Planet Libervis

Ben Webb: Multistanza and Medibuntu

Ben Webb — 2008-05-10T15:12:30+00:00

Follwing from my last post, I decided that the best way to try and solve this issue would be to create a free-multiverse repositroy. To do this, I hacked together a bash script that would compare sid-main with ubuntu-multiverse (using packages lists I downloaded manually and removed the headers from) and pull any of the packages that overlapped between the two. I also got it to read an extras file, for packages that are in multiverse but not sid main, but yet are still free.

So, I now have a demonstration free-multiverse (which I call multistanza). This is currently hosted on my own pc, so will dissapear at night. If you are interested, try this link. compare.sh is the main script and the repo an be added as “deb http://bjwebb.homelinux.com:81/multistanza/ binary-i386/”. I will look for some off site hosting if I decide to pursue this further. If anyone does use my repo, I suggest using it in conjunction with medibuntu (see below).

But, the question is. Is this the best way to pursue this? What I’ve done so far has been no loss to me, because I’ve learnt some more bash scripting; but it is only worth continuing if my new repositry will be of use to other people. Thus, it would be a good idea to know if this has been done already. As far as I know, it hasn’t quite been done the way I want it. However, there is medibuntu, which contains packages not allowed in ubuntu, and is separated nicely into free and non-free. In fact, since I have the repo added, some of the apps get pulled from medibuntu instead of my repo. Unfortunately, not all the packages in medibuntu are as new as the ubuntu ones (hence why my repo and medibuntu could be complimentary) and some are not there at all (vlc for example).

So, I think that the best and most consitent way of having a free “extras” repo, and to avoid duplication of effort, would be for medibuntu to offer all of the free packages in multiverse in their free repository. I think this would fit in with their goal, but I’m not sure if they’d agree. I will contact them about this issue, and see where to go from there.

Charles H. Schulz (Charles): OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta: Creativity Extended

2008-05-09T15:55:33+00:00

We’re now on the 9 ^th of May and the final version of OOXML is still not be published either by the ISO or the Ecma as they had to do so. This ongoing scandal affects the industry as a whole and proves once again that OOXML has never been an open standard.

The OpenOffice.org project has just released the first « public » beta version of OpenOffice.org 3.0.This first beta version may not support all the expected features that will be included in the stable version but it does give a very good feeling of how the 3.0 will be like. You will find a more detailed list of features on this page. As you can see the 3.0 will sport a number of very interesting and useful features, such as the ability to import PDF documents, switching language inside one document, a new StartCenter, new icons, etc.I wanted to go a bit beyond the list of new features and tell you about the effect that OpenOffice.org 3.0 will have on its users and ultimately on the way we create content share it and stay happily productive in this always-on world.

Perhaps what matters the most with OpenOffice.org 3.0 will not so much be the flurry of new features; perhaps what will ultimately matter is the brand new architecture of OpenOffice.org that has been introduced with this new release. You already knew about the ability to use extensions in order to add features to OpenOffice.org. With the 3.0, OpenOffice.org becomes even more modular, allowing even more interested people to develop their own features on top of the 3.0 platform.In the long run, this completely revisited, rearchitected platform will play an essential part in extending the yield of OpenOffice.org .

The concept of office suite has kept evolving ever since its appearance in the eighties. At first, what mattered was the wordprocessor and the spreadsheet application. Then, Powerpoint came in and started to control our minds, becoming both a tool and a concept. We then learned about the concept of productivity suite, growing the office suite with all kinds of tools, from a PIM module to specific financial applications and elementary document management features.

Today, the paradigm has changed, but it does not necessarily involve the fattening of the whole suite. Rather, I believe that this new paradigm is about creating all sorts of content and sharing it freely. Sharing freely involves two perequisites: The easyness of sharing and the use of open formats, open standards that allow the users to master their own data and content and does not push them into vendor lock-in. This assumption also implies another, subtle point: the boundaries between applications are blurring and the applications themselves become easier to use.What this means leaves some room for interpretation and unveils new, different paths. Let’s see first what these new paths will not be, and second, let’s see what options there are and what are the options Openoffice.org chose.

The new paradigm in office suite rests on the following elements:

Creation of open content through the use of open and free formats, ideally standards
Freedom to share and distribute this content
Ease of use, simplicity

These three elements ultimately make up for an interesting consequence; they don’t just liberate the content and the creativity of users, they also lower significantly the barriers of adoption for people who could never afford this before. In doing so, this paradigm puts forth the urge to enable participation. Ultimately, that’s what office suites should be nowadays: Participation Enablers.

One can understand now why I think MS Office 2007-2008 has already missed this shift of paradigm: The use of proprietary formats and spreading confusion around the concept of openness will not really help in the end. Yet, the latest versions of MS Office suffer from their excessive integration with MS SharePoint, the mother of all office technologies by Microsoft. This CMS/Groupware platform may be very easy to use, but it does create a fortress of formats and DRMs beyond which users are forbidden to go, and share. This centralized process is also very telling of a deprecated mentatlity even before being a compelling offer for certain types of organizations.

The truth here, tools such as SharePoints will fade away, as wikis take the lead. And precisely, OpenOffice.org allows you to export your content in certain wiki syntaxes while choosing directly the server that needs to be accessed. So much for command and control…But lets go back to our topic.

The appearance of online office suites such as Google Docs and Zoho shows a new path and illustrates the shift of paradigm in office suites. Online office suites make it easier to create and share content while making the issues of platforms and applications fall thanks to their online nature. The ability to import and export from and to multiple formats, some of whose being open standards (ODF, PDF) is also present. At the same time, online services such as Slideshare add value to traditional tools.

Nobody wants to have to deal with proprietary barriers of any kind. It is about creating and sharing freely, and ultimately, it is about enabling participation.OpenOffice.org is not an online office suite. But by enabling people to share and to communicate, OpenOffice.org works like a hub for content creation. Its features set covers the full range of functionalities expected by advanced users, and its inherently free nature (in beer and in speech) allows anybody to use it in order to create and share in the easiest way possible.Its extendability not only creates an ecosystem, it creates something more powerful: A community of users contributing to OpenOffice.org in order to serve their needs, and ultimately enriching the codebase.The modularity of OpenOffice.org (turning it into a set of modules running on top of a runtime environment, the URE) also make it possible to turn the overall platform into a RIA (Rich Internet Application) , thus addressing even more use cases.

In any case, OpenOffice.org is on its way to become the hub of your digital content, by enabling freedom; freedom to use, freedom to share, freedome to modify, and freedom to distribute.

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Pascal Klein (klepas): On body modification

2008-05-08T04:54:52+00:00

Body modification is a permanent or semi-permanent alteration of the body for non-medical reasons — think spiritual, societal, BDSM play, aesthetic or practical. Body modification has been in practice for at least two thousand plus years—Ötzi the Iceman was found with a fairly large earlobe piercing (1–000 gauge; 7–11mm) and 57 carbon tattoos.

Yesterday I had another piercing done — a vertical eyebrow piercing sitting right beside my first on my left eyebrow. I wanted to get another piercing before I leave for Germany this Sunday. Being my second eyebrow piercing I knew what I had coming and all in all it was a fairly relaxing procedure, as far as piercings go. My latest metallic addition had me reflect over the topic of body modifications again — the image I present to others both at work and in my personal interactions.

