Facebook, IM (chat) and IRC Phishing

2010 April 27^th

I caught a Phacebook Phisher today! It was someone impersonating a friend and asking for my phone number.
Tell-tale signs:

• A Chat or IM or IRC msg apparently from a friend, but saying nothing specific about them or about you
• Writing in a generic style possibly atypical of your friend's normal style
• They reply to your messages with no delay
• Urgent or repeated requests for info (like your phone #)
• Logs out or goes offline after only a couple minutes delay on your part

How to reply:

• Tell them to contact you by some other means which would require them knowing something specific (like their own email password), but

• Don't tell them that specific thing, and don't tell them what they're asking for via the IM or chat.

Likely Hacking Method
In this particular instance I believe the hacker got a Javascript running on my friend's computer. The way this can happen to you is as follows:

• You can visit a website which runs a Javascript (typically through a banner ad) that sticks around and later acts as a "chat relay".

• The script waits until you are in Facebook, then opens another window that is invisible (for example, hidden below the task bar)

• Within the hidden window, it starts a Chat with any friends who are online.

• If a friend responds, the script (running in your browser) forwards your friend's response to the hacker (who is somewhere else on the Internet).

• Your friend can then chat with the hacker, who impersonates you.

More details of other types of phishing are at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9874388706

Five Dichotomies of Interpersonal Politics

2010 April 14^th

First a couple limiting qualifiers:

• I do not imagine these to be the only five, or the most important five, dichotomies. They just happen to have been on my mind lately.

• By politics, I simply mean the ways in which people interact while deciding what to do.

These dichotomies exist as characteristics/traits of people, as ways of behaving or interacting, and as points of view -- and most are a combination of all three.

In no particular order, here they are:

1. The Personal vs Team dichotomy is strongest in situations where several people are working together and risk their individual well-being in order to achieve important results that benefit all. I discuss this and give examples in MCV03, Everything That Depends on You Depends on Your Well-Being.

2. The dichotomy between Individualism and Collectivism is similar but involves the tradeoffs between the individual(s) and a much larger entity such as an entire society. This dichotomy often factors in political ideologies, such as Ayn Rand's Objectivism (which falls on the individualist end of the spectrum) and Socialism or Communism. I have written a bit more on my Collectivism page.

3. There is a dichotomy between Task and Purpose, or between the means and the end, or between the method and the ultimate result. I think of this as a succession of several things connected in a chain. Roughly in order they are Task, Goal, Project, Mission and Purpose. They have a cause-and-effect relationship, in that each results from the ones that come before it in the chain. Also, at any point in the chain, there are typically several alternatives any of which can be used to achieve the next link in the chain. I have written a lot about this on my Priorities page.

4. That dichotomy relates closely to the dichotomy between One-Time Planning and Ongoing Re-Evaluation. This is a spectrum of individual preference; each person will tend to choose how much energy to spend on thinking and planning, and how much risk to take from the adverse effects of failing to adapt or to be flexible. I discuss this on my Decision page.

5. Finally, there is a dichotomy of management style between Hands-Off Management and Micro-Management. This appears when decisions are being made about what how to carry out a task or how to accomplish the results expected in a person's job. There is a spectrum, ranging from a completely worker-oriented extreme at which the person doing the job decides how to do it, to a completely manager-oriented extreme at which every detail is specified to the worker by another person, or perhaps by several or many others.

It's Milktaculous

2010 March 2^nd

The milk industry seems to enjoy having fun with their advertising campaigns. A brother from my college fraternity wrote:

Subject: Drink More Milk, brought to you by Canada

What's up with the crazy Vancouver dairy people?

As milk advertising goes, the above is very tame. I responded:

I see your milk stop frame animation short, and raise you a campy retro rock opera featurette.

The Battle for Milkquarious

The Battle for Milkquarious, by the California Milk Processing Board. Hosted by Creativity Online.

All-student version released after the end of the contest.

(In the contest, California high-school students submitted videos, with several prizes of grants to school arts programs.)

My frat brother friend replied:

I bow before your rock opera.     Remind me why I don't write musicals again? Oh yes, something about "copious spare time"...

And bow you should — it's nothing less than milktaculous.

