My weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. This week’s focus has been on the new content release “Last Stand at Southsun”. There’s also the usual assortment of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction from around the GW2 community.
May 31, 2013
This week in Guild Wars 2
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Everyone is watching – the rise of “Little Brother”
In The New Yorker, Maria Bustillos talks about the ubiquity of non-government surveillance:
… the same technological advances that have empowered the rise of Big Brother have created another wrinkle in the story. We might call it the emergence of Little Brother: the ordinary citizen who by chance finds himself in a position to record events of great public import, and to share the results with the rest of us. This has become immeasurably easier and more likely with the near-ubiquitous proliferation of high-quality recording devices. (As I learned after publishing this, the term had been coined earlier, and Cory Doctorow used it in 2007 for his book of the same name.)
The era of Little Brother was perhaps inaugurated in November, 1963, with the Kodachrome II 8-mm. film of John F. Kennedy’s assassination inadvertently captured by the Dallas clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder. George Holliday’s videotape of the March, 1991, beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, and Scott Prouty’s forty-seven-per-cent video, which arguably cost Mitt Romney the Presidency last year, fall into the same class.
There is a surprisingly rich and dynamic academic literature developing around the concept of “sousveillance,” a term coined by the University of Toronto professor and inventor Steve Mann to describe privately made recordings that can serve as a counterweight to institutional and government surveillance. Mann is famous for approaching these questions from the perspective of wearable computing, a field in which he is one of the earliest pioneers; his apparent eccentricity is belied by the gravity and lucidity of his writing, which is heavily influenced by Foucault’s views on panopticism:
One way to challenge and problematize both surveillance and acquiescence to it is to resituate these technologies of control on individuals, offering panoptic technologies to help them observe those in authority. We call this inverse panopticon “sousveillance” from the French words for “sous” (below) and “veiller” to watch.
Sousveillance is a form of “reflectionism,” a term invented by Mann (1998) for a philosophy and procedures of using technology to mirror and confront bureaucratic organizations. Reflectionism holds up the mirror and asks the question: “Do you like what you see?” If you do not, then you will know that other approaches by which we integrate society and technology must be considered.
H/T to Bruce Schneier for the link.
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The congenital defect of politics
Jonah Goldberg talks about a new book from Kevin Williamson:
Kevin Williamson’s new book is quite possibly the best indictment of the State since Our Enemy, the State appeared some eight decades ago. It is a lovely, brilliant, humane, and remarkably entertaining work.
Though he sometimes sounds like a reasonable anarchist, Williamson is not in fact opposed to all government. But he is everywhere opposed to anything that smacks of the State. There’s an old line about how to carve an elephant: Take a block of marble and then remove everything that isn’t an elephant. Williamson looks at everything we call the State or the government and wants to remove everything that shouldn’t be there, which is quite a lot. In what may be my favorite part of the book, he demolishes, with Godzilla-versus-Bambi ease, the notion that only government can provide public goods. In fact, most of what government provides are nonpublic goods (transfer payments, subsidies, etc.), and a great deal of what the market provides — from Google and Wikipedia to Starbucks restrooms — are indisputably public goods.
[. . .]
Williamson’s core argument is that politics has a congenital defect: Politics cannot get “less wrong” (a term coined by artificial-intelligence guru Eliezer Yudkowsky). Productive systems — the scientific method, the market, evolution — all have the built-in ability to learn from failures. Nothing (in this life at least) ever becomes immortally perfect, but some things become less wrong through trial and error. The market, writes Williamson, “is a form of social evolution that is metaphorically parallel to biological evolution. Consider the case of New Coke, or Betamax, or McDonald’s Arch Deluxe, or Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo. . . . When hordes of people don’t show up to buy the product, then the product dies.” Just like organisms in the wild, corporations that don’t learn from failures eventually fade away.
