ITT: I take credit for your work and declare a New Project.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I read something like that on the Wikipedia entry for it.  So what would that make Web 3.0?  Networked (peer to peer) information flow?

Maybe that, or the Always Online sort of thing that's happening now with IPhones, Blackberries etc.

[Cain]

As to an O:MF slant... I think thats simple.

Web 1.0 had a single channel for Information. Webmaster/dev writes HTML files with information. This file is placed on a secure server and *BAM* that's it. To compromise the information flow, you must compromise the server, compromise the author or compromise the client so that it doesn't get to the real data (DNS spoofing etc). In 2.0 the tight control over information sources has dropped... information comes from all over the place, often in an automated fashion. In Web 1.0, a Reuters feed would be taken, written into a web page and posted... now an RSS feed automatically accepts and posts anything from what it thinks is 'Reuters' or whoever the RSS feed belongs to. Sites feed off of sites which feed off of sites and users. Compromising a single point in this information flow, can allow tainted information to flow much further than previously.

Chaos Theory.  At any given "point" in the system, it is possible to create a cascading flow of irregular information/data that corrupts the whole system.  The more "points" of possible failure, the higher the chance of it happening, as failure can happen at any point where data can be entered.

[Triple Zero]

on hackers/security blogs i've heard it being called "attack surface".

the thing is, it only gets bigger and bigger every time. cause new technology and bits keep on being added. ok, in the wake of that, flaws get fixed, but it never keeps up. at least, not in general, maybe in the particular.

[Cain]

Attack surface is a good term.  Expresses it quite well.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

on hackers/security blogs i've heard it being called "attack surface".

the thing is, it only gets bigger and bigger every time. cause new technology and bits keep on being added. ok, in the wake of that, flaws get fixed, but it never keeps up. at least, not in general, maybe in the particular.

That's a great term and one I haven't heard around here yet. I just kicked off our annual "Secure Coding" class which we mandate that all developers attend... a large portion of the stuff is the same basic attack vector that's been used for years, with simple tweaks/variations to get past "fixes" (usually because the 'fix' is just a block to a flaw, rather than a fix to the architecture).

From a hacker perspective, the interactive web application is a godsend. Rather than directly hacking a box and leaving a trail of some sort, they can now simply vary their inputs to a form and get as much if not more information faster, often without anyone being the wiser.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The PDCOM Research Department has spent the past year or so researching the definitions and characteristics of The Machine(TM), delving into the psychological nature of the Black Iron Prison in which people trap themselves, and making up a lot of silly terms for almost every tendency people accidentally give themselves. Some have said that this is all a lot of intellectual masturbation, that we were going nowhere, or that there is no practical application of all this stuff beyond the off-chance that some of the propaganda we produced might snap somebody out of Robot Mode.

It seems, however, that all these naysayers were in fact wrong about everything, and we were right to call them Ass Bandits. Although even our researchers themselves were largely unconcerned with where our research was heading, it turns out that there may be a practical application of this knowledge after all.   To address what this application is, it might help to give a brief recap of some of the highlights of the PDRD's work.

First, we examined The Machine. The Machine is a difficult thing to define and is heavily nuanced, and it outside the scope of this paper to go all that detail. Suffice to say that The Machine is what happens when a society's internal power structures begin to lose absolute control over it. The Machine is the collective habits and unconscious reactions of a society's members, perceived as being almost an organism unto itself, with much the same behaviors, instincts, and requirements of a "natural" creature. A society at this point is characterized by political systems that, in spite of being enormous and powerful, are capable of directing the movement of the society, but incapable of outright declaration of the society's directions.

Secondly, we examined the Black Iron Prison. This is an individual-oriented concept describing the psychological, spiritual, experiential, and emotional "bars" we build and use to define our self-identities, determine our actions, and influence how we see the world around us and other people in that world. These "bars" often go completely unnoticed by a person until he is faced with a situation that forces him to re-examine his worldview in depth. They are constructed out of assumptions, religious beliefs, or anything else that is convenient to use when defining something we are initially unsure of or ignorant about. Because there is almost an infinite degree of information that can be learned about any particular subject, we almost always place a "bar" when dealing with things as a means to pin down what it is so we can move on to some other (usually more interesting) thing, and then tend to forget that the final definition we put on the thing was really only a convenient place for us to stop investigating it.

It is likely that both of these topics will be the subject of further exploration forever (and here I have hardly scratched the surface of what we already know), but we have gleaned enough usable information to move on to other things as well. Adding these to other topics of research such as Meme Dynamics and Military theory, we are at a point now where we can begin work on PDRD's next product. This product is exciting, because it steps beyond research and propaganda into the actual development of a testable model. This model has no official name yet but since I am egotistical and it fits with one of my posts, I'm going to call it the Game.

The central theory behind the Game is that it should be possible, knowing what we do about the nature of The Machine and the Black Iron Prison, to purposely construct an organization that uses human automation to produce pre-defined results in a larger society in which it is set in motion. The idea here is that a set of instructions would be introduced into a population, taking the form of a network among individual members, driven to recruit new members, and designed to produce a generally-defined effect.

This is not an organization in either the traditional hierarchical or flat-network sense. This system is designed to be self-sustaining and resilient to attack and dissolution like a network, yet share the benefits of deliberation and motive that are normally in the jurisdiction of hierarchical systems.

FURTHER INFORMATION PENDING RESEARCH.
DON'T YOU LOVE THE OPEN-SOURCE MODEL OF "RELEASE EARLY, RELEASE OFTEN?"

Remember when Vex was a good writer, back before he started shovelling cocaine up his face?

Yeah, neither do I.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

lol.