Adam Hooper's Blog

The iPad Apple announced today is, from what I understand, an oversized iPhone—which is great, in my opinion, especially considering it's cheaper than analysts expected. But web developers have already noticed that this mega-iPhone is missing one tool: Adobe Flash.

What's Flash? Only the most ubiquitous proprietary format on the Web. It plays videos on YouTube, handles file attachments in GMail, tells interactive stories on the New York Times, energizes punch-the-monkey online ads, and….

And, it's proprietary. Adobe owns the file formats and the only tools that produce and play Flash files properly. That means YouTube, GMail, New York Times, and just about every web browser on the planet depend on Adobe to function, because Adobe has the right to dictate what happens with Flash files.

Flash isn't the only proprietary software out there. Mac OS is proprietary, as is Microsoft Windows. Internet Explorer is proprietary. Microsoft Word is proprietary. But here's the thing: they're commodities. You can replace Microsoft Word with a Google Doc; you can replace Mac OS with Linux. You can't replace Adobe Flash with anything.

That's a problem: when Adobe Flash, a thirteen-year-old piece of software, lets any website you visit take control of your computer (as in last December's security fiasco), all you can do is phone Adobe and complain. Adobe isn't liable to you, and Adobe doesn't stand to lose any market share because there is no market. Either you use Flash and benefit from its features, or you disable Flash, crippling your favourite websites.

There's a shift coming, and it's called HTML5. HTML is the standard language of the World Wide Web: every page you visit online uses HTML to tell your web browser what to show you. Most pages use HTML4, which was officially standardized in 1999, toward the end of the browser wars, incorporating the features Internet Explorer and Netscape had pioneered so that any alternative web browser could clone them (as Apple's Safari did). HTML4 is ten years old and it's missing some key features of today's World Wide Web: features YouTube, GMail and even the New York Times need.

And that's Flash's niche: it was made when competing web browser makers couldn't agree upon what features a web browser should have, and it supplies the features nobody else has.

HTML5, which isn't finished yet, is being hammered out by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla (Netscape's successor, which makes Firefox) and any number of web geeks. Their latest browsers break the Flash dependency: even without Flash, they can play videos, upload file attachments and handle interactive animations. When HTML5 is ubiquitous, browsers won't need Flash, since they'll be able to do all those advanced features of YouTube, GMail and the New York Times on their own.

And here's where the proprietary bit comes into play. Flash was created in the wild-west days of the Internet, before people realized how dangerous the Web could be. Those were dark times: evil Flash-reliant web pages could wipe out your computer and steal all your data if their authors wanted. Back then, people were innovating too quickly to worry about security.

Obviously Adobe has plugged most of the leaks, but it's hard to erase a program's origins completely. Maybe that's why a computer-compromising Flash vulnerability was uncovered last December. It left over 98 per cent of people browsing the Web in serious trouble: just by browsing to the wrong web page, they could give away passwords and personal information without realizing.

HTML5 won't be the same. It's not a piece of software: it's just a set of specifications. The web browsers have their own free market, so if one browser causes problems, its users can jump ship and use another browser.

Another browser like the ones being used on smartphones today. Smartphones don't have Flash. Google's new Nexus One smartphone might get it soon, but Apple's iPhone doesn't have it and we found out today it's likely not on the horizon.

Google and Apple phones both support the features in HTML5, though.

As iPhones, iPod Touches and the new iPads gain market share, the people who produce websites will have to consider how many of their users won't have Flash. We ought to see fewer and fewer Flash-reliant websites in the future. And who knows? Maybe ten years from now Flash will be gone altogether.

Without Flash, the Web would be a better place. Here's hoping.

No.

The correct headline for this post is, "Headlines Should not be Questions."

Television news ads ask unanswered questions all the time. When I care about the answer, I look it up online and boycott the news that night on principle.

I can still remember the spin of campaign wheels.

Remember how candidate Barack Obama was "palling around with terrorists?"

Whew, glad it's over, right? When the confetti settled, the Federal Election Commission tallied that $1.3 billion dollars had been crammed into campaigning. That's up 61 per cent from the 2004 election's $820 million, which was itself a 90 per cent increase from 2000's paltry $430 million.

But now a law which restricted campaign financing has changed, which means the next slew of campaigns will likely make 2008's ads look like they were made with a camcorder in your basement, in comparison.

