It was my pleasure to attend OpenTech 2008 at the weekend (having been at these things since their original guise as the NTK Festival of Inappropriate Technology) and jolly good fun it was too (despite my best attempts to turn up late, flustered and hungover). Far better posts will have been written about this - for starters check out Roo Reynolds‘ excellent summary - and also Phil Wilson. What follows is a splurge of my highlights in sort-of chronological order.

First up, the excellent Wattson from the guys at DIYKyoto. Taking the electric meter out of the basement and into your living room, and by making it tell you how much your electricity costs rather than some intangible kilowatt-hours measurement, it could really be a brilliant gadget in these energy-conscious times. A Last.fm-style community site for that conspicuous non-consumption streak in you to share & compare with friends is on its way; additionally, Russell Davies‘ idea of making it a game is truly excellent. It is still a bit too pricey at £150, but a different pricing structure (pay per year rather than in one lump?), some VC for additonal production & economies of scale, and a hookup with an environmentally-minded partner company could make it cheap enough to take off.

Secondly, Alex of The Yorkshire Ranter delivered a great piece on finding arms dealers with Python and some bits of string (which turned out to be a terrible pun). In a nutshell, he screenscraped data from airports’ public webpages describing flights in and out and then mashed it up with Google Maps to provide a tracking service for arms dealers (suspected) planes. He had some nice angles on the obstacles in his track - “typosquatting” of arms dealers’ companies where they vary the spelling, making it hard to track via simple text searches, and how to deal with the many spellings and phrasings of “Kandahar” (in different encodings) among them. I smiled when he mentioned he used Beautiful Soup - if only to expose my own woeful inadequacies: I use the exact same software, but for getting football league tables.

Thirdly, Adrian Hon of ARG designers Six to Start, sadly relegated to the graveyard slot in the smallest room, gave a great walkthrough Penguin’s We Tell Stories. This has little to do with open source or tech hackery, but holds geek appeal in being a masterfully inventive way of trying to tell stories in a more spatial, interactive and non-linear fashion. I thoroughly recommend exploring all the stories on the site, and keeping your eyes peeled for his next project with the BBC which should be appearing soon.

Finally, the guys at MySociety give me a reason to doubt qutting coding as a career with a demo of some of their latest projects (which I had been aware of but never found the time to explore). What Do They Know? is the latest project, a centralised collaborative effort allowing people to make Freedom of Information requests and then publish the information they have received to share with others (and thus save others’ time as well as exposing them to more eyeballs). Still in beta (of sorts) it looks really interesting and as soon as I can think of a decent FoI request I’ll make one through it…

Some of the presentations from the site are available over at Slideshare. And a postscript - the people from MOO were one of the sponsors and provided lots of free sticker books with nice ORG and NO2ID stickers on them (which now adorn my Asus Eee). As Annie reminded us today, MOO are hosting a summer street party in Exmouth Market (my stomping grounds during the working week, happily enough), at which I’ll be, so come along if you can!

Tom yesterday posted a thoughtful and sober piece about the BoingBoing/Violet Blue saga. This is less long-winded and decidedly more pushy. I unsubscribed yesterday, and here’s why.

In short, BoingBoing have removed a series of posts referring to a sex blogger called Violet Blue (someone on the periphery of my awareness - I don’t read her or claim to be a fan). BoingBoing followed up with a mealy-mouthed non-explanation hinting at dark events and asserting BoingBoing’s right to “unpublish” stuff.

No-one is disputing BoingBoing have ultimately own their content and have the right to delete content off their servers - although in the enormous (in fact, the largest I have ever read) MetaFilter thread this is made out to be end of the matter. The real matter here is BoingBoing’s own hypocrisy in choosing to exercise that right, especially coming from a blog that supposedly opposes censorship, berated the Society of American Archivists for deleting their mail archives last year, and supports those that elect not to self-censor after response from their community, such as Digg’s “brave stance” during the HD-DVD controversy last year.

