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Binging the Bard

2020/01/01 By Rob Leave a Comment

With streaming video binging has become particularly easy today. This Christmas we watched all of the Die Hard movies, for example. Last year, on Boxing Day, we, of course, watched all of the Rocky movies.

For 2020 I’m planning on trying something a little difference. I’m aiming to read the complete works of Shakespeare, all the comedies, tragedies and histories, all the sonnets, even all the weird odds and ends, e.g., the metaphysical poem, “The Phoenix and the Turtle.”

I’ll be following the reading plan described at the Shakespeare 2020 Project, which generally follows the chronological order of the Riverside Shakespeare edition, with a couple of modifications to align certain plays with the calendar. For example, the reading plan starts with Twelfth Night, aligning it with that holiday, also called Epiphany.

I think I’ve read around 2/3 of the plays already. It will be good to revisit old friends and get to know some knew ones. I’ve barely dipped into the sonnets before, and I’m particularly looking forward to spending some time with them.

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Filed Under: Shakespeare

Distributed, personalized fact-checking of social network streams

2019/10/01 By Rob Leave a Comment

The Dangers of Centralized Control

A report on CNN online today covers criticism of Facebook by the Democratic National Committee, who claims that the social media giant allows President Trump, “to mislead the American people on their platform unimpeded.” The solution desired by the DNC is for Facebook to subject the president’s social media posts to “fact-checking,” something that they are already starting to do with posts by ordinary folks, but have not yet done to politicians.

The dangers of such an approach ought to be clear to all. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, as the ancients wrote. Who will watch the watchmen? Do we really want such concentrated power over political speech and political campaigns? I have friends at Facebook and Google. They are very smart people. But they are not so smart that they can act as censors to the planet. No one is that smart.

Of course, there are certainly harmful social media posts out there, dangerous medical advice, hate speech, bullying, frauds, spam, and so on, things that few of us would like to see in our social media streams.

At the same time we need to be mindful that the history of progress has been the history of unpopular ideas gaining acceptance and becoming mainstream, from religious toleration to abolition of slavery, to women’s suffrage to gay marriage.

These ideas, now considered sacrosanct liberties today, where once suppressed by centralized control over the mass distribution of ideas, the social networking of the day. For example, early proponents of contraception, getting their ideas out peacefully via newspapers, were prosecuted under laws that made it illegal to send “obscene” materials through the U.S. Postal Service, a law which was construed to include even information about birth control.

There are danger of doing too much, or doing too little. If we hand central control over censorship (which is what we’re talking about) over to a single company, or a small number of companies who, because of their great size are constantly in the crosshairs of antitrust regulators in the U.S. and in Europe, we effectively hand the “kill switch” of the internet over to the present ruling class, and likely stall future social progress. On the other hand, if we do nothing, our social media accounts become unsavory places where those with the worst intentions get the most attention.

An Analogy: Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer

Recall back years ago when the big controversy was over Microsoft’s platform monopoly on Microsoft Windows and how they apparently were extending that monopoly to their Internet Explorer browser, and to related internet technologies like ActiveX controls.

It was reasonable for, say, a hyperlink in a Microsoft Word document to launch a browser when clicked. What else could Microsoft do but launch their own Internet Explorer browser? At the time, this argued for on the basis of user-convenience. A highly-integrated solution, one the user did not need to tinker with, was said to be more friendly for the user. Allowing other browsers to insert themselves would be “messy” and lead to user confusion.

Regulators saw things differently. In order to resolve antitrust complaints, Microsoft eventually agreed to open up their Windows platform and allow internet browsers from other companies equal access for integration into their platform. So, Netscape and Opera, and eventually Firefox and Chrome, could install themselves to be the “default” browser for a user, and respond, say, to hyperlink clicks in a Word document.

This move encouraged much progress in the development of web browsers over the ensuing years, competition that Microsoft ultimately lost. But the users all won, by having more choice.

A Open Approach to Social Media Filtering

The debate seems to be focused on what Facebook ought to do, how strict Facebook ought to be with fact-checking, etc. But ask the wrong question and you’ll never get the right answer. Instead, we ought to be asking ourselves whether or not we ought to be limited to just Facebook’s filtering algorithm.

The fundamental problem here with Facebook and their censorship is the acceptable of artificial scarcity in the provision of filtering (censoring) services for social media streams, caused by the lack of an open interface.

Just as Microsoft was made to open up their browser integrations, it is worth considering the benefits of having Facebook’s monopoly on “fact checking” and similar content filtering, so much of it clearly politically charged, tempered by open competition.

Imagine a user interface by which any user could select and subscribe to one or more web services, run by 3rd parties, that would filter his social media stream, and promote, demote, hide, or annotate posts per the judgement of those services.

