war

The logic of free online books

David Glenn, Yale U. Press Places Book Online in Hopes of Increasing Print Sales, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 8, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Discusses the advantages of making books available online. His examples include Jack M. Balkin’s Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology (book chapters online in pdf) and Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, which Yale published in May. The book is also available online together with a wiki so that readers can respond.

“The real question,” Mr. Balkin says, “is what the vocation of academic publishing is. Academic publishers saw themselves as trying to spread knowledge â?? high-quality knowledge â?? as far and wide as they could … not just as a service that they provide to the universities that they’re associated with. Well, now they can promote that vocation even better than they could before. And they may even be able to make money off of it, which would be all to the good.”

Without a substantial investigation of a wide selection of material it will be difficult to claim the effects of online material on book sales. Any reports without such a study are anecdotal. But there is also another problem with that kind of study. It is the question of whether the specific book would have sold more or less without the online site.

I believe – a subjective opinion based upon my limited anecdotal evidence – that books sales generally increase when material is placed online. But this requires an important caveat: if the publisher prices the books too high then putting material online will not promote sales.

High-cost academic books are only intended for libraries and therefore online material will only prevent researchers from asking for the book. But high-cost academic books are a bad idea. They cannot claim to be about spreading knowledge (as Balkin states above).

Finding the right price for a large group of potential buyers, then placing material online will first create interest in the book and second ensure that the book is more easily found by those interested in the material. If the book is moderately, or reasonably, priced most (not all) still prefer to read a book in it’s traditional form rather than on a screen.

The problem is arguing with the publishers about this…

Posted on by mklang

Gender Equality and Terrorism

The question of why people become terrorists is naturally much older than the present discussion. While the trendy (and simplistic) explanations right now are based upon ethnic and religious boundaries we easily forget our all too close past. Terror groups over the last 50 years have not necessarily followed ethnic or religious boundaries. European terrorism between 1960-1990, for example, has plenty of examples of terrorists attacking their ethnic, social and religious peers.

For example: Brigate Rosse (Italien militant leftists), Black Star (Greek anti-Imperialist, anti-capitalist), Rote Armee Fraktion (German Baader-Meinhof Group), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom), Real (or True) IRA (Irish Republican Army) and First of October Antifascist Resistance Group (Spain)

So if we can cross of ethnic and religious tensions as to the cause of terrorism â?? what else is there? In recent research collaboration between University College London and Zhejiang Normal University in China arrived at one of the root causes is that there are too many men in society. These men are unlikely to be able to have (much/any?) sex and almost no chance of having families of their own. From the UCL media press release (28 August 2006):

Cultures that favour male babies have bred a surplus of men who will struggle to find sexual partners and could find themselves marginalised in society, warns a new paper co-authored by a UCL (University College London) researcher. As more men discover their lack of marriage prospects, this could lead to antisocial behaviour, violence and possibly more opportunities for organised crime and terrorism, threatening the stability and security of many societies.

There you have it. Research claims that lack of sex makes men into terroristsâ?¦ The solution is naturally to be found in the words of the great John Lennon & McCartney: All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

What a load of…

Posted on by mklang

Smoke and Fire

Is it true that there is no smoke without fire?

Browzar claims to be privacy enhancing software. Despite the fact that it is little more than an “Internet Explorer shell”, a program that sits on top of Microsoft’s popular browser to change its look and some of its functions. It is a free download and is offered as a “beta”, or test version.
Now Browzar is being accused of being adware (BBC article) – in other words the privacy tool is being accused of collecting and using user data to ensure that advertising can be sent to it’s users.
Browzar denies that it is adware or spyware or anything och that sort. The interesting  thing is not whether the claims are correct or not but what will the effects of such claims be on a company… Obviously accusing a privacy enhancing company of violating users privacy is not a small thing.

Posted on by mklang

Not a terrorist

On 12th August Raed Jarrar was forced to take of his t-shirt at John F Kennedy airport. The reason? It has a text in Arabic (and English) which read: “We will not be silent” (BBC article) He attempted to argue freedom of speech but to no avail.

He was given the ultimatum to change t-shirts or not get on the plane.

Not my idea of choice.

As a protest you can now buy t-shirts with the text – “I am not a terrorist” written in Arabic. The shirts are set to $1.00 more than the Spreadshirt (the manufacturer) base price â?? all profits will be sent to the ACLU. Get them here.

This is a good way of attempting to fight against the meaningless and degrading hysteria that has grown from the paranoia of fear of terrorism. Yes we should beware. The world is an unsafe place but the measures that have been taken over the past weeks are more racist than anti-terrorist.

Posted on by mklang

Strategic Media Relations

â??beware of Greeks bearing giftsâ??: The phrase comes from Virgil’s poem of the Trojan war (The Aeneid) and represents an interpretation to the phrase spoken by Laocoon attempting to warn the Trojans not to bring the wooden horse into the city, â??Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.â?? (Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes). Naturally the Trojans did not listen and they were massacred. More on the story at wikipedia.

So when I received an email recommending a privacy story my paranoia reminded me of Loacoon. The mail began: â??Thought you might be interested in reading and possibly linking to the following story published in the Star-Telegramâ?? â?? the story was on the use of biometrics at Disney Theme parks, written by two students. Interesting but definitely old news. Even I wrote about it ages ago (July 2005)

I have never heard of the Star-Telegram nor of the sender of the email. So I began to dig. The first clue came from the email address @trylonsmr.com this mail comes from an account director at a â??Strategic Media Relationsâ?? company.

