The Matazone blog

*if you are in organised crime.

Yep, apparently last year computer related crime, covering such nasties as corporate espionage, child pornography, stock manipulation, extortion, and piracy, generated more income for the criminals than the sales of illegal drugs. Together it is thought to have made $105 billion, that’s around £65 billion. Blimey.

Well, sort-of-blimey. This would be a great story if it wasn’t for the simple question of how on earth they calculated these amounts. The point of crime is that it’s hidden from authorities and as such they might be catching 5% or 95% of the criminals without ever really knowing for sure.

I love the next bit though:

Asked if there was evidence of links between the funding of terrorism and cybercrime, McNiven said: “There is evidence of links between them. But what’s more important is our refusal or failure to create secure systems, we can do it but it’s an issue of costs.”

Of course there would be evidence of links between them. There’s always evidence of links between anything naughty and terrorism these days. Funny that, isn’t it? Could it be that this is just a way of scaring people and trying to justify government funding? Oo, perhaps.

Let’s also look at that list: ‘corporate espionage’ that’s got to be a fairly specialist market there, child porn is seriously nasty and I can’t imagine (and I certainly hope) that there are very few people involved with that, then tacked on at the end of the list we have ‘piracy’. Hm. Bearing in mind the competing definitions of piracy that could potentially be almost every person who has ever used any sort of media. Lending a CD to a friend could be classed as piracy, by some company’s perspectives, and the amount of non-licensed copies of Micro$oft Windows floating around is astonishing although clearly that really is piracy. On the list you’ve got some significant but essentially small, organised markets, and then a huge group that probably covers most computer owners in the world. I can’t help but feel that skews things a little.

We all know that ‘cybercrime’ is a problem, but this kind of story is just scaremongering: yes! Lend that CD to your friend and you let the terrorists win!

Am I the only person who, on hearing the word ‘cybercrime’, envisions a devious looking robot that’s twizzling a 1920s silent-film bad guy moustache?

Source here.

You may have heard of SETI@home, a distributed computing project that allowed people over the world to let their computer use its spare processing cycles to help analyse radio signals from deep space in the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Now there’s a similar project that’s working on something a bit more practical: finding a treatment for HIV/AIDS.

It’s very easy to download and install and does research into genes and an illness that is killing millions around the world.

Download it from here
(Currently Windows and Linux only. No plans for the Mac have been mentioned.)

Once you’re set up you can click this link:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=J49BZGBSP1

and join the Matazone team so we can see how we’re doing together!

More info here.

‘Give me a D! Give me an R! Give me a U!’ Err…

Possibly one of the most amusing things I’ve read in the New York Times for quite a while:

On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynaecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection.

Apparently cheerleaders are being recruited to be drugs sales representatives. No, that’s not ‘reprezentin’ da streets posse’ or something like that, the cheerleaders are going around to (predominantly male) doctors to encourage them to stock particular brands of pharmaceuticals. I presume that they aren’t asked to do this in their previous uniform, but from the sound of things the doctors may get to see it as a side benefit if they place a large enough order.

You’ve got to admire the optimism of this person though:

Dr. Carli, who notes that even male drug representatives are athletic and handsome, predicts that the drug industry, whose image has suffered from safety problems and aggressive marketing tactics, will soon come to realize that “the days of this sexual marketing are really quite limited.”

Yes, I think that marketing things with sex is definitely getting old, it’ll never last. In ten years everything will be sold by ugly people in dirty rags, that’s the future of marketing! … Or perhaps not.

“The cheerleaders now are the top people in universities; these are really capable and high-profile people,” said Gregory C. Webb, who is also a principal in a company that runs cheerleading camps and employs former cheerleaders.

So there’s no conflict of interests there. Call me crazy if you like, but I fail to see why a cheerleader would logically be in ‘the top people in universities’. I see no reason why physical health, a strong relationship with attractive individuals, and standardised beauty would not mean that you are intelligent enough to be among the top people, and these things do suggest that in our aesthetic world they will probably do well, but they are also people who have to train very hard and so generally will have less time to dedicate to their studies, making them less likely to be academically successful. There is also the possibility that they have survived on performed charm, so they may be academically weaker than other students. These things apparently don’t matter for a person whose job is to convince doctors of the benefits of drug choices. Are you feeling worried yet?

