Who Owns Your Information?

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Just a bit of food for thought, as you go about your increasingly-online lives: what happens to your personal information if your online service goes bankrupt? In at least one case, things have turned out all right, but only after “Creditors of XY Magazine claimed that the magazine’s subscriber base and its readers’ personal information was an asset that they were entitled to in a bankruptcy proceeding.” (See Bankruptcy Proceeding Threatens Readers’ Privacy for the full article.) In this particular case, because the magazine had a privacy policy which stated that they would protect its users’ personal details and never share them, the users were protected (fortunately for them, as the magazine’s market was young, gay males, at least some of whom hadn’t gone public with the fact).

What does that mean to you, though, when you routinely enter your private information, ticking the box which says, “I have read and agreed to the terms of service?” Well, let’s consider what you’ve signed away, if you have a FaceHook account (as do half a billion others), shall we?

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According to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, are your personal photos protected? Your “notes”? If they go bankrupt, since you’ve agreed (in the T.O.S.) to them sub-licensing your content – without paying you – I’d suspect not.

Further, they explicitly state, “By using Facebook, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.” So, all of you in the US, you’re already there. What does that mean to the rest of the world, though? Well, it means that they are not subject to, for example, The UK Data Protection Act, which means that they are not required to destroy your information should you decide to leave them.

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Should you be worried? Well, is the company earning any money?

This doesn’t just apply to FaceHook, of course. It also applies to any number of companies out there, any number of which may decide to sell some of their assets, should they run into trouble, just as XY Magazine did.

I realize that not everybody is bothered by this – it’s become just the way things are – but I wonder whether the world wouldn’t be a better place if all of our information were safeguarded by law, rather than simply by caveat emptor, because the buyers do not read the privacy policies, and are not being aware.

-D

August 25, In Retrospect

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Yet some more photos from 2,000, taken in Skagway, Alaska. I think Skagway was my favorite of the whole trip, just because it was so much smaller, and we got a chance to get away from the other tourists. We’ve not been on a cruise since, and doubt that we will, if only because hanging out witn 2,000 other tourists doesn’t let you see that much of the way things really are.

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And, after a long patch of not taking pictures on August 25, here are two taken while we’ve been in Glasgow. These aren’t from the same year – the orchids were in 2009, and the sweet-potato bread from 2008. Funny to think that we’ve already been in this current flat for a whole year, and, despite its foibles, we really do like it here.

-D

August 24, In Retrospect

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Funny: the only pictures we’ve taken (apparently) on August 24 were way back in 2,000, on our cruise to Alaska. I doubt that’s the truth, really – I think that that’s the day the film was developed, because these pictures are from Juneau, yet some pictures which are from the 25th are from Skagway, which we visited prior to Juneau, as I recall.

Wish we’d been shooting high-resolution digital, way back then. Alas, we were shooting “APS” format film, and have since lost the camera somewhere.

-D

Quotes of the Day

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Two notable quotes of the morning:

Gravity is just so insistent!
-T

There is never an appropriate time to sing a Veggie-Tales song. EVER!
-D

We’ll be off to visit See Woo, for our bi-monthly restocking of Asian delicacies (edamame, curry paste, interesting veggie-meats, tofu) in just a few minutes (they don’t open until 9:30). We’re hopelessly addicted to edamame, and had the last bag yesterday, so it’s definitely time to restock!

Enjoy your Sunday!

-D&T

be happy in your head


by Canadian poet Tanya Davis ©2009

There is a young adult author who a couple of months ago started a book promotion asking authors and others to Tweet what they’d say to their thirteen-year-old selves, if they could pick up the phone and call them. It was clever and a lot of people started thinking of what they might say… we think we would leave this poem somewhere for our former selves to see.

Even now, there’s a feeling of guilt that comes to those who realize they prefer to stand at the edge of the room, at the back of the crowd, in the stacks at the library where no one can see them. Introverts might love people in general — and specific people as well, but also want to close themselves in a room with only a single window and a chair some days. It is a gift not to be worried by this, and to learn to seek time to oneself in order to breathe.

Solitude, in its myriad forms, is highly underrated.

Tha’s Some Evil Wee Beasties

Ah, swans.

We have the fairytale — the birds of great strength, elegance, grace, and beauty, with twenty-three neck vertebrae arching into that classic curve. We have the ballet. The mythology. And then, we have The Truth:

Their wings can break a grown man’s arm, they hiss, chase, and bite, crushing fingers, and drawing blood. Beautiful as they are, these things are a nasty piece of work.

