a-cubed.info

A copy of a message I sent to Bugzilla today.

I would like to be able to report crashes on my system using Bugzilla. However, I will not sign up for an account on that service because they violate a basic principle of user privacy, and for no good reason so far as I can tell. They require an email address for people to sign up, but this email adddress is then visible to all on any bug reports submitted. They “helpfully” suggest that users should use a “secondary” email account to avoid spam on their main account. This is just a ridiculous suggestion. If I wish to make use of bugzilla to do more than just submit automated bug reports, such as actually track the status of my bug, I’m going to want to use a “push” service to report changes to the bug, and that means accessing the email account I register with them, making it pointless as to whether it’s a primary or secondary account – I’m still going to have to wade through any spam to get at the real contents, and the publication of the email address will pretty much ensure that it gets spammed. Why not follow the more-or-less standard approach of having users select a username which is visible to other users and if it’s really necessary to allow users to contact others for whom they don’t separately know an email address, provide a simple user-to-user personal message system? Since the purpose of Bugzilla is to allow community-minded users to report problems with software to the development community, discouraging them from doing so degrades the whole community effort.

There has been a recent spate of reports regarding Research In Motion and their difficulties with various surveillance-oriented regimes (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan) demanding access to the emails sent from the famous and popular Blackberry mobile communications system. The most recent addition to the countries demanding such access is India. I find it interesting that they are targetting the Blackberry in this way. Standard email protocols provide exactly the same facility as the proprietary systems used by Blackberry and many other smartphone systems to send and receive email to remote servers with end-to-end encryption so that only if the user device is cracked or the server is located in-country, can the government access the communications data (modulo claims of encryption cracking capabilities of Forth Worth and GCHQ).

More flexible smartphones such as the iPhone, Mobile Windows- or Android-based systems can of course be set up with standard email servers anywhere in the world. Are these the next target, or are the users of Crackberries seen as the most likely to be “misusing” (according to the governments in question) email? This attempted fragmentation and re-bordering of the internet was analysed by Goldsmith and Wu a few years ago in Who Controls the Internet? Will open platforms such as the Android be banned in favour of iPhones but only if Apple follows RIM’s example and limits email apps to in-country servers? What about travel to these countries? Will entry into Pakistan with an iPhone be followed by a revocation of any app allowing out-of-country encrypted communications?

I just came across a book which I thought would be useful for one of the courses I’m teaching at Meiji University: Information Society. It’s a 2009 book called The Information Society and it includes the same kind of approach I’m using, with a historical background and various sociological, technological, economic and other facets explored. It’s a huge book, admittedly, at almost 2,000 pages. You can see the full details at the publisher’s web site. I’m not going to be using it as a book, though, even purchased for my University library, because it costs £675.00 (Amazon UK) $1,325.00 (Amazon US) $1,192 (Routledge List price). What on earth? That’s 25p per page! (more…)

In three pieces of fiction involving heaven and hell (relatively) recently, I’ve come across a similar kind of concept: the idea of a place outside the influecen of heaven and hell. Is this a new meme bubbling up in fiction or is it just an old trope I’ve not recognised before? The three in question have very different versions of the idea, though:

• Mike Carey’s Lucifer series starts with Lucifer gaining an exist from God’s creation to “the void” beyond;
• Simon R. Green’s Nightside is explicitly created to be outside the power of both heaven and hell, although both angels and demons do visit it when the plot demands;
• Liz William’s The Shadow Pavilion introduces a new element to her classic Eastern mythology with Between the places in the cracks where inspiration comes from.

I recently had my first Times Higher Education article “Lost Without Translation” published (I’ve been in the letters pages very often before but never had an article in there). Here’s the text: (more…)

David Ignatius, one of the Washington Post Writers Group, recently wrote an article (widely syndicated under different headlines) on The case for spreading press freedom around the world, in support of Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University‘s call for a global “First Amendment” (i.e. a global guarantee of freedom of speech, imposed by the US). In that article he mentions that “Bollinger’s call for a global First Amendment has been criticized as too chauvinistic. But the world’s embrace of the Internet tells me that we’re on the right side of history on this one.”

