Well, in most of the places that I've lived
around the world, anybody could go & sit in
on a court proceeding or two to get a clear
idea of what some -real- lawyers may be like
Where can non-techie people go to get such
samples of programmers-at-work...?;-)
...when Hitler tried to make [only] Jews
wear a yellow star... the king of the land
I'm referring to got -everybody- to do that.
Here, if -everybody- (especially those who
decidely have NOT have downloaded someone's
IP to their hardisk, in a way that would
ever be actionalboe) wrote "I just downloaded X"
big, in public online places...
Think of all the bogus suits out there...
And - hey! - think of all the countersuit
potential here...;-)
The latest should really be on a web site somewhere, not in a dead-tree book IMO.
I grant, of course, that the latest isn't necessarily the best, in all cases...;-)
---
OT: The latest outrageous Australian proposal:
In Australia, if someone is to be defended
by a lawyer against a charge with national
security implications, [it is proposed that]
the LAWYER defending him/her must -first-
go through a high-level security clearance!
(I understand that this restriction applies
ONLY where the client -isn't- paying lawyers
fees, ie a pro bono client... and NOT where
the client is paying his/her own lawyer's
fees)
...maybe even generate some electricity with the mechanical energy you create - eg, charging your UPS batteries or may- be the laptop's...!
I'm surprised that this idea isn't al- ready a product (or family of them... eg, with camping models, models for Amateur, Emergency Service or CB radios as well as computers.
You know the kind I mean:
Slow, meditative peddling (while thinking or keying)
Fast, intensive peddling (while making progress - burning off excess stress)
Perhaps it's time to start a project, eg:
- OpenOfficeFurniture,
- OpenOF,
- OpenBikeDesk,
- OpenExerDesk,
- OpenExDesk,
- OpenExDe or
- OpenED...or the like.;-\
[Deformated after/. reported: "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 34.5)" A STUPID RESTRICTION! Make the box wider & tell us how many chars/line is kosher, damn it!]
I don't want to insult a person who's built & paid for a useful web-based service...
But I -do- want people to show a bit more "chutzpah" in matters like this
Anybody remember the Boston Tea Party?
It was in response to a dumb tax on tea, on the part of remote tax-collectors, & now it is gone.
More recently, Australians won a license-free "Citizens Band" - simply by -not- getting license, en masse.
(And, by all reports, Auusies, tend to be pretty compliant ex-^H^H^H colonists of the UK;-)
Now, that bit of Civil Disobedience was against government, not the threat of legal action,
so there are differences.
But, surely, we can expect better support & a cleaner result than to just "roll over & die" that this site got.
Perhaps the same kind of response as we might expect, eg when a bug is detected in some Open Source software, would be appropriate; or, why not a:
LERT - Legal Emergency Response Team
1. Volunteer-based (might need to be anonymous)
2. Archive of succesful -response- HowTo's
(a bit like Bennett's play-by-play story of how he got Toshiba to refund $$$ for his non-use of (& non-intent to use) a bundled Microsoft operating
system;
while not a response to a Cease & Desist letter, it was a response to a legal quandry)
3. If necessary, off-shore (ie where legal)mirroring of alegedly "offending" site
It might be nice if such sites were as portable & easy to implement/mirror as possible.
4. IF the site's owner plans to take down
(& not just relabel bits of) the site,
then - for God's sake! - give the com-
munity NOTICE & perhaps (in advance)
an easy way to download its content;
even an udatable snapshot is more use-
ful than a total loss of access to it
5. A team of legal experts (volunteers)
stands ready to advise the site owner
(perhaps under safe disclaimer agreements,
if applicable) on how the letter or
other inputs (from IP owner(s)) might
be interpretted & replied to.
6. Fundraisers generate some $'s for
legal defense (again, if necessary)
etc.
It just doesn't work to walk away from
the fight. Sometimes changing a web page
into one where the icon for, say PIC-SIG,
as in this case, becomes a hot-link to it
& adding a CLEAR disclaimer ("UNOFFICIAL
PCI diveice list" or whateverm nect to it)
would be enough of a response (especially
as a pre-emptive strike, at site-creation)
to enable the site's continued existence.
Is it about showing off some cool new way
to store & provide info... or a way to
provide info support to the Open Source
community.
If it's the lattter, a searchable text-file
might suffice... one that anybody can
download, upload & share later.
If it's the former, then we're shooting
ourselves in the foot & aren't helping
each other as much as we might IMO.
Perhaps it's just a matter of some of a webpage's images failing to load, eg while a movie file is slowly oozing in...
But - just in case - you should find 3 -additional- pages of script portions (the -last- one starting with hardcopy page 21), ie just below the 3 whose image showed up (for us).