The other argument is big deal, it’s just a blog. Well, BoingBoing isn’t just a blog, it’s one of the biggest in the world and as a business earns a hefty amount of revenue. It has blazed a trail for other blogs and is the model for the rapid change in online publishing - and as I’ve spelled out above, it has long preached values that many blogs have taken after. It’s an important publication, so how it conducts itself is a rightful matter of public scrutiny.

But it’s not just about Violet Blue. I don’t normally read the comments on Boing Boing and it was through the MeFi thread I found out about the standard practice of disemvoweling - removing the vowels to render the comment so hard to read it’s not worth bothering.

Now, I know comment moderation is both tricky and necessary. I’ve removed or at the very least delinked comments on this blog that were spam. I keep a fairly liberal policy of comments here (not that I get many) whether they agree or not, and the only material I’ve ever deleted (apart from spam) has been outright race hate on a BNP-related thread.

This is not the case with BoingBoing’s disemvowelling however, and is best summed up with this post, where the bit of one comment that agrees with them is kept, and the bit that isn’t disemvoweled:

that’s a rad book cover, for what i’m assuming is a pretty rad book. it’s equally rad that people are hand making covers for your book. and admittedly it’s incredibly rad to be on so many excellent book lists.

t’s hwvr ncrdbly nrd tht y pst bt t vry thrtn scnds. thr s fn ln btwn prmtng yrslf nw nd gn n blg t whch y cntrbt, nd bcmng cmpltly slf ndlgd tl. ‘d lk t sy y’r wlkng tht ln, bt n lngr thnk tht’s th cs.

Which thanks to the re-emvowelment tool, probably originally said:

It’s however incredibly unrad that you post about it every thirteen seconds. There is a fine line between promoting yourself now and again in a blog to which you contribute, and becoming completely a self indulged tool. I’d like to say you’re walking that line but no longer think that’s the case.

Maybe it was the use of the word “tool”, but it seems any critcism of Doctorow’s relentless pushing of his “Little Brother” book (Google says 24,900 - probably a few too many but still you get the idea) - and it seems any criticism, no matter how mild, gets struck out.

Ths s jst t mch. Y trnd m ff frm byng ths bk lng g wth yr nrlntng psts bt t. t’s nt bst sllr nd t’s nt th bbl. rlly thnk y cmprms th ntgrty f ths st wth ths ndlss slf-prmtn. Strt sprt wbst t prmt th bk r plcs ds fr t, bt pls stp dmntng ths st wth s mny nn-strs bt t.

which was (approximately):

This is just too much you turned me off from buying this book long go with your unrelenting posts about it. It’s not a best seller and it’s not the bible really think. You compromise the integrity of this site with this endless self-promotion. Start a separate website to promote the book or place ads for it but please stop dominating this site with so many non-stories about it.

To me this is the most obnoxious form of moderation there is. Firstly, by modifying what someone writes it leaves them open to ambiguous interpretation - if the letters “cnt” turn up several times in a post, are they being exceptionally rude or just using the word “cant” or “cent” a lot? Unless you plug it into a program and do a bit of educated guesswork, you’ll never know. Furthermore it’s highly ostentatious - it’s not just enough to clean up a thread, but you have to show everyone that someone’s been naughty and you’re making an example of them. Note that the poster’s identities stay so everybody in class can see who the naughty one is. And finally, as I’ve demonstrated, it’s especially bad when done to silence detractors rather than just people who are genuine griefers.

The arbitrariness and preachiness is summed up in the moderator’s comments they say when closing the thread:

I’ve just disemvowelled eight comments (actually seven-and-three-quarters) in a thread with fewer than 40 comments. That means this thread was over 20% people who think Cory talking about Little Brother is boring, but themselves talking about their sense of entitlement is interesting. So I’ve turned off comments on this thread. I (or Teresa) might turn them back on later today; we might not. Meanwhile, you’re still free to follow the link to Abi’s Flickr set and leave egoboo there.

