‘Til All Are One

So the Pope is coming to Sydney, and the New South Wales Government is scrambling to protect him. What better way to shield an absolute monarch than with despotic legislation?

We can bitch and whine about it. We can blatantly flout these laws and hand out free condoms, as some are planning.

Or we could stop and think about it. If only we could identify the opportunity here.

Here’s my suggestion: make badges/buttons — lots of them. Print on them, in big bold letters, “ANNOYING”. Nothing more. The aim isn’t to offend, it’s to passively protest stupid laws and celebrate our freedoms.

Now, get people to sell the badges. Have volunteers spread all over the city selling them. Also make deals with shops to have them available next to the till.

Recognise this idea? It’s no different from what’s done on Daffodil Day or Red Nose Day. Have the proceeds go towards assisting AIDS victims. I would suggest AIDS orphans. Make sure the group it goes to is credible and secular. It’s heartbreaking how many so-called ‘charities’ are just cynical missionary Inquisitions in drag.

I consider this to be a win for all. Citizens get to peacefully protest, World Youth Day isn’t disrupted, and the children get some help. Would the government dare to stop this? Would they halt a funds-raising operation for disadvantaged children? I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot.

I’d actually be surprised if this is an original idea. I haven’t had time to pay much attention to the matter, so I’d expect that someone is already working on something similar.

(fully expecting the obligatory “why is this on Planet xxx???” whinging from people who don’t understand the point of a Planet and who like to oppress those whom they disagree with)

LotD:  Happy, Healthy Harold - Behind The Puppet

I am still trying to understand the benefit to local residents of hosting APEC in Sydney. Sydneysiders have been effectively told that they won’t be welcome in their own city for over a week - so thoughtfully extended by two days by our good friend George W. Bush (God bless his soul!).

What have we got in return? With the CBD strangulated and transport crippled, there are certainly no economic benefits. In fact, The NSW Business Chamber of Commerce estimates a loss to the NSW economy of between $300 million and $1 billion.

For ordinary workers, we got just one measly day off, in return for over a week of inconvenience. I don’t understand how people of privilege such as John Howard and Jeff Kennett can refer to ordinary Australians in such disparaging (and ironic) terms as ‘the Chardonnay set’. As far as I am (and evidently much of Sydney is) concerned, there is no benefit from this exercise, either in the short- or longer- terms. And no, I don’t count ‘international prestige’ or any such wankiness as a real benefit.

Has it been worth it, to bend over backwards for someone so stupid that even other world leaders laugh at him?

Can somebody please prove me wrong? All I see at the moment is a giant white elephant (particularly given the security blunders), but surely there must be more to it than that.

By the way, has anybody else noticed that the official APEC 2007 Web site does not work properly in Firefox? Probably because their ‘exclusive technology partner’ (read: government-authorised monopolist) is our good friend, Microsoft. What else would you expect from a mob that rules the words ‘Linux’ and ‘Unix’ to be ‘inappropriate language’? I have tested this myself, and it does appear to be deliberate: you can’t even fool it with simple alterations like adding spaces or dashes between the letters.

LotD:  Chinese stock market regrets switching to Windows Vista

George Orwell’s classic allegory, Animal Farm, presents many perspectives on human behaviour and society. One of these is how people can be led and manipulated through the control of information. In the story, the Seven Commandments formed a de facto constitution for the Animalistic society. Since only a handful of animals could read, the rest were dependent upon what they were told was written. Gradually, the writing was cunningly altered to the benefit of the pigs above all other animals, and the populace was taught to not trust their recollections of what was written in the past.

What made this subversion possible was the inability of most animals to read. The two animals that could read (aside from the pigs) chose not to do anything about what they saw. Amongst other things, the right to access and read information is an important cornerstone of democracy.

This is where open file formats come in. As our lives become increasingly defined by electronic records, there needs to be a way for independent viewing and auditing. Paper is easily read, but computer files require software to decypher them. Imagine if you needed special (and expensive) glasses just to read the letter that you yourself wrote only a few years ago.

There has been a fair amount of discussion in the press regarding the OpenDocument and the so-called ‘Open’ XML formats. The primary focus of this reporting thus far has been on the political and technical facets. This is slowly changing, as the importance of long-term data preservation and freedom of information become apparent to ordinary folk.

The BBC has published a report on the problem, and discusses how the UK National Archives are attempting to deal with it. Alas, it appears that they have opted for a short-sighted approach, relying on virtualisation of older operating systems and applications, through a direct partnership with Microsoft. With this approach, the format decoders/viewers (not to mention the operating system and software performing the virtualisation itself) remain closed in source and specification, and one must deal with a cumbersome virtual machine just to view a document.

