The McWetlog

Snakes in captivity are invariably fed too much. Keepers, particularly novices used to mammalian metabolisms, have a hard time grasping the concept that even once a week may lead to obesity. I've seen some hideously overweight snakes, with a thick layer of fat outside their rib cages. Snakes have low metabolisms, and in captivity they don't exactly exercise much.

Our snakes are not overfed. This is as much a function of weekly feedings being stretched out to every 10 to 14 days as a result of scheduling as it is by design, but either way it works. Overall, I'm pleased with our snakes' condition: they're mostly lean and muscular, with little or no fat.

Even so, our glossy snake is looking heftier than she should, and that's probably a result of her diet -- not the amount or the frequency, but the kind. Glossy snakes normally feed on lizards in the wild, though they're not strict specialists; in captivity they can and will take rodents, and ours has eaten nothing but since I got her in September 2001 (see previous entry). Generally, she's preferred mice on the small size, and I think that's because she's not keen on fur: she ends up eating multiple pinky mice rather than larger sizes, though she's been eating fuzzy mice (the next step up) recently.

I seem to recall (but cannot find the reference to it) that gray-banded kingsnakes -- another lizard-eating species -- that are kept long-term on a mouse diet accumulate serious fatty deposits. I wonder if that's akin to what's happening here. It's not an unreasonable guess that a mouse diet is too rich for the glossy snake (though it doesn't seem to be a problem for garter snakes; then again, they're more active), though I don't yet know what to do about it. (Lizards are not an option!) For the moment, I'll try cutting her back some more and see if that helps.

11:38 PM | Herp Collection, Reptiles and Amphibians

The new front page looks fantastic in Safari and Firefox, if I do say so myself, but I'm dreading that it's just going to look broken in Internet Explorer for Windows. (It looks pretty bad in IE 5.2 for the Mac.) I'll probably have to keep tinkering.

10:47 PM | Site News

Like the new site design? I sure do. I'm happier with how this site looks than I've been in a while. After more than three years in some shade of blueish grey -- usually #556677 -- I'm trying something different. Most of the changes are CSS related, or could be done in the PHP site template, so once I settled on the new design, changing over most pages was a cinch. Still a few loose ends to tie up, though, especially the front page, as well as some photo pages.

12:30 AM | Site News

Hmm. I seem to be writing more rants lately -- viz., the trio of posts in the last 24 hours about the AIM kerfuffle and the post about Apple's rumour site lawsuits a week ago Sunday. It's been a while: I used to write a lot of piss-and-vinegar entries, but I haven't lately, except for some deeply personal shite. I'm conscious of the relationship between stress and autoimmune disease, so I've had a vested interest in not getting too wound up. Also, I abhor confrontation. This means either that I'm doing a lot better or that I'll eventually collapse from this if I keep doing it.

12:03 AM | Personal

There have been some developments in the AIM story, which I'd better report here for completeness' sake, since I've been shooting off my mouth about it.

First of all, AOL will be bringing out a revised TOS. Ben Stanfield is claiming vindication, both on his blog and in an e-mail to me.

Ben points out that lawyers agree with his position on ownership and content: essentially, the terms of service permit exactly what Ben says they do (e.g. here and here). Fair enough: point conceded. But that doesn't mean that AOL was lying when it said it wasn't monitoring communications. As their spokesman said, the offending passages of the TOS were only intended for public posts. From the CNet article:

That unfortunate wording was intended to apply to an AIM feature called "Rate-a-Buddy," spokesman Andrew Weinstein said. Like the classic HotOrNot.com site, Rate-a-Buddy permits AIM users to post photographs publicly so others can rate them on how "cute" and "interesting" they seem to be.

The Rate-a-Buddy language was "wrapped into" the AIM terms of service, and that "inartfully" worded phrase has been deleted from a new version that will be made public Tuesday, Weinstein said. "It's going to make it very clear that this section applies to public areas."

In other words, they goofed. What they intended was not what ended up in the legal language. (As someone who once edited laws and regulations, I can tell you that that happens all the time.) So we're not talking about a change in policy, only a change in legal wording to better reflect AOL's intent, which has not changed. This is the legal equivalent of correcting a typo, though, granted, mistakes in this context have a much greater impact. (You think this is bad? Imagine this kind of confusion happening in, say, criminal law, and you will understand why lawyers are expensive.)

