When it comes to ebooks, I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place.
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The Trouble With EBooks
Posted on July 25, 2011
Google’s Transparency Report
Posted on September 23, 2010
Google, this week, released what it calls “Transparency Report”, a set of web pages that provide some insight into the requests that it receives from various governments. The requests are categorized into two types: requests for information about users called data requests and requests for removal of content from Google’s sites or its search called removal requests.
Internet Censorship Report (image courtesy of Antonio Lupetti)
Why should we care ? Google says:
“Transparency is a core value at Google. As a company we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that we maximize transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services. We believe that more information means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.”
Many people consider this data as providing a new insight into government censorship of the Internet.
Countries that massively censor the Internet such as Iran, China or Egypt are not listed in this report. Their level of censorship is well known via reports published by Reporters with Borders and OpenNet Initiative. OpenNet for example provides maps which show the level of censorship based on the subject: political (government dissidence), social (sexual, gambling, socially offensive etc.), conflict (wars, border disputes etc.) and internet tools (websites that provide services such as email, youtube, VoIP etc.). The US and India fare differently in different subjects. For example, India shows up as indulging in selective censorship of Internet tools and conflict, the US shows up as selectively censoring social content (child pornography, intellectual property etc.). Opennet’s main page also includes maps of censorship (a country is highlighted if it ever censored the media and is not reflective of the current state) of various social media sites such as Flickr and Facebook. For example, the report shows that Flickr is blocked by one ISP in Mexico.
It would not be a overstatement to say that Google is our window to the Internet (though Facebook is mounting a challenging attack on this status). If we can’t find a page, we can’t get to it without trying really hard. So, in countries such as the US, which do not indulge in widescale censorship of the Internet, what kind of surveillance or interference does the government indulge in and to what extent ? No information was available to answer such questions.
Consider the following two charts via Google’s new report which show the data and removal requests received from the governments of the US and India.
Google Transparency Report for the US, Jan-Jun 2010
Google Transparency Report for India, Jan-Jun 2010
It not only lists the removal requests, it also lists the sites from which the removal was requested, whether the request was court-ordered or not and the percentage of such requests Google complied with.
The list shows that the US leads the list of requesters with 4287 followed by Brazil with 2435. They drill down further into the nature of requests. For example, in the last half of 2009, half of Brazil’s requests for removal of content from Orkut involved defamation and impersonation. Germany also figures high on the list, primarily due to requests to take down pro-Nazi content, extreme pornography or violence.
Google says:
“At a time when increasing numbers of governments are trying to regulate the free flow of information on the Internet, we hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests to censor information or obtain user data around the globe – and we welcome external debates about these issues that we grapple with internally on a daily basis.”
The statistics are not fully accurate, Google says. For example, they do not include information about the sites Google itself censors, mostly related to child pornography. They don’t cover government-mandated service or content blockage, such as those mandated by China. The statistics also only cover what Google considers requests due to criminal investigations. What about requests for removal due to terrorist or national security considerations ? In an increasingly strife-ridden world, those are among the primary reasons used by the government to restrict the free flow of information.
I thought it interesting that Google chose not to put out a similar map for requests by non-governmental agencies. In the US, for example, the report does not show the amount of content requested to be removed due to copyright violations. Free flow of information is not restricted only by governments as is clear from the kinds of self-censorship that exist in the traditional media in the US (for example, post Vietnam war, no videos or images of attacks on US soldiers or civilians are shown, the news channels do not show coffins of US soldiers disembarking from a plane).
All in all, a useful step forward.
iPhone and Maya
Posted on June 5, 2010
The laugh’s on me, I suppose. I had hoped that with the portability of the iPhone, I’d be writing more and more spontaneously. Forget women, my frequent, witty musings would garner a huge readership. Alas! Courting creativity, I ended up courting RSI. One entry and my right arm is in pain, from the shoulder to the elbow and my pointer finger. And Shanthala is mad at my love affair with this gadget. After all the superior airs and snickering at people with heads perpetually bowed at the altar of little bright screens, you’ve turned into one of them, she said. And the pain in my arm is punishment for all that snickering, I suppose.
But one thing she can’t argue about. The phone is a really effective, compact camera. With it, I’ve been able to capture Maya in so many different settings that I had not been able to before. The phone is always with me, making photography a snap decision, no planning required.
So, for what will probably be my last posting from the iPhone, here is a gallery of pictures of Maya in different settings.
Maya In The Park
Maya loves to climb. Even as young as 20 months, she was attempting structures that parents of much older kids shied away from. And with time she’s only gotten more proficient, attempting stunts such as kissing Shanthala through the bars as she climbs up.
Up, Up, Up
Up Another Difficult Structure
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do! – The Swing, Robert Louis Stevenson
Maya couldn’t agree with Stevenson more. Her second favorite activity in the park is to swing. She’s just past two and she already swings by herself, I only have to seat her.
