My email to the PM and M of Foreign Affairs, please consider sending your own #iranelection
20 Jun 09
To: CannoL@parl.gc.ca, HarpeS@parl.gc.ca
Dear Prime Minister Harper, and Minister Cannon:
I am a Canadian citizen doing my best to follow what is happening in Iran. I am shocked to hear reports that the Canadian Embassy is refusing to accept injured democracy supporters. I sincerely hope that these reports are untrue. If they are true, however, please on behalf of Canadians, open our doors to them. The world is watching.
Peter Zimmerman
Windsor, Ontario
Posted by pzed on June 20, 2009 at 3.36pm
The Changing Meaning of ‘Unauthorized Access’
10 Jun 09
Cohen, Julie E. “The Changing Meaning of ‘Unauthorized Access’.” Distinguished Lecture in Law, Technology and the Arts. Case Western Reserve University, School of Law, Cleveland Ohio. 23 February 2009. Accessed 9 June 2009. <http://uc.princeton.edu/main/index.php/component/content/article/28-all-videos/4554-the-changing-meaning-of-unauthorized-access>
Legal system provides poor tools for resolving disputes over technical mediation of access to information: e.g. DMCA limits on tinkering with music/video formats and players; iPhone tinkering that can result in bricking. Unsatisfactory to give Apple final decision on whether tinkering activities are lawful. Categories are unsuited to technological convergence: iPhone is media player, software, and consumer equipment. Underlying conceptual frameworks do not address consumer’s freedom to tinker with an owned device
e-voting software is proprietary and copyright claims have been used to keep potential problems with e-voting secret. Government profiling: what algorithms get a name on the no-fly list? Where does the data come from?
Search engines and social networking: ability to identify users from search histories, Facebook problems involving new, mandatory features that consumers don’t want. Privacy issue with gmail using contents of email to generate ads–what then happens with the data? Algorithms and data use become trade secrets.
Legal tools don’t address the issues of accessibility to information and more importantly to the technical rules that govern and shape the networked environment. The legal framework operates to obscure technical rules.
Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999): Code is law. Intended metaphorically. Some take this literally, but of course states have no role. Others resist this idea, code is regulated by the market, therefore not law but “market ordering”. However, tools used to evaluate market ordering don’t square well with code, which can be developed to constrain market choice. Network emerges at conversion of public and private interest.
Others argue code is a form of regulation unique in human history: uniquely plastic ex ante and uniquely inflexible ex post, therefore new ideological problems. Based in a thoroughly discredited theory of technological determinism that fails to take into account aspects of social interaction and the evolution of code.
Too easy to understand law, code, market, as distinct Newtonian vectors, overlooking synergies among them and the fact they are strategies deployed by actors to serve self-interested goals.
Consider the larger context in which coded structures emerge. Legal frameworks to regulate access to systems are extended to impact ToS agreements and set parameters for marketplace behaviours. “Technical systems intended to police copyrights. . . represent one prong of a more diversified portfolio of strategies for controlling the shape of the digital media environment” (approx 20 min). Privacy, security, and technical systems for profiling increasingly linked to strategies for monitoring personal mobility and communications traffic. New systems of social ordering emerge where industry and government interests overlap.
How does code regulate? New structures establish prohibitions, but also new political economies around authorization of access to spaces, websites, information, resources, databases, transactional privileges. Governance of access to systems initially conceived of as protecting self-contained systems from malicious attack, not regulating market behaviours. If desire to use copyright to control access to digital files is legitimate, where digital files are widely distributed, controls must be as well, as must processes of authorization. “The figure of the hacker now coexists uneasily with the idea that the real locus of our distrust is the ordinary user” (24.30ish). Finally, privacy/security controls are inverted: authentication controls are all around us, and we become outsiders who need to identify ourselves to have access.
Freedom of speech/information is a central organizing philosophy in our culture, but much of the political economy of the networked information society is organized around secrets. Authorization and authentication become objects of desire, commodities, inducing us to reveal more and more of our personal data. Our trust in the market has allowed what are fundamentally governance decisions to be regulated by technical standards often developed in secrecy.
Everyday experience of the network: most users are not coders, bloggers, contributors to Wikipedia, etc. nor are they security experts or hackers. People generally interact with the network for mundane purposes, finding directions, ordering stuff, communication; to a lesser extent community building. When everyday user innovation comes into conflict with authorization regime, that’s at odds with how innovation historically occurs. More importantly, authorization regime seeks to instill a culture of permission-seeking in a predictable network environment in which independence of mind and action ceases to be valued. May also remake conditions of subjectivity and social identity.