There were two separate questions in this controversy: what was in the terms of service; and what plans AOL had for our data. Ben and those who agreed with him focused on the first question; I and others focused on the second. Neither of us was wrong, but neither of us was really answering the other's question: the TOS did not mean that AOL was lying; and AOL's statements did not explain away the problematic clauses in the TOS.

11:04 PM | Internet

Oy. Ben Stanfield's response to an AOL spokeman's denial that they monitor AIM conversations is to call him a liar. Because a random nitwit's parsing of a TOS document is inherently more accurate than an official denial. I can't believe Ben's take gets the benefit of the doubt, but AOL's response doesn't: apart from his interpretation of the document, which I believe is mistaken, there is as yet no corroborating evidence to support his claim.

Cory doesn't believe the AOL spokesman either, but that's Cory being Cory.

Update: Ben uses MacSlash to flog this horse some more. More coverage from the Houston Chronicle and from Slashdot.

1:41 PM | Internet

Spreading like wildfire across the blogosphere this weekend is the news that AOL's terms of service for its Instant Messenger service have been changed to give them the right to use your messages and denies you any right to privacy. It's all over the place: Boing Boing, MetaFilter, Slashdot, TUAW. The originator of this story appears to be Ben Stanfield (MacSlash's acaben) who posted about it on Friday.

There's only one problem with the story. It looks like it's completely full of shit.

From the comments to Ben's blog entry, someone identifying himself as AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein wrote the following:

The rumors flying around the blogosphere about the AIM Terms of Service are totally false.

First and foremost, AOL does not monitor, read or review any user-to-user communication through the AIM network, except in response to a valid legal process. The AIM privacy policy (which is part of the AIM TOS) makes that crystal clear:

"AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools offered as AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to disclose information about yourself publicly (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards made available by AIM), other online users may obtain access to any information you provide."

The second sentence of that same paragraph -- and the related section of the AIM Terms of Service -- is apparently causing the confusion. The related section of the Terms of Service is called "Content You Post" and, as such, logically and legally it relates only to content a user posts in a public area of the service.

If a user posts content in a public area of the service, like a chat room, message board, or other public forum, that information may be used by AOL for other purposes. One example of this might be a user who posts a "Rate a Buddy" photo and thus allows AIM to post it for other AIM users to vote on it. Another might be AOL taking an excerpt from a message board posting on a current news issue and highlighting it in a different area of the service.

Such language is standard in almost all similar user agreements, including those from Microsoft and most online news publications (MSN excerpted below). That clause simply lets the user know that content they post in a public area can be seen by other users and can be used by the owner of the site for other purposes.

Finally, there seems to be a misimpression that the change was recently made. In fact, the current AIM Terms of Service was last updated in February 2004 and has been in place for more than a year. The prior terms of service had very similar language reserving the same rights.

In short, AIM user-to-user communication has been and will remain private, the AIM TOS was not changed, and the TOS includes a standard clause on publicly posted material.

In other words, the controversial wording was about message-board posts, not instant messenging, and is a function of the service provider being able to let other users see your posts.

Ben got it wrong: he read the terms of service, jumped to conclusions about what it meant, and began posting about it. (He did his best to promote it: he submitted it to Slashdot and later posted it himself to MacSlash.) And the bloggers and Internet cognoscenti, who've raised paranoia about corporations to an art form, were all too willing to swallow a story that, on its surface, was quite absurd -- as though AOL could put several million iterations of "l8r d00d" to nefarious use!

This is not the sort of thing that gives bloggers journalistic credibility. On MacSlash, Ben said that he "broke the news on the story." Bullshit. Any real reporter would have called up AOL and asked whether this was in fact the case. Jumping to conclusions because you can't read a legal document is common enough -- you wouldn't believe some of the crazy interpretations of wildlife conservation law I've heard from reptile hobbyists, for example -- but it's not breaking a news story. If you're going to start a public campaign against a popular service, it's probably not a bad idea to check your facts first.

Ben got it wrong, full stop. And now people are running around telling each other to stop using AIM. That's not likely to abate any time soon: correcting the record is going to be extremely difficult, and several of the places where this is posted aren't likely to do it.

Update 3/14: eWeek covers AOL's denial.

11:58 PM | Internet

News coverage of the Jetsgo bankruptcy kept mentioning how people with Jetsgo tickets should call the Canadian Transportation Agency: first the news reported that Jetsgo said to do that; then the news said so itself. Though I once worked in the transportation sector, albeit obliquely, I couldn't figure out why. From checking their site, though, I presume it's to find out what your options are; they've certainly put together a handy page of advice for Jetsgo ticketholders.

2:44 PM | Travel