Tag: ethics

Le mariage pour tous, les enfants aux manifs, et les gaz lacrymogènes [fr]

[en] Kids in demonstrations. Appropriate or not? Some French people have their panties up in a bunch because tear gas was used to contain an anti-marriage-equality demonstration which included children.

Des fois, ce qui démarre sur Facebook doit sortir de Facebook. Comme ma contribution à une discussion autour du mariage pour tous et des enfants ayant été exposés aux gaz lacrymogènes lors de la manif d’aujourd’hui à Paris. Contexte pour ceux qui veulent, un article parmi d’autres. En somme, on trouve scandaleux que la police ait utilisé du gaz pour maintenir la foule qui tentait de déborder sur les Champs-Elysées, alors qu’il y avait dans cette foule des enfants.

Dans la discussion, une personne que je ne connais pas intervient pour dire que la loi sur le mariage pour tous nie le droit des enfants, accompagnant ça de quelques arguments “complot” un peu trollesques (genre “le pouvoir veut rendre la manif impossible par manque de place) sur lesquels je passerai.

Le mariage pour tous, c’est une cause à laquelle je tiens. S’y opposer ne tient pas la route une seconde selon mes valeurs. J’ai donc sauté un peu dans le tas, et comme j’aime bien mes commentaires, je vous en fais profiter ici.

Au risque de nourrir le troll je vais faire ma naïve et dire que je ne vois pas en quoi le mariage pour tous a quoi que ce soit à voir avec le droit des enfants. On peut élever des enfants seul, à deux, à trois, avec qui on veut, pas besoin de mariage pour ça. Le mariage pour tous, c’est surtout une question du droit des conjoints (ou partenaires dans une relation de couple, si on ne veut pas utiliser les mots qui fâchent certains) l’un envers l’autre, et d’une reconnaissance par l’Etat de leur relation.

Par exemple, pour éviter ce genre d’histoire à fendre le coeur.

Voici direct la vidéo, d’ailleurs:

L’histoire des enfants à la manif, ça m’interpelle. Parce que je ne suis pas du même bord que les manifestants, je trouve qu’ils n’ont rien à faire là. Mais si on manifestait pour le mariage pour tous, est-ce que je ne trouverais pas normal d’associer mes enfants à ça, si j’en avais?

Bon, histoire d’essayer d’élever un peu le débat, je trouve quand même que cette histoire d’enfants aux manifs pose une question éthique intéressante:

  • en tant que parents on essaie d’inculquer des valeurs à ses enfants, c’est donc normal à quelque part qu’on amène avec soi ses enfants pour prendre position par rapport à une cause qui nous tient à coeur
  • en tant que spectateurs d’une manif aux valuers de laquelle on n’adhère pas, on est horrifié de voir d’innocents enfants traînés dans ce qui est pour nous de l’idéalisme mal placé, des valeurs étriquées, voire du fanatisme

Alors, quoi faire? Peut-on raisonnablement demander à des parents de ne pas impliquer leurs enfants dans leurs causes? Je ne pense pas.

C’est pour ça qu’on verra toujours des enfants “manifester” contre l’avortement, contre l’égalité dans le mariage, mais aussi contre le réchauffement climatique, pour le droit de vote des femmes, pour ceci, contre cela. Bref. Les enfants restent en quelque sorte des extensions de leurs parents, sur le plan politique. Ils leur sont d’ailleurs légalement soumis.

Par contre: en tant que parent, on doit savoir qu’une manif n’est pas une activité “sûre”. Il y a des mouvements de foule. Il y a parfois de la violence. Il y a des risques de débordement. Les forces de l’ordre peuvent intervenir. Et on doit se demander si on veut risquer d’exposer son enfant à ça. Si on décide de prendre ce risque, après, il faut assumer, et pas venir pleurer parce qu’on s’est retrouvés pris avec eux dans des gaz lacrymogènes.

Pour la petite histoire, quand j’étais enfant, au Comptoir Suisse (pas une manif, une grosse foire commerciale), du gaz lacrymogène a été utilisé. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, j’étais trop petite pour comprendre. Je me souviens que ça piquait, que ça m’a fait tousser, et qu’avec ma mère (c’est vous dire que j’étais petite) on est vite partis ailleurs. Ben voilà. Là, on pourrait râler. Enfant, j’ai été exposée à des gaz lacrymogènes pour quelque chose qui ne me concernait absolument pas.