I’m not sure how insecure you have to be to believe that when less than four-fifths of the thread agree (or at least don’t disagree) with you, it’s a snarkfest that must be closed. Nor can I get my head around the cognitive dissonance where Cory Doctorow yacking on about his book isn’t “egoboo”, but the mildest of complaints is, regardless of validity. And as for the general passive-aggressive tone - “maybe we will, maybe we won’t” - ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

So, it’s partly the lack of transparency. Partly the sheer hypocrisy. Partly their attitude to anyone who disagrees with them. And partly how rude and snide they are about it. That’s why I’ve stopped reading BoingBoing. And I suggest you do the same.

Just over a week ago, it was my pleasure to attend the Liberty AGM in London, something which I’ve only just found time to write about. I haven’t written about liberty & human rights in a while. Maybe it’s part fatigue from the continual reduction by the government, or partly because after a while, there’s little extra to say on the matter apart from repeating your position again and again - the peril, I guess, of believing in things that are inalienable and non-negotiable.

Anyway, I’ve been a Liberty member for over two years but it was my first Liberty AGM, and probably the first time I attended such an event since my student union days. The difference being the majority of the audience were 50 or over (although I did still meet some interesting people my own age such as Andrew Lee of JR Jones), which makes me worry for the long-term future of the organisation; then again, it was on a Saturday, and there was the consolation Liberty’s staff are mostly young and enthusiastic.

Much of the day is procedural - approving accounts and confirming election results (something hashed by a very poor chairperson, who just announced names and made no mention of winning margins or where details would be available - very poor and opaque. There were also a series of motions, ranging from CCTV and Privacy to protection of journalist’s sources.

There were lots of interesting things but to me there were two debates of real interest; one was a motion on Liberty’s stance on assisted dying, allowing those who wish to die with dignity to do so. This provoked a counter-motion that “Liberty declare its opposition to the involuntary euthanasia of the elderly in nursing and care homes and hospices.” A motion that only really could happen in England (pernicketiness taken to an extreme) and it led to a frustratingly bickering debate that could only happen here - did the motion imply killing people in hospitals and private homes? As a newbie I could sense the politics within the organisation, particularly the audience’s uneasy attitude to the vociferous and eccentric (if reasonably harmless) Norman Scarth.

Nevertheless, the debate was very civil, and like all the other motions, the motion passed - the only one to do so with some opposition. I did the only thing and abstain as it was poorly-worded and such an obvious point of motion (Liberty does not need to waste time condemning something obviously heinous as murder). It does go to show, however, that Liberty’s AGMs are hardly preaching to the choir.

The other motion was something I hadn’t been aware of before, which was the National Staff Dismissal Register. A private enterprise that was set up with partial Home Office funding, it allows employers to add people that have left their employment (voluntarily or not) while “under suspicion” of any crime. While corporate crime is obviously undesirable, the fact that no proof of any offence is needed, let alone a conviction or even a police investigation, is disturbing. The person concerned is not informed of their addition and one’s right to appeal (or correcting any errors) is not clear - both of which probably break the spirit if not the letter of our data protection laws. The BBC has a little more info here, but I haven’t seen much else on the blogosphere, especially when compared with the (equally heinous) state-run operations which collect details of accusations and people’s DNA regardless of guilt.

The best bits of the AGM were the beginning and end. The first event of the day was a Question Time-style panel, with Chris Huhne MP (Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary), Dominic Grieve MP (at the time, Conservative Shadow Attorney-General, now Shadow Home Secretary), Michael Wills MP (Government Minister for Human Rights) and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (useless).

Huhne was impressive - a richer voice and more assured persona than I had remembered previously. Grieve, a former QC, obviously cared about human rights, but I also felt he was a political animal, willing to bend and acquiesce if party politics required (for example, he’s not a massive fan of gay rights according to They Work For You. Wills was a slippery toad, saying he cared about rights (his voting record suggests otherwise), and insisted on a dialectic - talking about “balancing” (though what this balance is, he never expanded on) and “deeply conflicting” concepts. Eventually, he let it slip and admitted that Labour’s outlook was also to bear in mind the “worries” of the British populace - instead of taking a stand, of educating and reassuring these fears, Wills implicitly admitted his government was more inclined to indulge them.