 

I happen to be a lifetime fan of cows and all things dairy, provided that it's not too bitter or sour (why did anyone ever start making cream go sour on purpose?!?!?) and tend to think the politics of anti-dairy zealots are blown rather far out of proportion: Smoking is bad for you, and so is an excess of fat, salt, or sugar — but there are people I know who'd rather whine about the advantages of goat milk over cow milk. These aren't people with a medical issue, they just want to be anti-establishment.

What is Commitment?

2010 March 11^th

I was recently asked for my opinions on the following questions:

What is a commitment? Why make them? What is important to do/be when giving your word? What is important when you are accepting another man's word? What is the best way to deal with success (kept commitments) and failure (broken commitments)?

These are common questions in a volunteer group that I participate in.
"A commitment" is simply a promise, which often engenders expectations on the part of others.
"Commitment" (in the more general sense) is the personal dimension of ownership; there is also a communal dimension of ownership which is empowerment. Total ownership cannot exist and the endeavor will fail unless both dimensions (commitment plus empowerment) are present in suitable quantities.
All commitments have a level of priority, a level of importance, and a level of urgency (see the "First Things First" part of Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People). It is not always true that one of these implies either of the other two. The biggest pitfalls in dealing with commitment issues come from getting one's priorities screwed up. This applies to individuals as well as groups. In most of the interesting situations there is no simple answer to a question like "which takes priority?".
Why make commitments? Teamwork. If you are dealing with a new challenge, the communication and successful follow-through of commitments are what enable coordinated action in groups. (It is not always required for teamwork: once the team has learned how to work together on a given type of task, they can usually get it done more efficiently by dispensing with the planning, talking and micromanaging.)
What is important when making and recieving a commitment? Complete and accurate communication. Each party has to understand what the other thinks is being committed, and this has to cover as many possible future contingencies as you can find time to discuss. Consider the downsides, that's how we got 24 men to the moon without losing any of them. Cover all the bases; don't bluff someone into committing by not telling them what your expectations are for each contingency. Jobs should be cleared thoroughly and in detail, the same way companies interview employment candidates.
I have written much more on all these issues here:
priorities
accountable
ownership
management
And also the following shorter articles:
responsibility
commitment
expectation

Vostè ha estat assimilada

2010 March 1^st

Traduir al català

A friend emailed me today with a link to this image of the Eixample of Barcelona and the comment:

How do you say You have been assimilated in Catalan?

The "assimilated" quote is a reference to the fictional Borg, a notably collectivist society of virtually identical aliens that have constructed a cubelike "hive" of many roughly identical rooms and passageways.

I checked into the history of Barcelona's street layout — it turns out the identical city blocks you see in the photo are the result of deliberate planning, in 1859, by urban planner Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer. In [1] I found:

In Cerdà's project, almost all streets were straight and distributed in a regular geometrical grid with perpendicular intersections (see Figure 1). The city blocks all had the same octagonal shape¹². According to Cerdà, this regular distribution was mainly aimed at avoiding privileged building zones.

(Footnote [12] reads: There were about 1,000 blocks, each one size 113.3 m x 113.3 m.)

Figure 1 showed this 1859 map by Cerdà.

In his day Cerdà was accused of being a socialist (the goal of "avoiding privileged building zones" came from this idealism — he was trying to prevent some parts of the city being rich neighborhoods and other parts being poor), and other politicians tried to block his plan but it was adopted and mostly implemented.

In a way, socialism is a real-world expression of the Borg mentality. As perceived by the Star Trek writers, the Borg, socialism and communism all share an "everybody-work-together, everybody-benefits-equally" idealism. And in the United States, identical houses and tract developments are often seen as evidence that individuality and artistic expression have been suppressed.

So my friend's Borg comparison is quite appropriate. The title of this entry was provided by Google Translate.

Food Zealotry

2010 February 15^th

My conversations with friends often end in a bizarre sequence of increasingly resolute claims followed by a sudden change of subject or silence. A typical example was today's exchange on the topic of oatmeal. It went roughly like this (I for me, F for my friend):

I: For many years I avoided oatmeal because it reminded me of my chemotherapy. I had been eating oatmeal in the mornings before the chemo and I learned to associate the subsequent nausea with the oatmeal. Oatmeal became permanently unappealing. Every 5 or 10 years I have tried it again. This last time, I found that I can eat oatmeal again!

