Sam I am

Email down

My website and email provider, Dreamhost, is having issues delivering email; I haven't received anything in the last 12 hours. If you need to reach me, you can contact me at <first initial><lastname>@gmail.com or via Facebook instead. If it isn't fixed at Dreamhost within 24 hours, I'll be switching email providers. Don't throw away that unhinged.org or samgreenfield.com address!

UPDATE: of course immediately after making this post, my email started working again. Please continue to use my standard email addresses.

Labels: technology

Alpha Geek

I just watched last week's episode of Battlestar Galactica on hulu.com on my San Francisco to JFK flight on Virgin America using wireless ethernet from Gogo Inflight Internet at 37,000 feet.

Labels: technology, travel

"I feel the need for speed"

I'm on another flight from New York City to San Francisco on Virgin flight 25. Like my American Airlines flight a few weeks ago, this flight has Internet service from Gogo. The speed is still fairly respectable:


Shortly after I returned from my last trip to San Francisco, my Verizon Fios installation was finally completed. The installer was prompt and professional. Interestingly, it turns out that the last installer who visited my apartment could have done the installation; he did not realized that fiber was already pulled to my apartment. The setup for Fios is interesting. There are direct pre-terminated fiber pulls from the basement of my apartment building to just outside of each apartment. The installer drilled a small hole into my coat closet in the apartment from the hallway cable run.

The fiber was plugged into an Optical Network Terminal (ONT), which acts as a bridge between the fiber media and a choice of 100Base-T Ethernet, MOCA, or plain old telephone service (POTS). The ONT comes packaged with a battery backup. I was a bit surprised to see that only a single strand of fiber was pulled into my apartment--most of the networking I have worked with uses two strands of fiber. I am using the 100Base-T Ethernet connection to a wireless router; hopefully I will later use the coax connection for television. Verizon plans on introducing TV service to my building in the third quarter of 2009.

Here was the network performance with Time Warner Cable Roadrunner:


Here was the network performance with Verizon Fios:


I have had no outages with Verizon Fios, and despite the pain of scheduling installation, I'm very happy with the performance so far. Now I need to make sure that the sites I use to store files have sufficient incoming bandwidth. For a well-connected site, the performance is very good. I was able to download a 145 MB trailer for Watchmen with no noticeable delay.

Labels: technology

Panama canal (or in time-lapse: Pnmcnl)

Telstar Logistics found a time-lapse video of a ship navigating through the Panama Canal. The entire video is captivating. For whatever reason, I'm fascinated that locks actually work.

A good friend of mine is coming back from Panama this weekend. If the photos on Facebook are any indication, I think she had a good time. Welcome back, APJ!

Labels: oceans, Panama, technology

Tripit saves me

I use Tripit to manage my travel. It's a service to consolidate all of your travel plans. Whenever you receive mail from an airline, hotel, or other travel service, you simply forward the mail to plans@tripit.com. Tripit will automatically read all of the information from your mail and create an itinerary for you. It also allows your to share your plans with other people, and you can add the plans to iCal or Google calendar automatically.

Today, Tripit really saved me. I booked a trip to San Francisco last week for next Tuesday through the end of the month. Or so I thought. When I went on Tripit to view my plans, I saw that there were two itineraries: one for the hotel and one for the flight. This was odd, since Tripit will combine locations that occur on the same dates. On closer inspection, I was dismayed to find out that I had booked the flights for March instead of February; I hadn't noticed earlier since the days and dates of February and March are identical!

I was able to rebook by tickets on Virgin America without paying any change fees. I only had to play a higher rate for the outgoing flight.

I would say that I was lucky to catch the mis-booked flights, but it wasn't luck at all. It was the design of Tripit that alerted me to my mistake.

