Maitri's VatulBlog

Much in the way of interesting and infuriating has gone on this week in the areas of intellectual property, privacy, digital rights, open source and Googlization. A lot of it comes down to the rights of citizens and businesses in a networked society both parties helped create, the crucial need to protect the public domain, where innovation lies and the golden rule: he who has the gold (in this case, money and political power) makes the rules.

IP ALLIANCE TO OPEN SOURCE: YOU’RE PYRATES. ME: YARRRR! Like anti-healthcare legislators who take money from insurance companies, the US-based International Intellectual Property Alliance and its friends in congress should not have any say in determining the future of copyright and intellectual property, and how other countries set their own IP laws. Instead, the IP Alliance wants the United States to consider a Pirate or Enemy Of The State any nation that uses and encourages free/open-source software. Indonesia is the latest nation on the Alliance’s 301 watchlist for having the audacity to give “preference to free/open-source software because it will cost less and reduce the use of pirated proprietary software in government.”

That’s Apache, Blender, GNU packages, Linux packages, Perl, Python, Ruby, Thunderbird and WordPress, for starters. While I fully agree with Cory Doctorow that “this is like crack dealers campaigning against having a laugh with friends because happiness reduces the need for intoxicants,” what angers me about it is the sheer hypocrisy of the IP Alliance and the businesses it represents. Any technologist or R&D person will tell you that an astonishing number of these same companies use free/open-source software to maximize their technology budgets, innovate using these free tools and then slap patents and all kinds of proprietary-IP stickers on their final products. You think I’m kidding? The Recording Industry Association of America website runs on Apache and PHP. *facepalm*

No, kids, Walt Disney did not invent Cinderella and Snow White. Just like Disney built its fortune by copyrighting works in the public domain, the IP Alliance fosters this unethical business model: Build on or monetize free or cheap ideas and technologies that have come before, and then shut off these alternatives by buying yourself several congresspeople. (And people wonder why the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision was so dastardly and wrong.) When the technology world clamors for automation, standardization and interoperability, i.e. different systems of different capabilities playing together more efficiently, is not the time to make useless noise against open standards and technologies. During a recession when innovation is key, charging $1000/lb for a sack of shit top dollar for clunky, mediocre products and enforcing these as preferred solutions with political bribery, in lieu of free, shared and open source technologies, is stupid and tantamount to the communism Real Americans so fervently dread.

SPYCAMGATE Schools spy on kids through webcams. This shocker made it into the mainstream news, so I’m sure all of you know about the class action lawsuit filed against Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District and associated offenders by now. What you probably don’t know is that this is not an isolated incident. In the PBS Frontline Digital Nation documentary, which aired earlier this month, a Bronx school administrator boasts that he regularly monitors students remotely through their school-issued laptops. Parents: This is an egregious violation of privacy, especially using property purchased with your taxes. Take this opportunity to check your kids’ equipment, know your rights and read Cory Doctorow’s Creative-Commons-published Little Brother before he is thrown in the brig with the Indonesians.

PLEASE ROB ME & SCRUB MY KITCHEN FLOOR WHILE YOU’RE AT IT Despite being an IT professional or perhaps exactly because of it, my husband has no social media accounts. He can be contacted solely via email, phone or the occasional private IM. D’s rationale is that there is enough information about him out there, should someone choose to search hard enough or pay enough, that he doesn’t need to feed the beast. Conversely, Twitter Queen (someone at work actually called me this today) here is still not afraid that someone is going to rob my house when I’m gone and tweet from the road because they have to a) know where I live and b) say hello to aforementioned big, burly husband if he happens to be home. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. You’ll just have to find out. Big, burly Neighbors 1 and 2 and crazy hunter dude with shotgun may be around, too, so take your chances.

Patrix comes closest to pointing this out, but if you are smart about what social media outlets you pick, employ the highest privacy settings and don’t declare your street address or UTM coordinates, you can tell the whole world you’re leaving your jewelry and electronics on the back porch and are going away for a month and folks will not be able to use social media to locate your home. Unless they bribe your crappy friends, in which case you’re screwed anyway and it’s not Twitter’s or FourSquare’s fault.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR GOOGLE Google’s Top Executives Defied Italy’s Privacy Laws Except this time, I’m on Google’s side. They did not act quickly enough to pull down a YouTube video that showed kids bullying an autistic/handicapped boy, which violates Italy’s privacy laws, but this may be the only chance for justice for the assaulted child. Should the kid’s guardians sue, the video may be thrown out as evidence for being fruit of the poisoned tree (assuming Italy does assault lawsuits & has similar legal code). This is a tough one: Do we allow Google to flout international laws in humanitarian ca(u)ses, but complain loudly that we don’t want a large corporation in our business when it comes to our email and Buzz? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

BOOK Tarleton Gillespie, law-technology-media-culture professor and blogger, was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on February 23rd to speak about the politics of online media platforms. I wasn’t able to attend but am waiting on responses from friends who did attend. Gillespie’s book Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture nicely sums up the fight for digital culture and the links in this post. From the Wired Shut website:

… the enforcement of copyright law in the digital world has quietly shifted from regulating copying to regulating the design of technology …

… this approach to digital copyright depends on new kinds of alliances among content and technology industries, legislators, regulators, and the courts, and is changing the relationship between law and technology in the process. The [print,] film and music industries are deploying copyright in order to funnel digital culture into increasingly commercial patterns that threaten to undermine the democratic potential of a network society.

