A few years ago I found an article pointing out how spammers had figured out how to abuse some code I wrote back in 2001 or so. I’d put it on the list to fix and even started a blog post so that I could take my lumps publicly.

Now I’ve rediscovered that draft post…and that I never fixed the bad code it had fingered. Worse, I’m no longer in a position to change the code.

Along similar lines, I’ve been told that a database driven DHCP config file generator that I wrote back in the late 1990s is still in use, and still suffers bugs due to my failure to sanitize MAC addresses that, being entered by humans, sometimes have errors.

I’ve written bad code since then and will write more bad code still, but as my participation in open source projects has increased, I’ve enjoyed the benefit of community examples and criticism. My work now is better for it.

In March of this year Apple applied for a patent on technology that enables or disables features of a phone via a config file. The tech is already in use: it’s the carrier profiles we’ve been downloading recently. On the one hand this is just an extension of the parental controls that Apple has included in Mac OS X since the early days, but it also implies some rather anti-consumer thinking at the company.

One examplar claim in the patent is that the config file can include a “blacklist of device resources to be restricted from access.”

AT&T used this this technology to block MMS until recently, and uses it now to block tethering, but the description given in the patent application goes much further:

For example, a carrier may wish to provide an enhanced service which utilizes the global positioning system (GPS) functionality in a mobile device. Carrier may wish to charge a premium for this service, so it may configure carrier provisioning profile to disallow third party applications from accessing the GPS functionality in device, and instead only allow applications digitally signed by carrier (or another entity affiliated with carrier) to access the GPS services in device.

Readers may remember the Trusted Computing video by Lutz Vogel and Benjamin Stephan that spotlighted the growing interest within the computing industry to impose new and artificial restrictions on the way we use the hardware and software we use daily.

The following was my email response to a thread on the web4lib mail list:

Okay, it must be said: you’re all wrong[1].

I can understand that news of a librarian being fired/furloughed will raise our defenses, but that’s no excuse for giving up the considered and critical thinking that this occasion demands.

Consider this: the principle’s blog reveals a reasonable person actively trying to improve academic performance despite crushing economic conditions. The communications show a level of transparency many of us can only wish for.

Unfortunately, many on this mail list seem to have come to the conclusion that this library was a stellar, but unappreciated example of everything that libraries should be, capriciously closed by a principle who secretly wanted to see the football team shoving bookshelves around on a hot summer day.

Go ahead, mock the story (and so far we only have one story about this) for suggesting that the books have been “re-organized” by subject, but the fact remains that this community didn’t think their library was organized in a way that met its needs. This suggests that either (a) it wasn’t well organized, or (b) the librarian had failed to educate the users and develop the finding aids necessary to help the community use the library.

Nobody here is banning or burning books. Nobody is suggesting that libraries are irrelevant. Far from it: this story about the modernization of a library to make it a more significant part of students’ academic activity.

News that a member of our profession has been furloughed is sad. But, news that a principle is investing time, attention, and money in the library is good. News that those two stories are one in the same should make us ask critical questions about how we and our libraries are positioned to serve our community.

[1]: Everybody but Robert L. Balliot, whose message has so far been ignored.

Howard Weaver wants newspapers to play offense against Google and others, but Chris Tolles, CEO of news aggregator Topix.com says he’s been trying Weaver’s plan for a while, and there’s no bucket of gold to be found in it.

The problem, it would appear, is that newspapers don’t sell news. They sell advertising space and pair it with news as a loss leader to keep the eyeballs. And while that worked in print, it doesn’t work on the web. Web users don’t click on ads on news sites (perhaps for the same reasons they don’t click ads on social network sites).

Yes. The news in a newspaper was a loss leader, though it’ll probably make you feel better to think of the sports and entertainment that way. Television overtook newspapers as the primary news source in the 1970s. And in 2008, newspapers fell behind internet sources. The economics of it now are that news printed on bad paper are less of a loss leader and more simply just a loss. (It’s hard to know if the poor performance of newspaper websites is a result of this or if it reflects other failings.)

Those worried about what will happen to the public sphere after the death of newspapers should take a look at this 2004 study comparing television vs. newspaper front pages: newspapers had twice as many lifestyle and crime stories as the evening TV news. The public sphere has long needed better nourishment.