Enfants, manifs, vous avez un avis sur la question? (Mariage pour tous: on va éviter, le débat est clos en ce qui me concerne, merci.)

Blog Host Ugliness [en]

[fr] Une amie Serbe s'est vu poser un ultimatum par son hébergeur de blogs: 24 heures pour supprimer commentaires d'un autre blogueur et liens vers ses sites, ou voir son blog disparaître.

L'hébergeur en question (qui utilise WordPress multi-utilisateurs, comme WordPress.com) avait en outre désactivé la fonction d'exportation de blog.

On s'en est sortis comme on a pu (voir ici).

Mis à part le côté technique de l'affaire, il est absolument scandaleux qu'un hébergeur de blogs se permette d'agir ainsi. Certes, tout hébergeur est libre de "virer" des clients -- mais déactiver au préalable la fonction d'exportation des blogs, cela atteint des sommets de mesquinerie. A bon entendeur.

Edit: sur Seesmic, l'histoire en français et en vidéo.

Note: I’ve updated this post as I gathered information allowing me to see more clearly in this whole mess. Please read the comment if you’re going to jump in the conversation or blog about this.

Wednesday night, my friend Sanja from BlogOpen (she was my very kind and competent hostess) pinged me on IM. She had less than 24 hours to export her blog before her blog host shut it down.

It was a blog hosted by WordPress multi-user [Edit: not WPMU]. Easy enough, I thought. There is an export function. Unfortunately, when I logged in (the interface was in Serbian, but I can find my way through WordPress with my eyes closed), this is what I found:

WordPress (MU?) with no Export

Even if you don’t understand Serbian, you can see there is a missing tab. I tried calling /wp-admin/export.php directly, but the file had been removed.

Well, after a bit of poking, prodding and thinking, this is what I came up with (reminder: WPMU means that you can’t there was no possibility to install plugins and no direct access to the server):

Last Hope Export of WordPress MU Blog

I went into Options > Reading. I set the feeds to “entire post”. As there were 110 posts in this blog, I set the home page to display all of them, with a little margin for error. There were more than 1400 comments, so I set the maximum number of items in a feed to 1500.

Then I did three things:

  • saved /feed (an RSS dump of the blog posts)
  • saved /comments/feed (an RSS dump of the comments)
  • scraped the blog (with single blog post pages) as an extra backup by running wget -r -l1 -w1 BLOGURL (thanks, John) from my server (also to save the images).

The blog was saved. I couldn’t import the RSS dump of blog posts into WordPress.com, where I told Sanja to open a new blog account, so I quickly set up a regular WordPress install on my server, imported it there, and exported it in WXR format. Great.

Comments, however, are another story. If you’re in a hackish mood, any help would be appreciated.

We’ll probably have to deal with the images too once the blog has been completely wiped off the 381.com server — for the moment it seems like it was disabled, but the images are still there (see this one for example).

There, that was for the technical part.

Now for a personal comment. I find it utterly disgusting and shocking that a blog host owner would give people an ultimatum to leave and disable the export function in the blogging software. Sanja tells me that they had the export function until a few days before the ultimatum.

Of course, a blog host can choose not to host certain people. But trying to lock people in by disabling export of their own data is simply evil. If you’re kicking people off your system, you damn well better make sure they can take their data with them.

Edit, 27.01, 12:00: I’m happy to learn that it seems the disabling of the export function was not related to the ultimatum, and that the blog381 people were not actually trying to actively lock people in. However, it remains that it’s pretty delicate in a conflictual situation to tell people to “submit or leave” when they don’t have a way to export their data on their own.

So, people, please. If you need a blog host, choose a serious one. WordPress.com for example. Or Blogger. Or Typepad. Putting your precious blog between the hands of an individual is risky (weblogs.com, anybody? and if you remember, people on weblogs.com at least had the guarantee they could export their data…)

How did this happen?

I got some details about the situation, but a word of warning about that, first. The source material to this Serbian blogosphere drama is all in… Serbian. I’m relying here on what my friend Sanja told me about the situation, and I do not doubt her good faith. I know, though, that stories do have multiple sides, and that there might be more to the background than what I’m telling you here — but whatever the background story, it cannot justify the behaviour of this blog host.

