for your consideration: joe scarborough doing his job

...speaking truth about power:

new fiction

New fiction (by me) up at 971 MENU. It's a short, "From Florida".

for your consideration: keith olbermann doing his job

...speaking truth to power:

haiku in kaywa qr-code

UPDATE:

"Warm engines cool. The rain hits, hissing, steaming on metal.
Write on foggy glass"

Decoded with the KAYWA Reader from the screen ;-)
Cheers!

Jerome Chevillat did it. J, if we're ever in the same city at the same time, I'll buy you a drink.



--

Just experimenting. You can use your cellphone camera to read the haiku (if you download the free QR reading software).

arphid melodrama?

I appreciate the dangers of RFID chips in passports, I really do.
A bad idea? Almost certainly.

But hasn't anybody ever heard of tinfoil?
If the policy makers make bad policy, hack the effect.
Come on, people!

banned books week post 9/11

So a patron wanders in because she saw our sign about Banned Books Week.

"Hi," she says. "I saw that it was Banned Books Week. What the heck is that?" Her worried brow made it clear she thought it was the week the library banned its books.

"Well, since the terrorist attacks on our nation five years ago, the federal government," (here the blood drained further from her face, causing her cute little brown specs to stand out in high contrast) "has started requiring all publicly funded libraries to discard or ban one-tenth of one percent of our collection that has some sympathetic leanings toward the ideology of terrorist organizations." I give her a cheery grin. "See? And we'd rather not throw our books away, so we just ban them for a week."

"What?"

"Just kidding!" Then I told her all about the ALA and how zealous we librarians are to prevent such a thing. You gotta have fun with this, right?

2 library program idea

RFID tags aren't toys... Arphid tags are!

From the badlands east of Hattiesburg, we welcome Doc Coyote and her troupe of Happy Hairy Hackers.

Learn! How to manipulate data on RFID chips.
Explore! The wonders of interactive "arphid" projects.
Meet! Local hacktivists with an eye to make the Internet tangible.

Doc Coyote is an old hand at making, breaking, and re-writing RFID chips with home-made, hand-held RFID reader/scanners.* She'll teach you how to build your own with parts from WalMart and RadioShack for less than $30. So bring your soldering iron and an open mind to your local library this Friday night at 6:30.** Go ahead, take the red pill! And welcome to "the Internet of things!"

*The library in no way assumes any responsibility for any theft, fraud, invasion of privacy, or distribution of misinformation that its patrons may participate in after learning these skills.
**Library patrons are strongly discouraged from using any skills learned at this program to manipulate the RFID chips in library books. If such tampering can be proven, any guilty patrons would be excommunicated from the library forever and ever and ever and ever. And ever.

orderly global economies / drm: redux in situ

I posted on the question of intellectual property and global economies here [link], and posted a video of Cory Doctorow at LIFT 06 speaking on DRM here [link]. Great comments followed both posts.

The conversation bleeds over to reBang blog [link], where Sven, Cory, The Mad Natural Historian, and I get into an discussion about all this in the context of a contest design posted at BoingBoing, following on one of Sven's post about how designers are exploited under the auspice of an "open source" contest.

Librarians not only have to worry about the impact of root kits on our computer systems, but we've also got to wonder about the fallout of DRM and IP law on our lending policies. How long before we're forced to buy restrictive licenses for [what we used to call] books at a jacked-up "institutional" price?

I don't know if small libraries could survive that. What do you think?

--

Weather: hot, wet, windy.
Reading: The 39 Steps again and again and again.

Vinay Gupta: worldchanging

You should get to know Vinay Gupta and his hexayurts project.

At Mind is Moving blog, he keeps a page detailing the idea. Hexayurts have been written about in the New York Times, and were featured at Strong Angel III.

It's a quick & endemic diaster relief project that uses simple materials to make a very sturdy shelter -- no complicated international NGO bureaucrastructres required. An excellent design makes duct tape and cardboard into roomy hexagonal shelters.

