Posted by Andy under BBC, Microsoft, Political, iPlayer
Erik Huggers has been appointed director of future media and technology at the BBC, replacing Ashley Highfield. Mr Huggers joined the BBC in May last year as group controller of future media and technology, launching the new version of the iPlayer, the on-demand internet service. Mr Huggers will be responsible for the BBC’s output on the internet, interactive TV, mobile, and other emerging platforms.
Before joining the BBC, Mr Huggers was at Microsoft, where he launched the MSN portal in the Benelux countries and was responsible for Windows Media in Europe. One of Mr Huggers’ tasks will be to resolve the row between the BBC and internet service providers, many of which feel the BBC should pay compensation for the extra demands the iPlayer demands makes on their networks.
Rob Minto
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Posted by Andy under BECTA, Control, Digital Freedom, Hypothesising, Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Personal, Personal, Political, SBLUG Planet, Software, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
Clay Shirky provides a fascinating insight into how a collaborative approach utilises more skills, and empowers more people than the old institutional model. Rather than coming from an Open Source background, he uses the example of Flickr to convey his point (and then takes a stab at Ballmer). It’s an interesting presentation, and shows how you can make the most of the information/data available in a field.
However, there’s an angle to his talk which isn’t covered in this short presentation; which I imagine is due to time constraints. That’s the opportunity for cross-discipline collaboration, and what that means for us.
One of the more interesting points made by Clay, is that he poses the current ‘$1 million question’ - Are Bloggers Journalists? - and then turns it on its head.
Journalists, and journalism came about to fulfil a societal need. How to communicate with the majority of the population. Gutenburgs’s printing press was a percursor to European journalism, and for the last 400 years or so, journalism has been an integral part of mass communication.
However, we now have a little something called the internet - which, as Gutenburg’s printing press did all those years ago, revolutionise access to information. The infrastructure required to become a ‘messenger to the people’ is in place for people to with it as they wish - create facebook pages, youtube videos, or wordpress blogs. Once the infrastructure becomes freely accessible, the applications of it become massively varied.
In Clay’s talk, he mentions a ratio. 80% of people do 20% of the work, and vice versa, using a lovely graph of the long tail:
An Example of the Long Tail Graph
Though a graph illustrating a different set of data, the concept can be re-applied to Open Source Project contribution. The Green area applies to the ‘core’ developers, who may even be employed by the project. The Orange applied to the people directly involved with the project, and perhaps some power users, and the Red section applied to everyone else.
The wonderful thing about the Red section, is that you get lots and lots of people contributing very little. However, it’s these people who can really add value to a project. With so many projects now existing across different distributions, each system becomes pretty unique. Where bugfixes and irrationailities can be spotted and reported on by end-users running their unique system - the value added is huge.
There’s also a question of expertise. The guys in the Red Section are the programming experts, who are commiting code. Those in the Orange Section are the users/implementers of the code - so will typically have a clear understanding of the direction of the project and the needs that the project needs to fulfil. Whereas in the Red Section are people who use the package, but often alongside other packages of greater interest/relevance to their line of work. It’s this cross-discipline collaboration that is unprecedencted.
Getting average non-geeky end users to use Open Projects is a massive challenge, but one that is going to bring massive benefits to Open Source Software. Some people talk of the digital tipping point from a technical standpoint - “Woo, when we get this critical mass we’ll overtake Microsoft within the next 5 years.” To be honest that doesn’t bother me. Judge MS as you wish, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because the potential contribution that end users can make to Global Knowledge, through Open Projects.
It’s going to be possible for a biological scientist and and engineer to be reviewing the same problem for different purposes. It’s unlikely that these two disciplines would ever communicate were it not be for this open project, and it’s also possible that only with the combined knowledge and expertise of these two disciplines, the problem can be solved.
This is what excites me most about free software, and to think we’re only just at the beginning.
Posted by Andy under Control, Digital Freedom, Freedom, Political, Psychology, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
One of the first lectures in my first year entertained the difference between qualitative and quantitative methods in psychology. We had three lovely, but definately qualitatively biased lecturers. They spoke of the personal approach to psychology, and identifying individual differences, rather than group ‘norms’ - for they argues that norms did not exist across society, due to all the difference cultures and individual experiences.
However, our quantitative lecturers disagreed. They liked to analyse and draw lovely graphs showing difference behavioural patterns. Attach electrodes to heads to monitor electrical pulses in the brain, and quantify social experiments using hard statistics and probability algorithms.
