Philip Zack 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (26)

• On the post: Is It ID Theft Or Was The Bank Robbed?

  

  Philip Zack ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2009 @ 02:39pm

  Security Questions

  When I still had an account with Bank of America, they used as one of the security questions, 'Which branch did you open the account at?" Well, for some reason, they changed the data in their record to show some other branch, and insisted that I answer with their lie in order to access my account. Nobody there, all the way up to the Office of the President, could understand that if they ask customers to lie about one thing, they will lie about others in order to get what they want.

• On the post: What Happens To All That Personal Data Clear Holds? It's Unclear

  

  Philip Zack ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2009 @ 08:26am

  Ulterior Motive?

  Collecting a lot of 'unnecessary' personal data about people who have money to burn on cutting the line at airports sounds to me like a very sophisticated social engineering scheme. Imagine convincing the rich and powerful to part with such information, and to pay a premium for doing so. I'd be interested in who got access to this data while the company was still in business. But then, I tend to think of possible scenarios that *might* happen, and turn them into short stories, like the one called "Incident on Concourse B", which starts like this...
  
  + + +
  
  Lendon Forrester, clattering bags of jumbled canned goods, ran up the steps and opened the door. “Did I miss it?”
  
  “No,” Frannie Jurdens called from the kitchen. “They’re still in a holding pattern.” She capped the jug she’d been filling, and placed it beside the others on the counter.
  
  Len glanced at the reporter on the living room TV in passing. “…the ticket counter behind me, air travel in our city has ground to a halt. This same ‘ghost-town’ scenario is being played out at airports across the country, in the wake of this morning’s thwarted terrorist attack in Cincinnati.”
  
  Frannie looked up as he entered. “I don’t know, Len. The media’s crawling with rumors.”
  
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  You can read the whole thing (and lots of other stories) here:
  http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/short-story-incident-on-concourse-b/
  
  P. Orin Zack

• On the post: Is It Really So Wrong For A Reporter To Have An Opinion?

  

  Philip Zack ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2009 @ 04:43pm

  Modeling new reportorial behavior

  As some people here have alluded to, a reporter who simply allows the various parties to a debate to have their say, without challenging either the facts being asserted or the methods used to present those assertions, prevents the readers from benefitting from the fact that a knowledgeable reporter had access to those people, and the reader did not. Combative interviewing, as is performed on Fox, does not improve the situation any more than the fawning interviewing of NPR does. However, there may be a way for that knowledgeable reporter to insert herself into the exchange in a way that benefits the reader or viewer, and I used a series of short stories to explore what such reporting might be like. One of these stories is entitled, "Terms of Debate", and it starts like this...
  
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  "I said, sit down!"
  
  Erica Oerstblander glanced over her shoulder. One look at Hennesy, the right-wing radio windbag who'd lately taken up the hobby of dogging her, was enough to harden her resolve. "Excuse me, Ms. Ghorbian," she repeated, a bit louder this time, and with her hand aloft for punctuation.
  
  Neda Ghorbian scanned the rented theater's sparse crowd from center-stage, and then stepped closer to speak with the reporter in the front row. "I'm a bit confused," she said. "I was under the impression that the press were here to report on my bid for the open County Council seat, not to disrupt it."
  + + +
  
  You can read the entire story at:
  klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/short-story-terms-of-debate/
  
  There are many others, as well.

• On the post: The Conversation Is What Matters, From Learning To Journalism And Beyond

  

  Philip Zack ( profile ), 02 May, 2009 @ 12:55pm

  Changing the role of Journalist

  Since I write political short stories (Google lists me first for that search), I decided to explore what it would be like if journalists dropped the conceit that it was possible for the press to be purely an observer of what went on in the world, and instead engaged directly in what was happening in a way that helped the citizens to better understand what was going on. The fictional organization that my reporter works for is a hybrid. They are primarily an Internet site focussed on politics and the framing behind it, but they also publish a single printed edition on the weekend, and use that to provide the extended depth of analysis and context that might be uncomfortable for people to read purely on a screen. The most recent story in that series (so far) is called "Terms of Debate". In it, our reporter steps into the political discussion to help the people at the event, and those following electronically, to understand what's being said, as well as what's being implied. Here's a link to the story:
  
  http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/short-story-terms-of-debate/
  
  Phil

• On the post: But What If A Takedown Notice Isn't Actually A DMCA Takedown?

  

  Philip Zack ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2008 @ 10:33pm

  Bullying 101

  It looks to me like they're taking a page from the bully playbook. The first stage is to actually rough up a few targets. This demonstrates the events that you want others to internalize. The next stage is to make threats. If your setup has borne fruit, the other targets with replay the consequences that they imagine might follow, and willingly do what you want without you having to lift a finger. Stage three is to leave a stooge in place to make empty threats to keep the behavior pattern going.
  ---
  I write pointed political and business short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com

• On the post: Premiere/Diebold: You're Doing It Wrong

  

  Philip Zack ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2008 @ 10:21pm

  It's not SQL

  Would that they did use an SQL database. Unfortunately, it's Microsoft Access, which is a toy, as far as real databases go. Still, a voting machine has no business being on a network, and therefore there is absolutely no reason to have an AV program running on it. Of course, if you take what they are doing as for a reason, I would have to conclude that they know full well that the idiots who will be sneaking in to mess with the election results are sloppy enough that they could be introducing a virus when they load those illegal updates in the dead of night.
  
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  I write pointed political and business short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com