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One thing your Dad may never know about

2009-07-23

Wired has published a list, called 100 things your kids may never know about, which includes many going-going-gone technological experiences that old farts like me can relate to, but that young-uns will probably have to live without.

All this technological stuff is nostalgic, but ultimately, it’s really kind of trivial. For a real challenge, try explaining to a teenager: “having to get someone’s permission to be able to say something to the world.“

When you’ve grown up with the web and blogs, and MySpace and YouTube, and Bebo and Twitter, and Facebook and Flickr as part of the way you communicate, it can be pretty hard to conceive of having go through publishers and broadcasters, or needing to be licensed, or having to wait your turn for the mike, in order to have your voice heard beyond letters and phone calls and earshot.

I find it disappointing that Wired, of all magazines, is obsessing over the progressive changes to the speed of modems and the size of disks, rather than the profound changes in social relations that connected computers have brought.

Maybe some grown-ups just can’t conceive of not needing permission to speak to the world.

(Thanks to Matt Locke for pointing this generational difference out.)

Posted in mired, pyred, sired | 2 Comments »

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For the public? Good.

2009-07-20

Simon Bradshaw has written a delightful summary of some legal opinions around the current dispute between the National Portrait Gallery and Wikipedia, in which the Gallery are seeking to prevent the distribution of high-resolution digital images of paintings whose copyright has expired.

Simon makes it obvious that, at least under English law, this dispute isn’t clear-cut. In particular, the National Portrait Gallery could well prevail in an English court using claims of copyright infringement, despite the works at the centre of this dispute being undeniably out of copyright, and despite the digital images being more akin to really detailed photocopies (which don’t attract copyright protection).

I think this dispute gets to the heart of what and, more importantly, who the National Portrait Gallery is for.

Given what they say about their mission and their history, it seems to me that the Gallery’s role ought to be the widest possible dissemination of those works that we, the public, have already paid for. This payment might have been with money, but has certainly been by granting a limited monopoly to the artist, in the form of copyright.

If anything, the Gallery ought to be helping Wikipedia, and anyone else willing to bring these works into wider public use.

If the Gallery are the official custodians of works that have been acquired for the public, then by what right do they restrict the public’s access to those works no longer in copyright, beyond that necessary to physically safeguard the works themselves? How does limiting the public’s use of these works advance their stated aim “to promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media“? How does restricting people from seeing, or using, out-of-copyright works promote the appreciation and understanding of those works?

On their own web site, the Gallery makes some statements that I find rather extraordinary.

The Gallery has a public duty not only to conserve and display works in its Collection…

Fair enough; I’d expect nothing less of a National Gallery established by Parliament, and supported with public funds.

…but also to ensure they are correctly represented in reproductions and publications.

I’m sorry? So the Gallery are also the Image Quality Police, with implicit jurisdiction over every publisher in the world? Who gave them that duty, and why?

There are sometimes sensitive issues involving artists, sitters, donors or lenders of Collection works, to which we must be responsive. Accordingly, we tightly control the circumstances and quality of reproductions from the Collection.

I believe the right to exert such control should fall away when the copyright in a work lapses. This will undoubtedly be long after the artist’s and sitter’s deaths, who are actually the only individuals whose “sensitivities” ought to carry any weight anyway. Note also that they’ve used a situation that arises “sometimes” as an excuse for imposing a general policy, which is never a good way to do things.

We also exert strict controls on all photography in the Gallery, which is allowed only on the understanding that copyright rests with us and that any further reproduction deriving from resulting photographic materials is subject to our written permission.

Note that their statement doesn’t say “photography in the Gallery of works still in copyright“, it says “photography in the Gallery“. So, if I take a picture of my foot in the Gallery, the copyright in that picture apparently belongs to the Gallery. By what right?

The Gallery’s image licensing department raises money by licensing reproductions, thus supporting both the free entry policy and the Gallery’s main functions caring for its Collection and engaging people with its works.

I interpret this statement to mean that the Gallery have decided to favour fund-raising, through restricting access to out-of-copyright works, over their duty to enable public access to those works.