Hover & click (or - from the "last" script page - hit Next, at the bottom)
Years ago, the Pennsylvania Deutsch
were similarly renamed Pa. Dutch...
Go figure!
It Harasses People with Visually Disabilities
on
Next-Gen Pop-up Ads
·
· Score: 1
It's hard enough to make a screen reader
work satisfactorily if your need one now;
just wait until the screens change (new
pop-up windows at the hover of a mouse).
I really think this comprises harass-
ment to PWD's.
- they seem to be -precluding- the existence of
a Better Business Bureau (or the like)
- even the Dep't of Consumer & Bus. Affairs
won't let you know if the company you're
having trouble with has been complained of
(with them) in past, let alone the outcome
of the complaint
FoI laws are just as bad, as this excerpt from the transcript of a recent Radio National 'Media Report' program suggests:
--- start of excerpt:
Mick O'Regan: Now to another aspect of freedom of information. A couple of weeks ago on the program, we discussed the current state of press freedom in Australia. One of my guests, the investigative journalist, Ross Coulthart from The Sunday Program on Channel Nine, sounded a warning about the state of freedom of information, known as FOI in this country.
Ross Coulthart: We have Freedom of Information Act which is meant to facilitate the media and indeed the general public getting access to information but unfortunately the Act has become a Freedom From Information Act. The idea is you pay $30, you ask for specific documents from government institutions and the idea is, they'll provide it to you. But unfortunately in this day and age it's become a way for the executive arm of government to stop people from getting information. It's got much worse, we're in crisis. I've never seen it quite as bad as it is at the moment, and indeed it's not necessarily a legal problem, it's an attitudinal problem inside government, inside bureaucracies, and until that changes, until we get rid of the spin doctors, the spin meisters inside government, nothing's going to change.
Mick O'Regan: A fairly bleak view of Freedom of Information, Ross Coulthart, speaking on The Media Report.
But not every country is in crisis over Freedom of Information. In fact in Sweden, it's an everyday resource.
Johan Lidberg from Murdoch University in Western Australia, studied the use of FOI legislation in both Sweden and Western Australia.
Johan Lidberg: The main difference that I find is that the Swedish journalists close to every day, and in some instances several times per day use Freedom of Information laws to access their information in Sweden. Whereas the Western Australian colleagues use it a few times per year. But also the survey study that I did showed that in the responses to the survey, 100% of the Swedish journos use FOI, whereas 44% of the Western Australian ones use FOI, every now and then.
Mick O'Regan: So are we talking only about political journalists, or are we talking about journalists more broadly?
Johan Lidberg: Well that's really an interesting thing, because my experience and my thought was that it was mainly political journalists in Sweden that use FOI, and that is still the bulk. But it also spills over into, for instance, sports reporting. I had one example where a sports reporter used Freedom of Information laws to access information regarding a soccer club's dealing with the Tax Department. They had drafted foreign players into their team and they hadn't fulfilled their accounting and tax obligations, so it spills over into other areas. It also spills over into business reporting for instance, so it's not only political journalism.
Mick O'Regan: Now what practical differences does that continued use of Freedom of Information mean to the content of newspapers and current affairs programs in Sweden?
Johan Lidberg: Well the last study I did was a content analysis of the two newspapers in the study. And it showed that the main sourcing in the Swedish paper was that they paraphrased documents, they referred to documents that they had accessed, whereas the main source in the Western Australian newspaper was that they paraphrased oral sources. Those are the two major differences when it comes to content. Those were quantifiable differences. There are also qualitative differences like for instance if you look at how the quality of information, and this is a bit harder, it's easier quantifying stuff than saying that this is of high quality, but one implication of the study was that the Swedish reporters start their research by using Freedom of Information, that's their starting point. The Western Australian colleagues, they will resort, as they said in interviews with me, they will use FOI usually as a last resort when they used all other journalistic means, and that's a very important difference when it comes to judging the quality of information in the article.
Mick O'Regan: Is there a problem in Australia that the law is OK but the application is faulty?
Johan Lidberg: If you look at the two laws side by side, the Australian FOI laws, because we have quite a few since we have a Federal system, and the Swedish ones, in Sweden you only need an oral request, you don't even need to put it in writing. In some instances you do, but normally you just pick up the phone, call the public servant and say, Listen, I would like this document, can you please fax it to me? And in 90% of the cases, that's the way it goes. So in Sweden the public servants, and to some extent even the politicians, act as facilitators rather than gatekeepers. In Australia you have the opposite situation. Now we have to bear in mind at all times that the first FOI law was passed in 1982 in Australia. So it hasn't been all that long. If you look at how long it takes for traditions and especially political traditions to take root, it hasn't been that long. It's more a matter of how its interpreted and in some instances how journalists view it. If journalists in some cases were a bit more persistent, that might provoke change as well.