F: That's great — oatmeal is pretty healthy. It helps you control your cholesterol levels.

I: Yeah, I heard that. And it's pretty easy to make, I use the instant oatmeal that comes in small packets.

F: Oh, no you shouldn't eat instant oatmeal.

I: What? -- Instant oatmeal is the same as non-instant oatmeal, it's just been boiled and then dried out.

(sudden silence -- a pregnant pause -- and a change in topic)

My friend couldn't go on, because he had just discovered that in fact he didn't know what he was talking about. There is one good reason to question instant oatmeal: the processing method might remove fiber content. My friend could have said that -- it's a pretty simple thing to learn and to remember. And if that were the problem, it's easy to address too -- just read the package (a commonly-cited goal is 3 or more grams of nutritional fiber per serving).

I now suspect he doesn't even know the difference between "oats" and "oatmeal" (I'll save you the embarrassment, and the trouble of looking this up: they're the same, except that oat "meal" has been crushed, cut and/or ground into smaller pieces, so you don't have to boil it as long. It is a completely mechanical process.)

In this case, the only practical upshot of our discussion was to confirm my characterization of him as a food zealot. I know lots of food zealots. Most of them are dead set on trying to get other people to do what they say: they're politicians, self-appointed leaders attempting to wield power one person at a time. The zealotry is usually driven by a sincere desire to do good and address some cultural evil; in this particular case, the cultural evil (as perceived by my friend) is a common American delusion: a simplistic belief that any food which is fast and/or easy must be unhealthy and should be avoided. (A similar delusion targets all tasty foods. The anti-tasty zealots and the anti-fast zealots must be eating a lot of grapefruit and pomegranates -- they occupy the difficult-untasty quadrant of the fruit universe).

This type of "zealotry" is part of a much larger phenomenon of political behaviour seen in inter-personal relationships. There is an abundance of negative-judgmental labels: self-made victim, drama queen, bully, manipulative, vindictive, and so on. I know a few of each.

Fortunately, one can address all of this pretty easily with a simple technique. Let's call it "The Three P's of Speech Attitude":

Personal : Speaking "personally" can be done by beginning everything you say with "I" or "my". For example, I prefer not to eat instant oatmeal. Personal statements carry one really big advantage: they are much easier for people to accept on their own merits.

Positive : This simply means replacing any negative attitudes and terminology with positives, and rephrasing questions such that the desired answer is yes. For example, I prefer to eat regular oatmeal (notice no more use of "not", and replacing the demonized "instant oatmeal" with something you actually feel good about). If I can't find a positive way to say it, I also consider saying nothing at all.

Proof : When I insist on a statement that doesn't adhere to the first two P's, then I try darn hard to be ready to prove it. Proof is in the domain of persuasive speech writing -- another P that is well beyond the scope of this little article. I read a couple articles on that topic and concluded that it would be far easier just to add the words I believe that ... to whatever I was going to say!

Translated Quote-ry is the most bizarre form of flattery

(Or: Patafísica y el cerebro de pollo Jorge Borges)

2009 Oct 12^th

In 2000, I put a geeky but otherwise seemingly innocuous joke on my personal bio page. Five years later, it kept a whole blog-forum full of Spanish-speaking websurfers puzzled, and I didn't even know it. Their discusson led me to discover something quite insightful.

The webpage is www.microsiervos.com/archivo/frases-citas/cita-paradoja-munafo.html. Here is how they quoted me:

09 Jun 2005 Paradojas

Cuando rompo con alguien un hueso de pollo de la suerte el deseo que pido es que se cumpla el deseo de la otra persona. A continuación puedo hacerle la observación de que, o bien el hueso, o bien el universo, deberían dejar de existir de repente.

-- Robert Munafo Publicado por Alvy # 9/Jun/2005 Categorías: Frases, Citas

I do not know any Spanish. Someone translated something I wrote into Spanish in order to quote me. Bizarre, but it gets better... I'll give you my original quote first:

When I break a wishbone, I wish that the other person get their wish, then point out why the wishbone or the Universe should have spontaneously ceased to exist.

