Category Archives: world watching - Page 3

Interesting Times

Posted by on November 4, 2011 1 comment

It’s been a busy few weeks.  As I write, the Greek parliament proceeds with it’s no confidence vote in George Papandreou.  Today has been fascinating, I’ve been watching the G20 coverage on Twitter and it has been very worrying.  I can’t shake the feeling that after all this, they’re back to square one on the European debt problem.  The solution seems to have been to roll the economic tanks onto a few lawns, certainly in Athens, and I think in Rome.  Italy is looking shakier, though storm clouds are gathering over France as well.  This can’t end well, I certainly don’t expect the Euro to survive in its current form and the fight to save it has led to the democratic governments of Greece and Italy being undermined by the EU leadership (i.e. Merkozky).  So this is how democracy dies….

Holding that thought, we find the Occupy movement spreading.  It’s been an the receiving end of some stick in the media and some beatings from the police, but they’re sticking with it, I admire their grit.  It was alleged in the UK media that half the tents at OccupyLSX were unused at night.  This was given some mileage in parts of the UK media that opposes the protests, but I suspect nobody’s thought beyond that.  The tents are allegedly empty at night, which is when you’d expect people who have families to tend to be gone; and  I am wondering about the weekday situation of those tents.  In my opinion, this bit that’s being missed is that this protest involves more than just professional protesters.  It’s involving more of the “average” people, people who can’t always be there as they have jobs to go to and children to care for.  If I were in power, it’s that fact that would be giving me sleepless nights, and setting the riot police on these people isn’t going to do any good.  It’s not going to solve the underlying problems and it will eventually raise legitimacy questions about the current governments.  I’ll leave you to ponder that, as I love to throw questions out there to provoke thought.

But coming back to that thought of Democracy, well, I did tell you to hold it didn’t I?  The Occupy movement seems to be directed by a very participatory democratic process.  This does seems to be working and if it can scale up it could be a major challenge to the current systems of power.  In fact the message that such an event would have for the politicians is “We no longer need or want you, consider yourselves redundant”.  If I were a politician, I might be getting a be worried by this as well.

A final thought.  There is an old curse “May you live in interesting times”, I’m of the opinion that they really knew how to make a curse back in the day….

A Revolutionary Effect.

Posted by on October 16, 2011 No comments

The Occupy protests are spreading.  This is in spite of quite a bit of silence in much of the mainstream media, who only covered them when ultimately forced to.  I should except Russia Today and Al Jazeera from the above statement, their coverage has been very good.  I’ll chat about my views on the protest movement another time, but something else has caught my attention.

The protest camp in New York made it into the IT media earlier this week.  This was in the form of an article covering their IT infrastructure, which I must give praise where it’s due, seems very nicely put together given the circumstances.  The sentence that caught me is in the above article, it’s a quote from a protester referring to the disappearance of a laptop during a police raid,  and I’ll quote it below.

“We’d love to get an Apple, because a lot of the software we’re used to is on the Mac,” one said. “Linux machines are always nice, given Linux is having the same revolutionary effect on the industry as we are on society, but even Windows machines would be a help.”

The above is quite accurate, GNU/Linux is having a revolutionary effect.  But the thought struck me a little later that this isn’t the entire story, is it?  GNU/Linux is a great system, a colleague of mine was at a presentation given by a Microsoft employee where the MS guy went through the Windows Server 2008 kernel and the Linux kernel.  After 1 hour 45 minutes, the conclusion was that they’re much of a muchness, he had to admit that the Linux kernel is every bit as good as the Microsoft offering.  Of course, with tools like openQA from the openSuSE team, the future is looking even brighter.

So the software is great, we know that, but revolutionary?  I submit that it isn’t by itself revolutionary.  You can get the code to BSD Unix, but that doesn’t really seem revolutionary in the way that is implied above, so what do I mean?  Enter stage left, the GNU General Public License, or GPL for short.

My understanding of things is this.  The BSD code can be referred to as “Open Source”, which means you get access to the source code and can play with it as you see fit to do so. However, you’re not required to give your changes back.  This means that BSD code has found it’s way into both Windows and the MacOS, but they are not required to return any improvements they made on other people’s hard work to the community.

