Quotes

Knuth versus Email

For some time now Donald Knuth is no longer doing email. But did you read his reason? He has a great online explanation where he writes:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.

On the same page he also quotes Umberto Eco “I don’t even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.”

Knuth wrote this almost 17 years ago. It’s still right. It is very impressive. I am particularly impressed today since I spent a great deal of time yesterday cleaning out my inbox dealing with over 200 little tasks which had piled up there.
—-

PS. For those of you who do not know who Knuth is: Before you even start to think about attempting to call Knuth anti-technology or using complex words like Luddite make sure you read up, why not try wikipedia?

—-

Posted on by mklang

Neutrality and Objectivity (or the beginning of a brawl)

In 2000 a report on IT related crime was released by the BRÃ?. BRÃ? is the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rÃ¥det – BrÃ¥). Since first reading this report I have been very critical of its presentation of gender in relation to computer crime.

When I began this blog in 2005 it was only natural that I would quote this report in an entry and air my criticism at the same time. So in a post entitled Boys, girls & computers (in November 2005) you can read:

In a report on IT related Crime (XXX & XXX) from The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention from the year 2000 we find the wierd and wonderful quote:

â??Män misstänks för dataintrÃ¥ng, de manipulerar, raderar och stjäl program, filer eller data. När kvinnor misstänks som gärningsmän handlar det mestadels om interna dataintrÃ¥ng â?? obehörig registerupplysning och radering av filer, program eller data. Endast tre kvinnor misstänks för databedrägeri.â??

Källa: IT-relaterad brottslighet, BR�-rapport 2000:2

Loosely translated: Men are suspected of breaking into computer systems, they manipulate, erase and steal programs, files or data. When women are suspected it is mostly internally accessing computer systems – unauthorised looking at files and erasing files, programs or data. Only three women are suspected of computer fraud.

The authors therefore state that men are actively carrying out manly tasks of destruction while women are driven by curiousity to peek into files. Men â??break, manipulate, erase and stealâ?? while women look and erase. Even to the most untrained this is a joke. Men are doers who do macho stuff while women are either driven by curiousity or erase (by incompetence?).

I realise that the report is from 2000 butâ?¦ come on!! Can they have written this with a straight face?

Since then the post has been peacefully hanging around the database waiting for a reader. Today it solicited a reaction. An email arrived from someone claiming to be one of the authors of the report (it is not an official BRÃ? email address). I will reproduce the email in Swedish so as not to be accused of interpreting the content.

Hej Klang!
Jag såg att du hade citerat våran Brå-rapport på ituniv.se för ungefär ett år sedan. Jag blev en aning fundersam över ditt sätt att tolka vad vi skrivit i rapporten. Så jag tänkte att jag kanske kunde förklara hur du ska tolka det du citerade.

Vi påstår inget, vi redovisar ett resultat från en undersökning av polisanmäld brottslighet. Det vill säga den delen av brottsligheten som kommer till polisens kännedom. En del av dessa polisanmälningar innehöll uppgifter om en misstänkt gärningsmän. Vi sammanställde dessa uppgifter och fick fram ett antal kvinnor som misstänktes för brott. Så vad vi skriver är endast ett resultat av vad som framkom i undersökningen.
Således gör vi inga slustater om skillnader mellan mäns och kvinnors brottslighet, det råkade bara falla sig så att de kvinnor som fanns med i undersökning misstänktes för interna dataintrång.

Jag hoppas att jag förklarat så att du förstår vad du har läst. Och du, när du citerar något bör du ta med allt som står i avsnitt du tanker citera.

Mvh

The letter begins â??Hello Klangâ?? and goes on to explain that I have misinterpreted the report and the quote. The writer goes on to explain that the authors of the report were not drawing any conclusions but simply reporting. It ends with on a condescending note explaining how one should handle quotes.

To which I replied:

Din förklaring hjälper inte alltför mycket. Min kritik dÃ¥ – och nu – handlar om det vinklade sättet ni okritiskt presenterar er data.

I detta stycke som jag citerar kan man läsa att kvinnor begår brott på grund av nyfikenhet eller okunskap medans männens brottslighet är aktiv och kunnigt.

