Comunicação Social

Entrevista a Samy Kamkar, na revista Visão

10:28

Entrevista a Samy Kamkar, um hacker que se tornou famoso por protagonizar um ataque à Myspace para ler, hoje, na Visão (Visão, Nº 921, 28 de Outubro a 3 de Novembro 2010, p. 22). Aqui vai um excerto:

- Que conselhos daria a quem queira salvaguardar a sua privacidade?

- Detesto dizer isto, mas não há sítio na rede em que possa confiar-se absolutamente. Todos os meses mais algum é atacado ou regista fugas de informação. Claro que nas redes sociais expomos mais dados, e quem não quer correr esse risco, não as use. Por mim, prefiro correr o risco, em vez de ficar fora delas.

Literatura

Orthodoxy

19:54

Acabo de descobrir que, mais que um liberal, Chesterton era afinal um anarquista idealista. Com um pouco de vontade, todos os livros acabam por dizer exactamente o que nós queremos que eles digam.


"When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. [...]
I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because, having now to trace the roots of my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias. I [...] have always believed in democracy, in [...] a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization."
G. K. Chesterton (1908). Orthodoxy. Cap. IV: The Ethics of Elfland. (Fonte: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm#CHAPTER_IV_The_Ethics_of_Elfland)

Ciência

De publicações científicas

10:59


Provavelmente todos os autores que trabalham em áreas científicas já se viram confrontados com recusas de artigos. Nada de mais... ossos do ofício. Geralmente usamos as críticas para construirmos alguma coisa de positivo; afinal, críticas construtivas melhoram o nosso trabalho, ajuda-nos a crescer enquanto autores e facilita o nosso trabalho de revisão. Por isso, nada se perde no processo.
O problema surge quando as críticas não são construtivas e todo o processo de avaliação dos artigos científicos pela comissão de avaliação está envolto numa enorme nuvem negra, oposta à transparência que deve reger todos os processos de divulgação científica. A começar no facto de muitas das críticas não virem assinadas pelos revisores e a acabar nas críticas não fundamentadas. Muitas das revisões de artigos científicos hoje ainda são feitas por revisores anónimos. Os autores não têm acesso ao nome do seu revisor e os revisores não são reconhecidos pelo seu trabalho nem responsabilizados por ele. Lia há dias o manifesto de Diana Santos, uma das autoras que mais tem contribuído para o movimento de Open Access na área do Processamento da Linguagem Natural em Portugal, deixado na sua página pessoal. A partir deste manifesto, chego a um outro manifesto, desta vez de Warren Smith, matemático, sobre o estado das publicações científicas. Vale a pena ler. Deixo aqui um excerto:
REFEREES
First of all, 80% of all referees are idiots and 100% are amateurs. By "idiot" I mean, either way too lazy to do a good job, or incompetent, or too biased due to some goofy agenda to judge the work unbiasedly (in roughly descending order of frequency), and in any of these cases, their effect is essentially that of tossing a coin. In the remaining 20% of cases, let us say that the referee is good and makes the right decision.[...] The entire referee system is a non-working anachronism from the Victorian Age of Noble Rich Dilettante Do-Gooders. It is sort of like the asinine notions of "Amateurism" in athletics which are FINALLY being scrapped (e.g. the Olympics) after over 100 years. As science became bigger and became an enterprise of numerous professionals rather than few amateurs, this system became incapable of doing the job, but everybody refused to admit it. The resulting cost to society has been, and continues to be, absolutely immense.[...]


SCIENTIFIC CAREERS
Are often advanced or stalled by boards who mainly utilize "bean counts" (publication counts) as their decision making tool, as opposed to actually trying to READ one's papers (that would require work). Thus the pressure to publish can be immense, leading to a giant proliferation of garbage publications, a trend toward more papers with fewer ideas, overloading of the busted system, and encouraging non-ethics. I believe bean-count is anti-correlated to ethics.
The fact that most of these boards are mainly populated by coprolites causes any consideration of the idea that maybe, just maybe, something is screwed up about the current system of Journals, Conferences, Referees, bean counts, Zero Accountability, and 100% Amateurism, to be dismissed. That in turn prevents any reform of the system.
Fonte: http://www.math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/refereeing

Novas Tecnologias

Unplug

13:44

"Unplug your TV, you don’t need it. Finally, make a damn strong foo-foo drink, and read a book while you sip it.

The trick is to employ your mind enough that you don’t miss being plugged into the lives of so many other people, and into the news of the world. Information is addictive, and like any other addiction it is potentially harmful. Cut back just a little, and you will reap the benefits the rest of the week. Pick a day, for me it’s Saturday, when no one at work can get a hold of you in any way other than a phone call. I don’t read text messages at all on Saturday, it’s my Fortress of Solitude.

You and me have access to information that people would have literally killed for just a few hundred years ago, and that makes us lucky. We just can’t let it run us completely. Do yourself a favor, pick a day in the next week to turn off. Plan ahead, go grocery shopping and cook for some of your friends. Fret over the wine, and worry about the weather. After all, nature is still the best app of all."

Excerto do texto "How to disconect, A primer" de Alex Wilhelm em http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/

Direitos

Série de Conferências: "Nato para quê?"

10:17



Licença Creative Commons
Este trabalho está licenciado com uma Licença Creative Commons - Atribuição-NãoComercial 4.0 Internacional.