Posted on April 2, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Important essay by Clay Shirky explains why complex systems must collapse, rather than adapt or simplify. He writes about Television but the lessons seem to me to be generally applicable.
But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.
Unless they convince people outside the system to prop them up somehow, that is. In that case those people become part of the complexity, part of the system, and when the collapse comes collapse with it.
This is our collective fate if we allow our legislators to prop up the complex but obsolete business models of the past. It’s why the Digital Economy Bill – and its inspiration, ACTA – are so toxic to society, way beyond the scope they appear to hold.
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It’s Easter, and there’s a lot of sugar around over here in the UK – probably where you are too. I watched this video a few months ago and it transformed the way I thought about sugar.
The lecture includes descriptions of the metabolic cycles by which the liver handles glucose and fructose and clearly explains why fructose is not the same as glucose for your body. Fructose needs handling in a way that could lead your body into high blood pressure, obesity and gout, and it prevents your stomach signalling to your brain that you should stop eating. Fructose separated from the fibre that delivered it is just plain toxic.
I heartily recommend watching the full 90 minutes of this one before you eat your Easter eggs, it’s changed the way I think about food and eating.
Short links:
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The new Ordnance Survey open data site is an amazing 180º turn from their attitude just a few months ago. Let’s hope it triggers deep and delicious awesomeness in British society.
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Alex Brown discovers that the faith he has been consistently and publicly placing in the goodwill of Microsoft around their OOXML specification has been betrayed. Most of us are not even slightly surprised, I’m afraid.
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This seemed too good to be true for April 1st, but it seems to be the first fruits of the move towards open data being forced on the crusty Ordnance Survey. It will trigger a fresh wave of innovation for geo-data applications in the UK, which is very welcome indeed. If only it had happened earlier. I still need to take a close look at the licensing, though.
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Two Lessons For Survival
Posted on April 1, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Yes, another posting from me about the Digital Economy Bill. As I keep saying, this bill is about more than just disconnection. Clause 43 sounds fair enough – putting “orphan works” where the copyright owner can’t be found into the public domain sounds a good thing. But it has been badly constructed, presumably with input from lobbyists with skewed interests.
It will have the side effect of making all photographs public domain unless they are painfully obviously marked with the photographer’s identity. When you write to your MP, ignore disconnection (it will just make them toss your letter); complain about clause 43, about the threat to open WiFi and about the apparently corrupt avoidance of democratic process. Oh, and write today, we’re running out of time.
And sadly this is not an April Fools prank.
In other news:
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As you may have heard on the Ubuntu UK Podcast, I’ve confirmed I’ll be attending – I’ll be opening the day on Saturday with a discussion on digital liberty, the threats it faces and the
actions geeks can take.
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Get them while they’re hot!
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Finally found the origin from which the saying “The Greatest Enemy Of Freedom Is A Happy Slave” is derived. I’ll add attribution on the slide where I cite it.
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The countryside has always been gorgeous, but this means we now officially live a 15 minute drive from a national park from SW all the way round to ENE.
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“when we start talking about business models, what matters is not how a vendor generates incremental revenue but how you generate incremental value.” — All of the value a business derives from open source software arises from the freedoms it delivers. When access to those freedoms is prevented, you have a plain, vanilla ISV. Heed Gartner for once!
Filed under: Digital Economy Bill, Links | Comments Off on ☞ It Can Get Worse
Posted on March 31, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Excellent news that Britain’s Liberal Democrats have finally got the point that the Digital Economy Bill is a Curate’s Egg and any support for it entering wash-up will create an injustice. It’s almost enough to have me voting for them in the election.
Geeks vote too.
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An interesting posting from JP. He digs into Anglo-Indian history and suggests that the Digital Economy Bill is comparable with a tax used to create artificial scarcity to prop up the unjust revenues of a fading regime.
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If, like me, you’d decided these antitrust complaints were just part of Microsoft’s well-known orchestrated campaign against Google, this article will make for very interesting reading. I now regard this particular anti-trust complaint with much more sympathy and look forward to Google proving they don’t in fact use their advertising muscle to kill off competition.
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“In short, according to the Court, favoring Free Software does not infringe freedom of competition, since software freedom is a general legal feature, and not a technological aspect connected to a specific product or brand.”
Filed under: Links | Tagged: Debill | Comments Off on ☞ Digging Deeper, Finding Salt
Posted on March 30, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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This is a welcome development, one we need to see replicated in other subject areas and other countries. Most of the law we have is based on assumptions from an era that has passed.
The old hub-and-spoke approach to the world – with central control and subject-citizens-consumers – is rapidly being replaced with a meshed world of equals, connected peer-to-peer across the net. We need laws that reflect that reality. The concepts behind the old laws are almost all still valid, but they need re-projection through the lens of a meshed society to allow us to live lives that are private, empowered and full of richness. This privacy coalition is a great step forward, finding as it has a common point between its participants motivations to unite them for reform.
Now we need to also identify similar common points for unity around access to knowledge, freedom to create, open data and software freedom.
Other news:
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Finally home to roost. I wonder if this had anything to do with IBM pulling out of buying Sun?
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A really good summary of the core issues with ACTA, and delightfully it doesn’t mention downloads and disconnections anywhere. The reasons ACTA needs to come under the disinfectant glare of sunlight are that it is a devious detour around democracy that will set mankind’s progress into the connected era back a decade.
Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »
Posted on March 29, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Martin Bell in the Guardian with commentary of how the wash-up process is the opposite of democracy and moreover likely to harm electoral reform. This is a subject worth raising with MPs…
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They’ve written a fine document that is well worth reading in full and using in discussion with others.
