The Substantially Similar Weblog

I was a long-time hold-out user of standalone RSS aggregators (SharpReader for Windows and Straw on GNU/Linux, both of which have been somewhat stagnant over the last couple of years). I’ve finally thrown in the towel and switched to Google Reader. It was a great decision.

The key factor is mobility. I check email and blogs from my personal laptop; our kitchen computer; my office workstation; and, perhaps most significantly for Google Reader, from my cell phone. The Google Reader cell phone app is quite good (handy “keyboard” shortcuts, efficient presentation), and allows me to catch up during time that is difficult to use for other purposes: waiting for the train, standing in line at Starbucks, on the elevator.

The only real downside is the lack of offline support (although I don’t think it would take a rocket scientist to create it), but this is far outweighed by the mobile functionality. As “access anywhere” becomes more important than “offline access,” I predict we’ll see more users of all applications make this sort of switch.

Running a Hospital is a blog actually written (not ghostwritten) by the CEO of a large Boston-area hospital, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The blog covers hospital/health-care issues as well as some unrelated topics. The emergence of this sort of open and frank discourse from leaders (particularly in medicine) is a real sea change. Just a few years ago, this sort of relatively unedited discussion would have been shut down by the lawyers. It’s an interesting variation on the “medium is the message” concept. Of course, everything this CEO (and others) are writing doesn’t require the web or weblogs. The same content could easily have been provided in a printed newsletter (setting aside the minor cost issue). Weblogs have established new norms, however, that enable openness even in particularly liability-sensitive areas like medicine.

For example, see this entry about fatal infections resulting from central lines. On a lighter note, should the hospital use cage-free eggs? (I said yes.)

[Tags]Weblogs, Health Care[/Tags]

As usual, Ed Felten offers a well-conceived analysis of the Cablevision decision from a technologist’s perspective (for a lawyer’s perspective, see William Patry). The money quote:

The question, in other words, was who was recording the programming. Was Cablevision doing the recording, or were its customers doing the recording? The customers, by using their remote controls to navigate through on-screen menus, directed the technology to record certain programs, and controlled the playback. But the equipment that carried out those commands was owned by Cablevision and (mostly) located in Cablevision buildings. So who was doing the recording? The question doesn’t have a simple answer that I can see.

This general issue of who is responsible for the actions of complex computer systems crops up surprisingly often in law and policy disputes. There doesn’t seem to be a coherent theory about it, which is too bad, because it will only become more important as systems get more complicated and more tightly intereconnected.

Agency, intent/scienter, and responsibility are indeed tricky issues with software and the law. I’ve experienced the problem in my own practice. Although it arises particularly frequently in copyright disputes, it is also common in patent and trademark cases (and of course contract disputes inasmuch as clickwrap-type agreements are implicated). I don’t have any coherent theory to propose, but a more uniform framework would certainly introduce some predictability into these sorts of cases (and thus perhaps avoid litigation).

Update: Mike Madison also has some interesting comments on the case.

Our local supermarket, Village Market (whose domain name seems to have disappeared) is generally pretty good considering its small size. Oddly, though, they don’t carry a single special kosher for Passover product. Not even a box of humble Matzah. Rachele asked the putative owner about the lack of Passover foods, but a week into the holiday there doesn’t appear to have been any progress.

The lack of kosher-for-Passover products is particularly surprising in our community which has a fairly sizable Jewish presence. In fact, I would be surprised if there were a single large supermarket in all of Massachusetts that doesn’t carry at least have a few token items during Passover.

Even from a purely economic perspective, it must be irrational to not carry these items. The overall U.S. Kosher market is over $35 billion annually. I’m not sure what percentage of that is Passover goods, but it must be substantial. I know lots of Jews who observe Passover dietary rules even when they make no attempt to follow any other kosher laws. I’ve even observed people eating shrimp on matzah! Village Market needs to get with the times. (And fix their website while they’re at it.)

