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Volcano forecasts have arrived. From the looks of these charts it's touch-and-go whether I will be able to fly home on Monday.
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☞ Volcano Forecasts
Posted on May 16, 2010 by Simon Phipps
☞ Disputable
Posted on May 13, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Very important issue here: Should goods in transit from A to B be subject to seizure in the places they simply pass through rather? Saying “yes” sets a very dangerous precedent indeed for sealed goods, for moving surface and air traffic and for the internet. Surely the answer has to be “no”? Otherwise we will find ourselves in a world of arbitrary diktat.
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Loving the delicious irony that that America’s rednecks still think that it’s the Republicans who are fiscally conservative despite more than a decade of evidence to the contrary.
Filed under: Links | 3 Comments »
☞ Apache’s Lesson In Radical Transparency
Posted on May 11, 2010 by Simon Phipps
The Apache Software Foundation’s radical and exceptional transparency provides a lesson all organisations need to learn. Read about it on Simon Says…
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☞ OO.o Extensions
Posted on May 10, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Pity it came to this. The FSF would have been perfectly happy with proper classification of the extensions on the OpenOffice.org site so that visitors could sort the listing to see which extensions were under which open source license. Setting up their own site is genuinely a last resort.
Filed under: Links, Open Source | 1 Comment »
✍ New Week, New Column, New Job
Posted on May 10, 2010 by Simon Phipps
You may have noticed I was a bit quiet last week. The reason? I was in Norway at a company summit for my new job, which actually starts today. More than that, I also have a new column in ComputerWeeklyUK, joining the esteemed Glyn Moody in providing their coverage of free and open source software. Glyn’s view is as an observer and (in the best sense) critic. Mine is as a practitioner, reporting from the field – a little like Matt Asay on CNet in the US. I’ll keep on blogging here, but anything with a tone of reportage is likely to end up over there.
The first post for the new column is today – read about my new job over there now.
Filed under: Webmink | Tagged: ComputerWorldUK, ForgeRock | 5 Comments »
♫ I’ll Still Be Using My Voice
Posted on May 9, 2010 by Simon Phipps
In the best traditions of both british music and democracy, Thea Gilmore wrote a song to celebrate the election. Some people – politicians in particular – seem to think that the election is the chance for British citizens to express their views. We then hear ridiculous statements about how “the electorate has voted clearly to…” {demand tax cuts | oppose health care reform | say no to proprortional representation | demand electoral reform|…} from people with the predictive chops of a fairground fortune teller.
Rubbish. I voted for a representative. I wanted to be represented. To do that requires constant consultation. An election doesn’t have enough bits to encode everything I want to say to my representatives. So I’ll still be using my voice.
Filed under: Issues, Music | Tagged: Thea Gilmore, YouTube | Comments Off on ♫ I’ll Still Be Using My Voice
✍ Changes, Personal and General
Posted on May 8, 2010 by Simon Phipps
I’m sitting at Heathrow Airport waiting for my flight to the US, volcano permitting, reflecting on the week.
It’s been a busy week on multiple levels. Last weekend I was up in Liverpool at OggCamp, where the photo to the right was taken after my keynote address – one of the delegates had brought a full picnic basket and we sat eating cake and drinking Pimms on the steps in the centre of the city.
OggCamp was a great event, full of energy, enthusiasm and optimism (which I almost felt sad to be damping with my pessimistic views on the future of our freedoms). An unconference created on-the-spot by the attendees,, it was well worth the trip to Liverpool (despite the Millwall “fans” on the train home). I’d recommend attending next year.
Following OggCamp I went abroad for the start of the week, spending an intense three days with some really great people talking about a very exciting set of plans and ideas we share. I’ll be announcing full details on Monday when I’ll have two pieces of news I find tremendous.
The week ended with the general election in the UK. No political party has overall control in Parliament and I view that as the best outcome from a bad set of options. The politicians have the chance to create consensus-driven minority-led government, if they choose to set their egos and power-lusts aside. Drawing together the views of many individuals is exactly what’s needed to deal with the hard problems that face us – participating in a highly-meshed global economy, providing security in a connected society without eliminating privacy and rights, conducting politics in a diverse and rapidly changing society.
For those sorts of problems, we need people who understand the connected society first-hand rather than from the dinner tables of the powerful. I think that a Parliament where respect for the views of many is an essential predicate for progress is actually what we need, rather than the hollow bluster we heard from the political parties.
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☞ Unexpected Influences
Posted on May 7, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Andrew Sullivan points to a fascinating article on Asperger’s. The role of Asperger’s Syndrome in the technology industry is reasonably obvious to many of us, but is rarely mentioned directly. The role of “the other normal” in shaping today’s society is far stronger than is generally acknowledged. The computer industry depends heavily on people with the focussed brilliance that comes from Asperger’s, and it’s high time we learned to consider it in a balanced and honest way.
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It’s common to assume that Russia or China must be the source of most spam, but it continues to be the dubious distinction of the United States to saturate the world’s in-boxes with detritus. If they’d put as much effort into stemming spamming and scamming as thay have into getting us all to sell our rights down the river at ACTA we’d all be in much better shape.
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I need to check in with my Brazilian friends, but this looks very positive. Removing someone’s internet liberty is something very serious in an age when so much commerce and democracy is conducted over the internet, and it’s good that a court has to be involved before it can happen.
Filed under: Links | 1 Comment »
☞ Sublime, Ridiculous: You Choose
Posted on May 6, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Use this handy and simple web page to get a full list of the stuff Facebook is making public about you.
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Good (if slightly hyperbolic) slogan.
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The first credible explanation for the war on water bottles at our airports.
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☞ Big Wins
Posted on May 1, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Given the warnings from Steve Jobs about the gathering attack on open source, this has the feeling of the first surge against Helms Deep, but it's still gratifying to see red hat beat Acacia in this way. May there be much, much more of this. And let's hope the US Supreme Court decides against software patents in the Bilski decision…
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They are using the EUPL by preference and allowing GPL et al by implication. Huge news, and a sign of a trend that will sweep europe as each country sees the value of ending the stranglehold of the big softwrae companies and the SIs.
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Wild Webmink 