The Linux kernel is under the GPL, which comes with a string attached.  If you modify the program and distribute it, then you have to make the modified source available so that others in the community can do the same.  For this reason, GPL’ed code is known as “Free Software“, it is not “Open Source”.  For a background to how the GPL came to be invented, I recommend “Free As In Freedom” a biography of the founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard M Stallman.

I’ve come to believe that the General Public license, and the associated “Four Freedoms” (see the “Free Software” link above), have been the thing that allowed the revolution to happen.  Think about it, a license that says high quality software and the improvements to said software are all available freely to everyone.  Individuals, communities and corporations alike.  We can study it, improve it, redistribute it, but not lock it away.

Now that’s revolutionary!

Maybe not so tactful?

Posted by on October 10, 2011 No comments

I checked Slashdot earlier today and found that Richard M Stallman is under fire for comments regarding Steve Jobs.  The exact comment is posted below and a short Google will provide enough commentary via a variety of websites and comment section flame wars to keep you reading for quite some time.  I’ve italicised the controversial section.

“Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.”

Click here for the original

Let me be frank, I value my freedom and as such I run Linux as my main desktop O/S.  I can see where RMS is coming from with regards to the whole “computer as a jail” idea, it harks back to the bad old days when when parts of the internet were walled off and proprietary, for example Compuserve.  I have not bought an Apple device for some years, after buying MacOS X for my blueberry iBook and then quickly  having support dropped by just about everyone, when 10.1 arrived.  This left me facing a bill of over £100 to carry on using the machine, even though I was already a paying customer and the software wasn’t technically out of support!  I seethed, then installed Yellow Dog Linux, gave Apple two fingers, and never looked back.

I should disclose that I have an iPhone but only as my company provides and requires it, their standard is Apple phones and that’s it, my own mobile is an Android device.  So what do I see?  To my eyes, iTunes is well designed, iTunesU certainly seems interesting, but the content is available elsewhere on the open Internet.  Also, while Apple are accused of restrictive DRM, I can play my iTunes purchases on OpenSuSE Linux with no problems.  I am however looking for an alternative to Amazon / iTunes.

Anyway, back on topic.  While I can empathise with where RMS stands, I see his comments as badly timed and frankly, there was no need to say it like that.  Though I will observe that in his next two sentences RMS does separate the man from his legacy, or as the Christians say “love the sinner, hate the sin”.

Steve Jobs went too early, it wasn’t a nice way to go (is there one?) and at this moment in time our thoughts should be with his family and friends.  A civil discussion of his legacy as regards our freedom can wait for another day.  I’ll air my own views in due course, but not yet.

My version of the future

Posted by on September 18, 2011 2 comments

Well, I do need to post more often than monthly don’t I?  It’s been a busy few weeks and mental energy has been slowly flowing back after a few changes.  Hopefully this will mean more to say on my part and also bring forward some planned changes to my SitQuietly software.

I was thinking of commenting on the unfolding situation in Greece, the Greek parliament is in emergency session tonight and the stakes are high. But there is nothing to add, nothing further to say.  Sometimes all you can do is watch silently, I’ve said everything I have to say on this.

I want to go a different way tonight, a way that cleaves (I hope) nearer to the middle path.  A lot has been said about energy in the last couple of years.  The oncoming peak in our civilisation’s available net energy supply (also known as “Peak Oil”) has been playing in the background of the current clutch of crises like a pianist in a dingy backstreet bar.  The common scenario seems to be that we return to a pre-industrial existence, almost like the wild west but with a little electricity and a few lightbulbs along the way.  Set against this is the hope that some sort of “Star Trek” style technology will save us and let us carry on as before.  To be frank, I think both viewpoints are a little overplayed.  So I’ll stick my neck out and say what I see, everyone else seems to be doing it, so I’ll jump in as the water seems to be fine.  This is a general flavour of the direction my thoughts are running in.

So, what do I see?  Change for sure, we can’t go on as we are, that much is certain.  But I see a different future, industrial society and high technology are still here, but they look very different.  I see technology being more expensive, scarcer, and not disposable any more. We will have to repair, to mend and make do more.  More things will be done manually, private cars will be scarcer, cities walkable and public transport will be forced to improve.

Industry will still be here.  We will still be able to smelt metals, produce solar cells and silicon chips.  We have the beginnings already, solar furnaces can produce solar cells and silicon chips of superior quality to our current ones[1].  Part of the changes I see is the migration of these sort of industries to hot equatorial countries to take better advantage of the stronger sun.