The ID card debate was interesting, in between the usual party politics and sniping which all three MPs engaged in. Huhne and Grieve were smart enough to get to the point - it’s the register, not the card that is the problem. Wills wriggled and squirmed and when challenged about the register and kept mumbling about the benefits - which now do not include fighting terorism: when challenged to name one benefit, the best he could come up with was the fact 30% of free school meals are not taken up, something a national database could reduce by targeting appropriate families. Not only is it laughably desperate, the possibility parents think the meals aren’t good enough never seems to have crossed his mind.

The other main debate was about the Human Rights Act. This was an area, where sadly both Grieve and Wills agreed. There was talk of bringing in an alternative, of “ownership” of a British bill of rights in the HRA’s place, of “strengthening” it. How this would differ from the existing Act wasn’t really covered with just lip service paid to incorporating further rights or other declarations or conventions. when Chris Huhne asked if it was a genuine commitment or mere “camouflage” for a paring back of our rights; he challenged the others to name three additional rights they would include, but neither Wills nor Grieve came forward with any. Out of it all, only Huhne came out with any credit, in my eyes.

The other person who really came out with credit was Shami Chakrabati, who gave the keynote at the end. While her writing and appearances of TV have always shown a fiercely intelligent and passionate legal mind, it’s only seeing her in person do you see the other side - her sense of humour and forthrightness as well shone through. I got the sense she has ruffled a few feathers in her own organisation as well as outside, yet she’s still been highly effective while sticking to her principles and has given Liberty a disproportionately high profile.

Which leads me onto the final part of this (inordinately boring) post - Liberty has only 10,000 members, and barely 150 of them turned up to the AGM. For an organisation that features so heavily in the news and the legal and political scene that number seems very low to me (as far as I can tell, I’m the only person with a blog who attended). Despite what on sight is a very narrow brief, Liberty is a broad church and though the AGM was at times highly procedural, it was also rather educational and illuminating; so if you’re not a member and care about rights in the UK, why not join us? And if you are already a member - see you next year?

Right so I’ve been tagged by Tom for this seven songs meme:

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.“

So here goes - after the jump (lots of YouTube videos embedded within so it really is necessary). By the way, I suck at writing about music.
Read the rest of this entry »

Once again the UK does badly at Eurovision. Once again it’s all blamed on politics by the likes of Wogan. The usual suspects win they say, it’s always the eastern Europeans voting for each other. But hang on, this was Russia’s first title. And if it’s the Eastern bloc conspiring, then why did Poland come joint-last as well? And has Eurovision ever been about the quality of the song rather than politics?

The state of Eurovision’s “political” voting is blamed on two things - the accession of eastern bloc countries (particularly the former members of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia), and the introduction of televoting rather than jury voting. The former happened gradually over the course of the 1990s, and the latter was introduced in 1998. That’s a good place to start looking at, and the winners’ list from then on reads as follows:

1998 - Israel
1999 - Sweden
2000 - Denmark
2001 - Estonia
2002 - Latvia
2003 - Turkey
2004 - Ukraine
2005 - Greece
2006 - Finland
2007 - Serbia
2008 - Russia

In the eleven years since, eleven different countries have won it. The finger is all too easily pointed at Eastern Europe and the breakup of its states in the 1990s. Four of the eleven are former members of the Soviet Union (36%), which is admittedly more than the proportion of countries contesting (Of the 43 participants in this year’s contest, ten (23%) were ex-Soviet republics). But two of those (Estonia, Latvia) are not Slavic but Baltic countries, and no other ex-Warsaw pact country gets a nod in; the only other Slavic country that has won it is Serbia. There are also three Scandinavian winners, while the remaining three (Greece, Turkey, Israel) are all Mediterranean, but each enjoys a highly distinct cultural and ethnic definition of its own.

