July 03, 2009
--> Is ‘Free Software’ really freedom?
There’s an oft reappearing topic of debate in Free Software circles, about whether Free Software is really about freedom. I want to give a different take on this issue, using some ideas from classical liberal philosophy.
The debate that I see most often starts when a strong free software supporter suggests that we should use exclusively free software on our machines. To this, someone else may respond that, surely such a policy is restricting a users freedom to run whatever software they want, including proprietary software.
I want to address this issue in a different way, by asking, what is freedom? According to the FSF, freedom in software is composed of the freedom to #0 run the program in any way, #1 study the program, #2 distribute the program and #3 modify the program.
Fair enough, but what is freedom in a more general sense? Dictionary definition time - “The condition of being free of restraints.”. Yes, there are many different ways of defining freedom, but this is the one that I, as a voluntaryist would most agree with. It its the simplest and most consistent way of thinking about freedom - you are free if you are not being restrained - that is you are not having force initiated against you.¹
So, how does this conception of freedom tally with the FSF’s. Looked at one way, not too badly. Being free from restraints (if you don’t hurt anyone or their property), in the area of software, would mean no copyright law. This being the case, you would be able to use and copy software as you saw fit (”freedoms” #0 and #2).
However, there’s a problem with this. In order to exercise the supposed freedoms #1 and #3, there is, as the FSF says, a prerequisite, the source code. Of course, in the sense of real freedom, without copyright law, you would not necessarily be given the source code, a programmer might choose to withold it. However, you could choose to use only software that is “open” (has source code), and the majority of software would probably be this way, since there isn’t the incentive of a copyright monopoly over the work, and open code makes it much easier for benevolent people to participate.
In this way, real freedom - that is, no restraining copyright law - fits very nicely with principles of free software. However, the same does not work so well the other way round. It may seem outrageous to suggest free software advocates, such as the FSF are working against real freedom and initiating force - after all, for all their heckling, they don’t actually force people to use software - but, in other ways they do.
As I said, to be actually free, you must not have the implied force of copyright threatening you. With this in mind, take a look at the GPL - what is it? A copyright license, and a fairly restrictive one at that.Yes, it is a free software license, because it doesn’t restrict any of the four specific software freedoms. But it restricts plenty of other things, you being able to distribute only parts of it (ie. binaries), or, combine it with non-compatible code and distribute (potentially very useful). These things are restricted with the threat of force. A threat, that through the legal system (SFLC lawsuits) has been carried out in some cases. Such restriction by force, is, in my eyes at least, anti-freedom and immoral.
However, in case it was obvious, these are not reasons for me to be making a big move away from free software, as I said, free software fits well with my sense of freedom - I strongly support the idea of being free to do what you want and having source code. Proprietary software is a much worse use of immoral copyright force. But, I disagree with the use of copyright, to advance the specific software freedoms, as it leads to other freedoms being lost - this is especially so with copyleft.
So, instead of fighting copyright with copyright, and amassing users to free software systems, we should try to abolish copyright, to try to make all software free. After all, do we really think we will manage to switch a majority of users away from the dominating OSes any time soon? Abolishing copyright might seem the harder thing to do, but it is much easier for ordinary people to get behind, without needing to switch much software etc. (of course, it would be good if they did). Now is as good a time as ever due to the outrage over ridiculous bittorent fines.
One final note, the emphasis on anti-copyright rather than 100% free software is why I now conceed to convenience in certain matters - namely, I now use adobe flash plugin on an ubuntu system.
#1 - Defensive force is of course another matter. You still have freedom, I would say, if you would have reasonable defensive force used against you if you hurt someone else.
--> ªíº(¥jYDëڶ̺È
It's been a long and busy week, and not a little frustrating. I've been on the early shift at work and made my 8:30am start every morning... until today, when I slept in a little. I've done some identity activism radio appearances, and lots of Lib Dem politicking. OTOH, I've also had a night round at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tartful_dodger's place, and spent a pleasant few hours down the pub with co-workers last night.
Tonight I will be skipping my customary Currybeer in favour of catching up on a few things; tomorrow I'll be heading to FAB Caffor a munch with greyeyedeve, and perhaps Wagamama and the cinema afterwards. On Sunday I'll be out campaigning.
--> æ2VÊ+)à
I am now the proud owner of a Trek 7.3 bike. It's been a bit of a fortunate coincidence really...
