Stupid Boys

I have a female coworker who is a badass tools developer. And at CanSec not only was it assumed she must not be here for the conference (female), but that she was the shiatsu massage therapist stationed at the con (Asian).

Eventually this retarded attitude at conferences has got to change. There were so many women at CanSec that Dragos ran out of ladies jackets and had to rush order more. Speaking of which, the jackets are pretty awesome. Probably the best con swag I've gotten in my 7 years of attending security conferences.

the things people can't talk about

It is hard to keep things hidden inside. It is painful and sad and it hurts, because the act of keeping something secret somehow invalidates it, makes it feel dirty and shameful even when it shouldn't be. Whether your hiding it to protect yourself or to protect someone else, the outcome is the same.

When a person hurts inside and they don't want to show it, they form a defensive shell and don't let people in. It is safer that way. They act like everything is fine, like they are bulletproof, like nothing ever bothers them. They project confidence and happiness, and they save their tears for in private where no one can see and suspect they are vulnerable.

And while they protect themselves, they struggle with feeling like they are being artificial, unauthentic, disingenuous. Identity becomes fractured between public and private. They hate who they are becoming but they feel they have no other choice. Who they are and who they present to the world are different things. And eventually this becomes routine, the new normal. Life goes on.

Someday, if they are lucky, the pressure gets released and they find themselves in a time and place with people where they have the opportunity to be themselves with and they don't have to hide (if they have the courage). They don't have to be ashamed. Hermey gets to be the dentist.

Microsoft Live has no respect for users privacy choices

I am a member of a small private blog that discusses matters of a highly personal nature. There are a couple dozen members. The blog was hosted on spaces.live.com, which recently upgraded its services/UI. As part of this upgrade, the ability to comment anonymously on blogposts was removed. Anonymous comments can be abused by spammers, I get that, its why I moderate comments here on the Hideaway. But on a blog with restricted membership I think the threat of spam is about nil. Is having a system intelligent enough to respect user privacy in that situation too much to ask for though? Lemme see… IF blog has restricted membership ALLOW blog owner to SELECT whether or not to allow members to comment anonymously. Yeah, that's some wicked complicated logic. But whatever, new policy moving forward, I can live with that. Sucks as people are less likely to comment and engage in supportive discussion - I know I'll think a little more carefully about what I comment since I am personally identified - but at least I know that going in.

But no, it isn't that easy. Because Live went and applied the policy retroactively so all the anonymous comments posted in the past NOW EXPOSE THE COMMENTER'S NAME. Thankfully the blog owner noticed this and shut the blog down completely. Apparently un-selecting the 'use my profile' box and entering a pseudonym for your comment is entirely unsupported now AND they were tracking commenters identity on the back end anyway, so now with no warning what-so-ever to users, the privacy choice users made to un-select that box has been reversed.

Did I mention I'm pissed off?

I will NEVER, NEVER use a Live blog/mashup/cloud offering again. I'd ditch the email too if I didn't need it for my gamertag. Asstards.



~Elphie

Sex and Technology

If you've read much of the Hideaway you know I find human behavior and identity to be fascinating. And you know i'm a total nerd. So the geektastic question I am going to address in today's blog entry is why is Cherry 2000 culturally relevant?


Cherry 2000 was a bad 1987 movie that has attained cult status - no doubt helped by semi-regular lustful references to the Cherry 2000 by Crow and Tom Servo on MST3K. Cherry 2000 wasn't the first movie to feature a humanoid sex robot (ok, technically an android), Blade Runner in 1982 had Pris the replicant. But Pris *looked* like a whore.

Cherry 2000 looked like the girl next door, and wasn't just an animated sex doll but the main character's wife-substitute.