Law and policy making must address these things comprehensively. Law should mitigate rather than reinforce structural problems arising from political economies of authorization. Best done through legislation, rather than waiting for courts to figure it out based on existing, inadequate frameworks. Regulations mandating greater transparency around closed systems, codes, data retention policies would help. However, transparency is retrospective, policy makers should recognize that users have interests to assert. May want to consider imposing obligations within standards processes.
Posted by pzed on June 10, 2009 at 11.41am
What’s wrong with Canada’s internet?
9 Jun 09
Michael Geist presents to the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. Short answer: just about everything.
via Boing Boing
Posted by pzed on June 9, 2009 at 10.08am
sesame soba noodles
17 May 09
Ingredients
(amounts are mostly approximations)
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
- 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
- an onion
- 1/4 teaspoon red hot pepper flakes
- a sweet red pepper chopped as you like it
- one package (300g) soba noodles
- 2 tablespoons tahini
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon demerara sugar
- the juice of 1/2 a lemon
Directions
If the sesame seeds aren’t toasted already, toast them.
Cook the noodles according to the package directions. Meanwhile. . . .
In a small bowl, mix the tahini, soy sauce, and sugar, and set aside. In a heavy bottomed pot, fry the onion and hot pepper flakes in sunflower oil until the onion is clear. Throw in the sweet red pepper and the sesame seeds for a couple minutes at the end. Finally, add the sauce mixture and bring to a low boil. With any luck, this will be the point at which the noodles are cooked and drained. Add the noodles to the pot, toss with the sauce, then finally add lemon juice and toss some more. Serves 4-6 (depending on whether you have anything else to eat).
Thanks to Jodi for the photo!
Posted by pzed on May 17, 2009 at 6.02pm
nit picking, blip edition
23 Mar 09
What’s wrong with this excerpt from blip.fm’s FAQ page?
A blip is a combination of 1) a song and 2) a short message that accompanies it. The way you create a blip is to first search for a song that you want to hear (or a song that you want your listeners to hear), then add a short message (under 150 characters), finally you submit it. Submitting a blip is also referred to as “blipping”, so from here on out, when you read “he blipped my favorite track” it means “he submitted a blip that had my favorite song attached”.
In the first sentence, a blip is defined as a song plus a comment. Hence the example in the last sentence should read something like “he submitted a blip that included my favorite song”. The song is not attached to the blip, it’s one of two constituent parts. The example as written says “he submitted a [song plus a comment] that had my favorite song attached”.
One could, of course, leave the comment field blank, but there would still be a song plus a comment of zero length making up the blip.
Posted by pzed on March 23, 2009 at 1.59pm
The Absent User
27 Feb 09
Martell, Charles. “The Absent User: Physical Use of Academic Library Collections and Services Continues to Decline 1995–2006.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 34.5: 400-407.
Long story short: circulation counts, way down; reference transactions, way WAY down. Same here. Conclusions?
Clearly today’s users have substituted virtual use for in-person use. While they may be absent, they are not inactive. Networked electronic resources via library portals and the Internet have provided users with benefits that go far beyond anything available when physical use was the only alternative.
Librarians have coped successfully with the transition, as reported in several major user satisfaction surveys.* This is an extremely positive sign. It demonstrates that librarians have done that which was in their power to achieve. Keeping users tethered to the physical library was never a realistic option. Instead users engage in whatever strategy works best for them. This has resulted in fewer visits to the library and more use of networked resources for research, study, and teaching.
Trying to bring students back to the library in order to use the print collections may fail as a strategy if instructors do not require such use from their students or if online alternatives are available. Adding a café, art gallery, computer labs, classrooms, and other non-library services may increase gate counts but they are unlikely to influence circulation rates.
There is no end in sight to the declines in circulation and reference that many libraries are experiencing. This presents considerable difficulties for anyone who is attempting to justify a new building or an improved materials budget. In these situations it becomes necessary to demonstrate how monumental increases in the usage of electronic collections and services balanced with sound investments in the print collections will provide optimum benefits to students and faculty.