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This rally covers an important area that I don’t see mentioned in any of the advance election materials delivered so far. Which party is going to stand on the “end the surveillance society” platform at this election?
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Uncomfortably insightful…
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Washed Up and Sold Out
Posted on March 28, 2010 by Simon Phipps
More of my weekly music picks. They are free of charge, as long as you’re in the right place to get them. This week’s favourites: The Six Degrees Sampler and the great Loscil ambient track.
| Loc |
Title |
Artist |
Comments |
| USA |
Coupled Key |
Cydelix |
Acoustic Spanish guitar lead, dreamy electronica backing, earnest piano melody growing to sustained sound-wall with psychotic fiddler – yes, people, we have a decent instrumental chill-out track on our hands. |
| USA |
The Best Treasure Stays Buried |
Zoey Van Goey |
Sounding for all the world like a junior Suzanne Vega |
| USA |
Dub for Cascadia |
Loscil |
Great ambient track that could have escaped from the Myst soundtrack. |
| USA |
Album: Global Grooves Sampler |
Six Degrees Records |
Another great sampler album from Six Degrees, with eleven quality tracks of world music. |
| UK |
One Time |
Justin Bieber |
A taster for the latest teen heartthrob. Disco heaven but I’ll be waiting until his voice breaks before I listen again. |
If you don’t already have it, bookmark Mercedes-Benz Mixtape. Every eight weeks the M-B marketing folks post a new mix of new artists on this page, complete with a zip-file of the MP3s for easy download from anywhere (mouse over the player and click “MP3 Downloads”).
Filed under: Links, Music | Tagged: MP3, Music | Comments Off on ♫ More Music Picks
Posted on March 27, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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This much shorter paper (from a conference address) is valuable as an explanation and description from a respected and knowledgeable expert on why we are getting such bad law proposed around copyright. The reason? The scope of stakeholdership has expanded (you and I are now stakeholders in copyright law in a way that was not the case before the connected era) but there are no seats at the table reserved for us. Read this and pass it on.
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This Washington Post article is a loud, clear call for review that the Obama administration surely cannot ignore unless they have a Mandelson-level disregard for citizens in preference for the media lobby.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: Copyright | Comments Off on ☞ Politics of Copyright
Posted on March 26, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Miguel de Icaza clarifies his comments regarding Microsoft’s handling of the open source community over the last 8 years. I find myself in complete agreement with him for once. Had Microsoft had the epiphany that open source was something it could instinctively adopt and harness at the start of the decade, the world today would be very different.
Instead, it finds itself with a history of toxic behaviour that no amount of attempted reconciliation will quickly clear, especially while the leadership that attacked the free and open source movement is still in place. I hear the job of figurehead for their open source work is proving hard to fill, and no wonder – who wants to step in as apologist for a decade of bad faith? The mistrust is deserved and most of us won’t be as wowed by technology into easy trust as Miguel has been.
Other news:
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Great behind-the-scenes observations from David Hammerstein.
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Exactly as
forecast by Bill Gurley, this is the “Less Than Free” model in action and it is likely to be a real winner.
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Great source of free downloads of music by emerging artists. Worth bookmarking as the selection changes every eight weeks.
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This in-progress paper is excellent and is full of lovely clear explanations of the problems both with US copyright law and reform. It also includes great ideas on terminology, good thinking-tools and of course a decent approach for future copyright law. Well worth reading even if you’re not a lawyer.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: Microsoft, Open Source | 1 Comment »
Posted on March 25, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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The Berlusconi regime in Italy has achieved a longevity that many thought was impossible in Italian politics, but it seems one of the mechanisms it has used rests at a convergence of politics and media power that is of questionable morality. It’s bad enough having Murdock and Fox as potential kingmakers across the world, but in Italy the connection is right in hands of the head of state.
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I’ve never trusted the Verisign-style pay-to-prove hierarchical approach to internet security and the fact this box is so freely available settles it. This box means you can’t even trust https to protect you on the web.
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The BBC want to add DRM (digital restriction measures) to UK television broadcasts. Given we have all already paid for whatever they broadcast becuase of the license fee, and given that most of what’s broadcast is available from elsewhere, this is about controlling consumers and not about protecting rights-holders. You’ll note that control of UK consumers is being handed to an unaccountable offshore consortium. It’s also another assault on the use of open source software since it will take a legal entity to get licensed by the offshore quango. I’ve signed up to the text ORG are submitting to OfCOM and suggest you consider doing so too if you’re in the UK.
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There’s a delicious irony about the crusty old BCS turning down a petition for debate about their “modernisation” plans (in my view more about connecting with corporate sponsors) becuase the petition was conducted on the internet and not on paper. I hope their new President is suitably embarrassed and will make sure it doesn’t happen again (the anachronistic behaviour, I mean, not the squashing of dissent which I sadly anticipate continuing).
Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Broken Democracy
Posted on March 24, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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I’m honoured to have been re-elected to the OpenSolaris Governing Board, delighted that the new Constitution has been adopted and humbled to have received the most first-preference votes. It is going to be a challenging year of change for the new OGB.
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Intelligent discussion from Mako on Stallman’s latest essay on Software as a Service. Note especially that Stallman’s usage of SaaS is a special usage and we should not assume his condemnation of the concept extends to all, or even most uses. It does, however, extend to most things Google offers.
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It had to happen eventually. Maybe it was the insulting performance from the European Commission’s negotiator that finally provoked someone to break the ring of silence. The draft reveals just how much negotiation is left to do, as well as plenty of horrors about the starting assumptions of the negotiators.
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Maybe there is more to sushi (and laverbread) than just concentrated delicious.
Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »
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