Except in politics: “The problem of politics is that it does not know how to get less wrong.” While new iPhones regularly burst forth like gifts from the gods, politics plods along. “Other than Social Security, there are very few 1935 vintage products still in use,” he writes. “Resistance to innovation is a part of the deep structure of politics. In that, it is like any other monopoly. It never goes out of business — despite flooding the market with defective and dangerous products, mistreating its customers, degrading the environment, cooking the books, and engaging in financial shenanigans that would have made Gordon Gekko pale to contemplate.” Hence, it is not U.S. Steel, which was eventually washed away like an imposing sand castle in the surf, but only politics that can claim to be “the eternal corporation.”
The reason for this immortality is simple: The people running the State are never sufficiently willing to contemplate that they are the problem. If a program dedicated to putting the round pegs of humanity into square holes fails, the bureaucrats running it will conclude that the citizens need to be squared off long before it dawns on them that the State should stop treating people like pegs in the first place. Furthermore, in government, failure is an exciting excuse to ask for more funding or more power.
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Lovers of BDSM report “a higher level of subjective well-being”
At Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin discusses a recent Dutch paper comparing people who indulge in BDSM with boring old “vanilla” types:
A provocative article from the Netherlands published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine says people who like to participate in bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, and sado-masochism erotic play are “characterized by a set of balanced, autonomous, and beneficial personality characteristics.”
Practitioners of BDSM report “a higher level of subjective well-being” when compared to people who tend to have more boring forms of sex.
These sexual practices have long been “associated with psychopathology,” the paper says. “However, several more recent studies suggest a relative good psychological health of BDSM practitioners.”
The article is safe for work, but you’ll quickly get into NSFW territory by doing Google searches for most of the terms used…
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Reason.tv: What Game of Thrones teaches about crony capitalism
“The game of thrones in general is a game of cronyism because it’s all about forming political alliances, especially with people who can make you better off economically speaking,” says Auburn University Economics Instructor Matthew McCaffrey.
McCaffrey has recently written about the economics involved in the popular Game of Thrones novels by George R.R. Martin as well as the HBO series based on the books. He sat down with ReasonTV’s Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss the various economic concepts that develop alongside the character-driven plot line, such as sin taxes, coin clipping, and the ever-present cost of borrowing.
According to McCaffrey, Martin extensively researches historical economic systems to make “the Realm” as plausible as possible.
“As part of his process he ends up uncovering a lot of historical details that usually get lost in a fantasy book of this kind,” says McCaffrey, “just practical difficulties of running a kingdom, how public finance works, how the game of thrones corrupts the people who play it and how it ends disastrously for the people who don’t play it well.”
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May 30, 2013
The real reason we’re getting wall-to-wall senate scandal coverage
Colby Cosh suspects we may be on the receiving end of a massive distraction attempt:
I’m starting to half-believe the theory that the Senate expense scandal was cooked up to cover other problems for the Conservative Party of Canada. The broad main effect of the Senate fracas so far has been to exasperate the hell out of everybody. Mike Duffy’s bad behaviour presents the public with the frustrating conundrum that only the Senate can make rules for or punish errant senators, and that the major features of the Constitution (including that one) are probably immune from formal amendment for the next hundred years or so. Stephen Harper’s statutory end-run proposals for permitting Senate elections and tightening term limits are currently awaiting scrutiny by the Supreme Court; if the court rejects his measures, he can argue that they represented at least a fillip of attainable accountability, which they do, and that it is not his fault they were bounced.
In modern history, providing convenient excuses for inaction by elected politicians is about 45 per cent of the court’s function. And, at that, maybe it is okay to notice that the court, now crowded with Harper appointees, is as much an audience for Duffy’s antics as the rest of us. On top of all this, the whole mess invited Justin Trudeau, following cues like a good drama teacher, to plunge headlong into the trap of not only defending the Senate, but defending it on the specific grounds that Quebec is beneficially overrepresented therein.
If people are pulling faces at the Senate, that’s a win for the Conservative party. But perhaps more importantly, it’s a boost for the New Democrats, who have a clear “dynamite it” position on the Senate that they have advocated pretty consistently for half a century. Keeping the seat counts of the NDP and the Liberals roughly level with each other is the paramount strategic axiom for the Tories from now until (at least) 2015.