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We discussed it, and concluded: we’d both rather take on a goose, and D. has had experience with a goose attack. But here, since all swans belong to the Crown, we couldn’t even really kick one if we had to — the rowers at Cambridge who were assaulted last summer by “Mr. Asbo” and are continuing to be pecked, smacked, and bloodied have no recourse but to paddle really fast, and beg the queen for help. Which is just — wow. Quite something. (Who knew the Brits could be such good, obedient subjects? Guess no one wants to risk the public flogging handed down as sentence for anyone who messes with HRH’s birds.)

This is a Mama Pen, Papa Cob, and all ten of their cygnets. It’s hard to believe, but this photo was shot from a train, as we went over a small bridge on the River Tay. And just look at them — all fuzzy and dark, not a one of them a misplaced duckling… from this distance, don’t they look cute?

But YOU know better.

Here are some swan facts for those of a turn of mind to know their enemies. ::cough:: Um, we mean, find out more about the stories, history, and lore of this gorgeous bird. Yeah, that’s what we meant.

On Poorly-Reasoned Media Articles

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I don’t know if you’ve been following the whole WikiLeaks story, of how some 90,000+ classified documents concerning the war in Afghanastan were leaked, or whether you think it’s a good thing for democracy or not. I’m not about to answer that question, but I did have a few thoughts, in light of the latest article in the series: Shortcomings of US Drones, and in light of my current reading, The Quest for Responsibility: Accountability and Citizenship in Complex Organisations (TQR, from here out).

Taken in light of what I’ve been reading in TQR, I’d have to say that there was a proper procedure which probably wasn’t followed prior to leaking this information (whistleblowing in the military is protected, the same as whistleblowing by civil servants). So, the person doing this … well, certainly didn’t follow procedure. I don’t know how I feel about that, particularly, but I must say that there’s a definite agenda on the part of WikiLeaks, and I’m not entirely certain that I can fathom it. Nor do I wish to, particularly. I am fairly amazed, though, that nobody’s asking questions about the motivation and procedural correctness surrounding this leak. I read lots about WikiLeaks in general, but nothing about how any grievance could have been addressed within the military rather than dumping masses of data into the public domain.

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The latest article, in which der Spiegel paints a grim picture of unsecured, military databases being carried off when military drones crash … well, that bothers me just a bit, because I’d like to think that somebody bright enough to design a remote-controlled weapons platform would at least know how to secure the thing from having its data stripped out by an opponent. I mean, 5 minutes of thought says to me:

  1. Encrypt the hard-drive using strong encryption,
  2. Require an external key be provided to even launch the operating system (on a USB stick, or something of the like),
  3. Load in some encrypted keystores onto each of the onboard missiles when the platform is initialized, such that they are required for boot in the event of radio-loss
  4. Continually update the encryption requirements as those missiles are spent (so that, when the device reestablishes radio communication, you’d be able to remotely boot the system, or could provide a missing key),
  5. Design the system to go into a safe shut-down in the event of a certain number of minutes of radio silence, or upon a signal provided by an impact-sensor.

Now, that probably sounds like a lot of gibberish … but, basically, it would require a monetary expenditure which far outstrips the value of data supposedly “lost to insurgents.” Does anybody believe that, in addition to the “remote-controlled ‘zero-out’ procedure,” the manufacturers didn’t include an extra $100 worth of hardware (and free software) to make these things less vulnerable? When their per-unit price is supposedly around $4.5 million each? Please.

This is not a political rant, this is merely a rant against stupidity.

-D

Tired of Travel

This past month has been all about travel, it seems, and not enough about the things in our lives which involve peace, introspection, and the things we enjoy locally.

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First off, I had to go down to Southampton for a day, which meant leaving Glasgow at 6 a.m. and arriving back at something like 11 p.m. Quite a long day, and it was on the day that the British played in the World Cup. So, lots of chaos, lots of travel, and one tired out me.

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The following week, we were both at Glasgow Airport, on our way to Washington, D.C., for the ALA conference.

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We’ve described the conference a bit already, but the city itself we didn’t really visit: we went from place to place, visiting people, going to coctail parties, and only taking pictures incidentally. The conference, as you can see below, was absolutely packed with people. This wasn’t to our liking, as we both tend to avoid crowds like the plague (which they, no doubt, carry).

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The National Cathedral was much more our speed, and I dare say that we spent more time just enjoying the peace there than we did at the ALA Conference. I’d say it’s a shame, but … well, it was peaceful!

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We’re back home, now, and a few weeks have gone by … and we’re feeling as if we’re able to finally look around, examine things a bit, and ask, “what do we want to do, in our final year in Glasgow?”