What he's done, as Surgeon Captain Peter Buxton, O.B.E, put it, is make "teaching people how to use materials that are availabe for them" primary over shipping in materials and techniques from developed countries (see vlog link below). This really does empower those who are affected by disaster.

Nominate this man for a Genius Award!

Here's Vinay's vlog from Strong Angel III [link].

Some questions come to mind... I wonder about modding the hexayurt for the needs of specific environments -- for instance, how would they have fared in SE Louisiana after the hurricanes of 05, in such a wet environment?

Might these structures be cheaply chipped, so that they become spimey (trackable in space/time for recycling, usage statistics, and info on wear and tear)?

Or might they be outfitted with arphids so that a collection of structures in a community could ooze info about which families live in which yurts, etc.?

How tough/expensive a task would it be to outfit these structures with a solar panel and basic wiring?

How tough/expensive a task would it be to use the structure of the walls (the fiber itself) as part of a water filtration system, Katavolos style?

What's the max lifespan for this structure?

The hexayurt is simple, elegant, and eminently helpful.

















This could be a world changer.

Cory Doctorow on Digital Rights Management

Cory Doctorow, novelist and former EFF man, breaks it down at LIFT 06. Now I think I get DRM.

14 comics: Rushkoff

Why do I have this dreadful (and not-yet very deeply explored) suspicion that Testament and Club Zero are very like Waking Life and What the Bleep?

Is it because the "story" is utterly sacrificed to the "ideas" the author is trying to share? I love ideas (and Rushkoff's work is mostly full of cool and good ideas), but I love stories more -- and, yes, the best stories are able to communicate ideas without the audience feeling like "uh-oh, I think this is some kind of statement or idea or something... I think I'm supposed to be getting it or something..."

Maybe it's because I don't like being instructed in what constitutes cool. Maybe I like to be shown, not told.

The characters in Testament read like walking barcodes. These aren't people with an array of terrible and wonderful and meaningful particularities; these are cliche cardboard people that the author musn't realize he's parodying. I really don't think he meant to parody the counter-culture he's writing about -- I do, in fact, take him at least that seriously.

I mean, who care'ss about all this Torah-as-metaphor stuff? We get it already! And it's atemporal and all that too. Eternal struggle against the forces of singular domination, yada yada yada -- we get it!

What Testament should have been was a story that started as a story -- instead of a manifesto that got a spackling with plot.

Well. I won't be buying any more comics by Mr. Rushkoff -- but I might check them out from the library some time, see if future attempts make for better stories. And good luck to him... his non-fiction rocks, after all.

1 library program idea

LEARN the art of sousveillance, "watching from below"!
BECOME an active watcher of watchmen!
REALIZE the potential of ketai!

Sousveillance means you're watching the cameras that watch you. In a world of total surveillance by 'the man', why not take back the streets and turn the panopticon culture on the corporate-government overlords who would seek to see all?

In this library program, you'll learn how to use ketai, or cellphone-camera-gadgetry-culture, to manifest your right to watch the world around you. Police abuse? Thing of the past! Detention without charge? No more! Now you've got streaming video documentation of every breach of your civil liberties!*

So bring your cell phones, digital cameras, laptops, baggy clothes, offensive hats/buttons/teeshirts, loud music, and bad attitudes to your library this Saturday afternoon at one o'clock.

Cookies and punch served to a soothing background of techno-ambient musical compositions by local DJs and electronic artists.^


*No guarantee or assumption of liability for indefinite detention implied.
^If we don't play your track, we're not dissin' ya!

1 happy world: forget the 5th amendment or any of that other stuff

It just gets in the way!



"

Associated Press 09:45 AM Sep, 17, 2006

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

"We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," said Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer. "We've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure."

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide -- 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.

In Hussein's case, the military has not provided any concrete evidence to back up the vague allegations they have raised about him, Curley and other AP executives said.