I think I can hypothesize the Gallery’s motive as: “this licensing business, which we’ve built on top of our custodianship of out-of-copyright works, is a nice little earner. Wikipedia is jeopardizing this part of our income, which we’ve somehow come to depend on, therefore we want them to stop.“

Frankly, I think the Gallery has lost the plot, and needs to be reminded of it.

I believe anyone ought to be able to use images of works that are out of copyright for any purpose whatsoever, without asking anyone else’s permission, and without paying so much as a brass farthing for the privilege. This could include printing high-quality reproductions of works and selling them to anyone who wants a fine portrait on their wall; or it could include printing the works on toilet paper, for anyone who wants to appreciate a little art while they poop.

I believe this ability, for the public to copy, re-use and re-purpose artistic works whose copyright has lapsed, is precisely why copyright lapses in the first place. It’s the final stage of the deal that copyright represents, between the public and the artist. The artist gets certain exclusive rights for a time that they are free to exploit to their wallet’s content, but in return, the public eventually gets to do what it likes with their art, short of laying claim to any physical instances of it.

It seems to me that, by engaging Wikipedia in this dispute, the National Portrait Gallery has forgotten the primacy of its roles as custodian and promoter, and is attempting to deny the public its proper use of works acquired for the public good for the sake of a bit of cash.

Let the Gallery help copyright holders license the hell out of works that are still in copyright; that’s one of the things that copyright is supposed to make possible. But out-of-copyright artistic creations are ours, the public’s. The canvas and the paint and the box it comes in are physically the property of someone, but once the copyright has lapsed, the imagery itself no longer belongs to anyone in particular, but everyone in general.

I think it’s shameful that a National Gallery of Anything feels okay about erecting a tollbooth in front of images that I believe legally, and quite possibly physically, belong to the public, using excuses such as “protecting sensitivites” or “ensuring reproductive quality” or “supporting free entry“. I see this as building a business on public property, and then denying the public access to that property for the sake of the business.

If the Gallery cannot be persuaded to reset their course, and put the public first in their decision-making, then I hope this dispute with Wikipedia does get to court, or judicial review, or whatever’s appropriate. I further hope that this will result in the Gallery’s role being clearly articulated as custodians for the public, and that where that role conflicts with any income stream they have built on top of it, the income stream should not be what wins.

Posted in art, business, copyright | 7 Comments »

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Give me space

2009-07-15

If you ever enter credit card information online, you’ll undoubtedly encounter the peculiar request to omit spaces from credit card numbers, such as on this fairly typical form:

Excluding spaces

Now, as an actual programmer of computery software, I see such requests as completely bizarre. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why you, the human, should have to carefully avoid pressing the space bar while entering a credit card number. Since the bank, to whom this data will shortly be delivered, is expecting a credit card number, and since the bank defines what those look like, they can scrupulously throw away everything else you, or your space-loving cat, types that isn’t 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 0.

It’s so easy, that I’d expect any competent programmer to be able to immediately write a piece of code to do this, off the top of their head, with no bugs. If they couldn’t do this in, say, a technical interview for a programming job at bank, they shouldn’t be hired.

In fact, it’s highly likely that the amount of time and effort necessary to place the warning “(excluding spaces)” in the web page is more than the effort required to adjust the software to remove the spaces for you.

Cleaning up the data you receive, such as removing unnecessary spaces from it, is known as sanitizing the data, and it’s not only trivial, but essential if the bank is to have a chance of running a secure and reliable operation.

In my more cynical moods [not at all encouraged by having actually worked in banking operations, he said rolling his eyes], I see the “excluding spaces” request as meaning “our programmers aren’t so good with the sanitizing and the programming and the stuff, so please help them, thanks so much“.

So, with all that in mind, here are not one, but two, stories of what happens when banks apparently fail to remove spaces from a critical value, with hilarious consequential overdrafts.