That’s it for This Week In The Fight For Digital Culture. Keep thinking. Keep fighting.

Abhi in Sepia Mutiny:

… You see, the very definition of terrorism has changed, right beneath our feet. A man with strong ideological beliefs against the government of the United States tries (and succeeds) to kill himself and take as many civilians (federal workers) as he can with him. But they don’t call it terrorism. That sacrosanct term is now reserved only for non-white people with funny sounding names. Preferably Muslim.

Swear by a copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang?  Threaten to ram whaling ships?  You’re an “eco-terrorist.”  Pre-meditate and carry out the murder of a physician who conducts abortions and swear to take more such lives, all while possessing a solid anti-government track record?  You’re an “abortion foe.”

Shoot up people while screaming Allah in Fort Hood?  You’re a terrorist.  No, wait, you’re an “Islamo-kazi.”  Fly into America with a bomb strapped to your nads, which, thank the Gods, did not go off?  Damn straight, you’re a terrorist.

Long-windedly admit to illegal activity and a long-term hatred of American government and “taxation without representation” in your suicide manifesto, and then fly an airplane into a government building with intent to kill?  You’re a “crash pilot” at best, “cowardly criminal” at worst.

Shame on CNN to Fox News and Obama’s White House to Scott Brown for not referring to this dastardly act as terrorism.  And shame, shame, shame on everyone out there who screams for investigations and the heads of selfish, agenda-based murderers only and repeatedly when it is politically expedient.

There are the dead in the Austin IRS building, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the airplanes, the Oklahoma City federal building and cowardly, unnecessary acts of violence all over the world.  Whether their killers are termed “terrorists” or not does not make a damned bit of difference to them.  Nor will it bring them back and make their families whole ever again. There are the living, however, who have to go on with the fallout.  The rest of us die inside slowly every single day that blame and justice are assigned improperly.

(Update: But hark! Stack’s manifesto has been calculated as 76% left-wing.  Don’t all trip over yourselves calling him a “terrorist” now.)

Suggested Reading:
Patrix | What Does It Take To Be Called A Terrorist?
Big Man | Oh, Hell Naw

A geospatial and engineering study, recently conducted by my firm in support of relief operations in Haiti, shows that much of the island nation is susceptible to landslides.  And by “much,” I mean MUCH.  About 80%.  This should not be surprising considering young volcanic rock, active tectonics and steep slopes.  Easily-weathered, clay-rich soil at an angle will slide when shaken, right?

A structural geology and geophysics nerd, I was initially more enamored with and engrossed in the earthquake’s ground motion numbers, which were fed into predicting building failure, than ground sliding.  Thankfully, the Katrina levee failures have led me to a more holistic view of disasters.  To come up with solutions, we do need subject matter experts, but it is crucial that the general scientific attitude is less “I’ll take the seismic stuff, you take the soil stuff and let’s not be bothered by policy which is for suits in Washington” and more interdisciplinary cooperationin the name of scientific progress and human betterment.  Never will I sift through sediments or poke at fossils, but I’ll be damned if I ever view a problem through the blinders of  specialization again.  At some point, we have to grow up as scientists and citizens and want to incorporate other research as well as demand and follow through on change implementation.

More on the need for synthesis:

1) Disasters aren’t things that happen to other people, parts of which you later study for academic purposes. The paper Katrina’s unique splay deposits in a New Orleans neighborhood by Tulane University’s Stephen Nelson et al. documents some fascinating patterns of deposition of canal sediment in the Gentilly neighborhood, which ultimately show WHY the levee there failed as it did (pilings driven into ground all wrong due to poor sampling of and little care for the subsurface).

2) Disasters are normally compounded by other disasters.  These things rarely happen in isolation.  Landslides and floods triggered by earthquakes (and Atlantic hurricanes) are worsened by deforestation for charcoal in a job-starved and subsequently energy-starved country.  The need for aid and housing now is appreciated, but what of the larger problems of disappearing trees and moving coastlines?

3) “If the disasters themselves are not preventable, sometimes the way we handle the aftermath is,” says Adele Barker in Disaster’s Aftermath.  Ms. Barker speaks of aid agencies not being prepared in the wake of Haiti and how it reminds her of botched aid following the Southeast Asian tsunami (which in turn puts me in mind of our own New Orleanian disaster after the disaster).  Sometimes, the way we handle the scientific aftermath is preventable, too.

