Planet TuxHacker

Moderne Demokratie ?

2008-11-21T20:44:00+00:00

Don Wolfgang Schäuble und die Großverschwörung unter Angie Merkel haben schon als es darum ging, Flugzeuge abzuschießen, erkannt, dass das Grundgesetz ein unnützer alter Schinken ist, der der Realpolitik von heute nur im Wege steht. Diese abscheuliche Ansicht hat jener Haufen vor kurzem noch einmal bestätigt, aber überlegen wir uns zunächst einmal, was passieren würde, wenn große Politiker die Verfassung zum eigenen Vorteil ändern sollten...

Blicken wir ins Ausland, sehen wir, dass die Amtszeit des russischen Präsidenten um zwei Jahre verlängert wurde. Und, wie reagierte die Bevölkerung ?

Wenn die Politiker meinen, dass sie das brauchen, wird das schon richtig sein.

Der Vergleich mag suboptimal sein, in Deutschland steht ja viel mehr auf dem Spiel, aber zumindest ist er aktuell.

Schäuble hasst bekanntlich kleine Parteien, und wünscht sich, dass ihre Stimme im Bundesrat effektiv wertlos sei, damit er mit seinen leicht roten Freunden von der SPD ungestört über seine Untertanen herrschen kann (nach Verabschiedung des BKA-Gesetzes natürlich). Bislang haben die kleinen Parteien sich in Koalitionsverträgen auf Landesebene Nein-Stimmen in Form von Enthaltungen im Bundesrat gesichert. Das ist besonders wichtig, wenn es eine große Koalition gibt, die somit in ihrer Macht ein klein wenig eingeschränkt ist.

Ist Demokratie denn so schwer zu verstehen ?

Property ownership and fraud of Fractional Reserve Banking

2008-11-17T13:56:50+00:00

Any way you slice it Fractional Reserve Banking system which is the prevalent banking system in the modern world, is a fraud and at that quite unsustainable in the long term, which is what plays a key role in the current economic destabilization we’re witnessing. It is what makes all our money effectively be worth nothing more than someone’s promise of debt, but you can watch more about that in an excellent documentary called Money as Debt (note though that I don’t agree with the solution the documentary suggests to the presented problem).

But the reason I’m writing this is an article which provides a fairly simple argument on why is Fractional Reserve Banking fradulent which effectively boils down to that no two persons can own the same thing or the same amount of money: “Fractional Reserve Banking Is Indeed Fraudulent”.

It’s a good article and I suggest reading it, but I have a couple of complaints which tie in to a recent discussion I’ve had on our IRC channel at #libervis (irc.freenode.net) about what constitutes property ownership.

Defining property ownership

The author, Laura Davidson, claims that property ownership is defined by the right to dispose of that which is owned. If you can’t dispose of the thing then you don’t really own it so it’s not your property. This is in a nutshell the definition my debater had on IRC as well, but as we discussed I finally reached the conclusion that while not entirely incorrect this definition is merely a subset of what property ownership implies, which is control. Being able to dispose of something is being able to exercise control, but few would deny that if you own something you can also use it in every which way you choose so long as it is possible with respect to the nature of the thing in question (as in, you can’t use a tricycle to travel through space at warp speeds).

This is also what allows ownership of ideas, but I will explain that in an upcoming article on Libervis.com. Suffice it to say that there are two elements in question: control and nature and to understand property we have to understand both concepts. Control cannot be applied to a thing in ways in which its nature does not allow. So a human cannot control another human if that human does not let it because that human is a controller of himself as well.

But this is a minor complaint as “right to dispose” off is still a subset of control.

Collective ownership

Secondly, I vehemently disagree with the notion of “collective ownership” which she seems to accept. I think it’s an utter self-contradiction and it requires such explaining away like this:

In the case of joint ownership by a couple or a group, individuals within the group do not have full rights of ownership individually. (They cannot logically each have an independent right to use or dispose of the property whenever and however they please.) They can have partial rights individually, but they can only have full rights of ownership collectively. Therefore it is the group, as a single entity, that has full rights of ownership.

This is stating an impossibility. An individual has partial rights, but can at the same time have full rights collectively? I’m sorry, but I think you can’t have both at once. The “entity” is non-existent. By the definition of a group it is a number of individuals not a single entity. I’ve written more about collective ownership here.

All this, however, doesn’t change her core argument about the fraud inherent in fractional reserve banking. If you deposit money to a bank and get a contractual guarantee to withdrawal of the same amount on demand then you didn’t make a loan (then the only contractual guarantee you would have is to withdrawal after a certain period of time) and you therefore contractually kept control over your money to yourself - continuing being an owner. A bank can’t own that money at the same time as you so it lending any of it to someone else is FRAUD.

But that happens every day.

FreeTalkLive host jailed 90 days for not obeying fast enough

2008-11-17T12:46:52+00:00

In one of the best demonstrations of the nature of government, a very vocal liberty activist, a host of a US wide syndicated and worldwide listened libertarian talk show FreeTalkLive was arrested and sentenced to 90 days in prison for literally not sitting fast enough as the judge ordered him, like he would order a dog, to sit down. They managed to pin him 3 counts of contempt of court each worth 30 days in prison, amounting to 3 months. For not removing the couch he got only 3 days.

He is Ian Freeman, a voluntaryist, living in New Hampshire, working full time every day on the cause of liberty.

You can see exactly what happened here:

There’s more to the story, but you will hardly find anything that incriminates Ian any further than these contempt charges. The whole thing begins with something as trivial as a couch being put on his tenants lawn and someone filing a complaint that had the court order him to make the tenants remove the couch. He refused to do so until he was faced with the one who filed the complaint in the first place, as is his right. Instead he got trapped like this and was told the name of the complainer, Mikaela L. Engert, only after the first contempt charge made in the closed room where he was tried.

Many liberty activists believe it to be a planned move, that this was not about a couch at all, but about silencing an avid and effective liberty activist and making a scapegoat for the entire liberty movement in Keen New Hampshire, and I agree.

However, the arrest is having an opposite effect. More people are pledging to move to New Hampshire or accelerating their actual move. More people are getting involved and the New Hampshire liberty movement appears to be strengthening rather than weakening as a result of this display of tyranny. Here are some related links.

Thank You Mr. Burke (Mr. Burke is the judge in question above)
John Wayne Done Proud
93Days.com - Is 93 Days in Jail Just Punishment for an Old Couch and Sitting down too Slowly?
JailedActivist.info

Also check out the Voluntaryist Planet (planet.doubleplushuman.com) for latest voluntaryist stories.

I’ll likely update the post with more links as I encounter them.

Students taking to the streets

2008-11-12T21:41:00+00:00

Today, Wednesday November 12 2008, about 100 000 German students skived off too march for better, fairer and cheaper education. And, mind you, it was the young kind of student that goes to school, not university. Yeah, the people you thought were apolitical knife-wielding mobsters.

I have written more on this subject in German here. If you understand the language, please have a look at that as well.

The 16 German school systems are a mess. The way it is designed, you'll probably never go to university if your parents aren't either rich or academics. In Bavaria (where I'm from), we are required to do 2 lessons of religion (Christianity, that is) a week. There is an alternative course, ethics, which is quite obviously designed not to teach kids stuff, but to legitimize state-supported almost-mandatory theology classes. The flip side is that we only get to do politics in one year, one lesson a year. Best preconditions for the near one-party system we had for decades: keep people stupid, or, if that doesn't work, make sure few understand what the government is/does. What is worse, there is an enormous teacher deficit, and there is way too little money in public schooling. There are many more problems, some of which I put into writing in German.

There were demonstrations in many German cities with thousands of students at nearly every one. They were nearly completely peaceful, though, in Hannover, some idiots stormed the state parliament, and in Berlin, the city with the largest demonstration (predictably), the Humboldt university was temporarily invaded.

Imagining ourselves out of existence

2008-11-09T23:57:18+00:00

Human’s capability of imagination is at the same time an enormous blessing and an enormous curse. Just as it makes us creative and empowers our continuous advancement and evolution it could serve to doom ourselves out of existence.

The former refers to all of the inventions and technologies that humans have developed which couldn’t have been done without imagination. This is where cultural elements like science fiction play a role. You first have to imagine, envision, entertain the mind before you can make it real. However, in the process of making it real you have to deal with reality and separate the concepts which correspond to it from those which do not, which is done through the scientific process; examining empirical evidence (or lack of it) and logical consistency.

Unfortunately, this process is completely ignored when it comes to certain concepts and this is leading towards destruction.

One such concept is the concept of “government”. Another is a concept of “country”. Both in fact have no basis in reality whatsoever, yet millions upon millions of people hold them to be facts as hard as the concept of a rock you can hold in your hands. “Government” is viewed as an organization which is somehow special, noble, generally benevolent, serving the people and because of this endowed with a monopoly on violenent power, the power to initiate force to compell obedience to its sacred rules and to steal in order to pay for its noble job in a “country” or “society”.

This ridiculous idea goes back to ancient times when governments, then called kings or queens, have been considered as endowed with this noble role by the gods themselves. No further questioning was necessary when you imagine and believe as real the concept of god. You’ll readily imagine and believe as real any other concept which is supported by the one of god.

Today, god was replaced by the concepf of “the people”. It is “the people” which endow the government the right to govern by force, through an incredible yet on further examination fully self-contradictory process called “democracy”. Yet again, if people believe in such a thing as “the people” or “country” or “society” (which are often synonymous) they easily accept other false concepts based on it.

But none of it is real. None of it exists.

The collective does not exist without an individual. What is a “country”? Who are “the people”? What is a “society”? And ultimately what is “the government”? Do they really exist as what most individuals conceptualized them as?

No they don’t.

They are illusions.

“Country” implies that a land marked by some lines drawn on the map has some sort of a mysterious soul, a life of its own, something to be served and protected and something which is, through some strange elusive process linked with the people living on that piece of Earth. It’s hard to describe it when you try because it’s a complete and total delusion. It doesn’t really exist. When you hear politicians say things like “serve the country” or “protect this country” or “country first” what the hell are they referring to?

You may say “the people” or “society”, but that would be jumping from one illusion on to another. When you think these terms through it’s obvious they refer to groups of individuals. Why then are these terms being used as if they refer to something that is more than just groups of individuals, as if they have a soul of their own as if “the people” or “society” refers to something that is separate from the individuals?

There’s no answer except; to keep you deluded, to keep you sacrificing your own individual self in the name of these gods, gods called “the people”, “country”, “society” etc., to keep you subjected to violence and make you ask for more, because that’s the way it has to be. Something deep in you tells you that you don’t like it, making you always strive for lesser taxes, more freedom etc., but you don’t realize that you’re merely begging for the rape you’re being subjected to from being a little gentler.

You’re still being raped though.

And all because you believe in this religion called “the government”, this incredible delusion.

In reality, however, there are only individuals, nothing but individuals. Groups of individuals are still individuals, only ones interacting with each other. Once this is completely realized the idea that one has to sacrifice for this “greater whole” called “country” or “society” starts to look awkward and illogical, because.. what is this greater whole if there are only individuals? And how can sacrificing myself for this greater whole be better for all of us if everyone is being sacrificed at the same time? Isn’t it that at best this process only brings us back to where we started, except with a loss of time and energy? What’s the point, then?

There’s no point, except to enrich those who happen to be the beneficiaries of holding you in this mental delusion, those who happen to be the ones dictating who is to sacrifice how much, and being handsomely paid for this “noble” role given to them by the “the people” god, paid by that which you sacrificed or let them steal from you.

But that’s not quite what you believed was supposed to happen is it? Of course it isn’t. What you expected was not realistic, it was not possible. If there are only individuals and sacrificing all individuals for the so called greater good which only ends up being the good of the currently ruling elite doesn’t actually help the good of all, then the whole proposition falls flat on its face. The concept of government as a noble organization endowed by god or “the people” becomes invalid and impossible.

The only alternative that remains is for invididuals that are left standing once the clouds of delusion have been cleared away to take back control over their own self and be the god and government to themselves, as they truly are. Then the only form of order that can exist without destroying you and other individuals as a matter of norm emerges naturally.

A few curves on the road ahead

2008-11-07T18:15:54+00:00

The most regular followers of GNU/Linux Matters‘ work will have noticed that publicly-visible activity has almost stalled over the month of October. There are important matters which keep us occupied behind the curtains.

As any activist or voluntary worker will surely know, one does not always have the resources to keep working at no cost forever. Of GLM’s two project leaders, one is combining non-profit work with international studies, and the other will formally leave the organization altogether within a handful of weeks, for personal and professional reasons.

This does not mean that GLM is shutting down tomorrow morning. First of all, development of our linking platform is well and progressing, and the translation community is still present and active. Secondly, we still have financial resources to keep the servers running for a comfortable amount of time.

We are, however, looking to pass the legal ownership of the websites over to another organization. This would not only free the only one of us living in France where the non-profit is legally registered, but most importantly, give the new eventual project leaders the full freedom and means to develop the project in the direction of their choice.

In the immediate weeks, we will likely be shutting down our advertizing service, nonbreakingspace, which has not contributed to the organization’s funding in a satisfactory way. Another suspended project is the T-shirt shop, this time purely due to lack of time. But in the meanwhile, all servers and development services remain up and running.

