Month: October 2005

Brisbane City Council Punts on Animal Research Ordinance Until After November Election

The City of Brisbane, California, considered and then deferred a decision on an ordinance that would modify the city’s existing rules on animal research.

Media accounts of the Brisbane animal research proposal are muddy, but Brisbane apparently does not have any sort of ordinance regarding animal research — a company would simply have to get a building permit and comply with zoning and other ordinances. The city was apparently contacted by a company that is interested in building a campus-like animal research facility within the city’s limits, however, and that company suggested that the city update its general development plan to make that explicit.

After much debate and the resignation of a council member that led to a 2-2 vote on the proposal in July, the Brisbane City Council currently has three options. According to a summary produced by the City Attorney,

Ordinance 501 was considered for adoption at the regular Council meeting on September 19, 2005 and the matter was continued to provide staff an opportunity to draft alternative language pertaining to the use of live animals for research and development. The proposed draft now contains 3 separate options concerning this subject. They are as follows:

Option 1: All animal research is a conditional use:

This is the language contained in the proposal Ordinance. It would require that any research and development involving the use of live animals be classified as a conditional use for which a use permit would be required. The activity would need to comply with the performance standards in Subsections 17.20.050.F and 17.21.050.F.

Option 2: All animal research is a permitted use:

This option would restore the existing regulations from the M-1 district which allow any form of research and development (including use of live animals) as a permitted use. The performance standards in Subsections 17.20.050.F and 17.21.050.F would be deleted.

This option would allow any other type of animal research, such as research involving the use of rats, mice or guinea pigs, to be conducted as a permitted use.

Council member Lee Panza told the Bay City News, “We couldn’t decide whether [animal testing] should be outright banned, completely open or have some type of restriction.”

The council will take up the issue again after the November 8 election when there will be a full council of 5 seated and at least two new members.

Source:

Brisbane City Council tables animal-testing issue. Bay City News, October 5, 2005.

United Egg Producers Agrees to Modify “Animal Care Certified” Logo

In October, United Egg Producers agreed to modify the logo it uses to certify egg producers that meet its egg production standards.

The logo had read “Animal Care Certified,” but in 2003 and 2004 the Better Business Bureau found that the logo was deceptive and forwarded a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission which had been dragging its heels in deciding one way or the other on whether or not the wording was deceptive.

United Egg Producers short-circuited that process altogether by deciding to change the logo to read “United Egg Producers Certified” with the tagline, “Produced in compliance with United Egg Producers Animal Husbandry Guidelines.”

Erica Meier of Compassion Over Killing, which has filed a number of lawsuits over the past couple years charging that the “Animal Care Certified” logo was deceptive, told the Washington Post,

Consumers will be able to make more informed buying choices and won’t be duped or deceived into buying eggs that were produced by animal cruelty. They will more than likely opt for eggs labeled as cage-free or free-range.

Meier added in a prepared statement,

While the egg industry’s husbandry guidelines still permit routine animal cruelty, at least the new logo will no longer convey a false message of humane animal care. The industry’s next step should be to amend its guidelines to prohibit battery cages.

Not likely. As United Egg Producers spokesman Mike Head told the Washington Post,

We support cage-free eggs as a choice for consumers. We say, let consumers make their own choice. They are making their choice right now, and 98 percent of them are choosing conventional eggs.

. . .

The program is intact, which for us is a great victory. The only thing that was in question was the words on the logo itself. That’s why we decided, ‘Let’s change the words, because we don’t want a cloud hanging over this.’

Since free range eggs are significantly more expensive than those produced by hens confined to cages, I wouldn’t be the farm on Meier’s prediction of a sudden surge by consumer’s to such eggs because of a slight change of wording on an egg carton logo.

Sources:

Egg Label Changed After Md. Group Complains. Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post, October 4, 2005.

Egg producers group agrees to alter logo, settling complaint. Des Moines Register, October 4, 2005.

Egg producers relent on industry seal. Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York times, October 4, 2005.

Federal Trade Commission Announces End to Misleading Egg Logo. Press Release, Compassion Over Killing, October 4, 2005.

Can Spyware Ever Be A Good Thing?

In posts here and here, Xeni Jardin and Cory Doctorow at Boing! Boing! accuse Blizzard of installing spyware on their customers’ computers and then using “a bunch of PR spin” to justify said spyware. For once, I could not disagree more — if this spyware did not exist, I probably would not be playing World of Warcraft (hmmm…maybe I could get my life back then, and that would not be such a bad thing).

