Not everyone owns a computer, and some people are still illiterate. More > so when you start talking about third world countries. Think about the > majority of the populations of the countries who's governments were > overthrown :) >
Yea, that started because of social networks. People who did have computers got their neighbors who didn't involved. > > Social networks (love them or hate them) have connected the world it a > > way not thought possible before. You may be feeling a certain way > > about the government or your living conditions and have no idea that > > thousands of people around you also feel the same way. Then you find > > out that all over your country feel the same way. You may have kept it > > to yourself. You may not have been aware that the government dragged > > someone a few blocks away out of their house kicking and screaming > > never to be seen again. That's the power of socially connecting to > > people on the Internet. Hell, most news stories are broken on Twitter > > before you see them on the evening news. These facts are pretty > > undeniable. I would like to see a papyrus do that ;) > > The reference two how news comes about these days is part of what I > dislike about the social networks. To be a news person used to involved > a process, that now anyone with a means to communicate simulate. Without > having to do the work, vet leads, etc. It has also lead to various > retractions in legit media. > News as I was referring to is not "reported news" or "journalistic new", although sometimes that is what it is. It could be that a Tsunami just it or that someone is giving a talk at a certain time. It's all technically news although not all newsworthy, if that makes sense. Just because it isn't newsworthy doesn't mean it isn't news. > > Why does that make you proud? I am always surprised when people say > > things like this. There is no way to really know the value of a social > > network until you use it. > > There is no way to know the long term impacts of socialization being > public. That which can help you today, could potentially hurt you > tomorrow. > Not all social networking is public. I would almost venture to say that not connecting socially could hurt you tomorrow. So far from all I have seen the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks in many cases. Say for instance in the unlikely event someone loses a job, their connections could open doors for them. Many jobs never get posted out because of referrals. That's just one case in particular. Your social presence could actually benefit people as well as you gaining benefit from them. I know, I know, that's in a perfect world. There are always asshats out there, but still there are many benefits. > > The value of your social network experience is based on who you are > > connected to as well as your contributions back to it. I realize this > > is hard for you to understand because you haven't participated but I > > think you would be surprised. > > Yes, and I know people who have lost their jobs and had other major > problems in life they never considered at first. I value what little > privacy I have left in this world. Every day there is less and less of > that. > Once again, it's you sharing the data. If you have a bunch of pictures of yourself smoking a bowl on your social network, then yea there may be some repercussions. > Often I see things on twitter days and sometimes weeks before it ends > > up on something like Slashdot. What about things that would be useful > > to you that might not make it to something like Slashdot? > > Even prior to the rise of social networks, I did not live on Slashdot. I > rarely pay any attention to it, and it has no effect on my world or > bubble :) > You know, I just thought of something I think it has to do with the speed and delivery of information. In the security world minutes count. Knowing something first can mean you are better protected or better at exploitation. The jobs security people have today probably won't be the jobs we have in 4 or 5 years. Maybe it's that speed and need for adaptation that makes this style of communication so attractive. Not many jobs have that requirement or have things change almost daily. > > > In some ways by not being a Twitter user you are losing out. In some > > ways participating in Twitter allows you to directly connect with > > developers of a project or other experts in your field. > > I have been in the trenches for years, we have a great invention called > IRC. I communicate and work with people all over the world. Its how > Gentoo operates, and most distros with distributed developer bases. > I am going to throw my second Wow of the day in here. You just compared Twitter to IRC. They have two totally different purposes. Otherwise people wouldn't use IRC and also have Twitter accounts. IRC is basically just group chatting. First of all, only a small amount of people even use IRC. Secondly, people are more mobile than they have ever been so they are constantly on their mobile devices. Only a handful of sadists use IRC on their phone ;) IRC still serves a purpose but it is antiquated and from a different generation. It's like using a landline from a hand-crank phone and then blurting something out to the operator. Ok so it's not that bad, but the point is you aren't going to get breaking news from IRC. 3rd people in IRC channels are usually there for a purpose and that purpose may be short lived. I have problem X, problem X gets solved and now log off. Also what about projects you care about and decision makers a vast majority of these people aren't on IRC. You can follow them on Twitter and get insights in to what they are working on. What about something simple such as getting updates about something you use. For example, Dropbox. I use Dropbox sometimes they will Tweet if they have an outage or if they are working on some cool new feature. That is a benefit that you just can't get from something like IRC. They are WILDLY different and made for two different purposes. > > Linus did not need Twitter, or any social network to make Linux into > what it is today. Most all that preceded what exists today. > Wow <- That's my third of the day. Just think about if Twitter existed back then. The landscape may be drastically different than we see today. There may have been an appeal from many more people. Just think of the industrial revolution, we survived perfectly fine prior to that but look how much we advanced afterward. > > Take the security community for instance, you may find out about new > > tools an techniques long before other people find out about them. You > > may even find information that his helpful that never gets published > > to a news aggregator. I turn a lot of security people on to Twitter > > for these very same reasons. > > Security stuff has no business being out in the open. Some aspects as > mentioned are good, others are not. Most times when a vulnerability is > found, till its resolved, that information usually kept private. There > are many things that go on in the security world, that is kept private > for legitimate reasons. > Absolutely not. You have the completely wrong viewpoint of this. That vulnerability exists whether it's disclosed or not. The problem is, when it isn't disclosed the handful of people who do know about it can go around exploiting at will without anyone's knowledge. It's better to know and protect then be oblivious and get exploited. It's the organization's responsibility to properly write code. The disclosure of a vulnerability often puts pressure on the organization who coded it to fix it in a timely fashion. There have been some vulnerabilities disclosed to vendors that go over a year without being fixed. The whole time you were vulnerable to attack and they never informed you. If there is one thing that needs to be out in the open it's security related items. That's the only way everyone can benefit. > Often people are going through massive amounts of information and > > giving you the useful highlights. That is a HUGE advantage to someone > > like me who stays pretty busy. So you are still saying this > > collaborative community is something that you are proud to not > > participate in? > > Well per the charts others have produced, you have to wade through 80% > plus unwanted stuff, to get at any tid bits. But same can be said for > many things rss feeds, blogs, etc. I used to waste hours with a rss > aggregator. That was years before Twitter ever existed. Sure I stayed > really informed, but productive I was not ;) > It depends. Technology people are a bit better than the average user about providing useful information. That's one of the things previous people did not have a look at. > > Once again though, it depends on the people you socially connect with. > > The people with the useless babble probably wouldn't be the people you > > would follow every day. For a blog, you just wouldn't read it if it > > provided no value to you. > > Even those I have received technical value from. I cannot follow all of > their activities, blogs, tweets, etc. A buddy of mine used to work at a > social network aggregator, Spokeo, which has since morphed. But even > using something like that, still way to much. > > To me there is a difference between valuing something and practical > application. There is lots of knowledge that would be valuable to have, > but unless I can use it in a practical application today and now. Likely > just leads me one more step towards overload. > I do it every day without being overloaded. -- *Nathan Hamiel* http://hexsec.com <http://hexsec.com>http://twitter.com/nathanhamiel blog: www.neohaxor.org