These issues came up twice before — when I got my first eyebrow piercing and later when I had my Ashley piercing (an inverted vertical centered labret). Eyebrow piercings are simple to get, quick and easy to heal and generally bruise or swell very little. My Ashley piercing on the other hand left my lip swollen for several weeks, bruised and discoloured. Now that the primary healing is over I’m as happy as a clam; I love it. I consulted my employer, work colleagues, family and close friends about both of the piercings and received mixed responses. Work was open to the idea and didn’t mind whatsoever, family didn’t mind either way and accepted it was my decision whilst most of my friends were supportive and receptive to the idea.

Ultimately it comes down to an alteration of the body that can affect the impressions we leave upon others, particularly first impressions. First impressions are vital to good relationships; as much as we like to think we don’t judge books by their covers our first impressions of someone will shape our reactions and future interactions with that person.

The way we look during social interactions is influenced by many factors. Two that come to mind first include the way we dress (is she wearing a casual t-shirt or smart business wear) and personal hygiene (how clean are his fingernails). Body modification also affects the way we look.

I’ve found little issue with the piercings I have and the way they’ve altered my personal image. The only notable observations are that interactions with those several generations older than myself tend to be more conservative and prone to look less favourably upon visible body modifications. This is obviously something that I needed to weigh up — how much did I want to get the piercings versus how often I would have important business meetings with government types. I don’t want to make accusations that public servants are all conservative, but I think the example works.

On that note working in Canberra means I’ll probably run across a public servant just by walking out the door here in the City. I have a few colleagues who directly work for the government and themselves have a piercing or three, if not a tattoo or something else and have had no issues getting or holding their job. I’m glad that thus far I’ve had no problems in business interactions and happy to rarely hear of prejudicial treatment relating to body modifications, at least here in Australia.

In closing, I’ve also been told that as a “creative type” we’re given a little more leeway in this entire regard and sometimes we’re almost expected to be somewhat more outgoing and expressive.

Ben Webb: Ubuntu lumping troublesome stuff together

Ben Webb — 2008-05-07T22:06:44+00:00

As anyone who has read other posts on this blog will know I feel quite strongly about software freedom. I try to use exclusively free software as far as I possibly can. However, unfortunately I do still use some propreitary software, for various reasons.

Nonetheless, I wish to strive to become better in this respect. Recently, I took a look at the 100% free software distribution gnewsense. Thing is, I’m still rather undecided about whether non-free firmware is a problem (topic for a future blogpost maybe) and gnewsense breaks the network cards on both my pcs, rendering it useless for me, until I buy new network cards of course (It also means that I have no compiz, due to graphics card firmware, and the fact that glx has been stripped out (this annoys me, no truly free 3D acceleration yet :S), but I can live without this. The internet, I basically can not).

And, there is also the fact that my belief in the importance of free software has been wavering a bit (I know it is important, I’ve just been wondering how important - I’ll elaborate more in athoer blog post). But, I decided I was at a point where I wanted to try to remove all the tradiotional non-free software. By this I mean software that is regared by everyone by non-free, is not GPL’d etc. In fact most distributions have this content in a separate repository.

On Ubuntu (which I use on my main PC), this software is put into the multiverse. I decided today that I would cut myself off from this repository completely. It should be no harm for me, as I do not use any of these apps, flash and java were installed, but only for other people (gnash and icedtea ftw). However, the thing that is really annoying me is that by disabling multiverse, it is not only non-free software that I can not download, it is also perfectly free software with some sort of legal problem (patents, DMCA). The two groups of software are not the same thing for me (being a freedom lover and patent and DMCA hater), so it is a great inconvenience if the two are just lumped together!!!!!!

I want to be able to have all free software enabled (including that with patent issues etc.) but no non-free software. With ubuntu, I can’t do this - all I can do is pick debs out of multiverse by hand! For this reason, I’m thinking of switching to a distro that does not lump non-free and possibly troublesome together, the obvious choice, I think would be Debian (Sid, I think). Already, I had realised I would be comfortable with debian (I use it on another machine), but given that ubuntu is considered more user friendly and will do anything Debian will do, I had no incentive to switch. Now I do!

I wonder if I can update my current hardy installation to Sid. Its probably not advisable, but given that I have a fallback Kubuntu partion, I might just give it a go, for the hell of it.

Another thing I was wondering, is that I do decide to go freedom crazy (and hate non-free firmware). Then what distro would I choose? Not gnewsense I don’t think, because that doesn’t ship the free software that ubuntu lumps in multiverse. Annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be a freefree distro based on pure debian. Maybe gnewsense could be tweaked to be based on debian (project for the summer holdiays maybe).

Okay, I just spoke to the gnewsense guys, and it would probably be easier to create a “free multiverse repo”. So, I might not switch to Debian afterall. Then again I might. And everything could change if I manage to buy a new ethernet card. Watch this space

Self referencial note: This blog is almost like a conversation with myself. I either leave too long before writing or am still making up my mind whilst I’m writing. The latter is definitely better though.

Kevin Dean (kdean06): Openmoko Freerunner Update

Kevin Dean — 2008-05-05T18:33:10+00:00

I just thought I'd drop an update about my favorite Free Software project. :)

Today I got word from Steve (The production manager) from Openmoko Inc. that mass production of the Openmoko Freerunner - the long awaited GTA02 - will begin May 9th, 2008.

So you have 3 steps: build phone. test phone. ship phone.

Then we take orders. I was very adamament about having phones in the disty ready to ship before I opened the web shop.

This means soon, Openmoko Freerunner will be going on sale. :) More great news!

I'll certainly post again when it's on sale, and once I have mine.

Charles H. Schulz (Charles): “Die Partei hat immer Recht”

2008-05-05T14:19:44+00:00

The fact is, nobody outside the Ecma and probably ISO knows how OOXML looks like now. It is particularly cumbersome, not so much because that could amount to one more irregularity against the JTC1’s SC 34, but also because it creates yet one more precedent in the long story of anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. At the time this article is being written, there is no sign of OOXML and according to the loosest estimations, we should have seen it on the 2 ^nd of May at the latest.

But there is nothing, neither on the ISO web site, nor on the JTC1’s, while the Ecma and the Microsoft web site habor nothing else than their other usual news on other topics.

Rob Weir is wondering who may be induly favoured by this situation; I am but desesperately resigned to see this kind of irregularities happen. Unfortunately it strikes me as obvious that whatever irregular actions might be accomplished further in the OOXML case, the ISO will not be doing anything. It will carry on the farce, no matter what it takes, and will serve the Ecma (and the Ecma’s main shareholder’s interests) even if that means jumping in the pond of Ridicule.

Today it occured to me that we were getting closer to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A defining moment of History always comes with its flurry of anecdotes, quotes, and images, especially when we are close to it. And twenty years is very close on historical timelines. This is how the following sentence popped back in my mind: « Die Partei hat immer Recht »; it means « the Party is always right » with a very subtle nuance that I believe of some importance: The emphasis lies not on the righteousness of the said party (the SED, East-German Communist Party) or the mere affirmation that it always speaks the truth, but it lies in the subtle, deeper sense that the Party owns the right, or defines the law by which it owns the right to judge what is right and what is wrong. If that notion had not been consciously or unconsciously implied in this slogan, then the German sentence would have merely been « Die Partei ist immer richtig », the exact translation in English being « the Party is always right ». The original terms though convey the nuance I describe above through the use of the verb «to have/haben » and the subsequent use of the common noun « Das Recht » (the right, as in human rights), understood in a quasi-legal sense.