"

check The Hedrons

Remember Sleater-Kinney? The Hedrons owe a lot to S-K, sure, but they've also innovated. "Be My Friend" has a story (tho that's a generous word here) that grabs you and involves you with the, um, narrative. It at first annoys in the same way that R.E.M.'s "Diminished" from UP annoyed during the first 100 listens -- it seems to pretend to know too much about an extremely unlikely predicament, and thereby barred the listener from immediately identifying with the situation. But that's not what The Hedrons do, after all. They somehow convice you that they really mean it. Repetitive and occasionally too full of vocal affectations that remind of the worst dog-days of the 1980s? Less than 1/3 of the time. Really bold? At least half the time. Worth listening to? F*ck yeah! Do it!

http://www.myspace.com/thehedrons

well, what sort of punishment, then?

No, we won't be pushing people around.

But we might be kicking them out. Even thinking of screwing some beady-eyed LED-flashing faux cameras to the ceiling and support struts. It's getting out of hand.

If books are for use, then libraries are for use. But for use for what? And who's to use the library? I'm liberal when it comes to social software and new media in libraries. But I'm conservative as hell when it comes to caring for the books (actually, the information, in whatever media) and the patrons.

Students are getting too loud. I'm stalking through the stacks like a fascist, hushing grown folks, asking them not to smear potato chips on pages, asking them to leave if they can't follow our rules.

This is changing things, and I don't like it. I didn't become a librarian to police people. I shush? Shush your damn self. We're all students here.

who blogged this? banned books from above.

I think it was The Lipstick Librarian. Anyways. Tell me Google ain't our friend.

http://books.google.com/googlebooks/banned/

comments on orderly global economies and intellectual property

Update: David (of Simulation Weblog) has weighed in on this with some really good points. Read the comments of this post for more -- & Librarians take note:

"...Sometimes growth comes from efficiency. (Look how EBay recycles junk! or - sorry! - how Google cuts down on the number of trips we have to make to reference libraries). What if we applied modern database/ surveillance/ simulation techniques to road traffic management instead of surveillance, for instance - how much gasoline, time and lives might this save?"












The conversation continues...

--

In response to this post (link), Sven Johnson had plenty to say. It was worth posting as a new entry.

--

csven said...

I disagree with the words, but agree with the idea. In today's world I'd use:

"Respecting intellectual property is a cornerstone of an orderly global economy"

There is no protection. Not from hackers and not from corporate corruption. Rather than fight corporate greed by trying to break DRM which protects their precious media, I say people should ignore their product altogether. Much of what's being fought over is a luxury. No one needs the latest Britney Spears mp3. No one needs to watch whatever movie they can download from Pirate Bay. Worse yet, there is still greed behind those activities. Whether it's a Russian website selling lower cost music (bc they have almost no overhead and a giant legal loophool) or whether it's Pirate Bay raking in bushels of ad money (which they don't like to talk about), someone is getting rich. And you can be sure a fair amount of that dirty money isn't going to social programs to feed the poor or organizations trying to stop the AIDs epidemic in Africa. It's most likely just going into some other corrupt person's bank account.

The best way to react imo is to a) buy the offerings of truly independent artists and b) respect their work by giving them control over it's distribution. Don't do it because it's the moral or ethical thing to do; that removes pragmatism, and I'm very pragmatic. Do it because our collective behavior will either help us or harm us in the years to come. Because just in the way cheap goods purchased by the working class sent their jobs to low-wage countries, the day will come when all things will be pirated as easily as an mp3. And the effects of that technology rippling through our social systems faster than we adjust to accomodate them will result in economic chaos. Something is going to rip if we're not more thoughtful.

Because I don't believe people can stop themselves, and because I believe selfishness trumps, I expect that we'll see some very difficult times ahead. The cornerstone will, in effect, crumble. How or even whether we reinforce or replace it is the real question in my mind.

Woody Evans said...

If we accept that disrespecting intellectual property really amounts to theiving, I have to ask: why is stealing a threat to the global economy?

Using strong arm tactics to gain rights (by way of legal loopholes, like you mention they do in Russia), doesn't seem so different from bending international treaties to invade a country for its resources (or whatever other reasons). These moves can destablize the system in the short term, but WHY do they threaten the longterm stability of the system?

