adamyntium

Category: society

  • Short guys in film

    When browsing the headlines of Wired News the other day, I became excited when I saw this:

    Short Film Stars on Amazon

    Wow, I thought, short folks (in particular short guys) getting featured on a prominent site like Amazon! No more Tall, Dark, and Handsome, no siree… finally, the spotlight on short, pale, and plain looking fellas like myself! Oh happy day!

    But, alas, the actual article was not what I had hoped for.

    The initial excitement, however, has at least spurred me to ponder a related topic: Are there any Leading Men (I’m not talking goofy comics like Danny DeVito) that are, well, short? Tom Cruise, I suppose, isn’t all that tall (5’8″ or something?”) but are there any 5’2″ men cast as dreamy romantic leads? Any especially short men in film that are portrayed as strong, decisive, sexy rather than goofballs or jerks with Napoleon complexes?

    Humble readers, help me out here… 🙂

  • Life-B-here

    “What I really want is Life-B-Here.”

    – Mitch Altman, creator of the TV-B-Gone, a keychain device that turns off nearly any TV in the surrounding area

  • Let’s kill, er, tax all the lawyers!


    Governor Rick Perry and the Legislature can’t agree on a school finance plan, but Michael Boone has an idea he thinks can’t fail. Here’s how he would sell it in a TV ad campaign. 

    The ad would show pictures of schoolchildren in desks and seniors in their gardens. A soothing but concerned voice talks of underfunded schools and overtaxed homeowners. 


    Then comes the punch line: “If you want to lower your property taxes 50 cents and put a tax on lawyers, vote YES on Saturday.” [Emphasis mine] 


    That idea, Boone said, would be so popular that “they won’t have enough voting booths.”
    Boone has standing to propose such an idea. He’s a lawyer. 

    – from “A lawyer’s case for lawyer tax” in the Houston Chronicle, May 16, 2004

    The article gets even wackier from there.

    Boone is a staunchly pro-Bush Republican. A Republican, favoring increased taxes? For improving schools? What next, a Liberal war-hawk? Oh wait, there’s Lieberman… 😀

    On a serious note, I don’t quite get the supposed attraction of this tax. Saving a whopping 50 cents on one’s property taxes doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that’s bound to excite folks to the degree suggested in the article, even if it is coupled with a tax on what many perceive to be an odious and overpaid profession (DISCLAIMER: I’m a law school graduate myself).

    Of course, increased money for schools is — at least in theory — a good thing, so I can’t argue with that. But this opportunistic Robin-Hood’ing doesn’t quite seem like a very logical way to go about it. Why not a tax on overpaid sports crybabies, er, athletes… say, .1% of their income? That should be enough to pay for a few thousand extra teachers each year in Texas. Or how about a tax on crappy actors/actresses? Wait, that might corrupt schools with too much money.

    My point is… why a specific tax on lawyers, other than to satisfy the typical “Lawyers are scum” pandering? Sure, lawyers are sometimes obscenely compensated, IMHO, or at least obnoxiously greedy. But all of that isn’t really limited to lawyers, is it?

    * * *

    In summary, I usually would applaud pretty much anything that helps schools. But a ‘lawyer tax’ — no matter how quirkily appealing — just doesn’t seem to be an appropriate option.

  • The RIGHT way to AUTHOR privacy policies

    You’d think that companies would “get it” by now. Most don’t.

    Privacy policies aren’t rocket-science, but they’re absolutely critical to the long-term success of a company. Without earned trust and strong communications, firms have little hope of surviving, and thank goodness!

    So without further ado, here is my free advice to companies wanting to create or update a privacy policy:

    A privacy policy must do all of the following:
    – INFORM: Let visitors know, in accessible language, how the site collects and manages data acquired
    – REASSURE: Offer confident and truthful promises about the safeguarding and respect of this data
    – PERSUADE: Successfully invite visitors to fully utilize the site’s functions, and to provide honest data and feedback without fear
    – PROTECT: Guard the company itself against basic legal or public relations challenges that may arise from improper or incomplete disclosures

    Ideally, every company should offer both a comprehensive privacy policy (though preferably not in ‘legalese’ — whip those lawyers into speaking English, please) and also a concise one paragraph summary of what they will and won’t do with their customers’ data.