Again, this is neither an upcoming downtime notice, nor (yet) a formal goodbye. We are interested in any proposals from existing formal non-profit organizations who would be interested in taking over the project. You can contact us at committee at our domain name - we kindly ask for your understanding that we have extremely scarce time resources.

Thank you very much, and we shall keep everyone updated on how the situation evolves.

Olivier,
on behalf of the GNU/Linux Matters team.

Laptop und Lederhosn

2008-11-07T13:20:00+00:00

Last Friday, October 31 2008, I turned, on paper, into an adult. The most immediate result was, of course, that I'm apparently a lot more able to drive a car (at least I'm allowed to, alone). I also appear to be a lot more responsible with distilled beverages, and I'm suddenly able to take care of my own money. Banks like paperwork, and they like money, so, of cour"se, I had to give a few autographs to a few banks, as expected. Of course, I've also driven a car parent-less (to a LAN party with some friends), but I haven't as much as seen, let alone bought any strong liquor.

Birthdays are interesting social constructions in themselves, be it 18 or not. Usually, my birthday happens to be in the school holidays, but this year, they're the week after All Saint's Day. That was quite an experience, with most of the 20-student physics class congratulating at the same time, girls being shocked at having forgotten, etc. As usual, some people felt like giving away presents, like this one, from my lovely parents:

The EeePc 901 is a nice little machine. The keyboard may be a lot smaller than usual, but I can still type quite well on it; the size and weight are excellent, the only thing that wasn't that great was the pre-installed xandros operating system, which I have replaced with ubuntu-eee, which still works well but gives me more control.

JollyBOX, the next generation

2008-11-05T22:19:15+00:00

The original creation of this blog in April 2008 was the beginning of a JollyBOX.de renaissance. Maybe the key change was the usage of Serendipity, giving up on AFoC. Since then, I have created a new, simple and refreshing reference design with simple, regular logos for sub-sites. Nice.

Since not too long ago, the website has been hosted on an external server, meaning it's faster and more reliable than before. Finally, even JollyBOX code now uses the new design, and is based on PmWiki instead of simple HTML, which is a great help now that it's going to host information on software I write (previously at the now-dead zombieHQ). To celebrate this new splendor, the JollyBOX sites now all carry a bar at the top referencing each other.

GameLapse.com - where machines sing

2008-11-03T16:47:06+00:00

My brand new project, GameLapse.com, is nearing launch. It is a digg resembling web site for machinima movies. Machinima are movies made inside of computer games and there are plenty of them on youtube, Machinima.com and other sites like WeGame and Gamerz Theatre etc.

GameLapse.com allows its users to submit a link to machinima from any of these sites (and any other site) and get it voted, reviewed and rated. It is therefore a good additional opportunity for machinima movie makers to promote their videos and at the same time a great, simple way for anyone looking for some machinima style entertainment to find what’s hot and best rated. You can also browse by category and by tags. I explain more on the about page.

Of course, all of the above will mean far more once there are more submissions, more people making them, voting, reviewing etc. This blog entry marks the first word about this site anywhere on the web and further announcements and promotional campaign are to follow.

This project is my current major project. It was selected among a few candidates with higher commercial potential than my current involvements are (Nuxified.org, Libervis.com etc.). It reflects my ongoing interest in the gaming world and a recognition of an opportunity in the growing phenomenon of machinima. The project will also nicely tie in with Freedomware Gamefest Reloaded (born out of the past freedomware gamefest), which is also in the cards as not only an event but possibly a gaming community as well, one in which the first freedomware-based machinima scene may be given birth.

“Where machines sing” could be a nice alternative slogan.. Currently it is just “the machinima link”. Well, if anyone has an opinion on that feel free to comment.

Help us test ircd-seven!

2008-11-02T20:14:06+00:00

As many of you will have noticed, our current IRC server software, hyperion, has been showing its age for some time now. Expectations for its eventual replacement are nothing if not high — hyperion contains a great many features not found elsewhere, most of which are fairly unique to the way in which freenode operates, so anything that wants to take over from it must provide all of these, in a more robust, maintainable and future-proof package.

Charybdis looks like a good start — it’s a modern, modular IRC daemon supporting many of hyperion’s strange features, and built on top of ircd-ratbox, which gives it a good heritage of stability and scalability. ircd-ratbox is perhaps best known for powering the majority of EFNet, which seems to make it an excellent base on which to build.

However, neither ratbox nor Charybdis implements freenode’s more unique features, such as ban-forwarding or hidden IRC operators. So, some work is needed.

Enter ircd-seven. Seven is based on Charybdis, with the features freenode needs added in. Channel operators and network operators alike should recognise most of the useful, and heretofore unique, features of hyperion, without many of the bugs and oddities that have become an unfortunate fact of life.

Development and internal testing of seven has been ongoing for some time, and we’re now ready to open up testing to a wider audience. The test network is currently running on testnet.freenode.net, port 9002 for normal connections or 9003 for SSL connections. This is a new server, sharing no code with the current software, so all aspects of it need thorough testing, both that it works, and behaves in a way consistent with how most people want to use it — this last aspect is particularly difficult to do in small-scale private testing.

ircd-seven is designed to be capable of everything hyperion is, but not necessarily as a drop-in replacement. Some functionality is still available in a different form, or with a different interface. The most notable differences for users are summarised below:

SSL support
seven supports SSL, for client and server connections. Users connecting via SSL will get user mode +Z to denote this.

Channel bans and quiets
Channel mode +q (quiet) is now sent as a separate mode — hyperion’s translation of +q foo to +b %foo is gone. Extended ban types are supported for all ban-like modes (+bqeI). These extended masks begin with $, followed by an optional ~, to negate the match, and a single letter denoting the type of match to do. For example:

+b $r:Lee* will ban any client whose realname (gecos) field begins ‘Lee’. This is equivalent to hyperion’s +d mode.
+I $a:spb will set an invite exception for any client logged in to services as spb.
+q $~a will prevent any user not logged in to services from speaking. This is roughly equivalent to hyperion’s mode +R.

Forward channels for bans are now delimited with $ instead of hyperion’s !, and can be used with extended ban masks as well. Setting and unsetting of bans via the hyperion syntax (nick!user@host!#channel) is supported — it will be translated to nick!user@host$#channel.

Identified status
There is no user mode +e. The IRCd keeps track of the account name of every user who is identified to services, and uses this to determine whether a user is identified or not. The ‘is identified to services’ line in WHOIS output is no longer present; there is, however, a line containing the account name if the user is logged in.

Identifying on connect
Using a NickServ password as a server password still works as it does in hyperion. However, there are two new mechanisms:

You can specify : in the server password field, to log in to a specific account. This removes the requirement to connect using a nickname that is grouped to your services account.
seven supports SASL authentication, to log in to services during the connection process. This requires client support; a script for Irssi to do so is located here. Conspire supports this natively. Other clients, as far as I’m aware, do not.

Username prefixes
The n= and i= prefixes are not used; instead ~ is prefixed to a non-identd username, as in most other daemons.

IDENTIFY-MSG
The identify-msg capability is still present, but the way to enable it has changed — it is now part of the same CAP mechanism that is used to control SASL and multi-prefix capabilities. A script for irssi that understands both hyperion’s and seven’s identify-msg capability is available here. Conspire will also support this natively once w00t remembers to apply the patch.

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[Maintenance] Downtime warning — lem, orwell

2008-11-02T19:01:07+00:00

Hi all,

Tomorrow evening, November 3rd 2008, at 22:00GMT we will be undertaking some routine maintenance on two of our client servers, lem and orwell, both servers have already been taken out of rotation. The downtime window is set to one (1) hour, but we anticipate that the upgrades will take less time. At time of posting we have approximately 2,000 users across the two servers, and while we will urge users to connect to a different server prior to the upgrades we realise that not everyone will be able to act on the notice in time and as such we expect to see some disturbances on the network at the time of the upgrade.

Thank you for using freenode!

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Moral science?

2008-10-30T18:51:15+00:00

If I piqued anyone’s interests with my previous entries maybe I can start this one with an open ended question. Do you think there can be such a thing as moral science?

To define it, it would be equal essentially to physical or biological science in that it would describe universal processes that go on in the world or within a specific set, like human beings.

A moral science would thus describe at the very least, a framework according to which to determine how ALL people form their morals and at most determine the actual morals that are universal to all people.

It is important to distinguish this from the imposition of ones morals on to others. This would not be the objective of moral science anymore than it is an objective of physical sciences to impose ones arbitrary idea of why objects attract each other on to all others to believe. It is about observing, hypothesizing and then testing the hypothesis.

Someone attempted to create such a scientific framework already. I’m not sure he’s the only one (probably not), but he’s the one who caught my attention. He is Stefan Molyneux and his theory is called “Universally Preferable Behavior“. I’ve read Part 1 where he explains most of his theory and I have to say it’s quite interesting. Stefan Molyneux is quite an unorthodox and somewhat controversial philosopher with a bit of a cult following. My assumption is that the latter is due to him being one of those easily impressive people with leadership qualities that tend to, intentionally or not, attract a little too much zeal from those impressed. I’m not a big fan of personallity cults, but it’s no reason to completely dismiss the man and his ideas. Often the best and most revolutionary ideas have been brought about by most controversial of persons.

But I’m not necessarily making up my mind about whether UPB is a valid moral science theory or not. By default I do subscribe, to an extent, to moral relativism if not because I believe that morals are always subjective and cannot be a part of predictable patterns, then because I don’t yet understand such patterns. Just because something hasn’t been discovered yet, doesn’t mean it wont be, and attempts like the UPB are thus worth paying attention to.

One thing I continue to believe as strongly as ever though is this. I can hardly go wrong if I adopt only a single moral principle, or just The Principle if you wish, a “prime directive” to use trek-speak: non-initiation of force. Whether one is a moral absolutist or a moral relativist if both can agree that at least we wont force each others beliefs and morals on to each other we can make tremendous proggress as we continue to journey through life and explore the world and our beliefs.

The merger of realities

2008-10-30T18:26:48+00:00

A little upgrade on last entry. I’m just trying to get this stuff out of my mind.

Taking the assumption that reality is relative to you while at the same time believing in the distinct possibility that this subjective reality of yours is based upon the absolute reality outside of you, what do you do when you are trying to convince someone that what you believe is real? Well, of course, you debate, but if both of you are assumed to have different realities then it would make sense to identify the commonalities between them.

You define the terms you use to make your claim and seek agreement from your partner on those terms. By this process you are identifying a common paradigm according to which you would judge your arguments, like defining the rules of the game. Once they have been defined and ones argument breaks them, their arguments must be taken as failing.

And I believe most people who would call themselves reasonable and are privy to scientific method would almost universally, take two things into the common paradigms: internal consistency (no logical contradictions) and empirical consistency (no contradictory evidence from reality you both defined as such).

Also it is crucial to ask questions. If you’re in doubt about whether you’re “on the same page”, that your subjectivie realities are in misalignment, nothing can detect and solve the problem better than questions. You ask your partner; so do you think this is or this isn’t? Ask questions until you understand where he’s coming from and can then see if you can match where you’re coming from with it or dispute the entire framework of thinking.

A relativist described previously would possibly just call the whole debate an illusion, but who cares about them relativists. More reasonable ones would say this is a merger of realities, because in the process of pinging the reality of another you are identifying the common points and thus seeing evidence of reality that is beyond only your subjectivity, but is actually objective to both. That’d be more sensible, if you ask me. And yes, that belief reflects my own subjective reality and needs to be understood if anyone is to continue debating reality with me, among other things.

“Absolute” relativism revisited

2008-10-30T17:57:23+00:00

I was discussing absolute relativism or just “relativism” a bit more yesterday on #libervis IRC channel on irc.freenode.net where as it turned out we already have at least a couple of relativists, one of them being a voluntaryist. I’m just still not sure whether I can call them absolute relativists as the way I described it in my last blog entry doesn’t necessarily describe them.

Their basic premise seems to be that all reality is dependent on the mind and what it perceives since anything that it doesn’t perceive it can’t also consider to be “real”. The reason this doesn’t necessarily reflect the belief that truth is only what you choose it to be is that it is based in perception more than deliberate choice or in other words, perception rather than conception. So a relativist who isn’t absolute in the sense I’ve described previously, but only in the sanse that all we see as real depends on mind perceiving it as such, wouldn’t necessarily say everything he conceives as truth is truth and everything he conceives as false is false. He would just say that everything he perceives as truth and finds to be true by logical and empirical observation of and within “his” reality, is true.

I can’t say I have much of a problem with that assertion. I just think it’s pretty useless and irrelevant. The only thing that it really means is that there is a possibility that reality I am perceiving is just some sort of an illusion or that absolute external or objective reality doesn’t exist. But by definition it can’t deny its existence either. I could practically come up with the same kind of conclusion from my default stand point as well; which is that external objective reality exists, for all I know, but all I see is my “subjective” reality and it is an attempt at copying the objective reality on which it builds. So I too can say that I could be perceiving a mere illusion or that the nature of external reality is that it doesn’t exist, or whatever.

So I’m basically, and have been for a while, more of a relativist than not. The difference, if there’s any, seems to be merely semantical. Even relativists like my friends on #libervis would say that they live as if the reality they perceive is truly real. I can say the same thing in different words; I live knowing that reality I perceive is based on reality that is objective and absolute. It might be coming down to a difference between assuming what may or may not be and just deciding to make the assumption into “knowledge” based upon the observation of reality in question itself. It may seem illogical, but within the framework of relativism it really isn’t. If I can assume that the orange in front of me is real to the point of acting on that assumption as if it was absolute knowledge, it practically ceases to matter whether I’m calling the assumption an assumption or “knowledge”.