Now if you care to ask me, what in blazes does this linguistic considerations have to do with OOXML? The repeated and successful attempts by Microsoft to influence the outcome of the OOXML standardization process at the levels of the ISO’s JTC1 and of the national standards body was in itself unseen and the evidence that some large corporations are ready to do whatever it takes to fulfill their strategic objectives. Yet, the incongruous, unexpected behaviour of the standardization world has given way to a near total impunity for the Ecma and Microsoft. No matter how twisted a situation can be, the JTC1’s SC34 should always be followed, and when the rules do not fit the Ecma, then the rules are ignored or simply changed. At this stage, we do not know the reasons for which OOXML has not yet been published. I’m not even requesting the very final, ISO -stamped version of OOXML, but just the final, post BRM, consolidated version of OOXML. That too does not seem to exist. But worry not, some reasons will be made up, almost on the fly, cunningly lame and incredibly mediocre explanations that will show the utter submission to powerful interests of some inside the SC34 and the complete brainwashing of others.

In a few words like in a thousands, « Die Partei hat immer Recht ».

NB to the people working for Microsoft or for an entity having ties with Microsoft: I do not imply that Microsoft is like the East-German « United Workers’ Party » or that Microsoft is communist in any way (but Steve Ballmer implied that Free Software movement is communism, if you care to remember). Therefore I do not want to hear any threats or requests for public apologies for this blog. I meant what I meant, and said what I had to say. Don’t look for meanings that are not there. This is my mere, personal opinion and I am blessed to live in a country that is a democracy where Free Speech (just like Free Software) is protected and allowed. I am sure you too can appreciate that as well.

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GNU/Linux Matters Blog: More ways to help

2008-05-05T13:18:45+00:00

The participate page is always there for pointers, but if you look for more exciting things to work on, we have plenty of areas where you could have leg space for creativity and autonomous work.

We are still lacking (human) resources to work on the following topics:

Link button revolution. We’d like to go from the current ugly stack of buttons, to something authoritative, elegant, and simple —think spreadfirefox. We’d be much better off with five sizes and ten buttons, with a single icon.
Screenshot perfection. We’re looking for extremely well thought-out sets of screenshots for getgnulinux.org and translations, localized in eight languages. (this is ticket #41)
Precise visit statistics tracking. If you think that you could write a script that outputs, say, the number of Windows visitors who visited at least two pages in the past week, we’d love to hear from you!
CSS mastership. We’re maniac about accessibility and legibility, but could still do better. Improving font rendition on IE6, making sure things will display fine when we release a Chinese translation, adapting to mobile devices browsers, are things we’re thinking about.
Linking module. Managing an affiliate system for linking to our websites will be the first milestone of Animador, our grassroots marketing platform. If PHP development is your thing, you might want to have a look.
Articulate writing. We have just started working on GetFreedomware.com, the upcoming replacement of SoftwareLiberty.com. We are looking for polished, concise, powerful phrases to get the message to everyday visitors. (more to come very soon in the forum).
Elegant web design. Our Linux FAQ page has grown to be difficult to read and navigate. Accessibility and simplicity are your mottoes? This might be for you.
Multi-cultural expertise. If you know what it takes to reach the Japanese community, or what kind of domain name would suit an Arabic translation, or how to best manage cross-border variations in languages —well, you can educate us =)

Enthusiastic coulda-woulda-shoulda talkers are easy to find. Participants who get things done are priceless. If you think you can help, feel free to start working, make yourself known, and we’ll hand you the keys. Thousands of daily visitors will benefit from your skills, and you’ll get eternal gratitude from the rest of us! =)

GNU/Linux Matters Blog: Miscellaneous early spring news

2008-05-05T09:02:33+00:00

We have not written much in the last weeks, due to a relatively high work load; but I wanted to share a few news about our work.

First, the second GLM summit is over. Gustavo and myself were able to meet for 4 days in April, which allowed us to work on the roadmap for the current semester, as well as work out many technical decisions.
We will write more about this, but the main priority that we defined was community growth. This translates into better community tools, more translations, measurement of website growth, more internal communication.
Our lists of vendors selling GNU/Linux pre-installed computers are growing continuously, which is very encouraging. Both the French (LinuxPréinstallé.com) and English (LinuxPreloaded.com) websites show that things are getting brighter in the USA and in the EU.
We have the great pleasure to note that translations of GetGNULinux.org are progressing nicely. At the time of writing, the Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian languages have over 20% of the website translated.

In the background, a myriad of technical improvements, exchanges within communities are getting us ready to grow faster.

Chris Sumner (artist): Nebula Flypast

2008-05-03T15:06:00+00:00

A ship flies past a brilliant nebula, on its way home. It cruises past so the crew can take a look at this magnificent natural phenomenon.

Chris Sumner (artist): Alien Waters

2008-05-03T15:04:00+00:00

A crew of explorers in a hi-tech submercible venture deep into the waters of an alien world hoping to find evidence of life. Despite their sopisticated equipment, a massive animal of unique origin ploughs overhead undetected...

Chris Sumner (artist): Kentares

2008-05-03T15:00:00+00:00

A shuttle orbits the suppose dead world in the Kentares system, but someone or something has left the lights on, on a world that is suppose to be void of any sentience or life.

Chris Sumner (artist): Gas Giant Tanker

2008-05-03T14:58:00+00:00

A tanker heads to a gas giant to claim its funds in extracting stellar gas for commercial use. Its a dangerous job, but one that has to be done. The tanker has seen years and still goes on, chancing its luck.

Chris Sumner (artist): Future Lonliness

2008-05-03T14:57:00+00:00

An individual head home to a maassive futuristic complex, a megastructure catered for one's need, but in the process isolates all and as a result makes them alone amongst the others. True futurte lonliness.

Chris Sumner (artist): Cellestial Cathedral

2008-05-03T14:55:00+00:00

This is a neutron star drawing stellar matter to itself. As a result the substances become spires of materia, or gas and substance - the spires of a cellectial cathedral. This was done to emphasise the vastness and natural beauty of space. I based the idea off the famed Eagles Nest Nebula and made it into the image you see.

Chris Sumner (artist): Pursuit

2008-05-03T14:12:00+00:00

A Federal agent spies upon illegal activity, only to be rumbled - and now is on the run for his life, pursued by determined killers - if that is not bad enough, he has to navigate an asteroid field!

Ben Webb: RMS Talk

Ben Webb — 2008-05-02T22:50:43+00:00

Yesterday, me and a couple of friends went to see a talk in Manchester by Richard Stallman (rms), the founder of the free software movement. I’m not sure quite how much the other two got from the experience, but I certainly found it very interesting - although I knew many of the things he said, it was the way he explained them, and it also provoked me to think about certain things.

One of the biggest things was Richards unfaltering commitment to the four freedoms as moral imperatives. One thing he explained particularly well, that I’d known for a while, but found difficult to explain was the problem with free software not allowing people to do certain tasks (e.g. use a printer, due to the technical incompleteness) and yet still claim to be liberating them. His explanation, which I will use from now on, is that something like this is not about freedom, it is about convenience. The two are completely separate, even though people are sometimes try to lump them together.

Of course, that then raises the question for me personally: How committed am I? What inconveniences am I prepared to face? This was really brought home to me by part of his talk specifically about schooling. Not only did one of his apologies compare roughly to my own experience (free software is great for learning for children who want to know how stuff works, unfortunately, I was still part of the proprietary software world during most of my childhood, so I missed out). But, also he was talking about how exclusively Free Software is an absolute must in schools, for four reasons:

Its much cheaper, and schools have tight budgets as it is
To prevent proprietary software companies from locking in, or “addicting” children
Given that the four freedoms are important, the most important people to teach these ethics to are our children. Rms gave his example that children should be willing to and able to share anything they bring to class, whether that be sweets or software
Free software provides a much better way for eager students to learn how software works (as explained above)

However, what struck me most, was again, how he talked about achieving it. That those who care about Free Software, such as myself, should refuse to use the proprietary software in schools. I’m currently wary of doing this, especially for diplomacy, but it is certainly something I should consider doing. Then, there’s the point of whether I can avoid proprietary software entirely - really, it is something I should aim for, and am working towards, but when am I going to take the plunge entirely.

