Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
It has begun. Tub leaks in at least one circumstance. Digital camera stopped downloading to computer. And I stayed up too late to watch Most Haunted…again.
But the Sox won with Boomer on the mound and the Yanks lost and that makes the world a sunny place.
A while ago I wondered about the point when a move is really made as opposed to finished. Turns out it is not the beds or the telephone but the stuff on the walls. As soon as you put the framed stuff up, your interior is yours. Forget about the TV. That just costs you an hour of sleep and night.
Conrad Black’s bail was raised Thursday by another $1-million (U.S.) in cash, but the erstwhile media baron managed to score one important legal victory: His wife won’t be forced to reveal her financial affairs under oath.
An interesting morality play.
Must make coffee. Maybe more later. What stories are you following anyway?
The BBC has printed a short essay by Michael Geist, Ottawa law professor and cyber-dreamer [Ed.: that is unkind] of some renown. Unconvincingly, it is based on an alarmingly obvious inclusion of a useful premise of convenience – in this case the “internet intermediary” – which is not founded in anything under Canadian or Commonwealth law but (perhaps and to be fair) ecumenically inserted to assist in the desired end within the argument:
The case places the spotlight on the liability of internet intermediaries. The importance of the issue extends well beyond just internet service providers – corporate websites that allow for user feedback, education websites featuring chatrooms, or even individual bloggers who permit comments face the prospect of demands to remove content that is alleged to violate the law. The difficult question is not whether these sites and services have the right to voluntarily remove offending content if they so choose – no one doubts that they do – but rather whether sites can be compelled to remove allegedly unlawful or infringing content under threat of potential legal liability.
Since when is a publisher in any medium an uninvolved intermediary? The act of publication is just that – an act. I publish this website and even get meagre ad revenue for doing so. I am actively involved with the process of writing, editing and controlling what you see here – even in the comments that I do not author. I monitor and I remove. That is my responsibility. Some believe that there is a new order in which responsibility is no longer part of presenting a civil public discourse. Mr. Geist is one of the most fervent evangelists for this faith. Yet there is no basis for the proposition in fact – the law is still the law and those responsible for publication are responsible. Hate law and child porm crimes as well as civil libel are still legal structures in place to respond to all ill-advised publication. Who ever promised that they were somehow inapplicable simply because the text appeared on a cathode ray tube and not mashed and rolled out tree fibres? The best analogy I can find is the party that sells items that need to be in compliace with safety standards and then complains when the product turns out to be a lemon that the pre-existing standards are “red tape”.
This is nothing more than “outta be” law. Wishery. Short reference is made to the fact that there are legal tests in Canada and the US which ensure a level of responsibility exists – that there is no neutral intermediary status. And the fact that the US has a law of some nature, the details of which were beyond the scope of the essay, does not make it wise or even relevant for other jurisdictions. Without an analysis of how the neutral internet intermediary role would/could/should operate and its effect on other forms of publication, the simple allusion to its existence is not very useful. Alluding to it out as a fully formed alternative simply does not seem appropriate.
Some related links:
When have you moved?
It is looking like #4 more and more.
Suffocate? That is a bit odd, a bit much – especially for a 19-9 game. More like a lambasting or even a knee-capping if you ask me. Maybe a piano wiring.
Rob has written something very interesting and has packed in his faith that a tipping point is coming. I suppose my first inclination to find this interesting is based on the fact that I have never been a tipping-pointer or a dichotomist. The world and human participation in it is too complex. But the human perception and reaction to the world often is not. Because we like to sift for clues and establish principles mainly to give us comfort and get us through the day.
You only have to look at the reaction in Canadian political blogs over the war in Lebanon to witness the drive to simplify and give oneself comfort. Canada has a large Lebanese population in the area of the bombing and shelling so the natural reaction is to distance ourselves from their Canadian-ness as the reason for the bombing is justified. So these citizens for some become “Canadians of convenience.” Both sides in the conflict have endured misery for decades but as it is too hard to carry the weight in ourselves for all of them, we pick a side and give more validity to the life and death of a baby born to one side or another…but not both. With the news this morning of the death of a Canadian soldier at a UN post under Isreali bombardment, I am now bracing to read some fool say that it was somehow the fault of the generic boogieman socialism or even the fault of that soldier at his or her post – look out for the obscenity “heh, peacekeeper“. There is no end to what one can think when one has abandoned shame in favour of the need to simplify and justify for our own comfort.
But it is not only in crisis that we see this and, if you pardon the illustrative diversion above, that is where Rob has found himself:
Until very recently, I thought that the rules of the adoption curve or the Tipping Point would apply and that eventually everyone would “get it.” I no longer believe this to be true. I see no signs of any airline other than AMR going the Southwest Culture route. I see no signs of the US or Israeli military matching their asynchronous opponents. I see no signs of the Commercial media other than Murdoch making a shift to true particpation.