I told Bicycle Doctor that I wanted to test-ride it, and had been told by them previously that they didn't have any 22.5" frames in stock. They said they could frig up an 18" frame with raised saddle and handlebars which would be good for a test-ride but not to purchase, and would call me when it was ready. I got a call back about twenty minutes later - somebody had ordered in a 22.5" frame Trek 7.3 and it was waiting to be tuned up for collection. I was told I could take it for a quick spin if I got there before it was collected.
The next day, I took it for a brief spin in a torrential downpour, and really liked it. The sitting position is more upright than my old bike, which feels more comfortable. The handlebars are padded and widened at the end, just where they got sore when riding on the old bike. It's a bit weird being higher off the road, and the wider tyres are taking a bit of getting used to, but they're still 700C diameter, which makes for a nice fast ride.
On returning from the test ride, I told the shop guy that I wanted to buy one. I was told that the person who'd ordered it had decided not to purchase after all, and so I could have the very bike I'd just test-ridden, the very next day. I ordered a pannier rack and mudguards, and an über D-lock, and had some lights thrown in for free.
On Tuesday I left the office at 5pm to collect my bike. Rush-hour traffic meant that I didn't get to the shop until 5:55pm, and the shutters were already down - they'd closed early. I was really upset by this, but then collared one of their employees coming out of the side door and asked him to fetch my bike. He said he couldn't process the sale since the tills were off, and I handed him the receipt which said I'd already paid in full.
So yay, new bike!
July 02, 2009
--> Dear Lazyweb…
I am currently stuck taking four times the suggested daily dose of two anti-histamines in order to combat my body and its reaction to plants having sex all around me.
I am taking two 10mg Loratadine tablets, and two 10mg Cetirizine Hydrochloride tablets, twice daily. This is effectively four times the recommended dose of twice as many anti-histamines as I should need.
I wasn’t this bad last year, but the year before was similar. Irritatingly, once the drugs kick in (45 minutes to an hour after taking) my runny nose, itchy/burny eyes, slight dopeyness induced by feeling crap, etc. all fade away. Yesterday I needed my second dose a mere 8 hours after the first, but I didn’t need to re-dose until this morning after that.
I guess what I’m asking is—what is the expected side-effects of taking such a high dose of antihistamines. Do any of you out there have to take such high doses, have you seen a doctor about this? All I expect a doctor to do is to either supply me more loratadine on prescription (which is of dubious value unless I get a lot given prescription charges in the UK), or to try me on a nasal spray, which tend to induce nosebleeds for me. If you’ve found other ways to cope, I’m interested. Otherwise I guess I’ll make an appointment to see the doctor in the next week or so.
July 01, 2009
--> O*^8× jدyj+Ш)à'
FFS THIS IS NOT A FUCKING U-TURN OR RETREAT OR ANY SUCH OTHER FUCKING THING YOU JOURNALIST FUCKING RETARD SHITBAG MORONS
THE GOVERNMENT HAVE SAID THAT ID CARDS ARE VOLUNTARY FROM DAY ONE. THEY WERE LYING THEN AND THEY ARE LYING NOW
GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK FUCKING HEADS AND STOP SUCKING ALAN JOHNSON'S COCK WHEN HE'S JUST AS MUCH OF A LYING AUTHORITARIAN CUNT AS ALL THE FUCKERS WHO PRECEDED HIM
June 29, 2009
--> Engaging Young People in Technology - Talk at Liverpool LUG
I am going to be speaking on Wednesday at the upcoming meeting of Liverpool LUG
"This month’s talk will be given by Tim Dobson from DFEY-NW. He will be talking about what "Digital Freedom in Education and Youth (DFEY)" is all about and how free software communities can engage with young people. He'll then open the floor to questions. This talk will be filmed and posted online under a Creative Commons Licence.
"Tim is an active member of the Manchester Free Software group and is well known at many other technical events. Having just finished his A levels, in his spare time, he enjoys dinghy sailing."
The meeting will be held on
Wednesday July 1, 2009 from 7:00pm - 8:00pm
at
Liverpool Social Centre
96 Bold Street
Liverpool, England L1 4HY
Moral support would really be appreciated!
June 28, 2009
--> Code Computerlove's 10th Birthday
I recently went to Code Computerlove - one of Manchester's large web agencies, Tenth Birthday Party
I spent a lot of time hanging out with Dave Bird as I hardly knew anyone else there but it turned out to be a cracking time with of mingling, drinking and retro Mancunian dancing...