Morality aside, how is theft bad for the global economy?

csven said...

If there's no incentive, progress slows. If nobody respects the inventiveness of creators, then the creators won't invest the energy. That's the lesson of the Soviet Union afaic.

Assume for a moment that you've spent three years developing something. You've sacrificed for this creation; not just time and money but perhaps a marriage. And your reward? Someone takes your work and claims it as their own and profits from it. And you have no recourse because that theft is acceptable to society; society approves of the tricksters and the bullies.

Do we really want social Darwinism? Do we really want to remove the protections that intellectual property laws are supposed to provide?

The United States is the powerhouse it is today because of those laws. Unfortunately, they've become corrupted. The solution is not to wrestle product from the corporations, because there are ways to profit from that attention. The solution is to remove those politicians who votes are being effectively bought by corporations. The solution is to stop giving any attention to the products offered by those corporations. Ignore them. Entirely.

The opposite of love isn't hate - it's apathy toward the individual.

The opposite of IP corruption isn't cracking DRM - it's apathy toward the product.

There's a very good reason so much money is spent on advertising. We should not underestimate the power of turning our backs on companies and their offerings. Apple is a good example. I don't own an iPod. I don't purchase my music through iTunes. The reason I don't is because I don't like the restrictions. So I ignore their product. What's baffling is seeing a bunch of iPod owners angry over the DRM. Huh? Like they didn't know this going in? And they're angry with Apple because they purchased something which clearly limited their options? I think it's idiotic. Nobody forced them to purchase this luxury product. What happened to taking responsibility for our own actions? They shouldn't blame Apple, they should kick themselves for giving Apple the market. Apple's dominance is a result of their attention and nothing else.

Now, I'll agree that there are times when IP laws should be set aside. South Africa and Brazil weighed those laws against the AIDs situation in their countries and took action. There's nothing wrong with this and afaic it was the right thing to do; there's a time when excess profit (and by no means were these companies in danger of going bankrupt) should be set aside for the common good in just the same way that IP laws are for the common good. But access to music, movies, software, etc is a long way from that situation. We live in a world where the privileged use the word "need" far too often. No one needs most of what's being taken. All we're doing is teaching younger generations a behavior that will have a dampening effect on the future.

Woody Evans said...

Okay, it makes much more sense when you put it like that. Respecting intellectual property keeps the innovators innovating. Without respecting their intellectual property the innovative lose an important carrot, feel undercut and cheated by the pirates...

The thing is, as important as it is to fairly reward innovation and to keep encouraging it with law and money, I don't necessarily agree with the assumption that innovation will decline if piracy goes up.

I think need is what drives innovation, not the promise of legal rights or recognition, or financial reward. I think 1.3 billion Chinese hack innovations from Korea, Japan, and the West because they have a need -- imagined or not -- for those goods and goodies. Obviously if we're talking about breaking a patent on a water filter, it's a much stronger and more 'real' need than digicamming a blockbuster in the theatre and selling burned discs of it... Certainly there exists wildly different levels of "need" in the world, and the attempt to solve probelms that comes from that need can be as simple as selling copied movies, or as horrifying and selfish as the common folk remedy for male AIDs victims in rural Africa -- which amounts to incest and rape of minors in the belief that sex with a virgin heals the disease.

What you said (csven) about times when i.p. laws should be set aside for the greater good -- maybe the way forward is to create a more lenient legal evironment in the first place. A Creative Commons for patents?

csven said...

"I think need is what drives innovation, not the promise of legal rights or recognition, or financial reward."

Then how do you explain the economic disaster in the former U.S.S.R.?

My mother is German. When the wall fell she heard quite a bit from friends back home about how difficult it was for the former East Germans to adapt to a society in which they couldn't simply walk away from the jobsite when they felt like it. If they ran out of bricks to lay and the truck wasn't there with more to unload, they didn't wait... they bailed. They had no incentive to wait for more and no initiative to determine when they might be needed. Their basic needs were usually met and so innovation crawled forward. They had no experience with the products being developed in the West, so they didn't perceive a need for them. And when they desired something, they could find that item on the blackmarket - which is where organized crime incubated until the system collapsed.

