First Blog

Begin with definitions.   For Facebook, (1) The customers are those agencies that purchase information from their product (2), the personal data produced by their 2 billion users.     Most of those 2 billion were scarcely aware their personal data was being sold. Thus, for Facebook, implied data privacy is a myth. For Facebook, there seems little measure of business ethics. When the CEO Mark Zuckerberg was caught data-ripping he apologized, and then again when caught again.   “We have much to learn.”   I believe he did learn. Taken to the next step , it would not be surprising if Facebook sold customer data to other customers .   Now Facebook is the principal behind a new cryptocurrency .   With it, people will be able to transfer (and pay) funds from point to point.   This new venture, called Libra *, goes live next year.     With Libra , Facebook will have access to another dimension of data –   financial data, account numbers, and more. Facebook promises they will no

The latest news is that Facebook has been hacked again, this time for a mere 50 million users.  Is this cause for alarm?  Not for those that don’t use it.  But for others, organizations, politicos, and others it might be. Counting to Billions!! An old question asks for the identity of the world’s best con man.  The answer is the one(s) never detected. Yet the question is reflected from con men to hackers.  Who’s the best?   The answer is exactly the same. Note that Facebook has unlimited resources to protect their data as do other large-scale companies.  Most have also been hacked. What we do not know are those companies that have been hacked and haven’t reported it.  More significant are those hacked companies that don’t know it and maybe never will.  If the hacker is not greedy, and extracts data in a disciplined manner, it may never be detected even with competent IT people available. The other problem is that most IT people have not the skills of dedicated hackers. It

Here's a tidbit for the very depressed. Even if Zuckerberg promised to wrap all Facebook data in some kind of digital chastity belt, the partners and friends who originally scraped the personal data still have it.  It is still being used, and it is still a marketing tool. And it will live as such a tool as long as it has value.  Years, probably.  You see, hacked or otherwise procured data is forever.  This is also true for hacked information from any of the hundreds of hacked servers worldwide. Modifying the old joke: What lasts longer than true love?  The old answer was venereal disease.  The new answer is your data . DATA IS FOREVER

Social Media Standards We see more and more inciteful postings appearing on various social media sites.  These include of course recruitment to terrorism – the big one.  Social media sites state they are continually trying to reduce such postings, but they are completely on their own recognizance on how to do it and what to do.  Thus, little is achieved.  They don’t know what to do and simply do not wish to spend the resources to do anything. What is currently missing is a set of standards for what should not be posted.  Such standards for what cannot be transmitted on broadcast television do exist, and while they are mild they have worked for decades.  Ask anyone, I do not favor more regulations, but it is time the government should create an independent agency to first study this problem and then develop standards and guidelines.  Representatives of the the industry, elected officials, and media experts should be involved. However, unless and until there are standards, t

  Big money . Want to get rich?   Invent a biodegradable ink .   With such chemistry, errant youths could have all the tattoos they desire, and not suffer their whole lives with visible proof of temporary insanity. Bigger money .  You see Facebook ,Twitter, Instagram, and the like as social apps .   It seems that modernity has an unlimited appetite for such apps.  These transcend the now ancient letter, morning coffee, and telephone conversation by miles, even light years.  Create a new such app.  Easy to say, difficult to do,but the rewards are extravagant.  Really big money . We know the national debt (in 2015) is about 19 trillion dollars.   A lot of money this is.   But what does it mean?   We are crossing scales or orders of magnitude, and this is difficult for almost all people.   Suppose I said that a lifetime is about two billion seconds. (Actually, 2.2 billion seconds.) This is a magnitude of such a value to make it incomprehensible by any measure.   But when I say

The End of Computing.   We put forth the question as to the end of computing.   That is, we ask when will computing and computers come to their end of innovative applications, though this is not a discussion about bigger and faster machines.   Sure, bigger, faster computers can and will push to new limits ordinary and well explored topics.    They have this, and will so continue.   We are entered into a discussion about the use of computers to solve new, even revolutionary, problems   of this world.  Examples of innovations now at the end of their road .   Of course, these examples may simply reveal this author’s lack of futuristic insights.  ·          Watch making – long the epitome of machines, the watch is now engineered with precision and at least mechanically do just about everything ever desired – extremely accurate time keeping.   Even still there has evolved a new technology for this task. ·            The horizontal milling machine - Just about everything a m

The world you grew up in is no more.  The world of reasonable honesty and reasonable lies has been replaced by abject dishonesty and blatant lies. Lies.  Yes. People have always told them.  You have told them; so have I.   We need lies; they are a foundational structure of social living.  They both deceive and protect.  Children tell them to their parents to avoid consequences, like punishment.  Adults tell them to their bosses, to enhance their position and/or avoid consequences of poor performance.  Our bosses tell them to their boards to suggest business is good, the project is on target, or the detractors are wrong.  The boards tell them to shareholders to protect their own credibility and most importantly, stock values.   Our politicians tell lies to their constituents, though sometimes innocently with them not actually knowing much more than they've been told.  They enhance their positions to the detraction of their opponents and to the inflation of their personal positi