Labels: technology, travel

Blogging from the plane

I'm currently on American Airline flight #15 en route from New York City (JFK) to San Francisco. The plane is wired with wifi from Gogo inflight internet. It's a good connection. Speedtest.net reported a ping latency of 144 ms, download speeds of almost 2 Mbps and upload speeds of over 300 kbps. Both SSH and VPN worked without a problem, and there was no issue with typical web usage or instant messaging. I fired up Skype, and while I was able to connect to the Skype services, voice service was not usable. Video from YouTube was great, but I was unable to find any sites where live streaming video worked well. (However, that might be an issue with my computer in general.)

samg@flywithme:~$ ping samgreenfield.com
PING samgreenfield.com (208.113.245.235) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=644 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=389 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=270 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=4 ttl=44 time=170 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=5 ttl=44 time=264 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=6 ttl=44 time=560 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=7 ttl=44 time=564 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=8 ttl=44 time=323 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=9 ttl=44 time=533 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=10 ttl=44 time=508 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=11 ttl=44 time=950 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=12 ttl=44 time=765 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=13 ttl=44 time=934 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=14 ttl=44 time=704 ms
64 bytes from apache2-grog.nexus.dreamhost.com (208.113.245.235): icmp_seq=15 ttl=44 time=883 ms

--- samgreenfield.com ping statistics ---
16 packets transmitted, 15 received, 6% packet loss, time 15101ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 170.832/564.688/950.614/241.978 ms

Labels: technology

Don't shout at your hard-drives

I guess it is a bad idea to yell at your servers: "Brendan Gregg from Sun's Fishworks team makes an interesting discovery about inducing disk latency."

Check out the high resolution version at YouTube if you want to see the charts on the screen.
In essence: yelling => vibration => disk latency

Labels: technology

Verizon: fun with FiOS

Last week I decided to order Verizon Fios. I've been tired of Time Warner Cable's anti-competitive practices, their poor customer service, and their flaky appointments. In addition, Verizon Fios offers high-speed Internet for the home; I decided to order their 20 Mbps upload and 20 Mbps download package. (Compared with TWC, this is quite a different; my maximum download speed has been 10 Mbps and my maximum upload speed has been 1 Mbps.)

Signing up with Verizon should have been easy. On Monday, I went to their website, picked the correct package, chatted with the online service rep. and scheduled my installation. I confirmed with my manager that I could work from home on Friday to accommodate Verizon's very large installation window of 8 am through 5 pm.

A few hours after signing up, I received a phone call from Verizon: they did not have the CSC code from my credit card. I know I entered my credit card information correctly, and I am not in the habit of giving out private credit card information to random incoming calls. So I let them know I would call back. When I called back, it turned out that Verizon had no record of my order at all. Apparently, when I did not give them my CSC code the order was canceled completely.

This wasn't a huge problem, I thought and we were able to create a new order and reschedule the installation for the same date. The only minor snafus were when the Verizon representative attempted to get additional personal identifying information from me, such as my birth date and social security number. When I asked why they wanted that information, I was told it was totally unnecessary.

After the phone order was completed, I received email from Verizon confirming my order. Then, I received a phone call confirming my appointment. And finally, a few hours later, I received another phone call from the New York dispatcher's office confirming my appointment. The next day, I also confirmed the appointment online.

Yesterday, I sat around my house trying to do work. Unfortunately, I found out that my company's VPN solution does not play nicely with my cable modem, so I was only able to read email. Around 2 pm, I decided to check with Verizon to make sure they were still coming. And after navigating their phone tree and waiting on hold, at 2:30 pm I was told that I would get a call back within two hours.

At 4:30, my phone rang. It was Verizon telling me that my appointment had been scheduled and then canceled at 7:57 am. Needless to say, I was a big annoyed by this revelation. There was no explanation for the missed appointment, nor any guarantee of credit. (For what it's worth, New York City has regulations where if a cable company misses an installation appointment, they must perform free installation and give one free month of service. Verizon was trying to get this provision waived for Fios.)

I scheduled another appointment for Saturday from 8 am through noon. At 12:05 pm, since no one from Verizon had shown up, I gave them a call again. I got through to a rep around 12:15 pm and was told I would get a call back by 1. At 1 pm, I called again--I was told that they were running two hours late.

