...A Real Wayback Machine and Then Some

The Internet Archive is simply an amazing treasure trove. The header says:

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

Moving images, music, audio, texts, and the Wayback Machine of Internet sites will keep you lost for hours. It is all in the public domain and is virtually amazing. You want Grateful Dead concert streams? They're their. Don Quixote read aloud in English or Spanish? Yep. Books to read? of course. Old TV shows and TV ads? Step right up.

In fact here is a collection of thirty some classic ads:

Yes, the Flintstones even sold cigarettes!

Under moving images there is even a September 11 archive of the news programs from that fateful morning. Chilling.

I Almost Posted it

The pace of news and information in this age is enough to make one breathless. Over at The Atlantic, Megan McArdle posted on the Anatomy of a Fake Quotation. Here is the quote as it got propagated:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

It turns out that the first quotation mark you see above was misplaced. It was originally posted by a Penn State grad now teaching in Kobe, Japan. Here is where that punctuation belongs:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Dr. King did not say the first line, but he did the rest. Jessica Dovey, the teacher, posted a thoughtful reflection on the day's news and then added the King quote. The rest is history thanks to Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame. He tweeted it to his 1.6 million followers. From there is went viral.

Not a surprise since it is a powerful quote, with or without the opening statement. It expressed what many were feeling. When I posted my blog post yesterday to my Facebook page, I doubled my daily hits on this blog- and got a number of positive comments. We have all been touched by the news of bin Laden's demise. We also struggle in many different ways with its meaning.

When someone like Ms. Dovey  puts together a helpful way of understanding it, we respond. There was nothing malicious or suspicoius about what happened. But, like the way the news itself spread on Sunday night,  it does show the new age of information that we have come to live in.

I Think I Know One Popular Gift

I bought by wife a Nook for Christmas. As we played around with setting it up I could not get the registration to work. So I went online to see what my account is and discovered the problem. Barnes and Noble was overloaded. Server busy. Try again later.

Even after I finally got logged on and was doing some looking online, it was still slow. Very slow. I have a hunch that there were many people entering the eBook world today.

What are the Odds?

Thanks to Marketplace on Public Radio for leading me to the new website

The Book of Odds.

I gather it has been in the works for a couple of years to gather the "odds" of something happening. For example, several I found with a quick search that show some similar odds:

• 1 in 739.2 - The odds an MLB game will include a player hitting for the cycle are 1 in 739.2 (US and CA, 1/1/1901 - 9/8/2009)

• 1 in 737.5 - The odds a white female will be diagnosed with breast cancer in a year are 1 in 737.5 (US, 1994).

• 1 in 742.8 - The odds an employed person 16 or older in Tennessee is a telemarketer are 1 in 742.8 (TN, US, 5/2008).

• 1 in 735.3 - The odds a female born in 1950 is named Arlene are 1 in 735.3 (US, 1950).

Seems like fun to me. But then again, I think I need a life.

Time's Top 50

Time has posted their Top 50 Websites for 2009.

Link

Some look interesting. Many are still the ones we know and depend on in many ways.

The only one I missed seeing was pmPilgrim. Maybe next year.

Good-bye to an Old Old Cyber-friend

Cory reported the end of one of the first true cyber-communities- CompuServe. (To be honest I didn't even know it was still around.)

It started in 1979, 30 years ago as the forerunner to AOL and, in essence the World Wide Web. I first went on CompuServe in October of 1984. I bought my first "real" computer, a Tandy (Radio Shack) which was a surprisingly good computer. I bought a modem and the first night after purchasing a CompuServe membership I was online.

No graphics. Slow modem over a normal telephone line. Did I say no graphics? Just text on a blue screen (I think). But what a rush. It was the beginning of a long- and still active- hobby. Now we take it all for granted.

CompuServe- thank you. You were one of the true pioneers!

Facebook and the Desire to be Known

The following two articles appeared in the last few weeks. This was around the same time as a bunch of students at a nearby high school were suspended or disciplined when their drunken pictures were found on Facebook.

Authorities make string of underage drinking arrests from Facebook photos
Monday, January 14, 2008 4:56 PM
Abc7Chicago.com By Leah Hope

LOMBARD, IL -- A group of suburban teenagers has been arrested for underage drinking, and authorities say they learned about the incident through the Web site Facebook.

See the full article here.

