Synaptic Sugar

It has finally been decided that the multi-million Web portal on Italian tourism, italia.it, about which I posted previously ("Brightest Italian ideas"), is going to be closed. Italian Minister Francesco Rutelli stated yesterday that the current government has not spent a dime on the portal and has tried instead to discover where the responsibilities for the incomplete and non-functional work lay. It is still unknown whether the Italian taxpayers will be able to be refunded some money out of the many millions that somebody spent on this horribly developed project; I’m ready to bet the answer is “no”. Another hope is the government will finally answer the many questions that have been asked all these years, about how exactly the money was spent; but once again, the negative answer is almost a certainty.

Some people have been asking me what’s going on with the wildfires that have been plaguing Southern California for days now, so here’s a short recap for those who aren’t really up to speed; a lot of details aren’t known or final yet, but I may try to keep this post updated as the story develops, although there’s way too much information to report in a short post like this. Follow the links for more in-depth coverage.

Every year there are wildfires in California, whether caused by arson or accidents or very dry weather conditions, particularly in the summer; the same dry conditions make it quite hard to contain those fires quickly and easier for them to spread over wide areas of land. But only a combination of the above causes could have given birth to what have now become the biggest and most destructive wildfires in the history of the State, which are still burning and destroying acre after acre of land, cities and fields included. While the worst seem to be past (for now), the threat is far from being gone. It seems the first fires appeared on October 20 in San Diego County, but more were started elsewhere and they all quickly spread to larger and larger areas between Santa Barbara County and the border with Mexico (see a Google map for geographic details — link contributed by Bruscolini), thanks to the driest weather in years and winds that blew at up to 101 miles per hour.

According to various sources, some fires might have been started by the winds taking down power lines, one is said to have been started by an overturned semi-truck, but some are currently being investigated by the FBI as they definitely are or appear to be the result of arson. So far, almost one million people have been evacuated (with around 500,000 from San Diego County alone and 11,000 of them taking shelter in the San Diego Qualcomm Stadium), over 1500 houses have been burnt down, and around 500,000 acres of land have been scorched by the wildfires (try to count up to one million to get an idea of how many people that is). At least 16 fires are still active and up to now have caused the death of six people, injuring 70 more. Even if the State is not new to this kind of emergencies, it’s the magnitude of this situation that is unprecedented, and there aren’t enough resources to properly deal with it in a timely manner. Governor Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in at least seven counties, and President Bush also declared it a federal emergency, paving the way for more funding and resources to hopefully arrive in California soon; firefighting airplanes are flying in from as far as North Carolina. The damage is currently estimated at 1 billion dollars, and even when all the fires are doused it’s going to take quite a long time to recover from this huge disaster.

Personal note to whom may be concerned: we’re fine; my sympathy goes instead to all those families who lost everything from one day to the next.

Edited on October 25 at 1:23 PM to add: A second Google map is available, documenting all the fire locations including the ones near Santa Barbara.

Edited on October 25 at 4:33 PM to add: At least five people have been held in custody on charges of arson, as it seems to have been proven that several fires were purposely started in different places; bails range from $75,000 to $750,000. Governor Schwarzenegger has declared that those convicted of arson will be dealt with harshly; meanwhile, the reward for information leading to to an arrest has been increased to a total of $150,000. A toll-free arson tip line has been established at 800-540-7085. The death toll has sadly advanced to ten, with 78 injured, among which were 36 firefighters, and almost 1600 houses destroyed.

Edited on October 26 at 9:01 AM to add: The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection states 14 out of 23 wildfires are now 100% contained, as weather conditions improve. Meanwhile, the reward for supplying meaningful information has risen to $250,000, and there’s a new hotline at 800-540-8282.

Edited on October 27 at 9:32 AM to add: As the number of homes destroyed reaches about 1700, officials announce they’re looking for a white Ford F150 pick-up truck that may be connected to one of the arsons, although not necessarily to a suspect. Fires are still burning and creating breathing problems in extended areas due to smoky and sooty air.

Edited on October 29 at 10:11 PM to add: Luckily it seems by now most fires are under control. More information when available.