This could be done, for example, by associating a URI with each post and sending a list of these to the external web service, which would, consulting its own database and/or algorithms, return a list of actions per each URI: promote, demote, hide, annotate, etc., actions which Facebook would then comply with, for that user and that user only.

Web services could be run by non-profits concerned with hate groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, with political groups, even political parties, with churches, with schools, etc. Some would be liberal, some conservative, some associated with governments, some from newspapers, some from private associations. It would be open to any and all.

A user could select more than one filtering service and arrange them in a priority order. Since the interface would open, a service could aggregate other services. So, just as some would specialize in filtering, others might specialize in identifying unique and useful groups doing filtering.

Some services might charge for their use. Others might pay users for being used.

Some filtering might be crowd-sourced, hooked into a browser plugin that allows users to “report” objectionable material to one or more filtering services.

None of the services would be obligatory.

And, of course, Facebook would not be locked-out of providing its own filtering services. But it would be just one of many, and could easily be disabled by a user if he disagreed with Facebook’s judgement.

In Closing

An absolute technological monopoly on filtering content in the world’s largest social network must not become a politically-exploitable monopoly on free speech. To allow that is to invite absolutism. The technological means of getting around this, by an open interface for user-pluggable filtering services, is in our hands. We’ve done stuff like this before. It is not all that hard. And aside from its healthy, pro-choice, pro-competition, pro-consumer aspects, I suspect Facebook itself would welcome relief from perpetually being in the hot seat with respect to content filtering. This is a good opportunity for them to wash their hands of it, and end their unasked for and undeserved roll as global censor of social media, and return to being a common carrier, freed from responsibility and liability for censoring content.

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Filed Under: Cyber Freedom, Facebook

Seventh Planet from the Sun

2018/11/06 By Rob Leave a Comment

See below, a page from a high school textbook in use in New England in 1849, Elijah Burritt’s The Geography of the Heavens.  Ever hear of this planet?

The name for the seventh planet was up in the air (no pun intended) for years after its discovery in 1781. The British were calling it “Georgium Sidus” (George’s Star), after King George III. (Flattery will get you everywhere.  When Gallileo discovered the moons of Jupiter in 1610, he called them “Cosmica Sidera” (Cosimo’s Stars) after his patron, the Grand Duke de’Medici.

The Americans, of course, were not huge fans of King George III.  So they named the planet after its discoverer, William Herschel.

Still others called for it to be called “Neptune.” But, in the end (again, no pun intended) the scientific community adopted the name “Uranus,” much to the distress of every 7th grade science teacher.

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Filed Under: Astronomy, History, Humor

Downsized

2018/06/27 By Rob 4 Comments

As of today, June 27th, I am no longer working for IBM.  Last quarter’s widely-reported “resource actions” (lay-offs) hit my group and this time my number came up.

It was a good run, 27 years with one company, something that is not so common today.

Fresh out of Harvard I started working at Lotus Development Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, initially doing technical support, including for the Lotus 1‑2-3 C-language developer toolkit.  From there I worked in support’s application development team, developing and maintaining our internal information retrieval system, a hodgepodge of a DOS user-interface, a search engine (using a Bayesian inference network) and a fax-on-demand system, all over NetBIOS.

From support I transitioned over to development, to the SmartSuite team, where I first focused on Freelance Graphics, which was transitioning from C to C++, Windows and OS/2, then on a set of Windows ActiveX controls called eSuite DevPack, some Java components and attempts at an office suite running on a Java-based “thin client” or network computer (eSuite Workplace.)  It was a time when the thinking, at least in my little part of the world, was that the traditional desktop applications were dead, and all future work would be done in Java running on your desktop web browser. From this came the browser wars.

Then, in 1995, IBM came a knocking and bought Lotus.  Our focus, naturally, shifted from desktop to server-based computing, from Java applets to Java servlets.  I worked on various projects, from the K-Station Portal (based initially on Domino) to the Apache Xalan XSLT engine to XForms to WebSphere Portal.  I developed a framework for document conversions within WebSphere Portal that we called Document Conversion Services (DCS).

Then, one day, I got an odd call, out of the blue, a very senior person asking whether I was familiar with the file formats from SmartSuite and Microsoft Office.  Evidently, no one else in the company would admit to having that arcane knowledge.  So, I was drafted onto a “special project,” with a few other talented engineers, a real fun group working on various stealthy tasks, the details of which I am still not at liberty to discuss.

Somewhat overlapping the above, I worked on the things that readers of this blog will be more familiar with, the development of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard at OASIS and ISO, and the arguments against ISO ratification of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) file format.  This then overlapped, in part, with my work to establish the OpenOffice project at Apache, based on Oracle’s contribution, to get IBM Symphony contributed as well, and to bring those two efforts together.