Well, they’re now approaching the end of their careers in this field, as Google and the ‘database generation’ take over.
There’s so much information on the internet now, that we don’t need to know whether someone is going to do something or not - we can actually see records of what they do. Having the browsing habits of thousands, or millions of people is almost priceless data. It’s the stuff that quantititative psychologists can only dream of. Any psychologist will tell you how valuable that data is to them.
Well, today Alexander Hanff - fighting for our freedom - heads to the House of Lords in order to prevent Phorm from getting their hands on our data; and to question why BT haven’t yet been charged on any count for gross invasion of privacy in regards to their trials of the Phorm software last summer.
In order to understand what we’re dealing with, I offer the following analogy to those less technically minded.
The internet is an exchange of bags, each containing a little bit of information. Let’s say you pass one bag a second from your machine across the internet to an ‘internet server.’ It’s very easy for someone to look into any of these bags - but mainly due to volume (but also due to simple logistics) people tend not to bother looking in your bags. It’s not to say they can’t though.
Well, phorm contains software that looks through all your bags, and analyses them for ‘key-words’, from which they can then target adverts at you. If you’re communicating with someone, why do you want them looking through your bags - you don’t!
When you deal with your bank, you’d put a padlock on the bags, that only they and you have the key to unlock.. so your online banking details are safe..r. If you’d rather not have someone looking through all the information you exchange across the internet, charging you for the pleasure, and then holding more information on your browsing habits than you even do yourself.. say Yes to Phorm. else do the sensible thing and “JUST SAY NO!”
Posted by Andy under BBC, Chaos, Conspiracy Theory, Control, Debian, Digital Freedom, Freedom, Linux, Marketing, Political, Python, SBLUG Planet, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
Too many D’s for my liking… but a fantastic marketing point.
After David Davis resigned from the Commons today, the speech he gave focused on where technology and policy collide.
We will have, shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictator should have with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it.
We witness and assault on jury trial - that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state, short cuts to our justice system will make our system neither firm nor fair and the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.
It’s definately time for the debate to happen. Just because we can do things with technology doesn’t mean we should.
Posted by Andy under Apple, Control, Freedom, Personal, Political, Stupid
In the UK recently there have been a number of widely reported stabbings and murders among the youth of our country. It’s a sad state of affairs that youths are now using knives to attack and end innocent lives, but it’s a symptom of a problem - not the problem itself.
Today, the government announced that it will be pushing stricter penalties on those who carry knives, and that possession is equal to ‘intent to use.’ This is the point at which I am very concerned. Although I think it’s abhorrent that a few people in our society would wish to attack or defend themselves using knives - this type of law has no place in a developed society.
There are a number of people who rely on a knife in order to do their work - and the majority of people I’ve worked with in the trades carried a knife. It’s a ‘tool’ that is very necessary for many people to carry - it’s also a tool that may come in use in unforeseeable situations. They’re also a very natural and historical tool - that have been carried around by gentlemen for centuries.
Last year, I wrote about a trip I took to the Nontron Knife Festival, at which I bought myself a knife. I wouldn’t say I have particular need for a knife - but there are situations (such as when I’m fishing, camping .etc) when a knife is a useful tool to have. I’d take a photo and put it up, but I’ve left it at a friends after a camping trip.
With the proposed law (and current situation), should my friend and I decide to rendezvous on foot in order for me to take back my knife, the chances are that if we were seen one of us would end up in court. However, should I drive up to Sheffield (from my home in Birmingham) and pick up the knife in my car - my chances are massively diminished.
The other point is that playing with my knife is sometimes therapeutic. In January, I was eating an apple at my desk and cutting it up with the knife in my hand to eat it. It’s a pretty normal thing to do with a knife, and 100% legal. However, after eating the apple and cleaning my knife, I dropped it into my pocket. I wasn’t leaving the house any time soon, and didn’t want to leave it in the kitchen draw. Only later on in the evening did I realise I still had it on me, so I left the pub I was in and took it home, before coming out again.
Now I’d consider this a responsible action, however, should I have been stopped in the pub or on the way home by the Police - I’d be facing a court appearance and custody. A disproportionate response to an innocent misadventure.
