environment

Tellytubbyland

Most human differences can be overcome, but there is one unbridgeable divide. The world is split between people who play golf and people who don’t. Each faction regards the other as an alien lifeform. One is astonished that any human fails to see that life without golf is not worth living. The other watches grown men in two-tone shoes dragging a bag of sticks round Tellytubbyland, and shakes its collective head with incredulity.

One of the best writers in the fields of injustice is George Monbiot. He dares to ask the questions most of us prefer to avoid. He then takes the answers to their logical conclusion. These traits have earned him praise and criticism. For my part he is one of the most important journalist/writers of our time. In a recent column he picks an easy target environmentalism and golf and explains simply and logically the negative effects of the sport.

One study suggests that an 18-hole course requires, on average, 22 tonnes of chemical treatments (mostly pesticides) every year: seven times the rate per hectare for industrial farming(22). Another shows higher rates of some cancers, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (which has been associated with certain pesticides(23)), among golf course superintendents(24). Courses consume staggering amounts of water(25). Many of them are built on diverse and important habitats, such as rainforests or wetlands. In some countries people have been violently evicted to make way for them.The problem is particularly acute in South East and East Asia, where golf is big business, and land rights and the environment are often ignored by governments. There are hundreds of accounts of battles between peasant farmers or indigenous people and golf course developers. In one case in the Philippines in 2000, two farmers resisting a course planned for their lands were mutilated and dismembered then shot dead(26).

Read the whole article Playing it Rough (originally published in the Guardian 16th October 2007) at Monbiot.com

Posted on by mklang

Ethics for Scientists

The British government’s chief scientific advisor Professor Sir David King has set out a universal ethical code for scientists.

1) Act with skill and care, keep skills up to date
2) Prevent corrupt practice and declare conflicts of interest
3) Respect and acknowledge the work of other scientists
4) Ensure that research is justified and lawful
5) Minimise impacts on people, animals and the environment
6) Discuss issues science raises for society
7) Do not mislead; present evidence honestly

Professor King says: “We believe if every scientist followed the code, we would improve the quality of science and remove many of the concerns society has about research.”
The seven points are a bit obvious but then again maybe that’s the point?

(via Purse Lips Square Jaw)

Posted on by mklang

Can we afford the humanities?

The humanities can be seen as the beginning and the backbone of the academic world. From the early origins the university was based on the study and humanism. The oldest still operating university (University of Bologna) began in 1088 when masters of grammar, rhetoric and logic began to devote themselves to law.

Despite the age and pedigree of the humanities they do not live a protected life. The position of the humanities is not as guaranteed in the world of the university – economic reality and a focus on invention and innovation have created an environment where research for its own sake is too often neglected. The mantra of the day is research that can be rapidly exploited by companies in making or improving necessary or unnecessary widgets.

This means that the university is not about study but that the focus should be more geared to being a prolonged arm of the corporate research and development.

Naturally in times when such production counts for everything those parts of the university that do not produce are seen as liabilities and face grim economic realities.

One such example is the humanities faculty at the University of Göteborg. Our university has decided to reduce the number of departments here. At present the faculty has 17 departments and the university plans to reduce this number to between four and eight.

Naturally a faculty cannot consist of an innumerable number of departments and the reduction is most probably a prudent and necessary move. But axing departments in the humanities is not a good method of promoting fundamental research in any society.

While the decision may be sound economics – is it really the right way to go?

Posted on by mklang

ISP Liability in Sweden

Yesterday, the Cecilia Renfors presented the results of her investigation on copyright issues in relation to the Internet (press release in Swedish). The investigation entitled Music and Film on the Internet – threat or possibility? (Musik och film på Internet – hot eller möjlighet?). The purpose of this investigation was to understand and to create a way in which illegal file-sharing would decrease and users would be encouraged to pay for the downloading of video and audio.

The main suggestion in this investigation is to hold the ISP’s liable for users’ treatment of copyrighted material. In reality this would entail that the ISP would move from being an anonymous carrier of information to being actively involved in the content their customers desire. Cecilia Renfors suggests that the ISP’s should be forced to, for example, close accounts for users involved in illegal file sharing.

These suggestions have not been accepted quietly. Naturally the ISP’s are protesting – they don’t want to chase their own customers. But there is a wider issue at stake here.

Suppose that an Internet account is terminated because it has been used for illegal file sharing. This punishment does not fit the crime. Considering the drive towards e-government and the amount of services which are moving wholly online the loss of one’s Internet connection is too high a punishment. Another question is who actually carried out the downloading? Was it the underage child? Or is it a neighbor abusing an open network?