Code's people took some photos of the event but I also took some photos and bad video of the event:
Strange robot mannequins
You can find more photos on flickr
Rave video
The lighting was really bad so this was the best I could get on my little aiptek video camera.
June 27, 2009
--> Identica and Colemak
Soo, its over a week since my exams ended \o/… now I just have the long wait for results day near the end of August. So, now I have time to write a long overdue blog post. There are two things that make this blog post different to previous ones…
Firstly I’ve started using the microblogging service identi.ca again. For the uninitiated, identica (I never know whether to include the full stop or not) is basically a free software version of twitter, which uses an open protocol. (The software is actually called laconica, and anyone on one laconica instance can follow anyone on any other laconica instance.) I’m not on twitter because, most the people who’d want to read my messages (people in the free software/open tech movement) are on identica (or some other laconica site) anyway.
I’m not entirely sure how to use identica yet. I don’t mean with regards to the technical aspect, type 140 characters or less into a box on the website, or in a client such as Gwibber, and you’re away. No, I mean what to type, how, and when in order to make it most useful for me. At the moment I’m probably overusing it a little at the moment, but I think what it boils down to for me is a notebook. A notebook that is published for others to see, should they find it interesting. But equally, a notebook for me to look back at. For example, I’m writing this blog posts using some of my notices as reference (tags make this especially useful. I don’t know if you can show tags for just one user yet though).
And the second thing? I’m writing this blogpost using yet another different keyboard layout, colemak. This is the second time that I have switched layout, the first being to dvorak. Colemak is still slightly less popular than dvorak (it is third after dvorak and qwerty). So what made me switch? The fact that I had several weeks to spend doing something rather pointless… well kindof. But colemak does have some nice benefits. Your fingers move much less than on either qwerty or dvorak (dvorak places emphasis on hand alternation instead). But what really sets colemak apart from dvorak? Its pragmatism.
Okay, I’m not sure that’s quite the right word, but it sounds good. Basically, whereas dvorak moves keys, including punctuation, all over the place, making it harder and more formidable to learn, colemak moves only letter keys and not all of them at that. Many of the loss common keys, especially those on the bottom row, are in exactly the same place as in qwerty. This is ro much so (especially to the far left) that I showed the layout to a friend, who said, “thats not much different to a normal keyboard”. That would never happen with dvorak.
This may be a silly thing to be picking up on, but its important. As much as I like to be weird and different, it would be great if more people started trying more efficint layouts. Not only is colemak easier to learn coming from qwerty, it also simply looks less intimidating - making perple more likely to give it a go.
Confession time. I didn’t actually find colemak any easier to learn than dvorak, but that is because i was previously using dvorak full time, and dvorak and colemak are *very* different. However, the similarity to qwerty did manifest itself in a different way: it was much much easier to switch between colemak and qwerty than it had been between dvorak and qwerty. In fact, for the first couple of days, whilst I was learning, I used qwerty at night to type faster to people.
This is in *massive* contrast to dvorak. Whilst dvorak destroyed my qwerty skills at first, and i never properly recovered them, using colemak actually seems to have improved my qwerty typing! This ability to have both the common and the efficient layout at a good proficiency, without them conflicting inside your mind, is what really sets colemak apart from dvorak in my opinion. The fact is, as efficint as a layout might be, you’re still going to run into qwerty quite often in this society we are in, and colemak allows you to have the best of both worlds.
I’ve been practising and learning colemak for just over a week now. Its now very usable, although, maybe not as fast as I would like. More than good enough for writing an 800 word blog post. And, the problem in my case is not with colemak itself, it is coming to it from the weirdness of dvorak.
So, do I think most people will be using colemak it any time soon? No, afraid not. However, I do think its a great alternative, and hopefully, as aproachable as it is, will attract a growing userbase, in the geek community at least.
June 26, 2009
--> Gigabyte motherboards are harmful and can cause data loss
Unfortunately certain models of Gigabyte motherboards play very nasty tricks with your hard disks — entirely without your permission — by setting up Host Protected Areas. These unauthorised modifications to your hard disk can cause the loss of hundreds of Gigabytes of data. Personally I lost a 1.2TB RAID 0 array. [1]
I do not know which models of Gigabyte motherboards are affected but the Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H certainly is; according to this post on opensolaris.org, the GA-G31M-S2L is also affected. If anybody else has experienced this, please post a comment.
