Burningbird's RealTech

A friend sent me a link to a Slate article, How Smart is the Octopus?, discussing how to measure the intelligence of a creature from a completely different world.

So much of our intelligence measuring is based on tools, but tools are, themselves, nothing more than devices helping a species survive in a hostile environment. How does intelligence evolve in a world that's ideal? And how can we measure it?

The Slate article mentions one observation reflecting a set of complex behavioral patterns that are combined in order to meet a specific danger. Could this reflect primary intelligence?

Octopuses escape from predators not just by hiding quickly but by deceit. One of the most impressive examples of this deception is what marine biologist Roger Hanlon calls the moving-rock trick. An octopus morphs into the shape of a rock and then inches across an open space. Even though it's in plain view, predators don't attack it. They can't detect its motion because the octopus matches its speed to the motion of the light in the surrounding water.

For Hanlon, what makes this kind of behavior remarkable is that it's a creative combination of lots of behaviors, used to address a new situation.

The Slate article points to a scientific study, Cephalopod consciousness: Behavioral Evidence at Science Direct, which explores cephalopod learning and intelligence testing, and is available for a rather steep purchase price. However, for some odd reason, I received access to the online article. Perhaps, since this article is in a journal on learning and cognition, I exhibited the appropriate sequence of actions and was rewarded with access to the journal. In other words: Shelley, good monkey.

The research paper is a very dense read, and does reference learning studies methodology, but is fascinating reading. In particular, one paragraph summarizes the difficulty inherent with trying to test for intelligence with a species so completely different from us.

In accordance with West-Eberhard’s (2003) learning–forgetting–learning sequence, octopuses seemed to forget which one of a pair of stimuli was rewarded and began to choose the alternative after a week of testing. Papini and Bitterman (1991), among others, found that octopuses asymptoted at seven of ten positive choices before shifting attention to the alternative. All animal species have ecological limitation on learning, adapted to the situation in which they need to use it (West-Eberhard, 2003), though it is surprising to see this limitation given the variety of visual and tactile stimuli that octopuses can process (Wells, 1978). One reason that octopuses may have this temporal limitation on learning and so switch choices comes from field observation on their occupancy of space. Octopuses returned to one sheltering home after foraging trips for approximately a week and then moved on to a new area (Mather & O’Dor, 1991), possibly as the prey in their limited home ranges was depleted. If they were using a win-switch foraging strategy (see Stephens & Krebs, 1986), then their memory duration would be programmed to adapt to this use of their environment, a deliberate selection and not a limitation.

Not just octopuses are examined—the researchers also examined squid, exploring whether skin coloration may actually form a primitive means of communication, and even hypothesizing that the squid practice deception with rivals during mating. The question then becomes, is deception a product of higher intelligence?

Wonderful stuff.

I'm not one of those piling on the sack cloth and ashes over today's ruling directing Google to turn YouTube user records over to Viacom. Was the ruling overreaching? Oh, probably without a doubt, but it also justifies the worries we've had about Google's storage of our user information. In fact, it was Google's own "assurances" of privacy issued on the company's own weblog that went into the judge's decision to release this information.

We've been saying just such an event like Viacom suing for the information would happen eventually, except that the entity getting this information could have been much worse. Viacom will learn that I like octopus and squid movies, some music videos, funny cats and other amazing critters, very clever commercials, videos about corporate greed, the environment, and civil rights, and, unfortunately, a video featuring an older woman dying in the waiting room of a hospital while the personnel watched and didn't care. Have I watched any copyrighted material? It's all copyrighted, folks, but have I watched any material that infringes on copyright? Doubtful, but even if I had, I am not going to be suddenly sued by Viacom for copyright infringement, as some of the more hysterical are implying.

However, we don't know how much information Google does have about us. For instance, there is information from searches and other activities that I would prefer to be private. And with Google and Yahoo sharing resources, I can't guarantee that there is such a thing as a "private search", even if I used multiple search engines. Google's complete disregard for our concerns puts us at risk for just such events as this occurring, except now, rather than talking about a hypothetical situation, we have fact staring us in the face: Google's data privacy provisions are anything but private.

Though I am not necessarily disappointed this event happened, I am disappointed that this lawsuit is allowed to continue. The whole point on DMCA is to prevent just such events like this from happening by providing a safe harbor for ISPs. If the judges are going to ignore the DMCA when the corporations file law suits, than perhaps we should begin to ignore the DMCA notices we receive as individuals. Obviously as a law of the land, DMCA is cherry picked to death.

In the end I find it doubtful that Viacom will find its material is the most popular on YouTube, and its draconian devices will only serve to bring into question how inconsistently the DMCA is being applied. I also doubt that Viacom really is that interested in the data—this is more likely a move to get Google to settle rather than continue the court case.