Maybe Obama cast the first stone, which has just backfired biblically. Shying from the conservative financing route, he relied on small contributions from the Internet, netting him flocks of donations most pundits had never spotted. Poor McCain had to shuffle in Obama's shadow, with less than half the budget to broadcast a solution to the economy that was letting him down.

In light of this, the American Supreme Court removed restrictions that capped corporate campaign spending yesterday.

Many companies may decide not to contribute because it would be seen as picking sides. The New York Times article (linked above) suggests that companies like Microsoft and General Electric fear alienating investors. Funny choice of companies: Microsoft and General Electric own the left-leaning cable television news station MSNBC.

Obama (and McCain, for that matter) are against the change, but the Republican National Committee seems to smell blood in the water already. In 2012, we'll see which companies bite. And when they do, we'll learn whether ads are more potent than policy.

Deep in the lush, disorienting Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda, a silverback mountain gorilla and his wives patiently munch berries. Nine human beings watch, immobile. Every morning a ranger uncovers broken branches and excreted berries to find the nomadic group's newest camp. The eight awed white tourists in his tow quietly snap as many photographs as their cameras will allow, careful not to disturb the creatures. Only 650 of the animals exist in the world.

In the forest of the Impenetrable Internet, technology companies analyze queries and clicks in their own journeys to piece together migratory patterns and learn more about the elusive human race. There are half a million times more Internet users than mountain gorillas in the world, so you'd think it would be hard to single out any one person from the masses. But Internet users forget: every step they take is through these companies' territories.

The companies set up security cameras. They can watch all the human beings they like.

They probably know you're reading this.

Pick Google, for instance. Every time you search using Google, you show Google a "cookie": a face for it to recognize you by. You can disable cookies, but that's like wearing a ski mask to the grocery store: your efforts are silly because the shelf-stockers can still identify you by your "IP address"--the fact that you came in a blue '98 Honda Civic with license plate WH00P5. Without an IP address, you can't get to the Google website at all, but you can use a "proxy server" to disguise where you came from. Just like taking a bus to the grocery store, using a proxy server is a pain in the neck, takes time, is unfit for children and the elderly, and still gives part of your identity away because while Google might not recognize you, it knows which bus you took.

Every company that's big enough will watch how individuals behave, for the customers' own good. Companies research whether customers find what they want or whether they spend ages looking for bread in the baking aisle instead of the bakery aisle. Google passive-aggressively suggests that you angle for "kournikova" when you search for "anna kornikova", because dozens of men (and women?) have overcome the spelling hurdle already, alerting Google to the confusion. Amazon suggests that you buy the latest Harry Potter DVD to complement your new toaster, because other exemplary customers bought the two items together.

Google is privileged to be a gateway to other websites. You use it to browse to BBC News; you use it to find pictures of Anna Kournikova; and you use it to find directions to the nearest liquor store. Every time you find what you want on Google and go to that page, you tell Google your next Internet destination.

Google is even more privileged to be a major Internet advertiser. When you view a page with a Google ad, Google sees what page you're reading. You can "opt out" of this practice, but the technological joke is that the only way to opt out is to send a cookie to Google each time you see an ad.

Because Google knows what you search for and which webpages you read, it can build a "profile" of you. Several companies do this; Google is unique in its relative honesty about privacy concerns. Browse to http://www.google.com/ads/preferences to see your profile and freak yourself out. A half-dozen other companies probably know that same information about you.

I doubt anybody can imagine how much money can spring from a database of 500 million Internet users and their behaviour.

And people wonder why Google lets you search for free.

Let's pick on someone else. Twitter users often use http://tinyurl.com/, http://bit.ly/, http://j.mp/ or other such websites to fit web addresses into Twitter's 140-character limit. In goes an address like http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=76+9+Avenue,+New+York,+NY+10011,+United+States+(Google)&daddr=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA+94043,+USA+(Google)&geocode=FXurbQId08aW-yFatxpZiXCuXCktkJYTv1nCiTEixjLqxYw7rQ%3BFa8DOwIdLyS5-CEW5-Xqa0glpilRbQR7ArqPgDEel6cyESl4DQ&hl=en&mra=pe&mrcr=0&sll=39.081877,-98.197183&sspn=32.847436,54.580078&ie=UTF8&ll=39.571822,-98.173828&spn=32.636524,54.580078&t=h&z=4 and out comes the Twitter-ready address of http://j.mp/4LAFwg, which now points to the same thing. Great, but now the company behind j.mp sees where Internet users browse, since every John Twitteruser tells j.mp where he's going when he follows a j.mp link. This information on where Twitter users browse is worth money, and j.mp sells it.

