- I'm finally on the downslope of this flu. Checking back over the blog, I see it was a little over a year since my last bout. I tried to stay home as much as possible, because at its height, I'm pretty sure my viral load could have been measured with a bathroom scale. It would have been nice if Bobbi's Typhoid Mary co-worker would have been as thoughtful, but this is probably karmic payback for all those times I tried to be a trooper and went to work sick as a dog.
- The Genie Won't Go Back In The Bottle, Either: The future is going to be a wonderfully convenient place that will make anybody who grew up back in the days of "privacy" break out in hives. This is the absolutely inevitable sorcerer's apprentice result of the silicon revolution: Once you have computers powerful enough to recognize faces and correlate databases, people are going to use them to recognize faces and correlate databases. You might as well complain about the splitting of the atom or the Industrial Revolution or the invention of gunpowder. Barring complete civilizational collapse, what is done will not be undone.
- It makes me happy to know that there is a thing in the world called a "yeti crab".
- It feels weirdly like Monday, doesn't it?
Friday, November 23, 2012
Randomosity...
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21 comments:
"The future is going to be a wonderfully convenient place."
1. Virus playground. Borepatch, among others, has highlighted the astonishing security blindness of boffins and developers. Imagine music here: "Baby you can hack my car" /music. See also "steer by wire."
2. Let's think about who is going to be the ringmaster here. Living in a world filled with "Do you wish to continue?(Y/N)_" would be annoying but soft cutouts are, well, soft. Kicking the plug out is not always a viable option. But your personal counter-agent is secure, because, um, it has been so far.
Ritchie,
I'm aware of all that. Thing is, thus far it's all so much spitting in the wind.
"Pay-by-smartphone! Pphhhtttt! Never catch on! Security holes! No privacy!" and yet it keeps on happening.
Our security gurus these days have taken the torch from Buckley's hand, and stand athwart history, shouting "Stop!"
"Barring complete civilizational collapse..."
When you put it that way, Tam, that collapse we've heard so much about doesn't sound that bad.
Re: Yeti Crab, *imagines following conversation*
Scene: a Yeti barroom.
Male Yeti 1: Hi, Joe. Long time no see.
Male Yeti 2 (vigorously scratching himself): Hi, Jim. How you?
Male Yeti 1: Pretty good, pard. What's up with the scratching?
Male Yeti 2: Remember that hot little blond Yeti I went home with last weekend?
Male Yeti 1: Yah, the one with the bleach-blond fur? She looked like she'd been around the block a time or two. Heh heh heh...
Male Yeti 2: Well, she was a lot of fun, I'll tell you that. Bitch gave me a case of Yeti Crab, though, and I passed it on to my ol' lady Yeti. She's pissed as hell.
Male Yeti 1: Haw haw haw!
Male Yeti 2: Yah, she's cut me off. I'm in the Yeti doghouse. *sheepish grin*
Male Yeti 1: Ah, well. At least she didn't chase you around the Yeti den with a butcher knife, like happened to Fred...
Male Yeti 2: Oh, man, that'd totally suck. Hey bartender, bring me a beer, wouldja?
Makes that mall scene from "Minority Report" look not so far fetched...though a bit different. Your (allegedly) SmartPhone pops up ads for things on sale based on prior purchases...and if you forgot that item (Good Heavens! My phone's in the car!) then the cameras just scan you and I'm sure it comes over the loudspeaker.
Get off my lawn, durn kids.
Yeti crab, aka "Wookiee of the Sea"...
Raven Eye - Ethical Hacking Service
is located just around the corner from our complex.
Gerry
Glad to hear you're better... The rest, interesting... ;-)
At my current company, we'll send sick people home. There's not a much better example of corporate short sightedness than a culture that encourages the sick to come to work. Combining vacation with sick time and calling it PTO, or whatever braindead HR departments decide to call it, is one the most egregious examples. Companies end up losing far more productivity to having typhoid marys in the office making everyone else sick than they would if the first person that got it stayed home. Since I stopped working for companies that have such dumb policies, I hardly ever get seriously ill.
And what happens when the Chinese decide to just turn it all off?
Not this year, or next. But 2020? When we've spent our savings, when the boomers are all living hand to mouth on their pension checks? Maybe.
The homemade croissants, they are arising. See you tomorrow. Get well.
Actually, it feels like Friday out here, seeing as I had to work yesterday, Thursday.
drjim,
Yeah, it was weird here, with Bobbi being home sick on Wednesday and then Thanksgiving on Thursday, my internal clock is saying "Roomie has been home two days in a row, ergo, it must be Monday..."
Talk about spitting into the wind...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/23/saudi-arabia-text-alerts-women
I know the feeling.
On 4-day weekends, I'm always thinking the second day off is Sunday!
Glad to hear you two are feeling better!
flu is NO fun.
I just got home Tuesday, having driven from Orlando, FL here to Galveston, TX.
While afflicted with a stomach flu, the whole way. Basically subsisted on Immodium and Pepto, with many improptu stops en route. Scary, having to contemplate a very urgent stop at the side of the road on a moment's notice.... thankfully, those coincided with the apperance of avaliable facilities!
That's normally a one-hotel drive for me, though I have gone straight through on occassion. This time? Three day trip.
So yes, flu sucks, and Tyhpoid Mary carriers thereof, suck worse. I did my level best to minimize public contact en-route, for that very reason.
Just now beginning to feel semi-human. Earlier in the week, I felt more akin to that Yeti Crab.
Glad to hear that you're on the recovery side, too, ma'am. Cheers to full recoveries, one and all!
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Several dystopian scifi writers have already posited the self-imposed wearing of full facial covers, masks, burkas, veils and so on precisely because of facial recognition capabilities.
I wonder if it will come to pass.
Likewise, several writers have theorized that transhuman hybrids will be possible, and the doorman at the apartment building may be part doberman, able to smell if you are really the resident of Apt 5B or an imposter, and capable of a really nasty bite if you are not verified by nostril.
So maybe we'll have that going for us, too.
Somehow when the hackers used to say that information wants to be free, I don't think they meant every little private thing about THEM!
I can see how Ted Kaczynski could become a cultural icon (of people hiding in the Appalachian hills); sort of a proactive pastor Niemöller.
Glad yer feelin' better, Ma'am, and I do understand the Typhoid Mary cow-irker phenomenon. A guy who was staying at Ann's house with us brought it home from his job. Ann and I went from feeling slightly queasy to fixin' to die within about an hour.
I tellya, both of us had some fine hallucinations and fever dreams, which would have been much more enjoyable had we not felt like we were fixing to die, which was a real possibility at at least one point.
As I mentioned in the other comment, the fever ran so high at one point that I had to be dragged into the cold-water bath, I was talking so funny.
I'm sure she did it out of love, but also as a practical gal, not wanting to explain to the Deppities what this nekkid dead guy was doing in her house.
P.s. Ann has an IQ well into three digits. I refuse to hang out with dumb wimmin. (or men)
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