Of course, energy will be an issue and energy efficiency will be the name of the game. As I said above, the power use of labour saving devices will be a no-no so we will return to doing a fair few things by hand.  No tumble drier or dishwasher, and the electric mixer will likely be replaced  by a hand whisk!  Newer technologies are emerging that allow power to be drawn from our movements, there are wearable solar cells, kinetic chargers and hand or foot cranked chargers for devices[2,3,4]; this could be a lot more common.  In addition, we will make more use of walking and cycling.  The huge supplies of fossil fuels that power our cars and planes will not be anything like as available, and the alternatives don’t have anything like the juice to fit the bill; at least not until we eventually get fusion online.  I’m not holding my breath for that one, in case you hadn’t guessed.  I can see the biodiesels and power dense liquid fuels being used in construction machinery and other applications that need that sort of horsepower.  Our power needs will be met by a diverse range of technologies; solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear and no doubt others.  Let me be clear, there is no single magic bullet, how you are powered will likely depend very much on where you are and what you are doing.

Raw materials will likely be recycled, or mined from landfill [5].  Given that our cars and many aircraft will be largely redundant by this time, recycling them will free up a significant amount of raw materials.  I do have more to say on this subject, but am out of time for now.  I’ll try not to leave it so long next time!

References

[1] – The Bright Future of Solar Powered Factories.

[2] – Engineers Create First Motion Powered Nano Device.

[3] – 15 cellphone chargers that harness kinetic energy for a clean recharge.

[4] – Freeplay Energy. See FreeCharge 12v and Clamp Charger, but all products are good examples.

[5] – Landfill mining (Wikipedia).

Sitting in the aftermath

Posted by on August 13, 2011 1 comment

Well, an awful lot has happened in the last week here in the UK.  At one point it almost seemed that the country was going up in flames.  The recent riots will be the source for many theories and political manoeuvres in the coming weeks and I’d like to get a few of my own thoughts down now that the dust is starting to settle.  I don’t claim that I’m right on any of this, but these are the directions my thoughts are meandering.

The causes of this are no doubt, varied and complex.  It’s not really possible to encircle those who took part into one simple demographic and point the finger there, the people involved came more or less from all over.  So the usual tired old tactic of “blame the <insert group here>” doesn’t really help, not that it ever did.  For my part, I suspect that part of this was fuelled by a feeling of impotence and disconnection from society.  After all, the programs that reached out to a lot of these people, that bled a lot of this pressure off have been cut.  Aspirations snatched away, a route out of the places their in taken, where do they vent their frustration?  Where else is there?  The politicians don’t seem to want to listen, or seem to have any idea at all what life is like outside planet Westminster.  When David Cameron said that we have a problem with gangs in this country, the first reaction I saw from so many people was “Welcome to the real world!”

In addition, we have the ever present celebrity and corporate sales driven culture, pushing all the latest designer goods and “must have” accessories in your face.  Things that you can’t afford, to be honest that you don’t really need, but we’re going to torture you with consumerist propaganda anyway.  So, you have all these things dangled in front of your nose as often as the media can, displayed by the celebrities that we’re all pushed by the media to be obsessed with.  But you have little chance to properly scratch that itch, ever.  This extends into the middle class by the way, don’t be fooled for a minute.  Then the chance comes along to scratch it and scratch it well. Is there any surprise that there was looting?

A few years ago I wrote about the dangers of walling up and suppressing your dark side, instead of acknowledging it and coming to terms with it.  This whole thing seems to be heading into the same sort of territory.  It seems to me that society has created a disconnect in society a large swathe of people with little reason to invest in society.  They see that politicians don’t care and are ineffectual and so don’t care for them. They’re tortured with consumerist propaganda, left with no way of resolving the desires that said propaganda invokes.  Their options for getting out of that trap are ever more limited and so their list of options grows thin.  Then we ignore them, push them aside and try to suppress them.  I’m not surprised there was an almighty explosion of rage.