But you can see now why relativist statements like this are seldom useful or relevant. It’s more of mental entertainment than anything else.

Still, there’s an interesting observation to be made. If you claim that there is a possibility that you don’t exist, you’re making a self-destructive claim because in order to make that claim you have to exist. A relativist would say, though, that this statement “existence precedes the ability to make the claim” is based upon the observation rather than reality itself.

But then again a relativist can say this sort of thing for anything at all. There’s no standard. Again, this is why it is simply irrelevant, useless mental masturbation.

Here’s another interesting case. You and your friend are observing paintings in a gallery and stop by a particular painting. You tell your friend that you see a painting of a red car and your friend confirms it. His confirmation could in one sense be taken as evidence that reality you perceive as real is actually in common with his own and thus there is a single reality encompassing both of you. Yes, if you were to look through his own mind you might see what your own mind would call a green color, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the same pattern (as Taco mentioned in last entry’s comments) and his confirmation proves that the same pattern exists in both of your perceived realities.

Now, a relativist could deal that away by simply saying that your friend could also be just a figment of your imagination since perceiving him requires your mind. Can you see how useless relativism is?

Because seriously, I think one of the smartest things you can say to such statements is “so what”. It simply doesn’t matter. To conceive (or fantasize) of the possibility that your friend is just a figment of your own mind matters not to the fact that you’re still seeing him. And my gut would tell me that it is more likely that he is real than that he is imagined. And if that isn’t enough for a relativist then I can just say that I’d rather for my own sanity assume he is real than not, and it wouldn’t be contradictory to the relativist point because such an assumption is just as valid as any other.

And that again shows simply the intangibility, irrelevance, uselessness and mental masturbation inherent in absolutely relativistic statements and “beliefs”.

By relativist admission alone whatever you prefer to believe about the nature of reality you can believe, but according to that reality in question itself (including logic and empirical evidence derived from it), it proves its own existence. Nothing else matters.

There’s also an argument to be made similar to the one christians would use to keep believing in God except I personally believe it makes far more sense here: Pascal’s wager. The reason I think it’s far more applicable here is because unlike with the existence of God (I’m sure christians would disagree though) everything you perceive seems to scream reality is real whereas it requires positive effort to keep reminding yourself that it couldn’t be. And since both propositions are equally valid it wouldn’t be wrong to say reality does exist outside of your mind while it would be prudent to do so in order to account for the tendency of perceive reality to suggest just that.

I would suggest that you will live a more productive and happy life if you assume reality as real and your friends as real people than if you constantly entertain the idea that you’re just hallucinating.

Whether you’ll take that suggestion or not is up to you.

Fundraising for Charity Status!

2008-10-30T12:40:18+00:00

As you may be vaguely aware, we have been working on some structural changes to the operations of the parent organisation behind freenode. And I am happy to announce that Peer-Directed Projects Center Ltd is now incorporated as a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales.

This makes the administrative and organisational side of things a lot easier and manageable for us and will not in any way disturb the services we provide to our users currently.

However, we wish to register as a charity with the Charity Commission, but in order to do this we will need some help! We need to be able to meet a minimum support threshold of £5,000.00 per annum in order to be eligible for charity status.

While we historically raised a fair amount of money through various online fund raisers, we have not actively solicited for donations in the last two years, causing a massive drop in donation levels leaving us well below the threshold.

Now, there are several reasons for us not actively soliciting, for one our outgoings have over the past two years been a lot lower than previously as we no longer have any paid staff — all members of freenode and the PDPC are involved on a volunteer basis.

If you are considering donating, you will no doubt have some questions, some of which we will try to answer here:

If you are no longer employing anyone, what outgoings do you have, why do you need money? — Our outgoings are fairly low indeed and limited to hosting one server, registered office fees, telephone/fax, stationary expenses, domain renewal fees and other administrative overhead. We do intend to put any amount which exceeds our administrative expenses to use for the community.
What plans does freenode/PDPC have for “giving back to the community”? — There’s a few different programs we would like to be able to add to our current services, top of the list currently is arranging ‘live conferences” in Europe and America (if you are interested in learning more about this, helping out with planning, during the events or corporate sponsorship please drop us a line to live at freenode dot net).
Do I get any tax relief if I donate? — When we meet the treshold for charity status and enter the register, you will be able to write off tax on any donation made to us, and we will be able to claim tax relief of 28% per donation made from a UK tax payer!
Do you provide any receipts of donations? — If you donate through paypal you will automatically receive one then, however, for donations of £30.00 (approximately $50.00) or over we will also provide a separate receipt electronically or as a hard copy if you prefer.
Why do you want to be a charity anyway? — We want to be able to provide the services we currently provide to our community, we also wish to do future programs and we wish to get involved with working to “promote FOSS in the real world”, as a registered charitable organisation we can also apply for various grants and other support in order to reach these goals and provide a better service to the community.
Does this mean you will start spamming us with global notices begging us to donate all the time? — No! We believe that global notices should be reserved for messages relating to the status of the freenode network, not for soliciting funds. We may mention our fundraiser in #freenode and #defocus or other freenode owned/operated channels, and we may in future blog again and talk about it in our channels.

You can make your donation here.

While we only mention “freenode live” as a future program above, we do have other irons in the fire and if you’re curious about them, or have a suggestion for how we can better help our communities, why not come have a chat with us either over in #defocus or drop us an e-mail to ideas at freenode net

Any help, however big or small will be gratefully received! Thank you for considering donating, and to those of you who have supported us in the past and those continuing to support us a massive thanks for helping us help the community! If you have any questions, or want to discuss other levels of donating or other ways of helping out freenode and the PDPC — or getting involved with future programs, why don’t you drop me a message on IRC? You can find me online as christel.

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Don’t beg

2008-10-29T13:05:47+00:00

The begfest called elections is coming up in USA.

I’ll just say this. Don’t beg.

I’ll let Stefan Molyneux speak.

Warning: He is angry, not that I can blame him.

So, will you beg? Socialism or fascism, which is it?

Don’t dehumanize yourself like that.

Philosophical idealism

2008-10-28T17:22:00+00:00

In European philosophy, idealism is the counter-viewpoint to realism, which assumes the existence of a single “real world” that we all exist in, to an equal measure, at the same time. The way we actually perceive the world may, nonetheless, differ; nature and perception are not equal. Modern philosophy is mostly realistic; natural philosophy (a.k.a. physics, science) as we know it is based completely in realism.

Idealism, on the other hand, assumes reality to be formed by ideas, where an idea might be rock, flame, libervisco or death. We are presented with a projection of part of what one might call an “idea pool”. This would pretty much mean that every other person is also an idea, whereas it's thinkable that you yourself are an idea that can both perceive and be perceived, so to speak.

Of course, you can give ideas defining importance while believing in a single, solid universe. Take the sophist Πρωταγόρας (Protagoras), for example:

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.

We have no way of knowing what he meant, but that won't bother me, I'll just make some assumptions, because, in philosophy, I can.

Picture a red beetle. Man or no man, there is really a solid molecular substance containing quite a lot of carbon that, when hit by electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength between about 400 and 700 nm, will absorb quite a lot of waves with a wavelength not between about 625 and 740 nm. Realistic science tells us that that is the case. However, we're talking of a beetle, a red beetle even. We, humans, shape the reality we perceive by giving it character, by giving it spirit. We say something is red, and it's only red because we say so, because we have the idea that it's red.

Imagine a sound. Would there be a sound if no-one was there to hear it ? Of course, the air would still move, but air moves when there's wind as well. What makes it a sound ? Simple: Man does. Without human ideas, reality is nothing.

Oh, and I don't think Πρωταγόρας would really like the various ways in which we interpret what he may or may not have said

Absolute relativism

2008-10-27T23:04:48+00:00

Absolute relativism is basically a belief that truth is only what you choose it to be. It is relative to your own choice and nothing more. If you choose a statement to be true it is true and if you choose it to be false it is false. The only thing that can possibly determine the falsehood or truthness of a statement is your choice of either.

This allows for such statements as the following to be true, if you decide and convince yourself it’s true:

“This marble is both red and blue to me at the same time”

I added “to me” purposely in order to account for the claim that what one perceives as red may be what another perceives as blue. I tried to make the statement into one which is according to my own current paradigm stating an impossibility.

But according to the belief that every statement can be true or false depending ONLY on whether I choose to believe it is or isn’t, that statement can be true.

As you can imagine I have trouble accepting this. It effectively means that a cause is equal to relativity. I can say an object is moving relative to another object from which you observe. But according to absolute relativism whether the observing object exists or not is completely irrelevant. The object is moving because I have chosen that it does. Thus absolute relativism denies all other relativism replacing all cause and effect with a single thing: your choice, regardless of whether it’s conscious or unconscious. The only thing that can matter is your choice. (And even that statement can be chosen to be false.)

Absolute relativism thus implies that I am a god and you and other humans exist only because I think you do. I am omniscient because everything I see is everything that I choose I can see and I am omnipotent because everything I can do is everything I choose I can do. This goes beyond “The Secret” which suggests that one can alter reality, since absolute relativism puts you in the position of reality’s creator, effectively. Limits of your reality are limits you yourself have chosen to exist.

I think this is different from saying that I believe something exists only because I have perceived and chosen to believe it does. This is not about choosing beliefs, it is about choosing reality itself. If reality outside of that which you think is real does not exist, then the only reality that does exist is your own.

This kind of belief requires no evidence supporting it whatsoever because its validity or invalidity can be chosen at a whim. A true absolute relativist thus has no “standing ground” from which to judge because the standing ground itself is something he brought into existence by nothing more than a choice. Thus there are no paradigms according to which evaluate true or false. There’s no need for evidence or a scientific process.

I’m not sure there even is anyone who is truly an absolute relativist. I think instead that everyone who would ever claim to be one is just trying to escape the need to provide a more solid argument or evidence for his belief. It’s like saying “you’re wrong because I say so”.

And if there’s in any case ever a need for solid evidence to support a particular belief that evidence must be based on something that exists outside of your own mind, something that your own mind did not fabricate. In other words, reality external to that which is consisted only of what we believe (subjective reality or “belief reality”) must exist. This does not necessarily mean that there couldn’t be other realities existing outside of the one external to my subjective reality, but that ceases to matter.

Also it doesn’t matter if a statement is true or false if its truthness or falsehood does not matter to me or you individually. Also, it doesn’t matter to the universe itself (external reality) whether you are right or wrong about something.

In any case, I as a voluntaryist have to say that if absolute relativism means anything at all then it is that an individual matters since it is individual choice which makes up individual’s reality. Forcing one reality on another results in destruction. On the other hand, since believing in absolute relativism can also mean believing that such force is perfectly justified and perhaps even good, the whole idea of absolute relativism is one of perpetual contradiction, a constant collision of realities and paradigms.

Currently, I remain a relativist only in the sense of knowing I can be wrong, enough to make me believe that I shouldn’t force my beliefs on another. But I also believe that reality outside of my beliefs exists as well and it is where the data stream I perceive comes from. I tend to call that one the “absolute reality” and my own subjective belief as my “subjective reality” or “relative reality”.

Exploring animal rights

2008-10-27T16:30:30+00:00

I sometimes get into heated discussions with my (former) friend regarding my belief that all human action must be voluntary and that therefore we should have no coercive government (instead each individual should govern himself). We rarely agree on any point and never agree on our paradigms. Right now I even doubt whether he has a consistent paradigm due to his apparently absolutist relativist thinking, but I digress (and absolute relativism may be a good topic for some other entry).

One good thing that I take out of the recent debate is my curiosity about the issue of animal rights. Since my last blog entry effectively posits that rights are inherent in being what and who you are rather than something given by others it does not in principle discriminate between species. It applies to every thing and every one in the universe. In that entry my focus was on humans though and here I want to focus on animals.

The basic premise of the previous entry was that if one was capable of something one must have the right to exercise that something so long as it doesn’t deny another to exercise his own capabilities. To deny the existence of this right is to deny the existence of this capability and since it is what makes one what it is, it means to deny its existence as such.

According to this, an animal which is alive has the right to live. If it is capable of marking property as its own it has the right to property. If it is capable of barking, running, crying and doing anything else it can do, it has the right to do all these things. The logical conclusion would seem to be that if a human denies and violates any of these rights, even while professing to be a voluntaryist like me, is not being consistent OR is suffering from what my (former) friend called “specieism” (an equivalent to racism) where I believe only humans can have rights even when I see the evidence that others are capable of having rights too.

Then the only way to keep voluntaryism consistent with itself, without falling into specieism, is to either prove that a given animal is not capable of having a particular right which we habitually deny them.

Driven by that I started a discussion thread on one of the voluntaryist forums and also with a friend on IRC. I posed this as a potential threat to logical consistency of voluntaryism. What we concluded is something that I apparently overlooked. I even hinted at it in an above sentence where I mentioned being “capable of having rights”. It is the issue of demanding rights.

A human may exist as a human only so long as he can exercise what makes him human, including demand. If we look at history only those who cared about rights and demanded and defended them have ever been admitted to them. Otherwise their humanity was suppressed by other humans.

