Archives for December 2005

Found this on Slashdot.org today: " Metadata in Vista Could Be Too Helpful."

In part:

"Windows Vista will improve search functionality on a PC by letting
users tag files with metadata, but those tags could cause unwanted and
embarrassing information disclosure, Gartner analysts have warned. Search and organization capabilities
are among the primary features of Windows Vista, the successor to
Windows XP due out late in 2006. While building those features,
Microsoft is not paying enough attention to managing the descriptive
information, or metadata, that users can add to files to make it easier
to find and organize data on a PC, according to Gartner. ‘This opens up
the possibility of the inadvertent disclosure of this metadata
to other users inside and outside of your organization,’ Gartner
analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald wrote in a research note
published on Thursday."

Well, okay, that’s ‘in whole’, but the idea doesn’t change with that (the links are live and very much worth checking out.) The question remains for at least some of us with a touch of paranoia like myself (can I have a show of hands? Oh, come on, I know there are more of you  out there than that . . . come on . . . you three in the back, let’s see those hands  . . . I thought so . . . yeah, that’s more like it), which is more desirable, secure data or hyper-sensitive search capability?

I know most people who come into the Academy library are not metadata whizzes. Some of them are: the professional researchers know the differences between searching for authors, title, subject, call number, and keyword, and they tend to devise very carefully scripted search strategies to make use of this knowledge. I’m willing to bet, though, that most people (more than 75% I’d roughly guess) use the title or the author (title is more common in my experience) and the keyword searches are by far the most common from what I’ve seen. This is not a problem per se, as long as one is willing to acknowledge that they keyword searches are the least likely to return useful results: you will get results, several tens of thousands of them (up to millions if you use Google or Yahoo! or another major search engine.)

So with this in mind, has anyone thought to do a study on how people utilize search patterns on their desktops at work and/or home? I’m not sure how one would design such a study–I know there have been a number of studies that track how people search at library computers, but those may not help us here because there’s no way of knowing if those same people are searching for data different at the library, where the systems are set up by librarians and their IT departments, than they are on their home PCs, where they are either customizing their desktops or, more often, and therefore more likely, using whatever searching software was given to them by Microsoft or Apple.

My point is that most people are not all that computer savvy, and so they probably don’t put much thought into how to search for data, or even what data they should be searching for on a given project.  Which I think makes this question of trading off security for descriptive power even more important. (Deep down, I’d like this to not be a question of trading off one for the other but I haven’t been able to imagine how other than to think that technology companies should probably be thinking about security issues before they think about features. Yet.) What does worry me is the fact that Microsoft (with Vista) and Apple (through Sherlock), and Google (through Google Desktop) and other companies I can’t think of right now are developing these search strategies for us by creating search interfaces that are becoming more powerful (or rather potentially powerful, considering that most people won’t use them to fullest advantage.) Is that wise? Considering that people will generally buy convenience and cool features before security, is there anything to be done for it? And if so, then what?

Does this make any sense? Or am I just being paranoid?

Another fast update from the other day: Charles H. Featherstone writes this in response to the fact that all reading is apparently now suspect by the lovely folks in the U.S. government. Or, at least all the material that’s worth reading. (Yes, I think Mao’s "Little Red Book" is worth reading. If you  care about understanding modern Chinese history, anyway.  I don’t understand how someone can figure out modern American history without understanding what was happening in China over the same period of time and why. But, perhaps I’m just strange that way.)

Anyway, I thought this article from Michael Masterson was appropriate, seeing as how readers really do keep us in business, at least to some extent.  As I went over this one, it occurred to me that very few of the people I know in general really like to read as a recreational activity, other than my immediate family (including my in-laws).  So I wonder just how common recreational reading is these days.  Reasons that I bother to wonder are phrases I come across from average, every-day folk. Things like:

"Looks like we got a reader here. Hey, fella, what’cha reading for?"

"The boy’s a real bookworm, huh? Better than drugs, I guess."

"Your son’s a writer? Ah, well, I guess they can’t all be brain surgeons, can they?"

(Yes, these are all real quotes, and thanks to the late Bill Hicks, Chris Borecky from the Academy’s Access department, and my late, though not as late as Bill Hicks father respectively for providing them.)

The ugliest part of these sorts of left-handed compliments is that the people who say them are almost never being sarcastic or obnoxious when they do. They’re perfectly honest, well-meaning people who can’t imagine reading being anything but hard, unpleasant work. They can’t imagine that reading for fun can be, well, fun. That’s not necessarily bad . . . lots of people enjoy things that I can’t imagine volunteering for–skydiving comes to mind. Bungee jumping is another. But IME, people don’t generally mock you for skydiving or bungee jumping, they just stare and say "Wow!" or "Why would you do that?" or such like. Even if they don’t understand, they’re likely to respect you for it.

These same people view reading, especially reading for enjoyment, more like a waste of time, or at least time spent doing something less important than, say making money. Now, if you’re all about making a buck (possibly making serious big bucks, which I don’t) and you’re really good at it, that’s great. You’ve got a right to scoff if you’re really talented, and making money is a highly valued skill in this current place and time, so laugh away. If not, well, it’s your preference vs. mine, isn’t it? And maybe my particular preference is to learn a bit more about the world or some subject in it by reading instead of watching the tube or whatever. There’s nothing wrong with the tube (although Neil Postman would say otherwise), but how the average American watches 8 hours of it each day, I’ll never know.

As to MM’s view of the literary crowd, I admit I’ve drifted farther and farther away from that segment of society since I left college. I admit I’ve forgotten most of what I learned in various English classes, but I kept up my writing, which is what I concentrated on at QC.  I like to think that it keeps me sharp, even if I have been relying more and more on spell checkers.

Enough rambling.  Read, damn you! READ!

[Read more…] about The End of Literature?

All four of my dedicated readers know that I like to keep track of Google links. Well, this one is from William Anderson writing from the Mises Institute (two words for those who’ve never heard of it: "libertarian economics") on the potential for Google’s despoiling at the hands of anti-trust bearing politicians. His point seems to be that such things are more driven by politics than anything else, and that Google has few political friends in a position to help them out if need be. I don’t agree with all his points but I agree that politics drives a lot of silly legislation.

And as I keep saying, I have no doubt the folks at Google can do everything they say they’re going to do.  I merely doubt that they’ve correctly estimated how expensive it will turn out to be for them.

Anyway, here’s the link. Enjoy!

I picked this up from Andy, who picked it up from Alan . . . I get som many things from Andy’s site by way of his readers that had I not already listed him on the Economics typelist, I’d be tempted to sneak his wite onto the typelist for Library resources. Good stuff. Like this.

Anyway, from Andy:

NEWSPAPERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
"The way they really look (and zoomable for tired eyeballs). Thanks, Alan! Click here and take the rest of the day off to peruse 225 papers."

From JF: Enjoy!

The Daily Reckoning has a great tidbit on the history of "Uncle Sam" today, including the fact that there is no copyright on the image used by Army recruiters in World War 1 (government documents generally are not copyrighted, so yeah, that makes sense even though I’ve never really thought much about it. More fool me.)