Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

From The Ethicist - E-Book Dodge - NYTimes.com:

[Q:]... The publisher apparently withheld [a Stephen King book's eBook version] to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all 1,074 pages, more than three and a half pounds. Then I found a pirated version online, downloaded it to my e-reader and took it on my trip. I generally disapprove of illegal downloads, but wasn’t this O.K.? C.D., BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y.

[A:]An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical.... Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability...

What crap. Is the book out of print? Is that hardcopy somehow obsolete now? Of course not. There's obviously value added with the eBook or ole C.D. wouldn't've wanted it. How does Mr. Cohen (the "Ethicist") decide when you've paid enough into the system to begin illegal civil disobedience?

Can I pay for the movie in the theater and then download?
Better parallel: Can I burn a Blu-Ray b/c I've purchased the DVD at full price?
What if I paid a clearance price for the DVD? Have I still paid in enough for someone to forward me a bootleg Blu-Ray in high def?
If I've read the book, can I sneak into a theater showing the movie that's not quite filled? Where's the harm in that?

Would it really put poor, poor CD out to take along that "more than three and a half pounds" of codex on his trip? Really?

Look, if you want a law changed because, in this case, you feel superior enough to remark "the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology", then start lobbying. Now show me one fair law that's anticipated a specific technology perfectly. Sort of another anachronism, ain't it? Honestly, I think eBooks are an interesting way to leverage your ownership of IP into more profit. As long as we're not EULAing hardcopies, knock yourselves out.

Furthermore, in this case we have easier solutions for CD. Wait for the g*******d eBook to be released. Trade time for money. Read another book on your trip. I just finished Water is Wide by Pat Conroy on my iPod. You'll enjoy it. If you want to read a new book now, ya gotta pay. Or why not go to your local library and reserve a copy to read while you're waiting. That's a pretty good deal, isn't it? You're not out a buck. Now you read Conroy on your trip and you get to know the latest and greatest from that sick-o King[1]. And guess what, you've already paid for the privilege. Take advantage of it.

Had Cohen even so much as said, "Though the risk of being caught is low, it does exist, and in NY the penalty is [X]. I would also say that you need to delete the eBook as soon as you return from your trip, when its marginal utility is gone, and that once the eBook is released, you should stop using this rationalization immediately," I would have felt a little better.

As it stands, it bothers me that a representative of what's essentially the record of the United States could show such a simpleton's approach to ethics and encourage his readers to break the law without understanding the ramifications on themselves and the corporations that provide them with their goods. I'm no corporate cheerleader, but when a "ethicist" rationalizes stealing in officially sanctioned e-print, you know society's gauge of right and wrong had long since made a turn for the gutter.

[1] Actually, I'm suspicious King is one of the best authors alive. I've read a few of his books that aren't about blood and guts, and they're all exceptionally well written. Still, I tried that city in a bubble book and couldn't get past the first few chapters. SICK. It's all about how you apply yourself, I guess.

Labels: blu-ray, business, control, copyright, digitization, DRM, ethics, evil, hats of money, kindle, licensing, nyt, web 2.0 shiite, zealousness

This from Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post's Ombudsman, titled "Why you're seeing more copy-editing errors in The Post":

Why the increased errors [in the Washington Post]? Clearly, reduced staffing plays some role. A decade ago, at its peak, The Post's newsroom had more than 900 FTES (full-time equivalent employees)... Today, the now-integrated print and online staffs total about 650 FTEs...

The answer may be less about staffing levels and more about the changing duties of copy editors. Gone are the days when they primarily detected errors and smoothed prose for the next day's newspaper. Now they must also operate in an online environment where "search-engine optimization" is a key goal. That requires new skills and time-consuming additional duties. Separate online headlines must be written in a way that attracts attention on the Web.
...
Some relief may be coming for beleaguered copy editors. This week, The Post will begin search-engine optimization training for the entire newsroom. Front-end help from reporters and other staff should ease the burden on copy editors. [emboldened emphasis mine]

I don't know about you, but I'm not happy to hear that journalists are writing for the computers to the exclusion of their human readers. I realize there has always been a pressure on writing to the technology. I've done a review of newspapers from the 18th century, and realize the way that length was constrained by the sheets you could afford to print and sell, or how headline lengths are influenced by column and font size, and how inserting pictures are exceptionally difficult. I've seen papers run out of a font and start printing in, eg, italics to finish up a page to save time. I know that content is influenced by technology directly.