Something I found interesting, especially as it will be one of ADFA’s campaigns, is his stance on webapps. Using computers in the way he does, he sees no need for them, and points out that you are giving up a certain amount of control to your data (whether the server runs free software or not), something that I had pointed out on the ADFA project. However, the thing that I had not thought about, was the fact that these apps run software on the users machine, in the form of languages such as javascript. It is these scripts that must be under a free software license for webapps to be 4-freedoms-compatible. I’m still not sure whether this is a terribly big issue, but it is definitely something to campaign for - particularly since freeing these scripts would not cause much loss to the companies, escpecially as the source code is already availible anyway.

One less important, but interesting thing I took away from the talk was a fresh look on the whole Linux naming controversy. What I am trying to campaign for is free software as a right, not just Linux as a system or open source being good technically. Since what I am striving for is most similar to GNU/FSF than any other project, using the name GNU should really be a good thing. My main issue with GNU/Linux was that it sounded technical and off-putting. However, I hope to use the term “GNULinux” from now on (to avoid the “slash”). Really this is not so off-putting, especially since a gnu is also an animal, so those who won’t appreciate “funny” acronyms don’t need to know about them. And, if you are trying to market simply as a software product, then just use the distro name like Ubuntu - however, I don’t just want to market a product, so from now on, I hope to make an effort to mention GNU. Linux might be shorter to say, but surely we can at least use GNULinux as the “full name” for the system.

Another minor, but useful thing was how he answered the question about the loss of jobs if the whole world moved towards free software (aka. free software is communist, developers can’t make money etc.). He pointed out something I’d not quite grasped. Within the computing market, jobs actually developing software are only a small section, and only a small section in that is creating proprietary software (the rest is building custom software, which as long as the one user of the software has the four freedoms is completely ethical - giving people software and restricting there use of it is immoral, but not sharing at all is just a bit mean). The worse that could possibly happen is that this small section within a section would disappear. Not a problem at all, considering that it is entirely possible to get jobs developing free software! Someone raised the issue of one person propreitary software developers no longer being able to make money, and rms pointed out the argument we too often overlook - that nobody has a right to make money if they are exploiting people (in fact, he told the person that he hoped their business failed!). Free software is about encouraging a completely different mindset and ethos.

Finally, after watching Richard auction I’ve re-realised it would be good to read some of the free software movements literature. So now, I want to get my hand on Free as in Freedom and Free Software Free Society, as well as the ancap books Wikiacc mentioned in response to my previous posts.

PS: I left this a day before writing this. I reawlly ought to improve my blogging style and use a notebook or something.

PSS: Point in case, I’ve already found myself adding a major paragraph to this, I’ll probably find myself adding more to this as it comes to my head. I need a small pocket sized notebook!

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Free Hans Reiser?

2008-05-02T14:07:33+00:00

These days, I keep hearing of people getting jailed for not a very good reason. Wesley Snipes gets jailed for resisting government theft of his well earned property. And now, one close to our geeky hearts, Hans Reiser gets 25 to life in prison for the supposed murder, despite the fact that, as I keep hearing, evidence was merely circumstantial and the key evidence elements are missing (body of the actual victim, for instance).

Mr. Reiser is a weird guy perhaps, outspoken, easily interpreted as rude. Gee.. who else do we know displaying similar traits? Richard Stallman? Theo De Raadt? Let’s jail them all for not fitting the norm of “accepted” social behavior! Or not?

Because, for lack of better evidence, this is what the Reiser case largely comes down to.

And what do we see our fellow geeks do about it? The sheep just take it as it is. A court says he’s a murderer so he must be called a murderer, and that’s where the story ends. I wonder if they’d be so indifferent if it was them who were falsely accused and rotting in prison now, just because their social behavior was interpreted as oh so hurtful towards good men and women in this sheepish western society.

I expected better from a Free Software community, all so adamant in promoting their cause and supposedly “freedom”.

So how about someone gets a god damn hint here and starts questioning? Are there any geeks out there, who are well versed in the intrigues of “law” and have enough respect for a fellow Free Software supporter to actually care if he is being falsely robbed of his freedom or not?

Charles H. Schulz (Charles): Waiting for OOXML

2008-05-02T13:14:26+00:00

At the time this post is being written, there is still no news of the final version of Ecma 376/DIS-ISO 29500, aka OOXML. I guess we’ll have to wait until midnight, today, Geneva time to have it. Yet some also claim that the deadline was midnight yesterday on the First of April. The situation being what it is, I have decided to write a small song, and not to sing it because I sing very poorly. It will be up to Pieter (and its incredible guitar) to record it. The words below are to be singed on the music of the Doors, « Waiting for the Sun ».

At last comes the moment when truth shall come out

Standing on the brink of outrage

Waiting for OOXML (3x)

Can’t you still read it now that the Spring has come.

And its time to push it to unwanting users.

Waiting for OOXML (3x)

Waiting…. waiting…. waiting…. waiting…. (2x)

Waiting for it to – be published

Waiting for it to -really work

Waiting for it to – locking you all

Waiting for you to - tell me what went wrong

This is the worst standard I’ve ever known.

Yeah! (riff 8x)

Enjoy your week-end!

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Pascal Klein (klepas): The first Open Source Industry & Community Report

2008-04-30T14:49:59+00:00

This will most likely be old news for most — Waugh Partners released the first Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report following the census they conducted over the last year. This is it:

Industry, page 8 of the report.

Now with KLEPAS.ORG resurrected I wanted to briefly touch on it and entice those who haven’t yet seen it to download a copy. The report is licensed under a Creative Commons license and thus can be redistributed freely. A print copy is on its way — again see the census page above for more information.

Emloyment status pie chart.

I worked with Waugh Partners on the report producing their bar and pie graphs over the last few months. The work was done entirely using open source tools — namely Inkscape and Scribus. Working with Waugh Partners was a sincere pleasure: I was actively encouraged to use open source tools and of course got to have a sneak peak at the report. Thanks Jeff & Pia.

GNU/Linux Matters Blog: Financial report for 2007

2008-04-30T10:14:48+00:00

Last month, we completed our first year of formal activity. GNU/Linux Matters has been registered as a non-profit organization, operating under the French law regarding Associations de Loi 1901, since March 2007.

We want and need everyone’s trust — our projects, activities, and aspirations are for all to see and take part in. Finances are not an exception.

Our financial report for 2007 is a 4-page clear and human-legible PDF document. It summarizes our income and expense for the year ranging from April 2007 to March 2008, and presents our expectations for the year 2008.

I (Olivier) also endorse the role of treasurer of the organization, and remain available should you have questions regarding this.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Modern internet entrepreneurship in a nutshell

2008-04-29T23:19:10+00:00

First of all, I am not claiming to be an expert on internet and web entrepreneurship nor web publishing itself. I start with what I’ve got and learn what I need or what I am really interested in as I go. That said, a recent discussion I had with a friend inspired me to write a description of what I see as modern internet entrepreneurship.

