Picasa2 on steroids...

[Intrigued]

If you like ... Picasa2 (http://www.picasa.com) ... then this next one is going to probable really excite you:

There is a video over at Channel9 about this:

MyLifeBits (http://www.research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx) - Website


Channel9 Video (http://channel9.msdn.com/default.aspx) (approximately 45 minutes!)

[Corey]

Manage/store a lifetime worth of cards, memos, papers, etc.? That's my worst nightmare. :)

It's unhealthy for people to start internalizing these artificial thought models, there's a reason you forget things, it's a vital component of human health. :)

[Intrigued]

Massive Data Overload!

We will have to bring in Mr. Data on this endeavor I feel.

:eek:

[Corey]

Yes, MDO, you've coined the term. In ten years a large percentage of people will be going bananas from MDO. The funny thing about the human brain is that overall it functions better under less load, i.e. the less extraneous stuff you put in, the more valuable stuff comes out, and vice-versa.

Redefining what's extraneous is a dangerous road to go down. Think of it as overclocking, your warranty is void. The most amazing thing about the human brain is that it will do what you tell it to, even if it's unhealthy. In other words, it is the only organ we have which actively subverts itself from day one. :)

Noggin + Sabotage = Nogotage.

Anyhow people who save "everything" have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, those people will *love* this technology. But on the opposite end of the spectrum you have impulsive people like me, and to us this is a nightmare come true. :yes

Besides, what ever happened to letting certain things slide? I'm terribly glad my life isn't documented because I'm not proud of *every single* moment in my life. I'm glad certain times have been relegated to the softening filters of time and memory. It's just not fair or healthy to document a childs life to the extent that they are no longer free to interpret their own existence. In fact it's downright cruel. Seems to me a lot of these researchers spent their whole lives in schools and have no basis for understanding what it means to simply be human.

Try walking up to any reknown scientist at a cocktail party and asking them what they think of the latest Eric Clapton album and see how much nuance you get. :)

And lastly there's a point to be made here about time. Time is limited. very limited. Life is short. So essentially we are already in a state of time deficit. The problem with adding *any* tool to your life is that it's going to take time and thought energy. Sure it may sort things out in some regard but there's an added lateral availability=usage effect where you are now introducing one more "interface" or "environment" to your life. In other words, metaphorically speaking, if you have to move your family photo albums everytime you need to get to your tech manuals, the amount of time you spend perusing those photo albums will correlate with the amount of times you seek out your tech manuals, as opposed to if you had them in a box in the basement. So as you go to your database for specific things, you are constantly being distracted with unrelated material in addition to having to spend time going to the database.

Plus you stunt your own mental development in the process. We know for a fact that the brain will stretch to meet whatever it needs to, but only if called upon to do so. In other words, you are fully capable of remembering 10-20 commonly used phone numbers with ease, but if you never bother to do that, then your brain abandons that functionality until it's required. The result of course is that people who remember things manually end up with much more efficient brains than people who never remember things manually. Vast research exists that supports the assertion that old people who use their brains a lot lose very little functionality as they age but those who don't are more likely to suffer from Parkinson's, etc. The "use it or lose it" factor is well documented. It's much healthier to keep track of what images you have and where you store them in your own mind. Think of it as excercise for your brain when you have to recall which folder you keep your memos in. :yes

In terms of capacity one only need sit down with a librarian for coffee to soon realize that we are very far from needing cutting edge tools to keep track of our photos and memos. For centuries the human brain has been the computer behind all the world's largest collections and it did a pretty good job. In fact historically some libraries had less employees prior to computerization yet managed to service more users with less problems than their current-day counterparts. :)

Of course if you are already a highly methodical, mathematical type individual this may not be as much of a factor as it will be for average everyday folk. :yes

[Intrigued]

Yes, MDO, you've coined the term. In ten years a large percentage of people will be going bananas from MDO. The funny thing about the human brain is that overall it functions better under less load, i.e. the less extraneous stuff you put in, the more valuable stuff comes out, and vice-versa.

Redefining what's extraneous is a dangerous road to go down. Think of it as overclocking, your warranty is void. The most amazing thing about the human brain is that it will do what you tell it to, even if it's unhealthy. In other words, it is the only organ we have which actively subverts itself from day one. :)

Noggin + Sabotage = Nogotage.

