Category: Uncategorized

Flyover denied

An Idaho TV station, KTVB-TV, recently reported on an incident involving a local festival which usually involves a military flyover, but did not this year due to the Pentagon’s refusal of the request. The Treasure Valley God and Country Festival in Nampa (a few miles west of Boise), Idaho,

Dave Kellogg opines on this event, in essence calling out the Obama administration for discriminating against an event that has had the same military flyover for the previous 42 years, dating back to the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. I don’t believe Obama’s administration is to blame here and I will explain why.

If one looks at the Web site of the God and Country Festival, particularly its about page, there is an unmistakably strong religious overtone. Quoting from the first two paragraphs of the about page:

The God and Country Festival in Nampa, Idaho is organized by a volunteer-driven organization called the God and Country Association, Inc. The organization is made up of Christians who are committed to strengthening the fabric of the Treasure Valley community through the Good News of Jesus Christ. We are also interested in helping believers around the nation get an independent God and Country event started.

We believe that Christians in America should have a natural affection for their country because it was founded on the godly ideal that liberty is derived, not as a gift of governments and politicians, but as a gift of our Creator.

To be honest, I’m surprised their requests have been approved for over four decades. According to this, the organization is not primarily about honoring the veterans at all, which is what some of the news quotes would lead you to believe. From what the Web site states, the organization’s purpose is more about furthering their religion as it is about honoring veterans. In fact, from the home page:

We want to make it clear that although it is unashamedly a Christian event, a major part of the Festival is honoring our troops who protect our freedom to assemble.

Yes, many of the original founders of this nation were Christian. However, the framers of the Constitution also wrote in freedom of religion for a reason. As one who practices a faith quite different from Christianity, I would feel somewhat excluded from this event, or even a similar event held locally.

Quoting the end of Dave’s post:

Isn’t this taking the separation of church and state just a bit too far? I guess it doesn’t surprise me, though, that this is taking place during the Obama administration. Considering this event has taken place during every Presidential administration over the last 42 years, including both Democrat and Republican Presidents, could it be any other reason other than someone in Obama’s administration doesn’t like the fact that it would’ve been taking place at a *** and Country Family Festival?

It doesn’t surprise me that the Pentagon has been flaunting the seperation of church and state clause of the Constitution for over four decades. I’m glad someone at the Pentagon decided to actually look up the organization before just rubber-stamping “approved” on the request.

Take the money and, er, investigate

Is it really illegal to carry around large amounts of money in Canada?

CBC reports on the story of CA$29,000 and a man who claims he raised that money collecting cans in the town of New Westminster, British Columbia (a suburb of Vancouver). According to the story:

The car smelled of marijuana, according to the release, so the officers searched the vehicle looking for drugs. Instead, they found $29,000 in two plastic Baggies, which they seized as they investigate where the money came from.

I personally do not think the presence of a large amount of cash is prima facie evidence that a crime has been committed. And the same goes for the mere smell of marijuana smoke, or even both put together. I will conede that it is not exactly intelligent to be carrying that kind of cash around. But, at least as far as I know, it’s not unlawful.

I hope this guy gets his money back. The cops are sworn to uphold the law, not use it as an excuse to commit larceny. And without proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the money is tied to a crime, for the crown (government) to keep the money does amount to larceny.

(Note: I’m assuming the amount is in Canadian dollars, given this is a Canadian news article.)

How creepy can Google get?

An article on Wired.com Epicenter reports on Google’s latest move: behavioral profiling ads. In a nutshell, anything you do on Google sites (including YouTube), combined with the info from DoubleClick (which Google recently acquired), can now be used to target your preferences on any sites using Google’s AdSense banners.

Most telling is this quote from the article:

Google says its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google often says that it believes ads are information.

What it doesn’t say, but clearly believes, is that you are information to be indexed, made accessible and useful.

This is why Google fought government regulators who wanted search engines to limit how long they stored personal data on users.

If this wasn’t real, it would make one heck of a great horror movie.

Until recently, I declined all cookies from Google, due mainly to their previous practice of setting a cookie which did not expire until 2038. (Some may even know the quite infamous words of google-watch.org: “Yikes! Too many preservatives.”) Even today, I only accept cookies from Google for the session (thankfully Firefox and its derivatives have this great feature) and when feasible, access Google via Tor and/or use alternative search engines.

It’s one thing for Google to index and archive content available on the Web. It’s another entirely for Google to indefinitely index me or you.

[Edit 2023-07-03: removed now-dead link not available via Wayback Machine]

Et tu, Google?

And Google joins the “you carry our phone in your pocket, but we still own it” club:

CNet reports on Google’s decision to nix a tethering application for its G1 phone from the Android Market. I can only wonder if this is the first in a series of arbitrary moves similar to those Apple has made.

I am almost as suspicious of Google with regard to Android as I am of Apple and its iPhone. Whether intentionally or not, Google is misleading people by advertising its use of Linux, the kernel, in Android. However, from what I have read, Android is not a GNU variant. The SDK also contains non-free software; Google also makes heavy use of the term “open source” and I believe this is an attempt to deceive in light of the presence of non-free software in the SDK.

Note these section of the EULA for the Android SDK:

3.2 You agree that Google or third parties own all legal right, title and interest in and to the SDK, including any Intellectual Property Rights that subsist in the SDK. “Intellectual Property Rights” means any and all rights under patent law, copyright law, trade secret law, trademark law, and any and all other proprietary rights. Google reserves all rights not expressly granted to you.

