One day I hope to pen a piece that adequately sings the praises of Carl Malamud’s tireless work to make public work available to, you know, the public. Today he announced the release of Code City, through which the public can now access - without having to pay the publisher – many of the building safety codes that are incorporated into the laws of most states, counties, and municipalities (see, e.g., the fire code that is part of Virginia law).  Most anyone who has ever tried to access the building code for a project knows what an accomplishment this is. For those that don’t know, I highly recommend this brilliant little illustrated explanation (just start with the top left photo and keep clicking through to the next photo).
Category: Distribution Page 9 of 15
Here are a few that may turn out a little differently than its proponents had hoped for:
Scott Cleland over at the PrecursorBlog has an interesting analysis of what the FCC’s recent Report & Order regarding Comcast’s hidden traffic management activities means to the future of Net Neutrality. While NN proponent Larry Lessig seems to think it a big success, Scott Cleland sees the order as having “reined in the net neutrality movement much more than it advanced their agenda.” I haven’t had a chance to full parse the R&O, but I suspect that Scott is right.
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Heard this NPR story on the radio about the Bush Administration’s latest attempt to shoehorn more government regulation into private lives. This time, it wants to use the power of the government to give special rights to certain minorities bar private employers from taking any disciplinary action against an employee who claims that he doesn’t want to perform his duties because of his religious beliefs. Can we safely presume, now, that Republicans will be consistent and recognize that it’s legitimate to balance some public interest concerns against the private freedom of contract? Yes? No?
Heh.
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There appear to be a number of people (including lots of Democrats) who support a return of the Fairness Doctrine. The short description of the Fairness Doctrine is that when a controversial subject of public importance is discussed on broadcast television, a balanced presentation is made. Now, try and clearly nail down a definition of every word in that last sentence after “when”. Kinda tough, eh? So who does it? Why, the FCC, of course! Do you see the problem? Well, lots of Dems don’t – which sort of boggles me, considering the lesson in ideological manipulation of the levers of government we’ve gotten in the past 8 years. Why would you want the government to get involved in even more censorship than it does already?
The original argument was that since they were using the public airwaves, there was a public interest obligation that justified this intervention.  Now, as a legal theory, I find that acceptable (in fact, it’s a theory that underlies a lot of regulation). But as a practical matter, it’s a really bad idea. And, apparently, it’s an idea that almost 30% of people in a recent poll would like to see extended to the Internet (and blogs, in general). Think about that.
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Update: I figure that this is as good a place as any to put myself on the careful what you ask for hook, wrt the Obama VP selection. My own worst to first: Clinton (for many many reasons, none of which involve the question of her ability to be President). Bayh would be an awful choice (primarily for the reason noted here). Kaine doesn’t inspire me, but would be acceptable (and a good campaigner). I am surprised to find myself coming around on Biden (but still shudder at the thought of him actually being President). But I’d still like to see Brian Schweitzer (Governor of Montana) top the list.
*I know, I left off Sebelius, but I still haven’t managed to form an opinion of her.
Stryde Hax makes an interesting run at determining the true age of some of the Olympic gymnasts, and gives a quick tutorial about burying information in the process.
So many times in the course of conversations about privacy and politics, people are otherwise share my same general socio-political moorings express great doubt that the US government would ever spy on people for any reason other than crime prevention.  While I’m never at a loss for counter examples, I’ll have to say that the best documented examples are often a generation or two old, and probably carry a little less currency, as a result. Well, governments – state and federal – have been obliging me lately. First we had Maryland police closely tracking the activities of dangerous people like anti-death penalty activists, and now we’ve got a straight admission from the FBI that it spied on reporters from the Washington Post and New York Times.
It not only can happen here, it *does* happen here.
on YouTube hits.
That, ladies and gents, is today’s front page headline the Washington Times.
I’m not sure who that makes more pathetic – McCain or the Washington Times.
Glenn Greenwald has a nifty little piece up in which he highlights the hypocrisy of US lawmakers (like Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas)) who decry Chinese Internet monitoring efforts while supporting parallel programs here in the US.
Here’s an interesting analysis of Google’s approach to privacy. The author, Scott Cleland, summarizes his testimony before Congress thusly:
Why Google’s the single biggest threat to Americans’ privacy today.
Case Study: How Google Systematically Threatens Americans’ Privacy:
1. Google’s radical “publicacy” mission is antithetical to privacy.
2. Privacy is not a priority in Google’s culture.
3. Google gives privacy “lip service.”
4. Google threatens the privacy of more people than most any other
entity.
5. Google collects/stores the most potential “blackmail-able”
information.
6. Google’s track record does not inspire trust.Information is power. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Google’s market power over private information is corrupting
Google, just like former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was corrupted by
his power and mastery of personally-sensitive information. Google’s
unprecedented arbitrage of privacy law combined with its exceptional
lack of accountability is fast creating this era’s privacy-invading,
unaccountable equivalent: “J. Edgar Google.”
More on this from me later, but I wanted to pass it on lest it get lost in the ever growing Draft Posts folder . . .
What’s this about? Oh, it’s about so many things, but I’ll let a nice and respectable paper summarize it for the uninitiated:
“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” is the creation of Joss Whedon, one of the best-known scribes in Hollywood, thanks to his long filmography of genre-bending TV hits: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,””Firefly” (which inspired the film “Serenity”), “Angel” and the upcoming Fox series “Dollhouse.”
[ . . . ]
The series stars Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”) as Dr. Horrible, a wannabe mad scientist who blogs about his unrealized dreams for world domination and his refused entry into to “Evil League of Evil.” For example, he’s working with a vocal coach on his maniacal laugh.
He’s an evildoer who’s just not very good at doing evil.
Plus, he sings.
Really. Check it out.
This isn’t particularly noteworthy, other than it reminded me just how ubiquitous blogs have become (or – really – how ubiquitous they’ve become in a very narrow segment of society). 
This guy stopped in Murky Coffee (which is just down the street from me), the barista played to stereotype, and he wrote about it. This other guy overheard the conversation between the first guy and the barista, and wrote about it, too. And then Boing Boing wrote about the first guy writing about it (which is where I first heard about it). And now I’m writing about all three of them writing about it. And using a picture that someone else took of the result of the conversation between the first guy and the barista.
All that effort, and none of us have contributed anything useful to the world, I’m afraid.
(FWIW, I’d trade Murky Coffee for the old junk shop that used to be there in a heartbeat. And Murky Coffee should take that dollar bill down from the bulletin board and use it to pay their unpaid DC taxes.)
Update: Murky Coffee owner Nick Cho gets in on the clown bandwagon.
Photo: Tom Bridge
File this in the Photos I Wish I’d Taken folder.
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Speaking of photos, the kids over at BoingBoing are having fun with the Iranian missile ‘shop job (and surely I can’t be the only person who wondered if it was Cheney’s office doing the ‘shopping, there?). My favorite is the “AT&T More Bars in More Places” one.
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Tim Wu wonders why the answering machine was suppressed for 45 years:
Bell’s engineers had an answering machine invented by 1935.  However it wasn’t until 1980 or so that answering machines became widely available – why?
Interestingly, according to a great paper by Mark Clark that I came across recentlt, internal memos show that Bell was afraid that if there existed recording devices, people would stop using telephones.
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Susan Crawford finds a nifty bit of analysis on what it means to be a common carrier.
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I’m a huge fan of the Creative Commons project. I release most of my photos at Flickr under a CC license (and lots of people and organizations have found use for them). If you’re interested in contributing to a study of the Creative Commons license as it applies to photography, take a few minutes and complete this survey.