The Key to Creation by Kevin J. Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some interesting characters and interesting enough world, but as am writing this review after finishing all 3 books I have to give the whole series a 3.0 “meh” review.
The Map of All Things by Kevin J. Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some interesting characters and interesting enough world, but as am writing this review after finishing all 3 books I have to give the whole series a 3.0 “meh” review.
The Edge of the World by Kevin J. Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some interesting characters and interesting enough world, but as am writing this review after finishing all 3 books I have to give the whole series a 3.0 “meh” review.
This is a bit of a follow-up to my earlier post “Google+ Primarily an Identity Service?” though these posts elevate the topic to a more serious level that I did in that post, which was purely from a simple end-user perspective. From a professional, where’s-online-identity-going standpoint, this is a very interesting touchpoint and Doc Searls puts it in great historical and technological perspective in his post, Circling Around Your Wallet. The ultimate online battle for the ultimate killer app is… you. This means your identity in whatever guise identity ends up being defined as, which means who defines it matters. Hailstorm / Passport from Microsoft was dead on launch because no one wanted to trust such a definition and resultant architecture to come from MS. As I finished up my last post on this topic, it comes down to trust.
Do we trust Google to get this definition and resultant architecture right? Just because they have the self-aggrandizing motto “do no harm”, that just isn’t possible once you get to where they and a few others have gotten, where a lot of what you do will inevitably harm some community. Clearly, there are use cases where using a real name will be actually, dangerous to you in the real world. Google, by taking this stand indicates, “accept risk or get lost”. Certainly, their product, their right.
However, do we trust Google, or any other entity to be in a position to enforce their idea of accountability? Hear Eric Schmidt’s own words:
“If we knew that it was a real person, then we could sort of hold them accountable, we could check them, we could give them things, we could you know bill them, you know we could have credit cards and so forth and so on.”
“There are people who do really really evil and wrong things on the Internet, and it would be useful if we had strong identity so we could weed them out.”
Meg Worley in her post, say no to the meat wallet rightly calls out the word “accountability” as “one of the darkest words in the English language”. Combine accountable with “we could weed them out” and you don’t have to be too big a conspiracy theorist to get a bit of a shiver down your spine. Apparently, Google has decided with their real names policy has decided to preemptively weed out those that don’t fit the definition of “you” they see as best commoditized in their business model.
To many, this all sounds like a lot of furor over nothing and trying over-intellectualize the issue, but there is a lot at stake here. Bonnie Nadri does a good job highlighting the real practical issues we should all be thinking about now.
Only the players have changed since the early 2000′s when MS made their bid. Now its Google and Facebook and others. The real point is that one of the players hasn’t changed and isn’t going to change and that’s YOU. Yep, the you that does and should define you in the real world and the virtual and anywhere they intersect.
The Google+ Identity Service Project – Search Engine Watch #SEW.
I’ve seen the quote from Eric Schmidt all over the place and I can’t take any issue with Eric’s stated intentions and motivations, as they are whatever he says they are and I’m happy to believe him. However, I can certainly chuckle about the reality. It is exactly the same chuckle I had about the supposed user community kerfuffle around the “real name” related banning.
What kind of name could you put up that would get noticed and banned? If you are John Smith and don’t want to go by John Smith, then pick something else that looks even remotely reasonable. Kiqnaz Taiknaims? Sounds good. I just registered that at Gmail and invited Kiqnaz to G+ from one of my 4 G+ accounts. It will be interesting to see if Google ever flags that “identity” as un-”real”.
Yes, you read that right, I have 4 G+ accounts and while I do have one in my real name, I don’t post there and don’t foresee really ever doing so. I post under the same name I’ve used on the internet for over a decade. There are people that only know me as Hahleq, so why shouldn’t it be considered a “real name”? I have used it a lot and for a long time such that online it has as much or more reputation as my “real name”. What the reputation is of course, is up for others to decide and therein lies the point I’m getting to much slower and more painfully than I’d like.
Your identity is not your username, real name or not. Your identity isn’t your username and password. Your identity is a combination of the following: an identifier (username, screen name, email address, etc.) and data linked to that identifier. This data comes in many forms.
- Sometimes the data may be contextual such as john.smith@myco.com indicates a certain level of data given that not just anyone can get a corporate address and that if I hit the user directory, I can get some more info on this person and if he’s hassling me, I can get it addressed with Human Resources.
- The data may be tied into reputation such as at ebay or Amazon given the ratings of various buyers and sellers. The reputation may be 1:1 given your interaction with the person via email or chat.