In the meantime, now is the time to set our sights on Google, not Viacom. Google's assurance of our data being kept safe has proven to be false. The question is, what will the company do about it? If the company chooses not to act, what will we do about it?

update

I read the ruling and Google's attempt to protect the users was lukewarm, at best, as compared to the company's protecting its own source code. Google provided no viable defense, cited no laws, and even provided an argument that was easily refuted in the company's own weblog. In addition, it didn't even attempt to put conditions on what happens to that data, including ensuring that the data is not published in any way. All we can see from this ruling, is a company indifferent to the concerns of its users. Amazing.

I disagree, though, with those who say that the source code Google was protecting was unimportant. This is not the Flash source used for the videos; this was Google's own technology the company has implemented in order to look for copyright infringing material when first posted. This, in addition, to portions of its own search code. This is not "trivial" code, and that Google sought to protect it should not be dismissed out of hand.

What peeves me is that Google fought harder to protect it, than us.

second update

Interesting take from danbri on Google's work with social graphs and now much more far reaching something such as a YouTube username and/or IP address can be. Dan provides a listing of information about him that can be derived just from his supposedly pseudo anonymous YouTube login.

There's pile-ons, and then there's pile-ons. Just when the people who owned Techmeme tried to generate a controlled burst of activity related to Loren Feldman, Shel Israel, and some stupid puppet (actually covered by the Guardian as news, to the ever lasting embarrassment of the British), the real story was going on elsewhere, and not a hint of it anywhere to be seen. It was only when both Rafe and Seth posted on the recent BoingBoing/Violet Blue thing that I became aware of the latest fooflah.

BoingBoing no longer loves Violet Blue and has unpublished several posts related to her. Considering that Violet Blue seems, at least to me, to be a "BoingBoing" kind of gal— equal parts sex and narcissism—I was rather surprised to see such behavior from a "freedom" loving rag mag like BoingBoing. Surprised, but not so much that I would do more than read the Boing Boing post and then move on.

What stopped me and caught me long enough to read more and even comment here was what Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote in the post at Boing Boing:

Bottom line is that those posts (not "more than 100 posts," as erroneously claimed elsewhere) were removed from public view a year ago. Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn't attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There's a big difference between that and censorship.

(emph. mine)

I really dislike the all too frequence happenings of, "I know something awful about this person, but am above providing all the details", sort of smug self-satisfied innuendo, which serves not only to generate attention, in a carefully controlled way, but also to leave it to the reader's fevered imagination as to the heinous nature of the act committed to deserve such disapprobation. If you're going to condemn publicly do so explicitly, cleanly, so that the other party at least has a fighting chance to defend themselves. Not this air-kiss-slap that passes too often as honorable behavior in Silicon Valley.

behaved in a way... What did Violet, that bad girl, do? Did she sleep with an entire Catholic School boy's choir? Knowing BoingBoing, the crew would look on this with favor. Maybe she kicks kittens. She does wear spikey shoes...does she kick kittens?

Perhaps Violet Blue secretly voted for George Bush. That might be enough, but how would the BoingBoing crew find out, unless Violet Blue got drunk on lemon drops and spilled the beans.

However, I should have remembered who the parties involved are with this little contretemps. According to several comments, the issue could be related to the fact that Violet Blue had trademarked her name, and then sued a porn star for using it. Who Violet Blew, indeed.

Oh. My. God. The infamy of the act. If this is true, then of course what else could the Boing Boing crew do but wash the Blue dust from their hands and disavow all knowledge of Violet. After all, a person who sues to protect their name is only one step away from supporting the AP. Or worse...the RIAA.

Living in Missouri, where we don't understand these things, I have to think there is more to this than Violet Blue suing to protect her name. However, all we're left with is the words, hanging over all, the Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. Petty words that demonstrate that perhaps being unpublished by an organization like Boing Boing is an actual testament for your character, rather than against.

Two grown men fighting over a puppet, unpublished posts, and the quarrels of the rich and famous...and all we had for entertainment in Missouri this last week was a flood.

update

I would be remiss if I didn't point out one of the worthwhile comments made in the Israel/Feldman puppet fiasco. It was from a site called Hacking Cough, authored by Chris Edwards, who wrote:

Feldman called the puppet "more real": a classic bit of legerdemain. Israel was very real during the whole spat. He was angry. He was upset. He wanted to get even. Faced with what Feldman was doing to him, what would you want to do? Social media's advice: be real, be honest.

But nobody believed the advice. The sensible advice to Israel was to bottle it up, act nice. And that probably would have worked. Had Israel gritted his teeth and pretended that he really loved the puppet, he would probably have come out of the whole episode more famous and better off. In other words, ignore Naked Conversations: Be inauthentic. You can't blog or tweet your way out of a crisis any more than you can knit your way out of a burning building.

In other words, ignore Naked Conversations: be inauthentic. Very astute observation.