Speaking of conflict of interests:

“Obviously, people hired for the work have to be extroverts, a good conversationalist, a pleasant person to talk to; but that has nothing to do with looks, it’s the personality,” said Lamberto Andreotti, the president of worldwide pharmaceuticals for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Ah, so the people defending this are all coincidentally involved in drug sales? Spooky. It sounds like doctors are getting some very wrong messages too:

One informal survey, conducted by a urologist in Pittsburgh, Dr. James J. McCague, found that 12 of 13 medical saleswomen said they had been sexually harassed by physicians.

And in a final twist of feminism, here’s Novartis:

But there have been accusations that a pharmaceutical company encouraged using sex to make drug sales. In a federal lawsuit against Novartis, one saleswoman said she had been encouraged to exploit a personal relationship with a doctor to increase sales in her Montgomery, Ala., territory. In court papers responding to the lawsuit, Novartis denied the accusation. The company has also said it is committed to hiring and promoting women.

Shouldn’t that be ‘the company has also said it is committed to hiring and promoting sexy women’?

This is all a logical extension of capitalism in a health system. You make a product, then to sell the product you package it in an appealing way. When you are selling drugs the boxes are never going to be sexy (and will often be the complete opposite) so instead you get human packaging. I’m more than a little troubled by the way that these people, attractive men are in this profession too, are being turned into an extension of a commercial product. It’s not quite prostitution but these companies are pimping out people because of their bodies and looks, it’s just that the sexual acts are not strictly encouraged as dessert. How long before lap-dancers are being recruited too?

I’m sure that there are many women like Ms. Napier, the former Kentucky cheerleader:

she was so concerned about the cute-but-dumb stereotype when she got her job that she worked diligently to learn about her product, Prevacid.

I also don’t doubt that there are many others that survive simply on their looks. There was legislation proposed to make sure that drugs salespeople had a degree in the sciences, but this was rejected. I can see why, how many scientists study so that they can go into sales? Despite this logical reason, it has allowed an unsavoury practise to continue.

Steven Poole, author of Trigger Happy (a very enjoyable book about computer games US link UK link), is working on a new book called ‘Unspeak’. The word is apparently a trademark, but with a bit of luck he won’t sue me…

Anyway, it’s all about ‘decoding the unspoken assumptions in public debate’. What this means is that he’s taking statements from public figures and interpreting them into plain English. This, a common satirical tool, has been done before but he does it very nicely on the fine line between humour and agression. Definitely worth a look if you like something a bit more thoughful on the web.

http://www.unspeak.net/

US link UK link

Here’s the official blurb about it:

Unspeak is language as a weapon. Every day, we are bombarded with those apparently simple words or phrases that actually conceal darker meanings. ‘Climate change’ is less threatening than ‘Global Warming’; we say ethnic cleansing when we mean mass murder. As we absorb and repeat Unspeak we are accepting the messages that politicians, businessmen and military agencies wish us to believe. Operation Iraqi Freedom did more than put a positive spin on the American war with Iraq; it gave the invasion such a likeable phrase that the American news networks quickly adopted it as their tagline for reporting on the war. By repackaging the language we use to describe international affairs or domestic politics, Unspeak tries to make controversial issues unspeakable and, therefore, unquestionable. In this astounding book, Steven Poole traces the globalizing wave of modern Unspeak from culture wars to the culture of war and reveals how everyday words are changing the way we think.

‘Sounds interesting. Although I don’t think ‘unspeak’ did turn up in Orwell’s 1984 it certainly wouldn’t have been out on place in there.

Shoppity shop shop

Based on my Mittens series (in case you’ve no idea what I’m on about).

I’m also working on having full credit-card facilities up and running by the end of next week, so if you don’t like Paypal you only need to wait a little while before another option is available.

This one definitely ranks in the ‘how are they getting away with that?’ category of crime.

In Baltimore a gang are stealing the lamp-posts, most probably to sell them for scrap. These people clearly know what they’re doing, and they’re not totally irresponsible either:

Left behind are half-foot stubs of metal, with wires that carry 120 volts neatly tied and wrapped in black electric tape.

So they drive up, sometimes disguised in workmen outfits, chop down the 30 foot pole, and then carefully secure off the dangerous wires so no-one gets hurt. Odd.