I am a strong advocate of freedom of expression myself, but I find the analysis of both Bollinger and Ignatius to be missing some important elements here. There is indeed a chauvinistic assumption here that lies at the heart of the US’ attitude to the world at large. America seeks to impose certain thing on others, largely those which large power blocs within the US see as in their own interests (consider the capture of US trade policy by a small group of “intellectual property” businesses charged by Drahos and Braithwaite in their book “Information Feudalism“). An attempt to directly impose the US first amendment on other countries is indeed chauvinistic. However, there is a moral high ground that the US could legitimately take, though it is highly unlikely to do so. First, it could expand the scope of US constitutional guarantees and in particular the first amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, to all human beings within the scope of US dominion. Second it could enjoin all US-based companies from engaging in activities violating those rights anywhere in the world.

At present as a non-US citizen even when I visit the US I do not enjoy the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Indeed as shown by the case of Peter Watts, beaten up by a US immigration official and then prosecuted and convicted for non-compliance with a border official when he asked why he was being assaulted, and the case of the Guantanamo Bay detainees (and others in Bagram Air Base) other basic liberties such as Habeas Corpus also do not apply to non-US citizens under effective US dominion.

While I am a Bright and not a religious person, the New Testament comment about specks, beams and eyes comes to mind. Before the US starts trying to impose its particular constitutional settlement on others, it should first ensure that its constitutional settlement is appropriately fair and universally applicable within the legitimate scope of its own authority.

In a clear abuse of the parliamentary process and a travesty of democracy, the Digital Economy Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons yesterday, a process which now allows the final passage of the bill to be pushed through “wash-up”. The reason this is a travesty is that the wash-up process is supposed to be for bills with cross-party support and few concerns about the detailed provisions needing further parliamentary scrutiny, to avoid clogging up the post-election parliamentary timetable with uncontroversial matters getting in the way of (supposedly) the new governments’ manifesto commitments. Neither of these is truly the case for the Digital Economy Bill. While the Conservative and Labour Front Benches may have whipped sufficient of their MPs into line this did not have all-party support. It was not (and is not) uncontroversial. Claims that it had received significant debate in the Lords ignores the constant cries from the current government about how undemocratic our Upper Chamber is. When the Lords blocks something the government doesn’t like, it’s undemocratic, but when it serves as a mechanism for the near-dictator Lord Mandelson to push through a piece of captured legislation then it’s sufficient democratic scrutiny for a major bill. The Digital Economy is incredibly important to the UK and a bill to support and develop it needed to be put through the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and crafted with balance on all sides of the discussions. Ramming something through with Henry VIII powers, a lop-sided set of proposals which run the risk of destroying significant chunks of internet access and business through chilling effects if not legal action, all because Lord Mandelson got his ear bent by a rich representative of a dinosaur industry, is not democracy, it’s corruption and abuse of power.

Larry Lessig changed his tack in the US from lobbying for more sensible copyright (and related rights) laws to the issue of corruption in US politics and the capture of the law-making process by small groups with large amounts of money. After the DEBill fiasco in the UK, it’s easy to see why he felt that move necessary.

To be sung to Where the Streets Have No Name by U2 (or the Pet Shop Boys cover version):
I wanna blog
I want to speak
I wanna see through the fog
That makes us all weak
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the tweets have no name
Ha…ha…ha…
I want to feel
The book of my face
To see the cloud as it appears
Without a trace
I want to shelter from the trollish reign
Where the tweets have no name
Ho…ha… (more…)

After visiting Japan in 2007 for the Worldcon (Nippon 2007) Charlie Stross wrote in his travelblog that Japan had “got our future, damn it!”. I’ve just moved into a new-build apartment in Tokyo and thought I’d share some initial impressions of up to date living conditions in Tokyo, some of which clearly represent Charlie’s impression, but some of which are not ideal or futuristic. (more…)

I went to IKEA in Minami Funabashi in Eastern Tokyo yesterday. I kept noticing the music because it seemed like they’d copied a random selection of music off my media player: Suzanne Vega, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and many others. Obviously, I’m in their target audience. I didn’t buy anything, though we may get a sofa from them, at least partly because they keep stock in unlike most of the companies where it’s a minimum three week, and up to eight week, wait.