There is no room for academic and political ivory towers.  We work together or bust.

***

I will admit immense joy in science as an end in itself and a certain freedom in ignoring government and the social contract as petty constructs.  Forget you jokers with your grabs, wars and laws; when I’m in my lab, in my world, you cease to exist.  Science is a magical thing that way.  *ironic chuckle*  Moreover, within science itself, too much generalization leads to master-of-none paralysis.  You have to be good at something, do something, prove something, in order to move forward.  But, there’s no roadblock or harm in being good at something, learning more and sourcing from work outside of your expertise.  It makes you better.  More human.  In the end, isn’t that the point of science?

I haven’t read much of Zinn’s work, but this essay for The Nation meant a lot to me during the dark days of the Bush II administration.  It still does.

In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?

… An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.

If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

If we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.  I hope President Obama and congressional Democrats are listening.

Lizzy Caston and I were to write a mode d’emploi for air travel in this day and age of the ever-orange threat advisory.  A sample: Lady, please do your best not to wear four-inch-heeled slouch boots and every metal ring and bracelet in your collection before entering airport security.  The grimace on your face as you hobble about like a startled flamingo while trying to yank that thing of your foot amuses no one and only makes us standing in line behind you at 6AM want to push you down and carry on. Ok, it wasn’t going to be snide and actually more polite and helpful, honest.  Given recent explosive and “explosive” events and evolving TSA guidelines, however, Lizzy and I are going to have to sit on a few more flights, visiting a few more airports in the process, before we can pen anything useful.

Lists it is, then.  Best of decade (never mind that the new decade technically does not start until January 1, 2011) and best of year lists.  Ranking things is not my cup of tea; all of my top five movies rate about the same.  But what motivates others’ sort algorithms and makes their #1? Let’s see.  As always, please add to the discussion and feel free to list your favorite lists in the Comments section.

TECHNOLOGY – Since my Precious iPhone has not been more than arm’s length away at any given moment this year, to the point that my husband thinks I need to “tweetox,” it seems only fitting to start with Wired’s 20 Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009.  Productivity is king, followed by games, travel and hobbies.  Am I supposed to be embarrassed that I’ve downloaded only 2 of the 20 – Runkeeper and RedLaser – or proud to have gone this long without spending money on some of these not-free apps? $5 for Instapaper when I can simply Safari over to reader.google.com?!  I think not.  What are some of your favorite apps and why?

MORE TECHNOLOGY – The Real-Time Web is all that excites me in this list of 2009’s disruptive technology. Augmented Reality has potential but, in my opinion, isn’t ubiquitous enough to have made a difference yet.  Google Voice and Wave haven’t shown me their value this year, either.  What do you think? PC World’s list of the 10 disruptors of the last quarter century rings truer even today – I highly recommend this read.

MOVIES and technology – Roger Ebert is a rockstar.  Here’s a man who can find a great movie in a stinking haystack, commit to his picks and explain patiently to you why.  Ebert’s on Twitter, where he points us to all four of his Best Films of 2009 lists.

Aside from watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Matrix trilogy, Harry Potter saga and a handful of pop and arthouse films in the theatre this decade, I have to admit that D and I are not the best cinema-goers, preferring to watch DVDs in the comfort of our home (Netflix – now there’s a decadal gamechanger mentioned little), and even that has fallen by the wayside.  But along comes streaming video, the Creative Commons (also one of the best concepts given form in the 2000s) and the notion of simply putting your art out there, the studios be damned, and you get beautiful genius like Nina Paley’s Sita Sings The Blues, which has been around a lot longer than you think.  Whether a movie has live actors or animated ones, the most important thing about it is the story.  To paraphrase my dear, departed 3D Arts professor, George Cramer, all the visual effects dreamt of in Hollywood cannot polish a turd of a story.  This is why I am not likely to watch Avatar and recommend Monsters, Inc. instead.  Excellent story + well-animated fur = WIN.

MUSIC and technology – NPR’s The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings Between YouTube and downloadable MP3s, my music collection grew and grew up in leaps and bounds this decade.  Ignoring the current obsession with emo-hipster bands, pop divas and American Idol ingenues, there was some real good stuff: Radiohead’s Kid A and self-released In Rainbows, Kanye West’s College Dropout, Madeleine Peyroux’s Careless Love, The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, The New Orleans Bingo! Show’s For A Life Ever Bright, Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Sasha’s Airdrawndagger, DJ Krush’s Jaku and OutKast’s Stankonia.  Coolest music videos of the decade: Ok Go’s On Treadmills, Clint Maedgen’s It’s A Complicated Life and Empire Of The Sun’s We Are The People.  Alright, folks, tell me what I missed and why.