When the main character breaks his wife/doll, he puts her personality/memory on a chip and sets out in search of a new body to house 'her'. But being a sentimental human, he wants the same model - not any old female shell to house his beloved memory chip, he wants the exact same doll, because the human has fallen in love with his android and is emotionally attached to both the physical representation of her as a person as well as her 'personality'. (of course the entire movie is set up so he instead abandons his wife/doll in the desert and falls in love with a REAL woman, a pre-Antonio Banderas Melanie Griffith.) But go back a sentence or two, where I talk about how he has fallen in love with the artificial human - THIS is one of the things that makes Cherry 2000 different from Pris or Gigalo Joe (AI). Cherry is loved. She is in a relationship, as much as she can be given that she is property and not programmed to consider independence (or really anything other than subservience) an option. Cherry, Pris and Joe are all designed and programmed to be sex partners for humans, but Cherry 2000 is the only one who is truly owned (the second difference). Pris and Joe are prostitutes, but have freedom to move about in society and choose their partners/activities/home/relationships. Cherry is property. And IMO this makes her far less human than Pris or Joe, despite the fact that she appears to have the more conventional and respectable/stable life. She has no free will, and that makes her less human than the other human substitutes.

So why is the creation of human sex substitutes so common in the future vision? Is it technology for technology's sake? Misogeny run amok? I think it is just that sex is fun, but people are complicated and STD's are a bitch. But if we've evolved enough to create complex human substitutes, shouldn't we have evolved enough to change our attitudes about sex between consenting adults and by and large not need the sex robots? Sure, the hideously ugly or those into really whacked out kinks that they can't find willing partners for would still need/want these dolls, but what would drive a human into the bed of a machine versus a true flesh and blood human offering the same services? Pure skill? (Not to say that skill isn't desirable; after all, Data rocked Lt. Yar's world). If that is the primary criteria for sex android evolution, there damn well better be Joe models and not just Cherry and Pris.

What I hated about Black Hat this year

I’m on my way home from Black Hat and I have to say, some things have improved since CMP bought the conference a couple years ago. But that is a different blogpost. This is about the things that SUCK now. Like the vendors. Now vendors in and of themselves aren’t so bad when they have technical representation at their booth to talk to con attendees about their products or services. It’s the Booth Bunnies, or in some cases, the Booth Whores, that I find offensive. I’ve gone on record in the past about hating RSA because of the obnoxious marketing overload. I really hope Black Hat isn’t going that direction. I understand that the majority of Black Hat attendees are male, but it is still horribly annoying to watch companies use Cherry 2000 style bimbos try to lure potential customers to their booth based on sex appeal. And the mere fact that booth bunnies exist on the con floor makes it harder to be a woman in this industry and not have the gen pop assume you must be there purely as eye candy.

McAfee had the Security Barbie style booth bunny. I guess to distract you from the fact that their product sucks. I wonder if she comes with the Malibu Beach House.

Cenzic had a Booth Bunny ACROSS the hall from their booth (very sneaky!) stopping people walking by with “are you interested in Web Application Security?” and handing them puzzle pieces you could take to their booth and possibly win a prize. This was really funny, since I was walking with someone who works for one of their competitors (and has better products). As expected, I didn’t win anything. At least she wasn’t dressed up like a tart.

Some company had a Booth Bunny dressed as a Vegas showgirl, which I can at least respect for its theme appropriateness, even if I still hate the Booth Bunny philosophy. She was running different games where people answered questions to win prizes.

The most egregious offender was EdgeOS. When I stopped to snap a picture (and lets be clear, this was the best looking of the three Booth Whores I saw there), one of the guys working the booth asked if I’d gotten an invitation to their Saturday night party. Here is how the conversation went:

EOS Guy: hey, have you gotten an invitation to our party yet?
Me: No.
EOS Guy: you haven’t? how’d that happen? (this was kind of creepy the way he said it)
Me: probably because I didn’t stop by your booth to chat up your booth bunnies for one.
EOS Guy: they aren’t booth bunnies.
Me: no? when they wear pleather they aren’t called booth bunnies anymore?
EOS Guy: no, they’re booth babes (hands me invitation to party)
Me: whatever you call them, they make it harder to be a woman in this industry. (walks away)


You might think calling them Booth Whores is a bit harsh and judgmental. Maybe Goth Booth Bunnies is more sensitive. But this was the most direct sexual marketing I’ve seen at a non-sex industry conference, and if you get paid to dress like that, stick party invitations in your bra, and leverage sexual energy to get geek boys to stop at the booth of your temporary employer, I’d say you are selling your body for profit. AKA whoring.

