September 18, 2011
Posted in Behaviour, Society, Strategy at 21:24 by graham
I recently finished Gary Noesner’s Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator
, by the F.B.I.‘s former head of and founder of their hostage negotiation unit. The book is a great read (and I suspect heavily ghost-written). Here’s what I learnt:
Your goal as a negotiator is to get the target(s) (the person or people you are trying to arrest) to surrender peacefully to law enforcement.
Sometimes there are hostages, and then your priority is securing their release, but usually there are not. By getting them to put down their weapons and come out you are usually saving their lives, and also protecting your colleagues.
The last resort is an armed assault by the SWAT team. Prior to negotiation being taken seriously by law enforcement, this was the only option.
Make exclusive contact
First and foremost, you need to get in contact with them. Usually they are keen to talk, and most often you can use the phone line. Sometimes you have to get the SWAT team to bring them a field telephone. Sometimes you stand outside the window or at the foot of the stairs, and shout. And occasionally, as in the Beltway sniper case you have to ask the media to say things and hope the target hears.
Read the rest of this entry »
July 19, 2011
Posted in Society at 06:53 by graham
The News International phone hacking scandal is the case of a British tabloid’s staff hacking into several thousand people’s voicemail, over a period of at least six years.
They listened to voicemail of the 7/7 terrorist attack victims, politicians, a murdered schoolgirl (including erasing some messages, leading the family to think she lived), the British Royal Family, various celebrities, and other journalists.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 1, 2011
Posted in Society, Software at 07:29 by graham
Right now, for people like me who have access to servers, the single biggest benefit we can provide to society at large is by running a Tor relay. Tor provides anonymity to users of the Internet.
This page is about contributing to the network by running a relay (or server, or node – same thing). If you want to use Internet services anonymously, you probably want the Tor Browser Bundle.
There’s also general instructions on running a relay. Mine are specific to Ubuntu / Debian.
Install it from the official repository
Edit your sources list: /etc/apt/sources.list
Read the rest of this entry »
March 1, 2010
Posted in Society, Software at 01:28 by graham
Update: You need to know how to ban MAC addresses on your router, as you will eventually have a neighbor swamp your network with bittorrent. If you can do that simple operation (usually via your router’s web-based admin), open wi-fi is the right thing to do.
A few months back, I took the password off my WiFi router, and opened it up to the world, with SSID yes_we_are_sharing. Why?
The best answers are given by security expert Bruce Shneier – why open wireless. The second best answer is that Tor hacker Jacob Applebaum also runs open WiFi.
Here are my answers, and the reasons why you should join us.
Read the rest of this entry »
July 20, 2009
Posted in Behaviour, Society at 18:11 by graham
A very interesting article in the New-York Times on the research behind the risks of being distracted by a cellphone whilst driving:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/technology/19distracted.html
Here’s some excerpts:
in a survey of 1,506 people last year by Nationwide Mutual Insurance, 81 percent of cellphone owners acknowledged that they talk on phones while driving, and 98 percent considered themselves safe drivers. But 45 percent said they had been hit or nearly hit by a driver talking on a phone.
That’s the Lake Wobegon effect, the tendency for overestimate their capabilities in relation to others.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 20, 2009
Posted in Society at 17:34 by graham
Charlie Brooker on a television advert by the British National Party, England’s (very small) right-wing political party:
Extremist material of any kind always looks gaudy and cheap, like a bad pizza menu. Not because they can’t afford decent computers – these days you can knock up a professional CD cover on a pay-as-you-go mobile – but because anyone who’s good at graphic design is likely to be a thoughtful, inquisitive sort by nature. And thoughtful, inquisitive sorts tend to think fascism is a bit shit, to be honest. If the BNP really were the greatest British party, they’d have the greatest British designer working for them – Jonathan Ive, perhaps, the man who designed the iPod. But they don’t. They’ve got someone who tries to stab your eyes out with primary colours.
Read the article: Charlie Brooker on the BNP and their political broadcast.
March 21, 2009
Posted in Ideas, Society at 18:49 by graham
Congressman Mike Honda, D-San Jose, writing about opening government databases:
Instead of databases becoming available as a result of Freedom Of Information Act requests, government officials should be required to justify why any public data should not be freely available to the taxpayers who paid for its creation.
Wow, what an exciting time to be in North America.
From the O’Reilly Radar.
November 12, 2008
Posted in Behaviour, Society at 06:35 by graham
In the prologue to The Science of Fear
, by Daniel Gardner (published as ‘Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear’ in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada), which I have just started reading, as he talks about the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States:
Read the rest of this entry »
November 11, 2008
Posted in Society, Software at 02:34 by graham
I have just launched Plebis.net. It’s a wall on the Internet you can write on, for all to see.
You can write anything you want. There’s no censor and nothing is recorded, so feel free to scream shout and wail. Tell the world how you feel. Get it off your chest. Go on, it’s good for you. Head over to Plebis.net, and say something!
May 20, 2008
Posted in Society, Software at 06:55 by graham
It’s hard for me to see why you’d bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.
The new rule seems to be that if you’re going to spend the time and the money to see someone face to face, be in their face. Interact or stay home!
My thoughts entirely.
Original post: Seth Godin – The new standard for meetings and conferences
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
Feed
RSS / Atom feed