And now we get to 2 pm. A Verizon tech just arrived at my apartment. He has never wired a large co-op apartment before and does not know where to put the ONT or the power supply. His current proposal is to drill a large hold in my closet wall to access the apartment power supply. At best, that would look terrible, so he is going to make a few calls to see what he should be doing.

I'm going to file complaints with New York City DoITT, my council member, and probably the FCC--this kind of service is absurd. I'm curious to see if I'm going to get anywhere near of a good resolution.

Update 2:41 pm: I've spoken with the technician who has come to install Fios. Like all of the people I've dealt with at Verizon, he is smart and enthusiastic. Unfortunately, the Verizon management has over-scheduled the techs and not given them the equipment they need. In this case, the tech was sent out without the equipment to thread the fiber from the main distribution point on my floor to my apartment. We're waiting to see if he can get the equipment needed.

I'm not sure what's so hard with this installation. Everyone I've dealt with is professional and pleasant, and it's unfortunate that the employees seem hobbled by poor management. Verizon, you seem to have good product and good people! Why is this experience so unpleasant?

Update 4:30 pm: The technician from Verizon did not have the equipment he needed to perform the installation in my apartment. (He needed a tool to thread the fiber from the floor wire closet to my apartment.) His manager did not call him back, and he had to leave at 3:30 pm. (Verizon is not authorizing overtime.) I spoke with Verizon after he left for a bit, and I now have an appointment for February 1st. Who knows if they will be showing up. As I wrote before, I filed complaints with DoITT, the FCC, and my city council member. It will be interesting to see what kind of response I get. Hopefully, the official complaints will prompt change from the senior management of Verizon to run a tighter ship and bring some better management to their dispatcher teams. Also, note to Verizon: don't overbook appointment slots.

Ironically, I would be a much happier customer if Verizon had proactively called me to cancel or reschedule the appointment. I know it's a shocking idea for a phone company.

Labels: New York, technology

Life photo archive now available

Google recently announced that Life had published their photo collection on their system. It's a project Life was working on while I was still at Time Inc, and it's beautiful collection of photography. Most of the Life photos have been buried in the basement of Time Inc. for years; limited digital versions were only available internally to Time Inc. on clunky systems. It's great that the images are now available to everyone in the world.

I'm curious about some aspects of the Life collection. The collection includes a large number of images from the Apollo missions with a copyright attributed to Time Inc. From visiting the NASA web sites, I've always thought that the NASA images were either in the public domain, copyright NASA (and by extension the people of the United States), or copyright another space agency. It was a bit surprising to see images like the classic image of Buzz Aldrin next to the American flag with a Life watermark and Time Inc. copyright, especially when the original image is available at the Great Images in NASA web site. (High resolution images are also available.) I've dropped a note to the NASA public affairs office at NASA for some clarification; it's entirely possible that NASA and Time Inc. signed an agreement regarding the copyright years ago. One of the wins of having the Life collection available is that there are images now published that were not previously available on NASA's website. For example, I was unable to find this specific image of Earth from Apollo 10 on the NASA site, even though there are other images from around the same time at the Kennedy Space Center site.

I was surprised to see that Life is selling physical copies of images with celebrities. I assume they are sharing the proceeds of the physical copies with the photographers if they do not own all of the rights, but were they able to secure model releases from celebrities? For example, you can purchase a framed copy of the Time cover image of Michael Jordan by Walter Iooss Jr., or a red-carpet photo of Elle MacPherson with a happy clown. (Surprisingly, the Elle MacPherson photo is uncredited.) Historically, one of the problems photographers and organizations have had in monetizing their photo collections has been issues of photographer rights and model releases, so I'm curious how Life managed to research and clear the photos.

Overall, having the Life collection online is a good thing for professional photographers, researchers, and the public at large. The photography of Life would not be possible without the fundamental freedoms and innovation of the United States, and it's great that they are able to share their fruits of their labor.