Here’s an excerpt of what the license agreement to accept before installing the demo of the long-awaited game “Hellgate: London“, developed by Flagship Studios and distributed by Electronic Arts, says:

“Consent to Use of Data. You agree that EA, its affiliates, and each Related Party may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer, including without limitation your Internet Protocol address, operating system application software and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online play. EA and/or the Related Parties may also use this information in the aggregate and, in a form which does not personally identify you, to improve our products and services and we may share that aggregate data with our third party service providers”

“EA, its affiliates, and each Related Party”, “without limitation”, “periodically”, all for just a demo? Sorry but it’s a little too much to improve updates and product support. It sounds more to me like this is one of the first attempts to effectively implement that practice of serving dynamically targeted ads in videogames, tailored around the behavioral and commercial patterns of the players, that EA and other companies seem to appreciate. Either way, for now I’m not installing.

As promised, here’s the second bright idea. Perhaps it’s of more interest to my Italian readers, but it may serve as a warning to the others. But let me start from the Beginning.

Initially, I wasn’t sure about how to structure this blog and what topics to post about. Then I just decided to let it flow as it came because, after all, that’s one of the points of blogs; by the looks of it, even too many others have chosen the same approach (no need to give out links here, you all know examples). Like so many others, this blog is not affiliated with any company, doesn’t pretend to be a newspaper, doesn’t have any monetary gain from its own existence. It simply makes use of the freedom represented (so far) by the Internet.

Online newspapers are a different matter, and that should be obvious to anyone. Maybe not so obvious to those (clearly smarter than us) people who work hard all day to come up with fair and intelligent laws in Italy. In the middle of August, when everyone else was on vacation, those people came up with a draft for a law that wants the editors of all publications (or “editorial products”) to be registered at a public registry, after paying a suitable tax, so that they could be more efficiently prosecuted in cases of defamation (to sum it all up). It wouldn’t be much different from the way it’s been so far, if not for the fact that the notion of “editorial product” is brilliantly extended to all those “products” that exist as non-profit, and to those edited on the Internet. Personal websites, blogs, et cetera. To have a blog, you’d have to pay registration fees, go through quite a lot of bureaucracy, and be more easily subject to defamation claims that could make you (literally) end up in jail (please note that, even under the previous regulations, non-profit blog authors have in some cases been tried for defamation — publishing on the Internet has hardly ever been a “Wild West” sort of thing like so many are eager to cry out in outrage).

To the rescue come the Undersecretary of State Ricardo Franco Levi (yesterday) who admits the text is different from what was intended but is sure it will be corrected; and the Minister for Communications Paolo Gentiloni (today), who admits the wording was a mistake and comments (ironically, on his own blog) that he “thought the law proposal merely confirmed the previous regulations” and that he “should have personally read the text, word by word” before approving it. Yes, it was a mistake, no, admitting it is not enough (although appreciated), if your job is to vote on laws that have anything (and in this case everything) to do with Communications. Or, in general, if you happen to be in the Council of Ministers (who has approved the proposal as is, allowing it to go next through the Parliament). Average people who have more typical jobs and make big mistakes aren’t always able to make it all better by just admitting the mistake — keep that in mind.

That’s the latest trend: to come up with a faulty, poorly written and deeply nonsensical law that takes into no account the reality of technology and is criticized by many, and justify it with a “Let’s just do it for now; we’ll amend it later on” (remember what happened with the Urbani law not more than a few years ago, which among so many other things tried to force webmasters to send the contents of their websites on a floppy disk to a National Library every time they were updated “to preserve Italian culture” — newsflash: they have Web crawlers and Google nowadays who can serve an equivalent function automatically — witchcraft!). What happens before it’s amended? Let’s not just do it: let’s instead focus on what we’re doing and pass a law that makes sense to start with, and if needs be amend it later.

Now that so many are protesting against this draft (but I wonder, if they hadn’t, how many others would have come to know about it before it fully became a law), I’m sure it will be corrected. If not, this blog will probably have to move elsewhere, and with it who knows how many others. But it’s all to preserve Italian culture and spur innovation, I’m sure.