    And then — though I shouldn’t have to say this — they need stick by their promises… and they’ll then be rewarded with greater loyalty and fewer lawsuits 🙂

  • Direction of our lives… a quote from a surprising source

    To my surprise, this thoughtful musing is not to be found on Google:


    We seek to define our lives by the directions we take, by grasping the opportunities that present themselves and making a decision about which fork in the road to take. There is either good or bad, right or wrong. But there is no middle. Life is who we are, who we forgive, who we defend and protect. Do we choose a side? Or do we throw out the line in order to play in the middle? Do we straddle the fence between what is, and what should be?

    For some, this is the course they choose, trying to find the delicate balance of interest that can never exist. They choose by not choosing. They defend a center which cannot be held. And in time, they define their lives by the directions they do not take.

    1) Can you identify the origin of the quote above? (and yes, I do already know where it’s from)
    2) What are your thoughts about it?

  • Gmail’s not the problem: A look at misguided and dangerous privacy positioning

    HARK! A powerful new technology! Let’s [try it / ignore it / ban it]!

    History repeats itself. When new technology is developed, there are the early adopters who coo excitedly, those living under a rock who grunt “huh?” and varying degrees of those who issue warnings, which — at least as of late — seem to fit into one of several convenient categories:
    1) Fighting against terrorism
    2) Safeguarding values (e.g., “Protecting the children!”)
    3) Protecting privacy

    To simultaneously save me from getting writer’s cramp and enable you to finish reading this essay in under two hours, I’m just going to tackle the issue of privacy for now.

    * * *

    Examining privacy

    First, let’s take into consideration the two fundamental aspects of privacy:

    1) SECLUSION: Right to be left alone; protection from intrusion, interruption, etc.
    2) SECRECY: Right to keep one’s personal life from prying eyes

    Much ado has been made of Gmail’s alleged or potential violations of both types of privacy by other individuals (advertisers, hackers, employees) or entities (Google, other companies, government agencies). And admittedly, with seemingly so many potential loci for abuse, it’s understandable that many folks are concerned about a project of the scope of something like Gmail.

    However, in this essay, I’d like to offer my opinions as to why these risks are outweighed by benefits and — more importantly — why focusing on ‘reforming’ (or even suspending) Gmail harmfully takes our eye off the real problems in our society.

    * * *

    Assessing privacy issues in the context of Gmail

    It’s easiest to dispense immediately with the ‘right to be left alone’ aspect of Gmail. Unlike the flashy, gaudy, intelligence-insulting “You’re winner number 314159!” pop-ups that pollute leading Web mail services (and much of the rest of the Web), Gmail’s ads are deliciously unobtrusive. They don’t blink, they don’t flash, they just sit there quietly on the side — barely noticeable. And since Gmail does not insert so much as a tag line (much less ads) in any outgoing mails, it becomes even more difficult to forward an argument that Gmail creates an interruption or other intrusion into one’s daily life.

    One might counter that the very presence of contextual ads may create a feeling of queasy intrusion. However, Gmail has (in my testing) been pretty cautious about placing ads next to apparently-personal or otherwise sensitive e-mails, and of course, it does not place any ads next to e-mail marked (automatically or manually) as spam. Still, there’s admittedly the possibility of an unpleasant juxtaposition of a heartfelt e-mail with a angst-inducing related ad, but such an occurence is also possible via a song on a radio, an ad on TV, a seemingly random phone call, and so on. Our minds are rich in imagination, and capable — for better or worse — of astounding leaps of correlation. Once again, this is not something one should hold Gmail responsible for, IMHO, and it hardly seems to fit into the issue of privacy. And of particular note, the Gmail text ads are lightyears away from the ludicrous example of a billboard in one’s living room, as one clearly-clueless senator has suggested in tandem with her anti-Gmail legislation.

    So what we’re left with, then, is the more meaty and complex aspect of privacy-as-secrecy. With Gmail’s one gig of storage, it’s no doubt that many folks will practically be entrusting their life’s story — AND secrets — to Google. And in this area, I honestly have no easy answers. I will, however, attempt to address the various pieces:

    – Security breaches / the bored employee
    Google has an excellent history of data integrity, having (to my knowledge) avoided any data theft from its multi-billion dollar AdWords or AdSense programs. But other big players haven’t been quite so successful. Many of Amazon.com’s anonymous viewers found their screen names exposed a few months ago (frankly, much to my evil delight, since many if not most of the anons were shills and twits). On a less innocuous note, many Hotmail users found their accounts suddenly ‘open to the public’ due to a security exploit that Microsoft then understandably scrambled to fix.