Mick O'Regan: So there needs to be an attitudinal shift on the part of journalists to see the need to constantly try to get documents under Freedom of Information, almost like to make the system work by constantly putting it through its paces.
Johan Lidberg: That's exactly it. There are even to this date in Sweden, you know every year there are cases with government agencies that have to be what they say 'broken in' again, or broken in because they haven't been exposed to the law before, and you have the first journalist calling or rocking up, saying Listen, I would like to have these documents, and then they say No, you can't have it. And then the journalist will say, Well are you aware of the FOI laws? And it would go from there, and it might go out on appeal and then the agency's broken in. The same thing I would like to see happen in Australia. I would like to see for instance, the Australian Journalists Association being a bit more proactive. I would like to see some of the - there was one news room in my study that don't use FOI at all, saying that Well, we have our broadcast deadlines and we can't use it because it's just too cumbersome. I would like to, for instance possibly work with them in an action research project and say Give me your news conference list, I'll sit down, look at the stories and put in a few requests and see what we can get at. But it needs to be more long-term, you can't just change this in ten years or 15 years, it has to be even more long term than that.
Mick O'Regan: What about more practical barriers? For example, the cost of making an FOI application, does it cost money to seek a document in Sweden?
Johan Lidberg:No, it's free. And that's of course symbolically very, very important. You would assume that if the political will was there and if the politicians were serious about increasing the flow of information, then they would abolish the cost. So that is the problem. The biggest problem in Australia is probably the time frame, where the agency has 45 days to respond, compared to in Sweden where it's a lot less than that. Usually it should be in a matter of hours, and that's highly important. Also the fact that you've got quite a few blanket exemptions, agencies that are exempt from the law totally. Now symbolically that's important too; there are no blanket exemptions in Sweden, and that shows the basic will of making the system work.
Mick O'Regan: Now in your study you talk about the development of everyday investigative reporting. That I presume is the impact that the easy access and frequent use of FOI has meant for day to day reporting in Sweden.
Johan Lidberg: Yes. I had to come up with some sort of term of describing one of the main qualitative differences, and that is one of the main ones. If you read the regional papers in Sweden, and I did choose regional papers to get news rooms that would be as adequate as possible when it came to giving a broad view of how it works, if you read the regional newspapers, and if you look at the information in the articles, and if you compare that to the Australian sample, you will see that the calibre of information in most bread- and-butter articles in the Swedish paper, are of a weight that you hope to find when it came to thorough investigative journalism in Australia. So what I'm saying is that thanks to the extensive FOI laws in Sweden, there is investigative journalism going on every day as compared to Australia where you sit down and you really, if you're going to use FOI for investigative journalism, you're going to have to put aside some time for it.
However, the study also shows that there are journalists that make it work for them. There's one Australian journalist interviewed that said Well I put in a number of requests in June every year, because I know that in November when we have news downtime, I'll get the information. That's one way of doing it. So if you get your head around it, you can use it.
Mick O'Regan: It's just a question of getting your head around it. Johan Lidberg from Murdoch University in Western Australia. And if you're interested in reading Johan's M.A. thesis on Freedom of Information, you can email him
If most of the end-users -aren't- necessarily
programmers, they may have a presence outside
OSS circles (newsgroups, eGroup conferences,
mailing lists, or even meetings at phys. venues,
if you have time to travel).
Join the most populated ones, or those most
open to your presence &/or input.
Of course, not all groups welcome geeks,
for some reason; I include here both:
- groups with more luddites than technology-
friendly folks at the helm, and
- groups that have grown up around a com-
mercial product, eg sold at near-zero
cost by a one-person development firm
The latter comes -close- to the Open Source
model, since the developer gets -lots- of
user-feedback, but holds tight onto the
source-code (often with no succession plan
in case of the principle's untimely death).
In each case, one -might- even have to hide
one's open source orientation, eg in order
to get more detailed or complete feedback
from the user community, who may have been
"trained" (eg by the "worshipped" developer)
to shun open source advocates, as if they
were missionaries.
Even those who see benefit in OSS models
are likely to remain silent in such groups,
ie in order to ensure continued support
from the non-OSS developer.
We've set up an alternative eGroup & project
& continued to drop bread-crumbs leading to
these, for the benefit of open-minded members
of the non-OSS groups/lists.
Suppose -two- competing IT contractors were
each given a contract to be involved in
the development of the same product, eg:
- Company A is to implement it...
- Company B is to look for errors...
The contracts are written as zero-sum games,
ie whenever Co. B finds an error, Co. A loses
a bit of their fee (which, of course, B wins)
Ideally, no one in Co. A knows who Co. B is,
and vice versa.