Labels: photographers, technology

NY Times Dining section starts continuous publishing

Weekly sections in newspapers have generally run their content on a weekly cycle. (Hence the name "weekly.") The New York Times has just made the decision to start publishing content for their Dining section on a continuous basis. It's fairly exciting, and it's great to see a newspaper like The New York Times adapt to a continuous publishing cycle.

Labels: food, technology

Coverage of Google TOS and Picasa

PC World wrote an article on Google's TOS. Portions of the story focused on how the terms apply to products like Picasa. The story was picked up by Slashdot.

Labels: technology

New Google Blog post; same TOS

Google has again attempted to clarify its terms of service on its blog. Mike Yang, at Official Google Blog: Making terms of service clearer writes:

To be clear: our terms do not claim ownership of your content -- what you create is yours and remains yours. But in lawyer-speak, we need to ask for a "license" (which basically means your permission) to display this content to the wider world when that's what you intend.

I don't believe Google has ever attempted to "claim ownership" of content; my comments have always been about the specific terms of the license. Yang goes on to discuss other license agreements; he includes links to the terms of service for Amazon, Ebay, and Facebook.

Amazon and eBay both claim broad rights to content posted on their services; they do not limit these rights in any substantive manner. With respect to products, this makes sense on a certain level--Amazon and eBay have a vested interest in attempting to sell their users' products as much as possible. I question why these rights need to be perpetual and irrevocable, but it's fairly clear to me that if the companies do well, the sellers on Amazon and eBay receive indirect compensation via higher sales. In Amazon's case, I do not believe it is appropriate that Amazon retains all of the rights to reviews and comments posted by their users; however, I don't post comments or reviews on Amazon.

Facebook, who has been reviled for their terms of service (see here and here), has a very consumer-friendly clause in their license agreement with respect to user content. While they do initially claim a perpetual, irrevocable license, the terms of service go on to state:

If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

Worded another way, Facebook won't use your content at all if you "remove" it, but they don't want to be responsible from deleting your content in the form of "archived copies" from their servers.

The solution for Google remains the same: remove the "promote" term, and modify their "irrevocable" and "perpetual" license to allow people to terminate the license unless the user is explicitly warned at the time of submitting their content. If anything, I would like to see Google's base terms of service provide for a lesser set of rights; additional terms of service for other products could be used to increase these rights rather than limit these rights.

I am disappointed that Yang chose to contrast Google's terms of service with those of eBay and Amazon: the companies are distinctly different than Google. Google's comparison with Facebook is a bit more apt, but as I just pointed out, the Facebook license can be terminated by the creator of the content.

I've made quite a few posts on this topic, but it's an important issue to me. First, I feel that people should be aware of what happens to the works they create when they upload them to the Internet. Penalties for copyright infringement for unregistered works in the United State are fairly weak as it is, and once you grant a company or person an perpetual and irrevocable license you have absolutely no way to ask people to stop using your material. Second, I like Google as a company and I enjoy using their services. I would like them to succeed, and I believe that these kinds of problems can hinder Google in the long run. As distinct from some other companies, I believe Google tries to operate in a clear and open manner, and I would like them to continue to do so.

Labels: technology

Google TOS doesn't jive with Google Blog

Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel at Google, posted the following on the Official Google Blog: Update to Google Chrome's terms of service:

So to show a blog, we ask the user to give us a license to the blog's content. (The same goes for any other service where users can create content.) But in all these cases, the license is limited to providing the service. In Gmail, for example, the terms specifically disclaim our ownership right to Gmail content. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, he does not explain why the license is perpetual and irrevocable. (It's not an insurmountable technical issue; the terms for YouTube are neither perpetual nor irrevocable.) And what he states appears to directly contradict the Terms of Service Section 11:

This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services[...] [Emphasis added]

Google is a great company, and I hope they address this issue with their Terms of Service soon. The short term fix would be to remove the phrase "and promote;" they could address the "perpetual" and "irrevocable" portions later.

Labels: technology

New license agreement for Picasa

Google received a lot of grief for attempting to apply their standard terms of service to Google Chrome, their new web browser. Google has reacted by modifying the End User License Agreement. Section 11, which used to transfer rights to Google as per the standard Terms of Service, has been modified to read:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Kudos to Google for making the change.