Most Canadians over the age of 40 would rather do almost anything other than watch another attempt at constitutional wrangling … we saw what happened the last couple of times the feds and the provinces tried re-rigging things to their preference.
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High speed steam run
LNER A4 Class 4464 (60019) “Bittern” has been given dispensation to run at 90MPH on the East Coast Main Line in July, to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Mallard’s world speed record, subject to a satisfactory high speed test. This is that test. The weather was perfect — damp, cool, no wind. Bittern left Didcot at 05:23 am and flew through Slough 05:58 at full pelt for an average of 60mph over the 35 miles. The 6.2 mile section between Maidenhead and Slough was completed in 4 minutes, an average of 93MPH. Using film time markers I timed the whole train at 90mph through Taplow where this film was shot.
Given the two sets of hand cranked data, and with no speed gun to hand, I am happy to put the 90MPH stamp on the film title.
H/T to Jim Guthrie for the link.
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May 29, 2013
Lessons learned in the post-Napster era
At TechDirt, Mike Masnick discusses the things we learned from Napster:
Last fall, law professor Michael Carrier came out with a really wonderful paper, called Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story. He interviewed dozens of people involved in the internet world and the music world, to look at what the impact was of the legal case against Napster, leading to the shutdown of the original service (the name and a few related assets were later sold off to another company). The stories (again, coming from a variety of different perspectives) helps fill in a key part of the story that many of us have heard, but which has never really been written about: what an astounding chill that episode cast over the innovation space when it came to music. Entrepreneurs and investors realized that they, too, were likely to get sued, and focused their efforts elsewhere. The record labels, on the other hand, got the wrong idea, and became totally convinced that a legal strategy was the way to stem the tide of innovation.
The Wisconsin Law Review, which published Carrier’s paper, asked a few people to write responses to Carrier’s paper, and they recently published the different responses, including one from a lawyer at the RIAA, one from another law professor… and one from me. This post will be about my paper — and I’ll talk about the other papers in a later post. My piece is entitled When You Let Incumbents Veto Innovation, You Get Less Innovation. It builds on Carrier’s piece, to note that the stories he heard fit quite well with a number of other stories that we’ve seen over the past fifteen years, and the way in which the industry has repeatedly fought innovation via lawsuits.
You can read the whole paper at the link above (or, if you prefer there’s a pdf version). I talk about the nature of innovation — and how it involves an awful lot of trial and error to get it right. The more trials, the faster what works becomes clear, and the faster improvement you get. But the industry’s early success against Napster made that nearly impossible, and massively slowed down innovation in the sector. Yes, a few players kept trying, but it developed much more slowly than other internet-related industries. And you can see why directly in the Carrier paper, where entrepreneurs point out that it’s just not worth doing something in the music space, because if you want to actually do what the technology enables, the kinds of things that are cool and useful and which consumers would really like… you’ll get sued.
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QotD: It’s time to go, Rob
Yes, the media is out to get Rob Ford. It’s politics. Most hacks are not militantly left-wing, though their political assumptions are broadly statist. What almost all successful reporters have, no matter what their political inclinations, is a sixth sense about good copy. They can smell blood from miles away. Even the most right-leaning member of Ford Nation, who has a slight tinge of journalistic ability, can sense Rob Ford is a headline generating machine. More than that he generates the right kind of headlines: Cheap, simple and easy to understand.
He’s a big fat white guy who keeps getting himself into trouble. The man is an elected Fox sitcom.
That’s why he has to go. Hopefully to be replaced by someone with his values but also with a modicum of common sense. When faced with allegations, whether absurd or serious, the instinctive reaction of the Mayor has been to whine like a petulant child and to blame a vast-left-wing conspiracy. It never seems to have occurred to the Mayor, who has a penchant for self-pity, that this same media complex is also besieging Tim Hudak, Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, John Baird and Danielle Smith. Whatever you think of those politicians, each is enough of a professional to deal with the media they’re stuck with, rather than wish for a media that has never existed.
For the good of Toronto, Rob Ford needs to go.