From what I gathered, what brought about this crisis is a quarrel between two bloggers: Tatjana aka Venus aka Lang (Update: Tatjana is not happy that I’m linking to her and has redirected visitors to this site elsewhere; to see her blog, copy-paste the link http://www.laluve.com/ in your browser), the owner of the Serbian blogging platform blog381.com (not the Tatjana who organized BlogOpen!), and another pretty popular blogger. At some point, Tatjana decided to forbid the people using her platform from linking to this other blogger or harbouring his comments.

Here is the warning she posted on the community forums:

Vlasnik blogova

http://bruh.org/ludizmaj/,

http://www.blogoye.org/pecina/,

http://www.blogoye.org/Mudrosti/,

http://www.blogoye.org/sujeta/

(ima verovatno jos ali ne mogu da trazim)

je ovom blog sistemu naneo stetu laziranjem glasova oko izbora za najblogera (na kom je on bio ‘pobednik’), ‘miniranjem’ sledeceg izbora, sirenjem neistina, traceva, vrbovanjem novih blogera sa tri osam jedan sistema, a sve u cilju da se naskodi ovom sistemu a poveca sopstveni traffic i “ugled”.

Za one koji nisu dovoljno informisani i sve ostale koji su slusali ili nisu, samo jednu stranu price od gore pomenutog, necu dodatno iznositi nikakve detalje, niti vise imam nameru da se borim sa provincijalizmima pojedinih ljudi koji su bili ili jesu na neki nacin u komunikaciji sa blogom381 i njegovim korisnicima.

Slobodna volja svakog od nas da pise kako i gde hoce, ali oni koji se odluce da i dalje pisu ovde nece moci da imaju linkove ka ovim blogovima niti komentare vlasnika istih.

Ukoliko imate zelju,nameru ili potrebu da ostanete na ovom blog sitemu, obrisite linkove i komentare gore pomenutog blogera u roku od 24h.

Translation (Sanja was a bit tired, so forgive the wobbliness):

The owner of these blogs
http://bruh.org/ludizmaj/,
http://www.blogoye.org/pecina/,
http://www.blogoye.org/Mudrosti/,
http://www.blogoye.org/sujeta/

has caused damage to this blog system by faking votes for the election of “The best blogger” (where he was “the winner”), and was undermining the next election by spreading gossip, lies, and recruiting new 381 bloggers, with only one aim: to damage this community and increase his own blog traffic and “reputation”.

For those who are not informed well enough, and all others who were listening or didn’t, only one side of the story of the person mentioned above, I will not give any additional details, nor do I have the intention to fight with provincialism of some people who were or in some way are connected to blog381 communication and their users.

It is the free will of each of us to write how and where we want to, but those who decide to keep writing here, will not be able to have links to these blogs or comments by their owner.

Those of you who have the wish, intention or need to stay on this blog system, should delete links and comments of the blogger (mentioned above) within 24 hours.

Sanja learnt about this because the owner of the blogging platform left a comment on one of her posts (not the most recent) to let her know about it. Given that the “other blogger” in question is a friend of Sanja’s, she wasn’t going to comply.

Other bloggers have also seen their blogs deleted, or at least de-activated (actually, before the 24-hour limit was up). A dozen or so, says Sanja.

If you want to chime in on the “political” side of this story (particularly if you’re involved in this story or a direct witness), you’re welcome to use my comments. However, I ask (as always) that everybody remain civil and refrain from personal attacks (commonsense blogging etiquette, y’know).

Update: It seems that since Sanja’s blog was deactivated, the whole blogging platform has been shut down, with a message that people can e-mail the administrator to get an export of their blog. This message was not there during the ultimatum period.

In a comment to this post, Tatjana aka Lang asked me to remove the link to her blog, http://www.laluve.com/ , which I had placed upon her name. As I have refused to remove it (linking to the people involved in this story is perfectly relevant, and on the web, you can link to who you want, anyway), she has set up a redirection which sends visitors from this site straight off to CNN. So, I’ve left the link in, of course, but provided you with a handy copy-paste if you want to go and visit her all the same.

