Monday, 15 September 2003

well, not quite... That "final" post should have appeared last Friday, but it didn't because of a most annoying upstreaming problem at Radio Userland. I was finally able to add that final post from my other computer. The cost is that my May-September entries appear to have disappeared. I will add these entries to the new TypePad version. In the meantime, they are also available in the LiveJournal mirror. Although it's very unfortunate that those entries were deleted, I hardly care because I'm so happy that I'm finally free of the Radio Userland software! This last problem left a very bad taste in my mouth. 11:56:53 AM     final post in the Salon / Radio version of this blog new address: http://explodedlibrary.typepad.com/salonblog/ I'm also switching the explodedlibrary.info domain redirect so that it goes to TypePad The link to the RSS feed is at the very top right. Please subscribe to it! TypePad has been my primary blogging tool for the last few weeks. I've been very impressed with it. During this time Radio version of the blog has just been a glorified mirror of the TypePad version. Still, it takes extra work to maintain this - especially when I already have a LiveJournal mirror. So that's why, with some mixed feelings, I'm saying goodbye to this Salon blog and the Salon blogs community server. (There isn't a way that I can tie my TypePad blog into the Salon community server, is there? Please let me know if there is) I'll also be on the Salon blog web ring. Please bear in mind that my TypePad blog is still a work in progress. I haven't finished my blog rolls yet - which will be more extensive. I had planned to convert all of my Radio blog to TypePad, but I'm not sure if it's really worth the effort - which would involve recategorizing all of my posts. So my main focus is on cutting loose the Radio version of this blog. Doing that will give me more time (and more importantly, energy and enthusiasm) to continue improving the TypePad version of my blog. So far as I know, the Radio version will continue to exist as a static cobweb - so the links to those postings will continue to work. 11:26:14 AM

Friday, 9 May 2003

why I'm not interested in audio blogging NPR Highlights Audioblogging. Audio Blogs: Online Diarists Sound Off "In the 18th century, people recorded the mundane details of life in diaries. Today, bloggers -- or Web loggers -- share their most intimate thoughts and opinions with the entire world on the Internet. The online journals, known as "blogs," are increasingly popular. And while they've been dominated by text and photos, they're now also going in a new direction, using audio as well. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on "audio blogs" -- online audio diaries that can make anyone's life a serial drama. New technology allows them to be updated via a simple phone call.... Moorehead predicts that once the novelty of audio blogging subsides, it will become just another tool in a blogger's repertoire. Since audio blogs are relatively new, they don't yet cover the range of their written equivalents. But some people are already using audio in creative ways. A site called The Quiet American provides audio travelogues submitted by people around in a feature called 'one-minute vacations.' " [NPR, via weblogged News] I agree with Will that this article is already behind the curve by not even noting moblogging ...[The Shifted Librarian] I heard that segment too. Basically I'm not interested in audio blogging because of the following reasons. I would umm and ahh too much - unless I had written down everything that I was going to say, which would make me wonder what was the point of audio blogging. Yes, I would be providing my readers with the novelty of hearing my voice with its weird/cute blend of accent. But that novelty couldn't justify how stressful I would find the whole thing to be. 9:22:31 AM

Tuesday, 6 May 2003

the FBI would have a field day snooping in Amazon.com's customer profiles Recommendation Systems in 2003. Recommendation Systems in 2003 Source: The New York Times "Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial" Lisa Guernsey takes a look at recommendation systems being used by Amazon and others. Interesting reading. You'll also learned what happened to the Firefly technology after it was purchased by Microsoft. [The ResourceShelf] I'm a little embarassed to admit it, but I've found some of Amazon's recommendations to be quite spot on. Admittedly, this has required me to be proactive and remove the anomalies from my purchasing history. It also helped to tell them which things I already have and how much I like them. The question for me is whether it's worth it, considering how much personal information I'm entrusting to Amazon. Because I don't really trust them not to share it without my permission, And then there's the spectre of the PATRIOT Act. The information in library borrowing records is nothing compared to some of the goodies which might be contained in Amazon's customer profiles. These would surely be "business records" for the purposes of the Act. So why do I continue playing Amazon's recommendations game, knowing of the risks to my privacy? A part of me thinks that the damage is already done, so what does that it matter. Also, I'm too interested in this technology to be able to ignore it. 1:57:17 PM     procrastination is inevitable, so why can't it be about political and philosophical matters? Getting High. Larry Solum really really really doesn't want you (that is, judicial clerks or law students) to read his most recent post. Apparently we're too immature, we don't have enough time, and we should be doing other things than worry about high and low politics. God forbid we lowly little students worry about such silly things like what makes a justice... [a mad tea-party] 1:32:58 PM

