Panopticonic

End of the Know-It-All Era

2010-03-08T12:46:26Z

Are we forever at the end of the Know-It-All? You know the sort of person I'm describing, right? The kind who always know the right answer to everything when asked and, if not asked, will offer up blind bits of trivia on their own accord from the dark recesses of history while simultaneously adding living citations and quotes from books, politicians and serving up sharp shards of microinformation that only encyclopedia writers need to know.

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There was a time when everyone needed to have at least one Know-It-All in their lives to avoid having to go to the library or to crack open a dictionary.

I wonder if we're now at the end of an Era; have we reached the nadir of the Golden Age of the Know-It-All?

With iPhones and Google and quick access to any bit of known fact or truth as close to us as a flick of a finger or two -- we now have the Information Age in our hand and the Know-It-All is irrelevant.

Who needs a Know-It-All when you're your own Know-It-All and you have to personally remember nothing in order to earn the title?

Google is now your Know-It-All memory and search terms are your means of accessing what you think you know but cannot remember.

I mourn the end of the living Know-It-All because they were always lively and fun and full of quick information that could lighten your day in the right time and tide. I have no idea what the Know-It-All will do now. Perhaps write Wikipedia entries?

Poking the Red Eye

2010-03-01T16:41:40Z

In a great civilian uprising against -- the Panopticonic Red Light Camera -- those unblinking red eyes are being closed in the polling place by voter fury.

]]> Red-light cameras that have been gaining a foothold in many states face a growing public backlash and outright removal.

The cameras, billed as safety devices since their introduction in the USA nearly 20 years ago, are increasingly viewed by many motorists as unreasoning revenue generators for hard-up local governments.

Maine, Mississippi and Montana banned red light cameras last year, joining at least four other states, Nevada, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Wisconsin, says Anne Teigen, a transportation specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. State senators in Missouri and Tennessee are sponsoring legislation that would limit cameras. We applaud this legal effort to stop the loss of the conditional human mind in determining guilt or innocence in the duty of blind justice.

We all know police offers can be kind and empathetic -- a robotic eye snapping your image only knows the mindless mechanical.

When we begin to remove the beating heart from the judicial process, we begin to lose ourselves into the dark, futuristic ether where machine not only becomes man, but removes any sense of righteousness from the process of legislating morality through the bending of laws and rules.

The Glowering Gaze of Lower Merion

2010-02-22T14:50:55Z

It used to be that students were fearful of their teachers, thinking that they could see everything they were doing even when their backs were turned -- as though they had eyes on the backs of their heads. It seems as though one school has taken that idea a little too far and started taking advantage of the eyes they gave to students for free to spy on them when the kids thought they were in the privacy of their own home.

]]> investigating the Lower Merion school district just outside Philadelphia after one student filed a lawsuit against the district for remotely activating his web camera and taking pictures of him in his home. The school had contacted him about what they "saw" and he was disciplined by the school for partaking in "inappropriate behavior" -- behavior that they had only witnessed through the images that they had taken on his camera.

The school had previously argued it only used the cameras remotely when they were having trouble locating the computers, but this seems difficult to believe when they admitted the only evidence against the student was information they gained from activating his camera.

I am reminded when I was in high school and smoking was banned from all school property. The students who were smokers would cross the street and smoke in front of the stores near the school. There were no teachers who would take the time to cross the street and crack down on students smoking there because it was no longer any of their business.

Similarly, the student at home is, and should be, the concern of the parents or caretakers of said students, not the school itself. The only time the school should have any say over what the student is doing is during school hours, while the student is on school property.

It concerns me any school could have this kind of insightful Panopticonic gaze into the private life of its students. In a world where computer technicians easily turn into peeping toms, are we so far off from a place where students will wear dog collars to track their location and monitor in on their private conversation?