Mashable’s Josh Catone thinks NPR is the future of mainstream media. Their audience is way up, and it’s a well proven example of the crowdfunding model. My local affiliate provides some of the best local news around.

Anything that can help stop this kind of madness is worth a good long look (yes, I don’t like the DiggBar any more than John Gruber, despite Digg’s assurances it’s safe), so I’ve had rev=“canonical” on my mind (yes, that’s rev, not rel). Chris Shiflett thinks it will save the internet, but Matt Cutts suggests what I’ve always thought: why not resolve short URLs to their long form and store/display them that way?

Who cares if there are n+1 different services providing short URLs point to the same resource? If we build our applications to resolve the short ones until they stop returning 301s or 302s (or a few other 300-series codes), then we’ll always have something that’s pretty close to the canonical URL. The short URL doesn’t need to be saved or indexed, it needs only be used in the transmission of the data (and then really only in the context of Twitter).

Digg’s attempts to put a frame over everybody else’s website, however, is evil. It it’s not only violates the user’s URL bar (and the publisher’s URL), it breaks any rational attempt to identify the canonical URL for the destination. They’ll tell you it’s okay, they use rel=“canonical”, but rel=“canonical” doesn’t work cross-domain, so that doesn’t mean much. And all this framing stuff makes me wonder why anybody would think Digg (or any other site whose business is based on monetizing the work of others) would respect a site’s rev=“canonical” preferences.

Andrew Tobias asks if we can finally put the tax argument to bed:

• Is the reason you’re not investing in stocks these days (a) the prospect of having to pay 15% capital gains tax?  Or (b) the fear of further losses?  (Well, or – c – that you don’t have any money?)
• Is the reason you don’t start a new business that (a) if it made you a lot of money you’d have to pay a lot of taxes?  Or that (b) you can’t get anyone to risk the funds you need to finance it?
• Is the reason you don’t hire new workers that (a) you’re paying so much in taxes?  Or that (b) with business down so much, you don’t need them?
• Is the reason you’re not spending money as freely as you used to that (a) your taxes are too high?  Or that (b) you’re afraid of losing your job?  (Well, or – c – that you’ve lost half your net worth and suddenly realize you’d better get serious about saving for a decent retirement?)
• Is the reason you’re unemployed that (a) taxes are too high to make you want a job?  Or that (b) you’ve sent out 400 resumes and called every connection you have, but no one’s hiring.

FORTUNE Magazine, March 7, 1994:

Like alligators in a swamp, financial derivatives lurk in the global economy. Deriving their value from the worth of some underlying asset, like currencies or equities, these potentially lucrative contracts are measured in trillions of dollars. But they also lie in convoluted layers in a tightly wound market of global interconnections. And that gives them the capacity to bring on a worldwide financial quake.

Washington Monthly, October, 1994

The Wall Street Journal declared that derivatives were now a $35 trillion–that’s right, trillion–worldwide market. The U.S. share is estimated at $16 trillion, which is four times the nation’s economic output. And the Journal estimates that since 1993 there have been $6.4 billion lost in the derivatives game–$6.4 billion that could have opened businesses and created jobs. [...] And here’s the real kicker: Because the key players are federally insured banks, every taxpayer in the country is on the line.

That last story is by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND).

Public Radio’s Marketplace wasn’t on-air in 1994, but they felt it necessary to explain derivatives in 2004 (though I’m sure I remember an earlier, foreboding story about derivatives on the show that I can’t find in their archives). An archive search there also pulls up stories of the $120 million Credit Suisse loses due to derivatives and an $11 billion accounting problem in Fannie Mae’s accounting (also due to derivatives).

Stefan Savage, speaking in a segment on March 13’s On The Media, asked:

The question I like to ask people is, what are you going to do to the highway system to reduce crime. And when you put it that way, it sounds absolutely ridiculous, because while criminals do use the highway, no rational person is suggesting that if only we could change the transportation architecture that crime would go away.

Savage was speaking on the matter of internet security, and his comment was a counterpoint to a number of commentators who suggested the only way to secure the internet would be to replace the internet. This notion that we need a smarter internet has been around for a while, but its proponents have forgotten that the basic dumbness of the internet is the foundation of its success.

