Monday, December 16, 2002

play about spying in libraries WOW Café Theatre announced today the world premiere of this original play for its month-long run in January 2003. Based on actual domestic defense operations, and eerily prophetic of recent government invasions of personal privacy, Spies in the Stacks begins in 1962, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A New York librarian is approached by the FBI to spy on patrons, including those people close to her. Initially opposed to such tactics, her convictions waver after the assassination of President Kennedy. When a beautiful Cuban woman begins to visit the stacks, the librarian's surveillance becomes obsessive in this play about danger, desire and spying as an erotic impulse. Spies in the Stacks, written by Lori Bonfitto and Marie Laure Léger and directed by Lori Bonfitto runs Thursday-Saturday January 2nd through January 25th (previews January 2nd, 3rd and 4th officially opening January 9th ). All performances are at 8pm, tickets are $10. WOW Cafe Theater is located at 59 east 4th street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue. For reservations call 212-777-4280 or visit the website, http://www.wowcafe.org. Ms. Bonfitto's previous writing and directing credits include Groupies, A Very Special One Hour Georgie and the cult-hit Felony Femmes on the Lam at the Hamlet on Bank Street Theater. Ms. Léger is a student of Creative Writing at New York University. 6:42:53 PM     interesting article on the ethical tight-rope google tries to walk Google vs. Evil [kfsource] 6:38:49 PM     hotbot HotBot is baaaack. [kfsource] 6:33:45 PM     yes, why is there such a delay for adobe's ebook reader for os x? Mac Acrobat eBook. Is it just me, or is it pretty damn ironic that Mac OS X: The Complete Reference is available in... [LibraryPlanet.com] 6:28:13 PM     and what about internet cafes? - "As a librarian for more than 15 years, I read " .... - "As a librarian for more than 15 years, I read "Librarians Get Advice on Handling Government Requests for Information" (news article, Dec. 12) with interest and chagrin. Is it too obvious to point out that libraries are not the only places that suspected terrorists can gain access to the Internet?" "Internet cafes are opening up in every city I have visited here and abroad, and access is available to anyone who has money to pay for it. Will the government start asking for information from businesses that offer Internet service next?" (from New York Times - Letters to the Editor) [Library Stuff - Updated daily by Steven M. Cohen] 6:24:16 PM     what about the people who don't have internet access? Not Quite the Amends I Was Looking for. I just filled out my Settlement Fund claim against the music industry for their price fixing during the last century. You can fill one out, too, if you purchased pre-recorded music between 1995 and 2000. Depending on how many people submit claims, you'll get either $20 (fewer people), $5 (lots more people), or $0 (too many people making the claim under $5 for each person). You have to fill out the form by March 3, 2003. I probably bought something like 500 CDs during those five years, so even if the record companies price fixed their products by $1 extra, that's $500 I'm out. And let's be honest - that $1 is being stupidly generous. So now I'll get maybe $20. Sure...that sounds fair. [The Shifted Librarian] 6:16:16 PM     more delights of the dmca More DMCA Abuse. Big Chem Deploys DMCA to Takedown Parody Site "My, how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the DMCA, is turning out to be a fine and flexible friend. It extends across continents. It reaches into computers in Norway and Russia, which when we last looked, were sovereign nations and not US States. A fortnight ago it was used to protect price lists, claiming that these are trade secrets. And now it has been turned onto a parody site. Last week, the Yes-Men created a replica of Dow Chemical's website at the domain www.dow-chemical.com.... The letter [78kb PDF] spearheads a collection of copyright and trademark claims with the DMCA boilerplate. Many of the claims are arguable, and on some grounds precedent favors the litigant. But the use of the DMCA obliges the recipient to take immediate action. And in the current frosty climate, that is intimidation enough: 'The carrier must reply. It can state that to best of its knowledge this does not violate what they're citing, but it has to be in good faith, or the carrier will lose his exemption status,' says Robin Bandy who runs a co-operative ISP in Oakland, CA.... Bandy advises other ISPs to check that these robo-generated emails have been cryptographically signed and come from the aggrieved party, or someone verifiably associated with them. 