Virtual sit-in seems to be a creative way to use internet and still be able to make a kind of mass protest action with blocking access to some information or room.
We have all heard a "cyberwar" phrase before and I have taken it as attack towards something and being a violent act similar to actual physical harm.
But bringing together thousands of people who all would just click a page to make it slow and maybe even crash sounds interesting. It has the same "we can make together more than alone" feeling and touch.
I was determined to find some recent activity of virtual sit-in, but to my surprise there wasn't almost any. basically there has been 2 biggest virtual sit-ins. One that is considered as virtual sit-in was a protest action against World Economy Forum in 2002, but this had also some help with special software. People who wanted to be part of this protest had to download a special software that helped to crash the website.
I have to admint that I am really interested how tens of thousands of people in internet network end up on the same place and agree on to do something like this together. How it is possible to get the information about the action to so many people in time? This is a real challenge. If 40 000 people agreed to download the software and disturb the WEF website, how many people actually git the information first place? 40 % more 70 % more maybe 300 % more got the info. How the info was shared? And all kinds of other questions came into my mind.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Chapter 10 - Internet makes it equal
As I described deaf people in my previous post, I would like to discuss how they could actually benefit from internet and this way make the cap between themselves and hearing world smaller than it currently is. Deaf people do get most of their information by reading and seeing. Although not all deaf people are completely deaf, most of them can hear something, so they are not 100 % deaf. If they hear something they can also learn to talk – it is quite hard to learn to talk when you can’t hear what you are saying and how loud you are saying it.
But all this does not matter when they are talking online. I have a friend who is half-deaf. He can speak, but mostly he tries to understand what people are saying by reading lips. He does not have any problems communicating in internet through emails or MSN. I have to admit that he does not write grammatically correct Estonian, but he tries and at the same time understands everything that is told him.
Internet helps him and others like him to be part of the world. At least in the internet there is almost nothing that he could not do. Internet helps him to get more information, helps him to communicate with people that otherwise would never get in contact with him. Internet helps them to be normal not different from society. I think it is most important for young children and teenagers, a deaf person can have hard time seeing pop-culture on the streets, but not being able or just too afraid to be part of it. But as more and more of youngsters are hooked with internet, the minority young deaf people are taken as equals.
But all this does not matter when they are talking online. I have a friend who is half-deaf. He can speak, but mostly he tries to understand what people are saying by reading lips. He does not have any problems communicating in internet through emails or MSN. I have to admit that he does not write grammatically correct Estonian, but he tries and at the same time understands everything that is told him.
Internet helps him and others like him to be part of the world. At least in the internet there is almost nothing that he could not do. Internet helps him to get more information, helps him to communicate with people that otherwise would never get in contact with him. Internet helps them to be normal not different from society. I think it is most important for young children and teenagers, a deaf person can have hard time seeing pop-culture on the streets, but not being able or just too afraid to be part of it. But as more and more of youngsters are hooked with internet, the minority young deaf people are taken as equals.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Chapter 9 - Room will be filled anyway
I found Parkinson's Law of Data with 2 other Laws were the most true definitions on Jargon File.
I just liked the definition "Data expands to fill the space available for storage". I have felt it myself and seen all other people around me suffering for the same reason.
When I had my first PC, it had 3 giga harddrive, and I was really happy over it, I could watch movies, had several hundreds of music files and liked my PC and considered it to be a good and enough for me. Then the PC crashed and I was forced to get a new one. he new one had everything more, memory, harddrive, videocard etc... and I started to have more data. Windows itself took more and more space on C disc.
Then I got my first laptop - I just could not believe my happiness - I had 40 Gigabytes of harddrive, for me it meant thousands of files of music and after some time no stored movie on my laptop. This one also crashed, and unfortunately I did not get a laptop with bigger harddrive, but the same - I was really sad, for 2 years I basically could not include any new music files to my computer, because it was full - 30 gigas of music (I was even forced to remove some music from laptop, it was a traumatic experience) and a little bit other things.
Fortunately my luck changed :) and now I have 160 gigas of harddrive, I have had it for 2 months and half of it is full.