They would be getting 35 cents for a pound of scrap aluminium, so probably make a few hundred out of the poles, which is pretty annoying for the city because they cost around $156,000 to replace. Ouch. There are probably a few taxpayers who would rather the thought of electrocution from unsealed wires than the $20,280,000 bill that currently stands to replace the ones that have been stolen, so perhaps the gang’s social conscience isn’t that strong. Currently the police have no idea who is doing it either, and I have images of Chief Wiggum in my head: ‘That’s good stealin’ boys.’

The gang is clearly very organised, but you can’t help but wonder what they might achieve if the same level of ingenuity were applied to a legitimate business. Alternatively they could take the crime to the next level and start sending ransom notes to the city demaning $100k in return for every lamp that they don’t steal. Now that’s thinking outside of the box.

Source.

Would you want to use an investment company that, while telling you that they work hard for your money, finds time to make a cover version of a Donna Summer hit from 1983? This ranks among the most amusingly bad corporate videos I have ever seen, although it is car-crash hypnotic. Just try looking away once you’ve started watching, you can’t because you don’t want to miss the next embarassing bum wiggle or faux-jolliness of the poor investment staff forced into creating the video.

Watch and bemoan the further deterioration of humanity.

Source.

The blue screen of death, AKA BSOD, is the page that appears whenever Micro$oft Windows crashes. Fortunately, with Windows XP this has become a far less common event, although still by no means unknown. It’s basically a bright blue screen with a basic font error message, telling you that your machine has died and giving you a reference number that means nothing to you at all and usually isn’t very helpful.

It’s nice to see then that the XBox 360 has a had a bit more thought put into it’s version of the BSOD, with a multi-lingual generic error message and a large pinstripe effect in the background. Have a look for yourself.

It rather worrying really that only a couple of days after the machine’s US release that there are already quite a few errors being reported. The usual ‘it’s not as next-generation as I expected’ complaints are standard, but it seems unusual for consoles to have problems loading software at the time of release. It may simply be that this is a major launch, with a huge amount of hype, all happening in an age of massive instant internet feedback. Even if 0.001% of machines have problems it can still seem like a massive issue if those people go online to a few notable forums.

Still, it’s nice that the BSOD has had some design work put into it!

Fancy getting an Xbox? UK link US link

Xbox 360 BSOD info source here.

Currently the UK and the US let their prisoners be sent to countries with lax ideas on interogation so that confessions can be gained from them. The CIA calls this ‘extraordinary rendition’ and in the UK it is termed a ‘friendly liaison’ with a foreign country.

So, in our names, in the War On Terror, what is being done? What do these polite terms ‘extraordinary rendition’ and ‘friendly liaison’ mean?

It means the woman who was raped with a broken bottle in both vagina and anus, and who died after ten days of agony. It means the old man suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten to a pulp before his eyes. It means the man whose fingernails were pulled before his face was beaten and he was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid.

It means the 18-year-old whose knees and elbows were smashed, his hand immersed in boiling liquid until the skin came away and the flesh started to peel from the bone, before the back of his skull was stove in.

These are all real cases from the Uzbek security services which we viewed as friendly liaison, and from which we obtained regular intelligence, in the Uzbek case via the CIA.

A month ago, that liaison relationship was stopped – not by us, but by the Uzbeks. But as Manningham-Buller sets out, we continue to maintain our position as customer to torturers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and many other places. The key point is that none of the these Uzbek victims were terrorists at all.

[....]

We do not receive torture intelligence from foreign liaison security services sometimes, or by chance. We receive it on a regular basis, through established channels.

So who is telling us this? The British ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002-2004. Do you feel sick yet? Do you feel safer knowing that these things are being done in our names, to supposedly protect us? Do you believe that in those circumstances that there is anything that you wouldn’t say just for a moment’s rest, or even a quick death? This price is too high.

I think that every generation has their shame, and this may well be ours.

Source

There is one thing that always interests me about the gap between the US and the UK: in the UK it is usually seen as patriotic to question our leader.

Take backingblair for example. Here’s a website that says, for very valid reasons, that it is in the best interests of the UK to get rid of Tony Blair as soon as possible. I’ve had emails from Americans telling me that my questioning of my prime-minister and theirs is against democracy. The point of democracy is that we have the right to tell our leaders when they aren’t doing what we want them to do. They then are supposed to act in our best interests (which is sometimes a different thing). When they are neither doing what we want or acting to make us safer and more secure then they aren’t doing their job.