An entrepreneur is someone who seeks opportunities for creating value for other people. Most entrepreneurs also seek ways to convert this value that they provide into something of value for themselves as well (like money). An entrepreneur can, just as every other human, make mistakes and see an opportunity where there is none or simply fail to offer the kind of value that people are really looking for. In a free market entrepreneur is actually a default characterization of all people, since in their quest of pursuing maximum value for themselves, they first need to provide some value to others. In an extremely broad sense even wage workers could be considered entrepreneurs.

An internet entrepreneur is all of the above except that (s)he chose the internet, mainly the web, as the means of providing value (because this is what his/her skills or interests fit with best). This means that an internet entrepreneur will look for opportunities which (s)he can pursue by means of the internet, usually starting a web site of some sort (but could also be various other kinds of services instead or in addition to it, such as hosting mail servers, IM or IRC services, etc.).

Typically, internet entrepreneurs start web sites on which they provide some sort of a content or service hoping that enough people would find it valuable enough to visit or use, even if this requires a payment. And this is where a crucial point comes, one greatly related to the above mentioned discussion.

This payment does not necessarily have to be in money going directly from visitors to the web site owner. Most of the time the visitors see various kinds of advertisements placed on the web site and the fact that they have to see them in addition to the actual content they are looking for is their payment. If the content that is on the site is, however, not valuable enough for them to “put up” with those ads they will simply leave and not come back. Otherwise, they wont mind ads enough to leave.

So a web publisher “charges” visitors with this “price” for the content they are offering. At the same time, however, the fact that there is a number of visitors “buying” this content for that “price” of seeing ads is what creates the value that those ads themselves have to people we know as advertisers - people who wish to advertise a particular other site, product or service to our audience. So they pay if the price of those spots is what they consider to be fair given the value they estimate to get from it.

So, in a nutshell, internet entrepreneurs today are in a sense mediators between users of the content they provide and advertisers. What puts them into this position is the fact that they offer valuable content. As soon as no people “buy” the content, no advertiser will buy advertising space and the site will turn into a useless ghost town.

This is why it is extremely important to provide valuable content, and it definitely helps, if it should not actually be required, for one providing content to have a genuine interest in what it is about. An internet entrepreneur should also strive to make the cost the user associates with the displaying of ads to be as low as possible - therefore making ads as non-intrusive as possible while still retaining enough value for the advertiser.

If visitors didn’t see ads on the site they may be paying for the content they are getting in some other way, possibly involving a direct payment to the site owner. I believe, however, the reason why instead of this we see most sites carrying advertisements instead is because this is of greatest convenience to everyone. Not everyone has a paypal account nor does everyone want to use their credit card on too many sites. People would rather see a few ads than shell out real cash.

Those who do not like ads should really think about that. Perhaps there is an opportunity for themselves - in finding a way that keeps this convenience while ridding us of the necessity to display ads. I might give this some thought myself.

Cheers.

Charles H. Schulz (Charles): Comparing online newsreaders

2008-04-29T13:50:57+00:00

Today I will talk about some tools I’m using daily, namely feedreaders. It is likely that at least a good half of the people with whom I’m working use these readers in order to browse among dozens, if not hundreds of feeds. For the readers of this blog who don’t use such tools, here’s a quick description of the benefits they bring. I know they are not immediately obvious to the people who do not regularly use feedreaders. In a few words, you can fetch in one interface the content of the websites you’re visiting on a daily or weekly basis and read this always updated content (through RSS or Atom feeds provided by those web sites). Now how this is supposed to work better than the « old way » of browsing pages on the web? To be fair, it is only useful if you’re like me and many others, browsing hundreds of articles and dozens of website throughout the day while working on something else. Otherwise, feedreaders’s advantage will have little value in comparison of your good old bookmarks.

The section on fundamentals will stop here. What I would like to talk about now is not the feedreaders themselves, but the online feedreaders. Although I happen to use feedreaders myself, (on my Mac, I occasionaly use Vienna, a BSD feedreader for Mac with multiple themes and a clean , yet elegant interface) I mostly use online feedreaders. Why?

Mostly because I don’t have to open yet another software regardless of how small its footprint would be and I can find it directly in my browser window. Another benefit is that I’m free to browse my feeds on other computers, although desktop feedreaders are obviously better in an offline mode (See my point on Google Gears further below). As it turns out, I am now using three on line feedreaders. If you care to ask why in the world I would use three of those, my answer will be simple: 1) because I’m weird 2) because I still can’t decide the best among those three. So here’s what I’ll do now: I shall discuss the merits and drawbacks of those three services below and ask interested readers to provide me here with their opinion and feedback on this matter.

Blorq : Blorq has been my first online feedreader I’ve been using. I happen to talk once in a while with its founder. I believe Blorq is the cleanest and simplest reader I’ve ever seen, but several issues bother me. First, it only works with Firefox (all versions) but not with other browsers such as Safari, Shiira, and Omniweb (I don’t remember if it works with Opera though). Second, Blorq is at this stage very much a project on hold. I’d love it to become sustainable though. On the up side, it is quite clean and fast, and it does one thing right (feedreading and aggregation) and while social features are present (through the use of « Sets ») it does not bug you with anything that is not feedreading.

Rojo : Probably one of the oldest online feedreader/aggregator, it sports the most beautiful interface (different shades of blue and red on a white background), at least according to my taste. It is very simple to use, puts more emphasis on social features through the division of one’s personal pages and tags and the aggregation of every pages making up for the Rojo publicly available aggregated content. It also works with every browser I have used so far. But there is a big minus: Quality. The service can sometimes be slow, or simply break and it does so often.

Google Reader : I have been wary and very critical of one of the most famous online feedreader for a long time. At first I thought the service was slow, its interface simple but not elegant and generally speaking behaving poorly. Also, I found Google Gears to be more of nuisance than anything.

However, all this changed almost imperceptibly in less than 6-8 months. Although I still find the interface to be too simple for my own aesthetic tastes, the performance of the service is now much better than both Rojo and Blorq. In short, Google Reader is fast. The configuration is also very easy, features are added almost every day and I have not explored all the shortcuts available. The feeds suggestion is also very good (probably even better than with Rojo) but given the fact that I am using mostly Firefox 3.0 beta versions I was not able to use Gears with the service in order to test its offline capabilities.

So to summarize things bluntly: Blorq goes for simplicity and purity, Rojo for Beauty, and Google Reader for performance. You choose. I can’t.

Last but not least, I didn’t want to end up this post without pointing to some useful RSS/OPML tools:

Xfruits : is a set of services churning RSS feeds, web content and OPML files (xml files storing a group of rss feeds listing) in and out websites, emails, blogposts, and even mobile. In fact, it could also be used as an RSS reader but you have to enter rss feeds manually instead of being able to import full OPML files as it’s the case with Blorq, Google Reader and Rojo. It’s a nice and useful service that does many things (although I believe their creation of OPML has a few glitches) made by a nice French company from Corsica.
Feedblendr: another online set of tools around RSS. You can do less things with Feedblendr than with Xfruits, but it might be very helpful and is simple enough to use by everybody.

Comments welcome!

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Technica Discordia: Simplicy and Open Society

2008-04-26T09:37:57+00:00

It’s been a little bit of a long time since I last posted but I used the time to reevaluate my post style so hopefully it’ll be worth the wait. In this post I will be talking about the need to make any information which is made publicly available truly open rather just provided to the public. As many people probably know information can be presented in ways that make it harder or easier to understand the information. I would assert that presenting information in a way which is harder to understand when there is a simpler way to present that information.