Anyhow people who save "everything" have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, those people will *love* this technology. But on the opposite end of the spectrum you have impulsive people like me, and to us this is a nightmare come true. :yes

Besides, what ever happened to letting certain things slide? I'm terribly glad my life isn't documented because I'm not proud of *every single* moment in my life. I'm glad certain times have been relegated to the softening filters of time and memory. It's just not fair or healthy to document a childs life to the extent that they are no longer free to interpret their own existence. In fact it's downright cruel. Seems to me a lot of these researchers spent their whole lives in schools and have no basis for understanding what it means to simply be human.

Try walking up to any reknown scientist at a cocktail party and asking them what they think of the latest Eric Clapton album and see how much nuance you get. :)

And lastly there's a point to be made here about time. Time is limited. very limited. Life is short. So essentially we are already in a state of time deficit. The problem with adding *any* tool to your life is that it's going to take time and thought energy. Sure it may sort things out in some regard but there's an added lateral availability=usage effect where you are now introducing one more "interface" or "environment" to your life. In other words, metaphorically speaking, if you have to move your family photo albums everytime you need to get to your tech manuals, the amount of time you spend perusing those photo albums will correlate with the amount of times you seek out your tech manuals, as opposed to if you had them in a box in the basement. So as you go to your database for specific things, you are constantly being distracted with unrelated material in addition to having to spend time going to the database.

Plus you stunt your own mental development in the process. We know for a fact that the brain will stretch to meet whatever it needs to, but only if called upon to do so. In other words, you are fully capable of remembering 10-20 commonly used phone numbers with ease, but if you never bother to do that, then your brain abandons that functionality until it's required. The result of course is that people who remember things manually end up with much more efficient brains than people who never remember things manually. Vast research exists that supports the assertion that old people who use their brains a lot lose very little functionality as they age but those who don't are more likely to suffer from Parkinson's, etc. The "use it or lose it" factor is well documented. It's much healthier to keep track of what images you have and where you store them in your own mind. Think of it as excercise for your brain when you have to recall which folder you keep your memos in. :yes

In terms of capacity one only need sit down with a librarian for coffee to soon realize that we are very far from needing cutting edge tools to keep track of our photos and memos. For centuries the human brain has been the computer behind all the world's largest collections and it did a pretty good job. In fact historically some libraries had less employees prior to computerization yet managed to service more users with less problems than their current-day counterparts. :)

Of course if you are already a highly methodical, mathematical type individual this may not be as much of a factor as it will be for average everyday folk. :yes

Slow down, MyLifeBits is starting to smoke!

lmao!

Seriously, good point(s). And, I just checked... www.mdo.com is taken already (but not massivedataoverload.com).

;)

[Corey]

BTW never even touched on the privavcy issues but if you think identity theft is a doozy now, just wait... The capacity of this technology to be misused is as great as anything I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. Now the criminals will be able to work out perfectly seamless impersonation schemes for a variety of devious applications. :)

They asked Gordon Bell about this on ZDNET and he said, "Hadn't given it much thought." I would submit that is an untruth. Here you have one of the finest analytical minds money can buy, working closely for years on a pet project, and he hasn't given any thought to one of the most obvious problems arising from it? Yeah right... It's distasteful for him to bow and wave when he's introduced as "one of the world's most respected scientific minds" but then pull a Beavis 2 seconds later for any tough questions with, "Uhhh, I don't know..."

Even if he is telling the truth, a developer who didn't even bother to think about the privacy issue of his work? Yikes...

He could at least have the decency and guts to say, "That's not my dept." or "There's some tough issues there that will have to be dealt with over time but I don't have anything to share right now". I wouldn't trust that guy to mow my lawn. Beavis on the other hand I would. :yes

[Intrigued]

I thought straight away about this privacy wise, specifically the people that use P2P applications... I remember hearing how swaths of people were sharing (and probable still are) their entire H.D.! Ack!

Throw in this application with poor end-user P2P, for one, setup and... well you know. Bad news!

[Corey]

Yep I think you are right on the money, I think the privacy issue is one of the first things people think of when they look at the screencaps. Funky thing is that the laws don't protect you. Look at the recent Choicepoint theft, thousands of people's stuff sold directly to identity theives by the Choicepoint sales dept. And they didn't even bother to inform the victims except for in California which is the only state that required them to. Once the media hit the story they vaguely coughed up, but not really.

Fact is that this technology is highly inapproporiate in terms of acceptable privacy risks and that fact is exponentially compounded by the open admission of the developer that he doesn't even deem that worthy of thought. That is downright scary.