This particular dustup started with Bruce Schneier and Annalee Newitz complaining about a program called Warden that Blizzard runs in the background while a player is online in World of Warcraft. Warden pretty much rummages through your computer and looks at every single process that is running the same time as WoW. It then sends a hash of the process back to servers at Blizzard that compare the hash to known cheat programs. Get caught running a cheat program, and you can look forward to an account ban.

Schneier’s post was the most disappointing, as he has in the past generally talked intelligently about security issues and the need to balance competing interests of security and freedom. Here, though, he’s simply in all out paranoia mode. First, the source he relies on is an article by a programmer who has spent a lot of time trying to create cheats for World of Warcraft and, so far, been frustrated by Blizzard’s proactive approach to detecting and banning cheats. No, this does not invalidate the security concerns, but Schneier could have pointed out the self-serving nature of the summary he posted (I can’t imagine Schneier would let an essay by a Bush administration official on the Patriot act slip by as if it were merely disinterested commentary).

Second, Scheniers’ entire objection to Blizzard’s use of software like Warden is that some other company might abuse such technology,

Several commenters say that this is no big deal. I think that a program that does all of this without the knowledge or consent of the user is a big deal. This is a program designed to spy on the user and report back to Blizzard. It’s pretty benign, but the next company who does this may be less so. It definitely counts as spyware.

This known as the fallacy of the slippery slope. Blizzard’s actions should be judged not on how some hypothetical future company might act, but rather how Blizzard is acting now.

As Schneier concedes, Blizzard is pretty benign. Simply creating a hash for all running processes and running those against a database of hashes of known cheats is a good example of only collecting the very minimum of data needed to prevent cheating. The only area I think Blizzard does deserve criticism is for not making it more explicit that they are doing this. A short, plain English explanation of the process would more than allay all but the most paranoid of users.

In comparison to Schneier’s piece, Newitz’s article is laughable. She writes,

Whoa. That’s taking the anticheating spirit a little too far. I can see booting people out of the game if they’re repeat cheaters, particularly if they’re flushing other players off the servers and ruining the experience for paying customers. But snooping through the computers of innocent gamers looking for the bad apples who have installed a map hack? Give me a break.

Okay, I’m paying $15/month to play this game. If you wait until it is obvious that a player is cheating to boot him, I’ve already quit the game in disgust by that time. Blizzard simply cannot wait until after cheaters have ruined the experience for paying customers, or they won’t have any paying customers. People were pissed off at cheaters on Battle.Net which was free. My wife spends enough time getting ganked by Horde — if she has to worry that she doesn’t even have a chance because they’re using a cheat program, she’d probably go back to Sims 2 and Civ 2.

The thing that really pisses me off is that this is all being done in the name of having fun and playing games. I’m supposed to give up my Fourth Amendment rights in order to ax a bunch of warriors controlled by teenagers in Milwaukee? No thanks. I’d rather go back to playing Dungeons and Dragons, where at least I could roll the dice without the DM reading all my fucking e-mail. Breaking the rules isn’t nice, but this is a game, people — a game! It’s not a matter of national security; nobody is going to get killed except the stupid video game avatars. Do you realize the government would have to have a warrant to get the kind of information Blizzard claims it has the right to suck out of your computer to stop cheaters? Doesn’t that seem a wee bit wrong?

No, it does not seem wrong at all. First, we regularly give up rights in private settings that the government would never be able to force up on us. I visit a local newspaper and magazine store that has a very strict policy requiring patrons to turn off cell phones. Every time I enter the store, I turn off my cell phone. You realize that this is something that the government would have to get a court order to do, don’t you? Doesn’t that seem wrong to just browse a bunch of magazines?

But even this silly analogy is based on a lie. Blizzard is not reading or collecting any e-mail or other person content. It creates a hash of your e-mail program, if you have one open, and transmits that back to its servers. Blizzard is quite clear that Warden does not collect or transmit the sort of information Newitz claims it does. Presumably she chooses to prevaricate on this issue in order to dramatize the horrors of having her Fourth Amendment rights violated.

Source:

A Bugged Game. Annalee Newitz, Alternet, October 4, 2005.

Blizzard Entertainment Uses Spyware to Verify EULA Compliance. Bruce Schneier, October 13, 2005.

Stupidity, Thy Name Is Tom Barrett

So I open up the local rag, The Kalamazoo Gazette, today to the local section and there is a full-color photograph of some Western Michigan University students protesting outside the Kalamazoo Public Library. They’re part of a student group called Students for America, and in the photo they’re carrying signs that say things like, “Preserve American Culture,” “Stop Targeting Our Kids,” and “Promote the Gay Agenda on Your Own Time With Your Own Dime.”