Let us first assume that it is better to present the same information in a less understandable way. If the information is less understandable then fewer people can understand it. The point of making information public and open is so that people can use the information. If a person doesn’t understand the information then said person can’t use the information. So we run into a contradiction. So we have shown that a more understandable presentation is preferable for information which has been made public.

Something which is truly open would be understandable to anyone who is capable of using the information. So why is this important to the idea of an open society? Well the most obvious answer is that if our goal it to be a completely open society any effort to obfuscate information would be counter productive, but there are answer that is even relevant to our current closed societies. This answer is that confusion in public information can lead to undesirable results for the society providing the information.

The best examples of this come from law. The point of having laws is provide information to people about what they can and cannot do. Having done that they provide information about what will happen should someone do something they should not do. The goal of having laws is that of making it so as few people as possible do things which they shouldn’t. Laws atleast in the country I live in are very complex and there are so many of them that most people have to visit a specialist, a lawyer, to figure if we are allowed or are not allowed to do things. We as citizens know what I would call common sense laws like that we shouldn’t rob people or commit murder, but what exactly is something like loitering or where it comes into play is something vague that most people don’t understand. Even for the specialists laws are vague and they need to have books and books of laws and interpretations to be able to practice their trade.

That being the case and seeing as having a specialist evaluate a person’s every action would have an astronomical cost one can say that it is possible for a person to brake the law without knowing it. In my country there are so many laws covering just about every aspect of life which makes braking the law unknowingly very likely. Since the point of laws is to make people not want to brake them we can say every time someone brakes a law unknowingly the body of law fails in it’s purpose.

So in order to minimize the number of times the law fails due to the ignorance of citizens it would benefit us to make our code of laws presentable in such a way that most if not all citizens can understand it and do understand it. The ways to do this are to make the laws simple and to make the overall number of laws as small as possible so that specialists are unnecessary to avoid braking of the law.

So in recap we’ve shown that information should be presented in the simplest of forms possible in order for it to be considered truly open. This is because complexity serves to hide the information from most people. I would like to note here that target audience should be taken into account to when judging simplicity. For example technical details of a computer system would be simple if the information was being presented to computer specialists but would be complex for the general public. Having shown this we say an example involving legal systems which is applies to both open and closed societies. So I think so can safely call obfuscation through complexity a fallacy to be avoided in an open society or even a closed society when information is made public.

Pascal Klein (klepas): Are “reset” style sheets bad?

2008-04-25T16:39:34+00:00

It slipped by me that just last week — a few days before Canberra’s first BarCamp — Eric Meyer wrote an article responding to Johnathan Snook’s announcement that he doesn’t use reset stylesheets. Following that came Jens Meiert’s arguments that reset style sheets are bad.

I can see where Jens is coming from but don’t see any compelling reasons that would convince me they’re inherently bad. Below I’ve tried to counter some of the common arguments that get raised against reset style sheets.

Overriding the overridden

The addition of extra lines in the author’s style sheet to override reset sheet definitions can become a waste of time and effort. The amount of definitions that need to be redefined comes down to two things: how many definitions are made in the reset sheet and the scope of the website.

Some large projects may even demand for an optimized production set of style sheets with a separate commented and split development set. A designer will need to decide how many definitions are going to be made in the reset style sheet and weigh that in turn to the redefinitions that need to be made. This should be combined with the use of optimization tools such as CSSTidy and of course the removal of redundant definitions from both the main style sheet(s) and reset sheet. See Going nuts, below.

Latency

Another style sheet in the mix will definitely add to the full download size of a website. Again this is relative to how large the reset sheet is. It is possible to compress CSS, (X)HTML, and Javascript files. With the YUI reset style sheet sizing at around four kilobytes, the optimization of images and their are implementation within the design is a more prevalent issue.

Removing functionality and usability

Removing usability through the reset sheet and neglecting to implement it by other means or redefining it is not an inherent fault of the reset sheet but of the designer; the designer should look into what elements the reset sheet is defining — never copy and paste blindly.

Going nuts

Reset style sheets aren’t bad because some are all-encompassing in their definitions and this certainly shouldn’t be a case for never using them. Ultimately the number of definitions in a reset style sheet should come down to how useful each is going to be in your project.

I take Eric Meyer’s position on this whereby we should use the tools that suit us best:

“The key here […] is that you evaluate various tools by thinking about how they relate to the ways you do what you do—and then choose what tools to use, and how, and when. That’s the mark of someone who thinks seriously about their craft and strives to do it better.”

Thus:

Use what suits you best, even it’s just the age old
* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
If you use a reset style sheet make sure you know what you’re resetting and why.

Kevin Dean (kdean06): Man kidnapped for refusing to give money to armed gang

Kevin Dean — 2008-04-25T02:30:12+00:00

"This man is one of the most honorable men of character," said Robert Wall, CEO and president of World Black Belt, a martial arts training firm.

Another witness described how [the man] had helped train personnel from 33 airlines on safety techniques after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, without seeking pay or media attention.

In 1999 an armed gang began demanding payment from a man in a fashion similar to the mafia. While not stated implicitly, the message was clear. Pay up or bad things will happen to you. Being a man of honor he refused to pay. In 2006 this armed gang decided enough was enough. They claimed that by living in their territory, the man had accruded a debt of roughly $15 million dollars, money that (in the hands of the gang) would be used to fund the slaughter of foreigners, train assassins, invade the privacy of innocent people and sustain a regime of brainwashing and intimidation.

Despite the man's offerings of $5 million dollars and pleas to "have mercy", the gang reacted.

[This] should send a loud and crystal clear message to all [..] defiers that if they engage in similar [...] conduct, they face joining him, said Nathan Hochman, a spokesman for the gang. There's no secret formula, he went on to say. Pay up in a timely manner of face their reaction.

***

It plays like a Hollywood movie and conjurs up images of smoky speakeasies and men with bad accents. Men concerned with the fear that the public has seen someone "get away with it".

But the sad, disgusting reality is that this scene didn't take place in a movie that one could get up and walk away from if they found it distasteful. This scene happend in a federal courtroom.

Wesley Snipes, a world-reknowned actor who stared in films such as "Murder at 1600" and the Blade trilogy, was sentenced to 3 years in prison today for refusal to pay taxes. Taxes which would go to fund the war in Iraq, wiretapping of American subjects and the "War on Drugs" which uses violence against people who set plants on fire.

The fact that the gang call themselves "the government" matters very little in the end. The threats, the violence and the intimidation are VERY real. Pay up, or suffer our wrath. The fact that they call their bribe money "taxes" matters little, for a man who harmed nobody will spend the next three years deprived of his livelyhood and seperated (by fear of being shot) from his family.

A crowd stood by as Mr. Snipes exited the court room and said "Wow!" but this crowd was not enough to change the situation. Letters from some of the nations social elite made recommendations to the court for leniency but the only think in the minds of the government thugs was the impression their actions would make on the populace.

On you.

What impression WILL it make? Will you sit by and doublethink this action away, calling the man a "criminal" for refusing to pay blood money? Will you quietly reflect on the fact that 'it wasn't me" and move on?

Will you take a stand and say "This isn't right!". Will you add your voice to that crowd, and do exactly what those goons feared?

Will you say 'You have no authority over me!"?

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): We will go to space

2008-04-24T05:55:52+00:00

A few decades from now privately owned space ships will roam through Earth space and perhaps throughout the solar system.