Anyway, I assume the pleather girls were on display at the EdgeOS party, I don’t know for sure because I didn’t go. If I had, I’d have been the bitchy attendee who just spent the evening giving the hosts and their pleather clad prickteases shit all night, and I didn’t want to waste my time on that even if they were buying the drinks.



Just in case there is some confusion let me be clear: I have no problem with pleather, fetish wear, or pretty girls. That isn’t what I’m complaining about. When vendors bring in booth bunnies it perpetuates the stereotype that the women at cons are not there for the con itself. I have a problem with the fact that every conference I attend, at least one person assumes I must be marketing, PR, or sales. All of those fields are useful and I respect the marketing, PR, and sales people where I work. The problem is that people assume I am something I am not based on my gender. They assume I can’t possibly do anything technical or relevant to their work because I’m female. And that fucking pisses me off. Let me repeat: It isn’t that I don’t respect marketing professionals, its that I get pissed at the discrimination and bias. I understand that guys are surprised I’m a geek, that I game, that I quote sci-fi movies and know what Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep led to. I understand that compared to the average woman you might meet in the mall or coffee shop, I’m an anomoly. But at a security conference, why WOULDN’T I be just like everyone else there?

Other things I hated:
Dan Kaminsky getting a pwnie. Black Hat overhyped his talk in a frenzy of media whoredom, then he got kicked in the balls by being awarded the most overhyped talk pwnie. He worked his ass off on this issue, did all the right things to try and protect people, and instead of earning the respect he deserved, he got made fun of.

Smells Like Teen Spirit transitioning to Saturday Night Fever. FAIL

French press sniffing creds

Snacktime crowds clogging the halls, making movement impossible

Talks that span 2 hours. I don’t want to commit 2 hours to one talk. C’mon people, tighten it up. There are too many interesting things to see to put all my eggs in one basket for 2 talks. By having a 2 hour talk you are not competing with 4 other tracks, you are competing with 8.


Not enough time or space to talk with everyone I wanted to. The size of Black Hat is a blessing and a curse. You see everyone in one place, where you might only see half as many people you want to at a smaller con. But everyone is circulating so there isn’t time for talking with any one person very much. There are a great many people I wish I’d had time to sit down and talk with more.

quitcherbitchen

The life of an international chinchilla smuggler is not always easy or predictable. Sometimes I am just too busy flitting through the seedy underworld of exotic pet trade to expatriate my furry leetle amigos and dodging customs agents to blog much. Its not like I can just FedEx them to their new homes around the world - though we all know I'd never use FedEx, they have no sense of humor.

While offline and transporting cargo, I am reading The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. If I'm going to mither on about identity here on the Hideaway, I should probably do a bit of organized reading on the topic. Surely there will be more soul-searching posts once I'm done feeding my brain.

In the meantime, a lot of interesting stuff has happened in the world. Dan Kaminsky has an interesting article about Net Neutrality on ComputerWorld that I highly recommend reading. Once you've read that, check out Adam Shostack's thoughts on how net neutrality impacts innovation. Adam, if you get someone to make chocolate toothpaste, I will soooooo buy some. HD Moore has announced July as the Month of Browser Bugs, I guess it is like the Year of the Dog for software. HD is a smart guy, and while I'm quite sure he is looking at all browsers, it does appear that Microsoft might have pissed him off a bit recently... whoops. surely unintentional, seeing as they've invited him to speak at not one but two of their hoity-toity BlueHat events...

There was something else interesting but I've temporarily forgotten what it was, and I've got to get back to the chinchillas. Another time...

~Elphie

I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got. (Really?)