Interestingly, and to continue with the tangents, the same sort of idea struck me when I was reading Brewing Up A Business by Sam Calagione of the rightfully praised Dogfish Head brewery of Delaware. Throughout the book, which is more about being an entrepreneur than about the beer, the basic question is asked “how can I make the customer happy though my product?” The thing is your product will make the customer happy and it will also not. It will not provide complete happiness as the same customer will also like other beers – even maybe PBR at certain moments – or chewing gum or watching CSI reruns or junky used cars. But that complexity is not really the interest of the entrepreneur – all that matters is that entrepreneur’s success. This means addressing the particular need of the customer…but not all need.
Back to Rob, that is why there will never be a tipping point given a slow set of changes like the internet provides – and digitization and optic fibre and other innovations of the late 20th century before it. Most people will still like postcards, the telephone and email. Many people will still like to pay cash at the grocery for milk even if they are prepared to use paypal on eBay or give their credit card to Amazon. Many will kick at the wonder that is western-style socialism which they blame for everything (including in large part their own failings of imagination) and yet rush to the emergency room with a rough cough whipping out the medicare card, demanding service now. Many will consider their own children different than those dying in the Congo or Iraq or Lebanon. Because we are too complex and have to deal with ourselves in a too complex world.
So what does this mean for Rob? It is right that some will get it as only some get anything. Everyone gets something just that much of what is gotten has no commerical, social or political value. It is what we each like because it is what we are each like. Some apparently do not even get the fact that the Blue Jays are worth disliking. But if you get all that there is a way to get ahead…and not just by getting a hat. It has something to do with accepting the inherent belief system described above and how it provides infinite choice among all the variables to grant the dignity of singularity…and the Jays sucking.
When the Red Sox play the AL West it is worse than interleague. First, they appear able to lose against the AL West. Second, when they do lose it happens at 2 am EST so you have wasted an evening and gotten a rotten sleep thrown in for good measure.
By the way – and milking the double entendre for all it is worth – playing a guitar after a couple of weeks of mandolin is very weird. There is all this space between the strings.
From the BBC and its Editor’s Blog (formerly and futurely known as an Editorial Page):
Each is enough to daze you for the day. Together, worse. Being honest about the order of importance given and we give to each, worse still.
A book must be out somewhere because there are interviews about the Long Tail all over the place. The Long Tail refers to a graph and that point on a graph where many different things are happening so rather than describing an spike in activity, it is showing an extended diversity. Someone has decided that this is what the internet has caused.
To a degree this is a correct observation but only to a degree as, in large part, it is not. This is because it is a catchy generalization that can be applied and misapplied with confidence. One basic principle that is largely ignored is both the incompleteness and over-self-congratulatory praise that accompanies it. So we have a tendency, like with refereces to “post 9/11” to accept that everything has changed – without the slightest reference to what was before. One very handy illustration of this is from these two posts at Bound By Gravity where Andrew (Canada’s best blogger at the moment) assumes and then catches himself assuming that the internet has had an effect on reading.
This sort of thing has become rampant. Recently I saw a reference to how difficult it must have been to travel by car before the internet based on the assumption, one supposes that mapping began with MapQuest. Another, more to the heart of the error of the Long Tail, is that people lived lives permeated by mass media and mass production. First, this presumes that people defined (and define) their lives by media and product – as subjects of consumption. That presumption is based on the limited ability the internet has to provide: it can only deliver communications and provide a venue for ordering product. Second, people did live out personal niche interests as actively and fully as they do now. People bought rare stamps, comic books and music. People read things that no one else read and held ideas that were different from their neighbours – hence, among other things, the great splintering schismistastic fun that is protestantism. They just did not do it publicly and through a medium that recorded the activity digitally. It was done by mail orders, letters, conversations, meetings. In rec rooms, via ‘zines and through posters stapled to utility poles.
Structurally, even with the opportunity to watch old videos on YouTube, the internet is just another mass medium and as dangerous a one as ever there was through its active denial its own nature is a mass medium. The third issue of Geez magazine came last week and is full of good advice on cross checking the effect of the internet on your values. Are you more materialistic? Are you more prone to follow the poltical and ethical messages of others? Are you more part of the Borg?
Remember, the internet is good fun and can be used responsibly. Be careful out there.
Woke up way too late and had to deal with my friend Manual Spammo. What poor
lives these saps must lead to have to cut and past their way now through the
handy dandy “are you human” quiz before each comment is posted. Looks like it
took longer to post than delete. That is a gain. Anyway:
Gotta
run.