När en undersökning visar resultat som verkar helt skumma har man ett ansvar som forskare/författare/utredare att problematisera de resultat man får. Erat sätt att presentera siffrorna ger den oreflekterande läsaren en felaktig könsbild i relation till brottslighet.

Tonen i ert sprÃ¥kbruk i rapporten förstärker tydligt budskapet om kvinnans tekniska inkompetens. Du skriver i ditt mail: “Vi pÃ¥stÃ¥r inget, vi redovisar ett resultat…” jag hÃ¥ller inte med. Genom att skriva pÃ¥stÃ¥r man (i detta fall ni) nÃ¥got. Genom att citatet finns i en BRÃ? rapport sÃ¥ är det inte lösa ord utan semi-officiell sanning. Era ord skapar en verklighet som andra förhÃ¥ller sig till. Det sistnämnda kanske lÃ¥ter dramatiskt och överdrivet – framförallt i detta fall – men som utredare bör man inte anse att man endast rapporterar neutralt och sakligt.

Neutralitet och saklighet är något man strävar efter men det kan knappast uppnår.

Jag anser att ni har fel, att ni borde tänkt igenom vad siffrorna betyder och, framför allt, att ni borde uttryckt er på ett helt annat sätt.

Basically I criticise the authors again for their gender-biased report which shows men as active and knowledgeable, while women are ignorant, passive and nosey. I go on to state:
1) Researchers must question and problematise results which seem odd.
2) Presenting results without questioning creates, in this case, a slanted or biased view of gender in relation to IT crime.
3) The tone in the report re-enforces the gender bias.
4) The claim in the email that they are not interpreting but simply reporting is both wrong and harmful. Every time one writes anything it is an act of interpretation.
5) The presentation or interpretation in a report issued by BRÃ? ensures that the words are taken seriously.
6) Neutrality and objectivity are things writers should strive for but are not attainable goals.

I conclude by saying that I believe they are wrong in their report, they should have reflected upon what the numbers meant and, above all else, expressed themselves in a completely different manner.

I have edited out personal names so to enhance the principle discussion rather than those involved. Besides the important lack of gender understanding, the point I want to push across is the idea that a report can be neutral. All writing is an act of interpretation. All reading is an act of interpretation. The fact that one of the authors contacts me to “teach” me how to interprete his work demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of the role of the official report as a political and social artefact. If this had come from the writer of a lesser work I would have ignored it. But when the admonishment to interprete official sources in the “correct” manner comes from an official source my feeling of concern grows rapidly.

There is a danger when we accept at face value what we read (even in official sources). This danger becomes even more serious when the author attempts to lecture, teach or scold the reader for his or her interpretation.

Posted on by mklang

Read Book Change World

Do you have a guilty conscious about books you should have read? I do. Most of the time I can ignore this little voice but every so often the voice shouts too loud to be ignored.

One book which I thought I should read when it came out in 2000 was Monbiotâ??s â??The Age of Consent: A manifesto for a new world orderâ?? but somehow I always had other stuff to do.

Then I began reading Monbiotâ??s writing online. He posts some (all?) of his newspaper articles online a short while after they have appeared in the newspapers. His â??Children of the Machineâ?? (2006) is an insightful understanding of how RFID technology will slowly come to be accepted and to control us.

Anyway I bought his Age of Consent and I was not disappointed. Here is a man who writes about the complicated hypocrisies of world economics in a manner that is understandable, entertaining and at the same time provoking.

His final goal is to provoke the reader into action. But he is aware that he must move the reader from ignorance, to understanding, to agreement before he gets anyone to act.

Some short quotes:

We must accept that democracy will always be something of a mess. Attempting to tidy it up too much could mean subordinating diversity to universalism and the individual consciousness to the general will to such an extent that we may establish the preconditions not for freedom but for captivity. We must leave gaps between the building blocks, in case we accidentally build a wall. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 115)

Throughout this manifesto, I have sought to suggest ways in which we can use the strengths of our opponents to our advantage, and it seems to me that the roaming hunger of corporations is another asset we can turn to our account. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p)

â?¦the curtailment of the world-eating mathematically impossible system we call capitalism, and its replacement with a benign and viable means of economic exchangeâ?¦ (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 238)

I end this with the same words with which he ends his book:

Well? What are you waiting for?