Did Sinead O’Connor reach the pinnacle of human existence where she truly does not want what she has not got, or is she just in self denial and living in holier-than-thou martyrdom? I suppose there is a possible middle ground, she is a total and complete sellout, writing something to tug at the heartstrings just to sell albums... :) Regardless, I don’t know ANYONE who doesn’t want SOMETHING that they don’t currently have. There is a reason lust and greed are two of the seven deadly sins, and ‘thou shalt not covet’ is in the 10 commandments. People have wanted things that they don’t possess for as long as there have been people.

I’m not talking just about physical desire/lust, though that is obviously one form of wanting. I’m talking about the basic premise of wanting. Wanting in and of itself isn’t bad. I want world peace – which is not a bad thing to want. But no one’s appetites stop at altruism (even mine), and what people want isn’t always materialistic. Wanting to be a leader in your community/church/office, wanting killer abs, wanting to screw around with that hot guy/girl you met at BlahLocation – we are a species born and raised to want what we have not got. And what we want is tied directly back to our self-identity (or identities).

I believe that there are two kinds of wanting. Routine desire for things you don’t have is pretty normal. The problem is when you take a look around your life and realize maybe all the things you’ve accomplished – while what you wanted at one point in your life – are no longer things you are interested in. Not just that you have the Audi A4 and really want the A8, but that you have the Audi A4 and instead want a Harley Davidson. This is a nice big highway billboard sign of impending identity crisis 50 miles ahead, do not miss, not for the squeamish or depressed, something you just don't want to miss.

So now the things you want out of life (family, freedom, career, possessions, etc) are so completely different from the things you have, you can’t figure out what to do about it. Do you give up everything you have and start over, or do you find the peppermint schnapps the Claus's didn't share with Rudy & Hermey and continue to live the life you previously bought into?

Ultimately though, wanting is still being driven by identity, not the reverse. And identity is so much more than just your social security number/name/credit rating. We display who we are to the outside world through our appearance, our belongings, our behavior. But the essence of who we are is something much harder to pin down, measure, or quantify - even to ourselves. In the words of the ancient Greeks:

Know thyself
The unexamined life is not worth living

But the road of self inquiry is not an easy one to navigate, and isn't necessarily a joy ride. Some get lost. Others turn back. Some run off the road into a ravine and perish. Some never leave home to begin with, preferring to stick with the comfortable routine they know than explore the unknown because change is scary and stressful. There is a significant amount of discomfort in realizing your life itches like an ill-fitting suit you’ve outgrown, and as you shed your old skin, the new you coming out is something else entirely.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
~Anais Nin, "Winter of Artifice"

"All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts"
~William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

As a student of human nature, I find the whole topic of identity fascinating. But unlike Anais and William, I am not convinced that everyone needs to travel a lifelong path of self examination to change states, or to reconcile their various personas, or uncover some repressed or hidden true self. There are people who are so comfortable in their current skin that they are exactly who they appear - to everyone. Family, friends, strangers and co-workers all know one person, who knows themselves and most importantly is happy with who they are. I'm not sure if I actually know any of these people, but I'm sure they must exist. :) I think I need to do more international travel and spend more time embedded in foreign cultures around the world. I'm sure there are very different identity paradigms to learn about and explore than those in the western cultures I've been raised in.

~Elphie

In the immortal words of Pete Townshend, ‘Who are you?”

Before continuing yesterday's post about identity, I want to point out something tangentially related to virtual identities that amuses me. I've written before about Second Life, and how I don't get the attraction (outside of financial gain). Guess what - I'm not the only one who doesn't get it. Chris Pirillo has a funny blog post about his first Second Life experience - I laughed out loud reading it. Chris is no dummy when it comes to computers, so the fact that he ended up with a box on his head is extra amusing to me.

Ok, so back to identity. I've been talking with a few friends about this topic for months now, and while the discussion has been fascinating (to me at least), I am not claiming to offer any revolutionary new answers or insights on the topic.