Still, what the Washington Post is doing marks a significant change for the press. Now, people are writing content for, say, Google News rather than to point out the most newsworthy events of the day. Like a gamer figuring out the secrets of the algorithm for Mike Tyson's Punch Out ("When he makes the noise, dodge right, and then upppercut"), newspaper reporters, the front line folk, are being asked to learn, anticipate, and integrate the algorithms of the news search engines ("When we're talking about someone in the movies, try to tie Angelina Jolie in there somehow" or "Make sure 'failed Obamacare' is in the title of three of today's stories somehow").

I've noticed the WaPo's declining editorial attention. To redefine what "editing" meanings is to take the lazy fellow's way out. What's happening isn't that you're doing a more complicated job. It's that you're no longer doing your old job. We're more worried about hits than grammar. And what bothers me the most is the degree to which an American institution is pushing onto the front ranks of the free press the onus for making our news match whatever Google's programmers feel is newsworthy.

In the briefest terms, then, I'm exceptionally disappointed that Google's programmers have become the editors of the Washington Post.

Labels: acad, business, cheating, control, digital, ethics, evil, Google, market, politics, pseudo-academic

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Google "firesheeped" the UK? Google Ordered to Delete Collected U.K. Street View Data \| News & Opinion \| PCMag.com: Between 2008 and 2010, the equipment attached to Google's Street View vehicles not only collected 360-degree mapping images, but also data from unencrypted wireless networks within range. That included emails, passwords, photos, and chat logs. I realized the cars were keeping track of WiFi names in areas, which makes some sense, as comparing WiFi hotpot names is a poor man's GPS, but I didn't realize they were firesheeping while they were at it. I can see some reasons to want to listen in just as a sort of corporate data-mining curiousity, but doesn't a smart (but evil) company at least contract out nasty work like that? Labels: evil, Google posted by ruffin at 6/22/2013 01:48:00 PM

Thursday, April 22, 2010
The NY Times' "Ethicist" is Anything But From The Ethicist - E-Book Dodge - NYTimes.com: [Q:]... The publisher apparently withheld [a Stephen King book's eBook version] to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all 1,074 pages, more than three and a half pounds. Then I found a pirated version online, downloaded it to my e-reader and took it on my trip. I generally disapprove of illegal downloads, but wasn’t this O.K.? C.D., BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y. [A:]An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical.... Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability... What crap. Is the book out of print? Is that hardcopy somehow obsolete now? Of course not. There's obviously value added with the eBook or ole C.D. wouldn't've wanted it. How does Mr. Cohen (the "Ethicist") decide when you've paid enough into the system to begin illegal civil disobedience? Can I pay for the movie in the theater and then download? Better parallel: Can I burn a Blu-Ray b/c I've purchased the DVD at full price? What if I paid a clearance price for the DVD? Have I still paid in enough for someone to forward me a bootleg Blu-Ray in high def? If I've read the book, can I sneak into a theater showing the movie that's not quite filled? Where's the harm in that? Would it really put poor, poor CD out to take along that "more than three and a half pounds" of codex on his trip? Really? Look, if you want a law changed because, in this case, you feel superior enough to remark "the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology", then start lobbying. Now show me one fair law that's anticipated a specific technology perfectly. Sort of another anachronism, ain't it? Honestly, I think eBooks are an interesting way to leverage your ownership of IP into more profit. As long as we're not EULAing hardcopies, knock yourselves out. Furthermore, in this case we have easier solutions for CD. Wait for the g******d eBook to be released. Trade time for money. Read another book on your trip. I just finished Water is Wide* by Pat Conroy on my iPod. You'll enjoy it. If you want to read a new book now, ya gotta pay. Or why not go to your local library and reserve a copy to read while you're waiting. That's a pretty good deal, isn't it? You're not out a buck. Now you read Conroy on your trip and you get to know the latest and greatest from that sick-o King[1]. And guess what, you've already paid for the privilege. Take advantage of it. Had Cohen even so much as said, "Though the risk of being caught is low, it does exist, and in NY the penalty is [X]. I would also say that you need to delete the eBook as soon as you return from your trip, when its marginal utility is gone, and that once the eBook is released, you should stop using this rationalization immediately," I would have felt a little better. As it stands, it bothers me that a representative of what's essentially the record of the United States could show such a simpleton's approach to ethics and encourage his readers to break the law without understanding the ramifications on themselves and the corporations that provide them with their goods. I'm no corporate cheerleader, but when a "ethicist" rationalizes stealing in officially sanctioned e-print, you know society's gauge of right and wrong had long since made a turn for the gutter. [1] Actually, I'm suspicious King is one of the best authors alive. I've read a few of his books that aren't about blood and guts, and they're all exceptionally well written. Still, I tried that city in a bubble book and couldn't get past the first few chapters. SICK. It's all about how you apply yourself, I guess. Labels: blu-ray, business, control, copyright, digitization, DRM, ethics, evil, hats of money, kindle, licensing, nyt, web 2.0 shiite, zealousness posted by ruffin at 4/22/2010 12:05:00 PM