The more room there is the more things will be put inside (also applies to any living condition, it does not matter how big house someone has, it will be full of things anyway).
I just liked the definition "Data expands to fill the space available for storage". I have felt it myself and seen all other people around me suffering for the same reason.
When I had my first PC, it had 3 giga harddrive, and I was really happy over it, I could watch movies, had several hundreds of music files and liked my PC and considered it to be a good and enough for me. Then the PC crashed and I was forced to get a new one. he new one had everything more, memory, harddrive, videocard etc... and I started to have more data. Windows itself took more and more space on C disc.
Then I got my first laptop - I just could not believe my happiness - I had 40 Gigabytes of harddrive, for me it meant thousands of files of music and after some time no stored movie on my laptop. This one also crashed, and unfortunately I did not get a laptop with bigger harddrive, but the same - I was really sad, for 2 years I basically could not include any new music files to my computer, because it was full - 30 gigas of music (I was even forced to remove some music from laptop, it was a traumatic experience) and a little bit other things.
Fortunately my luck changed :) and now I have 160 gigas of harddrive, I have had it for 2 months and half of it is full.
The more room there is the more things will be put inside (also applies to any living condition, it does not matter how big house someone has, it will be full of things anyway).
Chapter 6 - internet scam
I will write about a scam that I recently got close with. My mother is a sign language translator, that means I have also communicated with many deaf people since I was a child.
Deaf people in Estonia are friends with all kinds of technical possibilities, they have mobile phones – no they do not call with it, but write SMS’s, really easy and quick way to communicate with each other or their sign language translator. Do you know that with some cases you can even call for Ambulance with SMS in Estonia ;)
But the ambulance is not what I wanted to talk about.
Couple of months ago my mother called me and asked that if I could help one of her deaf people with English. She told me that the man is good using internet and also understands some English, but this time he would like to have some help with a letter that is telling him that he has win several millions of pounds in a lottery. I understood right away that there is something fishy in it. But of course I was ready to help, especially a person that according to my mother seemed to believe this email.
So I told, that ok, he can forward me the email.
Of course I did not need to read more than half if the first sentence
„Transfer Options for the Immediate Transfer of your Winnings of the Sum of £750,000 Pounds Sterling with Transfer Identification code: ELPC/MWT/0143“
The rest of the letter had spelling mistakes in it, more fishy information, no mentioning real name of the receiver, let’s name him Jüri.
To make Jüri relize he is being tricked I sent him long explanation of these kind of scams, took details from this email to make him understand why it was a fake. I sent the letter to him and was sure he understands everything and is happy that he is saved.
Next day my mother called me and adn said Jüri vas happy to get my mail and understood everything, he agreed that contacting this email was not good. But... he had already sent a response to this email before. Which of course ment that later he got more mails and when he did not answer them then a new mail from new address came, claiming that he has won even bigger sum of money with somekind of Lottery that he had never took part in.
Deaf people get most of their information from written texts or TV (they watch a lot of TV), but it also means that for example in a bus, sitting alone, they never get some new information from people talking next to them.
Jüri had never heard about internet scams. So when the next letter came, he again contacted me about it. I, again, took time to answer him and was sure that this time he will understand and will delete all future messages like that without further reading. During the time he had already told my mother that he will buy my mother a car if she helps him with this. It was sad, how Jüri believed that he has really won something. His financial status is not good, so he really wanted to believe this luck.
After I got third letter from him I suggested to change his e-mail address, or at least make a google account and forward all emails from his hot.ee address to google and ignore spam mails.
The tricky thing was that he understood my explanations and believed me what he was not so good at making connections with new mails he got about his winnings and big sums – he did not get the big picture how to just get with a first glance to email that this is not a true one.
***
I had a really rough day at the office which continued with really bad internet connection from home (writing this offline right now), but during the workday I tooka look to www.whatsthebloodypoint.com and now writing about it makes me laught. It was just a really good idea to have a webpage like this. I right away thought that I should show this page to Jüri, maybe then he could form a bigger picture to keep himself from believing future fraud letters :P
Because I found the idea to trick the email-frauders into believing that they have a “real believer” on the other side, a really good one, it is quite hard to find ethical problems in it. Of course the whatsthebloodypoint-person was just doing some fun and keeping frauder away from new victims, but at the same time he was cheating as well. It is quite hard to actually detect the frauder. I think that if I would get the email and turned to Police with it, there would be nothing they could do about it. If I ignore the letters, then spammer has more time to find another victim. I looked at the mails bloodypoint-person had got and it really takes time to write them.