Why would someone I do not know, working at a PR firm want to draw my attention to a mildly interesting news story? It was not even a news story really more an information piece. So I checked my logs.

It seems like the PR firm searches for blogs on technorati and then emails them with â??newsâ?? stories. The idea would most probably be to create increased interest in their clients. This is confirmed by the email which includes a paragraph about a cooperation between four schools of journalism.

My problem is that I would probably have linked to the story and I have no real problem linking to the journalism project. But the use of the PR firm sending friendly emails as if they were concerned about privacy issues (which I am) just makes the whole thing â?? sad.

I will not post their story since it is not the story they are interested in â?? they are marketers and spammers. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I realise that this post has been thin on the details but that is because I do not inadvertently want to do what the email attempted to manipulate me into doing.

Posted on by mklang

oh dear

Yesterday I came across this small predicament. A truck had attempted to drive through an underpass towards a park and got stuck. Naturally I did what we do in the digital age – I took pictures.

larger image one & two

The situation reminded me of the stories told about the New York city planner Robert Moses who was accused of purposely making underpasses to parks too low for busses to access and therefore reserving the parks for those who could afford cars. This structural discrimination of the poor and racial minorities has been disputed but the fact remains that low bridges do prevent busses but allow cars to pass.

For those of you who are politically inclined you may want to see this as a political metaphor since the van is actually labelled with the markings of a political party and was probably going to be used to spread political information about the upcoming Swedish Genereal Election.

Posted on by mklang

The ungood system of academic publishing

Another text on Free Software that I have written has been accepted for publication. This is good news. But then I read the rather draconian copyright and licensing rules which the publisher wants to apply to my text.

Basically the ideas remain mine but if I want to present them I have to re-write the ideas from scratch.

The author retains the rights to any intellectual property developed â?¦While the author may use any and all thoughts and research results developed or accumulated while working on a manuscript, and may rewrite, update, and re-title them for use in other publications, â?¦ the author CANNOT use the verbatim text of the manuscript or any part thereofâ?¦without first obtaining the written permissionâ?¦

From my limited experience this wording is pretty standard. From the academics point of view I â??needâ?? publications. But the situation becomes strange when the topic I am writing about is Free Software which has a large focus on openness and the freedom of ideas.

Let me just point out from the start â?? there is no limitation on the reader to read and develop the ideas. They just cannot slavishly copy the text.

My niggling concern is the fact that I am paid by an organisation to do research (and teach). So I spend my time gathering information and thinking about the implications of what is occurring in my particular field. I may even have applied for public grants to do this work.

Once I write down my thoughts the only way for the others to gain access to them is for my library to buy the book so that others can read it. Which basically means my university is paying twice for this information. First for me to think/write and then to obtain physical access to the information.

Even though I dislike the contents of the copyright agreement I have just signed it did not prevent me from signing it. The problem is one of incentive structures. Had I written the work and then just posted it to my website â?? it would not have been worth anything to my academic peers and therefore to my academic career.

The academic text only becomes valuable after it passes through the quality control system which is in the hands of the publisher. Without a publishing house behind the text the information contained therein is not seen as knowledgeâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

So long, Pluto

Not every lifetime has the privilege of experiencing the discovery of new planets â?? in particular in our own solar system. But we are now living in an exiting time. Today a major decision will be made that will effect our solar system. We are going to remove some planets from the solar system.

So how many planets will there be in the solar system tomorrow? If you are a betting person then the safe money is on the number eight. This means that Pluto is out. Even though it has been accepted as a planet since its discovery in 1840 1930.

The reason (New Scientist) for the loss of Pluto is the acceptance of a new planetary definition that a planet must be the dominant body in its orbital zone, clearing out any little neighbours. Pluto does not qualify because its orbit crosses that of the vastly larger Neptune.

The other Pluto

Pluto may become either a “dwarf-planet” or planetoid. But even though the safe money is on the adoption of the new definition there is always the chance that the long shot will win and the pro-Pluto-as-planet lobby will succeed! Ok so I have no idea whether there is a pro-Pluto-as-planet lobby but can you picture the whole decision making body: the politics, the lobbying, the intrigueâ?¦ Being an astronomer must be exiting stuff right now.

Or maybe the whole thing is a ruse to be able to reprint all the astronomy booksâ?¦
Take a look at the cool BBC astronomy website.

Posted on by mklang

Steal This Film

Steal This Film is more than a website that seems to scream out its message! It is also the first part of a documentary series on filesharing. This first part focuses on The Pirate Bay and in particular on the raid on their servers. The documentary seems interesting â?? natural bias towards pro-filesharing but the creators are open about this:

In 2006, a group of friends decided to make a film about filesharing that *we* would recognise. There have been a few documentaries by ‘old media’ crews who don’t understand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation as a threat to their livelihoods. They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively, and no capacity to represent it lucidly. We wanted to make a film that would explore this huge popular movement in a way that excited us, engaged us, and most importantly, focussed on what we know to be the positive and optimistic vision many filesharers and artists (they are often one) have for the future of creativity.

Posted on by mklang

Damn!

According to Mr Hawkins’ interpretation of Biblical prophesy, nuclear war will erupt on September 12, 2006, and one third of the humans on the planet will perish. Watch him here.

Damn – my thesis defence is on October 2nd!

Who should I contact to ask for an extension on this end of the world thingy?

(via Boing Boing)

Posted on by mklang