A definition of “demand” could be useful. According to wiktionary it corresponds to a need, desire, claim for something, an urgent request or an order. A demand for rights, that is the recognition and respect of self as such then corresponds to a need, desire, claim, request or order to be recognized as yourself.

Are animals, then, capable of demanding their rights? I think the answer depends on whether they recognize their own rights to begin with, recognizing their own capabilities and what makes them themselves. In other words, it seems to come back to the question of whether they are self-aware? If they are not even aware of themselves as what they are then they don’t even recognize their own rights as part of who they are and are thus incapable of demanding such recognition from others. This is why most animals also willfully aggress on other animals and why humans which fail to recognize their own rights also tend to fail respecting the rights of others. Such lack of recognition results in violence.

It is hard to answer this question with absolute certainty, but given what we can scientifically determine so far is that animals aren’t self aware in which case the capability of demanding rights is not a part of who they are and thus granting them to live or do anything that they are instinctually driven to is up to anyone in their vicinity, whether it is another animal or a human. This is what makes it possible for a human to own an animal and let it do some things while denying it to do others.

This is also consistent with the known and widespread belief (even among non-voluntaryists) that only sentient rights can have rights. I think I understand better now the basis of this claim. The emphasis is on can. Whether they can or can’t depends on whether they are sentient.

This said, every individual decides for himself what sights or acts does he prefers more or less and I would say I don’t like the sight of a human torturing animals. I therefore reserve the right to ostracise everyone who does this. Animals might not be capable of having rights, but I am capable of feeling disgusted when they are being hurt for no good reason and based on this disgust I can make or break my relationships with other humans, at least this way, through non-forceful action, sending a signal to them that I don’t approve.

And like with everything in the free market, the more people demand of others not to do something less people are likely to do it.

Privacy @ JollyBOX

2008-10-26T14:38:52+00:00

I would like you to know that

I do not save your IP address in access logs.

All *.jollybox.de web sites are available over an SSL-encrypted connection, including this blog. The server's SSL certificate is currently self-signed. If you tell your web browser to trust it, please tell it to permanently save it to make sure you're always connected to the same potential imposter.

Right to Life, Liberty and Property Equals Human Being

2008-10-24T23:10:44+00:00

I believe that rights are not given nor earned. They are inherent in who we are and inseparable from it. If one stomps on the right of another, his humanity is violated because to be is to exercise what makes you human.

And what is it that makes you human? You are alive, self aware, capable of thinking and acting on your thoughts and thus capable of creating and acquiring. All of this together constitutes your being human and to deny you to use your life, self awareness and ability to think, create and acquire would be to deny your humanity, to deny you to BE human. Thus life, liberty and property are one and the same. Without life you perish. Without liberty you cannot exercise abilities that make you human. Without property, the result of these exercises, you have nothing to strive for, nothing to cherish, nothing to call home, nothing to call your own - the fruit of your labor.

No two beings can occupy the same space, digest the same piece of food or breed the same molecules of air, at the same time. That’s the very basis of property ownership, simply the need to occupy and consume a particular piece of the world in order to exist AS whatever you naturally are; a fish, plant, bacterium or.. a human.

Since as a human, you’re in addition to being alive also defined by being self aware and able to think and act human property ownership is expanded to accommodate for the exercise of these traits. So in addition to the food you’re digesting, air you are breeding, space you are occupying (your body) you also own everything else that is created or acquired by the work of your mind and body.

No two persons can own the same thing. If we pretend they do there is a conflict. Which one decides what to do with it? Which one uses it when both want to use it? Which one is responsible for it? Even when two persons agree to share something these impossibilities remain. They can only “time share” the use of a thing and “time share” the responsibility, at one time one can use it and be responsible for it and at another the other can. Effectively, it is never owned by both, never becomes “collective property”, rather ownership merely shifts from one person to the other in time according to their voluntary agreements.

Let’s take a challenging claim; that a given road is a public property. This claims that everyone living in a city where the road is located is the owner of that road at the same time. This also means that everything everyone in that city wants to do on or with that road they can do, all at the same time. So one can decide to drive a car on it as fast as he likes whereas another can decide to walk at the same place where the other guy is speeding a car. It also means that at the same time as those two are doing this, a third person can come and drill a hole in the middle of the road.

This obviously doesn’t fit reality and is in fact impossible. It is thus not surprising that when one claims a particular thing as “public property” it never really means that everyone can do anything they want with it. Instead there is a government which enforces rules of how it is going to be used. This government or moreover the head of the government (its president, for instance) contractually bound to his employers to propose and create the rules, is the actual singular owner of this so called “public property”.

Thus the conception of collective ownership or “public property” is a fallacy. It cannot and does not exist. Property by definition is always private and always belonging to a single individual. It is that person’s very extension, when acquired by voluntary consent of previous owners (through trade or gift etc.) or created by him or those whom agreed to create it for him. In all cases property is the result of thoughts and actions applied without violation of another’s right to think and act by himself.

Without property there can be no liberty. To deny ownership altogether is to deny ownership of self. This implies that someone else owns you and that thus someone else can decide what to do with you or what you should be, instead of you. You therefore have no liberty whatsoever.

If self ownership is admitted, but ownership of everything else is denied then your acts are not for you, but for someone else. What use is the admission of self ownership if nothing you do with yourself results in an enrichment of yourself, if every result you produce is for someone else to take without your consent. You are still a slave.

If self ownership and ownership of only some of the rest is admitted it is still not you who decides which of the results you produce are yours to keep and which are someone elses. Someone else can change the criteria at a whim. Because of this you’re still not in control of that which you yourself produce and remain a slave.

In short, life, liberty and property are human rights indivisible from each other and the process of being human. Violation of those is the violation of someone being human because one can’t be human without exercising that which makes him or her human.

Whose Garamond is it anyway?

2008-10-24T21:41:06+00:00

Flick through various foundry catalogs for a Garamond revival or adaption and you’re bound to discover more than garalde typefaces. Interspersed amongst the many Garamonds you’ll find erroneously titled baroque faces works by another type designer, Jean Jannon. I decided to investigate the affair and while doing so swept the dust off a little history of French printing.

Prelude: the birth of French printing

The European invention of letterpress printing with movable type by Johannes Gutenberg c. 1450 systematized the Latin alphabet into individual characters that could be physically composed and reused. Because Latin letters amalgamate into an alphabet—distinct from logographies and syllabaries—they are particularly well suited to be divided, cut, and finally cast into pieces of metal type that reside in wooden cases (fig. 1.). Majuscules (capital letters) lived in the “upper case” whilst the minuscules (small letters) inhabited the “lower case”. This is where we draw the synonyms for upper- and lowercase from.This was the basis for the revolutionary adoption in place of the meticulous copying of books by hand word-for-word and saw the establishment of an integral part of the printing trade: typography.

A reprint of a page of one of the Gutenberg Bibles, from Mainz, Germany. Gutenberg’s typefaces epitomize the strong gothic elements that we now classify as blackletter. The face in particular is a textura blackletter.

A sort is a single piece of metal type, a letter of one specific typeface and size. In digital typography it has been replaced by the term glyph as digital type does not physically exist until printed. Thus a sort of Bembo italic at 12 points is distinct from another of Bembo italic 10 points. Conversely those that semantically share the same letter but are stylistically different—even if of the same family and point size—are also classified as different sorts.Fig. 1. Metal sorts being set on a composition stick with many more organised in a job case underneath. Photo by Willi Heidelbach.

The trade of printing quickly spread throughout Europe. It was introduced to France in 1470 by Johann Heynlin and Guillaume Fichet—two professors of the Sorbonne, the historic university of Paris—who enlisted the aid of German printers to establish the first printing house. Three printers from Mainz helped them construct the presses, equipment and began cutting type. Still in the same year they printed France’s very first book, Gasparini Epistolae (“Letters”), written by the Italian grammarian Gasparino da Barizizza.

Traditional preferences

Gasparini Epistolae was set in a humanist blackletter (fig. 2). The face was a hybrid from a merging of roman and gothic elements. The style was rebuffed in favour of the traditional gothic properties of blackletter which French readers had grown accustomed to; unlike the humanist faces that were cut during the Italian Renaissance, humanist typefaces weren’t met as candidly in France as elsewhere in Europe. French typography remained moderately conservative, utilizing heavy blackletter faces of one style or another to set most printed material until the turn of the century.

Fig. 2. A sample of the humanist blackletter hybrid from Gasparini Epistolae, Haralambous, Y., 2007, Fonts & Encodings (p. 375), English edition, O’Reilly Media Inc., California, USA.

There are two noteworthy interludes between the end of the 15^th century and the cutting of garalde faces in the early 16^th century. In 1477 came the first book printed in French, an unusual and controversial venture as French was considered too vulgar to be set in print. Typically Latin was used for the written word, even in Germany at the time. It was set in cute bastarda (or Schwabacher) by Pasquier Bonhomme. Then in 1529 Geofrey de Troy, the personal printer to King François I, took the next steps that led to the broader adoption of roman with the printing of his book, Le Champ Fleury in which he put forth his theory that letter forms and human anatomy are closely linked.

The Garalades and Garamond

By the mid 16^thcentury printing was a solid industry. Certainly printing was still expensive, however it had become more economically viable and less time-consuming than the the previous option of employing scribes. Following the classical humanist typefaces, typographically in the 16^th century came the garalde (or old-style) faces, paying homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius. These featured a heavier weight and stronger emphasis on the downwards strokes than their antecedents (fig. 3). The weight can be attributed to a more oblique axis of the pen; garalde faces in no way loose their humanist elements. Today the best known garaldes faces are Garamond and Bembo, the former of which there are many versions of. Other notable digital renditions include Adobe Garamond, Granjon, Sabon, and Stempel Garamond.

Fig. 3. Top: 72 point Centaur, cut by Bruce Rogers in 1912–1914 and based on cuts by Nicholas Jenson made in the height of the Venetian Renaissance, 1469; bottom: 72 point Stempel Garamond, a true Garamondian revival by the Stempel Foundry, 1924. It was later digitized by Linotype.

The other Garamond

A century after Claude Garamond came Jean Jannon (1580–1658). Jannon was a French Protestant printer who began cutting type in the Protestant Academy in Sedan, France. He cut his type during the French Renaissance but did so illegally under the Catholic regime and consequently had his casts seized in 1641 by agents of the French crown, under orders of Cardinal Richelieu (who ironically used Jannon’s work to later to set his own memoirs, Principaux Points de la Foi). Jannon’s work sat locked-away for two centuries before seeing the light of day again. When they were uncovered they were misidentified as cuts by Claude Garamond, and hence named thereafter Garamond. Many digital revivals still carry on this error: ATF ‘Garamond’, Lanston ‘Garamond’, numerous versions of Monotype ‘Garamond’ and Simoncini ‘Garamond’. Jannon’s work is baroque in nature; it is easily distinguished from Claude Garmond’s; sharper serifs and an almost wild variation of axis and slope (fig. 4, 5).

Fig. 4. Top: 72 pt Monotype Garamond, digital revival based on Jean Jannon’s cuts; bottom: 72 pt Adobe Garamond, digitally revived by Robert Slimbach and based on Claude Garamond’s cuts.

Fig. 5. Top: 72 pt Simonici Garamond, another digital revival based on Jean Jannon’s cuts; bottom: 72 pt Stempel Garamond again, based on Claude Garamond’s cuts.

Historically befitting

So if you’re writing a piece on the introduction of French printing and want to set it in an appropriate typeface, a Garamond revival is most apt—of course you could pick a heavy gothic with which Johann Heynlin and Guillaume Fichet began France’s printing ventures but no one would comfortably read it today (and ultimately the blackletters are more Germanic than French). Conversely if you’re writing a piece set three centuries later, covering the French Renaisance, select one of Jannon’s revivals and pay tribute to a man almost forgotten by history.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Times italic sorts

2008-10-22T23:28:26+00:00

I’m still alive, just playing with sorts, that’s all.

Der Alltag eines busfahrenden Schülers

2008-10-21T15:37:00+00:00

Dies ist eine Geschichte aus dem Alltag eines zivilisierten, vernünftigen Kollegstufenschülers am Gymnasium Geretsried in Bayern. Ähnliches spielt sich wahrscheinlich täglich überall im Land ab.

Nach der 6. Stunde, 13:05 Uhr, regulärer Unterrichtsschluss. Die „5” nach der „13” mag in der Unter- und Mittelstufe zwar meist eine reine Formsache sein, das ist aber nicht immer und überall so. Also, um fünf nach eins endet der Unterricht, dann heißt es Zeug zusammenpacken und in einem normalen Schritttempo das Schulhaus verlassen. Daran, dass die Wände seit Jahren nach Baustelle aussehen und die Kabel von der Decke hängen, hat man sich schon längst gewöhnt—egal wie viel man sich beschwert, vor 7 Jahren war die Schule intakter—den dunklen Betonklotz aus den 70ern, der sich „Schule” schimpft, möchte man aber eigentlich doch relativ flott verlassen.

