Note Re: Posts and Psoters

Considering that the three of us started this blog with one account, under my name (that is, Stanley Cabrera), the posts have been credited as such even though we have each made our posts.

So from now on we'd be indicating the author of each post by placing the name of the author at the end of each article.

Thanks very much!

MySpace and Internet Predators

Who among us haven’t heard of MySpace or Friendster? Chances are a lot of us have heard about it and a majority of people we know have accounts in either MySpace or Friendster… maybe even in both.

MySpace and Friendster are just some of the many internet social network service providers. They cater to both young and old, bridge gap between races, and provide an enjoyable past time. Yet with all the benefits and conveniences provide by MySpace, Friendster or any other social network service provider, the danger of abuse and misuse is not far behind.

In an article written by Paula Lehman for Business Week Online[1], she tells us that MySpace is currently facing a $30 million lawsuit concerning a 14-year-old Texas girl who said she was assaulted by a predator she met on MySpace. She further informs us that U.S. lawmakers were lobbying to have social networks banned from schools and libraries.

For its part, MySpace has bolstered its security measures. Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace Chief Security Officer, announced a partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to use MySpace to disseminate word of child abductions through the Amber Alert system. He also said that the site will implement an e-mail verification system and an “over/under” privacy tool that prevents contact in either direction between users above the age of 18 with younger users[2].

Novel as these efforts may seem, these measures are insufficient to counter the existing dilemma. Pedophiles and other internet predators need simply fool people into believing that they are minors. By simply typing a “falsified” age entry, these individuals could still continue making contacts with minors. No one would know whether the entry is falsified or not due to the millions, if not billions, of users worldwide.

Strict policy guidelines should be implemented not only by internet social service providers but also by States to help curb this problem. A lot of laws have been passed to prevent child pornography, abuse and abduction but an efficient “monitoring system” is at want. Such a suggestion may not be acceptable to many since it might create a “privacy issue”, but its need is evident. Without such a system, the danger of the proliferation of internet predators will continue.

by: Bryan Tan

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[1] This article may be viewed at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16789338/

[2] Ibid.

To FOSS or Not to FOSS, that is the Question

The FOSS revolution is quite a tale. The concept of cooperation between programmers from all over the world to come up with something very much productive is awe inspiring, really. One wonders, how did they pull it off?

Of course, when one thinks about it, if you’d post some code on the net and ask for suggestions in improving it, you’d get a whole lot of sorts of responses. There would be the helpful ones, the useful ones, the absurd ones and even the harmful ones. Why? That’s because there are so many people on the net nowadays that you’d have a multitude of weirdoes who’d want to put in their stuff, often malicious.

Back in the early years of the internet and when the call for help in the GNU and the Linux projects were made (okey, so the internet, or at least it’s predecessor, was in existence for quite sometime before that but it was still in it’s early years in the popular vernacular), it was still quite exclusive to those in the know. It was either your in the computing or telecommunications industry or a certified geek to get into the internet. That carries with it competence with programming and computers and, more or less, a close-knit (and often competitive) community who know each other (at least when compared to current standards of internet interaction). Such are ingredients for a more organized and efficient effort.

True, the increased popularity of the internet and computing has also increased knowledge and competence regarding it. However, such improvements are often skewed to quantity and sometimes to the detriment of quality. You have lots of young kids fresh out of computer school, bored, unemployed and hankering to make a mark. Thus you get lots of these viruses springing up all the time. What that means is that although there are a lot more potential contributors, the effort becomes more and more difficult to organize, with forks cropping up every so often.

Granted, it does not mean that the current batch of FOSS collaborations cannot be as productive, as can be seen in the Mozilla Firefox series of software. It just means that Linux is that special. With majority of the contributors being old timers, the code for Linux was made in C, which has the advantage of being near to machine language and thus more reliable than the subsequent programming languages. Ergo, Linux is as steady a program as it gets. And that distinguishes it from Microsoft Windows. The comparison becomes more skewed when you factor in the disparity in the price. That’s the appeal of Linux, ditto with other FOSS packages. Since in terms of functionality (the useful ones, at least) the gap between the “commercial” types and the FOSS ones is becoming smaller and smaller. Now that it’s clear that FOSSing has its advantages.

The only question is, to FOSS or not to FOSS?

point-and-click-and-hitch

A few years ago, at around the time that E-commerce became quite a hot topic, or shall we say, “fashionable”, in the country, the promise of shopping for imported goods without budging from one’s house (or seat, for that matter) appeared on the horizon. Suddenly, one need not badger his or her relatives in the States or elsewhere to buy some coveted stuff for him/her and have it Fed-exed to Manila. One could actually just “point and click” and after some time, (given sufficient credit card balance) the a guy in a blue and white uniform knocks on the door and hands over the thing. At least, that was the promise.

As expected though, some hassles and kinks had to be smoothed out. Amongst the very first purchases of my sister were books from Amazon.com which took 4 months to reach us, no kidding. The frustrating thing is that they had actually been delivered to the country within a month of her order, but were held up due to customs duties issues (which we discovered much later). This was around the time that a new set of issuances were released (at least that’s what they told us) and the people on the field were quite confused as to what would actually be charged. That experience brought to light the vast improvements required on the logistical aspects of E-commerce activities. But still we were hopeful that it would improve in time.

Fast forward a few years and the operation of E-commerce is still bogged down by logistical concerns. Just the other day I read in Yes! magazine (uh, I visited my mom back in our old house and had nothing else to read) that brand name luxury goods, if they so happen to be unavailable in Rustan’s (or in Greenbelt) can be bought online, though you risk them getting stolen by unscrupulous cargo handlers (this was an article where Gretchen Barretto showcased the particular brands of shoes, clothes, accessories and make-up which make Tonyboy Cojuangco a bit poorer by the day). That would give new meaning to the term “traveling bag”. Considering that the imported goods which are worth buying online would surely be the ones which cost a bundle, buying online and having them shipped when such vulnerabilities still exist becomes less attractive (except maybe for fashion-minded and naughty-handed customs personnel). Very unfashionable.

Considering also that at best one can only see a video (usually just a picture, which maybe from a sample and not the particular stock your buying, or more commonly just words describing the item for sale) before buying something, even if indeed the thing arrives at the buyer’s doorstep (after escapes delay and more importantly, disaster (theft, that is)) another concern is genuineness: whether the “LV” you bought is THE LV. Then again, at least they’re offering stuff for sale and to be delivered to us. Apple’s iTunes has so far snubbed Asia (wont sell downloads outright). Now that’s one hitch.