The Inanity of Open Comments

2010-02-15T15:47:48Z

I am always struck by the inanity of other websites and blogs that allow open commenting on their articles because that sort of anonymity invites chaos, creates confusion and encourages deception and ruins the reading experience. It is the publisher's duty to only accept comments from verified individuals. Without some sort of verification process in place -- that at least links a verified email address to the person commenting -- you have no idea who is attacking you or for what reason.

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When people are no longer free to hide behind their cowardly anonymity, a much more refined and decent conversation can be had in public that might just change some minds and influence other cogent thoughts.

If you read online news articles, or if you watch YouTube videos, then you know firsthand how awful even registered commenting can be -- and that's why all publishers must also filter and edit out comments that do not directly add to the upward movement of the comments flow. No comment should ever be published without being first read by an editor.

I loved the "Cracked" story on the "Eight Most Obnoxious Commenters" -- that is then filled with inane, anonymous, comments -- and it was quite telling when Engadget turned off all comments in early February, 2010 to try to defeat the commenting cowards.

Not every comment is divine. Not every comment submitted earns publication.

Letters to the Editor in the heyday of paper newspapers were always edited for space and content. Now that we have "endless space" online -- must that mean the rise of the endless, incoherent, comment? No. Editors and publishers must do their jobs and manage all content -- and that rightly includes comments.

The dire lesson in reading unedited, anonymous, comments is realizing the horrible fact that we are quickly becoming a nation of nasty illiterates who can barely spell, let alone make any logical -- or human! -- sense at all.

Spying the Google Store View

2010-02-08T12:37:50Z

We already know that Google is a master at peeping at us. I'm not all that bothered about Google having their street teams out and about if it means that it will be easier for me to find my way to the Nederlander theater. I feel a little odd, if it is a true report, about the idea of Google entering stores and allowing people to virtually walk around them.

]]> spying on her because her cat happened to be looking out the window the same day that Google drove their van past her house. She was certain that she would have to have her shades drawn forevermore or face having online spies look in on her.

Google Maps has also done a smashing good job of catching crime -- though the Google team seems considerably better at documenting the crime than doing anything about it. I can't help but wonder what it must be like to be one of those people caught in the act of breaking the law, having your photo put on hundreds of web sites for public scrutiny and ridicule.

I also wonder if the people in the photos turned around after being "caught" by the internet and decided that breaking the law was not the best idea and reformed themselves. A remote possibility, but not out of the question.

Now we have Google entering stores and with its entrance we wonder where Google won't point its unblinking eye -- will bedrooms remain free of the Google camera?

I Am Not Who You Think I Am

2010-02-01T13:36:18Z

I have had my Gmail account for nearly six years now -- thanks to an early invitation from master publisher David Boles. I chose the username "gordond" because I wanted to see if it was available. For many years I only chose the username 'gdavides' based on the assigned username I got at Peddie -- it was based on the first letter of my first name and the following seven letters of my last name.

]]> own your name) and therefore couldn't help but be surprised when I started getting e-mails that were subscription based -- only I knew I hadn't subscribed.

It all started with HP emails from the UK. They were weekly e-mails advising me of the latest UK HP sale. I wondered how it was possible that someone decided to subscribe to this weekly e-mail with my e-mail address and it finally occurred to me that it was only too easy for someone with my first name but with a different last name -- perhaps a slip of the finger turned what should have been gordons@gmail.com into gordond@gmail.com.

A few months ago, I started getting e-mails that were addressed to a man and his wife in Colorado regarding their Toyota and its recent service. I assumed that the e-mails would stop after a few -- thinking that the couple would alert the Toyota to the lack of e-mails on their end and the matter would be fixed. However, this has not been the case at all. Rather, the e-mails continue to this day and I'm not sure if there is anything I can do to stop it as they come from a "do not reply" e-mail -- and the e-mails all contain very personal information about this Colorado couple that I'm sure they would not want me to receive.