Those years were among the most memorable of my career.  I was able to work with a lot of talented and enthusiastic people, within IBM, of course, but also at other companies, with non-profits, with academia and government.  I was able travel and see parts of the world I might never have otherwise seen, speak to a lot of audiences about the importance of open standards.  I even testified to a few legislative committees.  My business travels took me to Brussels, Berlin, Budapest, Barcelona, Granada, London, Paris, Lyon, Rome, Orvietto, Geneva, Amsterdam, the Hague, Beijing, Seoul and Johannesburg.  It was a lot of hard work, but it was meaningful. Open standards and open source matter.  I have many fond memories of those years.

Eventually, however, corporate interest in document editors, document standards, “social documents” and similar initiatives fizzled, and I no longer had support for remaining involved in ODF and OpenOffice.  I needed to move on, to find a new gig.

I looked internally within IBM for something that would combine my hard technical skills and my soft skills, including working closely with attorneys, an ability to “meet them half way” when discussing complicated legal/technical topics.  Since I’ve been an active inventor throughout my IBM career, with 54 patents to my name, and a good head for reading and analyzing patents, I spent a few years working as a patent engineer, helping to monetize IBM’s vast patent portfolio, developing technical evidence for infringement, identifying possibilities for patent licencing and assignment, etc.

That’s where things stood as of today, when I handed in my badge and laptop.

As for what is next, I honestly cannot yet say what “Rob 2.0” will be.  I plan on taking some time to mull things over and explore my options.

One thing I do plan to do, relatively soon, is start a new blog, a fresh start, on a new path at this domain, preserving this older blog at its current (/blog) URL.

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Filed Under: IBM

A Meditation upon Things

2015/11/30 By Rob 2 Comments

A Meditation upon Things in which I will briefly speak of the Icelandic Parliament, “creature features” of the 1960’s, Cicero, Duke Ellington, Shakespeare and excessive pedantry.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a short piece by James R. Hagerty that raised my ire:  “Use More Expressive Words!” Teachers Bark, Beseech, Implore.   The article describes teachers who have banned certain words from student assignments, like “go,” “said” and “good” because they are considered insufficiently expressive.   This attitude is not new, of course.   It certainly existed when I was a young student.  I suspect it was first promoted by Peter Mark Roget’s publisher, to spur sales.

Among the condemned is the word “thing.”    I’d like to make a plea, if one can be entertained at this late date, for full pardon, and show that “thing,” like all words (even big words) can be used in insipid ways by mediocre authors, it is also capable of great delicacy, truly a word to be cherished, not discarded.

Let’s start with a simple, familiar example, the legendary song, “It don’t mean a thing (if it ain’t got that swing)” with music by Duke Ellington, words by Irving Mills.   How can one write this without using “thing” or “anything”?  We could try, “Your music will not have popular or critical acclaim if it lacks rhythmic syncopation in the current vernacular,” but this is hardly an improvement.

Of course, we don’t need to stray from the King’s English to have a fling with a thing.   The Bard himself used this forbidden word to good effect, in Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 1, where Marcellus berates the hoi polloi for turning out for Caesar’s triumph: “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”

It is worth mentioning, in passing, that Caesar himself would have been familiar with “thing” in its Latin form, “res”.   In Latin the term has a dual meaning, “thing” but also “affair” or “deed.”   So his adopted nephew, Octavian would later have inscribed in bronze his “Res Gestae Divi Augusti” (Things Accomplished of the Divine Augustus).   One of Caesar’s enemies, Marcus Cicero, wrote a book called De Re Publica or “of the public thing”, maybe better translated as “concerning public affairs” or, in the word as it has come down to us, “On the Republic.”

Some of that flavor lingers on in English today.  You might say you cannot accept an invitation because, “I have a thing next week.”  The British English (forgive the redundancy) “husting” (what Americans might call a “stump speech”) was literally the “house thing” or a small deliberative assembly.  In modern Icelandic (forgive the oxymoron) they have the Althing or “all thing”, their legislative general assembly.

“A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true,” as Herman Melville said.   Well before Melville, and well after, things that go bump in the night have been called…well…things.

Consider Hamlet, Act I, Scene 1: “What, ha’s this thing appear’d againe to night?”   And then consider all the horrible horror movies that haunted movie screens (and UHF television channels) in decades long past, such as:

  • The Thing from Another World (1951)
  • The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958)
  • Godzilla versus the Thing (1964)
  • Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1966)
  • The Thing with Two Heads (1972)

Thus the case for thing.  Perhaps you care to suggest some other examples that illustrate the versatility and vigor of “thing”?

There are other words that the pedants despise that I contrariwise cherish.  Perhaps, next time I will give a few thoughts on another word that has “the right stuff.”

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Filed Under: Language

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