Monday, 5 May 2003

my links page Well, I have finished my page of links to other blogs. I expect that I will be the main person who uses this page. I will now be able to keep track of my favourite blogs whilst at work. Although I love news aggregators, and am back to liking the Radio Userland news aggregator which I use, it is very interesting to view the actual blog and see all the design changes which bloggers are constantly making. Like everything else in the blogosphere, this link page is a work in progress. It is just a selection of my favourite blogs. To list all would be information overload. I do hope to maintain a featured blog of the week/month - highlighting a recent discovery or another blog which I view in my aggregator. This page also serves as a bridge between the exploded library and my quite rudimentary personal web page at Hamline. 7:58:47 AM

Wednesday, 30 April 2003

the iTunes Music Store is what I've been waiting for, mostly Louis Louis. Forbes' Arik Hesseldahl ("Apple Tunes Up"): [A]fter a short tryout and a tad of obligatory skepticism, we can honestly say we're impressed. The iTunes Music Store, an online music download service that is integrated into Apple's iTunes 4 digital jukebox software, is enormously easy to use and dangerously addictive. On the user-friendliness front, I can observationally add it was far easier for my Dad to set himself up than it can be for him to edit a Word document. He was thrilled to find plenty of Louis Prima. [Bag and Baggage] I must confess that for all my criticisms of the RIAA and its attempts to stifle technologies which do not fit into its outdated business model, I have never used Napster, Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster or any other file trading services. There are a few reasons. Lack of bandwidth for one (not an issue now thanks to my new EarthLink dsl connection at home). Also I have vague fears of viruses or adware that might hijack or embed itself in my computer. Finally, although I oppose the RIAA's rhetoric that brands all online music consumers as thieves, my own moral compass has cautioned patience, to wait until there is a legal and safe alternative. Well, I'm glad that I'm a Mac user and that some very cool software is available for us (and that the Windows world will have to wait for months for an alternative! *gloat*). Maybe it's because I've never looked at the other services that I'm so impressed with the iTunes Music Store. It's a fabulous time-waster for one thing. I spent at least an hour browsing through their catalogue, just listening to the free 30 second streaming samples which they provide for each song. Some of these are daggy songs from my childhood & teens which I haven't heard for years, which I'd never think of buying - although at 99 cents a song, I guess that I could. It is dangerously easy to buy music on iTunes. Once you've given them a credit card number, it's all "one-click" purchasing. Before I knew it I had bought 5 songs. I am yet to test the features of transferring the purchased songs to other computers (up to 2 others) or burning the songs to a CD (up to 10 times), so I can't comment on how the DRM works in practice. The catalog is extensive enough to keep me busy & poor. It does have gaps in its content. For example, I noticed that a few prominent artists are missing (the Beatles & Madonna). Also, most of the catalog is mainstream in that the artists are somehow connected with a major record label. There's no reason why local and more independent artists (such as Australian alternative bands) couldn't appear on iTunes - or is there? Finally, the coverage is often incomplete for the artists which are on the catalog. For example, the only Crowded House albums on the catalogue are Woodface and the self-titled album. Also, not necessarily all the songs in an album will be on the catalogue - such as only 2 songs of Crowded House's self-titled album are included. None of this is very surprising or intimidating - as a law librarian, I'm very used to dealing "selected coverage" issues with electronic journals. Just because the library supposedly has access to an electronic version of a journal - it doesn't mean that the particular article which I'm looking for will be covered. You can find music by browsing through their catalogue or using their search engine. The search engine works well, especially if you're looking for something specific. One drawback with browsing is that you might not have the same definitions of "alternative", "pop" and "rock" as iTunes' catalogers. On the other hand, browsing gives you the chance to serenditously find music which you've long forgotten about. On the whole, I am very impressed with the iTunes Music Store. It's easy, legal and cheap - at least in my opinion. Most importantly, it seems to work. I'm sure that as it gets more established, it will improve in coverage and other functionality. By the way, there is a very interesting article about this in Salon - to read it you need to subscribe or watch an ad to get a daily pass. 9:30:17 AM