Lastly, for a very brief period of time I received e-mail messages from a woman in Australia who wanted to send me photos of her family. Well, not so much that she wanted to send the photos to me -- rather, that she wanted to send the photos to her grandson, great nephew, or whomever she thought was actually receiving these e-mails.

I thought I should respond and tell her the bad news about my not being that person but I thought that it might just break her heart to think that she was sending such personal information to the wrong party. In rethinking it, however, it may have been better to write to her such that she could have gotten the e-mails to the correct person faster.

I wonder how carefully people are when they send letters and postcards and packages by mail. Do they look over the address they write on the package to make sure that the correct person gets the Chanukah present they are trying to send? If so, why is similar care not taken when e-mails are being written, considering what sensitive information can sometimes be sent in a message?

Just when I thought I was going to wrap up this article, along came another set of e-mails from a total stranger titled "scattered moments (involving you and my camera)" -- from what may have been a date. About three minutes after the first e-mail was sent (with three lovely photos) a second e-mail was written with the following text: "If this is your email, well enjoy the pictures. Wrong email; that's a different Gordon. Sorry!" I enjoyed seeing the happiness of these two strangers even though I am in fact: A Different Gordon.

The Innocent Intended: Violating Your Email Address

2010-01-27T14:14:04Z

Every single day someone somewhere is violating your email privacy. The violators might not even intend on penetrating your cone of silence, but their carelessness can lead to no other end than virtually bleeding you out. You might think your email address is secure, but if someone has access to your private information and then includes those personal markers in a misdirected email intended for you, but sent to someone else -- any sense of security you have worked to protect is inherently broken.

]]> not dead yet, but I sure do get a lot of email sent to me that ends up in the dead end of my Trash folder. Here are three examples -- from just the last few months -- of vital email wrongly sent to me instead of the correct person. I have protected the information of the innocent intended -- I have no interest in protecting the bad behavior of the email sender. Perhaps this article will serve as a warning to them to shape up their carelessness.

Remember, I don't know any of these people and there is no reason my email address should appear in any of their address books.

In the first example, you can see an email from 24 Hour Fitness. They've included login information, contracts and payment information for personal training sessions. Every few months I get updated versions of this mistaken email and every time I reply and tell them they have the wrong person and that I deleted the email and attachments. No reply is ever given to me and when the innocent intended "re-ups" -- I get the email confirmation.

If I had a meaner bone, I could easily login to the system and transfer these paid for sessions to a local gym nearer to me for my use.

In the next example, it looks like some is trying to teach someone else a lesson about paying Geico car insurance.

Yes, that's an important lesson to teach and learn -- but shouldn't you first make certain you absolutely have the correct email address of the one you are trying to admonish for lackadaisical behavior?

I replied to the sender that she had the wrong person and that I deleted the email and attachments. I received no reply in return.

In our final example, you will meet Kerri who used to send me email, invoices, and other highly sensitive information at least twice a week for six months.

Each time she would email me, I would be horrified by the highly sensitive nature of the attachments and I would always reply and tell her to remove me from her address book because she had the wrong person. I also told her the email and attachments were removed. To this day, I was never sent a reply or even an apology for clogging my Inbox with her repeated mistakes.

I believe I have finally been removed from that endless email loop because several other people in that company with Kerri also emailed me sensitive documents and, after I replied to them, too, about the mistake -- I haven't been in the circle.

These are but three examples of email sent to me that was never intended for me and I really feel rotten for the poor people who were supposed to get the email but likely never did.

I've had divorce papers sent to me from lawyers' offices in several states, full mortgage applications have been "faxed" to my Inbox via the internet and all kinds of funeral details found me, along with lots of approved applications for credit. None of it was for me. I deleted all of it.

Be wary of not just what you're sending, but WHO you're sending it to. Double check the email you're using is valid and connected to the right person. If you aren't getting a reply from a person you email, pick up the phone to make certain they received what you sent. Don't assume you are being ignored or stuck in a Spam trap. Be aggressive to confirm no mistakes were made in the addressing or in the delivery -- and if you make a mistake and someone replies to you and tells you of your error, reply to them with a simple "Thank you" to finally let the right person know you got the message.

