Year: 2008

Honda GPS Warns Drivers of High Crime Zones

/ Christopher Parsons

Honda has released a new GPS system for their vehicles where it will warn drivers when they’re about to leave their car in areas where there is a high chance of theft, vandalizm, or other criminal activity. I have two, relatively short, things to note about this:

A Comical Note

I can just imagine programming this thing for Rio – all the device would say was ‘If you’re stupid enough to think that this will help you here, you’re almost certainly a tourist’.

A Less Comical Note

This continues the pervasive surveillance of what you’re doing AND associates it with databases that you can’t be certain are terribly secure. I imagine that if a particularly enterprising individual surreptitiously made a few changes, and the the GPS was followed to the letter, that badness would ensure. Beyond fear-mongering, however, this technology associates perpetual vehicular monitoring with safety, and mistakenly presents the notion that police equally monitor and respond to reports in all areas of GPS coverage. This is a legitimate badness – it further complicates the problems surrounding self-awareness and unquestioned reliance on external data sources, sources that can become significant factors in one’s daily life.

Of course, it won’t be sold that way: Live in safety! Let us watch you! Surveillance stops all crime! Just look at CCTV in Britain.

Gizmodo link

The Making of a Media Center

/ Christopher Parsons / 2 Comments

This guide is intended to let me (and you) quickly set up an Apple computer as a media centre. I’m currently using a PC running Windows Vista Home Premium as the media centre – it’s native media centre functionality works quite well but, given my hope to move to a more Mac-centric environment, I want to see if it’s possible to actually use something like a mac mini as a media box. For the purposes of this guide, the media centre has to do the following:

  1. Be reliable! No weird and unexpected crashes. Moreover, I don’t want to be servicing the damn thing on a semi-regular basis.
  2. Be fairly easy to manage. I’m not going to have a lot of time to futz around with this thing come September.
  3. Be simple! If it take a lot of work to maintain, my hopes of spreading that work around are doomed to failure!
  4. Be as good as Vista Home Premium! While I really do want a dominantly Mac environment, I’m not willing to do so at the loss of overall functionality.
  5. Access media from my Fileserver (this, really, is what makes this whole thing a pain in the ass).

Now that we’ve identified the conditions for victory, let’s go and investigate how to do this!

Continue reading →

Identification, Identity Systems, and the REAL ID Act

/ Christopher Parsons

In a recent presentation to the Summer 2007 Privacy Symposium, Jim Harper lays out a series of concerns about a national identification system. I’m just going to run through them quickly – watch the video that I link to at the end of the post to view his presentation yourself.

Authentication versus Identification

  • Authentication is where you are challenged to provide a set of items/data in order to gain access to something. An example would be the requirement to have both a banking card and a PIN to access your bank account – this authenticates your access to the resource, but it isn’t a wholesale validation that it is actually Christopher Parsons who is accessing my bank account. Instead, what this does it is gives enough information to the bank that it is comfortable providing access to my bank account, without actually knowing for sure that it is me accessing the account.
  • Identification draws on unique characteristics that make up who you are, and validates that person attempting to gain access to X or do Y against the recorded characteristics that identify that person. This involves validating a person against facets of their constitutive being, with a popular identifier coming from biometric information. This passes beyond authentication systems because the person is certifiably identified. Whereas I can give you my bank card and PIN, I would have a far harder (and more painful) time giving you my right eye and left thumb.

Continue reading →

The Book Industry Needs to Change! Why (most) authors and publishers need not fear online piracy

/ Christopher Parsons

Ars technica has a pretty good rebuttal to the recent piece in the London Times that offered the (seeming) common line of crap that you hear when old industries talk about peer to peer networks. You know what the line is in its general format: “Without the guarantee of making money through our tried, tired and tested revenue streams, authors will stop writing, culture with wither away AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” (There is often a “Think of the children!” added in there for good measure.)

Now, why isn’t it likely that authors are going to flee writing like bookworms from a server farm?

(1) It’s a pain in the ass to scan a book, cover to cover. Don’t believe me? Scan a decent book and then post it for all of us at The Student Bay. I bet you give up before you get halfway through your task. And I bet that you can’t scan in Communicative Action (ISBN-10 0807015075) in a searchable PDF format! (Let’s see if this whole reverse psychology stuff really works…)

Continue reading →

A Not-Good Relationship

/ Christopher Parsons

I tried. I tried so hard. I’ve spent literally years drooling over her. I’ve seen her cousins at some of my friends’ offices, and I was blown away. My choice of either a tall, slim image or one with a little more meat on the sides. My choice, and I could switch things around whenever I want.

I wanted to be with her so bad. After the time we’ve been together, I’ve touched her. I’ve caressed her. I’ve spent tens of hours reading about how to make us work together a bit more. I’ve really tried – I mean that. I realize that all relationships have a honeymoon phase, and that I might have been a little too optimistic that everything would work out between us, but I’ve never had a relationship like this be so challenging.

In this case, there is no compromise with her; she’s definitely a prima donna. In the past I’ve been able to put my ladies to either side of my primary display. This time, however, my Dell 1907 has to be in the front of me or else the colours are washed out. It’s amazingly annoying – to have spent a ton of money on a nice new 19′ monitor that I have the ability to rotate 90 degrees is pretty awesome. I had hoped that I could just wait it out, that I could adjust where it was and things would be better. Of course, this meant that I waited beyond the time that I could return the monitor. It’s not that it’s bad per se, but simply that it’s not good. Continue reading →

Obama Race Speech

/ Christopher Parsons

There’s a good chance that you’ve heard of the recent speech that Obama gave about racial issues in the US, but there is (unfortunately) a good change that you haven’t read it. I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t – a lot of speeches that are talked about really aren’t worth reading. That said, if you haven’t read a speech in decades, read this one. It’s powerful, it’s poignant, and it’s deep. It’s also written by the candidate himself.

Link to Speech: Obama Race Speech