In the event of a "logic bomb" or any other
functionality which was never ordered by the
end-user organisation, Co. A forfeits a BIG
chunk of their fee, possibly losing the con-
tract entirely without payment (maybe with
the obligation to repay previous payments).
That kind of responsibility / liability for
actions has to bubble through to Co. A's staff.
If bonusses bubble through to Co. B's staff,
ie as Co. A's errors (or, for a real winfall,
logic bomb) are discovered & reported, then
incentives are there for Co. B.
Cool, eh?;-)
PS I guess Co. A has to win more if Co. B
can't find any errors or 'logic bombs'...
The idea is to formulate the contracts in
such a way as to have both carrorts & (if
necessary) sticks for each company.
7. matter taken to Dep't of Consumer &
Business Affairs for assistance
8. (matter still pending)
UPDATE:
9. By some coincidence, the above Dep't
rang me a few minutes ago & said
that the shop is now prepared to
accept the return of the modem &
refund my $ in full.
(Of course, the cost of the Certified
Letter with Receipt of Delivery may
burden... unless I care to sue them
for compensation in the matter...)
---
Say, has anybody in SA had any similarly
disappointing dealings with IT Warehouse?
Another IT friend tells me he's seen a
number of articles in the Trade Press,
that warn the unknowing would-be buyer
to stay clear of them, and I'd like to
read some of these articles for myself.
(The Dep't of Consumer & Business Affairs
can't tell me about other complaints, ie
unless they've "named" the business...
which they haven't done in this case.)
Australia could -really- use a Better-
Business Bureau in every capital city!
Perhaps an off-shore web-site would do
the job, in lieu... No, wait! The re-
cent [Gutnick] case brought a decision
suggesting that one could be sued here
even if the material is published off-
shore.
Perhaps we need a Good Consumer Law -
a bit like the Good Sameritan Law - to
protect consumers, who want to share
their experiences with a business, and
help to preclude others from falling
into similar holes...
I encourage the Open Source Foundation, et al.
to take the NY Times to task over the name of
the subject article/activity:
www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/15OPEN.html
(It's about a woman, whose website asked for
money; she managed to collect over $13,000
to help pay off her $20,000 credit-card debt,
by telling her story & "begging" online...)
That's -not- the idea of Open Source, folks.
C.F. BURKS 6 (low-cost comp sci CD-ROM set)
on
Free Books on CD?
·
· Score: 1
Netscape (no installation needed, early version)
selecting an item from the [global] table of con-
tents brings up a call for the disc it's on, ie
if necessary.
Shortly after I moved to Oz, I met a guy who was making money "hand-over-fist" in the carpet- cleaning business... not from carpet cleaninhg alone, however.
He imported some US smoke-eating technology: put the smoke-damaged items into his sealed room, which gets filled with a (reportedly) safe gas, which does all the work.
Insurance companies were his biggest customers... instead of replacing, they paid for "smoke-removal" service.
And... you have to admit... they had an earlier
world-wide digital data network (carrying eMail
& bulletins) than our present wireless LANs...
They continue to innovate (lookup APRS & its
popular incarnation UI_View), enjoy space-
communications, and -still- manage to keep
in-touch via voice (as well as eMail, et al.)
Like working on your car with your mates,
& sailing around the world with your team,
Ham Radio is one of the more humane hobbies
that's high-tech in orientation...
Just imagine: In-touch by voice, without pay-
ing a bandwidth hit, while surfing, hacking
or (together) trying to design up the next
killer app (or debug the previous one...;-)
Check it out.;-)
[Info available from:
- ARRL in USA,
- RSGB in UK, &/or
- WIA in Austraila]
Slashdot Mirror
SSS is a Finish guy's clever way to encrypt
a web page's contents, unlockable by p'word
It's implemented in Javascript.
We just had a disappointment, after a Client
revealed that they use Mac's and their brow-
ser (IE) wouldn't unlock the page.
Actually, I'm surprised that Opera 6 was
rated to low on this battery of tests...
its Windows implementation runs SSS well
Has anyone used SSS (successfully) on a
Mac? If so, which browser did it work on?
TIA
PS SSS's scheme doesn't show the encrypted
page - even after it's been decrypted &
displayed in clear text; a cool system!
Well, in most of the places that I've lived
around the world, anybody could go & sit in
on a court proceeding or two to get a clear
idea of what some -real- lawyers may be like
Where can non-techie people go to get such
samples of programmers-at-work...?
wear a yellow star... the king of the land
I'm referring to got -everybody- to do that.