I am aware that ethnic and cultural categories are never universally agreed-upon and this can only ever be a broad-brushed summary of cultural similarities, so if you think any of the above is wrong then apologies, but I’ve tried to keep it as loose an inoffensive as possible.

The only big loser in this, then, is Western Europe. But is that really such a bad thing? For comparison, here is the list of the ten winners in the years immediately preceding full televoting, when juries were used instead:

1988 - Switzerland
1989 - Yugoslavia
1990 - Italy
1991 - Sweden
1992 - Ireland
1993 - Ireland
1994 - Ireland
1995 - Norway
1996 - Ireland
1997 - United Kingdom

From a Western European perspective, looks like we did pretty well - you could say up to seven titles were from West (if you include Italy & Switzerland as such) and only one from a country in the eastern half of the continent. From everyone else’s point of view, it was no doubt incredibly unfair and a sure sign of politics meaning the same ones voted every time. But then that’s not surprising; a jury selected by the state broadcaster is far easier to nobble; it’s a much harder task to organise an entire nation of televoters into tactically voting than some people in a room. Conceptually televoting is fairer and the proof is in the pudding: the voters of Europe have voted for unique winners every year, taking in a variety of cultures and musical styles - from a bemasked gods of Finnish black metal to a transsexual Israeli.

What’s happening at Eurovision is not some sinister eastern European plot but ultimately a correction. In the 42 years before televoting and opening up to the people to choose, the top four winners were Ireland, the UK, France and (bizarrely) Luxembourg, with 22 (i.e. more than half) the titles. Some form of correction is long overdue and rhat’s what we’re witnessing now.

This is not to deny that some countries are more likely to vote for others; of course it does. Ethnic diaspora in one country will always vote for the mother country more (e.g. with the Turks in Germany, or indeed the Irish in the UK) and songs that are from a culture similar to your own are more likely to have resonance. But overall there is little to suggest that the same countries win Eurovision again and again, and it’s blatantly clear that the system was far more predictable than it used to be. The rancourous cry of the “usual suspects” is little more than code for “people who aren’t us”, ignorant of the actual facts and variety of performances. Having been the one of the biggest beneficiaries of an unfair system for decades we’re now turning on its successor when the results don’t suit us. It’s childish and ultimately makes us look little better than sore losers.

Alternatively, if you don’t like this argument, there is another one to consider: It’s just bloody Eurovision. It’s a bit of fun, it gives smaller countries the limelight for one night and it’s always been a festival of stupid pop, questionable taste in clothes and taking the mickey. Get over it.

Update: Good takes on the same subject from Duncan and Jamie.

The BBC’s Sound Index project is a very interesting (and according to my friend in the technology unit, fairly quietly-kept secret) site. It pulls data from a variety of sites including Last.fm, iTunes and MySpace (with permission) and works out who the hottest artists right now are, with the ability to recommend you stuff based on your tastes. Although the odd recommendation for me is a bit iffy (most notably Lily Allen) the search is impressive and is clearly pulling in some heavy data crunching.

While the BBC have gone to great lengths to secure permission to use album art and other services’ data, it’s a pity then, about the mistaken attitude to copyright of free (as in speech) content on the site. For example, Coldplay, the artist summary is basically a clean copy of the introduction to the corresponding Wikipedia entry. While Wikipedia is credited at the very bottom, this isn’t enough; Wikipedia’s licence is like the Creative Commons sharealike clauses - copies and derivative works must carry the same terms & conditions to prevent people wholly privatising the content and others can share them as well.

Technically the BBC Sound Index is breaching the terms of Wikipedia’s copyright - I’m sure out of ignorance rather than deliberate malice, I must stress. However, given how other arms of the BBC wish t enforce its own copyright on other people, their digital strategy people really need to read up on how they can use free content before using it in projects as big (and potentially awesome) as this.