It’s a shame that the law-abiding citizen has to suffer for the minority of idiots that choose to wield knives in an ungainly fashion - and then the majority of ‘illegally used’ knives are kitchen knives/cleavers. Do we ban these too?
It’s a silly precedent that the government are setting - they should be looking at the wider social picture, rather than at an easy-to-target symptom of the problem. Curbing civil liberties is going to have little affect on the people who wield their knives illegally. I do understand there is a problem with knife crime in the UK, but better policing and targeting of unruly youths is the answer - not creating new laws to limit the general public’s freedom.
Posted by Andy under BBC, Conspiracy Theory, Control, Digital Freedom, Freedom, Personal, Political, Software, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
I think it’s about time that people became aware of the advantages of the GnuPrivacyGuard.
Why?
According the to BBC the government are considering keeping a database of every phone call made and every email sent. Now, it’s already possible to do this with your current email communications - and very few people bother to encrypt their mail to make sure that only the recipient can read it.
Email passes over a network in plain text - thereby anything sent in a email is easy to ’sniff’ out and read. With gpg - you encrypt the mail with a password - then the only person that can read the mail is the person that knows that password.. the recipient of the email.
It’s a clever system, so here’s a link to Red Hat Magazine’s article on GPG.
For a Windows-based solution, try WinGPG.
If we can’t change the system, then we at least need to protect ourselves from it.
Posted by Andy under Conspiracy Theory, Control, Digital Freedom, Freedom, Hypothesising, Political, SBLUG Planet, Software, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
I’ve just read an article on The Register which detailed a system that Shopping Centres are now using to track people’s movements around a shopping centre using their Mobile Phone. When a phone registers with a network, it gets a TMSI address (a bit like a dynamic IP address) - and this PATH software is able to locate a handset to within a couple of metres - good enough to track which shop punters are going into.
Even though the makers say that each individual TMSI is refreshed at each phone reset - with more and more people leaving their phones on for sustained periods - it’s not particularly outrageous to say that if I worked out my own TMSI, then the data is no longer anonymous.
Anyway - that’s a little beside the point. When I walk into a shopping centre, there are plenty of CCTV cameras. I believe the mandate for putting them there is for my protection, rather than tracking my consumer habits. Imagine some ‘hoody’ walking into a shopping centre, stealing something - then getting his phone confiscated by Police to work out the TMSI to see where the ‘hoody’ has been for the last few hours. It’s technically possible with this new system.
With the advance of technology, there are loads of completely un-sexy but massively important questions that need to be answered. At the moment the government and authorities are simply seeing £’s. There’s technology being put together and used that infringes far more on our civil liberties than someone owning a copy of a terrorism handbook.
So, let’s get un-sexy and start discussing what we want from technology. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Posted by Andy under BBC, Debian, Digital Freedom, Facebook, Freedom, Gentoo, Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Political, Projects, SBLUG Planet, Software, Sun, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
BBC Click! Online - Watch the Show
Ok, so they ‘bend’ RMS’s definition of ‘free’ software in some places - but it’s still a fantastic 25 minute program for John Doe.
Enjoy!
Posted by Andy under Africa, BBC, BECTA, Conspiracy Theory, Debian, Digital Freedom, Freedom, Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Personal, Political, Projects, Python, SBLUG Planet, Software, Tech Geek, Ubuntu
Having just read Rory Cellan-Jones article on the BBC News Website about the OLPC choosing to use the Windows XP operating system, I felt it sensible to put forward the reasons why I think it may/may not be a bad thing, and who’s going to benefit from the deal.
Education versus Training
Unfortunately, I think the UK IT Education System passed under this bridge so far up river, that it would require getting out of the river, and a hard trek upstream to ever get back to fixing the problem. Since 1997 (the year I started secondary school, and the year the Labour government came into power), there has been a worrying trend toward using the education system as a training system. I enjoyed my first couple of years IT lessons - we played with things like Logo - and used some very simple database software (key-plus?) to understand the power of databases. We also used MS Excel to enter data into spreadsheets, and learn some basic formulae - as well as being told how to write the same formulae on the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software I had at home.
The difference that occurred in Year 9 (when RM ‘upgraded’ the IT suite at school) - was that we were now using MS Office. Sure, we’d had Word and Excel on the PCs before, and I guess the financial costs of upgrading to Office rather than having the two separately are minimal, especially once you take into account the “educational discount” that schools are entitled to from Microsoft.