    Could Google stumble here? Nothing’s impossible. Unfortunately (and in fairness to Google), however, this is a universal problem. Though I’d frankly trust Google with my data over most other companies, I think it’d be a mistake to assume that anyone’s data is 100% safe, anywhere.

    On a similarly sobering note, I’ll add that it’s trivially possible for an Information Systems worker at your company or your ISP to read your incoming and outgoing mail. Google has vehemently highlighted precautions it’s taken to prevent this happening at their company, and frankly, I believe them. Would you, as a highly-compensated employee, risk your job at such a coveted organization for the opportunity to snoop into likely banal exchanges? Seems unlikely to me. But that aside… once again, this is not a Gmail issue. This is a general e-mail issue.

    – Selling/giving data to other companies
    As a Google (AdWords) Advertiser and Publisher (AdSense), I can tell you point-blank that Google does an incredible job at protecting the data of both its users (visitors to Google.com and AdSense Web sites) and its advertisers. As both an advertiser and publisher, I am absolutely unable to glean any personal information about people who click on my ads. Google actually maintains a very strict separation between its departments, and were it (or another company) to risk this integrity in the future, the brand would be tarnished beyond recovery (and it’s not like there’s not competition!). In other words, unlike with almost every other transaction we partake in In Real Life, I firmly believe we can trust Google not to share our personal info with other companies.

    – Giving our secrets to federal governments… oh yeah, and lawyers
    If Ashcroft applied enough pressure to Google next month and insisted on wiretapping a few dozen “suspected terrorist” accounts, I’m betting that Google would buckle.

    Wow, that’s probably not what you expected me to say, is it?

    I’ll surprise you further: I have no doubt that lawyers are indeed salivating at the likelihood of millions of people getting Gmail accounts and storing voluminous amounts of discoverable data, perfect for future lawsuits.

    Of course, Ashcroft and — to a less chilling but likely more common extent — Dewey Cheatem and Howe have been subpoening mail records from Hotmail, Earthlink, Comcast, Big 10 universities, Fortune 500 companies, and so on. Gmail just expands the scope.

    But Gmail isn’t the problem

    And now we get to the meat of this essay, in which I argue — after acknowledging Gmail’s unwilling-but-likely facilitation of government and lawyerly snooping — that Gmail is absolutely, positively not the problem.

    Electronic Freedom Fighter and longtime smart-geek Brad Templeton gives us a good start here via his entry on Privacy and Gmail, which includes:

    …there are also some deep issues here, worth discussing with not just Google but all the other webmail providers

    …but Brad doesn’t go far enough. E-mail privacy concerns aren’t — or at least shouldn’t — be just limited to Webmail. As noted above, your mail is susceptible to snooping no matter where it resides… unless you’re one of the 0.0000002% of geeks who use encryption, and that’s likely to send up a red flag to Ashcroft anyway ;-). And though Brad’s suggestion that Gmail incorporate a more user-friendly form of encryption has merit, I think it’s a mere bandaid on larger problems. In fact, I’m generally uncomfortable with the feeling that Brad places the onus of responsibility (and solutions) upon technology, rather than those who abuse human rights via such technologies.

    As we move these things [record of peoples’ lives] online and outside, we build some of the apparatus for a surveillance society.

    I strongly disagree. This is like saying that when Japan set up high-speed rail transit, the country created the apparatus for criminals to flee farther and faster. Or as long distance calling costs have become insanely cheaper over the last 15 years, it’s made it much, much easier for people to plot nefarious acts over the phone more affordably.

    The introduction of new technologies — or the exponential improvement of existing technologies — facilitates opportunities for good and for not-good. But blaming the technologies (particularly communication technologies) is horribly wrong for two reasons:

    1) It stifles innovation, and keeps costs artificially high.

    Can you imagine how much more work — and perhaps more value — Google could be putting into Gmail if they were able to spend less time fighting PR fires?

    2) It takes our attention off of the real culprits: federal powers without sufficient accountability or checks or balances, not to mention a legal system which rewards, even necessitates antagonism over consensus.

    Let’s stop blaming tools, and start fixing the deeper problems

    We should channel our indignations towards privacy-enroaching intrusions such as the Patriot Act. We should vote our representatives — Democrat or Republican — out of office when they value false security over liberty. We should demand accountability, and insist that our journalists actually ask tough questions in Washington D.c. (and around the world). We should, as Brad rightly notes, fix The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA).