Where is the guarantee that files can be read hundreds of years from now, just as we can do today with paper documents such as the historic Magna Carta? How does this partnership benefit me, an ordinary citizen who might wish to view ten- (or even two-) year-old public documents that are only available in a proprietary electronic format?

It’s both sad and frustrating to see that history is yet again repeating itself. Whilst the contents of the Domesday Book can still be read nearly 1000 years after completion, the digital BBC Domesday Project was rendered virtually unreadable a mere 16 years later.

Thankfully, there are efforts to create an infrastructure for long-term preservation and management of digital documents. To start with, there are open formats such as OpenDocument and PDF. The Australian National Archives have long been supporters of OpenDocument, to the extent that they are standardising upon it. Putting their money where their mouths are, they are building a completely open source (GPL, no less) data managment system that anybody can use or improve to suit their needs. Michael Carden gave a great talk [Ogg video] at this year’s linux.conf.au about this technology, known as Xena [PDF]. Whilst their UK counterparts seem to have forgotten that access to data is not just a privilege for those able to make exclusive agreements with purveyors of lock-in technologies, the Australian National Archives have been striving to ensure that nobody is left out of the digital revolution.

Four legs good, two legs… better? Let’s prevent this subversion from happening.

LotD:  Mexican ‘world’s richest person’

There appears to be much confusion amongst the press and the general populace regarding the One Laptop Per Child Project, which I blogged about earlier. This article in the Murdoch press, for example, has stimulated some of these misconceptions. They stem from the false assumption that the OLPC is a computing project. "Don’t these kids deserve food, water, clothing and shelter first?", some people ask.

The fact is that the OLPC is far more than a simple computing project. It is an education project, or more broadly, a development project. The computer is merely the tool to enable education and creativity. How can one learn when a textbook costs more than an average weekly wage? Imagine if you could interact with your textbook, in the form of games and exercises. Imagine if you could learn to write your own software for this device, and distribute it to help others in your community. You can create your own artworks, write your own novel or make your own music. Wireless mesh networking allows the distribution of data between computers, and even the sharing of one Internet connection across a villiage. For many households, the keyboard lights will be the only form of artificial lighting. The possibilities are effectively limitless.

The point that I am trying to make is that it is not the computer that is important, it is what you can do with it that truly matters. The computer is an enabler, a tool that allows people to ultimately create their own livelihoods and futures. There’s no point in keeping people dependent on handouts. Let’s encourage them to stand on their own feet.

Back in the developed world, I was able to attend a panel discussion for NSW ICT for the forthcoming state election. Pia made some good analysis of the event. In summary, the representative for the Liberal Party was completely and utterly useless when the question turned to open standards and FLOSS. Moreover, both sides (Labour and Liberal) would seemingly deliberately confuse open standards and open source when questioned about them. The key when questioning such people is to not mention open standards and open source together. Force them to address the issues separately, or they will conflate the two. The City of Munich was disparagingly referred to several times as an extreme case. What disturbs me is that there was specifically strong emphasis on NSW as a procurer and consumer of ICT, rather than as a producer. So while projects like the OLPC can promote local education and industry, the NSW government wants to keep us dependent upon foreign providers.

There was enough at LCA to be excited about to give you heart palpitations. If I was forced to single out one thing, it would have to be the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC).

One of my primary interests has been the interactions between people and technology, and I have long felt that there has been scant attention payed to how this operates in developing countries. Sustainable development is a vital goal, and an important part of this ongoing process is the use of appropriate technology. This can range from bare hands and rudimentary tools to complex computational and engineering infrastructure. The key is to select what is most applicable in a given situation.

So-called ‘developed’ regions of the world might be able to accommodate expensive, disposable and inefficient technologies and methodologies. This has guided policy, R&D, production, distribution and use within this part of the world. The playing field is entirely different in developing regions, and so solutions need to be crafted with their needs in mind.

You can’t expect to successfully shoehorn a solution designed for Sydney onto Mogadishu, or even onto Maningrida. To date, however, most approaches try to do just that. This only works to an extent, if at all. In many cases it would be better to rethink things from the ground-up to come up with something more appropriate. This doesn’t mean that you’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Successful designs often base themselves upon existing policies, technologies and ideas, and then proceed to modify or redesign parts to fit their goals. The OLPC is a prime example of such an endeavour.

Whether it is successful or not is another matter. That remains up to the governments which purchase and distribute them, and the communities which accept them. The greatest challenge of the OLPC isn’t technical, it’s socio-political.

What do you do when you’re in the city and need to kill some time? Watching a film sounded like a fair option to me. The cinematic masterpiece (!), ‘Epic Movie’, caught my eye. I wasn’t expecting much from it at all, so I placed myself into Low Expectations Mode™, gritted my teeth, and went in. It went according to plan, with the LEM buffering me somewhat from almost-certain disappointment.