Unfortunately, Google has not addressed the same issue with Picasa Web Albums. Even worse, their new release of the Picasa client, version 3.0, now contains the same poor Terms of Service that the Google Chrome browser used. In short, just by installing the Picasa client on your computer, you give Google rights to your images. It's too bad--I would love to install and play with the Picasa client, but I would prefer not to grant Google "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free" rights to my images to "promote" their service.

Labels: technology

Google terms of service for Picasa

I use Blogger to publish my blog. Recently, after making a post, I noticed that there was an advertisement for Picasa Web Albums for Google in the Blogger interface. I decided to check it out and clicked on the link. I saw a standard Google launching page with a license agreement. I don't generally recall seeing license agreements for many Google services, so I decided to check it out. One interesting aspect of the licensing agreement was that it was nearly impossible to read online--the text was inserted into a HTML form with no line wraps. I had to copy and paste the text into a word processor. (I later found the the Picasa Web Albums TOS on a standalone web-page, but this is not what most users will be agreeing to in their click-through agreement.)

The license agreement contained the standard legal definitions at the top followed by many terms and conditions. One of the definitions was fairly interesting:

1. Your relationship with Google
1.1 Your use of Google’s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the "Services" in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google.

The important part to note here is that "Services" is defined as any product from Google. It's not just Picasa.

Later in the document are these terms:

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services[...]

This is good news, right? Google is not claiming any right to your content. But what about that "limited license" in Section 11?

11. Content licence from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

Section 11 starts out so well: "You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content[...]" but then it takes an odd turn.

In short, you are essentially giving Google rights to your content to promote their services forever in any location for free. In fact, they are also stating that they can grab your content and give it to other companies. And you can't stop them.

You may think that other services have similar terms. Not so. Here is the relevant sections from theTOS from Flickr (Yahoo):

With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.

Yahoo is not grabbing any additional rights than what they need to provide your service. And those rights go away when you remove your cotentn.

Interestingly, while Yahoo does respect your rights towards photos, graphics, audio, and video, they do make a license grab for othercontent:

With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

In other words, don't post a preview of your next novel to a Yahoo group!

Let's also take a look at Apple's Terms of Service for their MobileMe service:

Except for material we may license to you, Apple does not claim ownership of the materials and/or Content you submit or make available on the Service. However, by submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service that are accessible by the public, you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. Said license will terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you or Apple remove such Content from the public area.

It's pretty cut-and-dried. Apple only limits their rights to the ones they need. And once your content is no longer public, the rights terminate. It's very similar to the Flickr license with respect to photos.

What about other Google services? Here is the relevant section in Blogger's TOS:

Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services.

Basically, here Google states that they need a license to distribute your content. However, it is only for the purposes of "displaying and distributing" the services; it is neither "perpetual" nor "irrevocable," nor is it for "promoting" the services. Blogger's terms are very similar to Flickr's terms and Apple's terms.

YouTube has similar language in their terms of service:

C. For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in User Videos terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your User Videos from the YouTube Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of User Submissions that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in User Comments are perpetual and irrevocable.

If you read the terms carefully, YouTube is grabbing a license for both them and anyone else they want to specify "including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website." While they are snagging some promotional rights, as distinct from Picasa Web Albums, the terms are neither "perpetual" nor "irrevocable." In fact, YouTube explicitly states that the licenses terminate after you remove your content. They even reiterated their stance in a blog posting. (Except for your comments--you are pretty much giving YouTube rights to your comments forever.)

What does this mean for a professional photographer? You should think carefully before using Picasa Web Albums to display or store your content. It will most likely decrease the commercial value of your photos, and you will certainly lose a measure of creative control. Since Google is not making a claim of moral rights, you may still retain some control in some countries, but in the United States the terms and conditions that Google uses gives little recourse to photographers.