Thursday, March 25, 2010
The iPad's inherent DRM If there's one thing that I know Jobs would like to have back, it's an Apple computing platform with tightly controlled access for developers. As the Wall Street Journal apparently reports (via AppleInsider): "Jobs has kept 'tight control and directors have rarely challenged him.'" His preferred dev environment is no different. Right now, on the Macintosh, anyone can code up an app and release it without so much as Googling (Binging?) the Apple Human (once User) Interface Guidelines. Heck, even I've released apps for the Mac into the wild. Oh noes!!! Oh wait, Jobs has gotten that closed development environment, hasn't he? It's the iPod, iPhone, and, increasingly overlapping with the Mac, the iPad: In February, it was rumored that Hulu, an online streaming video destination for multiple networks, plans to make its videos available without Flash for the iPad platform. Reports then alleged that the Web site could be prepared by the time the iPad launches April 3, though it was said the service would likely be subscription only. If the iPad only does HTML5/H.264 jive, the fact that this protocol isn't the most popular on the net gives it a leg up on open browsers. That is, if Hulu makes HTML5 pay to play only, thanks to the iPad's effectively closed platform, Hulu has a ready-made, similarly closed/captive market. * If the iPad did Flash, not only would there be a closed system involved that Apple doesn't control, but there'd be no easy way to differentiate folks using the iPad platform. Goodbye Hulu revenue stream. With no Flash, Hulu has a reason to partner/get in bed with/come to the defense of Apple's iPad and to temper its support of Adobe's Flash. Captive markets are exactly what Jobs likes to have (see the iPhone developer program and the rules for distributing software, where Apple can even, 1984-style, rip programs off of your iPhone retroactively!), at least until he gets to the point that market dominance (digital music) makes it so that captivity works against Apple selling hardware*. So once the iPod and the iTunes Music Store dominate digital music, Jobs makes DRM leave the stage precisely to ensure there are no competitors to the gorilla. But, again, the interesting point here is how Apple is reinventing the Mac. As the iPod stretches out and begins to swallow the Macintosh via the iPhone and now iPad, it's essential to pay attention to the compromises these [at least relatively] closed platforms are making. The iPad will do 50% of what I use my MacBook for and essentially 90% of what I use my iPod touch for (the balance being "fitting my pocket"). But I can't run my Java apps on my iPad, and probably never will, and certainly won't without Jobs' permission. (Yes, I realize Apple develops and maintains the standard Mac JVM, but there are others that work on OS X. Don't split hairs, please. ;^D) Labels: browsers, control, DRM, ethics, evil, html, iPad, iphone, ipod, iTunes, online distribution posted by ruffin at 3/25/2010 10:01:00 AM

