Advogato blog for lkcl

13 May 2008

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:48:28 GMT

etbe: the only way in which it would be sensible for debian to "follow" a commercial company, with profit-maximisation at its core, would be if those commercial companies removed profit-maximisation from their articles of incorporation (and replaced them with "non-loss" articles).

social contracts such as those followed by debian automatically conflict with profit-maximisation priorities.

period.

assuming that for profit-maximising companies it is far too difficult for them to be able to get shareholder's permission to change the articles of incorporation, the only acceptable option is for debian's release cycle to be followed by profit-maximisation companies, not the other way round.

27 Apr 2008

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:37:36 GMT

Linux on Dell D430 - great machine, only £560 reconditioned. 2gb ram, 3G HDSPA built-in modem (!), 32gb Solid-State drive (!), dual-core 1.2ghz intel celery processor. lightweight (my absolute limit has always been 1.5kg and this one's 1.3 or so and it's got a 12in 1280x800 screen. cool!)

26 Apr 2008

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:46:51 GMT

o my god i think i just saw michael meeks or something vaguely resembling him ha ha ohhh dear i find a geekcam amusing ooo there must be something wrong with me

25 Apr 2008

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:07:51 GMT

OLPC scrapes bottom of barrel....

24 Apr 2008

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:44:20 GMT

ohhh maaaan i WISH that professor yunus had written his book like... ten to fifteen years ago.

dang.

24 Apr 2008

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:20:39 GMT

*ROTFL* what was i smoking??? oh - i don't smoke, ha ha.

(essentially, i was trying to express a problem for which i had no adequate solution at the time, and all i felt i could do was get exasperated. now, of course, there is the tantalising possibility of a way forward: "social business", under which projects that actually "help people" can operate without the threat of having the social charter aspects of the company undermined by "profit maximisation" focus, from the shareholders... but anyway.... :).

i'd completely missed this - six years later, it's a hoot!

my favourite quotes:

Is it just me or... does he really say nothing concrete in a very inflamitory manor?

Pulleeez Dear Lord this was a sorry article. It would have made more sense in say 95-98ish years, but certainly not now. Linux has made enormous gains in ease of use and functionality in the last 2 years unequaled in this industry. Not mention its the fastest growning OS in the server space. Add the MONO project to that and we have a VERY real threat to M$.

*ROTFL*.

it's six years on, and *still* microsoft is 95% market share. and yes, i had a beautiful way of driving people up the wall - of telling truth with nails in it...

... there's a reason for that, which i will explain some time. it's not pretty, but maybe someone will recognise some of the health-related symptoms in themselves (the technology-induced illnesses), and consider doing something about it before it causes their death.

24 Apr 2008

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:57 GMT

oof. another article in the series. not the one i planned to write, but a spontaneous one highlighting the important questions of what the heck we are doing, as free software developers.

let's face it: we're worthless and useless, are we not? we are happy to write code which makes us happy and keeps us occupied and out of harm's way.

... yet that's not the issue. the issue is that there is no business model in prevalent use into which we fit...

... except Social Business.

17 Apr 2008

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:10:34 GMT

gaah! i keep forgetting about things to write about.

distributed peer-to-peer ccache for distributed compilation of applications: a small device with a fast internet connection could easily assemble an application from source code with "make -j200" becoming commonplace.

distributed debian distribution development - an extension of the above, in combination with debtorrent, dpkg-cacheing "objectified" with apt-cache search performing automatic searches.

this is getting to be a long fricking list.

oh good grief _and_ the "meta-project" too - a project based on object-orientated databases expressing relationships explicitly between needs and desires, allowing them to be connected to those that can fulfil them. aaaagh! :)

16 Apr 2008

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:45:03 GMT

ok - whew: that one's done, too :) Technology in Warfare, for Peacekeeping and Peacetime is what I promised to write, yesterday. actually, it was an idea I had nearly 18 months ago when I was working for the United Nations.

16 Apr 2008

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:41:48 GMT

i have so much damn stuff to write!

about machine consciousness; about examples of how the "tech fusion" hardware and software combination can help the United Nations and NATO in peace-keeping, providing a combined role of both organisations; about how intelligence communities need to trust people (plural) more, and be much more up-front about their role and responsibilities...

whew :)