How is society responding?  Badly, from what I can see.  One of the proposed solutions is to cut rioters benefits, maybe their access to council housing.  I can see the temptation of this path and almost signed the petition myself, but on reflection I can’t see it helping and refuse to sign it.  The only thing I can see that doing is taking the things I’ve touched on above and making them worse.  Throwing fuel onto an already dangerous fire doesn’t seem very helpful to me.  For my part, I suspect that the usual political sound-bites about being “tough on crime” and “zero tolerance” won’t work.  A lot of the people in the riots had already been “cracked down on”, you can only crack down so far before it just doesn’t work any more.  How do you crack down on someone who doesn’t care and has no investment in wider society?  At what point do you start looking like the kind of regime that the Arabs have been so bravely trying to divest themselves of?

So what do I suppose might work?  I do often like to end my posts on a question, to try and leave food for thought.  This time I will offer my own thoughts in conclusion.

It’s time to bring these people in from the cold, re-engage with them and give them a reason to give a damn about wider society.  This will be something like opening a Pandora’s box, as it means that we have to take a long hard look at our society and the way we do things, it will probably mean that a fair few cherished attitudes and beliefs will have to change as well.  This will be painful, but the alternative is worse and eventually we will have a pressure explosion that will wreck everything.  How about we take the pressure out before it gets to that?

Norway, virtual remembrance

Posted by on July 31, 2011 3 comments

I tend to steer clear of commenting on world events if I can.  It can be hard to find anything to say that already hasn’t been said a hundred times.  In some cases, such as the recent awful events in Norway, it can be hard to know what to say at all.  Words just don’t seem to be enough, which is a strange position for a blogger to be in but there you are.  In this case, it’s so very hard to even know where to begin.

People grieve and remember and build memorials in our own ways, in my opinion, the memorials in the virtual are every bit as touching as those in the real world.  I’ve observed this in a previous post about the Second Life memorial to Salem.  Today I’ll return to the world of Second Life and look around a sim called Norge, or “Second Norway”, where I had found out that there was a memorial to the victims of the massacre.

Norway-02I, or rather my avatar, appeared by a waterfront.  It’s a tidy and very pleasantly presented area, with a small park, a café and a few shops; to name but a small number of the things that were there.  I took a moment to orient myself and looked out across the virtual harbour, thinking that this must have taken a lot of planningNorway-01 and effort to design so well.  There were a few other avatars around, I immediately noted a small group by the waterside, but consulting my mini map I saw others dotted around the sim.  My trip was slightly complicated by the fact that the memorial wasn’t signposted, but this meant that I had the pleasure of exploring the sim a little to find what I wanted.

So, I wandered a little, admiring this very nicely put together sim and taking in the sights, not all of which are as obvious as you might think.  But then that is the beauty of exploring Second Life, unlike MMOs Norway-03things aren’t always made so obvious; there are no “way points”.  As I explored, my path eventually took me uphill, towards a beautifully built church.  I went inside and discovered the memorial in the middle of the church, a collection of small objects bearing messages from people across the world.  I sat for a few minutes to read them and I once again realised how much a virtual world can bring us together, especially at times like these.  I’ve seen Second Life bring together communities from across the Norway-04world and crystallise them around a common interest or purpose.  Admittedly, in this case grief and remembrance, but the effect here was powerful and provided as touching a display as any in the real world.

On reflection, in spite of all the hurt that the gunman wrought in Norway, I feel that seeing this display of the goodness in humanity shows that there is hope for us yet.

News International, not just a question of phones.

Posted by on July 12, 2011 No comments

The News International scandal has been rumbling along for a few days here in the UK, it’s spreading outside our borders as well, this one really does have wings.

It’s quite rightly provoked a storm of massive proportions, one that will leave things forever changed in the UK.  The whole subject of the relationship between the media, the police and those in power is now being opened and there will be many hard questions to be answered in the days and weeks that follow.

One question I have is relating to the scale of corporate power, more specifically multinationals.  As anyone who’s watched the film “The Corporation” will know, they are hardly moral, no matter what they claim.  They are arguably described as psychotic, fixated on one goal and regarding anyone and anything as disposable in the pursuit of that goal.  These corporate behemoths straddle the globe and carry a lot of weight and wield a lot of influence.  In short, they have an awful lot of power, but no democratic accountability; nobody elected them.

So, does the News International storm raise questions about the role of multinational corporations in national politics?  Does it raise worrying questions about the amount of power they wield?  Most definitely in my opinion.  These are questions that we have put to the back of our minds, but the News International situation gives us the chance to turn these questions over and ponder them.  It gives more power to the elbows of those who would raise these concerns and then push for a resolution to them.  I think that’s no bad thing.