Day: January 29, 2005

Oxford University Pledges to Move Forward on Animal Research Laboratory

Despite the intense focus its received from animal rights activists who managed to stop work on a Pound 18 million animal research facility this summer, Oxford University has vowed that it will resume work on the laboratory sometime this year.

The contractor Oxford had hired to build the laboratory, Montpellier, pulled out after intense harassment of its employees; harassment that led to the resignation of one of the company’s directors.

Oxford seems to think that a High Court injunction against activists will be enough to prevent a recurrence of what happened with Montpellier, but at the same time was short on specifics. According to a university spokeswoman quoted by the Press Association,

We’re not saying anything about whether we have got a new contractor other than to say that we hope to resume work early in the new year and are hoping to get it finished by the end of 2005.

Lets hope Oxford isn’t deluding itself into thinking that the injunction itself is simply going to make animal rights extremists go away and not harass employees of whatever contracting company it ultimately hires for the animal laboratory. Oxford is in for a long, difficult process if it goes forward with the building — and it should go forward, but with eyes wide open.

Source:

University Pledge over Animal Research Lab. Katherine Haddon, Press Association, January 5, 2005.

DriveThruRPG.Com Goes DRM-Free

Here’s the thing — I love roleplaying games. I never have time anymore to actually play one, but when I’m in the comic shop I just can’t resist the damn things. The problem is that RPGs are such a niche market that they can be very expensive. The Buffy RPG core book cost me $40 alone.

So enter DriveThruRPG.Com. They’ve been around for awhile, offering high quality PDFs of RPGs. Yes there are services like RPGNow and Steve Jackson Games’ new PDF store, but those tend to offer either a) materials from small, independent publishers (which tend to be very amateurish in the case of RPGNow) or b) reprinting out-of-print stuff, which is nice but I also want stuff that’s out now.

DriveThruRPG.Com fit that bill, but had one major drawback — their files were heavy on the DRM. Yuck. Thanks, but no thanks.

Recently, however, DriveThruRPG.Com has had a change of heart and began offering publishers the ability to sell DRM-free PDFs. Quite a few of them have decided to go DRM-free. According to the DriveThruRPG.Com site,

Our publishing partners are now able to offer their titles in either the standard DRM format or in a new watermarked, standard PDF. The new watermarking option imprints a small watermark on the bottom of each page of a PDF file at the time of purchase, making each such file purchased at DriveThruRPG a uniquely labeled file. The file is otherwise a standard PDF file that can be searched, text copied, printed and otherwise used like any other PDF file.

Many of our publisher partners are choosing to embrace the new format. So, hundreds of new and classic RPG titles will be available in standard PDF for the first time ever.

As far as the watermark, there is a small line of text at the bottom of each page giving the name of the person who ordered the PDF and an order number, so if they show up on alt.binaries groups or filesharing networks, at least they can trace back who released them and take appropriate action as the site warns,

Warning: If any books bearing your information are found being distributed illegally, then your account will be suspended and legal action may be taken against you.

I’m very glad to see that although they haven’t been converted yet, Eden Studios is going to be selling all of their books DRM-free on the site. Because I need a copy of Terra Primate on my laptop (and, at half the price of the book version).

Take a Deep Breath and Tag Those Posts — Or Not

More than three years ago, Macrobyte added custom fields option to Conversant, the software I use to manage this and the rest of my web sites. That was like a revelation and I think I’ve exploit the feature more than anyone else using the software — I have some sites that have a couple dozen different fields and close to 2,000 values within those fields. The extensive, detailed categorization that has is one of the reasons my sites have been as successful as they have been.

Now the rest of the world has discovered “tagging” posts with categories (I hate that word “tagging” — sounds like I’m out spraypainting graffiti) thanks to services like Flicker, Del.icio.Us, Technorati and others. And that’s also brought a bit of a blacklash which goes something like this: tagging posts is a pain in the ass and users will quickly abandon it.

Dave Winer captures this view in describing why he doesn’t categorize his posts,

I’ve seen the same thing. I have a very easy category routing system built-in to my blogging software. To route an item to a category, I just right-click and choose a category from a hierarchy of menus. I can’t imagine that it could be easier. Yet I don’t do it.

It’s also very easy to add a new category, or to even reorganize my whole taxonomy. Never do those things either.

A picture named billg.jpgI have a theory that it’s like desktop calendar software, which people were very excited about in 1985 or so (they called them Personal Information Managers or PIMs). Seemed like every new Mac software product had a calendar in it. John Sculley and Mitch Kapor were singing their praises. Users got all excited about them too, and set them up imagining how great it was going to be to finally have an orderly life. They happily entered appointments, until they spaced out or got lazy and didn’t enter one. All it takes is one for the excitement to turn to guilt. You don’t even want to look at the thing because you screwed up. Quickly you never use it. I’ve seen this happen both in my own work, and in others.

The category stuff works the same way. At first I delighted in the ease of routing stuff to categories. Eventually I would only route to one or two categories, and then I stopped altogether. Not because it wasn’t easy enough, but because the guilt had taken over.