    Wringing our hands over Google isn’t just misguided, it’s dangerous in that it blinds us to the root of deeper problems in our society:

    1) As a society and individually, we’re generally unable to intelligently weigh risks.

    In our quest to “fight terrorism” we forget that far more people die from spousal abuse, drunk driving, malnutrition, etc. Will Ashcroft start scanning our e-mails for keywords relating to those causes of death? That’s (thankfully) doubtful, but only because he — and most of the FOX-watching public — is unable to thoughtfully weigh risks and benefits.

    In the vast storage that Gmail offers, non-profits can save and find key documents that help them better deliver social services. Grandparents can pull up pictures of their grandkids. Self-employed folks can be more productive, boosting their bottom line and doing their part to also buoy the economy. Sure, these are all butterfly-flaps, so to speak, in the ongoing history of society, but in the aggregate it adds up to a lot of good.

    2) We are tragically misinformed and poorly educated and we don’t seem to care.

    We fail to take our liberties seriously until we see sensationalist articles in the paper or hear about grandstanding bills proposed by a tech-ignorant senator.

    When I recently chatted with some friends here in the generally tech-savvy area of San Francisco about Gmail, nearly half suggested to me that they wouldn’t touch Gmail with a ten-foot pole. “They’re gonna read all the e-mail I get!” was the oft-expressed concern. Clearly, these people had no clue that their e-mails are already “read” many times enroute to their destination, nor did they think to actually visit Google’s Gmail pages to get the real info about what the service would and would not be doing. Funny, but I don’t recall my friends worrying about the privacy of their e-mail before.

    I don’t think the masses are misinformed because they’re dumb (though there’s certainly some of that). Rather, we absorb AND support the lowest common denominator in journalism. Not only does sex sell, but so does any bad news — whether it’s relevant or even true. “Duh, Sherlock” I hear you saying, teasing me for pointing out the obvious.

    But if it’s so obvious, why aren’t people like Brad and other prominent technologists decrying the lack of journalistic integrity and dearth of basic technological education and knowledge in our society? I have no doubt that if more people knew and truly understood the tenuousness of our personal privacy in society (with regards to credit card purchases, political affiliations, and yes, e-mail), they’d be concerned and mobilized to change the fabric of society and government… rather than throwing stones at a Webmail provider that’s providing a richer offering than its competitors.

    In summary…

    We need to focus on the fundmental roots of the erosion of our privacy, and realize that Gmail is a serendipitous wakeup call, not a culprit.

    True… Gmail, in itself, is not likely to lead to absolute world peace, and indeed, it’s admittedly easy and sometimes tempting to overstate what may be more of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary technological offering. But every moment people spend attacking this or any other communication tool amounts to time and efforts distracting us from the real (and real serious) issues facing our nation and our world.

    * * *

    Related entries:
    – Brad Tempton’s essay on The GMail Saga
    – My review of Gmail
    – My writeup of Gmail tips and tricks
    – Blog posts (via Technorati) on Gmail and Privacy

  • A reminder of how meaningful Online socializing can be

    There are many times in which I’ve felt that people — myself included — would benefit from logging off and getting a life. This sort of cynicism (or optimism, depending on one’s take) is heightened when I read about people falling in love with someone else that they’ve “met” only online. Hey, I’ll admit… been there, done that. And never again.

    So, too, do I often ask myself why I continue to feel so passionate about online communities and online networking. With all the flaming and faking and fluffery and general bullshit, isn’t it all just a waste of time?

    Then every once in a while, I’m reminded why Online matters.

    Recently, in a health-‘n’-fitness related forum on orkut, a young, formerly active woman who is recovering (slowly) from a stroke posted a note expressing her general feeling of hopelessness.

    Over the last few days, many of us took time to give her thoughtful advice and warm encouragement. And then today, she just posted a followup note letting us know how much our responses have meant to her… and has promised to start being more proactive about getting her life back.

    This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve personally saved two women (each who ‘met’ me from a forum online) from commiting suicide by keeping them “talking” over IM, finding a local hotline number for them and convincing them to make that critical call (since I’m not a licensed counselor!). And on a less severe but also heartwarming note, a great many people have thanked me over the years for my contributions to online communities, often giving me specific examples of how my information or encouragement or even friendship has made a difference in their lives.