Draußen, an der Luft, wechselt man noch schnell ein paar Worte mit einem Mitschüler, zugerufene Àdieux, und schon ist man in der Unterführung zur Bushaltestelle. Nicht besonders angenehm, vom Geruch bis zu den zwar frisch geweißelten, doch aber mit schlechtem Graffiti beschmierten Wänden, aber man kann ja nicht immer vor den Fünftklässlern über die Straße rennen, vor allem nicht, wenn Polizei oben steht. Da geht neben einem ein guter Freund, Ich finde das unverschämt, dass wir für den Scheiß jetzt zahlen müssen!; Recht hat er, und auch diejenigen Schüler, die genügend Geschwister haben, um die Fahrt zwischen Daheim und Schule erstattet zu kriegen, sind sich einig: Nicht einmal Einzelkinder in der Oberstufe sollten den Bus zu einer öffentlichen Schule bezahlen müssen, nicht in diesem unseren Sozialstaat.

Auch die Situation an der Bushaltestelle kann nicht begeistern: es stehen die zwei üblichen langen Busse da. Der Erste, proppenvoll, schließt gerade die Türen, um wegzufahren. Im Zweiten ist auch nicht mehr Platz. Im Gegenteil: obgleich die Insassen (was nicht heißen soll, dass viele sitzen) kaum noch Platz zum atmen haben, befindet sich an der Tür noch eine Traube von etwa 10 jüngeren Schülern, die sich mit letzter Kraft reinzuquetschen versuchen. Etwas weiter hinten stehen dann etwa 60 weitere Schüler, die rauchen und ratschen, weil sie wissen, dass in den Schulbussen kein Platz ist.

Wie lange wird das noch dauern ? Nach einigen Minuten kommt schon ein Paar Linienbusse. Die Tatsache, dass sie unterschiedlich Linien bedienen, stiftet zwar etwas Verwirrung, aber schnell haben sich auch hier Trauben an allen vier Türen gebildet, und jeder versucht mit Gewalt, noch einen Stehplatz zu bekommen. Aber, was heißt hier jeder ? Manch einer sieht ein, dass man eigentlich zuerst Leute aussteigen lassen sollte, dass die Chancen, überhaupt einen Platz zu bekommen, infinitesimal sind, und dass diese Art des Einsteigens eigendlich zutiefst barbarisch ist. Man wünscht sich eigentlich, dass alle sich ganz normal anstellen, und die Leute hinten ungehindert Aussteigen lassen, aber das scheint in Deutschland ja nicht zu gehen. Die Busse sind weg, jetzt heißt es zunächst fünf bis zehn Minuten warten—wenn man Glück hat, kennt man irgendjemanden, der auch wartet, mit dem man das Warten einigermaßen überbrücken kann.

Der nächste Bus war vermutlich schon an einer anderen Schule, von Platz kann da keine Rede sein. Langsam wünscht man sich, man hätte den Unterricht doch wie in der Unterstufe um 12:55 Uhr eigenmächtig beendet, um zum Bus zu rennen, aber wo kämen wir denn da hin ? Kaum ist es 13:26 Uhr, schon kommt der nächste kurze Linienbus. Von Platz kann da zwar auch keine Rede sein, die Bushaltestelle wird aber langsam leer. Um nicht noch eine Viertelstunde warten zu müssen, quetscht man sich dann halt als letzter in den Bus. Um zwei Uhr ist man dann vielleicht zu Hause, und die Busfahrt war keineswegs angenehm; kein Wunder, dass so viele in der Regel ehrliche Schüler sich für dafür entscheiden, schwarz zu fahren.

Copyright © 2008 Thomas Jollans. Die Verwendung dieses Textes unterliegt der Creative Commons Namensnennung-Keine Bearbeitung 3.0 Deutschland Lizenz

Lisping: IRC bots are fun

2008-10-19T18:19:00+00:00

A wee while ago, I decided to learn a lisp. Randomly, my lisp of choice was Common Lisp. (though I will probably have a look at Scheme sooner or later) As if a new programming language wasn't enough, I also started using GNU Emacs (rather than my previous absolute favourite Vim) for editing the code... Why ? SLIME. Implementation-wise, I have used GNU CLISP (love it), Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL, quite nice) and GCL (rather pointless).

Of course, you cannot really learn a programming language without programming with it. Back in the day, I used the BWInf competition to learn the adorable Python language (along with a book), and this time, I solved a part of this years' BWInf round 1 in Common Lisp for starters. But, more importantly, as it was more fun and I can publish the code, I have written a bare-bones IRC bot in lisp using the CL-IRC library (which is very lacking in documentation, but both the IRC protocol and the library source code are open, so that wasn't a great problem).

You can get the code via Mercurial.

There is really only one aspect of the implementation worth noting here: the command-creation macros. Not really spectacular, but rather lispy, I'd say.

Instead of

(defun blah-command (connection source channel text)

  ; make sure the user is logged in

  ; parse the text into useful chunks

  ; more ))) than cool

)

(setf *commands* (cons (list "blah" #'blah-command

                             "blah documentation) *commands* ))

You write

(auth-irc-command admin "blah" (connection source channel) (arg1 arg2 arg3)

  ; get stuff done

)

etc.

Macro definitions are here.

I joined the Free State Project

2008-10-18T14:30:09+00:00

I intended to do this a while ago, but a technical glitch and then some doubts I had later on prevented me from it. However, as I was discussing and thinking lately, while observing the happenings in the world, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that if there will be a last stand made for true freedom on this Earth, it will be in New Hampshire. I wont say New Hampshire, USA though, just New Hampshire.

I believe it is the Switzerland of the american continents, except so much better. It may be the only place in which the old american ideals of freedom, which have made USA a “promised land” for so many fleeing europeans, will still survive and persevere until the time comes for the world to see the true nature of governments and socialism (even if mixed with some perversion of capitalism) and the true value of having freedom. The Free State Project and the people of the free land we know as New Hampshire, are going to show the way.

I do not believe that humanity has much of a choice except these two: either learn to live and let live, learn to respect the freedom and sovereignty of another, learn to live in peace OR perish, because the ways of perpetual warfare (between gangs known as government or between government and “its” people), of perpetual theft (welfare state), of perpetual victimization, violation and fear of each other - cannot lead to long term survivability, let alone prosperity, as the number of humans grows and the Earth continues to be destroyed by the power mad coercionists and their willfully mindless minions.

So I pledged to move to New Hampshire, some time in the future. The pledge is fairly open ended. I have up to five years after 20 000 people sign the pledge to move, so I don’t feel too pressured to move very soon. There are plenty of obstacles, from getting a visa (at least while USA as a federation still exists) to psychological issues of separating myself from the rest of my family and the place I’ve known for most of my life to the purely financial issues (the costs of moving, starting over there etc.).

But being that the future is uncertain and that a lot of opportunities are something I either recognize or create myself I would not say that it is impossible to resolve these issues. If I thought that I wouldn’t sign up.

So New Hampshire is very likely a part of my future.

Let the torch of Liberty burn again

2008-10-16T18:05:08+00:00

Let the torch of liberty…

…burn again.

What would copyright designed by artists look like ?

2008-10-06T11:15:00+00:00

Copyright as we know it originated in the English printing industry of the 16^th century. Since then, British writers have monopoly copy-rights they can sell to printers, who are, as we all know, the only people capable of reproducing books. This applied to printed music, and today, it also applies to recorded music and all other expressions of creativity that can be bound to tangible media. This is a nice, working system as long as printers (record companies) are the only ones capable of reproducing a work, and pay the artist adequately for the multiplication, which they fully control.

It should be obvious to anyone with the technology to access this blog that record companies (and publishing companies...) are no longer the only people capable of copying music (or printed works). Since copyright law and copyright contracts are still stuck in the Cold War era, which is exactly where the record companies want them, this is kind of a problem.

All this is no new argument, and some people are fighting against the situation: Some independent artists are going the way of the GNU, but they are few. Some have founded Pirate Parties, but most of them aren't artists, and they are realistically almost irrelevant. Now, there might be a new player around: On Saturday, October 4, British musicians united to create the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC).

I'm not sure what to think of this. While the Süddeutsche Zeitung jokes about it being a union of super-rich non-working-class pop stars that want more money (like all unions) on the front page of today's paper, I'm sceptical mostly because I don't know what they'll actually do, and what will effectively happen.

Their charter is directed at artist-company deals: they don't want to sell their rights. I fully agree with this; I actually don't think artists should be able the legal construction that is copyright completely: IF there is copyright at all, the originator should always have it. This, along with the demands for transparency, is important, and the most prominent part of the campaign, but I think another part is a lot more important:

Copyright owners to be obliged to follow a ‘use it or lose it’ approach to the copyrights they control. Despite new technology, many copyright owners fail to release recordings to the public. As a result many artists lose out and fans can only access such material illegally. A ‘use it or lose it’ contractual provision should automatically apply so that an artists’ work is always available for legal purchase by the public, digitally and physically.

While the solution they half-propose might not change a lot (we might see some day), the train of thought is an important one (see Lessig, Free Culture, ch. 5 Piracy) Might this get the ball rolling ?

Literature Tip

In his book, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, (Penguin, ISBN 0-14-303465-0, also online) Lawrence Lessig presents a brilliant argument about creativity, copyright, media syndicates, and how they do, don't and/or should fit into the Internet Era. While it is a philosophical-political text written by a law professor, the book remains close to reality and it worth a pleasant read for anyone blessed with common sense.

Flash of light in the sky

2008-10-06T03:29:50+00:00

Just after 5 AM today I saw a flash of light in the nightsky when I looked through the window of my room. It looked like a pretty light star suddenly appeared and disappeared in a matter of a second.

I immediately thought it to be notable because, even as someone who likes to observe meteorites, I don’t quite remember seeing this. It’s just a flash of light, but every time I see a flash of light in the night sky it is either an airplane (multiple recurring flashes and usually quite obvious), iridium flares (which last more than this flash lasted, which was practically a blink of an eye) or meteorites which leave a trail and also last longer.

And I don’t recall myself being prone to hallucination either. I saw it!

So it seems anomalous. I should scour the astronomy related sites later to see if maybe I saw something others have noticed. Perhaps I witnessed a distant supernova explosion? That’d be cool.

In any case I love seeing something unusual in the sky, for some reason, even if it is a mere anomalous flash of light. It makes the universe feel more real and exciting, as it should.

Introducing IdeaProbe.com

2008-10-03T19:52:13+00:00

A project of the last few hours, here comes IdeaProbe, based on an idea of a search site which conveniently allows you to search all other good idea sites for ideas you might need for a new creative venture.

I was searching for ideas myself, before I make a final call on the next venture of my own, and since it took so little time overall, this particular idea seemed worth executing. It could very well pay for itself by, if nothing, then adsense revenue it might generate. If it doesn’t work and nobody is interested then, oh well, it’s just 7 bucks for a tiny lesson learned.

But something tells me it might be useful to some people, especially if I decide to go with it and add some additional resources to it, like perhaps the ability to submit the ideas directly from the search results into the special voting queue and then vote them up or down, sort of like digg or reddit news stories.

Afterall, everything starts with an idea, no matter how small or big it is.

Everything happens for a reason.

2008-09-28T19:04:28+00:00

The more I understand causality the less I believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. A reason for every event is its cause. Where conscious choice is involved, the cause may be a purpose of the one who chooses. I pursue a goal, thus I act to produce a cause that will produce an event that is a part of the chain of events that leads to the achievement of my goal - my purpose.

The more one knows and understands the multitude of causality chains affecting ones pursuit of purpose the more powerful one is. Having a defined purpose is, however, a pre-requisite.

We may be facing a new Great Depression in this world, and a subsequent resurgence of violent fascism and war. This too happens for a reason. Some would say it’s prophecies coming true. Others would blame human inability to resist violence (which results in governments tyranizing markets of otherwise free people). Some would say both, or some other imaginative reason.

But whatever we say or believe the reason exists and it is what it is regardless of what someone thinks it is. The closer one is to the truth of what this reason is, and moreover what all to one relevant reasons are, the more powerful one is.

Great Depression and increases of threatening violence easily instill fear in us, but there is an illusive truth somewhere in my mind which seems to hold the key which opens the doors out of that prison of fear and into the endless realm of possibilities. Where even in the worst of times one can have a world of his own. Once you rise above the chains of events - the causalities of our time and sees what they are you can mold it to your will. Even if you can’t change the whole world, since it involves others who may have the same power as you, you can transform your world.

But it is an elusive truth. My guess would be that it reflects, one way or another, the exact belief that is the topic of this post: everything happens for a reason.

So perhaps, if you find and know the reason to everything that affects you and everything you want to be affected by you can act against reactions that press you down and instill fear in you, to create the consequences that do the opposite - empowering you.

Maybe the greatest of souls will be born during the hard times that are coming. Maybe the singularity, the awakening, the new enlightenment, the transition, the evolutionary leap - will happen when the times seem the darkest.

And perhaps it will be a deliberate act by the few and a react by the many inspired by those few, that will bring it about.

Freedom is a state of mind. So is serenity and power. Rewiring a mind to these states is a painful process, but it is possible.

As the banks fall and violence rises, let us be ready. A powerful mind can stop bullets before they’ve been fired and make a mountain out of a depression.

selfpicmeme

2008-09-24T22:42:16+00:00

I got this silly idea from damog...

Rules:

Take a picture of yourself right now.

Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.

Post that picture with NO editing.

Post these instructions with your picture.

Do it !

This site has an IP address !

2008-09-24T21:53:35+00:00

Until recently, this site was hosted on my home server, which is connected to the internet over an asynchronous DSL connection, without a fixed IP address, that broke off at least every 24 hours. And hosting a web site on a crappy connection is never really good.