This meant that everything we did was MS based. The simple database has gone, we were using MS Access. In essence, IT lessons involved being trained in how to use basic productivity tools for our future office careers; which, in my opinion, is not something that the Education System should pay for. I’d prefer to see people have an understanding of the difference between the ‘web’ and ‘email’; the difference between what a Spreadsheet can accomplish in comparison with a Database; and hopefully a way for people to be taught on looking after their data, online and offline.
Advocacy as a Business Model
I recently watched a lecture given by Nicolas Negroponte in 1984. In it he discussed his ideas for the future of Computer Interfaces. It was an interesting talk, as he spoke about experiments he was doing in some African Countries on UI design. However, he also noted that he’d done a dry-run of these experiments in New York previous to heading out to the African Continent.
In the school in New York, there was a child of around 14. He didn’t know how to read and was seen as needing Special Needs treatment. However, he was simply left to fend for himself in the IT rooms. One of the days, a local council worker came to visit the school, and happened to notice this child in the library, so asked him what he was doing. He showed him what he’d created on the screen using the ‘LOGO’ program. The council visitor was suitably impressed, and asked him if he could do a little variation on his work. Rather than simply say ‘no - I don’t know how,’ the child reached for the manual, worked out how to do it - and did it - clearly pleasing the visitor.
The visitor then went to the Principle’s Office (his reason for attending the school in the first place) and happened to mention the child. The principle was certain that the visitor was the victim of some kind of ’set-up,’ therefore took the visitor down himself to see the child demo his abilities. Lo and behold the child was able to do a further variation on his work by looking through the manual.
When asked why the child could read the manual, yet could not read the books provided to him in class, his answer was akin to the following: “What the teachers give me in class is boring, and I don’t get anything out of it. However, when I’m on the computer and working, I can see the results of my efforts straight away and get rewarded for them.”
OLPC - Sugar UI
The Sugar UI for the OLPC project, for me, was a symbol of the ‘LOGO’ program for this child. Someone that the teachers has written off as a massive underachiever had been able to produce ingenuity and learning independently - given the resources to do it. Encouragement wasn’t necessary, as the learning process is something organic to the human mind.
The Sugar UI isn’t about being Free and Open Source (thus cheap) - it’s about so much more than that. However, it’s also not the be-all and end-all of the OLPC project. There are thousands of Open Source applications that can run on top of Windows XP that the OLPC users will be able to access. It will also open up their opportunities for developing for FLOSS software on Windows Desktops - and thus be able to access the Windows Market in developed countries.
Why did OLPC do the deal?
For those of you that have been following OLPC, you’ll know that the ‘Intel Classmate’ has played some underhand tactics in order to get their processor on the OLPC - and then pulled out once they’d hijacked the relationships that OLPC had with important African leaders. There’s so much corruption in Africa, that XP was probably an (unofficial/off the record) requirement. Sometimes you’ve got to get in bed with the bad guys to help the small guys.
Where does this leave OLPC in the future?
OLPC ‘Ltd.’ will always be the pioneers to the concept of OLPC. The aim is a noble one, yet in what is essentially a commercial market - pure advocacy fell to the power of multi-national marketing. However, it has opened up a new market in the developed countries too - of Ultra Mobile Personal Computers - many of which run Free / Open Source Software. This can only be a good thing in the long run, with more and more people using FLOSS and seeing the benefits. Coupled with the coming-of-age of Ubuntu, and the fantastic marketing effort that’s coming with that, Nicolas Negroponte can be confident that where his company may have compromised - his idea is still being pushed by those supporting him.
Posted by Andy under Control, Digital Freedom, Linux, Political, Tech Geek
Last Thursday I went to see Richard Stallman (RMS) deliver a lecture in room C9 of the Renford Building, North Campus, University of Manchester.
For those who do not know, RMS is the guy who ‘invented’ free software. His organisation ‘Gnu’ was created in 1983 to create a 100% ‘free’ operating system. He also proposed the ‘4 freedoms’ which he regards as essential for computer software to be truly ‘free’.
At the talk, RMS went through the four freedoms, and gave a good explanation of what each of them meant, in terms of both technical and social responsibility. I liked this part of the talk very much. However, the second half of the talk really got under my skin. It’s for this reason that I’m disillusioned with RMS’s opinions.