Sunday, 27 April 2003

truth and lies in public discourse: Fox, Nike and Kamiya This week I’ve musing about truth and lies in public discourse. They are quite different issues but it is ironic that as Salon’s Gary Kamiya is being castigated for his extremely honest and courageous essay about the fall of Baghdad, we see companies such as Fox News and Nike go to court to preserve their right to mislead the public. 1. Distorting the News The courts have officially ruled that it is okay for television news to lie and distort the truth. Accepting a defense rejected by three other Florida state judges, a Florida appeals court has reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre. Here's the full scoop: Jane Akre and Steve Wilson had produced an expose for WTVT/Fox News of Tampa about how Florida supermarkets were reneging on a promise not to sell hormone-laden milk from rBGH-injected cows. In their investigations, they also found many troubling things about the artificial hormone and its maker, Monsanto Company. Fox News had already advertised the expose, but the day before it was to air, the station received a threatening letter from Monsanto's lawyers. Fox ordered Akre to retract her story and do a slanted piece in favor of Monsanto, but Akre refused, on the grounds that it would be dishonest journalism. As a result, she was fired. Akre sued, but a Florida appeals court has now ruled that it is technically not against any law, rule or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast. [Reader Weekly, Duluth Minnesota] First, for the lawyer types, the case is New World Communications of Tampa v. Akre, 2003 WL 327505, 28 Fla. L. Weekly D460. The issue before the court was not whether broadcasters are allowed to mislead the public. Rather, it involved interpreting 448.102, Fla. Stat. (Supp. 1998), Florida’s private-sector whistler-blower law. In my view, the Court made its decision in the following two quotations: Even if we agreed with Akre that the FCC's news distortion policy was a "rule" as defined by section 120.52(15), her argument overlooks the fact that the whistle-blower's statute specifically limits the definition of "rule" to an "adopted" rule. § 448.101(4). "This limitation to 'adopted' material only appears deliberate, and well serves the public by hinging civil liability upon matters of which due notice, actual or imputed, has been conveyed." Forrester v. John B. Phipps, Inc., 643 So.2d 1109 (Fla. 1st DCA 1994). We find the legislature's use of the word "adopted" in the statute to be a limitation on the scope of conduct that will subject an employer to liability under the statute. … First, federal law recognizes a dichotomy between rulemaking and adjudication; it does not equate the two. See Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hosp., 488 U.S. 204, 109 S.Ct. 468, 102 L.Ed.2d 493 (1988) (Scalia, J., concurring). Second, while federal agencies may have discretion to formulate policy through the adjudicative process, the same is not true under Florida law. The Florida Legislature has limited state agencies' discretion to formulate policy through the adjudicative process by requiring agencies to formally adopt each agency statement that fits the definition of a "rule" under section 120.52. See § 120.54. As noted above, the legislature's use of the word "adopted" in the whistle-blower's statute was deliberate and was intended to limit the scope of conduct that will subject an employer to liability. This limitation is consistent with the legislature's requirement that agency statements that fit the definition of a "rule" be formally adopted. You might say that the Appellants (the Fox affiliate) won on a technicality. It doesn’t matter if they violated the FCC news distortion policy, because that policy had never been adopted according to the exact requirements of the Florida statute. Because of this, the District Court of Appeal did not need to decide whether the Appellants had in fact violated the FCC news distortion policy. The Court did discuss the news distortion issue somewhat. It recognized In re CBS Program "Hunger in America", 20 F.C.C.2d 143, 150-51 (1969) as the leading authority on the issue. It also cited a journal article: Chad Raphael, The FCC's Broadcast News Distortion Rules: Regulation by Drooping Eyelid, 6 Comm. L. & Policy 485 (2001). Much of the Hunger in America opinion concerns whether a broadcaster is liable if one of its rogue employees distorts the news – unknown and unbidden by management. The FCC wrote: [U]nless our investigation reveals involvement of the licensee or its management there will be no hazard to the station's licensed status. Such improper actions by employees without the knowledge of th licensee may raise questions as to whether the licensee is adequately supervising its employees, but normally will not raise an issue as to the licensee's character qualifications. If the facts in New World Communications of Tampa v. Akre are correct, it seems pretty clear that the Fox affiliate engaged in the “top down” management-mandated distortion which the FCC was concerned about here: Rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest -- indeed, there is no act more harmful to the public's ability to handle its affairs Violations of this news distortion policy are only relevant when the FCC is deciding whether to renew a broadcaster’s license. There are no other legal consequences for distorting the news and misleading the public. And can anyone imagine that the current FCC, headed by Michael Powell would give a Fox affiliate even a slap on the wrist for distorting the news? The law is an ass – as indicated by the result of the New World Communications of Tampa v. Akre – but politics is worse. 