One thing struck me, however. I was sitting through the closing credits, and I noticed an attribution to a character named ‘Steve Irwin’. That’s strange, I thought. I didn’t remember a Steve Irwin character. The closing credits were punctuated by short video clips, each followed by a change in music as the standard credits scrolling returned. A minute later, the screen flickered for a split-second, the credits returned, and the music suddenly changed. Did they cut something out? At the end, there was still no sign of Steve.

Was the Steve Irwin scene removed somewhere between the film studio and Hoyts? It could not have been done by the studio - the cut was far too amateurish for that (although I might be giving them too much credit, given the mediocre quality of the film). While I understand that Steve Irwin died not too long ago, in my opinion that is no excuse for anyone to tell me what I can and cannot watch. The cinema probably calculated that the risk of public backlash from maintaining the scene would be greater than the opposition to censorship. If so, they were probably right. That still doesn’t change the fact that I paid money to view a title that has been rendered incomplete at the (likely perceived) behest of extremists.

Censorship has its place in society, but this is going too far. Within reason, a free and open flow of information is the hallmark of a healthy democracy. Of course, the perceptions of what exactly ‘reason’ is is debatable, and that’s what lies at the heart of such debates. I prefer to err on the side of openness, in the same vein as ‘innocent until proven guilty’. I don’t like being told what to think, and what I can view. If I wanted that, I’d be using Windows Vista with all of its Digital Restrictions Management nonsense.

There’s always the chance that I’m completely off the mark with my accusations. I’d appreciate it if someone could verify/dispel my claims.

The penguins are on the march in India. It’s wonderful to see the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu taking their future development seriously by adopting free software on a wide scale. My parents are from Tamil Nadu, and most of their families still live there. Some of them have been involved quite considerably in educational and computing projects, which have unfortunately been based around Windows. This doesn’t help anyone in the long term (apart from the vendors controlling the lock-in), so it is terrific to see them working towards some autonomy and freedom.

P.S. As of today, I am a quarter of a century old. Howzat?!

Update: On the converse, we have absolutely appalling conduct in the so-called ‘developed’ world. How can a democracy function when the mechanisms of government are hidden behind proprietary data constructs? Is it truly wise to hand the keys to public information over to corporations that have zero accountability to the populace? Even their so-called ‘open’ formats aren’t really open at all.

This is quite disturbing:

A 2006 Gallup survey of American public opinion found that "many Americans harbour strong bias against U.S. Muslims".

• 22% say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbour.
• 34% believe U.S. Muslims support al-Qaeda.
• Only 49% believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.
• 39% advocate that U.S. Muslims should carry special ID

The fact that such a large percentage of the population harbours resentment against Muslims may explain much of America’s aggressive Middle East policy from Israel to Iraq. It’s a lot easier to play with the lives of millions of people if you don’t think of them as civilised human beings, but terrorist supporters.

This appears to be consistent with other studies:

The Media and Society Research Group of Cornell University conducted a survey in November of Americans with respect to their attitudes towards Muslims. Nearly half (44%) of respondents favoured restricting the civil rights of Muslims in some way.

Such attitudes often stem from ignorance. It is exceedingly easy to dehumanise a race/religion/culture if you know nothing about them:

A survey commissioned and published by National Geographic shows that a large majority of young Americans between the age of 18-24 are geographically illiterate.

Less than 15% of the subjects could locate Iraq or Israel on a map. Only 17% could locate Afghanistan, even though the survey was carried out after the war. 11% could not locate the U.S. on a map.

Now, I am not posting this to pick on Americans. In fact, I feel that at least to some extent these results also apply to Australia and other Western countries (e.g. the UK). We like to think of ourselves as ‘enlightened’ societies, yet the ignorance many people appear to exhibit is astounding. There is much in the way of misinformation and FUD being spread around, intentional and otherwise. The solution, I feel, is education. For instance, I bet that the average Australian knows very little about Islam: its beliefs, its history and the cultures surrounding it. It is all to easy to judge people and events by our own values, the principles by which we were raised. People need to understand that what may look like ‘common sense’ to them is in fact a cultural construct, and that other cultures may see things differently. This diversity is what makes the world interesting, and this abundance of different views is what has propelled human development since the very beginning.

Those who like to argue that Islam is a backwards religion or that its people celebrate an anachronistic culture ought to investigate the 1001 Inventions Web site:

A unique UK based educational project that reveals the rich heritage that the Muslim community share with other communities in the UK and Europe.

1001 Inventions is a non-religious and non-political project seeking to allow the positive aspects of progress in science and technology to act as a bridge in understanding the interdependence of communities throughout human history.

Pia has very eloquently indicated the divide between religion and culture, and in doing so I feel she has demonstrated how truly close many world religions are in their core beliefs and values.