I haven't even mentioned GMail, Google DNS, the iTunes Store, Facebook, or the dozens of other websites you frequent. They all know what you're doing. They may say their privacy policies are legally binding, but you and every other average person won't understand the policies even if you read them. Besides, laws vary from country to country and money-loaded companies have a long tradition of breaking laws first and buying solutions later: it's brave to hope that your Internet footprints are private.

But darn it, all these websites are useful. How can you use them and keep a sense of privacy?

You can't do a thing. Clearing cookies may confuse smaller companies, but big ones can recognize you regardless. Anonymous proxy servers are complicated and inconvenient. If you're religious, you can try praying, but anyone who's worked in a corporation can tell you how futile prayers are against large, lawyer-laden institutions.

My advice: when you use websites, write emails, post photographs, tweet, and instant-message your friends, assume a bunch of people you've never met are watching your every move and keeping records. Because they are, and you can never find out for sure what they're doing with their studies of your behaviour.

Maybe this is how the mountain gorillas feel.

Disclosure: while I have worked at Google, this post shares no corporate secrets and I have no ill feeling toward the company. It's just a handy example for this post containing widely-available, public information.

Wonderful chitchat sprouted from my family visits this holiday season. In one pleasant gab, a thought struck me so hard I almost said something about it.

Conversations tend to orbit around age-old topics: news, weather and health. At Christmas in Quebec, we had plenty of all three. In the process I realized that banter about health proceeds differently in Canada than it does in the United States.

In Canada, we'll talk about cancer, infections, colds, flu and other forms of malaise the way my journalism professors tell me I should write news stories: on-topic, answering obvious questions. For the flu, obvious questions are "was that H1N1?" and "how many sick days did you take?" and for cancer, "will she be all right?" and "did the doctors tell us the odds it'll recur?"

In the United States, however, talk time is squandered on two off-topic questions: "how much will it cost?" and "how are you going to pay for that?"

Example: in Canada, I once had an ear infection and cured it with antibiotics. In the States, I had a concussion that led to a $7,000 hospital bill. I'm not ranting about the $7,000 (today, at least): I'm pointing out that in Canada, my synopsis covers the state of my health rather than the state of my wallet.

In Canada, dentist chats follow American tradition, inspecting price more than teeth. My braces extracted two years of coolness from my youth, but they also pulled two years of financial security from my mother's budget. Cost leaps into discussions about my teeth somewhere after "I wore a headgear some nights" and before "I had to eat through a straw when my braces were tightened every month." This implies the bank account hurt more than my mouth, even though I still have the odd nightmare about tooth pain.

I'm commenting on banter, not bills, budgets or politics. No matter what American health care reforms arrive in the coming months, I doubt most American dinner talk about cancer in the family will shed its monetary overtones anytime soon. But to me, every conversation about life and well-being that sidesteps money is a step closer to utopia.

The law of averages is, on average, misused.

Here's my first crack at scientific writing: I'll explain the Law of Large Numbers, the official law of averages, for which the renowned mathematician Jacob Bernoulli published his proof in 1713. Citing Wikipedia:

where X₁, X₂, ... is an infinite sequence of independent and identically-distributed random variables with finite expected value E(X₁) = E(X₂) = ... = µ < ∞.

There's a lot going on here, which probably convinced laypeople to make up their own definitions. My goal is to set the record straight.

First up: the term "independent and identically-distributed random variable" is a long-winded way of explaining, for example, what number a die ends up showing after you roll it. If the die shows 3, that doesn't affect the next roll or the previous roll, and so it's "independent" from them. And die rolls are always "indentically-distributed" because you're comparing die rolls to die rolls, not die rolls to coin tosses. "Identically-distributed" is the math cliché equivalent of comparing apples to apples. Finally, each die roll gives a "random variable" because it's a number you can't predict.

Got that? Die rolls are independent and identically-distributed random variables. If you're still shaky on all those words, don't bother squinting: just go along with the die-rolling example and you'll do fine.

Onward: E(X₁) is the "expected value" of roll number one. Since dice fall on any of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 with equal chances, the "expected value" is the average, 3.5. Normal people don't "expect" 3.5, but mathematicians do, and they must be right because they taught Vegas how to win mountains of money.