Here, if -everybody- (especially those who
decidely have NOT have downloaded someone's
IP to their hardisk, in a way that would
ever be actionalboe) wrote "I just downloaded X"
big, in public online places...
Think of all the bogus suits out there...
And - hey! - think of all the countersuit
potential here...
1. Get latest Slashcode
2. Add Subject feature
3. Get
Too easy, eh?
As early as Compaq's Deskpro 4000, there was:
- a software-controlled case-lock &
- a case-opened sensor
The box's firmware could be setup to use the
sensed indications that the case had been opened
(with or without use of the s-w-cont'd case-lock)
By the way, has anybody got code that can access
case-opened indicator and/or s-w-cont'd lock, eg
for us in an Open Source OS?
TIA
may offer cancer cure
Anthrax... Diarrhea Bug... What next?
Gee, when you have to -remind- us of Linus' claim /.er's mind...
to fame, it seems a sign that the History of Linux
must be fading from the modern
I really -doubt- that it has...
The latest should really be on a web site somewhere, not in a dead-tree book IMO.
;-)
I grant, of course, that the latest isn't
necessarily the best, in all cases...
---
OT: The latest outrageous Australian proposal:
In Australia, if someone is to be defended
by a lawyer against a charge with national
security implications, [it is proposed that]
the LAWYER defending him/her must -first-
go through a high-level security clearance!
(I understand that this restriction applies
ONLY where the client -isn't- paying lawyers
fees, ie a pro bono client... and NOT where
the client is paying his/her own lawyer's
fees)
'looks like they're picking War this year...
...maybe even generate some electricity
...or the like. ;-\
with the mechanical energy you create -
eg, charging your UPS batteries or may-
be the laptop's...!
I'm surprised that this idea isn't al-
ready a product (or family of them...
eg, with camping models, models for
Amateur, Emergency Service or CB radios
as well as computers.
You know the kind I mean:
Slow, meditative peddling
(while thinking or keying)
Fast, intensive peddling
(while making progress -
burning off excess stress)
Perhaps it's time to start a project, eg:
- OpenOfficeFurniture,
- OpenOF,
- OpenBikeDesk,
- OpenExerDesk,
- OpenExDesk,
- OpenExDe or
- OpenED
[Deformated after /. reported: "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 34.5)" A STUPID RESTRICTION! Make the box wider & tell us how many chars/line is kosher, damn it!]
;-)
I don't want to insult a person who's built & paid for a useful web-based service...
But I -do- want people to show a bit more "chutzpah" in matters like this
Anybody remember the Boston Tea Party?
It was in response to a dumb tax on tea, on the part of remote tax-collectors, & now it is gone.
More recently, Australians won a license-free "Citizens Band" - simply by -not- getting license, en masse.
(And, by all reports, Auusies, tend to be pretty compliant ex-^H^H^H colonists of the UK
Now, that bit of Civil Disobedience was against government, not the threat of legal action,
so there are differences.
But, surely, we can expect better support & a cleaner result than to just "roll over & die" that this site got.
Perhaps the same kind of response as we might expect, eg when a bug is detected in some Open Source software, would be appropriate; or, why not a:
LERT - Legal Emergency Response Team
1. Volunteer-based (might need to be anonymous)
2. Archive of succesful -response- HowTo's
(a bit like Bennett's play-by-play story of how he got Toshiba to refund $$$ for his non-use of (& non-intent to use) a bundled Microsoft operating
system;
while not a response to a Cease & Desist letter, it was a response to a legal quandry)
3. If necessary, off-shore (ie where legal)mirroring of alegedly "offending" site
It might be nice if such sites were as portable & easy to implement/mirror as possible.
4. IF the site's owner plans to take down
(& not just relabel bits of) the site,
then - for God's sake! - give the com-
munity NOTICE & perhaps (in advance)
an easy way to download its content;
even an udatable snapshot is more use-
ful than a total loss of access to it
5. A team of legal experts (volunteers)
stands ready to advise the site owner
(perhaps under safe disclaimer agreements,
if applicable) on how the letter or
other inputs (from IP owner(s)) might
be interpretted & replied to.
6. Fundraisers generate some $'s for
legal defense (again, if necessary)
etc.
It just doesn't work to walk away from
the fight. Sometimes changing a web page
into one where the icon for, say PIC-SIG,
as in this case, becomes a hot-link to it
& adding a CLEAR disclaimer ("UNOFFICIAL
PCI diveice list" or whateverm nect to it)
would be enough of a response (especially
as a pre-emptive strike, at site-creation)
to enable the site's continued existence.
Is it about showing off some cool new way
to store & provide info... or a way to
provide info support to the Open Source
community.
If it's the lattter, a searchable text-file
might suffice... one that anybody can
download, upload & share later.