What does this mean for amateur photographers? If you don't mind who uses your photos, feel free to use Picasa Web Albums. If there are photos of people in the images, Google may not be able to use them if they don't also own model releases anyway. However, be aware that Google could use your photos in just about any way they deem fit, and that you will have limited recourse.

I plan on writing a quick note to Google--in my opinion, this kind of license grabbing is poor behavior. Of course, I'm not a lawyer and may have missed something obvious from the Picasa Web Albums Terms of Service. If I have, please let me know, and I'll be glad to post a correction or even remove this post entirely.

[Edited on 2008-08-20 to add the following]
A Google search for "Picasa Terms Of Service" returns Picasa: Terms of Service as the first link. These terms are similar to the Flickr and Apple TOS. However, I believe this is an outdated terms of service. "Terms of Service" is the highlighted navigation link on the page; clicking on "Program Policies" and then back to "Terms of Service" returns you to the page described above--not the one returned from a Google web search.

Labels: technology

Content Encoding

I believe Firefox 3.x has a problem with the 1.x version of Apache my web host provider is using in conjunction with the caching algorithms and gzip content encoding. Please let me know if you see problems when loading the site.

Labels: technology

PhotoShelter plug

It's been around nine months or so since I started to work at PhotoShelter, and I'm having a great time. When I first started here, we were a company of less than ten people in a small office near Madison Square Park (and Shake Shack). I didn't have a desk as much as I was sharing portions of two other peoples' desks. A month or so after I started, we moved down to Union Square on the second floor of the Decker Building. While we did move away from Shake Shack, we did end up overlooking the Greenmarket in Union Square, one of the first farmer's markets in New York City. We've also grown--there over 25 full-time employees!

I've worked on a lot of interesting projects here. For example, not only have I learned how to use Apple's development environment Cocoa, but also I've learned the intricacies of international tax law and how it applies to royalties. (Do you know what W8-BEN and 1042-S forms are? I do!)

Our largest project in the past year has been the launch of the PhotoShelter Collection, a photo licensing site. Photographers submit their photos to us, and after our editors review the photos the photos are made available for purchase. There are over 15,000 photographers from over 120 countries, and we add over 4,000 images each day. There are many competitors in this market, and our goal is to offer buyers images they can't get elsewhere while respecting photographers by acting in a transparent manner.

We currently have a promotion running where new buyers can get 20% off of any purchases for three months. I think the site is very easy to use as a buyer, and it's even possible to license images for personal use. The Collection does not sell prints or merchandise; the photo is provided as a digital file.

[In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that there is a fun contest in the office as to who can refer the most buyers this month. That being said, please do not flood the site with bogus registrations on my behalf! :-)]

We are also always looking for new photographers to submit images. You can join as a photographer with no risk or costs. We offer photographers a 70% commission on all image sales, and we work with our photographers as well as if not better than any other company in our business. Most of the founders of the company have worked as professional photographers, so we have a strong appreciation for their work and photography in general.

If you are a photographer but aren't interested in having PhotoShelter sell your images through the Collection, you may also want to consider setting up a Personal Archive account. Quite frankly, it's crazy to not back your images off-site if you are a professional photographer. Heck, it's even crazy if you are a hobbyist that really cares about your photos. I feel strongly about this issue: I try to tell every photographer I know that even if they don't store their photos at PhotoShelter, then at least back them up with one of our competitors. PhotoShelter allows you to set up a free account with 50MB of storage space, so you can easily check it out without paying anything. And, if you decide to go with the Standard or Pro accounts, you can integrate PhotoShelter into your own website with e-commerce.

One of our recent hires is Rachel Hulin; she is in charge of Shoot the Blog! I read it throughout the day--her commentary is spot on. Without the blog, I would have never run across this photo shoot with a lion.

PhotoShelter is a great company to work for. The folks here are smart, the location is terrific, and we try to do the right thing. I believe in our products, and hope that other folks like using our site as much as I enjoy working here.