I do agree from ethical point of view that making this: http://www.whatsthebloodypoint.com/pics/g1-5.htm is not really a honorman thing. But would playing a trick like this on your friends be unethical – I do not think so. So I also do not think that answering spammers emails, is unethical – I just can’t think seriously about that.
Deaf people in Estonia are friends with all kinds of technical possibilities, they have mobile phones – no they do not call with it, but write SMS’s, really easy and quick way to communicate with each other or their sign language translator. Do you know that with some cases you can even call for Ambulance with SMS in Estonia ;)
But the ambulance is not what I wanted to talk about.
Couple of months ago my mother called me and asked that if I could help one of her deaf people with English. She told me that the man is good using internet and also understands some English, but this time he would like to have some help with a letter that is telling him that he has win several millions of pounds in a lottery. I understood right away that there is something fishy in it. But of course I was ready to help, especially a person that according to my mother seemed to believe this email.
So I told, that ok, he can forward me the email.
Of course I did not need to read more than half if the first sentence
„Transfer Options for the Immediate Transfer of your Winnings of the Sum of £750,000 Pounds Sterling with Transfer Identification code: ELPC/MWT/0143“
The rest of the letter had spelling mistakes in it, more fishy information, no mentioning real name of the receiver, let’s name him Jüri.
To make Jüri relize he is being tricked I sent him long explanation of these kind of scams, took details from this email to make him understand why it was a fake. I sent the letter to him and was sure he understands everything and is happy that he is saved.
Next day my mother called me and adn said Jüri vas happy to get my mail and understood everything, he agreed that contacting this email was not good. But... he had already sent a response to this email before. Which of course ment that later he got more mails and when he did not answer them then a new mail from new address came, claiming that he has won even bigger sum of money with somekind of Lottery that he had never took part in.
Deaf people get most of their information from written texts or TV (they watch a lot of TV), but it also means that for example in a bus, sitting alone, they never get some new information from people talking next to them.
Jüri had never heard about internet scams. So when the next letter came, he again contacted me about it. I, again, took time to answer him and was sure that this time he will understand and will delete all future messages like that without further reading. During the time he had already told my mother that he will buy my mother a car if she helps him with this. It was sad, how Jüri believed that he has really won something. His financial status is not good, so he really wanted to believe this luck.
After I got third letter from him I suggested to change his e-mail address, or at least make a google account and forward all emails from his hot.ee address to google and ignore spam mails.
The tricky thing was that he understood my explanations and believed me what he was not so good at making connections with new mails he got about his winnings and big sums – he did not get the big picture how to just get with a first glance to email that this is not a true one.
***
I had a really rough day at the office which continued with really bad internet connection from home (writing this offline right now), but during the workday I tooka look to www.whatsthebloodypoint.com and now writing about it makes me laught. It was just a really good idea to have a webpage like this. I right away thought that I should show this page to Jüri, maybe then he could form a bigger picture to keep himself from believing future fraud letters :P
Because I found the idea to trick the email-frauders into believing that they have a “real believer” on the other side, a really good one, it is quite hard to find ethical problems in it. Of course the whatsthebloodypoint-person was just doing some fun and keeping frauder away from new victims, but at the same time he was cheating as well. It is quite hard to actually detect the frauder. I think that if I would get the email and turned to Police with it, there would be nothing they could do about it. If I ignore the letters, then spammer has more time to find another victim. I looked at the mails bloodypoint-person had got and it really takes time to write them.
I do agree from ethical point of view that making this: http://www.whatsthebloodypoint.com/pics/g1-5.htm is not really a honorman thing. But would playing a trick like this on your friends be unethical – I do not think so. So I also do not think that answering spammers emails, is unethical – I just can’t think seriously about that.
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