Peeping by Business Card

2010-01-14T14:40:12Z

We already know that there are cameras all around us. You are hardly ever private when you use social networking sites. You know about how your criminal past may easily come back to haunt you. But did you know that dropping a seemingly harmless slip of paper could also open a door to destroy your privacy?

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I try to pick up such things so that I can return it to its original owner if it turns out that it is of some valuable. Rather, it turned out to be a card handed out by a company that specializes in taking pictures of people at nice looking locations -- this one in particular happened to be the ice pond at Bryant Park.

The card gave instructions on how I could find the photo that was taken by a special multi-digit code. I could then order prints of the photo, if I wanted to, or have it made into special souvenirs. As soon as I got home, I completely ripped it to pieces and recycled it, of course.

I can only think that it is quite fortunate that I am the person who found the card and not someone else -- the sort of person for whom we keep our children offline. Even if it were not such a person, the careless act of leaving such a card behind is just an invitation to your privacy to be decimated.

The simple solution is to be careful when you are given cards like these. They are not to be treated lightly and should be shredded unless you are like me and like to make souvenirs out of everything!

Memory Runoff Review

2009-12-09T13:40:38Z

To live is to remember; and how we choose to consecrate our memories is what gives texture and context to our lives as the Panopticon becomes public. Google is good at creating the instant now for future recall, but The Wayback Machine is the granddaddy of soliciting who used to be. Today we have -- Memento -- a new contender for scrapbooking our online lives. So who is the king of our remembering? Wayback or Memento?

]]> Boles.com domain since it has been around since April 1996.

Memento did not like that domain much. The best example we could find that actually gave us a visible return and not a server error was during the year 2000.

Here is what Memento brought us for Boles.com in 2000. No images loaded, but we do remember that look and feel.

Next is the Wayback Machine. We typed in Boles.com and waited.

Here is what the Wayback Machine returned: A full buffet of snapshots of that site over time -- and the first image capture is November 27, 1996 -- a mere six months after the site went live!

We clicked on the earliest link and this Wayback memory shot to the forefront of our wanton now:

What a difference 13 years makes!

"Internet Insider" became "GO INSIDE Magazine" in November 1996 and "Boles: The Mag!" eventually became "Urban Semiotic" in 2004 and the Resume was, and still is, the C.V. We were also one of the first to use a traditional "post office" image as an email link.

Is it fair to so quickly compare Memento to Wayback?

Can you ever recover and record memories that were never yours -- but that are now available for the sharing in the public square?

Will Memento ever pluck the memory of the Wayback Machine to memorialize what the Wayback knows in case it ever forgets?

The War Prezzy

2009-12-02T14:14:03Z

Last night, President Obama told the world he was taking over where Dubya left off and was becoming the new War Prezzy.

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We are aware Obama must remain strong and neutral -- neutered, really -- if he hopes to get any real work done in a second term when he will answer to no one and can finally fix the world.

We worry, however, that these early missteps -- spying on us, healthcare and Guantanamo -- may be mortally wounding any chance he has of re-election by wholly alienating his base and firing up his haters to a point that he has split the difference too often to meet the middling middle.

Defrauding the Federal Video Relay Service

2009-11-20T19:03:06Z

UPDATE: February 18, 2010:

Irma Azrelyant and Joshua Finkle, the former co-owners of New York and New Jersey-based Deaf and Hard of Hearing Interpreting Services Inc. (DHIS), pleaded guilty today to engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Video Relay Service (VRS) program of more than $7 million, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.

Today, Azrelyant, 47, and Finkle, 41, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Joel A. Pisano in Trenton, N.J., to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Azrelyant and Finkle were indicted on Oct. 29, 2009, along with DHIS assistant bookkeeper and video interpreter coordinator Oksana Strusa, as well as video interpreters Natan Zfati, Alfia Iskandarova and Hennadii Holovkin.