Most users do not know enough about their technology to control their own Internet accounts. In addition they do not know enough about the complexities of copyright law in relation to the Internet. A study (pdf here – in Swedish) user’s rights (paid for by an ISP), also presented yesterday, shows that most people do not know which actions in relation to the copying of copyrighted material are legal or not. This latter study shows that 83% of Swedish teenagers download music from the Internet. Half of them believe that when they make a copy of music for a friend or family member that this act is also illegal.

An example of scenarios presented in the examination:

My friend has bought a song on the internet. She plays it for me on her mp3 player and I would like to copy the song to my mp3 player. Is this act legal?

Teenagers answer
* No: 51%
* Yes: 29 %
* Don’t know: 21%

Teenagers parents answer:
* No: 55%
* Yes: 21 %
* Don’t know: 24%

The correct answer is that this act is legal. Sharing a legally purchased song with friends and family is permissible. It is not permissible to share it to the general public nor is it legal to circumvent technical protection measures to copy the song.

The lack of legal and technical information makes this a sensitive issue. Naturally everyone within a society is expected to know the laws which applies to them. Ignorance of the law can never be a defence. However, the fact is that few people really know whats what in copyright and online environments.

If we create an environment where we begin closing access to Internet we are taking a step back in the information society. Access to Internet today is arguably more important than being connected to a telephone system. Not that I would like to give up either.

Posted on by mklang

Travel is a waiting game

Sitting in an airport looking at other people I realized that the whole thing with travel is all about the ability to wait. To make yourself relaxed and comfortable in unnatural, artificially priced environments. It’s easy to forget about this with all the exotic adventure propaganda being published.

Good travelers are not those who have stocked up on the latest air-sickness tablets and tourist-tummy pills but those who bring more than a magazine on a five hour flight, those who begin flights by politely ignoring people who are, in reality, sitting way way to close to each other. Seriously we don’t let people come this close unless they are family, lovers or medical staff.

Airport boredom can be relieved in many ways (one is blogging), work is another good method, reading, watching movies or simply counting the number of people who have white or red shoes. The only thing you don’t really want it is someone who is too bored to amuse themselves and therefore strike up conversations…

Posted on by mklang

Seafood is Politics

Eat fish, don’t eat fish, don’t eat cod, eat salmon, shellfish is bad, or good. Giant prawns help developing countries or screw up the environment.

Fish is confusing. Since I don’t eat meat or poulty fish is the main source of food confusion. It should be easier since I don’t have to worry about so may foodstuffs… its not I am confused and I have, I admit, been avoiding the issue.

Some help in this tangle of issues is the the booklet Fish Dish: Exposing the Unacceptable Face of Seafood published by the WWF (2006).

  • Illegal fishing
  • Overfishing
  • Wasteful fishing
  • Unselective fishing
  • Destructive fishing
  • Unfair fishing

The text does not make life easier but it does inform in a brutally honest way. Treat your next plate of sushi with respect – read Fish Dish.
(Via Lunkens Blog)

Posted on by mklang

Norwegian Free Software

On the 15th August Norway opened a National Center for Free Software whose purpose it is to work with actors from industry, university, research and development environments and the public sector. The center’s goal is to increase competence in, and the use of Free Software in both private and public sectors in addition to stimulating competition in the programming sector.

They even have a magazine called FriProg… The Norwegians seem to be taking Free Software much more seriously than the swedes are.

Posted on by mklang

Bottled Water

Ever held a plastic bottle of water in your hand and wonder why you are drinking imported water? Or why I just paid for a plastic bottle filled with tap water? I often do. I know that there is a guilty story waiting to be uncovered but I tend to try not to think about it. I look for arguments that the water I am drinking is healthier than the soft drinks I used to prefer.

Via Boing Boing comes some of the ugly secrets in an article on Fast Company called Message in a Bottle. Some of the ugly truths we are trying to avoid hearing are:

  • Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets–$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
  • In the United States alone we transport 1 billion bottles of water around a week…One out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water.
  • In Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water.
  • You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35–17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren’t paying attention…If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35.
  • 24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi for our convenience.

Naturally there is a trend to counteract the bottled water industry and the water sellers are working hard to maintain that they are connected to health and purity rather than environmental decay.

It is hard to understand why people believe that water imported from another country is a healthy choice. It is strange to think that people are prepared to pay dearly for tap water in a plastic bottle.

There are other issues such as the waste left behind, the health effects of the plastic traces in the water, the transport costs on the environment and the privatization of water…

This is definitely another area where we should be more critical.

Posted on by mklang

Six questions about open standards

The question of open standards is a challenging and important one. Unfortunately most people tend to lose interest very quickly when standards are being discussed.

The FSFE has presented six questions which national standardisation bodies should ask before adopting the ECMA/MS-OOXML format as an IEC/ISO standard. Unless a national standardisation body has conclusive and affirmative answers to all of them, it should vote no in IEC/ISO and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format).

