Civility versus the Back Channel

If you're the blog-following type, you know there was a blow-up at a recent conference wherein people called each other names. I'm not going to get into that here, except to mention that my first exposure to the IRC back channel was at an O'Reilly Etech conference a couple years back, and I was just astounded by how immature the conversation was. It was like school children giggling about how they were able to use IRC to talk behind their teacher's back. Poor manners, and worse use of time.

What's interesting to me, though, is the response two people have had:

• Shelley Powers, in Slingshot.

• Kathy Sierra, in Are "nice" and "honest" mutually exclusive?

Those two are particularly interesting to me because they're both panelists on the SxSW panel I'm moderating next March, Why Are Women Invisible on the Web: Whose Butts Should We be Kicking? Given that they've both got strong opinions on this topic (and many others), it's going to be a fascinating experience.

And if we're given a choice on whether or not to have the IRC back channel publicly displayed at our session, I'll put it up to a vote of the panelists, but I'll state now that my vote is no, and that if we tie (there are four of us total), I'm choosing no. And given Shelley said (in her post above):

My own reaction to the events is to be appalled, furiously so at first, that the conference organizers actually put a huge screen behind the speakers where anyone could post either backchannel IRC communications, photos, or what have you. The only reason I can assume they did so is because they knew that they had to use whatever gimmick they could to attach the audience’s attention, in an age where conferences of this nature occur every 2-3 months.

… well, I think that Kathy and Virginia will have their hands full if they want to change our minds (assuming that they do disagree, of course).

JavaScript CAPTCHAs Considered Harmful

Over on the Wise-Women Mailing List, there was a recent discussion about how to do a CAPTCHA. Someone made a comment about doing it in JavaScript, to which I replied:

Can you point me to a site that does this, or someone that promotes this? I'm a big fan of JavaScript (as you might guess), but doing a CAPTCHA with JavaScript is just wrong. It would be like putting a lock on your front door and then hanging the new key on a string off the knob — yeah, you've got a lock now, but it's not like it's going to keep anyone out.

She wrote back, pointing me to Archreality: Jcap (Captcha Validation Javascript). Oooh boy! Here's what I wrote back:

It took me all of about 30 seconds (and no JavaScript knowledge) to crack this one. Follow along by looking at their demo.

If you look at the source HTML of that page, a JavaScript verification function is called when the form is submitted. That function tells the page whether or not to do the action specified in the form. That action is simply to load this page.

So, if you just load that page, you get a message saying, "You entered the code as it was shown!" — which I didn't.

Pretty pathetic, huh? Moral of the story: JavaScript CAPTCHAs Bad.

Up with fascism!

The ever-excellent Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, discusses why Samuel Alito may be a truly dangerous choice for the Supreme Court and to the cause of civil liberties, for reasons having nothing to do with abortion. Rather, he is slavishly devoted to the proposition that the courts should be a rubber stamp for the unchecked expression of executive and police power. As she says, "Alito, on the other hand, is a former prosecutor who has seemingly never met a search, seizure, warrant, or arrest he couldn't love."

When conflicts between police and defendants come before him, Alito unfailingly falls on the side of the police. He is an extreme judicial activist on this subject, far outside the mainstream of judicial thought:

Alito penned [a memo] on whether there should be any constitutional protection for an unarmed teenage boy shot and killed by a police officer as the youth fled a crime scene. Alito's personal position—that there was no constitutional protection from such conduct—was more extreme than some other Reagan administration lawyers, the Supreme Court's eventual ruling in the case, the dissenters on that Supreme Court, and more than 85 percent of police departments at the time. It's hard to conceive of someone who loves police powers more than the police. But that someone may be our next Supreme Court justice.

Start writing your Senators urging them to oppose Alito now, folks. This guy has a long record opposing personal liberty and supporting extreme police powers. He has no problems with cops kicking down your door whether or not you committed a crime, as long as the cops claimed that you might be a criminal. He'll undoubtedly be perfectly willing to put the Supreme Court's imprimatur on Bush's extra-legal indefinite detention of American citizens, torture, and anything else the President wants to do. It's like putting Dick Cheney on the Supreme Court.

Healdsburg Miscellanea

A few notes from around town:

• Esquire released their Best New Restaurants, 2005 list. Their Chef of the Year? Douglas Keane of Cyrus Restaurant. We still haven't made it there yet, but we hope to soon. Especially after Tom read this article about their pastry chef.

• From one end of the restaurant spectrum to the other is this real estate listing:

Confidential Listing, Please Do Not Speak To The Owners Or Employees When Visiting This Business!

Or what? Folks, you included an address and a picture in the listing! It's not like there's any question as to what restaurant it might be referring to. Sheesh.

• If I promised to do something (respond to your email, contact you, etc.) right after the book finished and I haven't done whatever I promised to do, don't take it personally. We finished the book, then I got sidetracked by Thanksgiving, and now I'm overwhelmed with Chorus (see? this is relevant to Healdsburg!). We've got seven rehearsals/gigs in nine days, so until that's over (next Monday), it's taking up a lot of my time. OTOH, if you want to come to one of our concerts, I'd love to see you there!