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Washington Post Reporters Now Writing Specifically for Computer Readers This from Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post's Ombudsman, titled "Why you're seeing more copy-editing errors in The Post": Why the increased errors [in the Washington Post]? Clearly, reduced staffing plays some role. A decade ago, at its peak, The Post's newsroom had more than 900 FTES (full-time equivalent employees)... Today, the now-integrated print and online staffs total about 650 FTEs... The answer may be less about staffing levels and more about the changing duties of copy editors. Gone are the days when they primarily detected errors and smoothed prose for the next day's newspaper. Now they must also operate in an online environment where "search-engine optimization" is a key goal. That requires new skills and time-consuming additional duties. Separate online headlines must be written in a way that attracts attention on the Web. ... Some relief may be coming for beleaguered copy editors. This week, The Post will begin search-engine optimization training for the entire newsroom. Front-end help from reporters and other staff should ease the burden on copy editors. [emboldened emphasis mine] I don't know about you, but I'm not happy to hear that journalists are writing for the computers to the exclusion of their human readers. I realize there has always been a pressure on writing to the technology. I've done a review of newspapers from the 18th century, and realize the way that length was constrained by the sheets you could afford to print and sell, or how headline lengths are influenced by column and font size, and how inserting pictures are exceptionally difficult. I've seen papers run out of a font and start printing in, eg, italics to finish up a page to save time. I know that content is influenced by technology directly. Still, what the Washington Post is doing marks a significant change for the press. Now, people are writing content for, say, Google News rather than to point out the most newsworthy events of the day. Like a gamer figuring out the secrets of the algorithm for Mike Tyson's Punch Out ("When he makes the noise, dodge right, and then upppercut"), newspaper reporters, the front line folk, are being asked to learn, anticipate, and integrate the algorithms of the news search engines ("When we're talking about someone in the movies, try to tie Angelina Jolie in there somehow" or "Make sure 'failed Obamacare' is in the title of three of today's stories somehow"). I've noticed the WaPo's declining editorial attention. To redefine what "editing" meanings is to take the lazy fellow's way out. What's happening isn't that you're doing a more complicated job. It's that you're no longer doing your old job. We're more worried about hits than grammar. And what bothers me the most is the degree to which an American institution is pushing onto the front ranks of the free press the onus for making our news match whatever Google's programmers feel is newsworthy. In the briefest terms, then, I'm exceptionally disappointed that Google's programmers have become the editors of the Washington Post. Labels: acad, business, cheating, control, digital, ethics, evil, Google, market, politics, pseudo-academic posted by ruffin at 2/16/2010 09:50:00 AM

Friday, January 08, 2010
More on collective privacy: Gmail's sidebar links From Sidebar links - Gmail Help: Ads and Related Pages Ads in Gmail are placed in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through the Google AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The goal is to provide you with helpful ads, links and content relevant to your specific interests. Advertising and related information are displayed based on a completely automated process. [emph mine] If it's automated, it's okay? Though that doesn't even explicitly mean that your privacy is protected -- an automated process could certainly fill a database full of some pretty compromising information from your emails. Heck, has anyone seen the search results AOL let slip in 2006? I'm not sure how I missed it, but I got the feeling that I'd never peered quite so intently through a keyhole into someone's most personal activities until I looked at some of those files. And they were, of course, created by an automated process. But the implication, I think, is that the automation removes the personal connection. There is the feel of a double blind provided by the code between your personal email and corporations' ad copy. From the page above's "Learn More" link: Gmail is a technology-based program. Advertising and related information are shown using a completely automated process. Ads are selected for relevance and served by Google computers using the same contextual advertising technology that powers our AdSense program. This technology enables Google to target dynamically changing content such as email or daily news stories. No humans will read the content of your email in order to target such advertisements or related information. Because the ads and related pages are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful. ... Your Privacy Google does not and will never rent, sell or share information that personally identifies you for marketing purposes without your express permission. No email content or other personally identifiable information will be provided to advertisers. [again emph mine] No humans will read your emails? So now we won't even promise that humans won't be reading the key terms from your emails? Makes sense from a software engineering bias, but not from one of personal privacy. Neither automation nor collective ("non-personal") data eliminate threats to privacy. This, unfortunately, hasn't yet stopped me from using Gmail. Labels: evil, gmail, Google, privacy posted by ruffin at 1/08/2010 08:33:00 PM

Friday, December 11, 2009
Google CEO Eric Schmidt Dismisses the Importance of Privacy \| Electronic Frontier Foundation Just passing it along. Google CEO Eric Schmidt Dismisses the Importance of Privacy \| Electronic Frontier Foundation: Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users' privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC's recent 'Inside the Mind of Google' special about whether users should be sharing information with Google as if it were a 'trusted friend,' Schmidt responded, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' Labels: evil, Google, privacy posted by ruffin at 12/11/2009 11:04:00 AM

Thursday, December 03, 2009
Politics of the collective and Google's DNS servers' datamining powerplay AppleInsider \| Google launches free Public DNS: The new service enables users to bypass their own Internet Service Provider's DNS to use Google's performance-optimized name lookup server ... Other free DNS services are already available, but most cover their costs by redirecting failed lookups (for mistyped or incorrect URLs) to ad supported pages that suggest alternatives. So far, Google isn't performing any such commercial redirects. Instead, the company is providing the service for free as a way to collect information about how users use the Internet on an anonymous and aggregated level. Of course it's anonymous. It's worth more to Google as anonymous data. Anyhow, the advantage is no 404 ads? Is that really a huge advantage? And then you provide Google free labor? Interesting. Are we really so excited to use Google that we'd like to give up some privacy -- maybe not individually specific privacy, but our privacy as collective demographics -- to avoid a few cruddy ads? There's a politics of the collective that is being almostly entirely forgotten in our age of "postmodern" individuality (let's just call it "late capitalism", right?). Labels: evil, Google, privacy posted by ruffin at 12/03/2009 07:33:00 PM

