quítate de en medio! ¡Eres un forastero y ya quieres actuar como juez! Ahora te trataremos a ti peor que a ellos.” Lo empujaron violentamente y se disponían a romper la puerta.

- Génesis 19.

Nótese que la mayoría de los personajes bíblicos son auténticos imbéciles a disposición de los acontecimientos. En el caso de Lot su estupidez no solo roza lo insano sino que además por su posición como cabeza de familia logra situarle en un lugar privilegiado para promover las atrocidades a las que nos tiene acostumbrados el viejo testamento.

Y díganme si no es de ser subnormal profundo entregar a tus hijas vírgenes e indefensas para que sean violadas por una multitud propiciando un acto de total salvajismo contra dos inocentes. Todo para que “no les pase nada” a dos ángeles enviados por Jehová capaces de destruir una ciudad y a la multitud contenida en ella. Claro que muy listas tampoco eran sus hijas que terminaron practicando incesto con el viejo Lot…

Total, henos aquí que esta clase de gente se supone que son los precursores de nuestra civilización actual. ¿Te sorprendes que las cosas vayan tan mal? Tener a la biblia como libro de guía moral o consejo es a la vista de los hechos y los textos un error propio de un crio de seis años que habiendo visto algún capitulo de X-Men, cree poder volar.

Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriate seductiveness, usually beginning in early adulthood. These individuals are lively, dramatic, enthusiastic, and flirtatious. They may be inappropriately sexually provocative, express strong emotions with an impressionistic style, and be easily influenced by others.

Associated features may include egocentricity, self-indulgence, continuous longing for appreciation, feelings that are easily hurt, and persistent manipulative behaviour to achieve own needs.

My partner and I have been keeping our relationship a secret from my family. Is there any way to tell my dad that I’m a lesbian without setting him off?
Lacey L., New York

Lesbians are awesome. If your dad doesn’t like lesbians, he’s gay. You guys should make out in front of him and send me a video of it.

At the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh this week, there was a conversation on social networking data. Someone made the point that there are several different types of data, and it would be useful to separate them. This is my taxonomy of social networking data.

1. Service data. Service data is the data you need to give to a social networking site in order to use it. It might include your legal name, your age, and your credit card number.
2. Disclosed data. This is what you post on your own pages: blog entries, photographs, messages, comments, and so on.
3. Entrusted data. This is what you post on other people’s pages. It’s basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don’t have control over the data — someone else does.
4. Incidental data. Incidental data is data the other people post about you. Again, it’s basically same same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that 1) you don’t have control over it, and 2) you didn’t create it in the first place.
5. Behavioral data. This is data that the site collects about your habits by recording what you do and who you do it with.

Different social networking sites give users different rights for each data type. Some are always private, some can be made private, and some are always public. Some can be edited or deleted — I know one site that allows entrusted data to be edited or deleted within a 24-hour period — and some cannot. Some can be viewed and some cannot.

And people should have different rights with respect to each data type. It’s clear that people should be allowed to change and delete their disclosed data. It’s less clear what rights they have for their entrusted data. And far less clear for their incidental data. If you post pictures of a party with me in them, can I demand you remove those pictures — or at least blur out my face? And what about behavioral data? It’s often a critical part of a social networking site’s business model. We often don’t mind if they use it to target advertisements, but are probably less sanguine about them selling it to third parties.

As we continue our conversations about what sorts of fundamental rights people have with respect to their data, this taxonomy will be useful.

Britain is full of license-plate cameras, cameras used to send you tickets if you’re caught speeding, or driving in the bus-lane, or entering London’s “congestion-charge zone” without paying the daily fee for driving in central London. And because of Chekhov’s first law of narrative (“a gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off by act three”), the police have decided to also use these cameras as a surveillance tool, to “catch terrorists” (and other bad guys). So any police officer can add any license number to the database of “people of interest” and every time that license plate passes a camera, the local police force will receive an urgent alert, and can pull over the car, detain the driver, and search the car and its passengers under the Terrorism Act.

And, of course, police officers are less than discriminating about who they add to this list. For example, “Catt, 50, and her 84-year-old father, John” were added to the list because a police officer noticed their van at three protest demonstrations. And now Catt and John get pulled over by the police and searched as terrorists.