Update: Steve in the comments asked for a source on the economics of Passover. I found this:

Out of an estimated $250-billion worth of kosher food sales annually, more than 40 percent take place during the Passover season, Lubinsky said.

I’m not sure how to reconcile the $250 billion here with the $35 billion figure I found elsewhere, except perhaps the former figure may not be limited to the United States, or perhaps it is retail rather than wholesale.

I used to be a hardcore daily bike commuter. (By “hardcore,” I mean I commuted 20-30 miles roundtrip every day in Chicago in January.) Lately, I’ve gotten lazy, especially since I now live about thirty seconds by foot from a train station that takes me to a spot about thirty seconds by foot from my job.

Also, since I’m now supporting two people (including my nearly two-year-old daughter), I’m a little more reluctant to get myself killed.

I was reminded of the perils of biking in Boston this afternoon when a 22-year old bicyclist was killed by a dump truck in an area where I used to ride daily:

The bicyclist, a 22-year-old man from Halifax, was riding between two lanes of traffic on Huntington Avenue when he was clipped by a taxicab near Northeastern University at about 2:30 p.m., police said. After being clipped by the cab, the bicyclist was run over by a McCauley and Sons Co. dump truck, police said.

When I was a bike commuter, I was fairly cavalier about this sort of incident. I realize it’s still fairly rare and biking may not be any more dangerous than driving. But we still see these events in Boston fairly regularly. I don’t think it can be fixed fully by better driver education/behavior (or better bicyclist education/behavior). There are just too many streets that are poorly designed and naturally hazardous.

On a related note, Nat mentioned this nasty run-in during a recent Critical Mass in San Francisco (the article is obviously from the driver’s point of view — there may be another angle on this):

Susan Ferrando, her husband, their two children and three preteens had come to San Francisco from Redwood City to celebrate the birthday of Ferrando’s 11-year-old daughter. They went to Japantown, where they enjoyed shopping and taking in the blooming cherry blossoms. Things took a turn for the worse at about 9 p.m., when the family was leaving Japantown — just as the party of about 3,000 bikers was winding down its monthly red-lights-be-damned ride through the city.

Suddenly, Ferrando said, her car was surrounded by hundreds of cyclists.

Not being from San Francisco, Ferrando thought she might have inadvertently crossed paths with a bicycle race and couldn’t figure out why the police, who she had just passed, hadn’t warned her.

Confusion, however, quickly turned to terror, she said, when the swarming cyclists began wildly circling around and then running into the sides of her Toyota van.

Filled with panic, Ferrando said, she started inching forward until coming to a stop at Post and Gough streets, where she was surrounded by bikers on all sides.

A biker in front blocked her as another biker began pounding on the windshield. Another was pounding on her window. Another pounded the other side.

“It seemed like they were using their bikes as weapons,” Ferrando said. One of the bikers then threw his bike — shattering the rear window and terrifying the young girls inside.

All the while, Ferrando was screaming, “There are children in this car! There are children in this car!”

…

Update 4/5/2007: the 22-year-old bicyclist had a myspace page.

Add to my Netflix Wishlist (that is, the list of features I wish Netflix had, not the list of movies I wish I had): links from IMDB entries to the respective Netflix page (or, better yet, “add to Netflix queue” directly from IMDB). Links back to IMDB from Netflix would also be nice.

This seems like something that would be relatively easy to do with a Mozilla plugin. In general, Netflix would be a prime candidate for a developer/hobbyist ecology similar to that which has grown up around Amazon’s API. The only examples I could find were this Perl module and this Moveable-Type plugin. More development along these lines could be a key advantage for Netflix to preserve its now incumbent position in the market. (Does anyone have any local video stores left? Ours closed down about a year ago.)

