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Strong opinions, weakly held

Month: March 2007 (page 1 of 5)

The ubiquity of harassment on the Internet

Laura Lemay on the Kathy Sierra situation:

Mostly as I read the comments on Kathy’s post and on other blogs I have noticed a kind of interesting but obvious breakdown. Men, in general, are shocked and horrified that this kind of harassment goes on at all. Women are of course shocked and horrified at Kathy’s situation, but they also kind of nod ruefully and say yeah, it happened to me, too.

I honestly didn’t think this was a secret, that women get disproportionally picked on in the internets. I thought it was a big fat obvious fact.

Do I get stalked and harassed and picked on on the internet? Do I get death threats? Sure. I started getting them the week I first posted to Usenet twenty years ago, and I’ve been getting them ever since. It was worse during the usenet era, and WAY worse when I was selling a lot of books. Its pretty quiet these days now that I’m mostly anonymous and I write a mostly personal journal blog. No one cares about cat posts; there are bigger targets. But it still happens.

Microsoft’s leaked memo on transparency

So Wired News does an article on increased transparency at Microsoft, mainly covering their Channel 9 site. Someone at Microsoft mistakenly sends Fred Vogelstein, the author of the story, a confidential internal dossier about how the company is managing the story internally. It covers who’s talking to Vogelstein, what they’re telling him, and how likely it is that they will be able to make sure that the story presents the message Microsoft wants delivered. It’s sort of the corporate version of the Scooter Libby trial and further illustrates how journalists and their subjects attempt to game one another. Wired editor provides some background on the memo, and you can find the memo itself here (it’s a PDF). The memo even reveals that Microsoft planned ahead of time to get Wired to write the story in the first place. In the end, Microsoft got the story they wanted published, so even in spite of the memo being leaked before the story was finished, their plan was a total success.

Fascinating stuff.

Are they really cylons?

The question on everyone’s mind after the Battlestar Galactica season finale was, “Are the four really cylons?” Series executive producer confirms that they are.

Political crime and punishment

The most common reason I read for dismissing the US Attorney scandal as no big deal is that nobody broke any laws in firing the attorneys, because they are political appointees who can be fired for any reason. That is, of course, true, but it’s not really important. Just because something is not illegal doesn’t mean that it’s not wrong. And what the Bush administration did was wrong, make no mistake about that. Josh Marshall made another good effort in explaining exactly why it was wrong a couple of days ago.

The first clue that the Bush administration knowingly acted wrongly was that they tried to hide what was going on. The second was that when asked why the attorneys were fired, they lied about the reasons instead of telling the truth. If there was really nothing wrong, then the President could have been completely up front about why the attorneys were fired. Here are some statements from a hypothetical press conference where he told the truth:

  • “I fired the eight US attorneys because I wanted to replace them with lawyers more politically loyal to the White House.”
  • “I fired the eight US attorneys because Republicans complained about their not being sufficiently partisan in deciding who to prosecute.”
  • “I fired the eight US attorneys because giving their jobs I wanted to give a career boost to their replacements.”

If the White House really felt like they had done nothing wrong, they could have been honest, but they weren’t.

The offense here is a political offense. The White House tried to get away with making personnel moves that they knew were improper, and they got caught red handed. Then they tried to worm out of it by sliming the attorneys who they had fired, and everything blew up in their face. That’s politics. What’s going on now is the standard punishment for political offenses, which is that your dirty laundry gets aired and your rivals make you twist in the wind for as long as possible. If the Bush administration really had a valid defense for its actions, all they’d have to do is make an honest case to the American people, but they don’t, so the punishment continues. And the longer Alberto Gonzales keeps his job, the longer it will go on.

I don’t understand

I’ve been reading Kathy Sierra’s blog pretty much since she launched it, mainly because I really enjoyed Head First Design Patterns. Her blog seems innocuous enough. It’s smart, funny, and topical, the topic being designing products that users like. So today I’m checking out the feeds, and what do I find, but a long post there talking about how Sierra is the target of death threats and hateful misogynistic attacks.

How does she suggest people respond?

If you want to do something about it–do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence (especially sexual violence). Do not put these people on a pedestal. Do not let them get away with calling this “social commentary”, “protected speech”, or simply “criticism”. I would never be for censoring speech–these people can say all the misogynistic, vile, tasteless things they like–but we must preserve that line where words and images become threats of violence. Freedom of speech–however distasteful and rude the speech may be, is crucial. But when those words contain threats of harm or death, they can destroy a life.

I’m going to disagree with her here. Yes, people are free to say whatever they like (barring illegal speech like death threats), but I’m not in favor of people saying hateful things just because they are legally allowed to do so. The kind of speech that she cites on her blog is not crucial, or even acceptable. Anil Dash has written more than once about rampant incivility in the blogosphere. The types of things people are writing about Kathy Sierra take that incivility to an absurd extreme.

Shelley Powers says we shouldn’t take this too far and specifically points out that the email with the explicit death threat certainly did not originate from the people who did the provocative anonymous weblog posts that targetted Kathy Sierra. But blog posts about putting a noose around someone’s neck provide the truly deranged with the comfort of knowing that they’re not alone out there, and that their even more explicit fantasies exist in the realm of the acceptable.

Bottom line is, either there’s a place in your life for publishing the kind of stuff that people posted about Sierra, or there isn’t. For me, there isn’t.

Tyler Cowen on a social safety net

A few simple reasons why a social safety net is probably a good idea.

The Blackberry defense

Justice Department official claims he didn’t know about some pertinent details of the US Attorney scandal because he didn’t scroll down when reading an email on his Blackberry. I can’t wait until we have the first blogging software-related political scandal.

Future quote from someone’s official spokesman: “He didn’t know about the plan to fleece the voters because he never reads past the jump.”

National security letters in practice

The Washington Post prints the experiences of one recipient of a national security letter, anonymously, because the first rule of NSLs is recipients are not allowed to talk about NSLs.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn’t abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case — including the mere fact that I received an NSL — from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

Did you think you lived in this kind of country?

Evidence of Bubble 2.0

Take a look at this bit of rumormongering about MySpace and tell me it doesn’t sound like 1999 all over again. Companies hiring like crazy and then just setting the employees adrift once they start is a sure sign that things are going off the rails, and I’m certain MySpace isn’t the only offender in this department.

Twitter’s growth rate

Andy Baio figured out a nifty way to track Twitter’s growth rate since it was launched. Companies that aren’t interested in revealing that sort of information indirectly may want to read about using GUIDs instead of sequential ID fields in databases.

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