Posted on by mklang

CC tool for Microsoft Office

Microsoft and Creative Commons (CC) have released a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of CC licenses in the Microsoft Office package. The tool will enable users of the Office package to select a CC license from within the specific application. The copyright licensing tool will be available free of charge at Microsoft Office, and CC. The tool also provides a way for users to dedicate a work to the public domain.

Quotes from the press release:

â??Weâ??re delighted to work with Creative Commons to bring fresh and collaborative thinking on copyright licensing to authors and artists of all kinds,â?? said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. â??We are honored that creative thinkers everywhere choose to use Microsoft tools to give shape to their ideas. Weâ??re committed to removing barriers to the sharing of ideas across borders and cultures, and are offering this copyright tool in that spirit.â??

â??The goal of Creative Commons is to provide authors and artists with simple tools to mark their creative work with the freedom they intend it to carry,â?? said Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of Creative Commons. â??Weâ??re incredibly excited to work with Microsoft to make that ability easily available to the hundreds of millions of users of Microsoft Office.â??

â??Itâ??s thrilling to see big companies like Microsoft working with nonprofits to make it easier for artists and creators to distribute their works,â?? said Gilberto Gil, cultural minister of Brazil, host nation for the Creative Commons iSummit in Rio de Janeiro June 23 through 25, where the copyright licensing tool will be featured. Gil, who will keynote at the iSummit, has released one of the first documents using the Creative Commons add-in for Microsoft Office.

The full list of licenses available from Creative Commons is available online.

Posted on by mklang

When librarians snap

Most jobs have built in annoyances – and most often its customers! These are usually tolerated as they are considered part of the territory but sometimes the urge to work these annoyances out becomes too great…

One such occurance concerns the librarian Barbara McCutcheon who will now, with the help of the local police, have people arrested for not returning library books. This article quotes her as saying: “I’m just not going to take it anymore. I want my books back and I want them now,” and “I will track people down. You can run but you can’t hide”.

This may seem a harsh way to go but the police seem to support this action: “If Barbara has books out that are not returned, then we will make reports and begin to seek arrest warrants. We will start arresting people…”

The library is in Texas – why is this not surprising?
(via Biblioteksrelaterat)

Posted on by mklang

Graph of the Website

As you may have seen I have updated the design of this site – let me know what you think.

Also I found this website that makes a graph of your website – check it out. What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Posted on by mklang

27 days

The snow has turned to rain so its all mushy wet snow and cold water. The result of the days work is +900 words and its 27 days until the grand hand-in. The focus of my work today was writing a short theoretical section on privacy to introduce the chapter on the relation between spyware and integrity. The thesis is now 170 pages long.

The recommended text of the day is “The Right to Privacy” written by Warren & Brandeis in 1890. They argue that there should be a right to privacy and that such a right can be understood to exist out of the legal principles of their time. The motive for writing this article is usually their anger at the Saturday Evening Gazette reporting of one of Warren’s daughters. One of the best quotes include

“Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery. To satisfy a prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers.”

“The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the worldâ?¦”

Somehow this all seems very modern. The part about intensity and complexity of modern life seems almost strange considering it was written over 100 years ago.

One of the reasons why the article came about is the development of technology. The Kodak camera above was a radical development in photographic technology which enabled the photographer to become mobile and therefore allowed pictures to be taken with the fantastic portable technology. In addition to this the new technology meant that the motive did not have to remain immobile in a studio.

Posted on by mklang

More odd spam

Once again odd spam puzzles me. I recently blogged spam about Gouranga. Today it seems to be meaningless inspirational (?) quotes. My question is obvious – why bother spamming people with this. However the answer can only be why not? why blog? why do anything? Anyway here it is:

Subject: The ultimate security is your understanding of reality

If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

And here is the meaning? Well not really a meaning – more an identification of the sources:
The subject is a quote from H. Stanley Judd
The first line is a quote from Vince Lombardi (American Football Coach)
The second line is a quote from Harry Truman (American President)
The third line is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet)

What nothing more exotic?

Posted on by mklang