By the way, I have sent them an edifying email outlining the copyright breach as it stands, I’ll keep you up to date about what happens.

Dear Ken,

I’m fucking proud you were the last politician of the Thatcher era to survive into our own

I’m fucking proud you beat Mandelson to the NEC elections in 1997

I’m fucking proud you’re the only Labour politician to feature on a Blur track

I’m fucking proud you stood up to the a rigged mayoral candidate selection process in 2000 and then won

I’m fucking proud at how gallant you were in victory and your kind words for Frank Dobson, the man with the most thankless task in London that year

I’m fucking proud you pushed through the congestion charge for London and it actually fucking worked on the day it started

I’m fucking proud you got back into the Labour party, got Blair to grovel, and fought to a second term as London’s mayor

I’m fucking proud of the humanitarian and open-minded spirit you envisaged the 2012 London Olympics being

I’m really fucking proud of the solemn, defiant and above all non-judgemental speech you made after the July 7th bombings, the day after we won the Games, far better than a thousand words from Blair or anyone else

I’m fucking proud that despite a limited brief, under your watch you’ve got improvements on the Tube, miles more buses at affordable prices, Crossrail and the London Overground, and Trafalgar Square as a clean & amenable civic plaza. Not to mention the encouragement of art & music to London’s streets

I’m not fucking proud that you got chummy with gay-hating fuckwit Yusuf al-Qaradawi

I’m not fucking proud you got yourself in that stupid row with Oliver Finegold when a simple apology and admitting you made an error would have solved it in no time at all

I’m not fucking proud you and Ian Blair are such good mates, either

I’m totally fucking proud that tonight, despite how New Labour fell to third place and 24% of the national vote, you got a bigger percentage of the first ballot vote than you did in 2004

You had your flaws, and a multiplicity of enemies, and you could have done better in acknowledging & confronting both. But your bloody-mindedness worked for you as well when in office, and over the eight years, you did a good job overall. It’s why I voted for you. And yet you still lost. But as upset as I am at the fuckwit they got to replace you, I’m still fucking proud of the job you did. And so are many of us in London.

Don’t let defeat deter you - do stick around, and please find a job where you do what you do best - be competently effective doing important shit and annoying your opponents who obsess over the inconsequential. London will be all the poorer if you don’t.

A press release rehashed as a news article on the BBC website today - “Lie detector software saves £500k” states:

Lie detector software has saved a south London council almost £500,000 it was losing through benefit fraud.

During a phone call Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) software analyses minute changes in the voices of those claiming benefits to see if they are lying.
[…]
During the pilot, almost 1,700 people were assessed, of which 377 had their benefits stopped or decreased.

For starters, VRA isn’t a lie detector - there is no such thing. Even the polygraph isn’t really a lie detector, and in any case evidence from either machine cannot be used in court. The success rate of VRA itself is not particularly encouraging:

What we see here is that 198 true statements were coreectly determined to be true but 118 true statements were incorrectly determined to be false. We also see that 127 false statements were correctly determined to be false but 73 false statements were incorrectly determined to be true. In short, 37.3 per cent of the true statements were adjudged to be false and 36.5 per cent of the false statements were adjudged to be true.

While a strong case can be made for using them as one of many tools in an assessment process, with due care and attention taken as regards their fallibility and the risks involved, there’s nothing to suggest this is the case here, particularly given how the council is trumpeting it. Processing 1,700 cases in five months (17 or so per working day) is pretty swift work, to boot.

This is further exacerbated by the numbers - the false positive and false negative rates are similar, but assuming the vast majority of claims are genuine, then there are going to be more genuine claimants are going to be denied benefits they deserve, than bogus ones who get away scot-free.

The only remaining thing in their favour is they can be a deterrent - albeit a fairly expensive one - and that their ongoing usefulness as a deterrent depends on how they are used. Used carefully and judiciously these are a good idea; used as a quick fix to plough through thousands of claims and they quickly become ineffective and even oppressive.