I wish it was compulsory for all university students to go travel the world for 5 years. Then maybe we'll end up with top developers who deem the potential damages of their products at least worthy of a few minutes contemplation.

If I have any criticism of MS at all it is this.

[Corey]

Also the most scary aspect of these new massive identity thefts you read about almost every day now is that the people who you trust to protect your information never even seem to know when they occur, they only find out after the credit card companies detect a pattern of frauds, i.e.:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050308/dsw_credit_cards_4.html

And in many of the cases they willingly sell the information directly to the thieves such as with Choicepoint, and then they say they aren't responsible because the thieves signed an agreement saying they weren't thieves. That's essentially the current state of affairs. And in the case of choicepoint the execs even took it one step further and dumped massive amounts of personal stock during the period between when they sold the data to the thieves and when the media first heard about it. :)

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/mcherald/business/11000123.htm

I'm just amazed at how little this seems to bother people. :)

[Intrigued]

Also the most scary aspect of these new massive identity thefts you read about almost every day now is that the people who you trust to protect your information never even seem to know when they occur, they only find out after the credit card companies detect a pattern of frauds, i.e.:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050308/dsw_credit_cards_4.html

And in many of the cases they willingly sell the information directly to the thieves such as with Choicepoint, and then they say they aren't responsible because the thieves signed an agreement saying they weren't thieves. That's essentially the current state of affairs. And in the case of choicepoint the execs even took it one step further and dumped massive amounts of personal stock during the period between when they sold the data to the thieves and when the media first heard about it. :)

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/mcherald/business/11000123.htm

I'm just amazed at how little this seems to bother people. :)

This is definitely a national security issue, for any country!

:huh

[Corey]

Absolutely. Only problem is that it's the people in charge who are doing it. :) Check out the "secret history of the credit card" at Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

And, "Card Tricks" at CBC Markletplace:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/money/credit/index.html

So much for the henhouse. :)

[Intrigued]

Absolutely. Only problem is that it's the people in charge who are doing it. :) Check out the "secret history of the credit card" at Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

And, "Card Tricks" at CBC Markletplace:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/money/credit/index.html

So much for the henhouse. :)

Arggg... (thanks for links)

[Corey]

Hey don't forget this. After 8 years of lobbying, the credit card companies are finally getting approval to push through their "bankruptcy reforms". So now they win-win. When you win, they win, when you lose, they win:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/03/congress.bankruptcy.ap/

That is some serious, serious stuff I-man. No one is paying attention, but I don't think I have to explain it to you. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and it's your tax money which pays for all this, not the credit card companies' massive profits. BTW another day, another 70,000+ identities for the crooks:

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=32120

What they don't report is that it will take a lot of hard work for every single one of those victims to repair the damages done to their name. And at their own expense of course. Just imagine how much damage having your lifeBits profile in the hands of crooks could do as compared to the existing SS number, birthdate, etc.? The potential is staggering.

Given that staggering potential, and the admission of Gordon Bell that he "hasn't given much thought" to the issue, it's a real eye opener and basically a window into the future of identity theft. There's at least 5 good sci-fi novels in this theme. :)

[Corey]

WOW! Look at this new one today:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7150531/

The consumers will have to dispute to get the charges taken off.
They bulk ping cards with 1 cent transactions and then go back and add a DVD purchase to the ones which work. This is not a scam, this was just a small test by someone for something much, much bigger you can bet on that. They are just probing the system, monitoring the reaction.

As always the consumer is 100% responsible for cleaning up any mess. :yes

[Corey]

Zowie! Here's another zinger on this I hadn't even considered:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7118767/

What a twist. So the records themselves are flawed to begin with. Geez, I can't imagine how this thing could get any twistier. These data aggregators are really something. :o

See you later aggregator.

[Corey]

Yet another variation on this one I hadn't considered, this one is perhaps the scariest, and right in the very last place you would hope for:

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBLHIE7E6E.html

[Corey]

60,000 more for the mix:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=JD2NOMUI3OKBICRBAEOCF EY?type=technologyNews&storyID=7964776

This one is sort of a precedent in a way as universities seem to be exempt from any sort of regulations in this regard, and have not really been part of the debate so far, which has focused primarily on business and government.

[Corey]

These new card skimmers are scary too because anyone could be affected at anytime, and they apply to bank cards as well as credit cards... The technology is getting quite sophisticated:

http://novascotia.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ns-pin-scanner20050322