So why do people end up with multiple identities (and I'm not talking about clinical schizophrenia)? Several months ago I had a conversation with a friend about not underestimating people’s personas based on what you see in public. I asserted that some people are exactly who they appear. They are comfortable in their skin, in their identity. Conservative or freak, they are exactly who they seem to be. But not everyone can do that. For starters, society would have a hard time functioning if everyone ignored decorum and rules and said and did whatever they felt like. So while it feels unnatural to be this conflicted and have a personality different from the veneer you show the world, it is often necessary.

Let’s face it, if Hermey had wanted to be a plastic surgeon instead of a dentist, he and Rudolph could have avoided their whole journey with Yukon Cornelius and the Island of Misfit Toys. Rudolph was different due to evolution or (as his father and other reindeer thought) a birth defect. The other reindeer shunned him even though his being different was completely out of his control. Hermey was a more egregious offender to society’s working order: he CHOSE to pursue a deviant career path from his peers. He wasn’t born a dentist, he had the nerve to choose that path instead of testing rubber duckies or whatever else the elf-master made him do in the little-people sweatshop. Either way, Rudolph and Hermey couldn’t fit in with North Pole society (though I’m thinking if Mr. & Mrs. Claus had been a little more liberal in sharing their peppermint schnapps they could have dulled their independent identities enough to make a go of it) so they struck out on their own. While the North Pole society depicted is a bit simplistic in its monoculture, the basic premise isn’t all that different from reality.

At a very basic level we push deviants to the fringes, underground, and that allows the rest of us to feel normal and safe. People are generally uncomfortable with things they don’t understand. So for a lot of people it is easier to mold themselves to fit in even if it isn’t who they are. It is a peculiarity of human society around the world that is started in our childhood as kids take sides and ostracize the ‘different’ kids, so we learn early in life to fit in. Later in adolescence even the 'non-conformists' (emo, goth, mod, punk, whatever) really do conform to one another – they listen to the right music, wear the right clothing to fit in with their tribe. Because isolation isn’t safe. If you are isolated from your tribe and get injured or have a bad season hunting you could die. It isn’t so drastic today because you can just go to the grocery store, but the basic premise of survival of the fittest comes back into play.

So what happens next is an interesting twist - identity drives materialism. People want things because they want to fit in. People in Miami don’t want the best pickup truck on the block like people in Topeka do, because it doesn’t help them fit into their tribe. Rudolph wanted a ‘normal nose’, because he wanted to fit in. You could argue that is a sign he is a weak person, er, deer, because he didn’t have the chutzpa to be himself – even if that meant being different. It isn’t easy to be on the outside looking in (as anyone who was unpopular in high school can tell you) but when even your parents don't understand or accept you for who you are, well, that increases the pressure to fit in tremendously.

next: I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got. (Really?)

~Elphie

The competition for internet domination continues...

Google or MySpace? Who is your money on for internet overlord? (and for chuckles, who do you think has better security?)

In the red corner... Google is moving to compete with eBay with an online auction offering that sports the spectacularly innovative name 'GBuy'. (yes, that was sarcasm) If not successful, I forsee a plethora of 'g'bye' jokes in their future. If it is successful, maybe the next new Video Professor title will be Introduction to GBuy (sorry, but I think the fact that there was demand for a class on how to use eBay is the saddest thing I've ever heard. It's eBay people. How hard is it?)

And in the blue corner... MySpace is trying to attract the LinkedIn and Monster.com crowd by adding MySpace Careers. This isn't necessarily a terrible idea... for those compelled to publicly display their popularity and social connectivity by creating accounts on MySpace, Friendster, and LinkedIn, this could be a chance to merge multiple online identities, cut down on accounts and passwords to remember and manage.