Following on from last week’s gift suggestions page for Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk have come out with something similar. ‘Tis rather handy really, click here for gift ideas from Amazon.co.uk.

Here’s the .com link again, Christmas gift ideas from Amazon.com.

Back in the world of the Ditigal Rights Management (DRM) software put on CDs by $ony, which turned out to change deep-files in your operating system and exposes it to trojan infection, $ony have now agreed to run an exchange program for CDs containing the DRM software. The wording on the page is wonderful:

You may be aware of the recent attention given to the XCP content protection software included on some SONY BMG CDs. This software was provided to us by a third-party vendor, First4Internet. Discussion has centered on security concerns raised about the use of CDs containing this software.

We share the concerns of consumers regarding these discs.

Let’s rephrase that into normal English:

You may be aware of the recent attention given to the XCP rootkit software that we installed on your PC without telling you and that can be found on all recent SONY BMG CDs. This software was provided to us by a third-party vendor, First4Internet, so we are pretending that we didn’t really know what it did. Discussion has centered on security concerns raised about the use of CDs containing this software. We are avoiding stating that we knew that it hides its own files and alters a PC’s configuration, as well as the fact that it could not be removed without specialist knowledge at the risk of breaking the entire operating system.

We share the concerns of our lawyers regarding these discs.

I think that’s a bit more accurate.

Yep, we all know that the PS2 has a technology life-span, after which disk-read errors become a problem. Fortunately it’s pretty easy to fix, as these instructions show. Obviously, don’t blame me if you damage the machine or yourself, but follow the instructions carefully and you’ll have a fully working PS2 again in no time.

I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with the Oregon-based author T. G. Browning for a few years now. He has proposed a very sensible idea to help move on the Intelligent Design/Evolution debate. Over to T. G.:

Okay folks, listen up. This is a plea, not a rant. The entire debate
about the Kansas School Board decision has shifted away from the real
core of the debate. I’m asking everyone who reads this to send it on
to at least three other people with a note suggesting that the
recipients do the same.

Intelligent Design (ID) adherents keep saying they simply want to
teach the debate. It’s time to do just that. But how?
The answer is so simple that no one has actually suggested it until
now; at least, not in the terms Americans are most familiar and
comfortable with.

Money.

I propose the following: A cash fund, administered by an impartial
panel that represents both sides, with the money to be awarded to
anyone who can put together a scientific experiment that has a
reproducible result.

The debate is whether or not ID can function as a scientific theory or
not. The fund would be presented to the first person or organization
that could propose an experiment that passes scientific peer review
guidelines and proves – or disproves – any prediction of the ID
theory. If ID truly is a scientific theory, then it must make
predictions that can be tested. Let’s accept that at face value and
let the chips fall where they may.

If this sounds familiar, it is. A similar proposal has been in place
for a number of years for any paranormal claim. The magician, James
Randi, has offered a cash award for years, to anyone who could
demonstrate under controlled, double blind conditions, any occurrence
of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition or telekinesis. No winners
have come forward to claim the money.

I’ll be upfront here. This is a sucker bet, because ID is not science
in any way, shape or form. It makes no predictions that I’m aware of
and no ID adherent has ever proposed any experiment, ever. Why?
Because there are no predictions to test.

I’m not rich, unfortunately, and can’t put up a huge cash prize, but I
will go so far as to put up $250 as seed money. I’m forwarding this
proposal to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims
of the Paranormal (CSICOP) with a request for others to start putting
money together. Perhaps someone rich who has demonstrated a concern
for science education in this country will also put up money. [Bill
and Melinda Gates come to mind. Over the past decade, the two of them
have shown a great deal of sense and civic concern.] My goal would be
a cash award of $1,000,000. That’s enough money to make the idea
attractive to even the most cynical of ID adherents.

God knows I could be wrong. Perhaps some very smart, incisive person
can think of an experiment that would actually test Intelligent Design
as a scientific theory. I’d be the first to applaud such a test. I
don’t look for any such test in the near future, however, and will
make a non-psychic prediction for you all. None will be put forth.

