Rant: Apple vs. Bloggers

I'm getting pretty sick of all the noise on the Mac net these days about Apple vs. Bloggers and how "bloggers are journalists!" and how Apple is just some big corporate evil trying to squash the little guy to gain world dominance, or something. I have read exactly two bloggers who have this right (The magnificent Jon Gruber, and Chuq Von Rospach, who is unfortunately saddled with a bit of a conflict of interest* and has removed his extremely coherent postings on this matter). It seems everyone else is on the other side here, including Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, and they're all just wrong.

First things first: Of course bloggers can be journalists. I don't need a court to tell me that, and anyone who thinks that you need to work for a newspaper or some sort of news organization to do work that ought to be considered "real journalism" (whatever that is) has a pretty limited worldview in my opinion. By that test, The Onion would qualify. Clearly, the definition of journalism that matters is one that speaks to the function of journalism, not the details of how or where that function is carried out. Certainly not all bloggers are journalists, but some most assuredly are.

But that's not the issue.

The issue is this: should anyone (journalists, bloggers, whoever) be compelled to reveal the names of people who have committed crimes — because it's my understanding that in California it's illegal to reveal trade secrets if you've signed an NDA. Now, my feeling is that, yes, they should. If the crime was something more heinous like robbery or rape then it would be unconscionable for a journalist or anyone else to protect such a "source". The folks who leaked this information aren't "sources" they are "criminals".

Think Secret and their ilk are going to lose this case, and they'll be lucky if that's the end of it. It seems to me that they're protecting these "sources" for purely selfish reasons: to rumor sites, people willing to violate terms of their NDAs are their lifeblood. I think it's fair to say that these sites are trying to protect their sources so that they (the sources) can continue to break the law and feed the rumor sites with confidential information about Apple. I'm no lawyer, but it takes two to tango and that arrangement seems to be dancing pretty close to 'liability' to me.

If they were journalists 'protecting' the identity of a serial rapist in order to get exclusive details of the crimes, I daresay their support would evaporate.

The shame in all this isn't that Apple's going to trample "blogger's rights", but in the avalanche of puffed-up bloggers who seem to want to pull out the stops to make this a landmark case. They're going to regret it when Think Secret et al. lose (they've already lost the first round) and if they draw too much attention to this case they're going to have the precedent swing the other way. You've got to pick your battles, and I think the EFF and others are on the wrong side here.

Boing Boing's entry into the fray with their amicus brief is stunning to me, because the point they're apparently trying to argue (bloggers are journalists) has already been dealt with in the discovery ruling: "The journalist’s privilege is not absolute. For example, journalists cannot refuse to disclose information when it relates to a crime."

When will the stupidity end? Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

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* Disclosure: I have an Apple employee in my family, so I have a similar conflict as Chuq.

How To: Participate In A Miracle

Clear thinking from The Raving Atheist:

(1) Get out of the vehicle and look behind it before backing up. God will guide you to the rear bumper, and then back to the driver’s side door.

Disposing of Batteries

In Vancouver you're not allowed to dispose of batteries in your household trash. Alkaline batteries (i.e. non-rechargeable ones) can be dropped off at the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation, 2150 Maple Street 604-736-7732. They charge a small shipping fee ($2/kg).

For rechargeables, the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation has information about where to drop off rechargeable batteries. The rule of thumb is that retailers who sold you the batteries will take them back -- there's usually a bin in the Customer Service department.

This information courtesy the Recycling Council of BC Hotline at 604.732.9253.

Attaboy, Lloyd

Who'd have ever though I'd be a Lloyd Axworthy fan?

Roasted Chicken

One of the things that I don't do a whole lot and would like to do more is to cook "real" meals. That means a meal like we get when we visit our parents: one with multiple dishes that is served on a plate, usually containing at least one dish that is primarily meat. You see, when we eat at home, we usually cook these single-dish meals that are pretty easy to do... plus maybe throw together a salad (thank goodness for the prepackaged stuff).

Well, since I'm doing things that I've always wanted to do this year, I decided that I'm going to cook a turkey dinner some time. Since cooking a full-on turkey seemed a little excessive at first -- I have no idea which end is up when it comes to poultry, I thought I'd start with a chicken.

First Mistake: I bought a whole frozen chicken from SuperStore. The mistake wasn't buying it frozen -- I had a couple of days before I wanted to cook it so it had an opportunity to thaw (mostly) -- the mistake was that I bought the first one that I found. It was pretty large as chickens go -- about six pounds -- which made everything a little more difficult. Most of the recipes I saw talked about three and four pound chickens.

Second Mistake: I didn't thaw the chicken quite long enough. I thawed it in the refrigerator for two days, which was nearly long enough, but there was still some ice around the outside when I opened it up. I suspect this is why it took a fair bit longer to cook than I expected, almost two hours instead of 90 minutes. (The rule of thumb I saw was 1 hour for a 3 lb chicken, plus 10 minutes per extra pound.)

Third Mistake: I was trying to rub the chicken with butter and herbs (basil), but I hadn't dried the chicken thoroughly after washing it. Bad idea. Most of the butter ended up on my fingers since the chicken was so slippery. Also, I should have used a rack during this process because a lot of the butter ended up on the cutting board I had set the chicken on.

I didn't have a single recipe that I followed, although I did rely heavily on Roast Chicken Made Better, Start to Finish, which seemed to have good advice. I ended up rubbing the bird with dried basil and butter, squeezing a lime over the outside and then stuffing the cavity with the limes, a few sprigs of fresh basil, some onion and mushrooms. I roasted for 20 minutes at 450°F and then for the rest of the time (about an hour and a half) at 375°F. I started the chicken breast down and then turned it over after the initial 20 minutes to match the photo on the web page (and so I could stick the thermometer into the thigh).

The end result was not quite a failure. I finally took the chicken out of the oven because we were starving -- there were a few pink bits so we finished those parts up in the microwave. The legs and thighs were certainly cooked enough -- the leg bone came right off the bird when I tried to separate the thigh.

Carving was a joke too. I know a little more about bird anatomy now than I did before, but I still don't really have a good handle on how to take these things apart. I think I did a passable job, but it wasn't elegant by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyway, with some mashed potatoes and veggies, it was a decent meal with lots of leftovers. Plus we made soup with the carcass. Now, that makes your house smell good.

Next time I'm going to try a smaller bird, hopefully fresh. I'm going to stick with the lime and basil theme, though. It was pretty tasty. Hmm. I'm hungry... leftovers....