I wish this last point were better elaborated. Around here we’ve been talking about one justification for capital expenditures being in reconfiguring space precisely to meet changing patron behaviours and expanding service needs.
—————
* – Martell cites: Carol Tenopir, Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: An Overview and Analysis of Recent Research Studies (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, Aug. 2003). 72 pp. Available: http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub120abst.html (Dec. 26, 2007); Amy Friedlander, Dimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environment: Introduction to a Data Set Assembled by the Digital Library Federation and Outsell, Inc. (Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation and Council on Library and Information Resources, November 2002): 1–20. Available: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub110/contents.html (Dec. 24, 2007); College Students’ Perceptions of Library and Information Resources 2005: A Report to the OCLC Membership. Available: http://www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/studentperceptions_ part4.pdf (Dec. 26, 2007).
Posted by pzed on February 27, 2009 at 1.34pm
Will power
27 Feb 09
The SB Will is a ship in London that can be booked for private parties.
If cruising on the River Thames, the highlight of the trip is passing through Tower Bridge as it opens exclusively for your party – literally stopping the traffic.
Now there’s a selling point. “Look how terribly important we are, chaps, the Tower Bridge is opening exclusively for us! Pity the yobs who have to sit in traffic watching us cruise by. Ha ha.”
I heard about the SB Will from the Tower Bridge itself.
Posted by pzed on February 27, 2009 at 8.06am
“In tough times, creative pursuits stage a revival”
23 Feb 09
When all else fails, make art.
Housing prices, industries and morale are all sinking. But for some, the recession brings a rare moment of opportunity – the chance to bravely pursue a dream when there is nothing else to lose.
It’s too Monday morning to think about how this connects to the stuff I’ve been thinking about the last few days, except to say I think creativity in art must be both personal and social, and somewhere in there lies the connection to citizenship and cities and making things better.
Posted by pzed on February 23, 2009 at 10.00am
a more nuanced discussion of creative class
22 Feb 09
Yesterday’s post about joining the creative class was kind of meant as a joke, but kind of not. The amazingly successful pecha kucha night held at Artcite last Thursday (and organized by my hunny, Jodi Green) inspired me to start getting better connected to what’s going on in Windsor.
All the talks went really well, and the energy and excitement both in the gallery and at the after party were remarkable. Phog’s Tom Lucier taped and uploaded all six Pecha Kucha Windsor talks. Tom, also one of the presenters, subtitled his talk “Growing Windsor’s Creative Class”, and this expression, creative class, was picked up by others over the evening.
During the discussion afterwards, I was tempted to challenge everyone to think beyond the term “creative class”. It makes me uncomfortable, but at the time I couldn’t think how to articulate exactly why, and I’m still not entirely sure. It reminds me entirely too much of knowledge worker, but being a member of the creative class sounds so much less like being a line worker in the manufacture of “knowledge”.
Years ago, I read Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide through the American Status System (Leddy Library: HN90.S6 F87 1983), in which he lays out a persuasive statement of what is obvious to any non-America: that America has a well-defined and fairly rigid class structure. But he also posits the existence of an “X” class of people, usually either impoverished artists or wealthy drop-outs, who (sort of) live outside the class system. These are the Bohemians in Florida’s formulation of the creative class, but note that they make up a small minority. The majority of this creative class are defined by the nature of their contribution to the economy, mostly in the private sector. Which isn’t to say that creative economic activity isn’t what Windsor needs, lord knows we need all the economic activity we can get.
Thursday night a very diverse group of people were brought together by their love of this city (this polis). To me, the unifying theme of Pecha Kucha Windsor’s six talks turned out to be citizenship. What does it mean to be a part of a city, to love that city, to be hurt by that city; how can we make that city better, how can we get more people thinking about, talking about, and making the change we need; how do we encourage residents to interact with their city as active participants, as citizens, rather than as passive consumers of utilities and services? And how can we live up to that ideal ourselves?
Posted by pzed on February 22, 2009 at 1.22pm
try some SORBET!
21 Feb 09
Those who read Jodi will recognize my new theme (code name: SORBET!) has basically the same structural underpinnings as the theme we developed for her. Getting away from the gawdawful wordpress default theme has been a three-year procrastination for me, but no longer. Still some bugs to work out, older posts not formatting quite like newer ones probably because of changes in wordpress, for example. If anything looks funky to you please let me know.
Posted by pzed on February 21, 2009 at 8.17pm