Maya also loves seesaws of all kinds, going up and down with kids older than her. She pumps her legs powerfully, surprising us with how much movement she can get out of the thing, even with older kids on the other side.
Standup SeeSaw
Maya Elsewhere
Besides the park, I’ve been able to capture Maya in other places such as twirling to music at the farmers’ market or listening intently to a concert by a popular local band at a cafe.
- Twirling to Music At The Farmers’ Market
Listening to Houston Jones
And the piece d’resistance is this picture of Maya attempting to skateboard.
Skateboarding
And so I must rest my weary arm, with fewer words than before and the hope that these pictures spoke far more eloquently than I could.
New Life
Posted on September 24, 2009
No, not a new life for me, but for my online presence. For the past few months I’ve been meaning to switch from my blogger site to a self-hosted WordPress blog. Why, you ask. Well, I was not happy to have the blog and pictures be present at two different locations. It made for a different look, there was no simple way to link from the blog to the pictures and back, I loved the look and choices afforded by WordPress, WordPress is free software and I love and support free software, as I posted more and more videos, I’d run into the space constraints imposed by blogger. The list goes on and on.
But I was in a bind. I have loyal readers and I didn’t want them to have to face any hiccups because of the move. I didn’t want half my articles in one place and the other half elsewhere. I also have a decent presence with many of my articles showing up on the first two pages or so of Google’s search for many of the topics that I’ve written about. I would be silly to lose that.
Then, I ran into this brilliant article on a site called Digital Inspiration, courtesy of a wonderful blog, Lifehacker. This article explained in simple steps how I could move my blog from blogger to a self-hosted WordPress version without incurring any of the problems that I worried about. The whole thing was so simply explained that I was done moving my blog to WordPress with all the old articles intact in about 15 minutes. I checked to see if by visiting the old blog site, I’d automatically be redirected to the new site and I was. I found a theme that blended well with the gallery theme and installed that too. Happy, I tore myself away from the computer and went about the rest of my day.
That night, as I was putting Maya to sleep, I managed to put myself to sleep too. When that happens, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and stay up for a couple of hours before going back to bed. I plonked in front of the computer and proceeded to test if the search results would also automatically be directed to my new site. Horror of horrors, it did not. I ran into the dreaded “Page not found” error. I was wide awake now, at 2 am, in a mild state of panic. I went back and read the article again. I noticed that there was a particular phrase that the author had used which I had not paid attention to.
Most people using WordPress change the format of what is called a permalink. The default format is widely considered to be ugly and most replace it with a well-regarded format. I had not done that. The author assumed that either the reader knew how to do it or had already done it. Nowhere in his thorough article did he mention this point. Figuring out how to fix that took me a little while. When that was done, the sun was shining again at 3 am.
This only goes to show that when an article is as thorough and detailed as the Digital Inspiration article, it is important to list just about everything. One small assumption and idiots like me will slip through the cracks.
Anyways, all’s well now. If you visit the site somewhat regularly, please take a moment to let me know if you like the new look and feel.
Linux turns Seventeen
Posted on October 9, 2008
October 5th marked the seventeenth year since GNU/Linux was first posted on the web. Long before Apple came long with its OS X operating system, Linux had begun to challenge the monopoly of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
If it had not been for the work of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and thousands of other software programmers volunteering their time and energy to the building of a powerful set of freely available software programs, the world as we know it today would not exist. Today, a free software product such as the popular Firefox web browser is more powerful than its counterpart produced by the most powerful software company in the world, Microsoft. Take a second to reflect this. It is probably unprecedented in history that loosely coordinated work, done by hundreds and thousands of volunteers, for no reason save their love for it, and with no monetary incentive, rivals, nay surpasses in some occasions, work produced by hundreds of highly coordinated, very well paid software engineers working for large, for-profit corporations. Software such as the web server Apache have a commanding lead over their commercial equivalents. Apple’s famed and admired OS X operating system is built on a solid foundation of free software programs, including the base operating system.
Started by the visionary Richard Stallman, free software was originally defined in terms of ethics and technical superiority. Consider a software program such as the popular application Microsoft Word. I must purchase a copy to use it. Once I purchase it, if there are any flaws in the program, I must either live with it or wait for Microsoft to release a fix for it, which may in some cases become available only in a subsequent release and actually cost me money to purchase the fix. I cannot loan the program for my father or a friend to use legally. Intuit, which makes the popular money management software Quicken, has designed the software such that every four years or so, you must buy a new copy to keep using the program. Stallman protests against these practices and restrictions on a user’s freedom. He advocates that every software program come with four basic freedoms: freedom to use in any way for any purpose, freedom to study and modify the software, freedom to copy the program so that you can loan it to a friend and freedom to release any modifications made back to the community so that others can benefit from the modifications. GNU/Linux is such a program. Stallman holds that it is ethically wrong for a person to withhold these four freedoms from others because each of us benefits and draws resources from the community at large.