2. Nike's Right to Mislead The Christian Science Monitor has a good summary of the facts and issues involved (thanks to Howard Bashman for that cite ): The case, to be heard Wednesday, centers on Nike's ability to participate in public debate over its foreign business operations - which critics call dangerous and immoral - without being held liable for any false or misleading statements. The question is whether Nike is engaging in commercial speech, which is subject to civil charges if found to be false, or political speech, which enjoys greater protection under the First Amendment. The US Supreme Court is reviewing Kasky v. Nike, Inc., 93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 854 (2002), which reversed Kasky v. Nike, Inc., 27 Cal. 4th 939 (2002). I will be pleasantly shocked if the Supreme Court does not rule in favour of Nike. It has been very interesting to skim through the amici briefs, most of which have been filed for Nike. I do not want Nike to win this case. Maybe it’s because I’m not American, but I do not think that free speech trumps every other right – especially the idea that companies should have the same freedom of speech as people! Freedom of speech becomes meaningless when money=speech. This means that although the poor have de jure freedom of speech, they have no de facto freedom of speech. Sorry to slip into legalese, but a legal right on paper is meaningless if there is no social or economic ability to exercise that right. So freedom of speech means the freedom to lie? Even in this country, it is not OK to use dishonesty to defame another person’s character. Corporations already have way too many rights – especially when considering their wealth and clout in media and politics. It is time to start scaling back, not expanding the legal personhood of corporations. I think that all corporate speech is advertising of some kind – whether to consumers or investors. In the company where I used to work, public relations was actually inside the marketing department. When the news about Nike’s sweatshop practices first came out, I decided to avoid Nike products. But if I heard convincing information from them that they had cleaned up their act, I’d be inclined to consider them again. In fact, I’d be more likely to trust information that did not obviously appear to be advertising. The point is that these statements do have an effect in the marketplace, therefore they should be regulated according to the rules of the marketplace. 3. Honesty will be distorted and used against you The treatment of Gary Kamiya’s article is different from the two court cases which I’ve mentioned, but it is also concerns distortion and the place of honesty or dishonesty in public discourse. O'Reilly-a-rama Here at Salon, we're used to having our arguments ripped out of context and turned into fodder for the right-wing media machine, but the feeding frenzy of distortion and lies surrounding the selective quotation from Gary Kamiya's "Liberation Day" op-ed over the past few days set a new standard for disingenuousness. You can read more about it in this Salon editorial. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] Kamiya’s main argument was that the fall of Saddam Hussein was something which everybody could feel glad about – whether they were for or against the war in Iraq. Because Saddam Hussein was a very nasty man – and whether or not the war was justified, or that it will open a Pandora’s Box of ethnic and religious hatreds in the Middle East – it is good to see him gone. In reaching this position, Gary Kamiya addressed his opposition to the war in the first place. He very honestly wrote: I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings. Of course, Bill O’Reilly and other right-wing commentators immediately jumped on these sentences, ignoring the point of Kamiya’s article – that as the war progressed, his position had evolved from that secret wish for things to go wrong. The moral of this incident is that as corporations extend their rights to lie and be misleading in public discourse, individuals will be punished for being too honest. The equivalent honesty would be if Bill O’Reilly admitted to that for a moment he really wanted to tear Jeremy Glick into “f**king pieces” for daring dispute the Right’s ownership of the 9/11 tragedy. 4:38:42 PM

Thursday, 24 April 2003

here's hoping that Rick Santorum gets the Trent Lott treatment More Republicans oppose Santorum's remarks. More Republicans have joined the call for Senator Rick Santorum to apologize for his recent remarks. The group, Republican Unity Coalition, includes former president Gerald Ford and Mary Cheney, the daughter of current Vice President Dick Cheney. They describe themselves... [different strings] 11:18:25 PM

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