"I think 1.3 billion Chinese hack innovations from Korea, Japan, and the West because they have a need -- imagined or not -- for those goods and goodies."

I don't know if you've been keeping up, but the Chinese are becoming increasingly concerned with the effects piracy is having on their own development. Chinese software companies are often hit so hard they can't stay in business. If there's nothing to be gained, they don't even try. They're now trying to use the same means as companies like Valve and MS to ensure that their fellow countrymen don't put them out on the street. But we all know that software verification systems can be circumvented.

The Chinese are now reaping what Communism has sown: people don't think piracy is wrong. How is China going to stop it now when it's so firmly a part of their culture? How do you convince a billion people to change their habit and pay for what they can get for free? Is the Chairman going to make an argument for Capitalist innovation where people are rewarded for their ideas??? If not, he needs to. Otherwise China is in real trouble. The world is leveling. Labor is making demands. Salaries are rising along with lifestyles and expectations - and much of it is based on old industrial technology. Meanwhile, those smart Europeans are pushing new rapid-manufacturing solutions forward (the kind of thing you get from a system that rewards innovation) and in the not-too-distant future products made in China will be more expensive and less attractive than those which are RM'd at home.

"Certainly there exists wildly different levels of "need" in the world,..."

I disagree. People only need a few things; among them are food, shelter, safety. No one needs what Pirate Bay offers. No one needs Apple to change their business model to give them unlimited use of the content tied to their devices. All those protestors should be protesting real issues - like this one: Blood Diamonds.

We need to get our priorities straight. Music and movies aren't anywhere near being a priority.

...maybe the way forward is to create a more lenient legal evironment in the first place. A Creative Commons for patents?

I've been arguing for this since before Napster (because I was aware of MPEG Layer 3 almost immediately - being a filmmaking buff, I was following its development). I downloaded some music back when a search for "mp3" yielded maybe 30 returns. But it didn't take me long to realize that we had some serious problems. And the patent issues I've known about for much longer, given my occupation.

Yes, we need to fix the system. I've never defended corporate activity in this arena. But I also won't yield to those who take a militant approach; mainly, because it doesn't work. The way to fix this is to use the power we have: with our votes and with our pocketbook. But the sad truth is that people are lazy. Far easier to download whatever you want and excuse it (often with outright lies) than make a real effort to fix the system.

csven said...

"...with our pocketbook"

Correction: with our attention (because that's how corporations can still leverage what people steal).

Woody Evans said...

"Yes, we need to fix the system. I've never defended corporate activity in this arena. But I also won't yield to those who take a militant approach; mainly, because it doesn't work. The way to fix this is to use the power we have: with our votes and with our pocketbook. But the sad truth is that people are lazy. Far easier to download whatever you want and excuse it (often with outright lies) than make a real effort to fix the system."

Now you've got me worried. If the issue is as serious as it seems to be and the only thing that can change it is political will, things look pretty damn bleak.

csven said...

Agreed. Because now boycotting (or stealing from) a company may not be enough. In today's technological world, attention has value. I can't imagine that some piece of music hasn't already been sold for advertising purposes that didn't include as part of its valuation the number of illegal downloads that the music label has tracked.

So even if people think they're hurting the labels, they may not be. This is where the whole "I wouldn't buy it anyway" turns around and bites the pirates in the arse - because one could then say "Well, you still put money in their pocket. Nice job keeping the greedy suits in control."

--

Further comments are welcome.
And if you don't know Sven, you ought to.

Ricky Gervais on Creationism vs. Evolution (and stuff)

stingray cult

Dead stingrays with their tails cut off have been found in Australia, sparking concern that fans of naturalist Steve Irwin may be avenging his death. (link: news.bbc)

Remember Biko

18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977