Blogging & Anonymity: The Paradox
If you’ve ever bothered to read any of the comment threads on this site which extend over, say, 30 comments you’ll realize the internet is full of idiots. And not just idiots, but all the kinds of truly disgusting people you would rather not know exist. Take the recent highly-publicized example of blogger Kathy Sierra who claims to have been harassed by death threats (we’ll set aside the legal considerations of whether the material showed sufficient intent, even though she repeatedly claims without proof that the material broke “federal law”). She articulately makes the point that the mere creation of material this offensive shows a perversion of bloggers:
It really doesn’t make much difference whether the person intends to act on the threat… it’s the threat itself that inflicts the damage. It’s the threat that makes you question whether that “anonymous” person is as disturbed as their comments and pictures suggest.
The Wrong Reaction
We should be tempted to fall into despair, for human nature is evil. This is exactly what Robert Scoble has done, turning to blogo-Solipsism and taking a week off. Both strong emotional reactions and withdrawing from the blogosphere produce more harm than good. After all, if you’re affected by the cruelty present on the internet, hiding will only make it worse.
The Right Reaction
I usually read Shelly and wince, but she’s right on here:
Frankly, calmer heads are needed when responding to this event. Webloggers are not very good at maintaining perspective. I know, I’ve been one for too long.
This is not something new. People are irresponsible and rude in real life, and the situation is only exacerbated by the internet and the so-called shield of anonymity. We are living in the world of that metaphorical question “if you were invisible would you steal?”
The Irony
Seth Godin suggests that “Anonymity hasn’t made the web a better place. Instead, it has allowed some of the worst ideas ever to get published.” He’s almost right. While the Internet surely allows anonymous slanderers to publish the worst ideas that exist, those ideas are powerless without an audience. And, Kathy Sierra’s public tantrum today gave her attackers more audience than they could have ever hoped for. It’s interesting that by specifically decrying offensive material we draw more attention to it. Creators of hate speech don’t mind bad publicity.
Take It All Away
Still, taking away anonymity (Discouraging Anonymity is Key to Protecting Visibility) is not going to solve any of these problems. First, there is the wee technical problem that it’s totally impossible. Second, and more importantly, people will always exist for whom hate speech is a normal way of life. Only the broadest social reforms can decrease the incident of this kind of thought. You cannot police what people feel in their hearts, but over time you can mold it.
The Only Solution
Remember the racism of the 60s? I don’t, but having heard the stories, it’s quite obvious that incredible leaps have been made to bring black Americans to the same social acceptance level as their white counterparts. Even so, there still remains work to be done wherever racism, sexism, nepotism, ageism, etc are found.
That work will not be accomplished by stifling speech (that means you, Wordpress), but rather by changing the way we are educated, and therefore the way we think.
IPtables Permissions on Linux
If you want to, say, run iptables from a script to ban naughty users on your website, you’re going to quickly find yourself with an error:
Can't initialize iptables table 'some table': Permission denied (you must be root)
Since only root is allowed to run iptables, then we need to let apache be root to run it. Just edit /etc/sudoers and add the line apache (ALL)=(root) NOPASSWD: /sbin/iptables. This means that the user apache is allowed to run iptables as root for any server group, so it is not particularly security adverse. It certainly doesn’t grant apache all of root permissions, which would lead to instant disaster. After you make this change, you can now run sudo iptables as apache:
sudo -u apache sudo iptables -I INPUT -s 127.0.0.1 -j DROP
Apple TV Review Roundup
Now that the highly acclaimed Apple TV has been out for a few days, interesting bits of news, reviews, and hacks are starting to appear all over the intertubes. The Apple TV, for those who don’t know, is a personal video recorder (PVR) device that let’s you stream all your iTunes content to your TV. Got shows, movies, or music on your pc? Now you can deliver them to your living room.
Apple TV Hacks
This hack lets you upgrade your Apple TV hard drive from the tiny 40GB to any size, say a gigantic 120 GB. It’s probably as simple as replacing the harddrive with a new one with a mirror’d image of the old one.
Want to watch xvid, divx, or another hot codec from your torrent stash on the Apple TV? No problem! Just install the Perian codec pack for Quicktime on the drive after you take it out the Apple TV. Watch for an automatic upgrade patch in the future from our young hacker friends.
The Apple TV is made for widescreen, but it will *work* on older 4:3 480p TVs. It’s just going to be a viewing experience you won’t get much out of, except the thrill of connecting hardware that should never have been fit together. Still, “it’s worth trying something really really weird every now and then to see if it works!”
Apple TV reviews
AG doesn’t think it’s worth it without more HD content: “wait until HD content makes its way to iTunes before you run out to buy one. When that time comes…this is going to be a must have…”
Apple TV Photos
Engaget posted a random collection of about 90 photos of the Apple TV interface, so if you’re curious to know what it will look like *before* you shell out the $300, you should check it out. And, that $300 is still less than a Fendi wallet!
Why would someone be so cruel to dissect their apple TV? And did they perform this abomination while it was running? Bloggers against gadget vivisection!!!
What makes a blogger think “oh yay I got a gadget in the mail, let’s take pictures of opening the box?” We don’t know, but feel free to drool over Apple Gazette’s new TV.
Apple TV Sex
Host of Attack of the Show, Olivia Munn goes the apple-girls-gone-wild way and licks her TV. But, she’s just imitating Ms. Chobot who licked her PSP before licking consumer electronics was popular.