It turns out they are protesting an appearance by author David Levithan who is the author of “Boy Meets Boy,” which, according to the newspaper, “portrays a town where a transgender character named ‘Infinite Darlene’ doubles as football team captain and homecoming queen and where GLBTQ teens — gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning — don’t suffer the stigmas that arise in the real world.” Sure, whatever. My main question is how many more letters are they going to add to GLBT? Wait a few years and it will be GLBTQRSTUVWXYZ (for those are questioning their alphabetic orientation.)

Anyway, back to the main point. First, like most protests, the principal here is simply stupid. The author shows up to talk about how gays, etc. are marginalized, etc. and how do the local paleocons reply? They show up and protest that homosexuals are somehow undermining “American” culture. Way to go guys. You really helped make your opponents’ point.

Second, never ever show up to protest unless you’ve done some basic fact checking and understand what it is you’re going to be protesting against. Remember that sign urging people to promote the “gay agenda . . . on your own dime?” The leader of this collective of idiots elaborates on that point in the Gazette,

Tom Barrett, a founding member of the Western Michigan University group Students for America, a 15-member group that organized the protest, said the group wasn’t protesting the book itself, but was “promoting good, American values.”

“We think it’s wrong,” Barrett said. “We think they shouldn’t be pushing the homosexual agenda with taxpayer dollars. They should do it on their own time with their own dime.”

King said taxpayer dollars did not fund the event or the distribution of the free copies of “Boy Meets Boy” to interested teens.

“The Kalamazoo Community Foundation funded the donation of all the books we had given away beforehand and all the books we gave away tonight,” King said.

The author’s visit also was free, he said.

Damn. You’d think Barrett would have wanted to make sure taxpayer dollars were paying for this event before making that the theme of the protest. Or maybe he just thinks ignorance accompanies intolerance as a “good, American value.”

Source:

Gay-teen-romance author draws fans and protesters. Elizabeth Clark, Kalamazoo Gazette, October 21, 2005.

Cage Match: The Vascular Surgeon vs. The Nursing Home, Round 1

I’ve mentioned my frustration with my grandmother’s vascular surgeon before — the man is by all accounts a fantastic surgeon, but the interaction I have with his office often leaves me exhausted. Today was one such day.

My grandmother had angioplasty and a stent replacement a couple weeks ago. After a week in the hospital she was transferred to a nursing home for physical therapy. Everything was going well as far as I was concerned, until today when I receive a call from the surgeon’s office wanting to discharge her from the nursing home early and have nurses and physical therapists come in to help her out.

That would be a disaster. Although she’s stopped having hallucinations — a problem that always occurs for her after surgery — she is still very confused and not cognitively up to snuff. I visited her today around 12:30 p.m., for example, and she thought it was the middle of the night. And then she tells me about how she just went to a funeral and two of her brothers — both who have been dead for years — got into an argument at the funeral. The surgeon’s office just dismisses this and says once she’s in familiar surroundings that will go away. Not delusions/hallucinations that severe. They will go away eventually, but it seems to take longer and longer after surgery.

Anyway, the real reason they want her to come home is that the surgeon’s office and the nursing home cannot get along about the best way to dress her wound! The surgeon wants them to use a wet-to-dry dressing method. The nursing home simply doesn’t use wet-to-dry dressing methods, arguing that they have higher risks of bacterial cross-contamination and have been supplanted by more recent innovations in wound dressing. The surgeon, however, insists that wet-to-dry is the best solution for avoiding infection — and my grandmother has previously had problems with infections in the areas where the incisions were made for surgery.

A bigger concern for me other than the hallucinations is the physical therapy. My grandmother is well into her 80s and has had multiple such surgeries over the past four years that have really taken a toll on her. She has little incentive or motivation to do the necessary physical therapy while in the nursing therapists will be dismissed in less than a week. Bring her back home and those nurses and physical therapists will be dismissed after a few days. Stay longer while not participating fully in the therapy at the nursing home, however, and she’s racking up incredibly large nursing home bills.

It ends up being just one more thing I resent my father for abandoning any sense of responsibility and leaving my brother and I to care for her at this stage in her life (and my brother doesn’t help for reasons that I understand even if I don’t agree with).

RavensBlight.Com

Ray O’Bannon apparently has a thing for old school horror, and his Raven’s Blight web site has an amazing array of downloadable horror-related content. Among other things, O’Bannon has downloadable PDFs for dozens of paper toys, including an original board game; four full albums of his horror-themed music; and numerous horror-themed PC games. Its just an amazing collection of original materials.