#881; In which a Standard is questioned:

This comic is dedicated to the engineers at JPL! Yesterday I was lucky enough to get to tag along on a tour my wife organized for her fellow crew members from the TV show Robot Chicken. Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell and his colleagues were kind enough to show us all around the facility! Check it out

Experimental short documentary on the northern lights:

Jan sends us this trailer for Magnetic Reconnection, “An experimental short form documentary contrasting the northern lights with the harsh landscapes and decaying man made remnants littered in the northern Canadian town of Churchill. The film touches upon the power of nature over man and the futility of struggle against the natural processes of decay. Despite our best attempts they are a power far beyond our control or ability to quantify. Featuring a score by Jim O’Rourke (Sonic Youth, Wilco), narration by Will Oldham (Matewan, Old Joy) and likely some of the best footage of the aurora ever captured.”

“Until recently aurora footage was captured on 35mm film at an ISO value of 800 with up to 30 second exposure times,” said Armstrong. “The resulting images often appeared to have very little definition or semblance of what the phenomenon appears to the naked eye and had the appearance of blobs of plasma with small changes. Over the past 10 years advances in digital sensing technology has led to more accurate representations, what you’ll see if you look on YouTube, with 15 second exposures, even 10 second exposure times. While they make for compelling and pretty pictures, these clips are frequently set against with moonlit nights with loads of light pollution suffering from the plasmic blob look because of the long exposure times.

Magnetic Reconnection | NEWS

(Thanks, Jan!)

Sets for a Film I’ll Never Make: The Unbelievably Intricate Cardboard Sculptures of Daniel Agdag:








If you ask Melbourne-based artist Daniel Agdag what he does, he’ll tell you that he makes things out of cardboard. However this statement hardly captures the absurd complexity and detail of his boxboard and PVA glue sculptures that push the limits of the medium. Agdag is an award-winning creator of stop-motion films and this new series of work, Sets for a Film I’ll Never Make, feature a number of his structural experiments which he refers to simply as “sketching with cardboard”. Miraculously, each work is created without detailed plans or drawings and are almost wholly improvised as he works. You can see these latest sculptures at Off the Kerb Gallery starting October 26, 2012 in Melbourne’s inner north suburb of Collingwood.

Kindle user claims Amazon deleted whole library without explanation:
According to Martin Bekkelund, a Norwegian Amazon customer identified only as Linn had her Kindle access revoked without warning or explanation. Her account was closed, and her Kindle was remotely wiped. Bekkelund has posted a string of emails that he says were sent to Linn by the company. They are a sort of Kafkaesque dumbshow of bureaucratic non-answering, culminating in the customer service version of “Die in a fire,” to whit, “We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters,” a comment signed by “Michael Murphy, Executive Customer Relations, Amazon.co.uk.”

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.

Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

I appreciate this is not the outcome you hoped for and apologise for any disappointment this may cause.

Back in 2009, when Amazon settled the lawsuit over its remote deletion of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (you really can’t make this stuff up), it promised that it would not perform any further deletions unless ordered to do so by a court. I repeatedly asked Amazon whether DRM-free ebooks, or files that users load onto their Kindles themselves, could be remotely deleted. I never received a response of any kind.

My guess is that Amazon has the capability to wipe any file from any Kindle, and likely also has the ability to read any file on any Kindle. I’d further speculate that the policy violation that Linn stands accused of is using a friend’s UK address to buy Amazon UK English Kindle books from Norway. This is a symptom of Amazon’s — and every single other ebook retailer’s — hopelessness at managing “open territory” for ebooks.

“Open territory” is a publishing term describing places where no publisher holds exclusive retail rights. In English-language book-contracts, it’s almost always the case that countries where English isn’t the native or official language are “open territory,” meaning that if a writer sells her English language rights in Canada and the US to Macmillan, and her UK/Australia/NZ/South African rights to Penguin, both Penguin and Macmillan are legally allowed to sell competing English print and electronic editions in Norway, Rwanda, India, China, and Russia.

However, the universal approach taken by ebook retailers to “open territory” is to pretend that it doesn’t exist. If no publisher is registered as the exclusive provider of an edition in a given country, the ebook retailers just refuse to sell to people in those countries. I’ve spoken to e-rights people in the major publishing houses, and they hate this, because a) it just drives piracy; and b) it represents lost sales. But there’s no shifting the etailers, apparently.

If my conjecture about Linn’s offense is correct, then she has not violated copyright, nor has she done anything that would upset a publisher. She’s merely violated the thousands of words of impossible fine-print that comes with your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iPad, as have all of us. This fine print will always have a clause that says you are a mere tenant farmer of your books, and not their owner, and your right to carry around your “purchases” (which are really conditional licenses, despite misleading buttons labelled with words like “Buy this with one click” — I suppose “Conditionally license this with one click” is deemed too cumbersome for a button) can be revoked without notice or explanation (or, notably, refund) at any time.