1. Application independence?

No standard should ever depend on a certain operating system, environment or application. Application and implementation independence is one of the most important properties of all standards.

Is the MS-OOXML specification free from any references to particular products of any vendor and their specific behaviour?

2. Supporting pre-existing Open Standards?

Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies.

MS-OOXML neglects various standards, such as MathML and SVG, which are recommendations by the W3C, and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to follow Microsoft in its proprietary infrastructure built over the past 20 years in order to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well.

What is the benefit of accepting usage of such vendor-specific formats at the expense of standardisation in these areas? Where will other vendors get competitive, compatible and complete implementations for all platforms to avoid prohibitively large investments?

3. Backward compatibility for all vendors?

One of the alledged main advantages of MS-OOXML is its ability to allow for backward compatibility, as also referenced in the ECMA International press release.

For any standard it is essential that it is implementable by any third party without necessity of cooperation by another company, additional restricted information or legal agreements or indemnifications. It is also essential to not require the cooperation of any competitor to achieve full and comparable interoperability.

On the grounds of the existing MS-OOXML specification, can any third party regardless of business model, without access to additional information and without the cooperation of Microsoft implement full backward compatibility and conversion of such legacy documents into MS-OOXML comparable to what Microsoft can offer?

4. Proprietary extensions?

Proprietary, application-specific extensions are a known technique employed in particular by Microsoft to abuse and leverage its desktop monopoly into neighboring markets. It is a technique at the heart of the abusive behaviour that was at the core of the decision against Microsoft by the European Commission in 2004 and Microsoft is until today continuing its refusal to release the necessary interoperability information.

For this reason, it is common understanding that Open Standards should not allow such proprietary extensions, and that such market-distorting techniques should not be possible on the grounds of an Open Standard.
Does MS-OOXML allow proprietary extensions? Is Microsoft’s implementation of MS-OOXML faithful, i.e. without undocumented extensions? Are there safeguards against such abusive behaviour?

5. Dual standards?

The goal of all standardisation is always to come to one single standard, as multiple standards always provide an impediment to competition. Seeming competition on the standard is truly a strategic measure to gain control over certain segments of a market, as various examples in the past have demonstrated.

There is an existing Open Standard for office documents, namely the Open Document Format (ODF) (ISO/IEC 26300:2006). Both MS-OOXML and ODF are built upon XML technology, so employ the same base technology and thus ultimately have the same theoretical capabilities. Microsoft itself is a member of OASIS, the organisation in which the ODF standard was developed and is being maintained. It was aware of the process and invited to participate.

Why did and does Microsoft refuse to participate in the existing standardisation effort? Why does it not submit its technological proposals to OASIS for inclusion into ODF?

6. Legally safe?

Granting all competitors freedom from legal prosecution for implementation of a standard is essential. Such a grant needs to be clear, reliable and wide enough to cover all activities necessary to achieve full interoperability and allow a level playing field for true competition on the merits.

MS-OOXML is accompanied by an unusually complex and narrow “covenant not to sue” instead of the typical patent grant. Because of its complexity, it does not seem clear how much protection from prosecution for compatibility it will truly provide.

Cursory legal study implies that the covenant does not cover all optional features and proprietary formats mandatory for complete implementation of MS-OOXML. So freedom of implementation by all competitors is not guaranteed for the entire width of the proposed MS-OOXML format, and questionable even for the core components.

Does your national standardisation body have its own, independent legal analysis about the exact nature of the grant to certify whether it truly covers the full spectrum of all possible MS-OOXML implementations?

All these questions should have answers that should be provided by the national standardisation bodies through independent counsel and experts, and in particular not by Microsoft or its business partners, which have a direct conflict of interest on this issue. If there is no good answer to any one of them, a national body should vote no in ISO/IEC.

Posted on by mklang

Theories, Movement & Collected Stories

James Boyle has just given an excellent presentation on what the environmental movement did right. He points to the right mix of theory, movements and the collection of stories in the creation of the concept of the environment. The environment as a concept did not exist prior to its creation, establishment and acceptance in the wider public.

What he means is that the movement to protect public domain and develop creative commons requires more than the creation of licenses and preaching to the choir. The theory is required as a base but the broader public does not want to read theory. Therefore what is required is a movement of people to enable the transfer of dry theory in the communication to the public.

How should this be done? Well the environmental movement added a collection of stories. Individual examples of environmental damage. Burning streams, smog cities, nuclear waste and silent springs. The collection of stories have become established and iconic. They are established in the mental image of the public to such a degree that protection of the environment becomes an obvious step.

So, in order to establish the protection of the public domain, open access and creative commons the organisations working with these issues should look at the strategies of the environmental movement.

Posted on by mklang