After the success of GNU/Linux, other advocates came along who eschewed the ethical aspects of free software and insisted only on the technical superiority of the model of having a loosely coordinated set of volunteers writing software over the traditional corporate model. An influential paper called “The Cathedral And the Bazaar” defined the philosophy of these people, who banded together under the umbrella they called open source to separate themselves from the free software movement. There are frequent skirmishes between Stallman and his supporters and the open source proponents. I think Stallman is right. Everybody benefits when knowledge is freely shared. All the success in the scientific world has come about largely because of the free sharing of knowledge. The scientific method that relies on others independently verifying the results of experiments, rests on this freedom.
Unlike physical resources such as steel or wood, software is a commodity that is not diminished by sharing. If I share my copy of Firefox with you, its not that I have less of the software for myself. Stallman clarified that “free” in “free software” is “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”. There are lots of free software companies out there that are making money mostly by providing support and customer-specific customisations.
As a supporter of free software, I’ve almost exclusively used Linux on all my computers, starting way back in 1990 when Linux was still at version 0.99. I spent a few weekends at Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science, downloading the Linux source code. It occupied 20 floppy disks. Shanthala wrote her MD thesis on a Linux machine. I have also contributed code to many free software projects such as Wireshark and ntop.
How can you help ? You can start by downloading and using free software such as Firefox and OpenOffice instead of their commercial counterparts. If a website you visit requires you to use Microsoft’s products only to access the site, write to the company and complain. Advocate the usage of free software products to your family, friends, and colleagues.
So on this day, when Linux is almost old enough to chug down some beer, I give thanks to the people behind the free software movement for empowering a whole generation of people around the world.
If it had not been for the work of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and thousands of other software programmers volunteering their time and energy to the building of a powerful set of freely available software programs, the world as we know it today would not exist. Today, a free software product such as the popular Firefox web browser is more powerful than its counterpart produced by the most powerful software company in the world, Microsoft. Take a second to reflect this. It is probably unprecedented in history that loosely coordinated work, done by hundreds and thousands of volunteers, for no reason save their love for it, and with no monetary incentive, rivals, nay surpasses in some occasions, work produced by hundreds of highly coordinated, very well paid software engineers working for large, for-profit corporations. Software such as the web server Apache have a commanding lead over their commercial equivalents. Apple’s famed and admired OS X operating system is built on a solid foundation of free software programs, including the base operating system.
Started by the visionary Richard Stallman, free software was originally defined in terms of ethics and technical superiority. Consider a software program such as the popular application Microsoft Word. I must purchase a copy to use it. Once I purchase it, if there are any flaws in the program, I must either live with it or wait for Microsoft to release a fix for it, which may in some cases become available only in a subsequent release and actually cost me money to purchase the fix. I cannot loan the program for my father or a friend to use legally. Intuit, which makes the popular money management software Quicken, has designed the software such that every four years or so, you must buy a new copy to keep using the program. Stallman protests against these practices and restrictions on a user’s freedom. He advocates that every software program come with four basic freedoms: freedom to use in any way for any purpose, freedom to study and modify the software, freedom to copy the program so that you can loan it to a friend and freedom to release any modifications made back to the community so that others can benefit from the modifications. GNU/Linux is such a program. Stallman holds that it is ethically wrong for a person to withhold these four freedoms from others because each of us benefits and draws resources from the community at large.
After the success of GNU/Linux, other advocates came along who eschewed the ethical aspects of free software and insisted only on the technical superiority of the model of having a loosely coordinated set of volunteers writing software over the traditional corporate model. An influential paper called “The Cathedral And the Bazaar” defined the philosophy of these people, who banded together under the umbrella they called open source to separate themselves from the free software movement. There are frequent skirmishes between Stallman and his supporters and the open source proponents. I think Stallman is right. Everybody benefits when knowledge is freely shared. All the success in the scientific world has come about largely because of the free sharing of knowledge. The scientific method that relies on others independently verifying the results of experiments, rests on this freedom.
Unlike physical resources such as steel or wood, software is a commodity that is not diminished by sharing. If I share my copy of Firefox with you, its not that I have less of the software for myself. Stallman clarified that “free” in “free software” is “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”. There are lots of free software companies out there that are making money mostly by providing support and customer-specific customisations.
As a supporter of free software, I’ve almost exclusively used Linux on all my computers, starting way back in 1990 when Linux was still at version 0.99. I spent a few weekends at Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science, downloading the Linux source code. It occupied 20 floppy disks. Shanthala wrote her MD thesis on a Linux machine. I have also contributed code to many free software projects such as Wireshark and ntop.
How can you help ? You can start by downloading and using free software such as Firefox and OpenOffice instead of their commercial counterparts. If a website you visit requires you to use Microsoft’s products only to access the site, write to the company and complain. Advocate the usage of free software products to your family, friends, and colleagues.
So on this day, when Linux is almost old enough to chug down some beer, I give thanks to the people behind the free software movement for empowering a whole generation of people around the world.