In pleading guilty, Azrelyant and Finkle admitted that beginning in approximately October 2007 and continuing through approximately July 2009, they conspired with others to pay individuals to make fraudulent VRS phone calls that were processed through DHIS, and that were billed to the FCC through VRS provider Viable Communications Inc. (Viable). According to the guilty pleas, Azrelyant and Finkle made VRS calls to prerecorded messages and other numbers for the sole purpose of generating VRS minutes and also coordinated with others to generate illegitimate VRS minutes that would be billed to the FCC. Azrelyant and Finkle also admitted to processing illegitimate VRS calls that were routed to DHIS by Viable....

According to information contained in the plea documents, Azrelyant and Finkle admitted that their role in defrauding the FCC's VRS program led to a total of between $7 million and $20 million in fraudulent billing to the program. At sentencing, Azrelyant and Finkle each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, as well as mandatory restitution and forfeiture. Sentencing is set for June 29, 2010 at 10 a.m.

The disabled are always ripe for the raping and the ripping off and when the news hit the street today in New York City that big players at DHIS -- Deaf and Hearing Impaired Services -- were under Federal indictment for defrauding the FCC's Video Relay Service Program, hands and heads were shaking everywhere as the Panopticonic Gaze of the Federal government rightly blinked to stop a taxpayer rip off.

]]> FCC describes the fraud and the indictment:

"The individuals charged in connection with today's operation are alleged to have stolen tens of millions of dollars from an important government program that is intended to help deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans communicate with hearing persons," said Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer. "These defendants are alleged to have generated fraudulent call minutes by making it appear that deaf Americans were engaging in legitimate calls with hearing persons, when in reality, the defendants were simply attempting to steal money from an FCC program that is funded by every single American who pays their telephone bills. The Department of Justice will not stand by and let corporate executives and others line their pockets with money that should be used to help deaf Americans."

The indictments allege that 26 individuals engaged in a scheme to defraud the FCC by submitting false and fraudulent claims for VRS calls, causing the FCC to reimburse the defendants at a rate of approximately $390 per hour. According to the indictments, VRS is an online video translation service that allows people with hearing disabilities to communicate with hearing individuals through the use of interpreters and Web cameras. A person with a hearing disability who wants to communicate with a hearing person can do so by contacting a VRS provider through an audio and video Internet connection. The VRS provider, in turn, employs a video interpreter to view and interpret the hearing disabled person's signed conversation and relay the signed conversation orally to a hearing person. VRS is funded by fees assessed by telecommunications providers to telephone customers, and is provided at no cost to the VRS user.

The most shocking news was left for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Services:

In the third indictment, DHIS owners and employees have been charged with generating and processing a large volume of fraudulent VRS calls. According to the indictment, DHIS operated VRS call centers for Viable that generated and processed fraudulent VRS calls. DHIS co-owners Irma Azrelyant, 47, of Basking Ridge, N.J., and Joshua Finkle, 41, of New York; DHIS video interpreter Natan Zfati, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; DHIS bookkeeper Oksana Strusa, 35, of Jersey City, N.J.; DHIS video interpreter Alfia Iskandarova, 29, of Brooklyn; and DHIS video interpreter Hennadii Holovkin, 36, of Philadelphia; have been charged in a six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; and mail fraud.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that someone somewhere was getting rich off of processing "free" video calls -- but the shocker of it all is DHIS' alleged involvement in the scam.

DHIS was, and is, own and operated by Deaf people. That was their calling card and their honorable hallmark and it was that fact that endeared them to so many Deaf people.

Now that several of the biggest players at DHIS have been indicted, many in the New York City Deaf Community will have to re-evaluate the object of their devotion and, perhaps, even confess that sometimes Deaf people are perfectly capable of ripping off the disabled.

