Word on the street is that Abu Musab al Zarqawi (a/k/a al-Zarqawi), who was done in last Wednesday during an air strike on his ‘safe’ (not) house, was dusted by “smart dust”. Dusted in at least two senses of the word, that is.

The supposition is that al-Zarqawi, during a close encounter of a dusting kind with an allied operative, was sprinkled with fairy dust (ok, smart dust), enabling allied forces to track his every move, and know exactly where he was at any given moment.

Now, of course, you could never do that over here, without a court order, because of the Constitution. I mean, you couldn’t, right? Right?

According to some sources, Iraqi locals were even aware of the smart dust, which some viewed more as “magic dust”. But really, there is no magic about it, and the same (or roughly the same) technology has been used more and more in civilian applications over here.

Explained Computer World, back in 2003, “‘Smart dust’ devices are tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything from light to vibrations. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in silicon and fabrication techniques, these “motes” could eventually be the size of a grain of sand, though each would contain sensors, computing circuits, bidirectional wireless communications technology and a power supply. Motes would gather scads of data, run computations and communicate that information using two-way band radio between motes at distances approaching 1,000 feet.”

In their simplest form RFIDs, dust motes, smart dust, smart chips, etc., all operate, for lay purpose, on much the same principle. They carry with them simple information, such as (usually) a single numeric identifier, which can be transmitted back to a mother ship, helping the mother ship to know exactly where the transmitter – and whatever is attached to it – are at any given time.

Or the transmission of the number can be used as a password to unlock anything from your computer to your door (or, if you are Amal Grafstra, with an RFID implanted in your hand, both).

Or, to prove your identity when embedded in your passport, or your arm.

Or, to dust you, when you’ve been dusted with the dust.

Robert Scoble, the Crown Prince of Bloggers over at Microsoft, is leaving Microsoft to join PodTech.net. The news that Scoble is leaving Microsoft – which wasn’t even supposed to be news yet – leaked out sometime between last night and this morning. In fact, Scoble himself said of the leak, about 11 hours ago, “I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it.”

Reactions to the news that of Scoble’s departure have ranged from “so what?” to “ohmygawd, it’s the end of the world as we know it!”

So the big question is – is this big news? And if so, why is it big news?

Well, Scoble is clearly the most visible of all of the bloggers at Microsoft, itself one of the most visible of companies. But as Scoble himself points out, he was but one of 3,000 bloggers at Microsoft.

Still, he was considered by many to be the people’s voice of Microsoft.

Some, such as Mathew Ingram and Vinnie Mirchandani, suggest that perhaps Microsoft didn’t treat Scoble well enough – didn’t do enough to try to keep him from leaving. To that Scoble scoffs, “How do you know that the company didn’t move heaven and hell to keep me happy? They did. I have the best job in the tech world. Bar none.”

So the question is, what is the big news? Why is this big news? Or, put another way, is there any there there?

In other words, what’s the big scoop?

Well, according the Scoble, the big scoop is this: He’s really excited by the opportunity to work in the video blogging industry. He says, after meeting Cali Lewis, one of the video bloggers working with Adam Curry at podshow, “Cali is showing us all that you can get a low-cost video camera, make an interesting show in your nights and weekends, and within six months get such a large audience that you are quitting your day job.”

What he found to be most of note in this exchange with Cali was the big smile on her face as she was talking about it.

Concluded Scoble, “But I had the same smile on my face when I told Cali I just quit my day job too to work in this new media industry.”

Now, Robert and I run in some of the same circles, and some of the same mailing lists, and so I understand that, and all I have to say to that is, “Good on ya, Robert! We wish you the best!”

I’ve been online for – ohmygawd – nearly 20 years. Which, as we all know, is about 2000 years in Internet time. I couldn’t believe it myself, until I started counting backwards. But I’ve been online since 1987, when I first got out to the nascient Internet from a university account. Actually at that point it wasn’t so much of an Internet as a multi-institution intranet.

Back then there were several sites just coming online which offered forums. You had to dial into them, as, again, there wasn’t really an Internet, at least not as we know it today. Heck, not even as we knew it ten years ago.

Let’s see, there was Compuserve with its ‘CB’ forums, Qlink, and PeopleLink, to name a few.

I was a “host” for a couple of these sites, involved in running online relationship forums for Qlink and PeopleLink. And let me tell you, even back then, we saw a lot of interesting things.

Perhaps one of the most interesting was people finding out that the people they had met online, “fallen in love with”, and had computer and phone sex with – all without ever meeting them in person – were not who they pretended to be (what a surprise!)

In fact, sometimes they were not even the sex they had pretended to be.

I recall one woman in particular, who had ‘fallen in love’ with a man from another state. They had not yet met in person, but had already engaged in a frenzied affair, complete with torrid computer sex.

And then, the woman discovered that her lover was actually not a man at all, but another woman.

And she freaked out.

Understandably.

And yet…

And yet…

Why did she freak out? Let’s think about this for a minute – why did it matter so much, given the context? I mean, her online partner had always been a woman. She was already a woman when they met, and already a woman when they engaged in computer sex, to which this person had responded quite positively at the time.

The only thing which changed was her knowledge of the sex of her cyber-partner.

The issue of having been lied to aside (because in my experience that is not what bothers people in this situation so much – it’s learning that they were engaged in a ‘relationship’ with someone of the “wrong sex”), weren’t her responses to this person all in her own head? And not really predicated on the actual sex of her partner at all?

Every physical response she had was based on her reaction to reading what someone had written.

That what was being written was being written by someone of the same sex, rather someone of the opposite sex, didn’t affect the reader’s responses at the time at all. Because she didn’t know.

Because it was all in her own head.

Of course, in person, this scenario would never (well, rarely) happen. But online it happens more than you might think. One good reason to not engage in online ‘relationships’ without meeting the person early on – if this sort of thing matters to you (as it certainly would to me).

Would you be upset to find out that you had responded sexually to someone online whom you thought was a woman (or man, as appropriate for you), if you found out after the fact that they were in fact a man (or woman, as appropriate for you)?

And if so, why?

After all, it’s all in your head.

Does yesterday’s low voting turn out signify ignorance and apathy?

I don’t know, and I don’t care.

No, seriously, lots of people are complaining, apparently surprised by yesterday’s low voting turn out.

First of all, it was a primary. C’mon, folks, we can barely get people excited about the general elections these days, let alone primaries. What’d you expect?

Second, I figure it this way: either people are so disaffected – or feel so disenfranchised – from the past six years, no matter what their politics, that they just can’t get excited about it any more.

Honestly, when it comes right down to it, I don’t think anybody in this country any longer believes that their individual vote makes a blind bit of difference.

Do you?

….would anybody read it?

“Why have a personal blog?” I am on occasion asked. “Who is it for? Isn’t it a bit vain of you?”

So I ponder, “Yes, why have a personal blog?”

Well, because I have things to say. Observations to make. Rants to rant, and pictures to post.

For the people who want to read them, here they are.

But today I thought “If George Bush had a personal blog, on which he discussed only personal stuff, would anyone read it?”

And if him, why not me?

And who would be on his blogroll?

MangeMerde.com is now the official blog of She Devil, a/k/a me.

So please update your feeds because the feed at SheDevilsBlog.com is going away.

The new feed address is:

feed:http://www.mangemerde.com/feed/

That is all.