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Couple accused of allowing teen drinking
09:48 AM EST on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Providence Journal By C. Eugene Emery Jr.

BARRINGTON - A local couple has been charged by the police with illegally serving alcohol to minors during a New Year’s Eve party at their home.

The party came to the attention of the police after 13 pictures of the Barrington imbibers, ages 17 to 20, were posted on Facebook.com, a social networking site, under two different names.

See the full article here.

Perhaps the most interesting reactions in these situations is that the students who are disciplined or reprimanded cry foul- invasion of privacy. Now I am not condoning nor condemning the actions of the schools (at this point, anyway) but the issues of privacy invasion seems to be a crazy defense. For some reason we still think that our lives are private even when we place them on the Internet for anyone to see. Most of the time what people post may be at best silly or irrelevant. It may, however, come back to haunt you. It makes you wonder what some investigation or Senate hearing for a nominee might look like in 25 or so years.

What we have is a desire to be famous- to see ourselves on the Internet. Many, many years ago I was in the Peanut Gallery on the Howdy Doody Show. I was more interested in seeing myself and my brother on the monitor off to the side of the stage. "Hey, look, that's me!" Facebook and MySpace and the other "social networking sites are the same. Notice me. See me. See me making a fool of myself when drunk.

So don't complain when someone sees you and calls you to task- asking you to take responsibility for your actions. The real defense, however, may be a constitutional one- the right to not incriminate oneself. But then again there has never been any law against acting stupid.
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But one of the other things that is happening is an extreme Zero Tolerance policy that can become guilt by association, even when there's no association. Take a look at this one:

School Cop Investigated for Porn Link on Friend's MySpace Profile -- Updated
By Kevin Poulsen

In the goofiest waste of law enforcement time we've seen in weeks, an on-campus police officer for a Florida middle school is facing a criminal investigation over his MySpace account. Why? It turns out one of the people on his friends list had a link on his or her profile to an internet porn site.

Or, as the St. Peterburg Times puts it, "kids could navigate from Officer John's page on the social networking site to 'Amateur Match Free Sex' in just three clicks."

You're reading correctly. Gulf Middle School resource officer John Nohejl didn't have porn on his MySpace profile, and he didn't link to porn. But one of the 170-odd people on his friends list, which seems mostly populated by students at his school, had a link to a legal adult site. Now the New Port Richey Police Department and the Florida attorney general's elite cyber crimes unit are investigating him for making adult content available to underage children.

Article here

So what you post may get someone else in trouble, too. What a world. I once heard an ethicist comment in a video that our understandings of ethics and laws are often many years behind the technology. What a struggle it can be until they catch up- by which time the technology will have moved on.

No Conscience - No Morals

I subscribe to an e-mail newsletter called Internet Scambusters. I am no longer shocked at the depths of amorality and immorality that people use to bilk others out of money illegally. But one of the stories this past week hit me and led to some strong anger and indignation. Here is part of what the story said:

In a particularly insidious scam, telephone callers pretending
to be Red Cross representatives are contacting military
families with relatives overseas, claiming that a family
member has been hurt, and that personal and financial
information must be supplied before treatment can begin.

Therefore, scammers have found that this is an effective way
to get military spouses to give personal and financial
information that they would not usually consider giving out.
After all, they want to make sure their spouse is treated as
quickly as possible.

I am sure that even otherwise world-wise and Internet savvy individuals could get sucked into this one. The information wrongly presented in these calls never gets to the "thinking" part of the brain and instead connects powerfully with the emotional, instinctual-response part. Who wouldn't immediately give the information!

That someone can look at a situation like people serving in the military and jump to ways of stealing information and money from their families is beyond me. It angers me. It fills me with sadness and fear for our human race.

But then again, I remember a statement from my Old Testament professor years ago. He was no conservative/fundamentalist by any measure of those words. But early in the introductory course, somewhere around Adam and Eve, he would make this deeply profound statement that would make us all sit up:

The longer you are in the ministry, the more you will discover that the only provable Biblical doctrine is original sin.Sadly, I haven't been able to disagree.

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NOTE: The Red Cross has issued a press release about this practice. You can access it at their Web Site. It says in part:

"The American Red Cross representatives typically do not contact military members/dependents directly and almost always go through a commander or first sergeant channels. Military family members are urged not to give out any personal information over the phone if contacted by unknown/unverified individuals, to include confirmation that your spouse is deployed."