It’s likely that the EU’s open market directives prohibit any kind of discrimination of sales based on national borders within the EU (though Norway isn’t technically in the EU). However, the EUCD’s strict prohibition on DRM circumvention (which Norway both voluntarily adopted and exceeded) means that purchasers of ebooks and ereaders can’t take any steps to enforce their legal rights, nor can any business or nonprofit assist them in these matters.

I was a bookseller for many years. I have no idea whether everything that my customers did with their books was legal. It’s likely that some of them photocopied their books and passed them around. Embarrassingly enough, I once sold a small stack of rather excellent novels to a guy who bought them with a counterfeit bill. Despite all this, I — as a bookseller — was never, ever expected to repossess those books. I was not expected to police my customers’ use of those books. I did not have — nor did I want — the facility to know what else my customers shelved on their bookshelves next to the books I sold them.

Reading without surveillance, publishing without after-the-fact censorship, owning books without having to account for your ongoing use of them: these are rights that are older than copyright. They predate publishing. They are fundamentals that every bookseller, every publisher, every distributor, ever reader, should desire. They are foundational to a free press and to a free society. If you sell an ebook reader is designed to allow Kafkaesque repossessions, you are a fool if you expect anything but Kafkaesque repossessions in their future. We’ve been fighting over book-bans since the time of Martin Luther and before. There is no excuse for being surprised when your attractive nuisance attracts nuisances.

It’s true that the ability to revoke files over the air is a boon to people whose devices are stolen or lost. Much of that benefit can be realized by designing devices that encrypt their storage (to a user password) by default (though we know about the weaknesses of passwords, of course). It’s also conceivable to have an over-the-air deletion system that requires a sign-in from the device owner/user at a Web-browser, and that isn’t available to the manufacturer alone. Both of these are more cumbersome than simply reporting your device stolen and knowing that the next time it’s connected to the Internet, it will delete itself.

But as we learned when Mat Honan‘s phone, laptop, and backups were remotely wiped by a hacker, having a manufacturer-controlled remote wipe facility means that your data is only as safe as the most careless front-line telephone-bank service rep at the manufacturer, which is to say, not very.

If it’s a choice between paving the way for tyranny and risking the loss of your digital life at the press of a button by some deceived customer service rep, and having to remember a password, I think the password is the way to go. The former works better, but the latter fails better.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM

Outlawed by Amazon DRM (Google cache)

(Thanks to Eirik and all the others who sent this in)

(Image: DRM PNG 1 900, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from listentomyvoice’s photostream)

#417 Manhattan Project:

[Warren Ellis says:]
Unsocial Media: The Uselessness Of Facebook And Google+:
Google+ is apparently a success, according to many tech reporters.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people are using G+ to post inside Circles.  Some 11,000 people have added me to G+ circles – but, apparently, none of the ones they post to.  Of the 150+ people I had in circles, precisely three of them posted content I could see.  When I posted content, only a thin fraction of those 11000 people could see it, because at some point I got tuned out by the system.  G+ is therefore useless to me, and I just nuked my circles.
Facebook Pages allow some 16% of the people who clicked Like on a Page to see the posts from that Page.  Regardless of whether or not those people specifically requested those posts in their News Feed.  If a Page owner wants to access the eyeballs of more of the people who clicked Like on a Page because they wanted to see that Page’s posts, that Page owner has to pay to Promote those posts.  I would currently have to pay USD $10 to ensure that all the people who Liked the official Warren Ellis Page on Facebook actually saw one single post.   Facebook Pages are therefore useless to me. 
(Of the 150+ people I had as Friends on my personal page, maybe five people were aware I was actually there, so I’ve nuked my friends list there, too.)
None of this is important, you understand.  But I’ve not been paying a huge amount of attention to social media this year.  Until it became time to start thinking about raising awareness of GUN MACHINE.  So I’ve had to dig into this a bit – I’ve been talking about this in the newsletter, too. 
Facebook, in search of monetisation, has killed engagement – unless your brand is so big that you are in fact desperate to pay for connection.  Because small brands like me can move around, but big brands have to be seen in the big places.  The Facebook Page is now completely broken unless you open your wallet.
And who the fuck even knows how Google+ works now.  It is, in its way, the most “service-y” of the social network sites – now the dust has settled, it really seems to be a souped-up version of Google Groups, with built-in discovery and significant tech enhancements like Hangouts.  A service, not a network.
None of this is important, but it is interesting to me. 
Facebook will have to rely on big companies for one of its revenue streams, driving the small-fry like me out of the Pages system and possibly off Facebook entirely.  People like me will probably keep a FB account alive, though, and maybe even use it to log into things, thereby sending data back that they can sell in another revenue stream.  FB won’t care that I’m not running a Page. In theory, by usurping the “single sign-on” role that things like OAuth were supposed to fill, Facebook gets data to sell without even having to run a social network.
Google doubtless gathers enough data about me in other ways that my non-use of G+ won’t matter a whit.  They felt that they had to have a social network, but they are not a social network company, and don’t need to run a social network in order to do their business.
Perhaps you could add “the death of the social network” to “the death of blogging” in the media-headline scare list.  Replace it with pervasive digital loyalty, maybe.
Whatever it is, it’s no bloody use for hearing from people, or talking to a crowd.