BOOKS and technology – Forget the Kindle and nook.  And forget those who tell you this carefully-planned obsolescence is going to change the nature of reading.  Find a light laptop and/or smartphone you’re comfortable with, do actual work with it and download books to it.  A book is not an exotic bird to be placed in the gilded cage of DRM, but something to be owned, shared and, most importantly, read many times on any platform.  I’m against the iTunes model of book consumption – fit the media to the unique delivery mechanism – and publishing companies’ constant war on the public domain.  Hooray for copyfight and folks like Cory Doctorow who have the balls to self-publish quality literature.  True defenders of freedom will enjoy and be inspired by his Little Brother.

The Times Online’s 100 Best Books of the Decade. If you’re going to read only one of them, make it Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao.  What a book.  A Dungeons&Dragons-playing Dominican-American college student, the gut-punching dialogue and relationships, the history, the profanity oh the succulent profanity, the future.  What a book.  Your best read?

SPORTS – An NFL junkie, my most important moment in sports was the New Orleans Saints’ 2006 return to the Superdome after the Flood and Tom Benson’s near treachery.  Granted, it contained no triumph of athleticism, but you’d think it rates (sorry, brimmy, but the Patriots-Brady-NFL-ESPN lovefest is getting old).  Again, is there another such moment in the 00s that I should be aware of?  Please comment away.  Lastly, for the record, I am very pleased with my quarterback and Athenae’s imaginary boyfriend, Aaron Rodgers.  His stats this season show that the team made the right decision and everyone else should shut it.

TELEVISION – When Babylon 5 ended in 1998, I despaired.  This is why God invented Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, Rescue Me and Futurama.  After Lando Calrissian and Kosh, the outstretched arms and biting sarcasm of Bender and Tommy Gavin beckoned. After Katrina and the Flood, the confused innards of Al Swearengen’s Deadwood, Adama and Starbuck made all too much sense.  The Onion AV Club’s Best TV Series Of The 00’s nails it.

LIST TO IGNORE – Ten Stories that Changed Our Lives This Decade: #10 Katrina. #9 Brett Favre.  Delete.  Any list that places Favre, whose family was very much affected by the hurricane, over the suffering of people goes right out the window.

THE WEIRD AND CHEESEHEADY, ‘cuz that’s how we roll – 2009 in Review: Top Weird Stories From Wisconsin: “A 37-year-old Fond du Lac man went to a motel room for what he thought was going to be a romantic tryst but instead was assaulted by four women who used Krazy Glue to attach his privates to his stomach. Police say it was all part of a bizarre plot to punish him for a lover’s quadrangle gone bad.”  Hey, we gave you Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Enough said.

ROUNDUP – I’m a sucker for New York Times graphics.  Philip Niemeyer pictures the past 10 years in a neat little 12×10 matrix.  The word “truthiness” gained popularity around the same time as Katrina/Federal Flood (they used a flood graphic and not a counterclockwise spinny one, phew).  2008’s maverick was Ron Paul and not John McCain – can’t keep pulling out the same old shtick every four years.  I often wonder what happened to 2008’s ardent house flippers.  Hmmm, Brownie was a Bushie term of endearment in 2004 but “tsunami” wasn’t big until 2006?  I really like the evolution of key nouns and verbs across the decade.  Would you have done this graphic differently?

Thus, 2009 comes to an end.  The ox gives way to the tiger.  Here’s wishing all of you a safe rest of the year and a great 2010 filled with pleasant surprises and many new buzzwords to learn.  Peace.

After groaning through the Saints loss to the Cowboys (come on, the Cowboys?!), D and I took the depression-fest one step further and watched 102 Minutes That Changed America. Without a word or a blink, we took in raw chunks of video footage of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001. Eight years later, the same raw feelings, the same nausea, the same urge to dive into the television and save everyone, especially the jumpers. We’ll catch you. No, we won’t.

But, what do those of us who weren’t there know?  What right do we have to what the dead and survivors went through?  Sure, I remember turning on the television at 8:03AM to watch the second airplane crash into the south tower, sinking to the floor and thinking, recognizing, knowing, “This evil.  It has followed me here.”  I recall a hundred different permutations of misery, fear, anger, helplessness, yet this was not for any of us who weren’t there.  How could we possibly know?

I will follow up on this thought in an upcoming post on art and writing based on others’ tragedies and getting it right.  Back to the documentary.   It reminded me that my crystal ball of 2001 predicted a very different 2009 than the one we’re in.  America would have reassessed its alliances with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and Osama Bin Laden would have been nuked from space on September 12th, 2001.  Today, we are still in Iraq (WTF) and just sent 30,000 more men and women to die in Afghanistan, every brown person is considered a threat to national security and Bin Laden’s beard grows longer.   Did those 102 minutes really change America?