Labels: PhotoShelter, technology

Schneier rebuttal

Last week, I wrote about the Mike McConnell profile in The New Yorker. In the profile, Ed Giorgio characterized security and privacy as a zero-sum game. This week, Bruce Schneier wrote an eloquent rebuttal to Giorgio's assertion. Schneier's thesis is concisely stated: "The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control." His points are on the money, and I wish more people in the United States heeded his words.

[Schneier's essay was also posted to wired.com.]

Labels: politics, technology

Mike McConnell

The January 22nd issue of The New Yorker (last week) has an in-depth profile by Lawrence Wright on the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell. All executive-branch intelligence departments report to McConnell in one way or another. "The Spymaster" discusses many topics including: the use of torture, defending the U.S. infrastructure against cyber-attacks from foreign countries, FISA, security screening, the state of IT in our intelligence agencies, and the balance of privacy versus spying. I was not able to find an online version, but it is worth picking up a copy at your local newsstand or visiting the library. (If you decide to read this issue, also check out article on the MySpace hoax and subsequent suicide.

Some quotes from the McConnell profile include:

• The fantasy worlds that Disney creates have a surprising amount in common with the ideal universe envisaged by the intelligence community[...]
  
• [McConnell said] "If the 9/11 perpetrators had focussed on a single U.S. bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order-of-magnitude greater impact on the U.S. economy"
  
• [Ed Giorgio, a security consultant who ran both the code-breaking and code-making departments at the N.S.A., said] "There are forty thousand Chinese hackers who are collecting intelligence off U.S. information systems[...] We should never get into a hacking war with the Chinese."
  
• [On the definition of waterboarding as torture] The reason that he couldn't be more specific, McConnell said, is that "if it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."
  
• [On being asked if Al Qaeda was America's greatest threat] "No, no, no, not at all" [McConnell] said. "Terrorism can kill a lot of people, but it can't fundamentally challenge the ability of the nation to exist."
  

Wright also briefly discusses his own experience of being tapped by the U.S. government and visited by the FBI. McConnell's response, while noncommittal, is quite interesting.

The article is 18 pages and required reading for anyone interested in U.S. policies regarding spying and privacy, and the agencies responsible for implementing those policies. It's thought provoking and provides valuable insights into the man most responsible for spying in the world.

I originally submitted this to Slashdot, but they didn't run the piece. Today they ran a one paragraph story on a one screen response on arstechnica.com to a single quote from the 18-page New Yorker article. Not surprisingly, The New Yorker article is better than either the Slashdot or ArsTechnica pieces. It has better writing, more sources, a higher quality of analysis, and a broader scope.

[Update: included link to article abstract. Thanks, Faisal!]

Labels: politics, technology

Apple: fairly evil, mostly harmless

I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: Apple is just as "evil" as Microsoft, just not as successful.

From the parody blog site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs comes the following four posts:

• I'm weighing an offer from Apple
• So now Apple is all pissed off
• First carrot, now stick
• I'm feeling a little bit better now

[Link via /.]

Labels: technology

Broken camera

In the past week, I noticed that the auto-focus on the camera was acting a bit chunkier and some of the images were a little soft. Sunday morning, I was out with Sharon taking photos of hairy crab before I left. I took my photos and then put the camera in my pocket. A few minutes later, I saw folks practicing tai chi. I grabbed my camera from my pocket, and the lens started to come out of the camera and then stopped. It now makes an interesting grinding noise whenever I try to use the camera. And the lens is stuck out.

The camera cost over $300 or $400 when I purchased it. Now, just a little over two years later, it's no longer available. A much better camera is $260. It would cost around $120 to repair my camera and I wouldn't have it for three weeks. I'm thinking of trying to repair it myself.

Anyone have any recommendations on a new camera? The Canon SD850 IS is $260 at Circuit City.

(In other news, I seem to be having a bad technology day. My receiver is now producing an odd hum on my speakers, even if all of the sound sources are unplugged. I may need to buy a new receiver. And my desktop machine had a failed hard drive--I think the power supply may be underpowered.)