If you look at both these stories, the amounts of money the poor saps’ credit cards were charged are suspiciously identical: $23,148,855,308,184,500.00. This is the kind of stupid number that immediately makes me want to view it in base 16 (a technically useful way of representing data), in case that provides a clue as to what’s going on.

In base 16, 2314885530818450000 (with the extra 00 on the end meaning cents) is 2020202020201250. That looks a lot to me as if it’s really meant to be 1250 (for example, meaning $12.50 in binary-coded decimal, commonly used in financial systems to represent numbers precisely), but somehow with a pile of spaces stuck on the front (since 20 is a common computer code for space). This is almost certainly the work of a piece of software between the retailer and the bank, which is wrongly padding the value out to fit a fixed-size field for transport (and probably also wrongly changing the type of it too).

But it’s also a sterling example (sic) of why the receiving system should remove unexpected spaces from something that’s intended to be a number, rather than just passing it on to a program that will mishandle it gloriously.

Of course, it would also, maybe, perhaps, be a good idea to make sure that the withdrawal request doesn’t exceed the size of the world economy. But that’s actually harder than just excluding spaces, since the banks think they can get you to do that for them.

Posted in communcation tips, fiddling details, software ungeneering | 5 Comments »

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End of week exam

2009-04-30

(I originally wrote this two years ago after a week of watching dreary arguments about copyright, digital rights management (DRM) and failing advertising models on the BBC Backstage mailing list. Sadly, it still seems fairly relevant. Here’s the original post in context.)

Cynical University

“Where all your ideas are derivative works of ours”

Attempt all questions.

Part A

(50 marks)

Scenario:

Mr A enjoys model railways so much, he wants to tell everyone about them, so he decides to publish a free newsletter for all called The Story of O-Gauge. Learning the lessons of the other free newsletters lying near telephone booths, he sets up an automated printer/dispenser in Old Compton Street, which prints and dispenses a copy of his newsletter each time its shiny red button is pressed by anyone at all.

Quickly, he discovers that his newsletter is popular, for many copies are dispensed to anyone that comes within arm’s length; but this popularity comes at a cost. So Mr A decides to defray his dispensing expenses by asking Mr B, the owner of a local trinket emporium, to pay him to give away their brochure, Astounding Trinkets!, with his newsletter. They agree, but only on the grounds that Mr B will pay one red cent for each brochure given away with a copy of Mr A’s newsletter.

Time passes, and Mr A is enraged to discover that he has been giving away many more copies of his newsletter than the Astounding Trinkets! brochure, which, in his mind, is an integral part of the whole newsletter experience, and not something the public is at liberty to ignore, throw away or clean their ears with.

Questions:

1) On a scale of nowhere near long enough to way too long, how long has Mr A’s brain been cooking on the Wishful Thinking grill?

2) On a scale of not at all to exceedingly, how stitched up has Mr A been by Mr B’s transfer of business risk?

3) Using any international Laughing Policeman scale, how helpless with mirth will Police Constable C become when Mr A accuses members of the general public Messrs D through Z of stealing his newsletter that he chooses to dispense freely to all and sundry? Will Mr A’s case be strengthened if he also stamps his little foot indignantly during these accusations?

4) Mr A decides to use DRM to restore economic sanity to the surly public’s enjoyment of his total content experience, but he wants to keep them involved in the process for some reason. So he asks his newsletter’s readers which DRM model they prefer; the overwhelming answer is: “the one with the biggest tits“. List at least three dubious, yet profitable business opportunities that Mr A sadly overlooks at this point.

5) Assume that Mr A started his dispenser at midnight on Jan 1 2007, that he dispensed one hundred copies on that day, that his newsletter dispensing grows at 375% per month, and that his pent-up frustration grows exponentially with dispensing figures. At what time will Mr A die from an aneurysm if he never realizes that most potential advertising impressions generate no response, and you couldn’t make some people read them if you put a gun to their head?

6) How will the date of his demise change if, when he dispenses his 50,000th copy, he discovers that two thirds of his newsletters are being eaten by a local circus horse called Googlebot that loves the taste of toner in the morning?