Anyway, I now have a VPS, and I can only hope that means everything jollybox will experience a lot less downtime in future. I have already migrated this blog (which was relatively easy, since this Serendipity setup uses SQLite3 instead of some dinosaur of a server) and set up a mail hub, which basically means that all the new spam is stuck in one central location when my home mail server isn't accessible.

Seriously, I can't wait for proper IPv6 deployment, I can't wait until having a few IP addresses of your own becomes natural once more. We already have the software, now the development of a v6 internet must continue at the leaves of the network: if ISPs don't provide IPv6 addresses and routing to customers, why would anyone want to properly hook up their servers to the IPv6 network—it costs at least a little time, after all. I know the Windows Firewall isn't suited for the internet, but we can't cope with less than 2³² addresses forever, especially if we want to give Africa civilized access to the 'net, and, while I don't know if I'll have any influence there at all, I want high-speed lines all the way from Cape Town to Helsinki.

I am free.

2008-09-24T13:16:35+00:00

Good morning to me.

Last night I’ve had a little merger happen in my head. It is between the concept of “self growth” and “self liberation”. I somehow saw them as parallel but separate processes yet they are not. I now believe that self improvement, self help or self growth, however you wanna call it, are in essence self liberation. And it’s a big industry because people yearn for someone to tell them how to succeed, but this desire to “succeed”, be it a specific desire for money, health or just general happiness is in fact rooted in a single thing: liberty - self liberation.

People buy self help books, seminars etc. because they want to be free, desperately.

But most of that material rarely brings them towards this state of freedom because most of it operates with the false assumptions about the world and about the prevalent social structures.

Funny thing, just as I tuned in to a trance station to listen to, it played a track which at one point had Morpheus from Matrix so eloquently say this:

“It is a world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

And I laughed out loud! In a state that I am right now I am beginning to truly feel that I have escaped from this world - I am free. I no longer believe the lies, no longer see the illusion and no longer fear as much as I did, because I know it’s all not real. I know that I have the power. And now that I do I can continue to grow my liberty to the point at which I can LITERALLY bend the illusion most other people call reality. The Matrix analogy is perfect, because that’s exactly what happens. People freed from the world of lies become Neo’s and are capable of BENDING the reality in which other people live. Why can we bend reality? Because it’s actually NOT real. It’s reality to THEM, not us. We know how it works now and so we can manipulate it.

But I’ve learned, however, another incredible fact last night - that I’m actually only at the very beginning of my freedom journey. I somehow thought that I’m already pretty advanced, but then I realized - wait a second - I am barely pass the “pain” stage, and I still feel pain sometimes when I see how upside down and wrong the world is. And the pain stage is the first stage of the process of becoming free. That means I still have a way to go and it also means that the way I feel now is actually just scratching the surface of what’s coming.

You know people. Freedom rocks. You should try and discover it. The thing people will rarely tell you is that you don’t need to change the world to become free. You don’t need government to grant you freedom. The only one you need is YOU. You have freedom by nature! I wish I could describe how that feels.

If you wish to talk to me or wish me to give you some pointers join #libervis on irc.freenode.net. Ironically, “libervis” means “most freely” and today I feel most free than ever.

Be free.

The Beauty of the Free Market and.. Wall Fountains

2008-09-23T21:16:31+00:00

Lately I sometimes look around me and visualize how all that I’m seeing has been made by someone working for some sort of an incentive, a form of profit. And as I’m thinking about it this way I can’t not to see the beauty embedded in the free market - how it makes people strive do the best job, to make something look good or function good, really put themselves into it, only so that the buyer can choose their product of labor instead of someone else’s.

Take for instance this site I recently came about. I have a soft spot for cool interior arrangements (I even have a nice decorative LED lamp to make my room more colorful at night), and this site offers some really great, I could say, works of art.
Soothing Walls are fountains pouring over cool looking patterns on stone, glass, ceramic or concrete shapes which are meant to not only decorate, but add a soothing experience to the room it decorates. They have indoor fountains, wall mounted fountains and even custom made fountains where you can, for instance, have a symbol, logo or a favorite inspiring quote inscribed on it.

They really made sure that they have a full service as far as decoration fountains go and their site further indicates that they’ve put some thought into it. You can browse by various kinds of fountains, zoom in on the photos by a simple hover of the mouse (or just click for a much larger picture) and choose various additional options applicable to a specific item of interest. On top of that they even offer online live support and free shipping. I’d say that’s a good deal!

Speaking of fountains, here’s one of my favorite wall fountains; a metallic frame, smooth lighting and blue letters - pretty much my style. But for something more affordable this Water Panel Tabletop Fountain looks just awesome.

Now just imagine if government regulated what kinds of walls you were allowed to have in your house or how big an indoor wall fountain should be. I mean, people could drown in the fountain water! We gotta regulate that, right? I’m being perhaps overly sarcastic of course, but the point is that the free market actors, indeed like Soothing Walls, always offer the best service and most creative and beautiful products when left free to produce on their own accord.

Cheers

I would be a Republican

2008-09-20T02:24:25+00:00

If I were not a voluntaryist I would be a republican. This is something that I concluded after watching an excellent documentary called Overview of America. It clarifies the political spectrums by putting total government control as the true far left and no government whatsoever as the far right. It then defines capital as “means of production” therefore concluding that every economic system is fundamentally capitalist (because every uses the means of production). The only difference is that in far left systems the government owns and/or controls the capital (means of production) fully (fascism, nazism, socialism and communism) whereas the far right systems leave the government out of the ownership and control of capital and serve at the most to enforce rights to life, liberty and property.

The documentary however attacks anarchy as an unsustainable bubble between collapses of governments and unfortunately there may even be quite a bit of evidence supporting that conclusion IF you would look at how many people calling themselves “anarchists” act. Most anarchists in the world appear to be “socialists” at the same time which is a contradiction in terms from where I stand because socialism implies collective rather than individual control of capital. Clearly, such anarchists cannot form a sustainable anarchy that wouldn’t just end up creating a new socialist government.

The documentary puts a republic at the balancing point which is limited government, a view which largely corresponds to what some today call “minarchism”. Considering that the USA prospered for quite a while under this system and people have rarely objected to government so long as it was kept limited only to law enforcement (law being entirely The Constitution and Bill of Rights (also dubbed by the doc “Bill of Government Limitations”), this system seems to have worked. And from my perspective today I would love to live in such a system today, compared to where I live now. I can understand why people en masse wanted to move to USA to build their dreams.

So why am I not a republican?

In principle, it comes down to a single fundamental reason: coercion. Even a limited government which only enforces the law which is only a provision for life, liberty and property is a coercive monopoly. It does not allow anyone else but itself to act as a third party in disputes or as an enforcer of contracts or defenders against violations of life, liberty and property. And frankly, I don’t see a good reason why it should have this kind of monopoly.

If the free market could efficiently handle everything else, as it did in the USA while it was still truly republican, why can it not handle law as well?

The documentary fails to make a connection that is rather obvious to me, between a free market and anarchy, both at the farthest right you can go - indeed for me The Right Way. It is exactly the free market which provides anarchy with stability it lacks when anarchy is attempted in a socialistic way. The perfect system as I see it, thus, is free market anarchy, anarcho-capitalism.

The reason why even a republican or minarchist limited government is so problematic is simple. By being the only entity allowed to operate in the market of law enforcement it becomes a magnet to all who would otherwise be legitimate competitors. Since they cannot compete with it they try to take it over. And since it is coercive by nature it can use this coercion, slowly but surely, to grow its monopoly into markets beyond law enforcement, which is exactly what happened each time a limited government was instituted (and the documentary covers Rome and America).

In a nutshell, government is the loophole of the republican system. They had a great idea, but they screwed that one up. The free market which they credit with creating the abundance that made america great, was the answer all along - they just had to let it be free of government 100%, not 99%. There is no such thing as “properly limited government”. It always grows.

There is also a question of morals, which the documentary briefly tackled. Apparently the founding fathers of the USA believed that the republic they created can only work so long as people are moral, and this had religious (biblical christian) connotations. In a sense I agree, but unsurprisingly for christianity, morality here seems to be expanded a bit too far. The documentary, for instance, shows pictures of people watching porn in the context of immorality, whereas this may merely be a subjective view.

The core morality, in my view, comes from non-coercion. No matter what another person does, so long as (s)he doesn’t harm you in doing it (initiate force on you) (s)he should be free to do so. It seems pretty clear that if people lost this moral principle they would likely deteriorate their society into one that calls for greater government and thus more tyrany. It perfectly aligns with the concept of violence breeding violence. Even a mere loss of the non-coercion moral is enough to start the vicious circle, as it will lead to the first violent act which will lead to all the more of the violence until we live in a totalitarian system where violence and the threat of violence is constantly present.

And I think in most countries today we are nearly or already living in such a system, even in countries which have a “republic” in its name like the Republic of Croatia (which is not a republic at all).

I only wished, now, that there was a place where a true republic really still existed. At least there a chance of inducing that last moral step towards a pure free market society would be feasible while the oppression would be 99% absent. Unortunately, not even New Hampshire in USA, the designated future “Free State” fits the bill.

50,000 Active Users

2008-09-15T18:49:43+00:00

Howdy, folks! At 19:40 UTC+1 today, freenode reached 50,000 active users online, which is a record for us!

Freenode reached 40,000 users a little over a year ago, so we’re really going from strength to strength! Thanks to all of you who’ve helped us build our community over the last year, and we’d like to invite you to #defocus to help us celebrate.

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Change in #defocus policy - and what do you think?

2008-09-14T19:17:17+00:00

Since rearchitecting freenode’s network help and social channels, we’ve been considering various ways to improve them for our network users, and recently freenode’s steering committee has investigated and considered these issues.

Whilst many of you have indicated to us that you feel longer or more aggressive bans are required to prevent disruption, the steering committee feels that an alternative strategy is most appropriate for freenode, as harsher punishments go against what freenode stands for.

Therefore, as of September 15th #defocus will be a moderated channel. This means that in order to speak, users will need to be voiced in the channel. Most of the time staff will be around to voice users in the channel, and if they are not, then users will need to wait in order to be voiced.

Whilst we appreciate that this will inconvenience some of our users, we regret that the difficulty of managing the channel makes a change in policy of some sort a necessity. We request that users not ask for voice, either directly via staffers or in #freenode, as this will not result in being voiced sooner. Please wait patiently, and you will be voiced eventually.

As part of the change in policy, we’d like to solicit comments from you, the users. How do you feel about the way freenode uses its help and social channels? What improvements would you implement, and how would you plan and discuss them? We’d like to foster greater community feedback, and if you’ve got any general comments about any of these issues we’d love to hear them! Please let canvas@freenode.net know what you think!

If you’ve got any questions about the shift in #defocus policy specifically, please get in touch with the steering committee at steer@freenode.net.

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Meet us at Paris Capitale du Libre

2008-09-12T06:56:45+00:00

In two weeks, we will be holding a booth at the Paris Capitale du Libre event in the French capital. The conference attracts a crowd of 3000 —in spite or because of its assertive name— including a number of prominent players in the French and International freedomware scene.

The event will also see the announcement of the laureates of the Lutèce d’Or awards, in which we hope to qualify as the best project for promoting free software.

We won’t be giving a talk this time, but we’ll be very busy staffing the booth and looking for corporate sponsors. Our new T-shirt is already in the making, the printing shop reported, and should make its debut at the Paris event.

We’d be delighted to meet and talk to anyone who passes by (the entrance is costless, but registration is required). Particiipants and translators, if you happen to be there, please stop by and we’ll get you a drink!

A short dash on French web television

2008-09-12T06:56:35+00:00

Granted — it is all in French, it wasn’t national television, and it didn’t last long enough to cover many details. But it is all still worth boasting about: here are two minutes and fifty seconds of GNU/Linux Matters fame. During the RMLL 2008 in Mont-de-Marsan where we held a booth, a camera crew from FreeNewsTV, a French web TV channel, stopped by and interviewed the only one of us who spoke French.

(The video is a 26 MB Ogg file, viewable with VLC or any other decent video player.)

Given the hurried pace, the continuously moving camera, some disarming questions, and the speaker who consistently mis-pronounced every name he could read, it wasn’t such a bad performance after all. We’ll try hard to be interviewed in English, next time.

USeless details

2008-09-05T22:11:31+00:00

If you spend a while in the USA as a European, you will inevitably notice some differences in culture et cetera. This shall be little more than a silly list of things I, as a German and European, noticed while on vacation in the states.

Continue reading "USeless details"

We have just released four new translations

2008-09-04T21:55:50+00:00

Today we are extremely happy to release HonaLinux.org, Pereidinalinux.org, DungLinux.org, and OtrymayLinux.org, which are written in Arabic, Russian, Vietnamese and Ukrainian respectively. These four new translations of our flagship website GetGNULinux.org are a great reason to rejoice, for many reasons.

The first reason is obviously that we grow in our capacity to reach out to everyday users and provide them with prime-quality web material about GNU/Linux and freedomware.
More specifically, we are able to enter a part of the web where information about the free software world is relatively scarce. We hope to be all the more effective in fostering Linux usage in these languages.

Another great reason to rejoice is that this release marks the completion of our translation system. From the first words down to the last localized URL, these four websites have been translated, built, checked, and published with a web browser only. The ease and maturity of the process —even right-to-left languages are displayed faultessly, as honalinux.org testifies— makes us proud.