The Host Protected Area means that a certain area of the disk is reserved. That’s not too bad on a disk that has never been used in another system. You lose a few tens of megabytes, which isn’t too significant on disks of hundreds of gigabytes. However, if the system has already been used in another system, and contains a partition table or is part of a RAID array, or LVM volume, your data will not be accessible and will essentially be lost.
I unfortunately discovered this problem myself when I upgraded my home Linux-based home fileserver. I upgraded from an Asus motherboard. I had four 300GB IDE disks that had been part of a RAID 0 array (yes, I know about the data loss implications of RAID 0; they’re acceptable for my use). I discovered that Linux’s md could not reassemble two of the disks back into the RAID array. The other two were fine — these were connected to a Promise IDE controller. As the disks were around four years old and had been on 24×7 for that time, I came to the conclusion — although unlikely — that both of the disks had died simultaneously.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately I had never had any prior experience of Host Protected Areas. However, whilst debugging, I should have noticed the following:
hde: max request size: 512KiB hde: Host Protected Area detected. current capacity is 586070255 sectors (300067 MB) native capacity is 586072368 sectors (300069 MB) hde: Host Protected Area disabled. hde: 586072368 sectors (300069 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=36481/255/63, UDMA(100) hde: cache flushes supported hde: hde1 hde2 hdg: max request size: 512KiB hdg: Host Protected Area detected. current capacity is 586112591 sectors (300089 MB) native capacity is 586114704 sectors (300090 MB) hdg: Host Protected Area disabled. hdg: 586114704 sectors (300090 MB) w/16384KiB Cache, CHS=36483/255/63, UDMA(100) hdg: cache flushes supported hdg: hdg1 hdg2
Unfortunately the motherboard, without my permission, was denying md access to part of the disk, meaning that md could not assemble it into the RAID array. Data loss bugs are some of the the worst kind of bugs and I find this behaviour of this motherboard rude and entirely unacceptable.
For me, this wasn’t terrible. Most of the data was backed up to tape, and thus restorable, and what wasn’t, was easily replaceable. But I hope that this post helps someone that thinks that they have lost their data, and encourages Gigabyte to change the unacceptable behaviour of their motherboards.
[1] Sure, using RAID 0 dramatically increases the risk of data loss, and that was acceptable to me as it was personal use, not business critical, and I was happy with the possiblity of a disk dieing.
June 25, 2009
--> I'd be this Boyfriend...
I don't usually have any time for this sort of thing. I rarely read the irritating chain-note-thingys that seem to be common on facebook these days.
However, a friend of a friend recently posted this to facebook.
I thought it was neat, sorry if you think it's lame. :-/
I'd be this Boyfriend...
When she stares at your mouth
Kiss herWhen she pushes you or hits you like a dummy cause she thinks she's
stronger than you
Grab her and don't let goWhen she starts cursing at you trying to act all tough
Kiss her and tell her you love herWhen she's quiet
Ask her what's wrongWhen she ignores you
Give her your attentionWhen she pulls away
Pull her backWhen you see her at her worst
Tell her she's beautifulWhen you see her start crying
Just hold her and don't say a wordWhen you see her walking
Sneak up and hug her waist from behindWhen she's scared
Protect herWhen she steals your favourite hoodie
Let her keep it and sleep with it for a nightWhen she teases you
Tease her back and make her laughWhen she doesn't answer for a long time
Reassure her that everything is okayWhen she looks at you with doubt
Back yourself upWhen she says that she loves you
She really does more than you can understandWhen she grabs at your hands
Hold her's and play with her fingersWhen she bumps into you;
Bump into her back and make her laughWhen she tells you a secret
Keep it safe and untoldWhen she looks at you in your eyes
Don't look away until she doesWhen she says it's over
She still wants you to be hersWhen she reposts this bulletin
She wants you to read it
June 22, 2009
--> How to go Bust Quickly - Andrew Threlfall - Barcamp Leeds
--> How can the community help the next generation - Alex Wolf - Barcamp Leeds 2
--> Kids & Code - Does it matter that they use computers but never see the programming? - Matt Edgar - Barcamp Leeds
Matt Edgar hosts a discussion on whether it matters that kids use computers but never see programming.
Unfortunately, I missed the beginning of his presentation however I think pretty much all the points are there and the discussion that follows is very insightful...
--> John Leach - Ukepedia - Barcamp Leeds 2
--> Sarah Hartley - Blogging in a Media Organisation - Barcamp Leeds 2