Update: James points to an impressive list of Greasemonkey/Netflix scripts, two of which seem to do the job: Netflix links in IMDB, IMDB links in Netflix. Another featuer I’ve been looking for: Netflix Ratings Granulizer (allows partial stars in ratings). Thanks, Lazyweb! (Note that these sorts of screen-scraping hacks inevitably break when the content provider modifies its presentation; an open API would obviously be preferable).

Via UH, Google Maps Driving Directions from Chicago to London. Myself, I can barely tread water.

Dear Lazyweb:

Is it really impossible to find a full-sized USB keyboard with a built-in trackpoint mouse device but no touchpad?

The logical manufacturer would be IBM/Lenovo; however, the current Lenovo keyboards either provide no built-in pointing device or have both a trackpoint and a touchpad (“UltraNav”). I’ve checked in all the regular places: eBay, Pricewatch, Amazon, Froogle, craigslist, etc., and no one has a keyboard with just a trackpoint. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this simple request.

This eBay auction is the closest I could find. That keyboard is “French Canadian,” which might not matter, but it is also a “SpaceSaver” model with no numeric keypad and is generally more compressed than I need.

On a related note, it is next to impossible to find a Touchstream Keyboard anymore, another brand I was interested in.

I often run into this sort of problem. It undermines my faith in the web as approximating a perfect marketplace.

The Children’s Online Protection Act, or COPA, requires website operators who provide commercial material that could be “harmful to minors” to verify their users’ age, for example, with a credit card. The statute was immediately challenged as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. A preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law was upheld by the Supreme Court, which remanded the matter for factual development as to whether filters could accomplish the same purpose while interfering less with free speech. (Ironically, the ACLU found itself in the unusual position of arguing for Internet filters in this case.)

It was just about one year ago that the Government sought to enforce a subpoena against Google for records of user queries and URLs stored in Google’s database. The court granted the motion with respect to stored URLs but not queries in Gonzales v. Google. It was never quite clear what the Government would really do with the data or why they pushed so hard to get it after receiving what they needed from other search providers. (The U.S. apparently argued Google’s search results would “add luster” to its analysis).

In any case, the statute has now finally been held unconstitutional. As Ed Felten insightfully points out, unlike in previous instances where courts have struck down Internet speech regulation, in his opinion, Judge Reed did not provide a roadmap for Congress to try yet again to enact a law that would pass First Amendmend muster. Maybe Congress will leave the issue alone for a while:

Two things make the judge’s ruling relatively roadmap-free. First, it is based heavily on factual findings that Congress cannot change — things like the relative effectiveness of filtering and the amount of HTM material that originates overseas beyond the effective reach of U.S. law. (Filtering operates on all material, while COPA’s requirements could have been ignored by many overseas sites.) Second, the alternative it offers requires only voluntary private action, not legislation.

Congress has already passed laws requiring schools and libraries to use content filters, as a condition of getting Federal funding and with certain safeguards that are supposed to protect adult access. The courts have upheld such laws. It’s not clear what more Congress can do. Judge Reed’s filtering alternative is less restrictive because it is voluntary, so that computers that aren’t used by kids, or on which parents have other ways of protecting kids against HTM material, can get unfiltered access. An adult who wants to get HTM material will be able to get it.

Doubtless Congress will make noise about this issue in the upcoming election year. Protecting kids from the nasty Internet is too attractive politically to pass up. Expect hearings to be held and bills to be introduced; but the odds that we’ll get a new law that makes much difference seem pretty low.

For those who care about kids…

I recently blogged about TMBG’s marketing genius in releasing “kids’” albums that adults who grew up to TMBG will love and buy. Another good example of kids’ music that you, too, can enjoy is Ralph’s World. It’s not quite as ironic or odd as TMBG, but still a good listen. Check out, for example, the RealAudio clips for Clean-Up (much better than the Barney version!), Baa-Baa Black Sheep, and The Coffee Song.

Speaking of Barney, apparently his music has been used to torture Iraqi detainees.

[Tags]Children’s Music, Music[/Tags]