Adobe has decided to partner with Yahoo and Google, specifically, in order to enable search engine access to Flash contents. In other words, web builders that use bad web practices have been rewarded, and can continue to use Flash to completely build their sites, without regard for accessibility or an open web. The site designers do not have to worry their pretty little heads any longer, because the big boys have come to an "arrangement of mutual benefit", and have decided that no, their shit does not stink.

I'd like to think that one reason Adobe is making this move is because it feels threatened from competition by SVG, but even a fangirl like myself has to acknowledge that much of this is probably related to recent moves into the animation and rich content field by other not-to-be named competitors. Besides, what chance does an open sourced, and openly accessible, technology have against such attractively packaged vendor lock-in? I mean, Google, Adobe: what more would we want?

We should just quit work on HTML5, right now. RDFa, too, not to mention microformats. Forget that semantic markup stuff, and the debate over ABBR. Who needs SVG, anyway? We have Flash, and Flash can be searched. The web has arrived.

Some people are still "waiting" on the AP to deliver a definitive guide to what can or cannot be copied of the AP material without risk of a DMCA notice. We really don't need to wait, nor do we need anything from the AP. We have copyright laws in this country, and they include the concept of "fair use", which we can continue to use as guide for our own writing.

People do need to look at how they quote and use other's work. If you feel that your use is justified and covered under Fair Use provisions, than full speed ahead and damn the consequences. You may be served a DMCA; you may not. Receiving one is not a judgment, and you won't be pulled into jail. In fact, you don't even have to respond by pulling the material if you really feel you're on the side of the law.

I wouldn't necessarily expect that you would get legal help, though. This environment tends to favor the noisy and the known. If you're neither, chances are you'll be on your own if you get a DMCA. That doesn't mean you shouldn't feel free to quote others, or to use AP material. It just means that you have to accept the consequences of your actions when you publish online, and use other's material.

As for the AP's DMCA notices being supposedly based on title and lede/lead, alone, whereby the lede is the first few sentences of the story, I think we were misdirected into focusing on the content of each individual quote, rather than the context of all the quotes, combined.

AP licenses entire stories, but it also licenses a feed of AP news items reflecting just the title and lede of the story. You can see an example of licensed material at the Huffington Post. Notice that the copyrighted material in this context is not limited to an individual story, but to the grouping of titles and ledes for several different stories.

People have been making an assumption that the AP is upset that people are quoting one title, and one lede. We've ignored the hints given in relation to Drudge Retort that it was a pattern of posting, of quoting multiple titles and multiple ledes over time that ultimately resulted in the AP issuing the DMCA.

If we consider that the ledes are only 30 or 50 words, it seems unreasonable for the AP to resort to the DMCA. However, if something like the Drudge Retort duplicates 3, or 5, or more of these syndicated story titles and ledes, what the site is doing is actually "copying" what amounts to 10, 30, 30% or more of the AP copyrighted material— not a few words of an individual story, as first discussed.

If the AP charges a site like the Huffington Post to publish this syndicated set of titles/ledes at the site, and something like the Drudge Retort is duplicating a significant number from this set, using virtually the same titles and lede wording, without adding additional commentary, the Drudge Retort could very well be violating the AP's copyright, and doing so in such a way as to cause financial harm to the AP.

The issue really is, and the AP stressed this, copy and paste publication. If you copy and past the title and the lede, add no commentary, you're not adding value to what you're publishing. You're just duplicating the content. There's nothing wrong with pulling out an individual quote from a story you like and publishing it by itself. However, if your publication falls into a pattern that is very similar or even equivalent to an individual or group's copyrighted publication of the same, don't expect to get all huffy because you only publish a few words from each story.

We shouldn't extrapolate from the AP to something like delicious or the Planets (RDF, Drupal, Intertwingly, and others), because they're not the same. I don't know of anyone that licenses their syndication feed and would feel financial harm if this syndicated feed was republished with a group of others. The purpose of the Planets is to give exposure to individual publications/people who do not get exposure from being part of a major news source, like the AP. However, taking our syndicated feed and republishing it in its entirety at another site, which then runs ads that benefit the second site is a different story. In fact, if we decry the existence of "splogs" we should find ourselves on the side of the AP, if we're being intellectually honest.

Now, some would say that the AP really will go after us if we only publish one title and one lede. Please forgive if I doubt any such thing would happen. Commonsense would dictate this, if nothing else. And commonsense is what we should be using when it comes to copyright and fair use.

I'm really not defending the AP so much as I am disappointed at how quickly people are willing to pile-on when the right stereotypes are triggered. We see the AP, big company, the Drudge Retort, small publication, and we become effectively blind—to both reason and fairness. More disturbingly, we become ripe for manipulation from those who care little for the consequences of the event, as long as the attention keeps flowing. The AP can protect itself, but the same cannot be said of every target of the pile-on effect.