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As of now, the site at http://www.scribble.clara.net will enter into a state of suspended animation.

I won't be posting here in the near future. But all current links will be kept in a pristine condition. One day, I may wake this space up and do something new with it. . .

Meanwhile, click on over and catch all the fun of the unfair at the new bigger, brighter, bolder iMakeContent.

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11:21 PM | permalink 

Due to technical problems (stylesheets and browsers mainly) the site is taking longer to tweak than I thought. It should be up and running as usual by the weekend. . .

10:27 PM | permalink 

A tweaked iMakeContent will be relaunching in the next couple of days.

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iMakeContent is on holiday until the first week of January 2003.

Capitalism for beginners: Educational tech toys are high on parents' to buy lists this Christmas, according to Wired's Leander Kahney.

Testing this season's top toys, her two year old particularly liked the Pretend and Learn Shopping Cart:

'Well-made and sturdy, the supermarket trolley comes with a variety of plastic food items -- bananas, packets of cereal -- that can be scanned with a handheld scanner attached to the cart. Pass an item in front of the scanner, and the cart speaks its name and the number of items. Scan the item again, and the cart speaks its color, the food group and its nutritional benefit.

'Aimed at preschoolers, the cart is billed as teaching numbers, counting, quantities and simple food facts. . .

'Lyle preferred the exploratory mode and its free-form play. The game mode, when asked to find certain items, was not altogether successful. Lyle had no trouble finding the first item asked for but lost interest before finding the second one, preferring to scan items at random.' [Wired News].  

11:38 PM | permalink 

Zoology of dreams: 'Floating islands are invariably Krakens.' Sound advice in this full-text version of Jorge Luis Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings.

6:33 PM | permalink 

A splice of mice: Mickey isn't the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. [Animation World Network].

Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse.

Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard's scientists invented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its Supreme Court says the university doesn't deserve a patent - at least not until the politicians have had a chance to think the ethics of biotech over. [National Post].

As with Mickey, business concerns slam into public concerns here.

It doesn't make much business sense for patented genes to be freely accessible. After all, you don't want your rivals rummaging through your research work.

This isn't just a standard big business line. As biotech develops, smaller firms, entrepreneurial boffins often, universities even, are entering the market as niche developers. Like artists, writers, coders and other intellectual property creators, they want to safeguard their work so they can be properly rewarded.

Fine, but when it comes to biotech, sole ownership of this kind of information isn't in the public interest. Charging for access is likely to discourage research. Ideas develop most rapidly, most fruitfully through free exchanges of information. And it goes against common sense, moral sense, for private groups to have monopolies over such fundamental knowledge.

Think eugenics here. Think perfect blue-eyed, blond-haired babies. Think the Boys from Brazil.

Scientists as scientists tend to agree that science should be open to all, should be open source. According to Michael Morgan, formerly executive director of research at the Wellcome Trust, research and competition were enhanced when the results of the Human Genome Project were immediately made public - for free - over the Internet. [Globe and Mail].

Business argues, however, that open source can sit alongside proprietary code. An academic institution, like Harvard, can apply its expertise to become a business and generate wealth for the good of its staff and students, for the greater good.

Perhaps. But GM mice, unlike Mickey or Windows XP, scamper through the real world. Clicking through standard intellectual property arguments when faced with invention at such a fundamental level, at a time when the news is one long brave new nightmare, isn't enough.

Corporations are exercising property rights over their biotech creations. How morally right is this? To enclose a creature's genetic code? To turn such fundamental information, the stuff of life, into something that can be bought and sold?

Like much else in life, as the public debate over patenting life splutters on in parliaments and in the media, the business of business happens quietly in the background. The corporations are shaping the biotech agenda. In universities even.

Canada's politicians may ponder long and hard. They won't be able to ignore the pressure from corporate lobbyists. Canada has to play the same free trade rules as the rest of the world. Patent law there, as everywhere else, will be reinvented for the 21st Century.

Meanwhile, challenging the idea of minting money out of minting life is left to the scientists. The Canadian decision came the day after the publication of the draft complete mouse genome. Scientists from 27 institutions in six countries took part in the £87m Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium. [Independent].

The consortium is in the public sector. All its data is in the public domain.

Real or cartoon, mice or men, code of all sorts will cheer loudly.

10:09 PM | permalink 

[Flash with sound] Tune in: America is having some technical difficulties. . .

12:11 PM | permalink 

Ho ho hum: According to a survey published last week, nearly 40% of German children have no idea why Christmas is celebrated.

Reasons given by the children, aged between six and 12, included: 'because it's winter', 'so that the shops can sell more stuff' and 'because that's when Santa Claus died'.

Some 25%, and over a third of those aged between 10 and 12, found it 'utterly tedious that months before Christmas it looks like it's Christmas already.'  [n-tv.de]; [via The Aardvark Speaks].