Working For Fame Or For Cash [en]

[fr] En organisant la journée de conférences Going Solo, je me trouve directement aux prises avec mes difficultés face à l'économie du peer. J'organise un événement qui dégagera je l'espère assez de bénéfice pour que je puisse me payer, ainsi que mes partenaires. En même temps, j'espère trouver des personnes prêtes à donner de leur temps en échange de la visibilité que leur apportera leur association avec Going Solo. Mais je ne sais pas trop comment m'y prendre. Je trouve difficile de rendre les choses claires.

I’d like to introduce this reflection by quoting Tara Hunt, who writes the following in a post titled Please Stop Crowdsourcing Me:

I came and I thought, hey, this is kind of neat-o and it empowered me at first. I thought, “Awesome! They want my opinion! They listen!” and I offered it and the feedback was, “Great idea!” and I watched as you implemented it, then benefitted from it and I felt good. I was great at first, but then after a while, I started to feel a little dirty…a little used…a little like cheap labor, replacing people you probably laid off or decided to save money on not hiring because you were getting so much great value out of my time. Maybe it was because it seemed that you believed you could ‘tap’ my well of ideas or ‘pick my brain’ endlessly? Maybe it was because my generosity goes so far and you overstepped your bounds? Maybe it was because you had a chance to reward my efforts, but dropped me like a wet rag as soon as I asked?

Tara Hunt, Please Stop Crowdsourcing Me

I just came upon her article a few minutes ago as I was aimlessly clicking around in my newsreader. It’s funny, because I’ve been thinking of this post I wanted to write for a few days now, and it’s right on the same topic.

I’ve already felt uneasy about the “Peer Economy” (if I may call it like that before). About the fact that certain businesses actually get a lot of stuff for free from their enthusiastic users — stuff they would have to pay for, otherwise. The point I understood about a year ago is that the fact that people contribute voluntarily to help improve services like WordPress, GMail, Twitter, and countless others is what allows us (the community) to benefit from great tools like these free of cost or way cheaper than what they’re worth. I’m comfortable with that.

However, I agree with Tara, there is a fine line to tread. As a company, you don’t want people to feel used. And like Tara, I’ve had more of my share of people/companies who want me to “take a look” at their stuff and “tell them what I think” — picking my brain for free. And I don’t like it. If I’m passionate about your product, then yes — I’ll give you feedback. You probably won’t even have to ask me. I’ll blog about it. If you’re smart, you’ll point out what I wrote, give me credit and link-love, thank me publicly. But I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I liked your product, or because talking about your product fulfilled one of my agenda, in a way. I’ve given products/companies like WordPress, Dopplr, Twitter, coComment, Seesmic and a bunch of others valuable feedback because I wanted to, because I loved their stuff.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll do it for any product or service that crosses my path. If you’re one of the lucky ones, well, good for you. If you’re not, you’ll have to pay cash (experiential marketing is one of the ways a company can use cash to make up for lack of immediate passion on the part of this particular human being). Just like I’ll help my friends out for free and open blogs for them just because I love them, some companies out there benefit from “free intelligence”. Others need to pay for a similar service.

You get the idea, I think.

Now, here’s what I really wanted to bring up with this post.

As you know, I’m putting together an event for the month of May, Going Solo. (If you’re a freelancer or a small business owner, you should plan to come, by the way ;-).) This is my first event. I’m not going to be doing it alone. Thing is, I realised I’m a bit shy about asking my friends to help me out, because on the one hand, I want to keep the event expenses to a minimum, and on the other hand, I don’t want people to get the impression I’m trying to “crowdsource them” — as Tara expresses above.

This is made worse (and way more uncomfortable for me) by the fact that this is not a non-profit venture. I’m going to be investing quite a lot of time in this adventure, and I hope to be able to pay myself enough to have made it worthwhile. Ditto for my sales and logistics partners. So, yes, we’re hoping the event will make a profit (against all odds, it seems — everybody tells me that if you’re first event breaks even, you’re very lucky).

So, I know that part of the difficulty I’m facing here is my own inner workings. Despite what some people on IRC may think 😉 I’m somebody who doesn’t find it easy to ask for help/stuff. I always feel I owe people (except when I feel I’m owed, in a kind of weird back-swing dynamic).