Virgin Galactic appears to have made a historic move towards making this happen, and this time I am not referring to them building a uber-futuristic space port nor sending tourists to space with one of theirs SpaceShipTwo’s. Oh, they will be doing that, next year or so. But what they did in January this year may prove to have much more dramatic ramifications. Let’s see…

Virgin Galactic on Wednesday (January 23rd) unveiled designs for SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightTwo, two vehicles that are designed to usher in private spaceflight. The technology behind the system will have an open architecture “like Linux,” said officials.

This comes from a story titled “Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo; Plans open architecture spaceship”.

And here I was, tongue in cheek, searching for instructions on how to build my own space ship (so I can escape should dreaded predictions for this government-fscked up Earth come true). Little did I know that my little dream isn’t that far from impossible anymore.

With openly available space ship architectures an army of what we could term “space geeks” (many of which are, no doubt, star trek fans) will be all over this looking for ways to not only improve the current design, but perhaps build completely new ship designs. Some of them, with entrepreneurial spirit and some (big) cash in their pockets might even start contracting builders for even better, faster, cheaper space ships - ones that could go on much further than “sub”-orbit and orbit of the Earth.

If you ask me, the genie is out of the bottle. The private somewhat free market finally took the ball (or was allowed to) in order to actually do something exciting about space flight and exploration, something that actually matters to me and you and your.. grandma. We’re talking about Linux for the masses.. er.. did I just say that? We’re talking Space Flight for the masses.

Given these news I don’t feel surprised anymore that someone on 43things is thinking about an “Open Source Space Ship”. I reckon if an alliance of people and companies who really care about this stuff would come together they might not only design private space ships in an open freedomware-like fashion, but actually build them, and build them as such to be operable with little training.

There is really nothing too tangible standing in the way of us starting to buzz around through Earth’s close space within decades in cool private space ships. All the basic technology is there, the market is forming and the idea of breaking out of our atmosphere is common sense since god damn seventies! It’s about time we break free!

I am going to go to space, in my life time.

Cheers!

Cool links:

- Virgin spaceship to use open source?
- SpaceDev to Build Piloted Spaceship
- Virgin Galactic Space Flights FAQ
- And.. how about some serious space shippery, Building an Antimatter Spaceship!

Ben Webb: What is Freedom?

Ben Webb — 2008-04-22T22:50:02+00:00

I’ve not posted here for a couple of weeks, which has been for a variety of reasons. Basically, I’ve not had much of interest to post. My AS exams are fast approaching so I’m busy preparing for those, which means that ADFA has not really got started (although a few of us will be going to hear Richard Stallman talk in Manchester next week, which I’m sure I’ll be able to blog about) and it also means that I’ve also not done any particularly interesting technical things. Another factor has been a fiasco involving a website, which I won’t elaborate on.

However, one thing I have been thinking about, is freedom in the wider world (ie. not just software freedom). I have always been a great supporter of peoples freedoms. Every human being has rights, yay for the the Geneva convention etc. Of course, I thought, some rights are more important than others. And we need a government to intervene when different people’s freedoms/rights collide. As far as I understood politics, I considered myself a liberalist - individual freedom is very important, which, in my opinion, includes the rights to be happy, well educated etc.

The government, of course, restricts our freedoms: takes our money and stops us doing things, even when those aren’t harmful to other people. Of course, I have always accepted, and been taught to accept this as necessary to safeguard, other more important rights. However, I’ve recently been made aware by Daniel and Kevin on the libervis IRC channel to the possibility of a stable society without government. The idea being that although every person has fundamental rights (to life, liberty and property), those rights are enforced not by one single monopolistic* organisation, but by the free market. That is, if someone violates your rights you can hire a company to recoup damages off him. Also, people who do immoral things will become known for doing so (increasingly easy in the age of the internet) so people will not “do business with them”**. This concept is called anarcho-captitalism (an-cap for short) or the laissez-faire market.

Anarcho-capitalism, as long as it remained stable, would protect most of peoples rights, in fact most even more so than our current system. However, even if it were to be stable, my main doubt is whether it would discriminate against poor people. I’ve always been a great fan of the public health and education service we have in the UK - the same services for all; but of course, you would not have these without a government and taxation.

The answer to this, I guess, is that all people would be able to afford these services through a combination of charity, sponsorship and providing some kind of service. The last is the kind of idea that poorer people would get affordable healthcare and schooling by agreeing to take part in scientific studies etc, to be monitored. Whilst this idea my actually work, in my mind, the concept conjures up images of poorer people having to earn the medicine they need to stay alive by being human guinea pigs and being subjected to all sort of chemicals. I guess, once again, it falls down to the fact that there would be a free market. People would be able to vote with their feet against the things that they do not like and would be able to support things they do think are right through charity. In fact, I think that if people weren’t taxed, people would naturally be more generous, and unlike the way that taxation works, would donate to the causes that really matter to them.
Of course, one of the other arguments is that in an an-cap society there would be less poverty, so there would not be so much of an issue. However, I am not yet so convinced about this; although lack of government restrictions in this area would be good in many ways.

One of my biggest issues with the practicality of anarcho-capitalism, although a really great ideal, is the fact that it depends on people making thought through choices, preventing any bad things by making the right decisions about who to do business with. I’m not sure if a lot of people are capable of making that decision for themselves, at least not as they are. For it to work smoothly, an an-cap society seems to require better more conscientious people - doubleplushuman.

Perhaps a lot of people would be willing to become more active. In fact a lot of the reason people don’t care now, is because they have the government to look after them, but, as they often point out, the government doesn’t really listen to them. And, one of the greatest things about anarcho-capitalism, is the free choice. If you want to, you can choose your own government (a corporation who will look after you, in return for a tax-like fee), or even establish small idealistic groups. (If you and friends bought a plot of land, no-one would stop you setting up a commune there!) The whole point is, people would have the choice as to how they want to live. A great dream, but one that will take quite a while to achieve (its about evolution not revolution) and one that I’m not even sure is practical yet.

* That’s something that I find really ironic. The fact that I naturally dislike and disapprove of massive corporations which have way too much power and control, and yet, have accepted the government, which is by its very definition a monopoly, without a moments thought.
However, one of the problems you could suggest with a free market, is the tendency for monopolistic businesses to grow. But, monopolies tend to use government contracts and legislation to their advantage. In anarcho-capitalism, it would be much easier for new, smaller businesses to compete.

** When there is no government, “do business” can mean a lot more than trade. If someone initiates force against somewhere else, the majority of a town might forbid him to use there land as a path and he would become an outcast.

So there you have it, another quasi-essay, another splurge of my thoughts on the web. But, for once, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, I’m still trying to work out where I really stand in the messy landscape of real world politics.

However, if you are interested, take a look at the philosiphy of liberty flash animation and there is also the Wikipedia article, and further information can be found here, here, here and here. My thoughts on the issue have been heavily influenced by Daniel’s and Kevin’s blogs.

Charles H. Schulz (Charles): Ite, non missa est

2008-04-22T11:14:45+00:00

As the deadline of the 2 ^nd of May is drawing near, I thought it useful to clarify some of the actual concerns surrounding the standardization of OOXML. Perhaps this piece will help dispelling some myths.

So what is going on , and what is left to be done before OOXML gets its now more than ever dubious ISO stamp? First, it is important to understand that we still have to see and to read the final draft of OOXML.

The deadline for the Ecma to publish this final version is on the 2 ^nd of May. There should be no doubt about wether this document will be produced in time. Of course, wondering about its quality will be another matter and a legitimate one at that. Where it becomes interesting is that as far as I was able to gather, the process does not stop at that stage. Once we will have that document (once again, it is dubbed « final draft) we will have a period of time to review it and if necessary, to appeal to it if the quality of the document is not satisfactory.