People like Dave and others are basing their guilt on a fundamental misconception, however, that categorizing posts has value only if you do it to every single post. But adding metadata has value even if you only end up tagging 1 in 50 posts or 1 in 100 posts.

I’m a categorization freak, but I am also fundamentally lazy and sometimes I just don’t feel like categorizing my posts. So, I don’t. For example, all of the articles on this page are ones that I was just too lazy to bother categorizing when I posted them. And that’s okay.

Even a little metadata can add a lot of value. For example, you might be a hockey fanatic and decide, you know, that the only posts you really care to tag are the ones related to hockey. Why should you feel guilty over not obsessively categorizing everything? You shouldn’t. Go on with your life. Get over it.

The other error I think a lot of people are making is assuming that tags only have value in relation to services like Del.icio.us and Technorati, etc. The single best use of a categorization scheme is to present a page or pages on your site that show, for example, all of your posts about hockey or, taking it to the next level, having an RSS feed of all of your posts about hockey.

What’s the payoff? Traffic. The one thing that most bloggers share is they seem to want more traffic. From my experience, tagging posts and then aggregating them on topical pages will drive traffic to your blog/web site like nothing else. I am definitely not an A-list blogger and get very little traffic directly from other bloggers, but I’m currently averaging about 40,000 page views/day thanks to search engine friendly topical pages.

Of course most people probably aren’t as interested in obsessively categorizing everything as I do, but sites I run where I have done only minimal categorizing, that categorizing has helped push the traffic levels to relatively high numbers compared to what I see other bloggers — even very popular ones — out there reporting they receive.

Fur Stores — Activist Protest Helped Increase Sales

A couple of Guerneville, California fur stores recently claimed than an end-of-year protest by a local animal rights group help send their Christmas sales through the roof.

Mikki Herman of Kings & Queens Vintage Clothing in Guerneville told The Press Democrat that the publicity from newspaper and television coverage of the protests helped drive her seasonal sales. Herman told The Press Democrat,

It’s so amazing. A lot of people came in to support me and shop in Guerneville. Some people who were buying a fur said they never thought to buy a fur, but they felt a compulsion to make a statement.

Jennifer Neely of Memories That Linger told The Press Democrat that although customers stayed away during the first few days of the protest, sales spiked shortly afterward,

I had a bunny farmer come in and spend $300 on Christmas ornaments. You couldn’t buy publicity like this.

However, Alex Bury of Sonoma People for Animal Rights dismissed the claims of increased sales, chalking it up to friends and family of the store owners who wanted to make a statement. Bury told The Press Democrat,

Our tourist base is very progressive. They won’t want to see furs or fur protests.

. . .

We’re getting tons of e-mails and phone calls from people who want to get involved. What the last few weeks of protest have shown me is that most locals are against fur. We’re going to represent them and animals suffering in traps and continue to ask for fur to be removed.

Which is interesting because, according to The Press Democrat,

In recent weeks, counter protesters have shown up at the protests carrying their own signs and supporting merchants’ and consumers’ rights to buy and sell what they choose.

Source:

Merchants say fur protests backfired. Carol Benfell, The Press Democrat, December 31, 2004.

Anti-Fur Activists Get Naked in South Korea

Anti-fur activists with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals held a nude demonstration in Seoul, South Korea, to protest fur.

Lisa Franzetta and Christina Cho painted their bodies with leopard prints and carried signs reading, “Only Animals Should Wear Fur.”

The protest lasted only briefly, however, before police showed up and forced the two into a police car. The Chosun Ilbo quoted an unnamed police officer as saying,

We thought about charging them with a criminal count of putting on an obscene performance, but we judged that to be too severe, so we are considering plans to write them up for a misdemeanor such as exposure and deporting them.

Sources:

Animal rights group plans naked rally Friday. The Chosun Ilbo, January 6, 2005.

Naked Animal Rights’ Rally Grinds Downtown Seoul to a Halt. The Chosun Ilbo, January 7, 2005.

Activists protest fur clothing in downtown Seoul? The China Post, January 8, 2005.

Judge Rejects William Cottrell Appeal

A judge this month rejected an appeal for a new trial by convicted arsonist William Cottrell.

Cottrell, 24, was convicted on 8 of 9 charges related to the August 2003 arson of SUVs at a California car dealership. The arson was claimed by the Earth Liberation Front.

Cottrell’s lawyers initially wanted to offer a defense based on Cottrell’s autism diagnosis. They wanted to argue that he had diminished culpability for the crimes because his autism made it difficult for him to understand what he was getting involved in.

The trial judge ruled that the Cottrell could not use the autism defense, but after his conviction his lawyers appealed asking for a new trial on the grounds that the judge should have allowed the autism defense.

Instead, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner denied Cottrell’s request, essentially finding that the trial judge was correct that Cottrell’s autism was irrelevant in determining Cottrell’s guilt or innocence.

Cottrell is scheduled to be sentenced March 7.

Source:

Judge rejects bid for new trial by convicted arsonist. Associated Press, January 3, 2005.