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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Trapped in his own body for 23 years - the coma victim who screamed unheard | World news | The GuardianThe article refers to the results of a new brain scan that showed normal activity. Houben had been "locked in", but conscious. The story received international attention. It seemed plausible to me, though horrifying. The implications were obvious for the care of other persons in a vegetative state.
For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.
Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing and hear nothing. For 23 years...
No miracle as brain-damaged patient proved unable to communicate | Science | The Guardian
It seemed to be a medical miracle: the car crash victim assumed for 23 years to be in a coma who was suddenly found to be conscious and able to communicate by tapping on a computer.
The sceptics said it was impossible – and it was. The story of Rom Houben of Belgium, which made headlines worldwide last November when he was shown to be "talking", was today revealed to have been nothing of the sort.
Dr Steven Laureys, one of the doctors treating him, acknowledged that his patient could not make himself understood after all. Facilitated communication, the technique said to have made Houben's apparent contact with the outside world possible, did not work, Laureys declared...
This is an outrageous statement. Schmidt cannot know that nobody was harmed, either directly through the bonding of Buzz streams to public profiles or indirectly through inevitable misunderstanding. Even if he were omniscient, since many people have felt harm, it's a stupid thing for a CEO to say.
Edit your (Google) profile - delete profile:... This will disable Google Buzz integration in Gmail and delete your Google profile and Buzz posts. It will also disconnect any connected sites and unfollow you from anyone you are following...
Note that my list doesn’t include “controlling health care costs”. That one’s simply inevitable, so I don’t bother with it.
BBC - Radio 4 Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time
...For the first time, listen online to every episode ever broadcast, from Aristotle to the History of Zero...The list includes many, perhaps all, of the legendary lost episodes...
... These ‘lost editions’ include topics such as Science and Religion, Childhood, Consciousness, The End of History and Quantum Gravity, and they’re discussed by guests including Nobel prizewinner Amartya Sen and the sadly deceased Stephen Jay Gould. The term ‘treasure trove’ is bandied around quite casually these days, but for anyone who enjoys In Our Time, these transcripts are very valuable...
WAR IN THE 20TH CENTURY
... In the first programme of a new series examining ideas and events which have shaped thinking in philosophy, religion, science and the arts, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss warfare and human rights in the 20th century. He talks to Michael Ignatieff about the life of one of the 20th century’s leading philosophers, Isaiah Berlin, and to Sir Michael Howard about the 20th century will be remembered; as a century of progress or as one of the most murderous in history.
When we see pictures on television of starving people in war torn areas most of us feel we must ‘do’ something. Where does the feeling that we are in some way responsible for our fellow human beings originate historically? How has technology affected the concept of the Just War? And what are the prospects for world peace as we enter the next century?
With Michael Ignatieff, writer, broadcaster and biographer of Isaiah Berlin; Sir Michael Howard, formerly Regius Professor of History, Oxford University and joint editor of the new Oxford History of the Twentieth Century.Ignatieff now leads the Liberal Party of Canada.
I’ve clicked the link at the bottom of my Gmail account to discontinue Google Buzz.
I was initially enthusiastic because of the value of Google Reader notes – a precursor to Buzz. I hoped Google would fix the notes confusion/neglect while also giving me a better version of Twitter.
Instead, Google’s most senior leadership, the people leading and testing Buzz, blew it big time. They failed to understand the multiplicity of adult identities. All I can guess is that Brin et al are so wealthy and powerful that they have become fundamentally disconnected from mainstream reality.
I gave Google some time to recover, but they’re only playing around the edges. Google remains determined to tie all Buzz discussions directly to a user’s public Google Profile, perhaps as a way to manage spam and to drive search/marketing revenue.
Disappointing, but I’ll be back if they fix it.
Update: Even though I've removed Buzz via Gmail, my Buzz posts still appear on my Google Profile. Not funny Google.
Update 2: I've reversed the procedure that made my Profile searchable. It's non-intuitive, but the "Display my full name..." setting in "edit profile" toggles searchability. When unchecked a Google Search on a my name no longer returns my profile. The profile URL has not changed and prior links still show the public view. That public view still includes Buzz posts even though I've disabled Buzz support in Gmail. I've removed other information from my Google Profile and I expect I'll continue to trim the profile unless Google has a dramatic conversion.
Update 2/17/2010: In depth critique - with cartoon. Credit for focus on the Profile.
My name is Legion; for we are many many (Mark 5-9).
I am father, brother, in-law, son, and spouse. I am coach. I am volunteer. I am citizen and activist. I am a physician. I am an (adjunct) professor. I am an oddity in a large, conservative, publicly traded corporation. In the corporation I am a team member, known to some customers, occasionally publicly facing, known in various ways and various places. I have other roles and have had many more over time.
I am Legion. So are most middle-aged persons.
Only one person knows all the roles and all of the stories that are not excruciatingly boring (hi Emily).
That’s the problem with Google Buzz, and why my Google Profile doesn’t include my pseudonymous (John Gordon) blog postings or my Google Shared items.
Buzz is tightly linked to my Google Profile, and my Profile is trivially discoverable. I don’t want corporate HR or a customer or business partner to instantly know that I’m a commie pinko Obamafanboy with a dysfunctional Steve Jobs relationship.
