Futurismic

Normally I’d leave surveillance-outrage stories to BoingBoing, but really:

Four young residents of a North Philadelphia house who circulated petitions questioning police-surveillance cameras were rousted from their home Friday and detained 12 hours without charges while police searched their house…. 9th District Police Capt. Dennis Wilson…was quoted …as saying of the residents: “They’re a hate group. We’re trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we’ll probably have to let them go.”

If they have nothing to hide, they shouldn’t be asking questions.

[Thanks, Eschaton; London '05 photo by nolifebeforecoffee]

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Another little gem spotted by the grinders: what would you get if you took the crime incident statistics for London and represented them as a 3D physical map?

Mount Fear is what you’d get. In the words of its creator, Abigail Reynolds:

The terrain of Mount Fear is generated by data sets relating to the frequency and position of urban crimes. Precise statistics are provided by the police. Each individual incident adds to the height of the model, forming a mountainous terrain … The imaginative fantasy space seemingly proposed by the sculpture is subverted by the hard facts and logic of the criteria that shape it.

While it makes for an intriguing art project, Mount Fear surely presages a short-range extrapolation of geolocative mash-ups.

In other words, being able to call up the data used for Mount Fear and overlay it on Google Maps running on your mobile device would make your next flat- or apartment-hunting experience that little bit more reassuring.

Or should that be less reassuring?

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Malicious software and obfuscatory legalese - two bad tastes that, I imagine, taste even worse together. [image by j l t]

Thankfully, as I’m not in the business of trying to turn a profit by building botnets, it’s not a flavour combo I’ve encountered myself, but there are reports that such things really do exist. Caught with the same economic problem as legitimate software houses - an infinite good, easily reproduced - malware crews are including EULAs with their program packages.

Of course, a malware author can’t fall back on the courts to enforce the terms of the agreement, and so the threatened actions are a little more, er, direct - basically, if you mess with the code they’ll rat you out to the antivirus companies. But, in the words of Mike Masnick at TechDirt:

“… we already know that almost no one reads normal software EULAs, so I somehow doubt that the online scammers using this software are bothering with the fine print either.”

I can’t say I’m feeling too sad about that.

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The vibration function in the Nintendo 64’s Rumble Pak can be hacked into an improvised tattoo gun.  Someone let MAKE Blog know…

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It sounds as if the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police is a science fiction fan - one who takes it a little too seriously. During a recent conference, he suggested that the police forces of the near future will have to deal with a variety of new threats to law and order, ranging from tech-savvy small-time crooks to rogue clones and human-robot hybrids. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t just a viral marketing ploy for the forthcoming Blade Runner re-release.

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Mark Ward’s a new writer from the United Kingdom with a lot of talent. His Futurismic début “Cycle Thieves” is a moody mystery that wonders if life makes sense if you know too much.

Cycle Thieves

by Mark Ward

“You know what I’m sick of?” Trev said.

“No,” Duffy said, pawing through his rucksack, “I don’t.”

“Perfect relationships.”

Duffy stopped rummaging, looked up, and saw that George, El and Chrissy were as nonplussed as he was, not least because Trev was going through a messy divorce.

“What?” Duffy said, speaking for all of them.

“Look,” Trev said. “I’ve joined all these online dating networks that hook you up with people that you’re bound to fancy based on your likes and dislikes, who your friends are, your aspirations, personality, salary. The lot. We’re all members of them. I’ve got accounts at Taxa, Umfriends, Benco, Lulot…”

“Lulot?” El said. “Don’t think I know that one.”

“Stands for ‘Love you long time’. Well, almost. Anyway, I’ve joined loads of them but when I’m on one of these dates there’s nothing to talk about. I know everything about her, and she knows everything about me. What music, what books, fave films, pet peeves, where we went to school. Collar size. Everything. The social network side of it means you can’t lie either. There’s no surprises, no mystery, nothing to discover. You’re perfectly matched and bored stupid. It takes all the fun out of dating, I can tell you.”

“You just miss getting your face slapped a few times a night,” Chrissy said. Continue reading “CYCLE THIEVES by Mark Ward”

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