[Warning: DEPRESSING. -egg]

I beg you to take my child:

In 1869, in response to a sharp rise in the number of babies being abandoned in New York, often in dangerous circumstances, The Foundling Asylum — run by Sister Irene Fitzgibbon, pictured above — opened to the public with a single white cradle on its doorstep, and immediately began to give safe shelter to unwanted infants. In the first two years alone, 2’500 children were taken in.

Babies were often abandoned at the Foundling along with a letter, many of which have since been preserved by the New York Historical Society. Below are just five examples.

Transcripts follow each image.

(Source: The wonderful Ephemeral New York & the New York Historical Society on Flickr; Image above: Sister Irene at the Foundling Asylum in 1888, via Wikipedia.)

Transcript

2-21-71

New York Tuesday

Kind Sisters,

you will find a little boy he is a month old to morrow it father will not do anything and it is a poor little boy it mother has to work to keep 3 others and can not do anything with this one it name is Walter Cooper and he is not christen yet will you be so good as to do it? I should not like him to die with out it his mother might claim him some day I have been married 5 years and I married respectfully and I did not think my husband was a bad man I had to leave him and I could not trust my children to him now I do not know where he is and he has not seen this one yet I have not a dollar in the world to give him or I would give it to him I wish you would keep him for 3 or 4 months and if he is not claimed by that time you may be sure it mother can not support it I may some day send some money to him do not forget his name.

Yours respectfully,

Mrs Cooper

Transcript

New York April 6th

My dear good Sister,

Please accept this little outcast son of mine trusting with God’s help that I will be able to sustain it in your institution. I would not part with my baby were it in any way possible for me to make a respectable living with it, but I cannot, and so ask you to take my little one, and with the assistance of Our Blessed Lady I promise to place in the contribution box, each month all that I can spare from my earnings, and to bring it clothes as often as my means will allow. This is no idle promise Good Sister. I know how often such are made and broken, but I will do my duty. Its name is Joseph Cavalier.

Transcript

Sister Superioress

I am a poor woman and I have been deceived under the promise of marriage, I am at present with no means and with out any relatives to nurse my baby. Therefore I beg you for god sake to take my child until I can find a situation and have enough means so I can bring up myself. I hope that you will so kind to accept my child and I will pray god for you.

I remain humble servant

Teresa Perrazzo

New York, Dec. 3rd 1874

Transcript

New York July 3rd 1872

Kind Sisters of Charity

This worthy man Mr. Edward Keefe has had the misfortune to lose within about a week, both daughter and wife. The mother of his child died today, leaving upon his hands a tender infant but a few hours old.

He prays of you to care for it and sustain in it the feeble spark of life which God has placed there.

Yours truly

F.E. Donlin MD

No 1 Ludlow Place

Transcript

Dear Sister of Mercy,

Please take care of my baby as I can not do it my self. I trust God will reward you. I do not know if I live or die. I give it in charge of you and the Almighty. I have sinned can not expect much good luck. It will not be christened as I know you will attend to that. If I live I hope to claim it some day. Its fathers name is Hudson. You call it as you think best. I am not able to write any more. I call it Julia R Hudson.

People simply empty out:

In 1969, publisher John Martin offered to pay Charles Bukowski $100 each and every month for the rest of his life, on one condition: that he quit his job at the post office and become a writer. 49-year-old Bukowski did just that, and in 1971 his first novel, Post Office, was published by Martin’s Black Sparrow Press.

15 years later, Bukowski wrote the following letter to Martin and spoke of his joy at having escaped full time employment.

(Source: Reach for the Sun Vol. 3; Image: Charles Bukowski, via.)

8-12-86

Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

“I put in 35 years…”

“It ain’t right…”

“I don’t know what to do…”

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

yr boy,

Hank