Several times a day we are now reminded how anal the world has become. By creating various ways to be more efficient and digitized we have also awakened equal number of Hydes that only end up helping the humans design a more complex lock with more passwords that will soon include the need for us to learn the cyrillic script - since anyone can hack a latinesque key.
Just this morning as I tried to update a blog the Captcha key popped up to make sure I was not a whack job computer algorithm trying to spoof an entry in and make some untoward comments or worse hijack the blog and cause a world wide panic.
Airports worldwide have taken the terrorism threat to mean different things to their public and implemented a non consistent and bizzare array of procedures to thwart people from carrying all manners of fluids or solids on to planes. The embarkation or getting to the gate itself is an exercise in undressing to varying degrees depending again on the whims of the policy makers and the aptitude and intellect of the person on the front lines.
Gaming the system is a natural inclination to a lot of people and to an extent it helps keep the purveyors of the service or products honest. As an example Airlines touting reward miles for flying have to actually let their customers use those so called rewards to get somewhere; instead they try to bury you in fine print not really letting you fly. Soon people realize there is no free lunch and start manipulating their earn so that they feel somewhat vindicated against the marketing gimmic that brands impose on the unsuspecting public.
Although I do not consume Facebook as a service I hear from the believers that the security apparatus has started becoming more sophisticated as the nerdy tool which was once a way to find the next chick or date in the form across the street transformed into a marketing engine that could (not sure myself if it will sustain). Pretty soon the user community will rebel against all the buttons and controls that protect your wild pics from that party you thought you did not go to but did because half of the public will be clueless on how to use them.
To see this tit for tat manifest into these ridiculous mechanisms has only made life more difficult since there really is no such thing as privacy or security when you are in the cloud. Ultimately you believe in the system to the extent you can afford to get hacked or peeped into or manipulated and just accept the risk. If not stay away from any form of organized procedure be it - flying or blogging or opening a bank account or getting a new phone because you my friend are going to be susceptible - just like our forefathers were more likely to catch a nasty virus (organic kind) compared to our generation.
On an informal mission to read one book a week as long as the eyes allow for such ambition. Fiction or non is not important as long as it entertains and /or educates. To that end the past few weeks have brought a bounty in the form of some wonderful and then not so engaging literature. Among the notables are - Non fiction category: 1. Good arguments by Bo Seo (how to handle a dispute or debate the most efficient way possible) 2. Genesis by Eric Schmidt (and former US Secy of State Henry Kissinger, who recently passed) - how AI might affect our lives as we know it 3. One in a billion - Zarna Garg (an autobiographical look at an Indian born American woman with a bindi narrated in a standup format - yes it is at times cliched but still funny) Fiction: 1. Personal by Lee Child (a vigilante story with Jack Reacher the giant, nomad protagonist of Child's novels goes hunting for a sniper) 2. Ramayana unraveled by Ami Ganatra (she might disagree about it being a work of fiction but oh wel...
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