Before anybody from Microsoft starts to call me disingenuous, let me just get this straight: Despite what I may think of the whole OOXML standardization process, despite how critical I am of the existing ISO processes, I have no problem with the simple reality of what we went through because of OOXML. To be very factual, OOXML has received the appropriate number of votes in order to become an ISO standard. What remains to be done might sound incredible: OOXML has to be published first, then definitely approved. I am pretty sure that it will very likely become an ISO standard, but that’s ultimately up to the ISO, after the document’s publication and the necessary review period that will stamp it as an ISO standard (or not).

I wanted to point that out because I increasingly get the feeling that some want us to forget this process and to switch to some other topic (XPS for instance?). I know that there are more interesting topics to work on; after all, ODF 1.2 is not that far out in distance, and I expect all the love and kisses to be sent by our friends in Redmond. But I am still sticking to it not clinging, but sticking, not because of a perverse and pathetic hope I would appear to have against OOXML, but because I believe that the bells and whistles have been taken out a bit too fast.

We want the spec. We want it as bad as we wanted the answers from the Ecma in December, as bad as we want the whole OOXML and as bad as we want to have the specification of the format called OOXML and actually used inside MS Office 2007. Groklaw has an interesting article about it, but allow me to disagree with Groklaw for this time: This is hardly a scoop, just read my blog, Rob Weir’s, GullFOSS or Stephane Rodriguez. It was a known fact for several months now. Okay, I hear you say, it never hurts to trumpet out the truth. What this implies is that Microsoft will not only have to harmonize its several specifications, it may want to do something with the format used by MS Office 2007, 2008, and soon 2009.

Unless of course, Microsoft remains idle and does anything with MS Office 2007. After all, there is no legal nor moral requirement to use an ISO standard; but you can still claim you use one in front of your customers. I’m sure it already happened in Bercy….

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Pascal Klein (klepas): Beautiful Web Typography

2008-04-22T06:09:15+00:00

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of presenting my first presentation on typgraphy, at Canberra’s very first BarCamp. The talk was titled “Beautiful Web Typography: 7 tips on de-sucking the web” and is available via:

Slideshare;
Slideshare as a PDF (requires an account);
here as a PDF;
and thanks to Nathanael, as a MP3 audio file.

I think I crammed too much into the 20-minute time slot — I didn’t leave time for comments and questions — on the other hand I’d love to give future iterations of this presentation so I can add many other tips and tricks I left out.

I’d like to add additional CSS examples and make more of a note of the YUI library’s CSS which almost anyone can make instant use of. A few screenshots of existing web applications and web sites showcasing the tips in action also can’t go awry.

In closing I should note that I owe thanks to a few type nuts – see the last slide in the presentation.

Kevin Dean (kdean06): Why I've ditched the Free Software Foundation...

Kevin Dean — 2008-04-22T02:41:47+00:00

For the past several years, I've been a proud supporter of the Free Software Foundation. The ideals of Free Software have always rung true to me, and I've not only adopted Free Software solutions in my home (even my wife runs GNU/Linux) but advocated for others to evaluate what they find important and adopt free software themselves.

So when I pulled my funding last month from the FSF, I was asked "Why?" from some friends. "Do you not care about free software anymore?"

I still care deeply.

Free Software is, at it's most very basic for me, a matter of property rights. To me, it is an affront to property rights to sell or give something someone and enforce conditional restrictions upon them. If Oster sells you a toaster, they have NO right to prevent you from taking that toaster apart, studying it, adapting it and using those adaptations in the marketplace. Free Software then, has ALWAYS been about me holding my right to study that which is mine - and affirms that everything on my computer is in fact MINE.

Due only in part to Free Software, the activist nature within me has been awoken. Even more than with free software, I feel it's important to stand for what I beleive in and make decisions that reaffirm that believe. The newest belief if that government, in some way shape or form, is the cause of most of the day-to-day gripes I have. That isn't the point of this blog entry though...

What has become clear to me is that the Free Software Foundation is not truly comitted to user freedom. Furthermore, they're quite willing to use the guns of government to enforce their "freedom". Freedom is free market freedom. Freedom is, at it's very base, the right to choose. I'm still firmly comitted to the ideals of Free Software, but I stand against the Free Software Foundation, as I stand against anyone, who feels it's morally justifyable to use the guns of government to enforce compliance with ANYTHING.

If free software is better, free software will stand it's own ground, and hundreds of men with military weaponry can't part with it. Bad ideas, however, don't seen the threat of violence to be abandoned, as it makes no sense to continue with it. Free Software stands and fights it's own battles, using only consumer opinion to oppose Microsoft and Apple and Adobe. I'm quite content to leave it there, and in order to do that I found it necessary to pull my funding of the Free Software Foundation.

Viva Libre!

Kevin Dean (kdean06): Police State, USA.

Kevin Dean — 2008-04-21T14:50:22+00:00

As a child going through the schools setup, administrated and funded by the US Government (which in turn gets it's money by taxes) I was taught to hate Nazi Germany. Not only did they burn Jews for being Jews but their police state laid waste to all of the values that people faught for and died to protect. Soldier-police could barge into a person's home to carry out searches under the guise of searching for closeted away Jews. This pretense, however, was abandoned as the soldier-police were granted the power to arrest on suspicion that someone had comitted a crime. Asking the solider-police "Why?" was forbidden and would put you on a list of "Enemies of the State".

This invasion of a person's home, lives and livelyhood was evil, something all vigilant Americans shouldn't tolerate.

On the flip side, we chanted the Pledge of Allegiance in a symbol of blind patriotic faith. Once done, we'd sit down and study about how the American patriots rose up against British tyranny to found "the best nation in history". Part of this indoctrination includes the premise that the checks and balances created a nation in which a police state couldn't form.

In that false sense of security, the majority of the population stopped being weary.

April 11th 2008 saw what some media outlets are calling the "largest regional crime crackdown ever taken". Large is an understatement. This undertaking, given the US Military-style name "Operation Sudden Impact" included agents from 53 federal, state, municipal and local agencies to apprehend terrorists.

Terrorism, huh?

Channel 5 News in Memphis, Tennessee reports Federal agencies raided several Memphis businesses in a coordinated effort to find information about possible terrorism ties.

The operation has been named known as "Sudden Impact."

At the same time, it is also being reported that The 100 sheriff's deputies working Saturday night and Sunday morning also recovered 12.2 grams of heroin.

What this says is pretty clear: Drugs are terrorism in the eyes of the police. Futhermore, with the police now working with the military (the National Guard was one of the 53 agencies involved) to "fight crime" AND "fight terrorism" it's pretty clear that under the eyes of the soldier-police crime itself it terrorism.

They issued citations for 202 traffic violations.

Speeders are now terrorists. If there was any doubt that the soldier-police were here in America, armed and ready to act, this should eliminate it all. Speeders are terrorists. "What we have found traditionally is that terrorists are involved in a number of lesser known type crimes," said Mark Luttrell, Shelby County sheriff.

Like the Nazi Ghestapo, all pretense of fighting a public enemy has even gone. The FBI along with hundreds of officers said they are looking for anything out of the ordinary. This statement from a national news outlet (CBS) has a two-fold impact. Firstly, doing something "out of the ordinary" itself constitutes police-soldier attention and secondly, but NOT attaching outrage and disgust to this statement, that it's already become common practice.

Welcome to America, with liberty and justice for all.

This way please.