The other bits of the equation should fall into place more easily. "Expected value E(X₁) = E(X₂)". That means the "expected value" of roll number one is the same as the "expected value" of roll number two.

"Well, of course it is," the careful reader observes, "because 3.5 is equal to 3.5, right?"

And the careful reader is right. "E(X₁) = E(X₂) = ..." is redundant, but mathematicians put it in anyway because they want to remind themselves what "independent and identically-distributed" means. They find symbols easier to understand than words.

And "µ"? That's just a made-up shorthand for "E(X₁)", which is 3.5 for us.

Okay. We've figured out "independent and identically-distributed" (die-rolls). We've wrapped our head around "finite expected value µ" (3.5). Now let's work on "X₁". That's what you get when you rummage through your drawer, find a die, and roll it. We expect 3.5, because we think we're smart, but we're wrong: it comes up with a whole number, like 2. We can do the same with X₂, but that might give us 5.

And the "X_n" with a bar above it? That's the average of all the Xs we get: X₁ and X₂ and X₃ and every other X there is. Each X is one roll, and we're going to do as many of them as we possibly can.

Got all that? Then you're done with context. The mind-blowing magic is contained in the equation's arrow. The arrow says, "if you roll enough times, the average result will get pretty darned close to 3.5."

It's not the same as just adding up all the sides and dividing by six. To prove the Law of Large Numbers, you really have to sit there and roll a die all day. And the next day. And every day after that. It'll take infinite quantities of paper and pencils, causing total deforestation and the end of life as we know it.

But mathematicians found shortcuts. They managed to prove the law in twelve hundred years.

This is the law of averages, in plain English: "If you do something lots of times, you'll find the average result comes close to the theoretical average."

On average, you'll roll a 6 one-sixth of the time. So you can make the law of averages tell you: "If you roll a die a thousand times, you're bound to roll 6, maybe around 167 times."

But you can't make it tell you: "That next roll is bound to come up six." The law doesn't say anything about individual rolls.

That's why mathematicians tried to name it the "law of large numbers" instead of the "law of averages": because the "large numbers" bit is the key to the whole phenomenon. They never said you could predict a single event.

When the top three Google News hits for "law of averages" are a basketball coach calling it the "law of averages" when his players get ten swooshes in a row, a school-teacher calling it the "law of averages" when her curling team sweeps past rivals and a public safety communication director using the "law of averages" to explain why there are glitches in radio systems, you can tell there's a rift between their math and real math.

The mistake is that they didn't know the law can only predict large numbers of results, not single ones.

By their logic, the next Google News hit for "law of averages" is bound to apply it correctly. And then, when it does, the next time I touch a piano a stunning rendition of Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto is bound to reverberate from its soundboard.

As a journalist, I sometimes feel the urge to quote people who use the "law of averages"—I want to fit in, after all—but so far I've checked myself. When I cave, my mathematician friends will gnash their teeth in rage and reach for their (perfectly spherical) machetes before calming themselves just enough to write furious blog posts lamenting the usage which will evade persecution despite clearly and provably being against the law.

Sometimes stories aren't news, and sometimes we don't write them.

For a recent story, I spent time in an H1N1 vaccination clinic in Ottawa. Prior to opening hour, the nurses' supervisor gave a pep talk “off the record.” (In this case, I can write that the meeting took place but not what was said. This sort of ethical agreement is important to journalists and their sources.)

I assure you: nothing damning happened. There was no talk of covered-up vaccine-related deaths and they didn't discuss plans to gain mind control over visitors by injecting surreptitious serums. It was mere procedure: a few tips to make nurses' jobs easier.

Why the secrecy? Because the media (and, by extension, citizens who listen) are deemed uppity: they assault the slightest mishap—an allergic reaction, for instance—at reality's expense.

Consider two fictional headlines: “Everybody is healthy” and “Man gets H1N1, blames vaccine.” The former is statistically closer to truth, but the latter is more interesting, regardless of its significance.

Journalists tell stories, not truth. We hate spreading rumours, but a job is a job: on those disastrous days when planes land, politicians parlay and bridges bridge, we have to improvise.

Last week I tried to connect a fatal fire at a women's shelter to a suspicious one at a women's boarding house, just because both involved one gender. It's an engrossing but misleading story or it's non-news. (As a moral compromise, I discarded almost all my work, paining my editors, my mark and my mood.)

Which is better: public outcry over a near-certain non-issue, or media silence around an unimportant but compelling story?