Labels: technology

Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again - New York Times

From the New York Times, Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again:

Twitter, a company in San Francisco that lets users alert friends to what they are doing at any given moment over their mobile phones, recently raised an undisclosed amount of financing. Its co-founder and creative director, Biz Stone, says that the company was not currently focused on making money and that no one in the company was even working on how to do so.

"At the moment, we're focused on growing our network and our user experience," he said. "When you have a lot of traffic, there's always a clear business model."

Translation: we lose money on each customer, but we make it up on the volume.

Labels: technology

Interesting survey

A friend of mine is running a Privacy Policy Study. Sam sez goes fill it out. You could win a gift certificate for $250.

Labels: technology

Sports Illustrated and the Final Four

Read about what I helped to accomplish in Atlanta in Microsoft's two articles on Sports Illustrated and the Final Four: Part 1, Part 2.

Labels: Sports Illustrated, technology, work

How I tie my shoes

I switched how I tied my shoes last weekend. I got tired of having the laces slip apart, so I visited Ian's Shoelace Site. It's a very nice site, except for his habit of naming everything on his site after him. I am now using Ian's Secure Shoelace knot to tie my shoes, and it seems to work much better than the old way I tied my shoes.

That being said, half of the reason why I am writing this post is that Clinky has a reason to mock me. I would feel bad if he had nothing to do.

Labels: technology

Drives me crazy...

I hate it when a columnist or talking head for a major news outlet complains how "big media" or "mainstream media" is ignoring an issue. For example, Lou Dobbs wrote a column for CNN, Dobbs: Big media hide truth about immigration, stating:

And the mainstream media are complicit in advancing this thinly veiled blanket amnesty.

Let's take a quick look at some facts from Lou Dobbs's entry on Wikipedia:

• Has worked for CNN since its inception
• Served on the board of the Society for Professional Journalists
• Member of the Overseas Press Club and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

Let's also consider CNN:

• News website and 24-hour news network
• Part of Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world

What drives me nuts is that Lou Dobbs is a representative of the mainstream media. By writing about a topic, he cannot in good faith say that mainstream media is ignoring a topic--he is mainstream media.

Labels: technology

Fun with mail

In March, I received 56,751 pieces of mail. This includes mail to me at samgreenfield.com and mail to the unhinged.org domain that I do not forward off. unhinged.org contains a catch-all. Of the 56,751 pieces of mail, I immediately discarded 25,808. These messages were obviously bogus for one reason or another and also include bounced messages that were forged from my domains.

27,058 pieces of mail were classified as spam by Spam Assasin and were filed into a Junk folder that I never check. I read most of the remaining 3,885 messages on gmail. Gmail does a pretty great job of filtering out spam, so I only skim through the messages in the Junk folder there. However, I do save a record of the messages, and in the end assesment I was left with around 531 messages that I would consider "legitimate."

But it gets even better. Of the 531 messages that I consider real, 430 of them are what we would traditionally considered on the verge of junk mail. For example, I received 11 messages from Sears in the month of March. I'm not counting "real" email such as billing notifications in the 430 messages.

At the very end of the day, I'm left with 101 email messages that I consider worth reading. Or 0.18% of the mail I receive through my personal accounts.

Labels: technology

Cool new Google maps feature

Google Maps now displays buildings and subways in the map view! This is really cool. You can actually see an outline of my building if you search for 175 Adams Street; 11201. As you can see, I am very close to the "A" train. Unfortunately, what the map doesn't show you is that the subway extends for two blocks in either direction; an entrance to the subway is right on my street, and you don't have to cross the street to enter.

My brother works with Google Maps, so buy him a beer next time you see him.

Thanks to the DreamHost Blog for noticing this!

Labels: technology

Blog for Choice day

The Blog That Ate Manhattan is written by a doctor in Manhattan. Today, she blogged about becoming pro-choice on her post, Making Choices. I also appreciated her post last year, Doing the Work that Has To Be Done.

If you support reproductive rights, I suggest volunteering at or giving money to your local Planned Parenthood affiliate. In New York City, that would be Planned Parenthood of New York City.

Labels: technology