I strongly doubt that Michael Behe, William Dembski and Jonathan Wells
(three big name ID proponents), will back such a proposal because the
truth of the matter is that Behe and his fellow ID advocates know full
well that no such test is possible.

Why?

Because ID is not science.

It’s a simple as that.
www.revisedevilsdictionary.com

I like charity as much as the next sensible person (did I just describe myself as sensible? *shudders*) but I think that Children In Need has to be some bizarre form of punishment sent by the gods upon uncharitable people that accidentally inflicts itself on everyone else. It’s a bit like passover where you didn’t get the ‘blood on the door’ memo. Personally I’d happily pay them to not show it.

Anyway, slightly bizarre metaphors aside, during the hell-of-televisions that is Children In Need on BBC1, tonight they will be showing a new epsiode of Doctor Who. It’ll be the first episode featuring the new Doctor, David Tennant, and it bridges the gap between the last episode of last series and the Christmas special that will be shown next Easter.* The planned time for its showing is 9pm, but, being one of those charity-telethon thingys, that time might move around a bit. This does mean that fans are going to have to suffer some ‘hilarious’ and ‘worthwhile’ programming before seeing the thing we’re interested in. Oh well.

*Not really. They’re showing it next Halloween instead.

Woah! Amazon.co.uk have revealed that the XBox 360 controller is capable of levitation! Fantastic! I was probably going to be waiting for the $ony Playstation 3 to come out next year, but with the floating controller technology I think Micro$oft just might have converted me. Click here to witness the spookiness (before they remove it).

Don’t forget though, this marvellous aspect of the technology is only available in dear old Blighty, the colonial lot across the pond get a boring gravitationally-conformist controller. Click to witness the drab US version. Hurrah for Britain! And for bored copy writers!

(Found by Mwongozi.)

For some reason a Swedish couple decided that parking their bicycle in front of their flower bed would prevent a local elk from destroying their roses. The elk, nicknamed ‘Droopy Ear’ (attempts at an interview have failed so we don’t know his elkish name, or should that be elken?), noticed that a small, light object was in the way and continued to eat the flowers on his next visit before continuing on his way. Unfortunately for the bicycle, it went with him and was found half a kilmetre away, bent out of shape. (Cheers to Hels for this and the previous elk fun source)

I’d love to have a combination of this elk and the drunken ones: I can imagine them riding around town on the bike, perched on each-others’ shoulders on a fermented-apple and rose fuelled rampage.

In related ‘news’, squirrels may be digging up crack-dealers’ stashes. Apparently dealers have taken to burying their goods in peoples’ gardens so they don’t have to carry so much around with them in case they’re searched. Squirrels have then been spotted digging up the same areas… The thing that really amuses me is that there is absolutely no evidence for the squirrels actually finding and consuming any of the drugs (which would almost certainly kill them near-instantly), but it still became a story anyway. For some reason I often find slightly bored journalists much more amusing than earnest ones. Source here.

This gave me a bit of a giggle:

the Department of Social Scrutiny is delighted to announce the adoption of a new Royal Crest which, we believe, mirrors the true values of Modern Britain and is set to make everything OK again.

It only takes a couple of minutes to read and is quite accurate, especially the meaning of the Overlion. Linkidy link link.

$ony have halted the inclusion of what is being called the ‘XCP virus’ on its CDs after the number of legal problems that it’s facing increases.

EFF has put out a guide to how to spot if your CDs contain XCP. That site has a list of 19 of the 20 titles that $ony have put this trojan onto, but, as is pointed out in Geoffrey McCaleb’s blog, the official number of 20 is being spoken in legalese: $ony might only have released 20 CDs containing the rootkit, but $ony subsidiary companies currently have 47 titles (that have been found so far). For a list of the titles currently identified, check out his blog post.

$ony says that this problem is only on CDs sold in the US, but, with the international market being what it is, it wouldn’t be surprising if this is a global problem. $ony are being invetigated by the Italian police for distributing malicious code, so at least one other country is taking legal action other than the US.

Currently there doesn’t appear to be an easy solution to removing the software, but Mirco$oft have decided that the code does indeed count as spyware so will be releasing an addition to their anti-spyware software in the next month (source) and other spyware comapanies such as Sophos say that they will have a removal system in place inside a week.