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One of the things we’d let drop, this past year, was the choir. When we think back to what we disliked about it … we won’t be going back. But there are other options, such as the Glasgow City Chorus (please schedule any visits with us around their concert schedule). We hope that they’re a bit more about the choir, and less about the soloists / musicians. They practice somewhere in the City Chambers / Council (shown to the right), I think.

We’ll be getting our music early (see The Mutopia Project to get your own, free music, and Lilypond to understand just what goes into the music available there). Between the concert schedule and the (free) music (when we get a chance to transcribe it, as it doesn’t seem to be up there yet), we expect somebody out there to sing along.

-D

Sunday Random, or “Sometimes, The World Is Just A Bit Odd”

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Awhile back we ran across a really disturbing study out of Edinburgh’s Napier University. According to the BBC some eighty-nine Glaswegian children from five different primary schools were interviewed to talk about their views on male/female gender and behavior. The kids were eleven and twelve years old.

The question they were asked was if it was justified for a man to strike his wife or girlfriend if she’d cheated on him. Nearly all of the children polled said, “Yes.” 80% of the children felt it was okay for him to slap her if dinner wasn’t on the table on time.

The rest of the study is just as harrowing, and deals with diminished future expectations for the girls and accepted discrimination, but because T’s sister (aka Mother of Sons) has in the recent past had the addition of two gorgeous Wee Men join she and Big Man, what stuck with us is what the researcher said about her subjects, and how it reflects on boys:

“The children didn’t agree with violence, but gave reasons to try to justify it if the woman had done something ‘wrong’.

“The old saying of ‘If he pulls your pigtails it means he likes you’, translates into violence in adulthood which girls accept as normal.”

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Boy, that old saw again. Sometimes, there are just no words for the lies some people tell kids, are there? T. remembers lecturing her seventeen fifth grade boys on this very topic (she somehow had only two girls in that class), and concluding with a Wrath of Teacher voice, “– and if I see any of you pulling hair, or kicking muddy water on Amanda and Sara or any of the girls, you will be RUNNING laps around the field for every recess for a solid month, so help me.” (Is it any wonder that the boys took to leaving her long worms and millipedes and not the girls on the playground?) She sometimes wonders if she scarred any of her students for life, but remembers all too well the charming boy in her sixth grade class who left fist-sized bruises all over her back — because he allegedly liked her. She wishes she had the right hook then that she does now.

Dear Mother of Sons: we sometimes worry for the Wee Men. What a world they’re coming into.

Sometimes, this town seems very wrong, and not in a quirky, funny way, either. Apparently Amnesty International has spoken out against Scotland for years for its continued violence against women. This study bodes ill for this city down the road, and here’s hoping that educators and parents are taking what they’ve reflected to their children seriously – and figuring out something to do about it all.


That made us both very sad — so, let’s talk about some nicer Scottish news: taxidermy!

Okay, “nicer” is a state of opinion here… but we were recently torn between horror and amusement to find that Scotland – Aberdeenshire, to be specific – is once again pushing the envelope of good brewing and …good taste. The company, BrewDog, had already been roundly criticized for brewing extra strong ales and beers… now they’ve come up with a new line called End of History – 55% alcohol by volume – and the bottles are slipped into the bodies of taxidermied roadkill. Yes. Dead animals.

We won’t bother including a picture, but if you need one – you can visit here. Of course, it was a limited line – sold for between £500 – 750 a bottle — and it’s already sold out. Because if you don’t have your ridiculously strong ale poured out of a dead animal at your next party, really, how cool are you?

Did we mention that sometimes this country is just a bit off?

Meanwhile, on the homefront, the long light continues. Though it’s not exactly sunny — we’ve had maybe five days in July so far where there has been no rain — it is still very light out until well into the evening, and early morning, and it is bringing on some intriguing sleeptalking episodes. One goes to bed and is awakened by one’s spouse, crooning to them, patting the blankets around them. “What are you doing?” one asks ones spouse in a carefully, psychiatric-approved Calm Voice, knowing the danger of abruptly awakening both the sleep-talking and the probably insane. “I’m encrypting you,” is the response, as eyes remain closed. “Music is closely associated with math, which is why I have to sing.”

Spouse simply rolls eyes and sighs as the patting and crooning continues.

Yep. Some days are just odd.

Meanwhile, T. has sold another book – woot! – and is working on three at a time, and jittering from drinking too much tea. D. is spending days — between being his company’s Good Luck Developer Charm — wrestling statistics into comprehensible form, and falling asleep over piles of books. And possibly encrypting things.

And now for something completely different.

We’re grateful that NPR is something you can listen to no matter where you are – and this little animation narrated by Robert Krulwich makes us quite happy just now.

Happy Summer.