The translations are a trimmed edition of GetGNULinux.org, containing less pages and thus allowing an earlier release while the full edition is being translated. This method allows us to grow at a much faster pace and we shall be making use of it again soon. A few people deserve great credit for this release:

Most of the credit for DungLinux.org goes to Clytie Siddall, from the Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team. Clytie, a familiar figure among internationalized free software project communities, simply stunned us with the efficiency and speed at which she worked through the translation. Many thanks also go to Minh Ngoc Le for his patient help and participation.
The bulk of both OtrymayLinux.org and PereidinaLinux.org was built by V’yacheslav Stetskevych — who didn’t give up despite the fact that we (still) cannot differentiate written Russian from Ukraininan.
Hassan Ibraheem took most of HonaLinux.org upon him, while we learned to write websites to suit his beautiful language (written and read from right to left!). A friendly wave also goes to Farid Fakhreddia for his encouragement and advice.

A press release (also translated in Russian, Vietnamese, Castilian (Spanish), and French) has been issued on this opportunity.

“International Linux homepage” grows in strength as non-profit organization publishes in Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian and Arabic

2008-09-04T21:46:58+00:00

Press release

[pdf format]

[en] Press release

[fr] Communiqué de presse

[es] Comunicado de prensa

[ru] press release

[vi] Thông cáo báo chí

Mennecy, France (Sept 4, 2008) – The GNU/Linux Matters non-profit organization is extremely happy to release HonaLinux.org, PereidiNaLinux.org, DungLinux.org, and OtrymayLinux.org, four websites intended to become the homepage of the Linux operating system in Arabic, Russian, Vietnamese and Ukrainian.

By focusing on everyday users rather than software experts, the organization wishes to affect freedomware adoption at a wide scale. The websites feature concise, introductory information about the free operating system, favoring legibility over exhaustiveness.

The release of the four websites, which are translations of the English GetGNULinux.org, fits within the organization’s vision for a multilingual web advocacy movement. “We now have a mature, easy to use web translation system which will allow the rapid release of further translations”, said Gustavo Narea, General Secretary of the organization.

GNU/Linux Matters warmly invites community members of all languages to translate, improve, and link to its websites. “We are slowly making our way towards our objective of having one million Windows users go through our websites over one year”, expressed Olivier Cleynen, president of the non-profit. “With the coming of Animador, our web freedomware advocacy platform, participating should be even more enjoyable and exciting”, added Gustavo Narea.

The organization’s first step into the non-Western Internet was made possible thanks to the efforts of a few motivated participants from around the planet. With a small but growing community, and several additional projects about to be released, GNU/Linux Matters enthusiastically works its way to becoming the first web forefront for FLOSS communities.

———————–

About GNU/Linux Matters:

A forefront actor of Internet marketing for software freedom, GNU/Linux Matters is a non-profit organization registered in France. Consisting of a small team of passionate members, it provides free software communities with high-quality, multi-lingual websites aimed at everyday computer users. Its main project, GetGNULinux.org (http://www.getgnulinux.org/), is focused on the Linux operating system.
Read more at http://www.gnulinuxmatters.org/

Contact:

Paris: Olivier Cleynen, +33 (0)6 28 410 948 (French, English, German)
Madrid: Gustavo Narea, +34 (0)6 29 247 034 (Spanish, English)
http://www.gnulinuxmatters.org/contact

“Who I am?”

2008-09-04T19:21:27+00:00

I am working on the selection of my major new venture and in doing so I tend to browse through some inspiring or helpful material relevant to the process of selecting candidates and making the right choice, coming up with the right strategy for the achievement of my major goal.

One of the posts I’ve read is about focusing on what other people need instead of money, when you want to develop a successful business. Of course, since I know that this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also take into account what I want as well, I’ve started thinking. And since I like to think “bottom up” or foundations first I ended up coming up with a sort of hierarchical image of what fits where. The result is the following, and I think it might be helpful to.. whoever you are.

The question “Who I am?” is the central question for anyone who wishes to attain great success, however they define it. What I find as constituting the answer to that question comes from our genes and experiences or our “hardware” and “raw sensory data” respectively. Our hardware is everything that we are from the moment we were born (or before). From that moment on our experiences shape who we are today. They are nothing but the data that we perceive with our sensors and then proceed to process with our minds.

And that in turn results in two basic things: beliefs and knowledge or data and know how and “love” how, or what we know how to do and what we love to do (are inclined to do), which is constituted of our skills and interests. Those are our “programs”, sets of instructions we know how to execute.

Of course, the two tend to intermingle. Our programs use the data and the data can influence the content of our instructions. Together they form who we are. Thus, I am a voluntaryist, atheist, web publisher, web designer, enthusiast about technology, electronic music etc.

It is from who we are then, that we extract our desires. Desire is an emotion and emotions are part of our hardware (like firmware). Specifically the program of desire is integral to the system which defines the direction that we are likely to go in life.

Desires are potential goals that we would set for ourselves. From my own learned belief, I think it is best to write down all of the desires as goals and then among them pick one which if accomplished would help accomplish most of the others - that goal is what would serve as your purpose at this time of your life and until it’s achieved. It is the question: “What do I want to get?”. I have my answer.

But to achieve this, no matter what “The Secret” tells you, it is not enough to desire it. That’s where faith (self-confidence), planning and persistence comes in. I am in the planning stage.

And in that planning stage we inevitably face the question: “How do I get this?”. The answer must come from the answer to the question: “What do I want to give?”.

As you can see, you can’t hope to answer any of these questions without knowing the answer to “Who I am”. In fact, answering these questions seems to be a part in answering the first one. It’s all interconnected. You can’t achieve anything without giving anything. If your goal is money, you wont get it without giving anything.

But pay attention to the word “want” in this last question. You can give something, but is it what you want to give? If your goal is money, you can get any sort of a job doing anything and get it, but will that job be something you want to do? Most people who want money make the mistake of “doing anything I have to do to get it”, and they will, but that’s like taking a bargain of sorts and seldom, if ever, results in the kind of success they hope for.

This is because you’ll be most effective in giving what you want to give rather than what you have to give. Doing what you don’t really want to do, which isn’t congruent with who you are, is akin to putting a router in a job of graphics processing. It doesn’t quite work out. A router is most effective in routing network traffic.

But there’s a catch, and it’s an important one. Is what you want to give in line with what a lot of other people want to get? Is there a need or desire (demand) for what you’d be giving?

Ultimately, the best question to answer then becomes: What is it that I want to give that a lot of the other people need or want?. This way you strike the gold, perhaps literally. You are aligning what you’re best at offering with what most people want. You’re capturing the formula for releasing your absolute maximum potential. Isn’t that awesome?

I’m still looking for mine. It’s, of course, possible to make mistakes. Knowing self can be a difficult job, but never mind that. I’ll keep trying and if you’re into it, keep trying as well. We’ll get it!

Cheers

Google Chrome

2008-09-03T09:57:31+00:00

Woo Pretty, I like it

Download linky - Google Chrome

Happy 25th Birthday, GNU!

2008-09-02T11:51:24+00:00

To mark the 25th “birthday” of the GNU project the FSF have teamed up with a very special man; Stephen Fry.

I personally am a great fan of Mr. Fry — he’s an accomplished actor, terrific writer and a good documentary maker. I enjoy his books, I will happily set aside entire weekends for my fry-a-thons in which I am glued to the TV re-watching the entire set of “A bit of Fry & Laurie”, “Jeeves & Wooster” or many of the other fantastic things he’s done for British TV. And I make sure to never miss an episode of QI — again, I probably re-watch all of them. I follow his blog, I listen to his podgram.. I have a lot of respect and admiration for this man, for his insight, his honesty, his no-nonsense approach, his incredible way with words and his hysterically funny ways.

So who better to mark the anniversary of a project for which I also have a great deal of respect — a project which values, visions and goals are shared by the majority of our users. A project often found at the core of so many of the projects who choose to use freenode.

So without further ado — Happy Birthday GNU!

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#freenode: Autovoice Trial

2008-08-28T11:00:51+00:00

It’s been a while since we touched the layout of #freenode - we are generally quite pleased with how things run in there! However, we believe that it needs to be easier for a user to identify a member of staff when they join the channel - our current system of using a mixture of

/stats p
voiced in #freenode (+v)
/who freenode/staff/*

is both confusing and cumbersome for users who may be unfamiliar with how IRC works. So, as of today, we are implementing a trial change to #freenode, whereby all online staff (not just those who are flagged on /stats p) will be autovoiced (+v) on #freenode.

/stats p will still give a list of on call staffers, so don’t worry about that. The change is intended to help users, new and old alike, to recognise staff and find support when they need it. To many users, especially those not familar with the freenode ethos, it is strange coming into a help channel and finding no operators.

It is important to note that those users who provide help in #freenode are more than welcome to continue doing so - we appreciate the assistance you provide us to those repetitive questions! freenode will only be able to offer support through staffers, however, and these will always be voiced (+v) in #freenode.

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Stand clear of the closing doors, please !

2008-08-24T02:30:00+00:00

Plenty of great, great cities are to be found all over the surface of the sphere of rock we call earth. In every region of this planet man has constructed large settlements, and each and every one of these is unique. Every land, every city, has its very own, very unique character. Every city is different.

Continue reading "Stand clear of the closing doors, please !"

Articles in limbo and ALA web survey

2008-08-13T13:12:35+00:00

Whose Garamond is it anyway?

If you flick through various foundry catalogs for a Garamond revival or adaption, you’re probably bound to discover more than garalde typefaces. Interspersed amongst the many Garamonds by Claude Garamond (or Garamont) you’ll find baroque faces works by another type designer, Jean Jannon…

I wanted to cover this little typographic affair but quickly found the article gaining length and arguably bloat. It’s currently in limbo—I can’t decide whether to trim or polish it. Should I go ahead with a large but more interesting article (including a brief history French printing—which is interesting in my opinion) or go for the concise shorter version? Bah.

I also found that I’m short in garalde typefaces. Accompanying the article I’d prefer to offer garalde (and baroque) samples other than Garamond Premier Pro that’s on my Mac. Anyone with Bembo or another “Garamond” revival—either one by Garamond or Jean Jannon?

A List Apart

The Survery, 2008

ALA is again running their annual survey calling all those who work in the process of creating websites. The survey closes on Tuesday the 26^th of August—have you taken part?

Putting Our Hot Heads Together

“If more of us are thinking ‘What can I contribute?’ instead of ‘Did I like this article?’ the entire conversation is transformed.”

Punctuation changes made to retain sequential quoting.

I also wanted to recommend article No. 265 Putting Our Hot Heads Together by Carolyn Wood. She offers a number of practical suggestions in nurturing collaboration in discussion and comment threads that appear obvious, but only after reading. Her writing style makes the piece a pleasure to read. Make sure to check that out.

Vivien’s review

In closing I also should pass on my thanks to Vivien from inspirationbit.com who kindly critiqued KLEPAS.ORG for me. Her thoughts and those that arose in the comments are going to help shape version 3 of this site; I’ve removed the clashing purple a:visited styling. Thanks again Vivien!

Parcellite Moved to SourceForge

2008-08-10T20:33:47+00:00

Over the weekend I moved the Parcellite project to SourceForge. The new website can be found at http://parcellite.sourceforge.net

The new checkout command is svn co https://parcellite.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/parcellite/trunk parcellite

My blog will also soon be moved :)

Der Sommerferien-Blog

2008-08-08T20:36:55+00:00

So, es sind Ferien—seit letztem Freitag bin ich aus dem gymnasialen Klassensystem befreit, für immer. Außerdem habe ich noch fünf Wochen zugeplante Ferien vor mir, aber bleiben wir erst einmal bei der Schule. Die elfte Klasse ist mit einem 2+-Schnitt herum, jetzt heißt es ab in die Kollegstufe ! Die 30 Wochenstunden in K12 (wovon in K13 3 Chemiestunden wegfallen) sind im Vergleich zu den 34 der 11. Klasse eine deutliche Erleichterung, die Leistungskurse Französisch und Physik werden aber wahrscheinlich kein Kinderspiel; in Französisch geht es jetzt schon los: Da wir uns als Kurs dazu entschlossen haben, am prix des lycéens allmands teilzunehmen, heißt es jetzt in den Ferien zwei Bücher lesen.

Ich habe noch effektiv zwei Tage, um das erste Buch zu lesen: Danach bin ich eine Woche mit den Pfadfindern unterwegs, bin danach zwei Tage zu Hause—dann werden wir wohl Bücher durchtauschen—bevor ich über drei Wochen in Amerika verbringe. (wo ich natürlich das zweite Buch lesen werde)

Merging the teen linux communities ?

2008-08-08T09:33:36+00:00

Since shortly after the emerging of the Teens On Linux internet community, there has been talk of uniting with TeenLUG. The administrator of teensonlinux.org, Tuna, has consistently been against this, and has always killed the idea in a slightly authoritan fashion, but with TeenLUG deciding to merge with Teen Linux Lounge, the subject has re-surfaced.

Tuna would have the subject swept under the table again, but there appear to be some distinct tendencies towards mutiny that are acting as a catalyst: There have been some conflicts on IRC that got me, as channel founder, more involved.

