Rehash for the win
20 July 2008
Is the free software community over, or is it just that tech journalists are covering the wrong projects.
Filesharing is the democratic choice
18 April 2008
If 20 million people in the UK have been or are involved in filesharing, then that is more people than voted for the government.. With 20 million people, filesharing is not a crime, it is a mandate. The government, policy and the old media industries need to find fresh approaches because the cultural changes at work cannot be undone.
The government are the real cyber-terrorists
16 March 2008
The end of Britannia
For the ascension of George I, a song was commissioned, one that celebrated both the act of union and the hard fought for independence from Europe, the chorus went:
> Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!
Today, all the warships in the Royal Navy won't help when us Britons have become slaves inside our own country, tracked and counted like a flock of cattle.
Planet of the Apes
20 January 2008
Ray Beckerman is a New York Lawyer and the author of Recording Industry vs The People, a blog covering "the RIAA's attempt to monopolize digital music by redefining copyright law, through the commencement of tens of thousands of extortionate lawsuits against ordinary working people".
Why the government cannot be trusted with our data
21 November 2007
Gordon, where are the CDs?
In 1945-6, the British government brought in a system of child benefit, this paid parents a cash payment of 5 shillings per week per child. Today in 2007, for your first child, you get £18.10 a week (38 dollars) per week, and £12.10 (25 dollars) for every additional child.
Freedom on Campus
26 October 2007
Now for something completely different...
Almost everything in computer software today has roots in the work done from the late sixties to the early eighties in universities such as the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Back then, the Computing Industry was dependent on the knowledge and expertise contained within the hallowed labs and bearded academics of such Universities.
Don't go to the University of Florida
19 September 2007
Tazering is putting around 3,000 kilovolts into a person with significant chance of heart failure or internal or external burns.
Occasionally you hear about someone who was electrocuted by mains electricity, well that is only 240 volts, not 3,000,000 volts.
Digital Anarchy vs Control - part 3 - fearing the crowd
03 September 2007
The crowd makes the ballgame
There are some horrible diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cystic fibrosis, certain cancers and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that involve 'misfolded proteins'. If biologists can better understand protein folding, then it might shed light into how to cure these diseases.
Transformers and why I am not buying HD-DVD or Blu-ray
22 August 2007
Autobots Roll Out
I was a subscriber to the British version of the Transformers comic as a child. It gets worse, in the original 1980s movie, the scene when Opitmus Prime died, I burst out into tears (I was 7 or 8 at the time) and I was not the only one by any means. Prime, the personification of good and courage, led the decisive final push that won the battle but he was mortally wounded in the process.
What is truth? - part 3 - All you need is one and zero
19 July 2007
Almost every aspect of our modern technology is filled with iconography and metaphors from the Judeo-Christian tradition (i.e. the 'West'), perhaps not surprising as all technologies are man-made systems, made, that is, in the image of their creators. Some of these links are obvious, I am writing this post in a web browser called 'Epiphany', then I will 'save' it, and then it will be available as part of the Ethernet (i.e. the heaven-net). Some of these links are not so obvious. in this post I look at binary numbers, the basis of all computing.
What is truth?
What is truth? - part 2 - true vs one
15 July 2007
So following on from part one, we have True and False in Python, which are somewhat equivalent to the Boolean 1 and 0:
> "The two-element Boolean algebra is the simplest Boolean algebra, ... having just two elements, named 1 and 0 by convention." Source
What is truth? - part 1 - false vs zero
14 July 2007
Iverson VS Boolean?
In my recent post, Python CGI contact forms, I open sourced my little contact form processor I use on my webpage and solicited comments from you, the reader.
Archimedes - Why Godwin was wrong
27 June 2007
Or why does all discussion end up on the Holocaust?
As you know I am an Arts graduate not a Computer Science one, I have degrees in Economics and Theology, so I thought I would explain one reason why I think open source is so important for the future of society. Apologies if it is a bit too Richard Stallman for some of your taste - I promise not to grow a beard. In the next post, I will talk about something more practical, the BBC and their Microsoft lovefest.
The West will eat itself - lawyers don't add to GDP per capita
14 June 2007
Mark takes a raincheck on the MicroBucket
Microsoft is rattling the patent sabre again. Software patents are not legal in the UK and nor should they be. Source code is a literary work, and like all other literary works, copyright is the appropriate legal protection. For the reasons for that, I will refer to a recent podcast featuring Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth, well worth tuning in.
Free the Files, free the headlights?
07 May 2007
I myself have gone for the Creative Commons-type approach of supporting Indie bands to replace the oppressive multi-national companies, rather than filesharing. However, I do not judge people who do fileshare, having been born a Christian, I must take my moral authority from Christ alone and he does not seem to be against it. An early share-alike attribution licence was 'Take, eat, this is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me'. Sharing is the hallmark of faith and morality (if you do not believe me read Acts 2 or the Sermon on the Mount), more on this subject another day, but suffice to say, the New Testament spread across the globe without the need of a Scripture Association of Nazareth protecting the copyright.
Your belief system may have similar concepts, for example, the sharing of manna in Exodus 16 was a radical shock to the economic values of the ancient Jews. In Buddhism, 'dana', unconditional sharing, is a core part of the route to perfection (dana-paramita).
The Ultimate Cheatsheets and the end of memory
16 April 2007
Thought for the day
In the last fifty years, modern life has become far more complicated than it has been throughout all of human history. Not a bad complexity, apart from when being ill or in hospital, I have never gone a day without eating, even though that food may come from the other side of the world. We can drink water without getting diseases, even though I have little understanding of the processes of flocculation and filtration that bring this about. I can bring up almost any kind of text and any kind of image at the touch of a button. In the words of Google, "I'm Feeling Lucky".
Comic Relief, the morning after
17 March 2007
Well we have given our money and worn our noses, who ate the chocolate Wallace and Gromit? I'm not sure. For those of you not from the UK, Comic Relief is a bi-annual national charity event culminating in a comedy telethon. I watched the second half of the programme last night and the part that really affected me was the feature on human trafficking during the Russell Brand part of the show.
Young, vulnerable women are tricked or forced to come here and spend many hours every day as prostitutes. Raped, hour after hour, day after day. Some of the Comic Relief money is being used to set up safe-housing and support for victims of this trade, although the ones they know about must be only the very tip of the iceberg. I was wondering last night, why as a society are we not stopping this? How can we let this continue?