If it's the former, then we're shooting
ourselves in the foot & aren't helping
each other as much as we might IMO.
Why should it take me three (3) clicks
on the button to get a reply to
post ['using Opera 6.04, if relavent]?
TIA
The Subject asks it all, folks.
Background
The latest post on the front page
of www.e-smith.org refers to a 5.6
version of SMS (formerly e-smith),
but none of the ISO's are ver 5.6
Has someone got a URL link for a 5.6
ISO?
TIA
Perhaps it's just a matter of
some of a webpage's images
failing to load, eg while a
movie file is slowly oozing in...
But - just in case - you should
find 3 -additional- pages of
script portions (the -last- one
starting with hardcopy page 21),
ie just below the 3 whose image
showed up (for us).
Hover & click (or - from the
"last" script page - hit Next,
at the bottom)
Years ago, the Pennsylvania Deutsch
were similarly renamed Pa. Dutch...
Go figure!
It's hard enough to make a screen reader
work satisfactorily if your need one now;
just wait until the screens change (new
pop-up windows at the hover of a mouse).
I really think this comprises harass-
ment to PWD's.
- they seem to be -precluding- the existence of
a Better Business Bureau (or the like)
- even the Dep't of Consumer & Bus. Affairs
won't let you know if the company you're
having trouble with has been complained of
(with them) in past, let alone the outcome
of the complaint
FoI laws are just as bad, as this excerpt
from the transcript of a recent Radio National
'Media Report' program suggests:
--- start of excerpt:
Mick O'Regan: Now to another aspect of freedom of information. A couple of weeks ago on the program, we discussed the current state of press freedom in Australia. One of my guests, the investigative journalist, Ross Coulthart from The Sunday Program on Channel Nine, sounded a warning about the state of freedom of information, known as FOI in this country.
Ross Coulthart: We have Freedom of Information Act which is meant to facilitate the media and indeed the general public getting access to information but unfortunately the Act has become a Freedom From Information Act. The idea is you pay $30, you ask for specific documents from government institutions and the idea is, they'll provide it to you. But unfortunately in this day and age it's become a way for the executive arm of government to stop people from getting information. It's got much worse, we're in crisis. I've never seen it quite as bad as it is at the moment, and indeed it's not necessarily a legal problem, it's an attitudinal problem inside government, inside bureaucracies, and until that changes, until we get rid of the spin doctors, the spin meisters inside government, nothing's going to change.
Mick O'Regan: A fairly bleak view of Freedom of Information, Ross Coulthart, speaking on The Media Report.
But not every country is in crisis over Freedom of Information. In fact in Sweden, it's an everyday resource.
Johan Lidberg from Murdoch University in Western Australia, studied the use of FOI legislation in both Sweden and Western Australia.
Johan Lidberg: The main difference that I find is that the Swedish journalists close to every day, and in some instances several times per day use Freedom of Information laws to access their information in Sweden. Whereas the Western Australian colleagues use it a few times per year. But also the survey study that I did showed that in the responses to the survey, 100% of the Swedish journos use FOI, whereas 44% of the Western Australian ones use FOI, every now and then.
Mick O'Regan: So are we talking only about political journalists, or are we talking about journalists more broadly?
Johan Lidberg: Well that's really an interesting thing, because my experience and my thought was that it was mainly political journalists in Sweden that use FOI, and that is still the bulk. But it also spills over into, for instance, sports reporting. I had one example where a sports reporter used Freedom of Information laws to access information regarding a soccer club's dealing with the Tax Department. They had drafted foreign players into their team and they hadn't fulfilled their accounting and tax obligations, so it spills over into other areas. It also spills over into business reporting for instance, so it's not only political journalism.
Mick O'Regan: Now what practical differences does that continued use of Freedom of Information mean to the content of newspapers and current affairs programs in Sweden?
Johan Lidberg: Well the last study I did was a content analysis of the two newspapers in the study. And it showed that the main sourcing in the Swedish paper was that they paraphrased documents, they referred to documents that they had accessed, whereas the main source in the Western Australian newspaper was that they paraphrased oral sources. Those are the two major differences when it comes to content. Those were quantifiable differences. There are also qualitative differences like for instance if you look at how the quality of information, and this is a bit harder, it's easier quantifying stuff than saying that this is of high quality, but one implication of the study was that the Swedish reporters start their research by using Freedom of Information, that's their starting point. The Western Australian colleagues, they will resort, as they said in interviews with me, they will use FOI usually as a last resort when they used all other journalistic means, and that's a very important difference when it comes to judging the quality of information in the article.
Mick O'Regan: Is there a problem in Australia that the law is OK but the application is faulty?