On the other hand, for people who don't want their personal and professional lives to bleed into one another, this isn't really any help at all. More and more recruiters and hiring managers are looking up job candidates online (both in MySpace and through your garden variety googlestalking) and using the information learned in their candidate profiles and interviews. Which if you've maintained a wholly professional online profile isn't a problem. But if you and your college buddies put up pictures of your latest keg party and get comments on your profile from the girls you partied with this weekend about what a stud you are, you might not want the general manager for one of the big 5 accounting firms you just applied at seeing you extra, uhm, happy, out at the club with your posse and getting the impression you're just a party animal boozer who is going to be late due to hangovers on a regular basis. And it isn't just the party animals that worry about identifying their personal lives to potential employers. Use your personal blog to connect with other members of your spiritual community? Discuss your kids latest adventures and your wish to adopt more kids from overseas? All personal details that aren't relevant to a job, but can still color someone's impression of you as a job candidate.

As always, the topic of identity interests me. Personal, professional, public, private. How can one effectively firewall their personal and professional identities? How do you handle things when your worlds collide? And what happens if your personal identity is best kept anonymous from family, neighbors and employers, but some of the people in your personal circle are also in your professional circle? Sure, a lot of people on planet earth only have one identity and the idea of having more than one is shocking and alien to them, something only a criminal would do. But many people have found that it is easier to fit into mainstream society if they isolate their personal pursuits from their employer, colleagues, and customers. You'd be amazed how many doctors and lawyers are swingers or into BDSM. Yes, your mild mannered dermatologist might like getting freaky on the weekends in leather and submission games, and you'd never guess it.

Obviously it is challenging when your personal and professional relationships start overlapping, and even harder when some of those identities cross the public/private barrier. Thus the need for pseudonyms, to help protect personal identity - and not just in the online world, this happens every day in 'real' life too. But how many identities are too many to have? How to you truly maintain anonymity if needed in one or more? And what happens when you start to have an identity crisis, unsure which one is the real you, which one takes priority over the others? I have friends struggling with this very issue every day, mediating internal debates between conflicting personas that are chafing at co-existing and resisting a life of eternal compromise. All outstanding future discussion topics for the blog seeing as this didn't start off as a post about identity but about new internet properties from two of the big internet players on the scene today. :)

Coming soon: In the immortal words of Pete Townshend, ‘Who are you?”

~Elphie

Internet mental health index

From a pure geek perspective this is one of the coolest things I've seen on the internet lately.

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Blog data comes from a variety of online sources, including LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.

Pretty neat technology, eh? As a result of the We Feel Fine project, one is reminded that there are likely a number of other people around the world who feel the same way you do - something often forgotten in monocultures and regional/demographic sub-cultures of multi-cultural populations. If urban Americans and rural Chinese share some of the same experiences and emotions, maybe that means that on the micro-societal level the goths and the jocks really aren't that different underneath the eyeliner and jerseys? We could have cats and dogs living together before you know it as we break down the stereotypes that separate us and start building relationships on our shared human experience!

Unfortunately, before we all break out into song and belt out a verse of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", there is inevitably a downside to this. I'm a bit freaked out by the privacy aspect of such a massive data collection endeavor.

Because a high percentage of all blogs are hosted by one of several large blogging companies (Blogger, MySpace, MSN Spaces, LiveJournal, etc), the URL format of many blog posts can be used to extract the username of the post's author. Given the author's username, we can automatically traverse the given blogging site to find that user's profile page. From the profile page, we can often extract the age, gender, country, state, and city of the blog's owner. Given the country, state, and city, we can then retrieve the local weather conditions for that city at the time the post was written. We extract and save as much of this information as we can, along with the post.

They also save any photo associated with the post. I'm suddenly having second (well, okay, third) thoughts about blogging at all. If nothing else now I've got an F word I'll do my best to avoid using here in the future.

~Elphie

life can be so entertaining...

Is it social engineering? performance art? civil disobedience? I don't know - but what I do know is that it is damn funny.