- Insert your examples here…
The data at the end of the day however always comes down to trust. Do you trust that your company controls issuing email addresses? Do you trust that ebay and Amazon police their communities and prevent reputation inflation cheats? Do you trust that the John Smith on Google+ ostensibly living in your hometown is the John Smith you went to high school with? If so, what data did it take to earn your trust? If you run across a blog written by Mr. Kiqnaz Taiknaims and find the content valuable will you really care if that is his real name? If he buys your used tablet on eBay and the payment clears will you care?
Exactly.
Aug 192011
Like Zynga, Digital Chocolate pulls back from the cloud — Cloud Computing News.
Interesting quote:
“the company was operating entirely in Amazon Web Services, but decided to bring some games back in-house when performance issues got to be too much. AWS’s database servers were plenty robust, he explained, but the backend network was just too slow.”
Games, as in most tech areas, is the place to watch to see where the boundaries get pushed as you consider your own use of the cloud.
Not too much to quibble with here except for #2, “Train Users in Best Practices”. Why? Why what?, you may ask. Why is this in the top 5 and certainly if it is a top 5 item, why is it #2?
How much training do users need to be safe on the internet? Other studies have shown that high percentages of IT professionals and even IT Security professionals get hacked. Are they not going to be the trainers of the less savvy? If they are vulnerable are they qualified to be trainers?
How many articles, local and national news broadcasts, radio discussions and gazillions of online articles do users have to see to know:
- They should change their password
- They shouldn’t use the same password everywhere
- They shouldn’t open attachments at all or at least not from anyone they don’t know and expect an attachment from
- Clicking links in emails is baaaaad
- etc., etc., blah, blah… I can’t type out anymore I’m nodding off thinking through all the “common-sense” items
It is time for us arguably professional IT folks to quit dumping our problems on our users and give them the tools they need to be safe. Most of these “tools” should actually be invisible to users as the more they have to interact with and learn, the more they will actively work to work around us and defeat our efforts.
Yes, these tools and functions aren’t free and yes, some of them won’t be completely transparent to users and they’ll whine a bit. However, if you keep it to a minimum and the pain items actually result in a better, safer, more enjoyable experience, the whining will die off. Imagine if the whining were only around items such as, “this process is different, I liked the previous one” vs. all the phone calls to the help desk beginning with, “I accidentally clicked this link in my email and now my PC does / doesn’t do…”.
I throw this advice out to enterprise IT folks as well as to the consumer players and to the internet infrastructure and standards groups. If we just used the tools, technologies and inventions that already, exist the internet could be secured. Isn’t anyone else weary of being told, “that’s too hard”, and “you can’t boil the ocean”? Big dreams got us this far and only grabbing for the next big one keeps us going at record speeds.
Aug 152011
Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam? :: Raymond Ibrahim.
Great info for those that believe there’s really no distinction between the 3 largest monotheistic religions and thus that we should be more understanding of the muslim world’s “viewpoint”. Lots of good historical references, so you’ll need to engage your brain a bit… sorry ’bout that.
Well worth reading and definitely lays out many of my thoughts and rationale for being against “real names”. I’ve held this position since day 1 on the internet and am glad that this gent, Alexis was able to work through all the politically correct hype and come to his own rationale.
What do you think?
Aug 042011
Peter Thiel: If I’d Known, I Would Never Have Started PayPal.
Interesting to note that the reason Peter and company were able to grab this space for themselves was precisely because the existing payment companies (one of which I worked for at the time) did know what was involved and purposely stayed on the sidelines. I was hugely critical of my employer’s decision to sit out and even pass on purchasing PayPal when they had the opportunity. Seems to me that 1.5 billion would cover a fair amount of pain.
I also think it is interesting to hear that Peter thinks that Facebook is a place where people use their real identities is hysterical. I have lost track of the number of Facebook pages I have and only one has my actual name on it and is the one I used least. PayPal has a much stronger claim to know real identities than Facebook. To use PayPal you have to provide some type of payment account and prove control of that account. Perfect? No. Fraud ridden? Yes, and Peter and Max would know. Better than making up a name and getting a free email account to tie it to? Absolutely!
Given this, I never understood why PayPal never tried to turn their accounts into an online identity play. Tie PayPal payment instrument identity to eBay reputation and you’ve got a huge leg up on anyone else out there in terms of reach and utility in facilitating transactions and that elusive element on the web… trust.