Thursday, October 22, 2009
Gmail ads -- influenced by sender? I've gotten some emails from someone recently whose gmail adverts aren't noticeably related to the content we're discussing or the sorts of ads I've seen in the past. They are, however, linked to the sorts of work the sender has done while programming in the past. Does the sender (and what some algorithm says about the sender) help determine ads? Do we project ye olde digital proverbial ethos with our emails linked to our online presence/brand as defined by some compilation corp? I mean, it's not a bad idea from the pov of profit if Google is doing this, but it seems close to an invasion of privacy. No reason everyone should be able to glean from ads connected to my emails that I, um, have read pretty much every codexically amalgamated word written by Frank Herbert [and much too many by his son, which, Dreamer of Dune excepted (barely), probably means any number above 1000]. EDIT: Now that I've replied, the adverts are gone. How the heck does Gmail decide when to show ads? Sometimes you just get offers to connect to Google Calendar or Maps, and sometimes there's nothing, though when it was just one email in the thread, I had probably twelve ads down the right hand side. Weird. Wow, busy day. Was going to upload the picture and the upload form for Blogger now has a pretty complicated "terms of service" which, though it's dated 2006, wasn't there last time I uploaded something. So we'll link offsite. Here's the text: In addition, by submitting, posting or displaying Content which is intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. You mean services like Google Press' book on someone famous who just happened to be in a picture I uploaded? Wow. And so all your family snapshots are belong to multinational corporation. Make your time. Labels: evil, gmail posted by ruffin at 10/22/2009 10:12:00 AM

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Google's home page compromised (well, by ads) I was disappointed to see what was the first outright ad I've seen hit the nearly sacred text of the Google front page. Sure, they've advertised their own stuff before, even the Google Mini if I remember correctly, but this is clearly someone else's baby on the Google front page, and I'm betting it was part of the deal to get Android on a T-Mobile phone. I realize Google's trying to combine being mammoth like Microsoft when it comes to web-based OSes with a svelte, Apple-style image, but these are not the values that made us all trust Google. I've already said Google's evil too many times. It's too bad the evidence of a real paradigm shift in the company keeps, in my eyes, mounting. (Just to be clear, the image below is part of what you get if you click on the link "Learn about the phone" from the image above. ---------------- Now playing: I:Scintilla - Machine Vision Labels: evil, Google posted by ruffin at 10/22/2008 09:06:00 AM

Thursday, June 12, 2008
Some of us are adults, Google. Okay, this policy of Gmail stinks, especially when you're a programmer trying to distribute applications you've built: Some file types are blocked As a security measure to prevent potential viruses, Gmail doesn't allow you to send or receive executable files (such as files ending in .exe) that could contain damaging executable code. Gmail won't accept these types of files even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) format. If this type of message is sent to your Gmail address, it is bounced back to the sender automatically. This fails the "do no evil" test. Why would Gmail shut down sending applications? Viruses, sure, but is there another reason a company who"outlines Web development investments in three areas", one of which is "2. Keeping Connectivity Pervasive" might want to discourage the distribution of applications on the desktop? Look, the browser is the platform for Google. They want to replace exe with http. This is exactly what scared Microsoft when Java hit the scene -- that Microsoft's hold over the desktop would become meaningless as applications moved to the web. Java failed in its attempt to take over the desktop, but it weakened Microsoft enough that Google's been able to do it (look, I realize that's a stretch, and I've left out about three hundred and two points between Java and Google, but hey, this is a blog post. For now, I'm going to have to ask that you trust me.). AJAX is the new Java. The web is winning. That Google would stop you from sending exe's via their new https should come as a surprise to no one. I'm not saying they instituted the policy to stop one from sending competitors to their platform, but it's sure as heck one reason if the decision isn't at least partially reversed in the future. Labels: browsers, email, evil, Google, java, microsoft posted by ruffin at 6/12/2008 05:06:00 PM

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