3.3 Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not load any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device except a personal computer, combine any part of the SDK with other software, or distribute any software or device incorporating a part of the SDK.

This looks an awful lot like it came straight out of a Microsoft or Apple EULA to me with merely a search-and-replace in the first line.

The potential for confusion surrounding Google’s use of the term “Linux” here is is a great example of the dangers of incorrectly using “Linux” to refer to the entire operating system instead of just the kernel. It is also a great example of why one must read carefully to ensure that a given software release is in fact free software lock, stock, and barrel and not to just treat “open source” as magic words. Given that Google packages non-free software with the SDK, I believe it best to treat the entire Android operating system as non-free.

The moral of the story? Don’t be fooled: on a broader scale, Android is just like the iPhone OS. If one uses an Android phone, one is trusting Google, a company that has had its share of criticism on more than one occasion.

“Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” –The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

An absolutely, positively, idiotic abuse of copyright

Just when you think you’ve seen every copyright-related stupidity in the book, here comes another. A Real Doozie, if I’ve ever seen one.

Judge Richard Posner has proposed a radical idea to expand copyright law yet again, to bar linking to copyrighted newspaper stories. The idea is to keep the cash cows mooing for large, commercial news-gathering operations like Reuters, AP, UPI, etc.

Dan Kennedy of the Guardian also wrote an excellent piece about this proposal, and I share Dan’s gratitude that the judge expressed his opinion on copyright from somewhere besides the bench.

Yeah, this idea of Posner’s is one triply radical idea–radically dubious, radically short-sighted, and radically heavy-handed. If something must be done to prop up the declining “old school” news agencies, expanding copyright in such an arbitrary fashion is definitely not the way to do it.

Without linking, the World Wide Web isn’t much of a web anymore. If there was a time to say linking should fall under copyright restrictions–and that’s a mighty big if–that time was somewhere from 1987 up to about 1992, when hypertext either had yet to find its way on the Internet or had been there maybe a year or two.

To make such a huge change now is a mistake. Restricting linking under the guise of copyright makes as much sense as short-sighted as the DAT and audio CD-R taxes the RIAA fought for and got. Which is to say, none at all.

Judge Posner suggests economics are the driving force behind the falling readership of newspapers in print:

News, as well the other information found in newspapers, is available online for nothing, including at the websites of the newspapers themselves, who thus are giving away content. The fact that online viewing is rising as print circulation is falling indicates a shift of consumers from the paid to the free medium. The economic downturn has doubtless accelerated the trend, but economic recovery is unlikely to reverse it. To repeat my earlier point, many of the people who have switched under economic pressure to the free medium may find themselves as happy or happier and hence will not switch back when their financial condition improves.

Not surprisingly, I vehemently disagree. Economics aside, three things are notable about printed newspapers:

  • Newspaper can be clumsy and messy in certain situations;
  • Newspaper and ink have gotten much more expensive over the last two decades;
  • Guessing demand is a huge problem; a waste problem if too many copies are printed on a given day, a disgruntled reader problem if too few are printed.

The rising costs of both killed the Houston Post in the pre-Internet era (the remaining Houston newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, bought the Post’s assets including the archives).

In 1995 when the Post failed, both Houston papers and USA Today were selling for US$0.50 per copy during the week. Today, both the Chronicle and USA Today in paper form sell for twice that (US$1.00). The Chronicle has almost doubled its Sunday paper price from US$1.00 to US$1.75 over about the same time frame.

I believe the days of news stories being printed on paper to be numbered and quickly drawing to an end. Ten years from now, I doubt even alternative weekly newspapers like the Houston Press will be distributed in print.

A.J. Liebling’s famous quote “Freedom of the press is limited to those that own one” has taken on a whole new meaning in the nearly half a century after his death in 1963. Today, anyone can get started with a Web site for a very small amount of money, sometimes as little as US$0.25 (on nearlyfreespeech.net, where incidentally this blog is currently hosted). If one finds themselves without two quarters to rub together after smashing the piggybank, one can even set up a blog on sites like wordpress.com for free and move it to a Web host of one’s choosing later.

I envision the future “newspaper” being available either exclusively on the Web, perhaps being funded on a sliding-scale subscription basis or even the honor system. The reporters of the future? They may be paid by the story out of subscription funds. Or, for smaller sites, they may be amateurs who maintain or contribute to a news site primarily as a hobby.

This could well be anathema to Posner, who observes earlier in his post:

Moreover, while in many industries a reduction in output need not entail any reduction in the quality of the product, in newspaper it does entail a reduction in quality. Most of the costs of a newspaper are fixed costs, that is, costs invariant to output–for they are journalists’ salaries.

I believe salaried journalists will likely be a distant memory in about a decade as well. Most copywriters are paid by the story, sometimes based on length.

Now, the actual word “newspaper”? I’m pretty sure in some form, it will stick around. People refer to “taping” or “filming” something, in the era where it’s more likely a digital video camera is recording onto DVD, hard disk, or flash-memory-based media (e.g. SD or CompactFlash). Even today, WordPress or Drupal themes often make reference to a “newspaper” layout. It’ll be a couple of decades before we have to tell the kids what newspapers were and how they got their name.

We no longer live in an era where one must buy a printing press to get one’s word out. This is the digital age, and the Web server now sits in the same throne that printing press once occupied as king.