4:20 PM | permalink 

No joke: Lawyers acting on behalf of Dow Chemicals have shut down the Dow Toxic spoof site set up to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal gas accident.

Verio, the site's ISP, received a note from Dow's lawyers citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Verio pulled the plug late Wednesday evening.

The Yes Men, the politico pranksters behind the site, say they wish Dow would put as much energy into cleaning up the mess in Bhopal as it's spent on closing down their site.

'It's really funny, but also really awful how Dow. . . and Verio can just put sooooo much energy and creativity into making sure this little image problem gets minimized, whereas they can't possibly be bothered to do something about the basic problem they're faced with: DEAD PEOPLE. SICK PEOPLE. TOXIC MESS.' [Yes Men].

The Dow Toxic site is still being mirrored at:
bhopal.doesntexist.com
dow.is.dreaming.org
dow-chemical.va.com.au

It's not only Dow that doesn't get the joke. The Yes Men's spoof sites specialise in stretching free trade logic until it reaches breaking point. But, mistaken for the real WTO, they regularly get invitations to give speeches at business conferences.

Even when they turn up and deliver their extreme trade-uber-alles message, the Yes Men don't always get rumbled.

The US civil war was a bad idea because the market would eventually have cleaned up slavery; Gandhi's ideal of village self-sufficiency was an inefficient protectionist measure; the Italian siesta is an unfair barrier to trade; Hitler's economic model had a lot going for it. . .

Mike Yes Man explains: 'The idea is that at some stage among your audience there’ll be some moment of realisation.

'Trouble is, there isn’t always. That’s what we’re realising – how much crap people will take if it comes from a person in a suit representing something official like the WTO.' [Ecologist].

10:10 AM | permalink 

Soft touch: The gap between business rhetoric and reality is causing problems at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

The 'left-leaning' think tank's latest report, based on a survey of 500 UK company directors, finds that while there's plenty of business chatter about the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR), most companies fail to implement effective social or environmental policies.

This hasn't gone down too well at the Institute of Directors (IoD) which commissioned the report.

The IoD disagrees with the IPPR's interpretation of the results so much that it's published its own summary. Unlike the IPPR, it regards the results as another opportunity for yet another CSR good news story.

Ella Joseph, who wrote the IPPR report, told Newsnight's Stephanie Flanders yesterday:

'I was really surprised by the IoD's response. We'd be the first to praise, promote, endorse positive company behaviour and we're absolutely delighted by some of the findings around workforce policy.

'However we do think that where companies say they have a policy but don't actually evaluate whether that policy is effective, we need to change that situation.' [BBC Newsnight].

It sounds as though the IPPR is tired of greenwash: corporate PR designed to pre-empt any broad critique of business practice.

Pushing for 'soft' regulation, it wants CSR company audits standardised and published widely to all interested parties - workers, consumers, the community and shareholders. [Observer].

Meanwhile, the government sticks to the voluntary approach. Business - Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, Martha Stewart, Enron - gets to decide its own code of conduct.

2:09 PM | permalink 

Moving pictures: Without copyright term extensions, old films wouldn't get distributed, argues the entertainment industry. 'Indiscriminate exploitation' by public domain copyists would reduce the flow of cash to Big Media and hence the motivation Big Media needs to 'publish' films. [CS Monitor].

Intellectual property lawyers Lawrence Lessig and Jason Schultz say that's so much baloney. Digging around the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Schultz finds that out of the 37,000 or so movies released between 1927 and 1946, only 2,480, 6.8%, are commercially available. [Lessig Blog]. 

So, why not place the whole lot in the public domain and see what happens?

5:11 PM | permalink 

Remembering Bhopal: Corporate responsibility means never having to do much more than hire a PR company and say: sorry, we won't do that again; we've changed, we really have; we care.

Unfair?

Hajra Bi remembers waking up just after midnight on 3 December 1984. A strange smell was making it difficult to breath. She ran outside with her family:

'People were running blindly. Many were falling down. By then my eyes had become so swollen that I could hardly open them. I had my dupatta covering my eyes.

'I was carrying four year old Nazma and my husband was carrying Shareef who was six and Iqbal who was two years old. I had gone a little distance when Nazma started making gurgling and choking sounds. I pried my eye lids open and saw there was froth coming out of her mouth.'

Shareef died after three months. Yosouf, born six months after the leak, died when he was a year old. Shahbano, born later, also died.

Hajra Bi received Rs 15,000, just under £200, in compensation from Union Carbide, the corporation responsible for the world's worst industrial accident. [Bhopal.org].

Yesterday, protestors dumped toxic waste at the headquarters of Dow Chemical in Bombay to mark the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak.

Women from Bhopal delivered brooms to Dow with the message: 'Dow, clean up your mess'.