'In the one case we received a complaint, all they cited was a file name. There was no assertion of the contents of the file therefore they were not even making a valid assertion of copyright. It came from a system that had no traceable relationship to the MPAA and no reasonable network admin would assume that it did.' " [The Register] How long before this type of abuse of the DMCA hits libraries because we preserve and circulate material that someone doesn't like? [The Shifted Librarian] 6:10:21 PM     total information awareness on poindexter Keeping Track of John Poindexter. Online pranksters have turned the tables on the man behind the government's controversial Total Information Awareness effort. They are posting his personal information on hundreds of sites. By Paul Boutin. [Wired News] [A blog doesn't need a clever name] 6:05:18 PM     more on googling Victim of zeitgeist. Steven Levy writes on how Google is changing the zeigeist and the rising prominence of Google in both meatspace and cyberspace: In the singles world, for instance, "Google dating" - running prospective beaus through the search engine - is now standard practice. If the facts about a suitor stack up, then you can not only go on the date with confidence, but you know what to talk about. [via Boing Boing Blog] Yep, I too have been Googled, and I fear that my web pages grossly misrepresent me. Maybe I should change my name or something. Or change the name on this weblog. I've said it before already: this isn't me, it's something I do for fun. I'm a very different person. You may be surprised or disappointed if you meet me in person. I've had both happen. Update: Levy's article seems to have spawned quite a debate: There is now an article about Googling your date in The New York Times, and the whole thing has also been slashdotted. From the article: While Googling is innocuous, it is not entirely reliable. For starters, people share names. You can't be sure if you're reading about one guy who has had a varied career (or who can't hold a job) or several people. And you can't be sure which one will be buying you a cocktail. (The surgeon? The sock collector?) Googling myself -- which sounds more perverse than it is -- turned up an architecture prof at McGill University, a video editor, a broker of sports tickets and a table-tennis champ; I'm now jealous of all of them. I must say that I have the unfair disadvantage of having a fairly unique name. [thx to Privacy Digest] Another update: Niek Hockx is writing about it, too and has some good points. I quote merely his conclusion: [I]t takes only a slightly intelligent person to understand why not even a zillion Google searches can ever represent another human being. But sadly, as machines get smarter and humans get more dependent on technology, we tend to leave our own intelligence and perhaps even more important, our own common sense at home. It's one thing to use Google as an information retrieval tool. But when the spider bots start directing our lifes and our loves, we might as well stop thinking and feeling altogether. ... Maybe my bot can have a date with your bot some day. Just remember it isn't really me. But then again it isn't really you either... ;-) [shutterclog] Indeed - all this googling business makes me think that if some people had access to Poindexter's Total Information Awareness thing, they'd use it for their dates, too. [The Aardvark Speaks] 6:03:08 PM     anti-eggnog site Vile substances. Dave and Natalie reveal that they "actively hate that most wretched of holiday drinks: eggnog." In response, they have created the No-Nog Weblog, chronicling its path of destruction throughout history. [davezilla.com]. Now I have never encountered eggnog (it seems to be pretty much an American thing), but if it's anything like advocaat, which is probably the vilest substance drunk hereabouts around Christmas and New Year's, I can fully understand their reaction, and they have my unconditional support. [The Aardvark Speaks] 6:01:04 PM     Blogs vs. Lott Blogs vs. Lott. When the major media and the Democratic leadership in the Senate were ready to give Lott a pass on his accidental honesty at Strom's 100th birthday party, it was the blogosphere that kept the story alive until the beltway consensus gelled and the pile-on began. We always here about the power of right-wing talk radio and the libertarian blogosphere to build a drumbeat in an echo chamber and influence national politics. Are we now seeing a similar stirring from the left, a late-blooming awareness that we (that is, anyone) can set the agenda without waiting for the imprimatur of the powers that be? [Radio Free Blogistan] 5:57:36 PM     Introducing Morgan's Meta Monday! Monday is usually a pretty slow day for the Exploded Library. I don't usually feel like writing anything. At the same time I've noticed that I've been neglecting my own metablogging - that is, blogging other bloggers. There are some many good things being put out, but by the time I get around to looking at them, it's too overwhelming, especially if I'm adding silly comments of my own to them. I'm going to try to solve both of these problems with my Meta Monday experiment. I'll post the blog entries which caught my eye over the past week. Just going to be the stuff which interests me but I don't feel like commenting on. It's a way of keeping of notes so I don't waste time searching for something if I want to read it again later. Generally I try to add something unique or value-added in this blog, but no longer on Mondays! This will be unashamedly value-added free. 4:55:14 PM

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