I have LinkedIn as my bland corporate face, and, despite Facebook’s innate evilness, a FB profile for friends and family. Inside the corporation I’ve a blog that serves as a limited persona.
We all have many roles, identities, avatars, personae, limited liability personae, characters, facets and so on. The problem with Buzz today is that it’s tied to the Google Profile, and that profile is the closest thing to my unified public face. It crosses boundaries. So it can only hold the limited information channels that are available to all.
Google gets some things right, and a ton of things wrong. They take a statistical, loosely-coupled, evolutionary approach to technology development (the exact inverse of Jobs the Intelligent Designer). I’m looking forward to where Buzz goes, but I’ll be cautious for a time. They can start by giving us more control over what aspects of the overall Buzz connection stream appear on our public profiles.
Update 2/11/10: More on the mess-up. Google really didn't think this through very well. They may end up feeding the families of a number of lawyers. I'm sure they weren't dumb enough to roll this out in the EU, but if they did the fines may be significant.
A Windows 2003 server machine I use may, or may not, have been infected with the Clampi trojan (ilomi.b or ilomo.c, which depending on your font, may look a lot like llomi or IIlomi or ILomi).
I say “may not”, because the combination of “Windows 2003” and "antivirus” has a high rate of false positive claims that can wreak as much destruction as the antiviral software.
In researching the Clampi trojan Google suggested I read this summary (emphases mine) …
Clampi/Ligats/Ilomo Trojan - Research - SecureWorks
… Clampi’s recent success in infecting victims is accomplished by using domain administrator credentials (either stolen by the Trojan or re-used, or by virtue of the fact that a domain administrator has logged into an already infected system). Once domain administrator privileges are granted, the Trojan uses the SysInternals tool "psexec" to copy itself to all computers on the domain.
Clampi also serves as a proxy server used by criminals to anonymize their activity when logging into stolen accounts…
… Clampi is operated by a serious and sophisticated organized crime group from Eastern Europe and has been implicated in numerous high-dollar thefts from banking institutions. Any user whose system has been infected by Clampi should immediately change any and all passwords used on that system for any websites, but especially financial credentials.
… Most major anti-virus engines should be able to detect Clampi variants; however there is always a delay between a new Trojan release and the detection time. Given the prevalence and seriousness of the Clampi Trojan, it is recommended that businesses that carry out online banking/financial transactions adopt a strategy to isolate workstations where these activities are carried out from possible Clampi or other data-stealing Trojan infections.
This may include using a dedicated workstation for accessing financial accounts which is isolated from the rest of the local network and the Internet except for the specific financial sites required to be accessed. Since Trojans can also be spread using removable drives, systems should be hardened against auto run-type threats. Businesses may even consider using an alternative operating system for workstations accessing sensitive or financial accounts.
Home Computer User Protection
SecureWorks CTU recommends that home computer users use a computer dedicated only to doing their online banking and bill pay. They should not use that computer to surf the web and send and receive email, since web exploits and malicious email are two of the key malware infection vectors.
As an alternative to operating a secure home PC for all important work, home users could, you know, buy a Mac. They would then have one machine to use for everything.[1]
Maybe Apple is funding Clampi development?
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[1] The Mac’s vast security advantage comes from the “faster friend” security philosophy. When you and a friend are being chased by a bear, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you have be faster than your friend. OS X 10.6 is, in practical terms, fundamentally more secure than XP, but not necessarily theoretically more secure than Microsoft’s very latest foul demon. The big Mac advantage is that the world’s criminals don’t own Apple machines, and have very little interest in targeting Macs as long as the vast majority of banks and corporations run some flavor of Windows. I’ve often wondered, incidentally, if Windows 98 isn’t now a very secure environment. I doubt many Trojans would infect it any more.
Gordon's Notes: John Edwards: Another man the media dislikes
It's increasingly clear that the US media dislikes John Edwards almost as much as they disliked Al Gore. Digby draws some conclusions ...
"...Ambinder says right out that "fairly or unfairly" the press can't stand John Edwards and so they are going to bury him. This is, of course, not unprecedented, since we saw what they did to Al Gore for the same reason... (And there is no question about whether it's fair. It most certainly isn't.)
Now, I am not especially surprised that the press corps doesn't like John Edwards. Many of these people probably didn't like guys like him in high school either and one thing we know about the political press corps is that they have never matured beyond the 11th grade.... I have to ask, once again, just who in the hell these people think they are and why they think they are allowed to pick our candidates for us based upon their own "feelings" about them? ...
Each time they've pulled this puerile nonsense in the last few years, it's resulted in a mess that's going to take even more years to unravel. And they learned nothing, apparently, since they are doing exactly the same thing in this election. If the press really wants to know why they are held in lower esteem than hitmen and health insurance claims adjusters, this is it..."
Krugman had a similar rant a while back. I don't think the '11th grade' is the full story; we need an insider to figure this one out. I do agree that the US media have about as much right as the GOP to be sanctimonious. Their star hangs low.In Slate on Jan 29 Christopher Beam tells us the tricks of Edwards affair(s).
Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip looks back ... cleveland.com
... It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
I've never regretted stopping when I did...Makes one miss his voice all the more. Of course, never return to Calvin and Hobbes, but does he really have nothing to say that we would like to hear?