Now, I have called for a referendum on whether to maintain ToL separatism or not; If the democratic answer is "don't merge", proponents of a union can't argue "It's only Tuna who's against it, that old arse of a dictator", if the answer is "merge", the subject might be irrelevant in a few months.

TeensOnLinux users, please vote here.

Bringing synergy to the table

2008-08-06T23:06:00+00:00

Once again, my desk is rather clean (a state that doesn't tend to last for long, let's see how long it holds this time), and I have decided to reintroduce a multi-head setup at my workstation. I've done this twice, and always enjoyed the space, and now I've also seen what it's like to have only a 20in wide flat screen sitting in front of you. In addition to that, I made sure there was a place for my laptop, as the recent acquisition of a PCMCIA network card made it desktop-compatible once again.

To spice things up a bit, and, I'll be honest, to spare myself the tedious labour of stretching toward my laptop whenever I want to use it, I've started using one quite magnificent piece of ~~art~~ software called Synergy. What Synergy does is, quite simply, allow me to control my laptop with my desktop's keyboard and mouse (over the network). This feels just like having multiple X11 displays: I just move my mouse pointer off the left edge of my big screen and focus is on my laptop. This allows me, for instance, to have an IRC client running on the wee laptop screen without really being distracting

By the way, the video deliberately placed on the right-hand screen in the photograph is one of Julien Doré's extremely arty «Les Limites»-clips. Grep Youtube for it if you will.

LugRadio Live and Silverback

2008-08-02T19:08:44+00:00

Yesterday’s entry regarding the great Australian Firewall was probably less interesting for anyone outside of Australia. The post was the result of a quick letter of concern that needed writing and consequently publishing (it’ll probably do more good online than in the inbox of the Minister I sent it to). That out of the way, I’ve been meaning to write about my time in England, in particular the visit to LugRadio Live ’08 UK.

LugRadio Live

LugRadio was the premier open source/free software podcast featuring the Internet’s Jono Bacon, famous web developer Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge, and sysadmins Adam Sweet and Chris Proctor. The second season ended with a weekend live recording and conference, ‘LugRadio Live’, in Wolverhampton, UK.

Following the initial announcement that LugRadio were to conclude their show at the end of season five (to the dismay of the many listeners including myself), this year’s LugRadio Live (LRL) in the UK was to be the last ever given the podcast had come to an end. It was therefore a must attend.

LugRadio Live was literally a rocking event—rock music blared from the speakers half the time and there was a true “Chinny Raccoon” (LugRadio’s mascot), a custom made raccoon outfit as worn by Ben Thorp. Both the exhibitions and talks were all of a high calibre of which Bruno Bord’s talk “Baguette on Snails” probably being the top highlight. The show—the final episode of LugRadio—was of course also a good laugh, and for those who were by chance bored Bytemark’s portably gaming center ensured there was something to kill time with.

Of course the news is that due to the strong persuasion of fans LRL will continue to run annually despite the conclusion of the podcast. Given it’s the premier open source/free software event in the UK, it would have been a great loss to the community if this just past LRL was indeed the final one. To get a feel for what the event is like check out Flickr photos and make sure you try to make it next year.

Recordings of the talks should make their way online within the next few weeks. I presented on the Tango Desktop Project—particularly on the re-licensing into the public domain. I was originally going to demonstrate the creation of Tango-styled icons but decided in the last minute to alter the focus of the presentation. I think I disappointed some people with the move—if I make it to next year’s LRL I’ll submit another paper.

Silverback

I suspect that the word would have traveled far across the Intertubes that Silverback is now out and available (it was even mentioned by Leisa Reichelt at GUADEC), so I won’t mention it for long here. Silverback is a USD $49.95 program by Clearleft that turns a Mac into a mini portable usability testing lab—for the price it’s a must-have for anyone working in the fields of usability and accessibility in the software & web production industry. Although it doesn’t give you the amount of data that a specialised usability testing lab might provide, Silverback doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, it’s as portable as your Mac and suits every use case I’ve ever needed.

I did run into a small issue regarding licensing after my purchase: I used a friend’s credit card and with no option to purchase the license for another, my friend whose name was the credit card holder was the subsequent recipient licensee—not myself. For taxation purposes and simply for the sake of correctness I started a discussion on Clearleft’s GetSatisfaction.com pages regarding the issue. I received an email response within thirty-six hours of the post and had the issue sorted out in no time. Thanks to Sophie over at Clearleft for the help.

There are a number of reviews of Silverback—by Jonathan Christopher, .net magazine, and graphiceyedea—check them out if you’re unconvinced and otherwise have a great weekend.

Internet content filtering: outdated remedies applied to modern issues

2008-08-01T13:31:40+00:00

Part of the hot-air during the Australian 2007 Federal Elections was the issue of Internet content filtering, which I waved off as just what I thought it was—hot-air—designed to impress and hopefully secure votes. The idea was shot down then and quickly was left alone … until now. Ashley Kyd drew this to my attention in his article Australia’s “Clean Feed”:

“The Australian Federal Government is powering full steam ahead on a $125.8 million dollar plan to enact a mandatory content-filter every single Australian Internet connection. Subtly different from the Great Firewall of China, the Australian version is to be implemented at ISP level, and will target not only illegal content, but also “inappropriate” content unsuitable for children.

The ACMA has submitted a report on the current state of the tech to Senator Stephen Conroy — so called ‘Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy’ — who’s hailing it as a modern miracle, despite what can only be seen as a startling lack of comprehension of the real world implications.”

Punctuation changes made to retain sequential quoting.

So, I got off my butt and wrote an email to Stephen Conroy. Because I doubt it will ever get past his secretary and meet Mr. Conroy’s own eyes due to his likely busy schedule I am publishing this here in the hopes that any Australians—or even Australian permanent residents (I am one)—who see this might consider voicing their concerns to the Government. The letter:

Dear Minister Stephen Conroy,

As an employed Australian permanent resident—and web & Internet professional—I have serious reservations about your new mandatory “clean feed” filter initiative.

Pursuing an expensive $125.8 ~~billion~~ million dollar venture that entirely fails to address the security, speed, quality of any such a filtering system, as well as the rights of both website owners in and outside of Australia and finally the civil rights of the citizens of Australia is a waste of tax payers’ money and of serious concern to every Internet user in Australia.

Concerning security, I am shocked that the report claims six of the seven solutions tested filter the HTTPS protocol (HyperText Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer)—the protocol over which Australians make secure Internet banking and e-commerce transactions. This communication protocol was inherently designed specifically to promise a set level of security and privacy for its users. Furthermore, as this is a secure protocol, any filter—by logical conclusion—must use a simple keyword, or “blacklist” method which has been proven both ineffective, slow, incredibly arduous to keep updated and also prone to blacklist (block) legitimate content.

In regards to speed, the July 2008 study clearly indicates that a high-speed, accurate filtering solution is not possible. Therefore implementing any such filtering at the ISP (Internet Service Provider) level will only hamper and slow down the current infrastructure—which greatly needs speed improvements, not declines.

As noted above a blacklist filter is of serious concern to security and speed, both of which are important elements of any such a system’s quality level. The higher the blocking accuracy of such a system, the more it well hamper the speed of the network infrastructure.

If such a system is implemented I believe the Australian Government will anger and frustrate many website owners both overseas and locally. Processing blacklist removal requests will be a major undertaking that will incur continuous monetary, time and implementation costs. I believe many web content owners will consider their legal options in regards any such a move by the Government. At the very least a one-size-fits-all filtering approach as the one proposed will cast the Australian Government in a very negative light, abroad and at home.

Finally—any most importantly—I believe the Australian Government has absolutely no role in monitoring and deciding what is appropriate for myself, our children—a fact that many Australians will undoubtedly agree with.

I believe the Internet is a technology that will test society and its legal systems—common issues that have arisen include content censorship (as on the table currently), copyright, licensing and patenting, universal access availability, and more. Many of our legal systems are outdated in respect to the advances of the digital age, and this current issue is just another hurdle to be overcome as we realise we must shift our attitudes; no body will be successfully able to control and filter the expanse of information present and growing on the Internet. Any such a venture is futile, expensive and will only cause distress.

The expansive resources—125.8 ~~billion~~ million dollars for example—available to the Australian Government instead be focused on providing up-to-date education on Internet technologies both to students and parents to ensure we can make well-educated judgements about how we spend our time on-line.

Our digital infrastructure has been the hot-topic before, during and now as it seems even after the election—I sincerely hope the Government will reconsider this initiative and make an informed decision that takes the needs of Australians at heart.

Your sincerely,

Simon Pascal Klein
Canberra, Australia

Time Travel

2008-07-29T22:16:12+00:00

Each day is a battle against time, there isn't enough in my day. I have been able to trickle down some i18n support in Parcellite during the last few days. I've had some translations that some nice contributors sent me sitting around and I finally was able to commit them to svn (german and italian). I have french and spanish to commit and I'll be done.

Aside from that, I've been looking for an alternative host to Google Code for the project (and future projects). I don't really like its "issues" system and it just lacks in general. So far I'm thinking DevjaVu or Assembla. Comments? Suggestions?

Island Labs

2008-07-29T02:12:44+00:00

We started this new organization called Island Labs, located at www.islandlabs.org.

The group is focusing on mechanical engineering, software engineering, electrical engineering, and even some chemical engineering.

The group is open to the public, and you can see meeting time and location on www.islandlabs.org on the top links.

The next meeting will be a cool talk about multitouch on Wednesday, July 30th, at Farmingdale State.

We are looking for Python developers!

2008-07-27T18:36:18+00:00

GNU/Linux Matters is looking for Python developers for the development of the upcoming multicultural SpreadFirefox.com-like platform to promote freedomware.

The develoment of Animador has begun and we are looking for Python developers who would like to do their bit in their spare time, in order for this web application to be ready sooner as wel as to make it better.

This software is intended to power the multicultural community of people who are going to promote freedom in computing by means of GNU/Linux Matters’ awareness websites, such as Get GNU/Linux. Its main objective is to get everyone involved in the promotion of freedomware, specially those users of freedomware who are not technical and/or don’t have much time to help; we want to provide guidance on how to do their bit, their way.

So, if you are a Python programmer, please take part in this milestone within the freedomware community and consider contributing. We provide an array of tools to make your job as pleasant as possible, and are also willing to deploy more if it is required.

Learn more about Animador and how to get started!

Open Source Developers are Amazing

2008-07-22T15:39:02+00:00

I started writing Parcellite when I was a full time student, with little responsibilities. I was able to dedicate a large amount of time to carefully writing, testing, and debugging my little program during the week. Now that I have a full time job, I realize just how much dedication and effort other open source developers have to write great applications in what little free time they have. I am finding that either new responsibilities (which came with living my myself) and other interests (gaming/girlfriend) have kept me from quickly progressing on my program.

I have come up with an idea though: I will attempt to code 1 hour a day, every day. Be it a variable name change, testing a new function, fix comments, anything. As long as I keep myself busy with it, I'll be able to reach the goals that I have for this project in a reasonable amount of time.

Opera Web Standards Curriculum

2008-07-17T22:57:17+00:00

Opera recently released a set of succinct educational articles on the foundation of the web, standard technologies and well-written introductions to vital web design topics, aptly titled the Opera Web Standards Curriculum (WSC).

At first I asked myself why something like this was necessary in the year of 2008—don’t students get taught web standards through college and univeristy these days? If not, aren’t there already are number of good resources available, free and commerical? I had a bit of a read, starting right at the beginning and found partially the answer in the fifth article:

“…The general feeling I get from looking at numerous university courses is that web languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript are below the technical threshold of most computer science programs, and above the technical threshold of most MIS/New Media programs.

What I’m getting at here is that many educational courses don’t cover this kind of stuff in any great level of detail. I would be willing to wager that if you ask 10 developers that work with web standards where they learned how to use web standards that 9 of them would reply that they are self-taught (the other 1 won’t answer you because she’s too busy trying to get her site to render properly in IE6).”

Previously defined acronyms earlier in the quoted text have been redefined.

I started an IT course in college that focused on publishing content onto web-based mediums in early 2006. I was told we would not touch CSS until the end of the second year, and mention of web standards was not to found in the entire curriculum document. I promptly left the course. As Jonathan Lane points out, most standards-based web designers and developers are probably self-taught—I am.

But why another set of articles ontop of the many resources that already exist? Because commonly it’s scattered across the Internet or because you’d need to purchase books (and in the case of students, those university text books can be quite pricey). The neat thing about web design and developement is that articles like those from the WSC appear in the same canvas we work on and consequently offer interactive examples—and best of all are freely accessible. Books can be nice—particularly well set ones—but for someone just starting with web standards beginning with the WSC marks a good beginning.

The WSC doesn’t go into great technical detail. Instead, it offers the background information that is often omitted from the more technical articles on developer blogs or on related publications. Something like this would have been great in place of the IT course I entered a few years ago.

Apart from being an introduction to the creation of the Internet, how it came to be what it is now and why standards are good for everyone, the WSC also features introductory articles on information architecture, accessibility, usability and content context, colour theory, wireframing, assorted mockup tips and last (and best of all), an article on web typography.

The Opera WSC will probably be my future recommendation for newcomers to web standards, HTML, and the selected articles above. I would even recommend them to the experts—pick a topic you haven’t dealt with in a while and make sure you’re up to scratch (there are a few questions at the end of each article).

Kudos to Opera.