Some 20,000 people have died since the leak of 40 tonnes of deadly gases at the pesticide factory in 1984.

At least one person a day still dies from diseases related to the leak. [Greenpeace].

Dow Chemical, which merged with Union Carbide in 2001, denies responsibility for cleaning up the site or for paying out any compensation.

In 1989, the Indian government settled out of court with Union Carbide for $470m. It seems unwilling to press the Bhopal victims' case, possibly for fear of putting off potential US investors.

What if a gas leak had occurred in New York or London?

Anne Karpf pointed out last year that the 25,000 families of those bereaved by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre received on average $25,000 each.

This contrasts with the average $1,300 compensation for each of the 14,824 Indians killed immediately in Bhopal. For the hundreds of thousands of people disabled by the leak, the average payout has been $580. [Guardian].

For more about the Bhopal campaign for justice, see Bhopal.net.

For more insight into the ways in which corporations like Dow play merry with the truth, see the pranksters (quickly, before they attract the attention of Dow's lawyers) at Dow Toxic:

'We don't want people to think "chemicals" when they hear "Dow" -- we want them to hear "Living. Improved Daily." We don't want them to think of a corporation striving to maximize profits, we want them to think of a good neighbor. . .

'. . . unless we're frequently and visibly expressing a deep concern about Sustainable Development, we're missing opportunities to position Dow as the caring, concerned global citizen our customers must believe us to be. . .

'Setting corporate targets and judging ourselves against them is an important part of our strategy to ensure that we remain free of the fetters of over-regulation by government.' [Dow-Chemicals].

Looking for corporate responsibility, corporate honesty even?

Joking aside, the truth is now so much PR.

10:13 PM | permalink 

Copy this: It's the beginning of the end of the big media monopoly, argues Robert X Cringely. The big media corporations may have succeeded in making copying illegal. But even Microsoft is starting to acknowledge that there's been a total failure in stopping the growth of a culture of copying.

Big media's next step will be to employ hacking techniques against peer-to-peer file sharing systems. Then, as consumer PR hits rock bottom, the corporates will introduce their own pretty peer-to-peer systems.

With corporate peer-to-peer - two incompatible ideas - likely to fail, big media will increasingly concentrate on media projects, like blockbuster films, requiring large amounts of cash. Text and music will come from individual writers and artists operating outside the old media loop.

If the corporates don't accommodate this new media, they may find their game is over. [Cringely's Pulpit].

5:34 PM | permalink 

Bye Buy: And they're off. In the US, the day after Thanksgiving traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. This year, to avoid a double-dip recession, consumers have been told to spend, spend, spend. It's nothing less than their patriotic duty.

Virtually you: A thinking sim's chance to live life or death again.

12:10 PM | permalink 

American idol: The new US foreign aid fund, the Millennium Challenge Account, is, in what passes for reality, just the latest in the rash of 'reality talent' shows spreading across the mainstream media.

The NY Times says Millennium Challenge, previewed in detail for the first time on Monday, is part of an effort by the US government to 'get the rest of the world to follow Mr. Bush's own philosophy'. For 'philosophy', of course, read the automated TV profiling provided by the President's Tivo set and whatever dad's old buddies dream up next. . .

Not quite Big Brother - that's left to the new Department of Homeland Security, Millennium Challenge will follow democratic wannabes around as they try to win a portion of the $5 billion promised to the fund over the next three years.

With average per capita incomes below $1,445, the half-dozen or so countries will be given expert training in every aspect of the Washington economic consensus, from predictable and sound fiscal policy to deregulation and a willingness to let in US goods and services.

Watched around the clock by US officials, the competing countries run the risk of being voted out of the international community if they fail to score on a range of performance tests. Contestants on earlier versions of the game have ended up in the axis of evil - which runs on Fox.

The new series comes at a time when the US government faces accusations that it's putting the chase for ratings ahead of its public service commitments.

But series producers argue that the contest is just about grooming the next generation of free market talent.

One of the President's senior advisers told the NY Times: 'No one is requiring countries to apply for this money. It's voluntary.' He added: 'If they want it, they have to show they play by the rules of the game.' [NY Times].

12:47 PM | permalink 

Belushi, Hegel and you: It's sharing ideas that leads to innovation. The Romantic idea of the artist as a lonely genius? It's more like Newton and Oasis and the rest of us jostling for position on the shoulders of giants.

According to Malcolm 'Tipping Point' Gladwell, innovation happens when people egg each other on. Group social interaction results in radical ideas.
He looks at how Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, how Darwin, Watt and Priestley, how TV comedians Saturday Night Live got together and got down - in John Belushi's case to coke snorting and everybody's wife - to produce, in the end, pure genius.

Of course, innovation needs heads-down time too. The trick is to 'combine the right kind of insularity with the right kind of homogeneity' and create an environment that's safe and yet stimulating. [New Yorker].