You may have already read on Slashdot or Gizmodo or about the roughly 80 people who one at a time entered a Best Buy wearing blue polo shirts and khaki pants (similar to the employee uniforms), dispersed through the store, and then stood around "waiting for my girl/boy friend". Of course the reason this is getting attention is that the organizers were smart enough to plan it well and documented the whole stunt here. Its creative. Its amusing. Its something people can rally around. And its something to stick it to the man, to thumb your nose at the establishment and say "I can wear whatever I want wherever I want and I can bring all my friends along dressed just like me, and you can't really do anything about it". The only leg the store had to stand on was that the participants weren't shopping and therefore could technically be considered loitering. Had the 80 people all had legitimate purchases to make, would Best Buy have still kicked them out? It would be an interesting twist on the social experiment if you are thinkng of trying something similar.

The best reactions from the Best Buy employees described in the article are:

"Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. 'Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!,' one employee shouted. They were worried that were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist.

and

Both security guards loudly advanced their own theories about what was going on. One security guard didn't know who the group was, but suspected that it was some cult, because, "They all have that zombie look in their eyes. They just stand there staring at nothing." They also argued about if the prank was funny or not. One did not think it was funny at all and the other said he thought it was "kinda funny," and tried to explain the humor, "What if you went into Home Depot and there were all these people wearing orange aprons all over the store?"

What if indeed. PLEASE NOTE: I am in no way advocating impersonation of police officers, firefighers, lifeguards, doctors, or any other uniform which could lead to human injury or suffering if mistaken for the genuine article. But what really is the harm if everyone wore red shirts and khaki pants to Target? Green aprons in Starbucks? Rented Roman Centurion costumes and wandered around Caesar's Palace?

I understand why security guards and management would freak out at any of these establishments. They feel out of control, they have no idea what is going on, they fear theft and manipulation, or acts by the imposters that will reflect on their establishment. I suspect Caesar's Palace would have the least tolerance and have the best organized and professional response. But all the same, what can they really do? What if you were just so freaking excited about the hotel theme and all the money you won at the craps table you decided to wear a toga and celebrate Caesar with the 30 guys there for your bachelor party? Would they really ask you all to leave? What if it were Halloween?

As usual, I have no answers or great insight. I just find the entire situation to be fascinating and thought I'd point it out to Hideaway readers. The reactions of customers, of employees, of management - fun stuff to observe for any student of human nature.

~Elphie

are you kidding me? part deux

wow, the post on computer sex games generated a lot of comments. Only one here on the blog, but quite a few more via email or IM. Apparently I'm not the only geek that finds human nature and the intersection of technology and sexuality to be interesting, though that is no surprise really. For decades people have been fascinated by this topic, though typically in a more sex-cyborg to human equation (see Cherry 2000 - Pamela Gidley, Blade Runner - Darryl Hannah's Pris, or AI - Jude Law's Gigolo Joe) than the current technology-facilitating-human-to-human sexual interaction trend.

One reader sent me this link, which is a fascinating article about virtual prostitutes in Second Life (SL), an oft-cited MMO used for college-level coursework in the design of digital spaces, in art and architecture, and in media studies and sociology. SL has over 148,000 citizens.

In the article there is a quote from a guy who has paid real money for online tricks in SL which I think reflects my confusion from my prior post:

"Walking around in a virtual world matters. The girl you meet might take you to a sleazy motel or a scary dungeon, or maybe she'll show you someplace you haven't been before--stuff you won't get on the phone. Nonetheless, language is cardinal; complex computer interfaces often become obstacles to satisfying cybersex."

This last statement makes total sense to me. Netsex has a long text based tradition that started in bbs chat sessions in the early 90's - I know because I was on ISCA bbs a lot and eventually had to put "NO NETSEX" in my profile to keep the creeps away. but interaction was all txt based. Unless you were a killer ascii artist there were no graphics to go along with the conversation besides old school emoticons.

In many ways this is the book vs. movie argument. Some people prefer books to tv/movies because there is a lot left up to the reader's imagination - in movies you have to live within someone else's reality and run the risk of disappointment in their interpretation of the authors work. Ever see a movie after reading a book and think "that was *so* the wrong actor for that character"?

