Subscribe to this blog in Radio:
Didn't find what you were looking for?
E-mail this blog's author, Bruce Umbaugh:  |
|
 |
Monday, December 29, 2003 |
Romania tackles rise in cyber-crime , by Clark Boyd, BBC .
The Friday night scene in the bar at Bucharest's Polytechnic
University is a lot like any other college bar scene. Some students
knock back a few beers. Others enjoy a game of pool.
In another corner of the bar sit a dozen high-end desktop computers,
complete with high-speed internet connections. This is where the real
action or maybe the virtual action, is.
6:24:35 PM 
|
|
Today, l also learned about Peri the robot.
3:24:07 PM
|
|
Not too late to the party, I hope . . .
The Alphaville Herald's been
reporting on lots of interesting news and figures from within the virtual
world of The Sims Online. And that reporting has gotten the publisher
kicked off of TSO.
Lots and lots of intriguing questions in all this, but I'm working on a
thumb-tiny keyboard and won't go on at much length now.
Three things, briefly (and, really, Peter, I'm going to get to the last of
these when I see you today):
- The virtual-real boundary issues. Is tiny prostitution involving
minors just unsavory? Or is it something really wrong? What about when
real-world money is involved?
- Emotional (and other) investment in things virtual. It's clear, in
discussion about this on the Well, e.g., that a lot of folks have buttons
that are pushed, hard, by anyone revealing attachment to, say, virtual pets
or dwellings or avatars. I think that's due to failure of imagination and
paucity of experience.
In a session yesterday morning (did I mention I'm attending the American
Philosophical Association meetings and posting this using my new palmtop
and Hilton HHonors free Wi-Fi? Yup), someone argued that online ed
ultimately fails because it lacks the element of emotional engagement that
come along wiith physical presence with one another in a classroom. A
questioner pointed out counter-evidence, such as the fact that people's
experience online has been sufficiently intense to motivate marriage,
murder. suicide. Sure looks like those folks are emotionally engaged.
To which the speaker replied that there are of course unbalanced people,
neatly dismissing all countervailing evidence with a "No True Scotsman"
move. So, I concluded there was nothing to talk about with him and
(uncharacteristically) shut up. (Though I did think of taking it up just to
point out how it could be better if we were doing the session online,
asynchronously, and I could work on a less hostile response.)
- The virtuality of the real. Some of the issues around TSO events are
compelling just because eBay and Paypal allow real-world commodofocation of
virtual artifacts in TSO, Everquest, and so on. Apparently virtual things
can be exchanged for apparently real things. But -- and curt story here (my
thumbs grow weary) -- this further points out how blurry the distinction is
between real and virtual, since real-world money is itself virtual. On the
face of things, what you get in the exchange is of the same kind on either
side of the transaction.
Does that make any sense?
More . . .
11:23:33 AM
|
|
Digital Pearl Harbor: It's already happened, by Robert Vamosi, ZDNet
Anchor Desk.
For the past few years, former White House cybersecurity
director Richard Clarke has predicted a Digital Pearl Harbor, a single
Internet attack that would change the way we view cybersecurity ever after.
Many believe such an event has not yet occurred. But I
suggest it already has. In fact, in 2003 there were at least two candidates
to choose from. Both had adverse effects on the Internet and in the "real"
world--which means to me they'd qualify under any conservative definition
of "Digital Pearl Harbor."
The two, of course, are the SQL/Slammer and MSBlast worms.
2:21:43 AM
|
|
|