There are certain things that I need for the conference, where I’m hoping I’ll manage to find somebody who is willing to “work for fame”. Taking care of the website is one. Design is another. Similarly, I’m hoping to strike up a partnership for the WiFi and bandwidth we need for the event.

In fact, there is some similarity between “working for fame” and being a sponsor/partner. You provide stuff for free (or almost), and in return you get visibility. So maybe I need to switch mindsets. Instead of looking for “people to help me”, I’m looking for “individual partners” for the event.

I feel like this is a thought in progress. I’m not exactly sure what I think, or what to do, or what is “right”. I’m particularly embarrassed when I start talking with friends or contacts about this or that they could do for the event, because it’s not clear from the start if we’re talking about a partnership (work for fame) or Real Work (work for cash).

Any insights appreciated. I feel like I need to step out of my mind a bit to find a way out, and you can help me out with that by sharing your thoughts.

Daniela Cerqui — Cyborgs: what kind of human being are we building? [en]

Kevin Warwick: implant in arm (real surgery!), measure signal when opening closing hand, to see what the right signal for it is. => able to control a robotic hand with his brain (by moving his hand).

Question of feedback. Sensors => capacity to get feedback from the robotic hand.

Applications: blindfolded, used the hand to “feel” something at a distance.

Wife: electrode fired into nerve, no anesthesia, really painful! Brain-to-brain interface, two human systems linked to each other. When he moved his hand, a signal would appear on his wife’s system.

Controlling robotic hand in the UK (from the US) by sending signal through the internet. Implications? will we one day be considered “disabled” if we cannot control a robotic hand across the ocean? We get used to technology and our ethical boundaries shift. What does normal mean?

*(steph-note: lots of photos, very evocative)*

Commercial applications: 2004 nightclubs in Rotterdam and Barcelona use membership implants instead of cards (and Kevin had his first in 98 — just a few years before!)

Kevin’s point of view: if it is used now, then I was right to develop it.

Humans are flexible. Get used to almost anything. Can we redifine ourself without boundaries. When do we become “other than human”?

Kevin looks towards enhancements. Happy with the idea we might become other than human. Promoting cyborgs as a new species.

Often, people draw the line between medical and non-medical applications, but it’s usually impossible to draw the line between therapy and enhancement.

Kevin is not *such* an exception.

We are on the same path as Kevin, whether we like it or not (connecting brains to machines and brains to each other). In our society, being “normal” means being connected.

Wild Videocast of Robert Scoble Interview [en]

[fr] Une interview (partielle) de Robert Scoble par Marc-Olivier et David de IC Agency, filmée de façon un peu sauvage. Quand on dit que les blogs sont la télé-réalité du web...

I was having a post-LIFT chat with Marc-Olivier in the lounge yesterday when David came up, stole him from me and started talking about getting Robert to do a podcast with them for a blog they were going to open. I offered to introduce them to him.

I was going to take a couple of photographs but as they started, I decided for video instead. Think of it as a “making of” videocast of their podcast. (I say “wild” not because Robert went wild on the video but because it wasn’t planned, staged, or whatever. Vidéocasting sauvage would be how I’d put it in French.

5-minute videocast with Robert (partial)

Robert Scoble podcast (5 mins) by Steph

My initial intention was to upload it straight away. I like the immediateness you can get with the web. (If moblogging wasn’t so bloody expensive I’d be moblogging away…) David actually asked me to hold off publishing the video and cut out some bits of it or put their audio on it, because they wanted to edit some of the audio (English mistakes in the questions, but IMHO, who cares?) I said I preferred to publish what I had recorded “as is”, mistakes, goofs, and all — it was OK with Robert.

I’m a bit embarrassed by the situation, to be honest. My video is on DailyMotion under a CC-by-sa-nc license, so they can put their audio on top if they like, whatever. I don’t really like having to refrain from publishing something, but on the other hand I am very much aware that if you appear on a video or a photograph, you have a right to control publication of it. I think what bothered me was the argument of “exclusivity”. My videocast is only about a third of the interview, anyway.

What would you have done? Should I have refrained from posting this until they had their version up?

I will of course be posting the link to their version(s) here as soon as I get it.