Mike Neuenschwander, for one, was ecstatic that the On The Media segment didn’t “slide into a futile discussion on the merits of world peace,” and followed Savage’s point with considerable discussion about the difference between the network and the social structure of trust. (In contemplating a recent NY Times story on this subject, Computing Community Consortium also quoted Savage on this point. The Coolest part: Savage commented to explain more.)

Near the end of the piece, Jonathan Zittrain explains why attempts to impose more limitations on the internet are so dangerous to the future viability of the internet:

so much of the code we now think of as central and crucial and cool and revolutionary is code for which, when most rational people first see it, their reaction is, what’s the point?

Zittrain offers Twitter as an example, but Ray Tomlinson offers an even better one. According to the legend, the man who invented email told his friend “Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on,” as he first demonstrated the application that would eventually become the internet’s first killer app.

A 2004 commentary by Doug Bandow of The Future of Freedom Foundation points out how much we love war, well at least politicians love war:

War has become a centerpiece of American politics. The war on terrorism is the focus of U.S. foreign policy. A real war is being fought in Iraq. Jimmy Carter proclaimed the “moral equivalent of war” over energy. Some analysts are advocating a war on obesity.

But, says Bandow, “the longest-running ongoing ‘war’ is the war on drugs.” And since then, our attitudes have changed a bit. A 2008 Washington Post story by Alfonso Cuéllar reminds us:

Two decades ago, illicit imports of cocaine, heroin and marijuana and their use by Americans topped the list of public concerns in nationwide surveys at 22 percent. In January, a Pew Research Center poll found that only 1 percent of the population considered drugs and alcohol the most important problem facing the country.

Nixon Declared the war in June 1971, but the content of the Wikipedia article probably reflects public sentiment in its outsized section on criticisms.

This is an old one, but because I’m in the air again today it’s worth digging up this up. Defense Tech long ago pointed out The Identity Project’s position on showing ID for air travel:

If a 19 year-old college student can get a fake ID to drink, why couldn’t a bad person get one, too? And no matter how sophisticated the security embedded into the ID, wouldn’t a well-financed terrorist be able to falsify that, too? The answer to both questions is obviously ‘yes’.

Honest people, on the other hand, go to Pro-Life rallies. Honest people go to Pro-Choice rallies, too. Honest people attend gun shows. Honest people protest the actions of the President of the United States. Honest people fly to political conventions. What if those with the power to put people on a ‘no fly’ list decided that they didn’t like the reason for which you wanted to travel? The honest people wouldn’t be going anywhere.

You’d think the top search results on the matter would be newer than 1999, but that’s where you’ll find this NYT article and PubLaw item story, both from precambrian times. Worse, both of those articles suggest that my links to them may not be entirely kosher.

The problem is probably that US courts have not spoken clearly on such a case. A Danish court in 2006 did, but I think that no case in the US has gone far enough to actually set a precedent. Another chance at settling this issue was lost earlier this month when BlockShopper settled, rather than continue a costly defense of such a case. The EFF is confident BlockShopper could have won, but that means little when the legal bills come in.

Related at EFF: Kelly v. Arriba Soft and Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

NH State Representative Delmar Burridge recently introduced HB 0037 proscribing death by firing squad:

When the penalty of death is imposed, the punishment for a defendant convicted under RSA 630:1, I(g) shall be execution by firing squad.

Burridge would likely describe himself as “principled,” like when he reported one of his constituents to the cops because of his advocacy for marijuana decriminalization.

The photo above is a still from a Ridley Report interview with him.

It’s called Gigapan, a robotic panorama-maker. David Bergman used one to take the picture above (though his view was much larger) (you can buy your own for about $300 if you get in on the beta). The point, however, is that if you zoom in real close, you can see W’s pursed lipped scowl.

Finding a 2007 blog post about a condom and a cheeseburger made a friend ask if student blogs should be moved off-domain. My flippant answer was “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

His retort was simple and quick: “Tell that to the catholic church.”

It stung. He had me, I was sure. It’s hard for many Americans not to think of sex abuse when Catholic Church comes to mind, but there are probably two lessons from that:

1. Suppression of unfavorable news is no longer possible. If you’d rather not see people air your laundry in public, it’s best not to dirty it in the first place. And if you do, it’s best to go public first and ask forgiveness. Fortunately, this openness goes two-ways; most people will forgive stupidity when they know that evidence of their own stupidity is just a few clicks away elsewhere online.
2. The other lesson may be more ironic: data from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reveals that the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Catholic has been relatively constant since the 1970s, despite the scandal, and the percentage of those Catholics attending Mass has been growing since 2000.

