(me) I’m an irritating perfectionist who can’t prioritize
(me) stubborn ‘pride in work product’
(friend) lose it
(friend) that’s an evolutionary …whatchamacallit
(friend) like the appendix
(friend) a holdover that adds no value
September, 2008
30
Sep 08
saddest (truest?) conversation of the day
22
Sep 08
computer usage data bleg (update: and server market share)
Hey, all. I’m in need of data about ‘typical’ computer usage- i.e., ‘in 2007, the average computer user spent X% of time on the internet, Y% of time doing word processing, Z% of time listening to music, etc.’ The ideal data set would have this information for a number of years- ideally going back at least to 2000 A.D. (aka ’1 B.iTunes.’) I’ve been googling for a bit and have had no luck. If anyone can point me at such data, I’d be extremely appreciative. Thanks!
Relatedly: (added later): similar long-term numbers for server market share, both by OS and by chip family (x86 v. everyone else, primarily) would be terrific to have if anyone knows of a source of them (ideally without paying Gartner bazillions, though I really need to look into whether or not the school’s Bloomberg subscription gives me access to that.)
18
Sep 08
what you can (and can’t) learn from Google’s EULA mistake
When people started complaining about the Google Chrome EULA, it seemed obvious to me that it was a copy and paste error- old language, copied into a new situation where it didn’t quite fit. But after Google explained that they had just reused language from other licenses, Gizmodo noted:
It’s not that I don’t trust Google, but the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V explanation .. seems like an odd oversight for a product in secret, heavy development for close to two years.
Explaining why it isn’t that odd might give people a little better understanding about how corporate lawyers work, and maybe even what this does (and doesn’t) teach us about Google and privacy.
First thing this teaches us: Lawyers (like programmers) copy and paste whenever they can. On the plus side, a document that is copied is usually battle-tested- so you know you’re getting something that covers all the bases, generally does the right thing, and has no known errors. If you wrote it from scratch, you might forget or overlook something, and that would be a problem. And lawyers are expensive- so if the copy and paste saves them time, it saves you money. On the down side, a copied and pasted document sometimes doesn’t fit the new situation perfectly; for example, old language could take on new meaning when the software grows new functionality- which appears to be what bit Google here. Given lawyers’ love of ctl+c and ctl+v, this doesn’t seem that odd.
(Corporate lawyers in particular are notorious for copying and pasting, to the point that some venture capital groups provide their own legal documents, since they figure your lawyers are going to be copy and pasting anyway.)
Second thing this teaches us: lawyers are human too. Your eyes glaze over after reading just one of these EULAs, and corporate lawyers who work in this area can easily read hundreds of these, all very, very similar. This doesn’t excuse the mistake that happened here- lawyers are well paid to avoid exactly this kind of problem. But at the end of the day we’re only human- after reading the same phrases a thousand times, it isn’t too ‘odd’ that sometimes we miss the wrinkle that gives the same old sentence an entirely different meaning like it did here.
Third thing this teaches us: among lawyers, programmers are notorious for doing things first and asking the lawyers to check it over later, even the night before (or the day after!) the release. I have no idea if that is what happened here- it could well be that the lawyers were consulted from day one, and Google generally seems well-organized about this sort of thing. But it is quite possible that even in a two year project like this one the lawyers were called only weeks, days, or hours before the website went live- obviously increasing the odds of a mistake like this one. Again, lawyers are well paid to do things under pressure- so this shouldn’t have happened- but it isn’t too surprising.
What this doesn’t do is teach us much about Google, Chrome, and privacy.
First, we still don’t have a great idea what other privacy problems there are with Chrome. Google may no longer be claiming to own everything you publish on the web, but there is still a lot of data going from you to them, and I for one still haven’t seen a good analysis of that.
Second, some people have claimed that this shows us that when there is a public outcry, Google will respond, and therefore there is no need for government privacy regulation. I’m not convinced government privacy regulation is a good idea, and Google may well be very responsive to market forces. But the idea that this incident shows that Google reacts to the market is fairly ludicrous- remember, what we’re talking about here is correcting a copy and paste error. So, yes, we’ve proven that when a Google lawyer accidentally gives them the ability to do something they have no intention to do, they’ll fix the lawyer’s accident. But this tells us nothing about how they’ll respond when they actually consciously choose to collect data- they famously did nothing when there were huge complaints gmail and privacy, and their response when people actually take them to court seems to be that “complete privacy does not exist.”
So was this mistake odd? Not really. But it tells us a lot more about how lawyers work than it tells us about Google, Chrome, and privacy.
17
Sep 08
what these guys need is… a trademark license!
Most screaming case for a community mark license I’ve seen in a while is the utterly cool PARK(ing) Day. Basically, they’ve got a very cool idea (probably patentable, not copyrightable) and have registered a mark (PARK(ing) Day, protected but not under copyright.) And they’ve put the thing (or tried to put it) under a CC-BY-NC-SA license, which is (say it with me, kids) a copyright license. And hence doesn’t accomplish what they want to accomplish, legally-speaking.