Your exam continues after this important message

Is your advertising revenue plummeting because your God-given right to demand attention is being denied to you by computer freedom blighters?

Are you worried that your family will spit their last breath at thee because of rampant ad-blocking mayhem?

Are you hoping for a miracle cure that will unblock your ads?

Well, hope no more!

Just add mod_senokot to your web server, and your bits will be flowing freely again, as when the web was new!

Unblock your ads with mod_senokot today!

And now, back to the exam.

Part B

(50 marks)

On a graph with Wastefulness along the X axis and Obnoxiousness up the Y axis, plot the size and position of all the advertising-supported business models you know of.

Keep the graph within the bounds of good taste by calibrating it in mega-Saatchis, and by using the colour scheme that you think will be most attractive to avocado-eating ABC1 18-34-year-olds.

Include a statistically significant sample of their names, phone numbers and tasteful photographs so that your answer can be verified by an independent panel of lonely experts.

The remainder of the exam is sponsored by
Sony Playstation 3

Exam Raider X – the Final Challenge

(2,000 marks)

Compare and contrast the relative speed, fidelity and legal vulnerability of the following copying machines:

  • the Gestetner Automatic Cyclostyle
  • the British Parliamentary rumour mill
  • EMI Records
  • Shawn Fanning’s original Napster

Explain, in sufficient detail to prevail at appeal, how these legal vulnerabilities can be avoided by any media player that Sony might bring to market in the future.

Exam Raider XX – the Ultimate Hurdle

(20,000 marks)

Show how a rigorous, yet fair, system of intellectual property governance, applied at the outset of rampant DNA copying by multicellular organisms, would have sped up the process of biological evolution to the point where we would all be walking on sunshine by now.

Exam Raider XXX – the Desperate Gambit

(200,000 marks)

Perform a market-impact assessment of a machine that could make perfect, free, unlimited copies of itself and Angelina Jolie, paying particular attention to the international trades in lip gloss, little brown babies and grainy photographs of Jennifer Aniston.

Using any system of logic that is legally permissable, show how hacking such a machine to make copies of Steve Ballmer would lead directly to the end of the world, as well as causing a widespread loss of confidence in Blu-Ray technology.

End of the exam.

… or is it?

Exam Raider Anniversary Edition
coming for Christmas 2010

Posted in advertising, copyright, drm, examination | Leave a Comment »

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One small step

2009-04-29

Remember when caucasians blacked-up in movies, because possessing actual dark skin interfered with the film-making process, mainly in the highly technical area of “hiring”?

Well, “The Wizard of Oz” notwithstanding, it seems that too many dwarves can also look bad on film.

Hence, the need to have non-dwarf Gary Oldman humped-up and sized-down to portray a small person in the recently discovered 2003 movie, Tip Toes.

At least, I’m assuming there is a technical reason for this, otherwise surely this kind of crass fakery would be offensive to actual small people. Such as, say, nearly all the other actors in the movie.

[Thanks to Graham Linehan for this.]

Posted in movies, unseen | Leave a Comment »

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Air Farce One

2009-04-28

I imagine that the planning meetings for this impromptu buzzing of lower Manhattan must have been surreal.

“Hey, I have an idea. Let’s fly some aircraft around at low altitude near the World Trade Center, for publicity or something.”

“You think we ought to warn people on the ground?”

“Nah. In fact, I think we should specifically not tell people about it. Because of, oh, I don’t know, national security.”

“You know, if we use one of the Air Force One fleet, we can make it look like it was Obama’s idea.”

“I like how you think, son. You’ll go a long way in this organization.”

“Thank you, Mr Cheney.”

Posted in it was probably worse, not how it happened | Leave a Comment »

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When Scabby calls

2009-04-23

I’ve had several calls recently on my mobile from 0845 412 2750, which is a number I didn’t recognize, and that looked to me like a business number.

I didn’t answer them, because my policy on phone calls is that, if I don’t know the number of the caller, or I’m not expecting a call from an unknown number, I let it go to voice mail, pick up the message, and call them back.