Richard Anderson, “He Needs To Go”, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2013-05-29
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Why “every homicide perp on death row who is reasonably attractive has groupies”
In the Los Angeles Times, Charlotte Allen examines the phenomenon of women who fall in love with murderers, terrorists, and other assorted villains:
This, of course, goes against all current conventional wisdom about the kind of men that women want: sensitive, egalitarian, feminism-friendly guys who split the housework 50-50 (or better yet, do it all so their wives can “lean in” at work).
In fact, as any evolutionary psychologist can tell you, women, like other female primates, crave dominant “alpha” males who demonstrate the strength to protect them and pass on survival traits to their children. And in a society such as ours, where the phrase “head of the household” is anathema and men are forbidden to dominate in socially beneficial ways, women will seek out assertive, self-confident men whose displays of power aren’t so socially beneficial.
It’s not surprising, then, that every homicide perp on death row who is reasonably attractive has groupies. Consider the handsome (and widely philandering) Scott Peterson, sentenced in 2005 for killing his wife and unborn son and throwing their remains into San Francisco Bay. The day he checked into San Quentin, he received three dozen phone calls from smitten women, including an 18-year-old who wanted to become the second Mrs. Peterson.
It’s probably a good idea, if you are religious, to say some prayers for Dzhokhar, who is likely to need them. It’s probably a bad idea to feel sorry for him. The worst idea of all, though, is to imagine that the obsessive female attention, adulation and pity lavished on a mass-murder suspect such as Dzhokhar is a cultural anomaly.
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“One imagines this isn’t the response the administration was expecting”
In the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto talks about the surprising recent uniformity of opinion among media outlets:
Hey, kids! What time is it? “TIME TO GO: HOLDER OK’D PRESS PROBE,” shouted the always subtle homepage of the Puffington Host last Thursday evening. It was in response to the news, broken by NBC, that Attorney General Eric Holder had participated in “discussions” about “a controversial search warrant for a Fox News reporter’s private emails.” That’s in contrast with the Associated Press phone-log subpoena case, from which Holder told Congress he had recused himself.
The New York Times‘s reaction, while not as breathless, was more dramatic. The paper’s editorial appeared a week ago tomorrow — before Holder’s involvement had publicly emerged — under the headline “Another Chilling Leak Investigation.” The editorial was straightforward and reasonably argued. That may not sound like a great compliment, but this is the New York Times editorial page we’re talking about.
The editorial was remarkable as much for what it didn’t say as for what it did. There were no snide asides about Fox News, or qualifications along the lines that “even Fox” has First Amendment rights. Nor did the Times editors take any shots at George W. Bush, congressional Republicans or any other familiar antagonist. They simply defended Fox News‘s right to engage in news-gathering and denounced the Obama administration’s assault on it.
One imagines this isn’t the response the administration was expecting.
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May 28, 2013
Breaking new (legal) trails
Colby Cosh on the fascinating attempt by former Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke to sue his alleged defamers on the internet:
Question: if you can defame someone on the internet, should they be able to sue you over the internet? Grouchy former Leafs GM Brian Burke intends to find out. His lawyers are set to appear in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver today, where they will argue that Burke should be able to serve notice of his defamation lawsuit against pseudonymous members of various internet forums by means of those forums themselves. “Ding! You’ve… got… mail.”
Early commentary on Burke’s lawsuit over claims he had an affair with a broadcaster was focused on the difficulty of tracking down internet anonymice and serving them with the right papers. The established pathway is to go through internet service providers to get them to disclose the identities behind IP addresses — but privacy-conscious tech firms don’t like to give up that info without a court order, and if Johnny Flapgums did not happen to post from home or work, a plaintiff is more or less out of luck anyway. In an unforeseen development, Burke is now asking the court to let him sue internet usernames as usernames, notifying the users of the action through the personal-messaging apparatus of the sites on which they posted their allegedly scurrilous comments.
If Burke succeeds with today’s motion, defendants such as “CamBarkerFan” and “Slobberface” will be forced into a tricky choice between fighting the lawsuit, and thus exposing themselves to a verdict, or laying low and allowing a default judgment to be entered against them, thus exposing themselves to the risk of being identified and penalized later without any chance of a defence.
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