So its the GUI component (yeah, I prefer books) and the fact that people are plunking down $$$ for the games discussed in my prior post that I don't understand. The idea that you would buy a game purely for anonymous online sex (not even a complex virtual world like Second Life) and that would be a worthwhile investment over a free technology like IM or chat rooms just doesn't compute. But Second Life is created to be a robust virtual reality, where people can mingle and share ideas, exchange goods, etc. As such, it has a thriving economy. And like any society the world over, the oldest-profession has a place in this virtual world with brothels, pimps, and prostitutes running businesses that derive real life profit from their services - some SL brothels are estimated to earn $47K (in REAL money) a month. Ah, capitalism. This seems like a viable business model based on proven sociological models of cross-cultural human interaction.

~Elphie

are you kidding me?

Online games replace monsters with sex
Explicit virtual playgrounds give new meaning to 'multiplayer'




This strikes me as strangely funny, in a bizarro-world sort of way. If life has got you down, if you aren't scoring with the ladies (or men) in reality, you can practice your technique and boost your ego with a virtual pick-up scenario. There have to be npc's in it to make up for the gender imbalance in the playspace - because I have a sneaking suspicion there will be more guys playing than girls. If so, I wonder just how 'easy' this game is. Are the npc's programmed with emotional baggage like the real players? Are there npc's who will turn your avatar down if you aren't in their preferred ethnic/age/etc group? If your name is Dan, will that infuriate the rebound npc girl who was just dumped by her cheating bf Dan and will she throw her virtual cosmo in your virtual face?

While certainly a creative marriage of technology and entertainment, I'm not convinced there is a viable (or at least successful) business here. There are a few obvious stumbling blocks to this new 'adults only' gaming becoming a successful entertainment medium. For starters, what woman is going to play this? Sure, there is the excitement of the flirting with someone over the network, the hookup, etc, but women aren't generally known for being avid porn viewers. And I can't really imagine the point of a point-and-click game where you've just taken off your shirt not because you are upgrading your armor, but because you are making out with some other character. Does the shirt disappear into your inventory or get thrown on the floor in a crumpled heap? How much is graphical versus text based? Do you control character climax? if so, how weird is that? Is there a big O button to click? Are the game controls simple enough for one hand operation? (oh come on, we all know you would have thought of that on your own eventually.)

I suppose if you are involved in a lot of chat-room sex this could take things to the next level by adding a visual component - some of these games are already available as text-only offerings. You'll now have a little idealized character you can pretend is you, hooking up with people who are pretending to be their little idealized characters, and the whole world is thin athletic and pretty and there are no repurcussions for visiting the make-your-own porn room with a guy you just met at the virtual bar this evening. I'm just guessing, but I'm pretty sure they won't have virtual gonorrhea or virtual pregnancies in this game, any more than they would have virtual premature ejaculation or virtual erectile dysfunction. Because the beauty of virtual reality in a computer game is that it isn't reality at all - it is an ideal state of being you can project. It is, for all intents and purposes, the Matrix. It is getting to be whoever you want people to see you as. So what if you are home in a dirty sweatshirt and old track pants eating ice cream straight from the carton? The people on the other end of the game think you're a badass hot chick in a vinyl catsuit and long coat.

virtually,
~Elphie

Everything old is new again

hmm, big news week I guess. Too bad this isn't NEW news.

Microsoft Fingerprint Reader Hacked

InfoWorld - 3/7/2006
A security researcher says the Microsoft Fingerprint Reader fails to encrypt fingerprint images, making the device vulnerable to hackers.

Even the researcher points out that the Microsoft Fingerprint Reader says right on the box that it is not a security tool but a convenience for users who don't want to or have a hard time remembering passwords. This translates to me as a power toy for geeks and the forgetful.

The unfortunate thing is how the journalist glommed onto this presentation as groundshaking when Joe Grand demonstrated several ways to hack fingerprint readers as well as several other hardware devices at Black Hat Vegas in July 2005. Joey, I guess you are just ahead of your time...

~Elphie