Part of the reason for this policy is to avoid ever having to deal with those automated call systems that relentlessly dial numbers.  Some just play recorded messages, and are therefore unsatisfying to hang up on. However, the really annoying ones waste your time by connecting to a call centre once you’ve made the mistake of sounding human.

Of course, such systems are designed to spot voice mail systems, faxes and other non-humans, and in such cases they drop the call without leaving a message, on the assumption that, eventually, they’ll interrupt you at a more inconvenient time.

Send calls directly to voicemail

Anyway, after a few voice-mail-free calls from yonder strange number, I looked them up and found that, indeed, they were from some obnoxious sales operation, trying to sell broader dongles for my band.

Now, a fellow annoyee on that site has had the interesting idea of adding the number to his phone’s contact list under the name “Do Not Answer”, so that he knows not to answer when they call again. Which they will.

But, with my fancy-schmancy Android G1 phone, I realized I could do better. The G1’s contacts application has a feature, hitherto unused by me, which lets you permanently divert all calls from a particular number to voice mail.

So, I’ve now added that number to my contacts, and checked the always divert checkbox. I’ve used the name “Scabby the Salesman”, for that is who I imagine to be calling (a strangely prescient choice of name by his parents, don’t you think?).

Oddly enough, since doing this, I haven’t heard from Scabby again.

Posted in android assistance, communcation tips, diversionary tactics | 2 Comments »

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Few wrongs make a write

2009-04-22

The author of a useful “How-to” article tends to require two things: a practical knowledge of how to achieve something, and an ability to bang words together without breaking them. When a “How-to” article purports to explain how to write “How-to” articles, the opportunities for irony are especially meta.

With this in mind, I propose the blitheringly unpunctuated  “How to Wright a How to Article” as today’s Dunning-Kruger Effect example, mainly because of the author’s unstinting confidence in their own ability to instruct anyone about anything. I do hope that they have followed their own randomly abstract list of eight steps, and are presently at ‘then wait’.

While they’re waiting, perhaps they can study the inspirational flowchart in “How to write for the American Theater”. Thanks to that, I’m already thinking of a musical based on my Uncle Jemima’s struggle to become the first gay zombie to run a Wall Street bank; I’m thinking of calling it “Night of the Lending Dead”.

I just hope that, when he reads it, zombie Mark Twain is able to tell all the corpses apart, something he was delightfully unable to do with Fenimore Cooper’s work.

Posted in braiiiins, wrighting, writing | Leave a Comment »

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Money for epsilon

2009-04-22

Here is an interesting article, in two parts, on trying to use programming to gain an advantage when throwing money at Swoopo, the “Entertainment shopping” site, in the hope of not losing all of it.

Having myself developed a system where data is flying around the net on short deadlines, I’m not really surprised this attempt at gaming Swoopo doesn’t work well, since this kind of real-time packetry will always be flakey compared with a process running on the server itself.

Plus, there’s really no incentive for Swoopo to do the technical work to allow inbound bids the chance to compete fairly with internal bids, notwithstanding that it’s actually a hard problem anyway, since it would tend to tilt the balance in favour of such gaming attempts.

Which I’m sure there will be many more of, particularly as Swoopo clones start to appear.

Posted in entrepreneurialism, notworking | Leave a Comment »

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Use of language

2009-03-21

“Opening the brand aperture” and disappearing right up it, the Sci Fi Channel uses several paragraphs of run-on sentences and abstract nouns to explain their decision to reduce even further the amount of science fiction they actually show. Sadly, it doesn’t explain why they didn’t just have the guts to rebrand properly, instead of to a mockable homophone; maybe they should have asked Dave for advice.

Meanwhile, a substantially more coherent and moving piece of writing has bobbed up on various forums, Karl Paulnack’s 2004 welcome address to the parents of new students at the Boston Conservatory.

And a surprisingly informative debate took place yesterday in the House of Lords, saying what a jolly useful chap that Darwin fellow turned out to be; ideal for passing the time on your next long trip up the Amazon, perhaps.

Posted in English, music, ropey writing | Leave a Comment »

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