Glib? Sure, everybody nowadays loves innovation, creativity and thinking out of the rectangular container. Just needs a little singing from the same hymnbook. Buzzword bingo!

But Gladwell has a point. Creativity requires collaboration. It also requires the ability to rework ideas taken from a common stock.

What should send us scurrying to the law books at this point, Gladwell's tipping or even, judging by the number of newspaper stories around about copyright issues, tipped point, is that not everyone thinks the creative process should happen freely - not in the sense of 'free beer' and not, sometimes, in the sense of 'free speech'.

Jonathan Zittrain, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, says we're at the start of a culture war.

It sounds dramatic, but he's right. As a result of the ease with which files can be shared across the internet, the informal common sense approach to sharing ideas, to innovating, is crashing against the corporate belief in the sanctity of copyright.

Business is ready to accept innovation, is ready to let us make content, is ready to give us access to walled gardens where collaboration can happen - but only at a price, if it can be costed, worked into a business plan.

Zittrain says we need a compromise between the profit motive and the urge to create. Given the current political climate, that's unlikely unless there's a general recognition of what we stand to lose. Zittrain ends: 'freedom of trade must not trump freedom of mind'. [Boston Globe].

10:53 PM | permalink 

Rip, burn and desist: Develop an existing idea so that it becomes something new and you'll be applauded for your creativity and genius. Unless you're hit with a cease-and-desist letter first.

The images and sounds in Illegal Art, currently at New York's 313 Gallery, broke copyright law and so media corporations and their lawyers dragged the artists responsible to the courtroom.

Trusting Linux: Despite throwing cash around during his tour of India last week, Bill Gates failed to persuade at least one Indian to fall for Windows.

Digvijay Singh, chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, told Gates that he's decided to plump for Linux, Microsoft's open source rival, when considering software for government projects.

'For us it is not a question of Microsoft versus Linux. It is just a matter of choosing between a free software and a monopoly. We feel that when we are putting public information out in the open, then it should not be through a proprietary software.' [India Times].

The developing world, when given the choice, prefers Linux.

Computer industry reports predict Linux use will spread to two-thirds of Chinese software developers over the next year. [Linux Devices].

Linux will be run in some 33 percent of computers in Latin America. [Forbes].

In India, Linux powers the new $268 Simputer designed to bring cheap computing to tribal villages. [Register].

Just like everybody else, countries on a tight budget find that Microsoft software is expensive, bloated and riddled with bugs and security holes.

Like everybody else, they find themselves on a perpetual upgrade cycle, splashing out every few years on computers big enough, fast enough to deal with the spec demanded by the latest version of Windows.

Like everybody else, illegally copying software is becoming less of an option as corporations push through tough anti-piracy laws.

Linux's overriding advantage for sovereign states, however, may be its inherent trustworthiness. Governments can check its code and make sure it doesn’t contain any back doors, any holes left for foreign intelligence services to peer through.

7:28 PM | permalink 

Courting trouble: Labour MP Tony McWalter had the nerve to ask the PM yesterday what weight he gives to 'independence of mind' when considering applicants for government appointments. The House of Commons fell about laughing. Last year, McWalter asked after Blair's political philosophy. To similar gales of laughter.

Simon Hoggart describes what happens to anyone foolish enough to demonstrate 'independence of mind' around Blair:

'They make speeches in the Lords, but no one pays any heed. Quangos are set up, and their names are not put forward. Important meetings are held on topics in which they are expert, but they are never included.

'At Christmas there will be glittering parties at which the illuminati of New Labour drink champagne and bask in each other's admiration, but those of independent mind will be outside, their noses pressed to the glass as they make their lonely way to All Bar One.' [Guardian].

6:25 PM | permalink 

Shellfish waste: Each Christmas, Norway sends a tree to London as a sign of its gratitude for British help during the Second World War. But for how much longer? Norwegian gratitude may about to be eclipsed by exasperation.

A Norwegian businessman chained himself to a bridge by Sellafield nuclear plant yesterday. Petter Stordalen, chief executive of Choice Hotels Scandinavia, Norway's largest hotel chain, said he had been forced to take action because Tony Blair wasn't listening to fears about the nuclear plant. [Guardian].

Like the Irish, the Norwegians are angry at what they regard as the UK government's careless attitude towards Sellafield's nuclear waste emissions. Marine currents carry technicium 99 from Sellafield to Norwegian waters where it contaminates seaweed and shellfish.

Last Christmas, Norwegian environmental activists in Santa Clause outfits climbed the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square as a protest against Sellafield. [Bellona].

Oil stains: A new online book lifts the (petrol) lid on Shell. Jack Doyle, an investigative researcher who's worked for Friends of the Earth, argues in Riding the Dragon that while Shell may brand itself as socially responsible, its behaviour marks it out as one of the biggest environmental violators on the planet.

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