This was intended to be a joke, and a self-contradicting logic scenario (like the philosopher who encounters a liar and a truth-teller at a crossing in the road). It turns out not to be a paradox at all (as my Hispanic readers pointed out; answer below). I used an auto-translator to render my words back into English:

When someone break a chicken bone of luck I ask is the desire to fulfill the desire of the other person. Then I can make the observation that either the bone, or the universe, should suddenly cease to exist.³

Okay... so far so good. Brace yourself...

#2 Alex M.

No lo entiendo :S

I do not understand :S

#7 Alvy

La tradición es que el hueso lo parten dos personas, ambos piensan un deseo, a la que se queda el trozo más largo con el huesecillo central se le cumple el deseo, a la otra no se le cumple.

Por tanto, si una persona desea que se cumpla el deseo de la otra y gana el juego, entonces se produce la paradoja porque el deseo de la otra NO debería cumplirse pero se va a cumplir.

The tradition is that the bone is split two people, both think a wish, which is the longest piece with the central ossicle desire is fulfilled, the other is not satisfied.

Therefore, if a person wishes to fulfill the desire of the other and wins the game, then there is the paradox because the desire for the other should not be met but will be enforced.

#15 El Pollo

Devuelvanme mi hueso, y dejare existir su universo.

Give me back my bone, and his universe ceases to exist.

#18 18

Otra paradoja está en desear quedarte con el trozo más peque~no del hueso.

Y la estupidez está en desperdiciar el deseo deseando el trozo más grande.

Another paradox is wanting to stay with the smaller piece of bone.

And the stupidity is willing desire to waste the largest piece.

#20 Gaona

Si la tesis inicial fuera que solo pueda cumplirse un unico deseo (es decir que uno gane y el otro pierda), la hemos liado!

Me pido croquetas.

If the initial thesis was that only one wish can be fulfilled (ie that one win and one loss), we have bundled!

I ask croquettes.

#23 banpiro

No,venga,tratemos ahora el tema que nos preocupa mas a todos ¿los angeles follan? por que el que tengan sexo o no es secundario,lo importante es lo que hagan con el.

No, come, let us now more concern to us all: Do angels f***? that the having sex or not is secondary, what matters is what you do with it.

Along with all the above, and several other humorous references to subjects as diverse as Futurama, the Monty Hall problem, and chicken bones falling from the vastness of the starry night, was a serious discussion that resolved the "paradox" with various logic symbols, arrows and technical jargon. But such formalities are not really necessary, as the answer is quite simply stated:

The "paradox" is based on the notion that only one person can get his wish. But there is nothing that says that must be the case! If my friend and I break the wishbone, and both of us get our wish, then the universe and the chicken-bone can both be happy, to say nothing of me and my friend.

So I learned (in 2009) that (in 2000) I had failed to see the possibility of a win-win scenario, thanks to a bunch of writers (in 2005) whom I have never met.

Addendum: After writing the above, a friend replied:

Two more triumphs for [you]! Robert, you must know Jorge Luis Borges' brilliant work and also the notoriously disrespectful work of the pataphysics society.

In response I'll say the following:

I heard Borges' brain is being kept alive in Argentina, connected via various electrodes to a computer (like in the "Spock's Brain" episode of Star Trek) and is surfing the Internet while waiting for the Nobel committee to finally give him the Prize for literature... so maybe he instigated the discussion. Come to think of it, I don't ever remember putting that quote on my webpage.

The wishbone custom is based in metaphysics, because it involves a belief in something beyond the physical world (namely, a belief that the wish is granted by someone or something that is not explainable in the physical world)

If there were an actual paradox, then I guess it would be 'pataphysics. It definitely has the satirical element (-: However, as the Spanish blog forum points out, there is no actual paradox, because the wishbone belief does not say that the person with the short half of the bone will not get his wish.

So I think it's just plain old logic.

Footnotes

3 : An earlier version of the same auto-translation service delivered the following:

When breaking up with someone a chicken bone of luck-wish I ask is that it meets the desire for another person. Then I make the observation that either the bone or the universe, should suddenly cease to exist.

The version given above is considerably closer to my original.