    In the end, I may still be a hardened cynic about falling in love online, but I now truly believe that online communities can mean the world for people, one posting and one person at a time. And I hope, despite the brutally sensationalistic Internet headlines we’re cursed with nowadays, we never forget about the real undercurrent of good humanity that flows throughout the ‘net.

  • Online social networks — encouraging sharing in the face of greed

    [Below is a note I posted on orkut in response to a fellow who noted that he was erasing his entire friends list, which he viewed as a commodity not appropriate to share with others freely.]

    One thing we might agree on as a concern is the issue of freeloading.

    Basically, what to do against those who scrape data, use and/or abuse data in the aggregate or individually on orkut, or — less sinisterly — simply take much more than they give (e.g., someone who lists only 1 friend, but networks with or even asks something of countless others in a social network).

    It’s a social networking tragedy of the commons… a few voracious grazers who don’t “replant” ruin the network for everyone else.

    Then again, isn’t this simply like real life?

    In any given city, 1% of the people do the volunteering / civic planning / cultural/infrastructure/political contributions, often for little or no extrinsic compensations. Being on the school board, contributing to citizens’ input meetings, etc. And the other 99% get a free ride (theoretically better-planned schools, more robust local economies, and so on).

    The challenge, however, becomes one of preventing “leeching” (of others talent, good will, connections, etc.) while not punishing those who — for one reason or another — don’t have much to offer initially but are intent on working their way up and contributing later, or in different ways.

    You may have fabulous connections, but someone may also have something you want. That someone may find your friends list valuable, and may (optimally) in return offer you something of value.

    But if you don’t present the initial offering… if you don’t show up on the radar screen, then you become shut out of the social networking currency exchange. You’re not even ‘listed’ so to speak.

    On a related note, take the example of your earlier offer to do paid consulting for orkut/Google. From this alone, the folks there may have little reason to understand or trust your knowledge, and thus little reason to hire you. But if you give too much feedback or assistance early, your help may be taken for granted.

    The key, then, is in the balancing of threats and opportunities.

  • Flickr — Yet another (but a cool!) social networking service

    I’ve had the pleasure of playing with a relatively new online networking service called Flickr, and — especially after reading Melanie’s thoughtful review — I thought I ought to chime in with a few thoughts of my own.

    What is flickr?
    It’s a service, based largely on the flexible-and-powerful Flash, that lets people interact, meet, link, chat in real time, post on message forums, and share pictures with one another. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s pretty darn easy to get the hang of after just a few minutes. I recommend that you give it a try.

    So what’s to like about it?
    – The use of Flash brings familiar drag-and-drop, a fine live chat interface, and real-time built-in instant messaging / presence features. Entertaining and functional!
    – The staff members of Flickr frequently interact with everyone in chats, and they’re both friendly and funny.
    – The members of the service are also a delight to interact with… the complete opposite of cliquish.
    – Unlike most other social networking services, Flickr lets you designate links as ‘acquaintances,’ ‘friends,’ and ‘best friends’… which is both smart and helpful!

    But it’s not perfect.
    – Frankly, I don’t get the emphasis on photo-sharing. The interface in this area isn’t robust and feature-rich enough to make it particularly worthwhile (you can’t upload more than one photo at a time!), and you can’t even upload a photo directly into a chat conversation; you must upload it to your “Shoebox,” find it in your Shoebox, then drag and drop it into a chat room and hope it’s still relevant and interesting by that time.
    – The boards aren’t very active yet, unlike with orkut, which — hugely popular even after just a week or two — had some pretty active boards even early on.
    – Some of the language on the site and in the default invite text could use some major tidying up.

    If I were in charge…
    I would have ditched the whole photo idea (at least to start), and instead extended many more features into the message forums and chats. Real time alerts when someone mentions a ‘watched’ keyword on the boards or in a chat. Rich-text editing in the forums. Better search and categorization of forums. And so on.

    —

    With all that said, I think Flickr is pretty cool, and I have no doubt it will continue to be a welcoming, friendly, and fun place for a long time.

  • Social Networking Services — Excellent recommendations

    Christopher Allen gets it right. Rather than simply noting what orkut and other social networking services are doing wrong (which has been hammered by so many others), Christopher details what social networking services should do to succeed.

    And rather than blather on about how much I agree with his points, I think I’ll just invite you to read his entry yourself 🙂