Johan Lidberg: If you look at the two laws side by side, the Australian FOI laws, because we have quite a few since we have a Federal system, and the Swedish ones, in Sweden you only need an oral request, you don't even need to put it in writing. In some instances you do, but normally you just pick up the phone, call the public servant and say, Listen, I would like this document, can you please fax it to me? And in 90% of the cases, that's the way it goes. So in Sweden the public servants, and to some extent even the politicians, act as facilitators rather than gatekeepers. In Australia you have the opposite situation. Now we have to bear in mind at all times that the first FOI law was passed in 1982 in Australia. So it hasn't been all that long. If you look at how long it takes for traditions and especially political traditions to take root, it hasn't been that long. It's more a matter of how its interpreted and in some instances how journalists view it. If journalists in some cases were a bit more persistent, that might provoke change as well.
Mick O'Regan: So there needs to be an attitudinal shift on the part of journalists to see the need to constantly try to get documents under Freedom of Information, almost like to make the system work by constantly putting it through its paces.
Johan Lidberg: That's exactly it. There are even to this date in Sweden, you know every year there are cases with government agencies that have to be what they say 'broken in' again, or broken in because they haven't been exposed to the law before, and you have the first journalist calling or rocking up, saying Listen, I would like to have these documents, and then they say No, you can't have it. And then the journalist will say, Well are you aware of the FOI laws? And it would go from there, and it might go out on appeal and then the agency's broken in. The same thing I would like to see happen in Australia. I would like to see for instance, the Australian Journalists Association being a bit more proactive. I would like to see some of the - there was one news room in my study that don't use FOI at all, saying that Well, we have our broadcast deadlines and we can't use it because it's just too cumbersome. I would like to, for instance possibly work with them in an action research project and say Give me your news conference list, I'll sit down, look at the stories and put in a few requests and see what we can get at. But it needs to be more long-term, you can't just change this in ten years or 15 years, it has to be even more long term than that.
Mick O'Regan: What about more practical barriers? For example, the cost of making an FOI application, does it cost money to seek a document in Sweden?
Johan Lidberg:No, it's free. And that's of course symbolically very, very important. You would assume that if the political will was there and if the politicians were serious about increasing the flow of information, then they would abolish the cost. So that is the problem. The biggest problem in Australia is probably the time frame, where the agency has 45 days to respond, compared to in Sweden where it's a lot less than that. Usually it should be in a matter of hours, and that's highly important. Also the fact that you've got quite a few blanket exemptions, agencies that are exempt from the law totally. Now symbolically that's important too; there are no blanket exemptions in Sweden, and that shows the basic will of making the system work.
Mick O'Regan: Now in your study you talk about the development of everyday investigative reporting. That I presume is the impact that the easy access and frequent use of FOI has meant for day to day reporting in Sweden.
Johan Lidberg: Yes. I had to come up with some sort of term of describing one of the main qualitative differences, and that is one of the main ones. If you read the regional papers in Sweden, and I did choose regional papers to get news rooms that would be as adequate as possible when it came to giving a broad view of how it works, if you read the regional newspapers, and if you look at the information in the articles, and if you compare that to the Australian sample, you will see that the calibre of information in most bread- and-butter articles in the Swedish paper, are of a weight that you hope to find when it came to thorough investigative journalism in Australia. So what I'm saying is that thanks to the extensive FOI laws in Sweden, there is investigative journalism going on every day as compared to Australia where you sit down and you really, if you're going to use FOI for investigative journalism, you're going to have to put aside some time for it.
However, the study also shows that there are journalists that make it work for them. There's one Australian journalist interviewed that said Well I put in a number of requests in June every year, because I know that in November when we have news downtime, I'll get the information. That's one way of doing it. So if you get your head around it, you can use it.
Mick O'Regan: It's just a question of getting your head around it. Johan Lidberg from Murdoch University in Western Australia. And if you're interested in reading Johan's M.A. thesis on Freedom of Information, you can email him
---
If most of the end-users -aren't- necessarily
programmers, they may have a presence outside
OSS circles (newsgroups, eGroup conferences,
mailing lists, or even meetings at phys. venues,
if you have time to travel).
Join the most populated ones, or those most
open to your presence &/or input.
Of course, not all groups welcome geeks,
for some reason; I include here both:
- groups with more luddites than technology-
friendly folks at the helm, and
- groups that have grown up around a com-
mercial product, eg sold at near-zero
cost by a one-person development firm
The latter comes -close- to the Open Source
model, since the developer gets -lots- of
user-feedback, but holds tight onto the
source-code (often with no succession plan
in case of the principle's untimely death).
In each case, one -might- even have to hide
one's open source orientation, eg in order
to get more detailed or complete feedback
from the user community, who may have been
"trained" (eg by the "worshipped" developer)
to shun open source advocates, as if they
were missionaries.
