Digital Imagination

It’d suck being deaf in the hood.

Most of the people who read this blog are not technical, but all of you whom I know personally have heard me talk about network security. I’ve told you to install Firefox, update and install virus-checkers, get rid of spyware and adware, and even run a scan of your computer at grc.

Now, I’m going to try to keep this relatively simple, but the reason I’m so keen on this subject is because proper computer security is not just for your personal and financial security, it’s for everyone’s.

I’m going to give you a small quote from an article I just read. It’s part of a speech by Dan Geere where he discusses the NIMDA virus, which very few of you will remember. On September 18th 2001, a week after 9/11, NIMDA was responsible for knocking out nearly 1/3 of the world’s computers. In his speech, Dan explains how we almost suffered an even more devastating loss:

“…As you know, nearly all malware in the wild persists there. An older virus called E911 was such an example. E911 would cause your modem to dial 911 repeatedly; that is all it did. Now when I call you on the phone, the circuit stays up until the calling party disconnects. When I call 911, however, the circuit stays up until the called party disconnects, a difference that is done at the switch for the obvious reason that you do not want the intruder to cut the phone line and the Police Dispatcher to have to say “Now whom was I talking to?” For the Police to hang up on a 911 call when the calling party has gone away requires a human decision, made under uncertainty, done at human time scales. Because of this, it is possible to saturate a 911 console and that is precisely what the E911 virus was crafted to do — saturate a 911 console.

The E911 virus was old and forgotten on September 18, 2001, but it was still available on the net and, of course, the Internet in the fall of 2001 was still dominated by dial-up connections. We got lucky in the simplest, stupidest, dumb luck kind of way. No jackass had the imagination to grab the E911 virus and re-target it at the backdoor NIMDA was busy installing at warp speed everywhere while we all were pre-occupied with watching CNN 24×7. If someone had done that, then everyone in America would have gotten up the morning of September 19 only to find that there was no emergency service available nationwide; it would have been turned off everywhere and all at once, like a light switch. While that would not have been a disaster of a physical sort, I submit that it would have been a grand mal seizure of the public confidence. Clinically that defines terror, it would have required no planning just opportunistic reaction, and it would have been an unpredictable event whose downstream influence was out of all proportion to is concrete effects. 

On September 18, 2001, we escaped a public loss of confidence by luck and luck alone.”

This is why I focus on security so much, this is why I talk about it every time we speak on the phone. When you leave your computer unpatched, or run poorly-secured programs, you literally open yourself up to the world. When you do, you will be the cause of a “Digital Pearl Harbor“.

I read a great blog post yesterday about “Society’s Cognitive Surplus.” In the article, Clay Shirkey posits that Americans wastes about the equivalent of 1,000,000 wikipedia projects (not pages mind you, the entire volume of the site) per year watching television.  It also points out that media producers need to beware, as future generations are becoming more attracted to the internet as a means of entertainment.

This is not news. The new media, the internet, provides a way for people to not only be entertained, but to provide feedback and be part of a community or project. The great thing about the internet is that most sites offer in some way, shape or form the ability for you to provide input.

Now, it’s no secret that I’m a geek. I love my computer(s), not because I love tinkering around with them (which I d0), but because of the very fact that they’re interactive. I can communicate with other people, build something to show the world, spout off my demented opinions in my blog or watch other fascinating people on youtube. It provides me with a constant data feed that keeps my mind active. To me, computers are a heck of a lot more entertaining than the television.

So I guess I’m not a geek after all… I’m a revolutionary.

10. Wow, I guess our bodies don’t really process seeds/corn skin/peanuts!

9. Never having to sit down at a public bathroom stall

8. I forget what 8 was for

7. You can pretty much get whatever you want just by threatening to swing the bag around “splattering shit like a drunk on a tilt-a-whirl”.

6. Getting to use the sentence, “I apologize, I recently had an operation that left me unable to control my flatulence, however, I assure you, while it does appear that I dealt it, you won’t have to smelt it.”

5. Seriously, and I can’t stress this enough, you NEVER have to sit down at a public bathroom stall!

4. If you think this bag is full of shit, you should meet my brother-in-law!

3. Whenever anyone anywhere in your vicinity passes gas, you get to make a mad dash to the restroom to make sure you’re not leaking.

2. When your wife/boss is yelling at you for something you did/didn’t do that you didn’t know you wer/weren’t supposed to do, being able to secretly think “I’m pooping right now”.
1. Watching yourself poop is just like seeing George Bush’s domestic policy get prepared.

I went to the Emergency Room last on Friday April 4th, with acute pain that began in the lower left abdomen and quickly expanded. I’d originally attributed it to a vicious stomach bug, but alas, it appeared after a CT-Scan to be a nasty case of Diverticulitis. I was admitted and given heavy antibiotics. I reeled in pain for about 3 days when my Surgeon informed me that he was going to need to do immediate surgery. He explained the operation, the chance of success and the probability of a temporary colostomy.

So on Monday, at 2PM, I had a funny man in a mask telling me to count backwards from 100…99…98…97… (has anyone actually made it past 97, please let me know).

When I awoke, I went back to sleep. I did that for a few days. Really, nothing before Wednesday is very clear to me, other than the fact that a lot of annoying people in gloves kept waking me up at unseemly hours like 3 in the afternoon. Oh, and that I had this little magic button that I could click which would make the pain go away, if I clicked it twice, I felt really fuzzy, and if I clicked it three times, the entire original cast of Pirates of Penzance would perform “Modern Major General” right before my eyes while flying around on real dragons, really, they’re quite amazing, should see them next time they’re in town.

I have to say, by Wednesday, I felt miserable. But I was still 1000 times better than when I was having the Diverticulitis attack. My chief form of frustration was not the abdominal pain (mostly from the incision), and wierdness, but from the damn Nasogastric Tube I had coming out of me. Actually at this point, with the NG, IV, Catheter and Colostomy bag, I officially had so many tubes running out of me that Ted Stevens had me declared “Part of the Internet”.

Since then, I’ve gone through a range of emotions from; “This is absolutely the filthiest, most disgusting, smelly thing on the planet.” to “This is absolutely the smelliest, most disgusting, filthy thing on the planet.” What can I say, I’m a diverse guy. Everybody keeps telling me that, “Hey, you can do anything with it, go diving, climb mountains, become ‘that dude at the office with the bag of poo hanging at his side’” Yeah, I can just imagine how great my life is gonna be for the next few months; Ol’ Scatty (as I like to call him) and me, hanging out at the bar, making pals.

I know that the trick to dealing with this is to have a good attitude, but dammnit, that’s really hard to do with this thing. I walk down the hall and it goes “poot-poot-poot”. Only a week into it and I’ve already had it publicly leak in front of a horrified audience in a waiting room as I was walking around.

I know, this stuff happens, and I can deal with that. But on a very deep and personal level, I have never felt like such a freak in my life. I know I’ll get used to it and I’ll learn to manage it, but right now, it just doesn’t feel that way.