This isn’t really their fault; as far as I know no one has creatively addressed their needs1. Still, frustrating to see. If only there were 30 hours in the day…
- just as no one has creatively addressed the need of the spec writers [↩]
14
Sep 08
that havoc, he’s such a nice young man. John McCain, not so much.
HP: very nice post. The version in my drafts folder since Friday night is… hrm. Very similar in content, but, well, less polite. One might say ‘angrier’.
I had a lot of respect for John McCain (probably would have voted for him over Gore in 2000) but over the past couple of weeks that respect has gone- I’m just sick of the constant stream of lies, distortions, distractions. To paraphrase Obama, the distortions and the distractions don’t hurt Democrats or Republicans, they hurt America, not just for one media cycle, but permanently, because they prevent us from actually talking about the issues facing the country.
If we want to have a serious conversation about the very serious problems our country faces- if we want to actually solve problems instead of just win campaigns- this sort of behavior must have consequences. I can’t scold McCain (or the media, who share responsibility) to their faces, so I’ve done the next best thing: I’ve written the biggest check to Obama that I can, and time permitting I’m going to take action myself by phonebanking. In other words, I’m trying to help McCain and his handlers face the ultimate political penalty. They deserve nothing better. (I have no illusions that Obama can magically fix the problem by himself, but if Rovians continue to win, they will continue to behave this way. So their loss is where the solution must start.)
(It is worth noting that this issue of distractions and lies should be non-partisan. Honest Republicans who actually support America as an ongoing concern, and not just a place for their party to ‘win’ more scorched-earth victories, should want a discussion of the issues rather than a discussion of lipstick. Admittedly, it might cost you this election, but punishing the Rovians now will make your party stronger in the long run. So think about it supporting Obama, or at least withholding your support from McCain and Steve Schmidt.)
To bring this back slightly to my typical topics, this is a terrific chart (using the best Tufte-ian approach) explaining who would and wouldn’t get their taxes raised and lowered under the Obama and McCain tax plans. It puts the lie to McCain’s claim that Obama would raise taxes for most Americans. Given what lawyers earn, I’d probably be better off under McCain, but I don’t need it. Chart via the awesome ben fry.
8
Sep 08
GNOME Mobile Stewardship Team
On behalf of the board, I just announced a new GNOME Mobile Stewardship Team on foundation-announce. I’m pleased with this announcement for a number of reasons. Primarily, I think it’ll help us get better focus and direction around GNOME Mobile, and obviously that is important. But I’m also excited that this is a big step towards delegation for the Board. That’s something we’ve historically been bad at, and it was my only non-legal campaign plank when I ran for the board this year. So I’m excited to see that happen- I think it’ll make both the board and the Mobile community more effective, and hopefully will provide a template for us to move forward in other areas.
7
Sep 08
Software Freedom Day event in New York City
James Vasile asked me to pass along that the Software Freedom Law Center is having a reception for Software Freedom Day. Details are at his blog (which is worth subscribing too- low volume, high value when something is said.
(I’ll try to make it, but my brother will be in town, so… possibly not.)
4
Sep 08
Deblois plays NYC!
3
Sep 08
creative commons picture script request?
I’m doing a lot of slide show work of late, so I was wondering if any of my readers knew of an in-image equivalent of the gfwa script I use on the blog? Basically, I’d love to know of (or have written?) a script that, given an image, a license, attribution strings, etc., would spit out the image plus an unobtrusive overlay containing the proper attribution information, so that I could put the image into the slide and preserve the requisite licensing information.
Something like adding the following in the lower righthand corner of this:
but less ugly (and more license-compliant; any CC-expert readers might want to weigh in in comments on the state of the art for citation in non-web-y formats like pictures/slide-decks.)
To be really kick-ass the script would probably need to take a font color and corner (upper left, upper-right, etc.) but I’ll settle for having that hard-coded for now.
Lessig handles this by including a list of attributions, links, etc., on the final slide, which may be appropriate for particularly image-dense presentations, but I’d like to experiment with this for now- it feels more appropriate anyway, especially if it can be done in a low impact, aesthetically pleasing way.
Thanks…
1
Sep 08
quick thought on blizzard’s thoughts on google chrome
“The fact that Google believes that they can launch a browser based on new technology means that the market is alive.” –Blizzard
monopoly-e-commerce by Daniel Broche. License: 
It is a pretty bizarre “market” where the major participants are, in market share order:
- a repeatedly convicted monopolist that makes no money off its product in this market
- a non-profit that makes no money (directly) off its product in this market, only indirectly off ads1
- a company that makes no money off its product in this market
- a company that actually makes money2 off its product in this market
- (probably up to 3 or 4 soon) a company that sells a lot of ads, in large part through #2, but which won’t make any money off its product in this market
So, yes, it is a market, given a very, very broad definition of ‘market’. But a very unusual one.
This is not necessarily a bad thing- the same standard that makes it difficult to make a differentiated, profitable browser also makes for more innovation at the web app and operating system levels3. But as google hinted in their intro comic, getting innovation to happen at the same layer as the standard is hard. (Some related thoughts here.)
Will be interesting, as always, to see where this goes from here.