John Vanderslice's Panopticonic Gaze

2009-11-11T15:30:15Z

If you knew that there were an omniscient eye that watched over you and your every deed and thought, would you behave any differently? For my whole life, I was raised with the belief that there was an all knowing deity that created everything in the world that was cognizant not only of what we did but what we thought as well.

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One of my favorite songs lately has been by singer/songwriter John Vanderslice. I found out about Mr. Vanderslice through his collaborations with another artist I really like, The Mountain Goats. They have toured together and released a couple of split albums -- one of which dealt with cannibalism on the moon.

The song has the lovely name of Kookaburra, a bird native to Australia. It opens right up with a great introduction about how things came into being in this world.

Lightning shot from the sky
It breathed life into every, every living thing
It made you, it made me
It gave us the Kookaburra, it gave us
Frangipane tree

From here the song takes a negative turn, opening with a line that tells us that perhaps not everything will be okay as John sings, "The sky will fill with vaporized dust, raining" and then goes on to describing something over and over again using the poetic but vague expression "white on white" -- what is white on white? Why is it raining down from the sky? A little later in the song, John tells us exactly what is white on white.

White phosphor rain
And blackout bombs are falling out the sky tonight
We can't be saved
Electricity is crossing out your family name

In the world of this song, there is no reigning deity to dole out punishment when people are acting up and so people can do as they please. The same electrical power that brought life into the world also creates that which enables a person to destroy life without any regard to what it is doing.

When I listen to this song I can't help but think of how sad the world would be to me if I didn't sincerely believe that there were some kind of ultimate giver of morality, so to speak. It seems to me that the more we have strayed away from that kind of belief system, the more we rely on the unblinking eye of Panopticonic Justice to keep us safe.

Your Privacy is Leaking

2009-10-26T11:28:36Z

Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, MySpace and Twitter all hope to create a feeling of loyal warmth and human companionship -- but is something more nefarious lurking just out of sight beneath the surface intimacy?

]]> EEF reports how Social Networks are working hand-in-glove with online advertisers to leak your identity and then sell you junque you don't really want and things you know you don't need:

Let's start with an example of 3rd party tracking: when we went to CareerBuilder.com, which is the largest online jobs site in the United States, and searched for a job, CareerBuilder included JavaScript code from 10 (!) different tracking domains: Rubicon Project, AdSonar, Advertising.com, Tacoda.net (all three are divisions of AOL advertising), Quantcast, Pulse 360, Undertone, AdBureau (part of Microsoft Advertising), Traffic Marketplace, and DoubleClick (which is owned by Google). On other visits we've also seen CareerBuilder include tracking scripts and non-JavaScript web bugs from several other domains. There are pretty sound reasons to hope that when you search for a job online, that fact isn't broadcast to dozens of companies you've never heard of -- but that's precisely what's happening here.

Each of these tracking companies can track you over multiple different websites, effectively following you as you browse the web. They use either cookies, or hard-to-delete "super cookies", or other means, to link their records of each new page they see you visit to their records of all the pages you've visited in the previous minutes, months and years. The widespread presence of 3rd party web bugs and tracking scripts on a large proportion of the sites on the Web means that these companies can build up a long term profile of most of the things we do with our web browsers.

Given how much tracking firms know about our browsing history, it's worth asking whether these companies also know who we are. The answer, unfortunately, appears to be "yes", at least for those of us who use social networking sites.

A recent research paper by Balachander Krishnamurthy and Craig Wills shows that social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace are giving the hungry cloud of tracking companies an easy way to add your name, lists of friends, and other profile information to the records they already keep on you.

The main theme of the paper is that when you log in to a social networking site, the social network includes advertising and tracking code in such a way that the 3rd party can see which account on the social network is yours. They can then just go to your profile page, record its contents, and add them to their file. Of the 12 social networks surveyed in the paper, only one (Orkut) didn't leak any personally identifying information to 3rd parties.