For the second half of the lecture, RMS clearly had an axe to grind re: Linus Torvalds, the ‘overseer’ of the Linux kernel. Initially releasing his code as Open Source (rather than ‘free software’), Linus believed that the beauty of Open Source software was the ability for so many programmers to contribute and review the code - thus creating more powerful and better written software. RMS made a point that it wasn’t released as ‘Gnu GPL’ software - until after RMS had convinced Linus that Linux + Gnu would make a good partnership - and fulfil their ‘different, but shared visions.’
RMS is clearly aggrieved at the fact that ‘Linux’ is now really popular, and ‘Gnu’ remains an pretty anonymous entity (as regards a lay-man’s perception). Those of us who know enough about the OS are comfortable enough to afford Gnu an awful lot of credit for their work.. but seriously - a name like ‘gnu’ was never a marketable brand. Whilst I understand his desire for proper accreditation - those of us who can appreciate the work do respect gnu.
The other thing that annoyed me about RMS is his tunnel-vision. One guy in the audience at the lecture said something along the lines of -
“If my Microwave contains embedded software, is it necessary in your eyes for that software to be free.”
This is where I think RMS showed that he’s become so focused on self-promotion, that he’s actually not sat down in a long time and thought clearly about the free software philosophy. Embedded software, in my opinion, is fast becoming a very grey area - as more and more devices become interconnected. RMS response was similar to the following:
“It doesn’t matter what software your Microwave is running. You press the buttons, and the Microwave cooks your food. Get over it.”
I think the guy deserves a doctorate in narrow-mindedness.
One of the things that really inspires me about Free Software is the ability for both hardware and software to be modified above and beyond their original design. In a few lines of python I can write a script that when I press a button on my scanner - it can upload the output to a webserver and then present me with a simple form on the screen to fill in some meta-data about that image. This is not what that button on the CanoScan N6400U was designed for - but through the power of Open Source software - I can do this.
Now, back to the Microwave. Sure, it could be unhealthy, but say I had 9 meals that I’d cook in a Microwave. If I was able to see the code and edit the software on the microwave - it would be easy to re-program the microwave for each number to represent one of my 9 meals. ‘1′ could be reprogrammed to scrambled eggs.. etc. It’s not possible with a closed-source approach - it is possible using ‘free software.’
I also use gnu/Linux not because it’s necessarily free - but because I think it works better for me than other options available. As a systems person, the freedom I get with ‘free software’ allows me to create scalable software that I would only have previously been capable of doing as Manager of a large IT project with the buying power to license lots of different pieces of software and stick them all together. This is the beauty of free software for me.
Pay for it - no! RMS also said that it’s ok to sell ‘free software.’ I think this is a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to say - and muddies the waters for people who are looking to utilise free software in their environments. I think it’s ok to charge to modify free software on an ad hoc basis - but selling free software opens the doors for people to resell other’s work without any direct involvement in the creation of that work. I could set up a business re-selling OO.org - that’s just not ethical in my eyes - however, producing an extension to OO.org - charging for the time to develop the extension and then bundling OO.org with the extension is a far more sensible way of charging. Charge for service, not products.
The other thing about freedom, is that we should have a choice whether to be free, or un-free - that’s part of freedom. Although we live in a quasi-democracy whereby we’re all meant to be free and can do our own thing - look at the mini-societies within that democracy. There’s never been a truly democratic business - as it just doesn’t work. An Admiral on a ship is a dictator of sorts. Giving someone freedom is giving them a choice. I should be able to choose whether to run free/non-free software. Were there no longer the choice, then the points of freedom would be moot.
When Tim Berners-Lee released the code for the World Wide Web - he didn’t say that any changes made should be shared. Some were shared and some weren’t. It didn’t stop the Web from becoming the most pervasive information medium ever - in a unprecedented short timespan. His ideas of freedom weren’t forcing people to be free - it was to give people a choice to be free. Perhaps we can learn from that example, rather than by requiring that everyone subscribe to a Texan model of freedom.
I ended up leaving RMS lecture feeling a bit deflated. This man obviously made a great start, and should be remembered as someone who has made a tremendous contribution to ‘free software’ - but I think his tiresome request for acknowledgement - when he already has that acknowledgement from the people that matter - is something that’s put me off the guy. I think it would suit him better to sit behind closed doors and work out a ‘free software philosophy’ - rather that simply rely on a ‘cult of personality’ to direct Free Software in the way his gut wants it to go.