Hot on the heels of Graph Newsmagazine, we green Carleton journalism students have launched two new sites in a class project: Hartwells and Ottawa Off-Centre. I am a part of the Hartwells team; our two sites are not competitive. Both websites are updated frequently on Tuesdays.

Hartwells is different from Graph News: while Graph News is run by students who aim to maintain it over the entirety of our two-year program, Hartwells will probably only last until the end of this semester. Its transience should by no means imply that it is not of the highest quality: already Hartwells showcases some fantastic journalism.

As journalism students at Carleton, we have the enviable yet sometimes frustrating duty of tracking down sources in networks we barely comprehend, so that our stories can be better-informed and more lively.

The task is often rewarding: I have talked with fascinating people, both in person and on the telephone, whom I never would have imagined meeting were it not for my choice of Masters program. As sources teach me every day, Canada is replete with fascinating, enlightening, and endearing people.

Sometimes, though, journalism students hit a wall. By conducting interviews, we interfere in people's daily lives. Our interruptions are sometimes welcome, but many potential sources are dismayed that we are mere students: they would prefer to give their messages to journalists who will disseminate them in "a real publication."

Enter The Graph News Magazine. Our class of 19 students has decided to put some coursework online.

This website joins our repertoire of foot-in-door routines. When we present ourselves to potential sources who may scorn students, we can pose as "real journalists." Also, we have less temptation to assure sources that we "won't be publishing this story anywhere," a self-demeaning habit which sacrifices real-life experience for better off-the-cuff quotations and, consequently, grades.

Furthermore, our clippings are legitimate: they have been published, and we can use them to apply for jobs in the ever-dwindling world of newspapers.

If you are curious about what kind of work we do as students, visit The Graph News Magazine at http://graphnews.ca. It is very sparse now, we have yet to determine which stories we ought to upload, and the style is far from finalized, but these faults are a testament to its shiny newness.

A link on the main page lets you subscribe to new posts. Do so to watch an entire journalism class learn the craft.

Last night I ran my final run in Central Park. Toward the end, I was struck by a sudden urge to sprint to the northern tip of the reservoir and revel in the midtown skyline.

I have stared at the skyline many times before, of course, but final occasions afford some unexpected ruminations. I peered at the skyline, the reflection of the skyline, and my memories of my last big departure: Dar es Salaam.

I had declared the city of Dar es Salaam—the city itself—somewhat unpleasant: flat, hot, dirty, stressful, and sometimes dangerous. My departure last year was painful exclusively because of the people I was leaving: it had nothing to do with the city itself.

New York, paradoxically, produced the same emotion. The skyline is inspiring and beautiful: Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, and countless other edifices stand guard over their remarkable siblings, obscuring from view but still hinting at a vibrant, never-asleep city encompassing vagrants, aloof businesspeople, quintessential weeknight revellers, and millions of families and roommates and lovers and loners, all living their unique lives. Yet as astonishing as the city itself may be, it is lifeless in comparison to its shimmering reflection.

In the skyline, the Empire State Building is a feat of architecture; in the reflection, I see the friends and family who accompanied me to the top. In the skyline, the Chrysler Building towers impressively; in the reflection, I notice it from downtown on Broadway while walking to the subway after work with a colleague or two, at least one of us never failing to complain about the freezing-cold air conditioners, pedestrian-traffic-inducing male models, and revolting smells wafting out of a department store.

“We should hire models to stand outside our office.”

“Let's buy the scent, too.”

The millions of households are different in the reflection: they are millions of abstract sketches of the families I joined here: they hold their own dramas, their own video game championships, their own morning schedules, their own parties, their own life lessons, and, with New York flair, their own neighbours of undignified proximity.

Above the water, New York is a mosaic of cultures. In the reflection on the reservoir, the only culture is my own: the amalgamation of all of the above, it encompasses barely-understood experiences and half-unexplored relationships. Millions of others' worlds dance around mine like stars, all begging to be investigated.

And in this personal sense, my New York departure is strikingly similar to my Tanzania one. In spite of how objectively fantastic New York may be, the skyline is meaningless without the people who make it my New York.

Friends and family constantly ask me why I want to leave. Am I running from something? Am I running toward something else? I look into this reflection of my past year, and I see myself the year before and the year before that one: departures cyclically transforming into arrivals, two reflective experiences I would be self-depriving to forgo.

I am running for the sake of running, loving every minute of it.