On the face of it, hosting student blogs at a different domain from plymouth.edu offers some insulation against embarrassment, but that insulation is limited. Just as the public demands that campuses censure students for their off-campus indiscretions, they will hold the institution accountable for off-domain blather. And in the bargain, the institution also forecloses any opportunity to enjoy the recognition and link love that good writing generates.

This dispute is going on now, tonight. There are obviously at least two sides to this story (Viacom &Time Warner Cable). You’d think a media giant like Viacom would know how to handle this one, but it seems that all they’ve got is that splash screen in front of a bunch of their websites and this uninspiring ad. Time Warner Cable, which you might think is just a bunch of network plumbers, seems a little more connected. They’ve got people on Twitter (one, two, three) who are actually talk with people, not just at them. jeffTWC (whose profile says he’s TWC’s director of digital communication) points out that Viacom appears to be threatening to block web access to their sites from TWC’s customers.

Still, isn’t this so old economy? Time Warner Cable needs Viacom’s content, but Viacom needs to Time Warner Cable’s audience.

New economy: it seems a growing number of customers are happy just getting internet access and spending their evenings on Facebook with Hulu playing in the background.

Former 2008 Presidential Candidate Lee Mercer shares your concern for circumstances and issues. He wants to crack down on treason and recognizes Democratic concerns about expansion of executive power.

One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine looked at the man and said, “Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.”

The old man said “Okay”, and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.”

The man thanked him and again just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you understand?”

The old man looked at the Marine and said, “Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.”

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “See you tomorrow, Sir.”

Via Bob Garlitz.

Nobody but the studios seem happy about Apple’s implementation of HDCP on its recent laptops. The situation leaves people who legally purchased movies unable to play them on external displays (yeah, that means you can’t watch movies on the video projector you borrowed from the office).

A related story may reveal the extent of the problem. The MPAA is petitioning the FCC to allow it to use “selective output control” to block playback of video content in a manner similar to HDCP. SOC would disable your DVR and analog outputs, as well as some 20 million HD TVs, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Public Knowledge has joined the fight, explaining that if the FCC grants the MPAA’s request, it would give studios unprecedented control over the consumer electronics landscape, including the ability to require people to buy expensive new equipment. Sounds unlikely? PK suggests you look at Sony’s recent actions: “Last month they announced that you can watch Hancock on VoD distributed over the Internet before it comes out on DVD. The only way to receive this content is through a Sony Internet device that connects to a special plug only available on a Sony TV. Sony is a studio and member of the MPAA.”

If anything, this appears to offer more proof of the XKCD argument: if you want digital media you can count on, pirate it.

enrguerrero’s photo of a Lincoln/Obama paste up mashup on the corner of Larkin and Myrtle streets in San Francisco.

From the Borowitz Report:

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

“Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon.  “If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist.” More…

Story via, picture from jmtimages.

We all knew the sordid details of Palin’s candidacy would emerge, but who figured they pour out so soon or on Fox News? Via Borkweb.com

Presidential Limos are armored, yes, but Gregg Merksamer reveals that George W. Bush’s limos sport five-inch thick glass, more than twice as thick as in Clinton’s limo. Merksamer should know, he wrote the book on so-called “professional cars”. He says half an inch is enough to stop a .44 magnum at point blank range, and BMW’s X5 “Security” model features only a little more than that. So what’s it mean when a person needs ten times that amount?

John McCain’s election team apparently told staff at The Phoenix Biltmore to have extra whisky on hand for their election party tonight. They’re not just planning to drown their sorrows: Republicans and Republican-leaning independents drink more whisky than the national average.

Sweet photo by Bearfaced, though I almost used this picture of barrels (or this one).

GPL and CC are incompatible? FSF says so, and the Debian Free Software Guidelines agree. I’m as opposed to ruinous compromises as the next guy, and I feel the GPL fever, but I just want to use Mark James‘ excellent Silk Icons in my GPL’d WordPress plugin.

I think this election has designers more involved than most. (Via DottieboBottie.)