There are some interesting technical details in how the social networking sites leak this data. In some cases, the leakage may be unintentional, but in others, there is clever and surreptitious anti-privacy engineering at work.

It's just a little terrifying how discretely and earnestly we're being attacked and tracked and moderated and "database-ized" for the purity of profit from people we don't know and will never meet.

We need to have a way to turn off all of these tracking directives without losing any functionality or features.

Why should we be punished with the convenient loss of browser cookies just because third parties are using them for nefarious purposes?

Punish the unseemly and leave the saintly alone.

Google Apps Calendar Corruption

2009-10-19T13:20:31Z

There's nothing more disappointing than the realization that a soft promise is not a hard fact and that eagerness does not equal integrity. Such is the case of the ever-widening hardship that Google Apps are not ready for prime time success because there are too many innate technical blunders that instantly hamstring any promise of safe data in the cloud. For the past three days I've been having horrible Google Apps Calendar misfires -- yet checking the official Google Apps Status Dashboard this morning reveals no trouble with the Calendar -- even though it isn't working.

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Finally, they found the problem on their end and solved it -- but getting them to that point of confession was spirit crushing and hope destroying -- and I even wrote the first book to print about Google Apps, so it isn't like I'm a know-nothing nobody! Feel secure in knowing that Google doesn't discriminate and refuses to play favorites. We all suffer in the same, churning, tub, you and me.

I won't ever contact Google Calendar support again because dealing with them was like doing hard time at Pelican Bay but without the fun of three hot meals a day and the nighttime shankings.

What, I ask rhetorically, is more pernicious than a calendar that refuses to save appointments -- naked babies banned from trains not withstanding -- and the answer is, "Nothing!" ... but that's precisely what Google Calendar has been doing to me: I add entries and, a day later, all those appointments have disappeared into the Google cloud never to be seen again!

The problem with Google losing your appointments is that it doesn't happen right away. It happens during the night while you're sleeping, so you wake up in the morning quite certain you had filled in certain days on your Calendar only to realize those appointments no longer exist except somewhere in your prehistoric memory.

Restoring lost appointments is a real hassle because you don't train yourself to keep a copy in the Google cloud and on your desk. Why should I have to keep a paper copy of my Calendar to back up the Google cloud? If I have to write down my appointments on paper in the first place, why add all those entries to my Google Calendar in the second place?

If your Google calendar begins to act up -- signs of that choking are entries that you can't edit, calendars that fail to load, renamed calendars that revert to their original name and Google refusing to save new entries -- stop what you're doing and log out of Google Calendar. Stay away for a day or two and see if the problem resolves on its own. Make paper notes for what you hope to enter later if the Google Calendar begins to behave again and you decide to invest your trust and time again.

The most curious thing over these past three days was any entry I tried to save that started with the word "Banned" would not save! Those entries would either freeze or immediately not show up after saving.

If history is any guide with Google -- and it always is in this case of the Apps Calendar -- all the work I originally entered will show up in a few days to clutter up and confuse all the redone entries I had to pull from muscle memory; and when Google Calendar finds copies of appointments and conflicts in time, it will barf a boot and I really hate waiting for that other shoe to drop.

Catching Copyright Infringement

2009-09-30T12:43:06Z

It never gets old catching Copyright infringers and yesterday was no exception. There is a sheer disgust and yet also a shared, Panopticonic, delight in catching another website red-handed copying and pasting and re-publishing your writing without your permission.

]]> Go Inside Magazine published nine years ago:

Here is the copied and pasted and re-published-without-permission version.

Notice how the GO Inside Magazine was logo removed, along with the hotlink to my email address? A background graphic was also added to the page:

There is a visceral vileness in the base deceit of the act and I could spend most of my days ferreting out content that I have written that has been stolen and re-published elsewhere.

I heard from Rob this morning and he had no idea how my content was re-published on his website. He told me he would remove my article later in the day. I replied I was writing about the infringement today; but even publishing this article of discovery doesn't really make up for nine years of thievery.