Even those who see benefit in OSS models
are likely to remain silent in such groups,
ie in order to ensure continued support
from the non-OSS developer.
We've set up an alternative eGroup & project
& continued to drop bread-crumbs leading to
these, for the benefit of open-minded members
of the non-OSS groups/lists.
"Softly, softly... catchy monkey"
Suppose -two- competing IT contractors were
each given a contract to be involved in
the development of the same product, eg:
- Company A is to implement it...
- Company B is to look for errors...
The contracts are written as zero-sum games,
ie whenever Co. B finds an error, Co. A loses
a bit of their fee (which, of course, B wins)
Ideally, no one in Co. A knows who Co. B is,
and vice versa.
In the event of a "logic bomb" or any other
functionality which was never ordered by the
end-user organisation, Co. A forfeits a BIG
chunk of their fee, possibly losing the con-
tract entirely without payment (maybe with
the obligation to repay previous payments).
That kind of responsibility / liability for
actions has to bubble through to Co. A's staff.
If bonusses bubble through to Co. B's staff,
ie as Co. A's errors (or, for a real winfall,
logic bomb) are discovered & reported, then
incentives are there for Co. B.
Cool, eh?
PS I guess Co. A has to win more if Co. B
can't find any errors or 'logic bombs'...
The idea is to formulate the contracts in
such a way as to have both carrorts & (if
necessary) sticks for each company.
7. matter taken to Dep't of Consumer &
Business Affairs for assistance
8. (matter still pending)
UPDATE:
9. By some coincidence, the above Dep't
rang me a few minutes ago & said
that the shop is now prepared to
accept the return of the modem &
refund my $ in full.
(Of course, the cost of the Certified
Letter with Receipt of Delivery may
burden... unless I care to sue them
for compensation in the matter...)
---
Say, has anybody in SA had any similarly
disappointing dealings with IT Warehouse?
Another IT friend tells me he's seen a
number of articles in the Trade Press,
that warn the unknowing would-be buyer
to stay clear of them, and I'd like to
read some of these articles for myself.
(The Dep't of Consumer & Business Affairs
can't tell me about other complaints, ie
unless they've "named" the business...
which they haven't done in this case.)
Australia could -really- use a Better-
Business Bureau in every capital city!
Perhaps an off-shore web-site would do
the job, in lieu... No, wait! The re-
cent [Gutnick] case brought a decision
suggesting that one could be sued here
even if the material is published off-
shore.
Perhaps we need a Good Consumer Law -
a bit like the Good Sameritan Law - to
protect consumers, who want to share
their experiences with a business, and
help to preclude others from falling
into similar holes...
I encourage the Open Source Foundation, et al.
to take the NY Times to task over the name of
the subject article/activity:
www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/15OPEN.html
(It's about a woman, whose website asked for
money; she managed to collect over $13,000
to help pay off her $20,000 credit-card debt,
by telling her story & "begging" online...)
That's -not- the idea of Open Source, folks.
Netscape (no installation needed, early version)
selecting an item from the [global] table of con-
tents brings up a call for the disc it's on, ie
if necessary.
It's an example worth updating & emulating IMO.
Shortly after I moved to Oz,
I met a guy who was making money
"hand-over-fist" in the carpet-
cleaning business... not from
carpet cleaninhg alone, however.
He imported some US smoke-eating
technology: put the smoke-damaged
items into his sealed room, which
gets filled with a (reportedly)
safe gas, which does all the work.
Insurance companies were his biggest
customers... instead of replacing,
they paid for "smoke-removal" service.
More I do not know...
I think it would have been better to require a
-minimum- local gov't -size- before opening the
Act's power to use by local gov'ts.
In a small town, local gov't very likely lacks
the personnel to monitor/interpret/utilize any
info received (eg from ISP's).
Also, I think there's a big risk that such info
would be misused, no matter how great the pen-
alties that such misuse might attract.
Unabashed Plug:
And... you have to admit... they had an earlier
world-wide digital data network (carrying eMail
& bulletins) than our present wireless LANs...
They continue to innovate (lookup APRS & its
popular incarnation UI_View), enjoy space-
communications, and -still- manage to keep
in-touch via voice (as well as eMail, et al.)
Like working on your car with your mates,
& sailing around the world with your team,
Ham Radio is one of the more humane hobbies
that's high-tech in orientation...
Just imagine: In-touch by voice, without pay-
ing a bandwidth hit, while surfing, hacking
or (together) trying to design up the next
killer app (or debug the previous one...
Check it out.
[Info available from:
- ARRL in USA,
- RSGB in UK, &/or
- WIA in Austraila]