I did some work for the local RSL (Returned Services League of Australia) - they house a small military library which at the time was maintained by a part time librarian on maternity leave. She needed my help with a migration because Koha apparently worked better on a linux platform. Said it was the best software she had used, and that it has an excellent rep in librarian circles. The only other library software I'd previously helped maintain was Dynix, and that used to get plenty of eyerolls from the libarians.
Leadership should be about expecting great things from the electorate - Mandela expected his nation to come together despite human nature, and examples from other nations failures. I believe subsequent problems are largely due to lesser leadership - small thinking and failure to expect much of the electorate.
People often live up to expectations, positive or negative... although there's a negative bais because it's harder going uphill than down. I think negative caracatures get people off side, and help them confirm your worst expectations.
Apparently this statement is from one of Mandelas trials - it's an interesting read. Mandela says although he engaged in violence he was never a terrorist. Yes, the man was defending himself in court, but I had difficulty even parsing the argment. After it sunk in I was ashamed, and shocked/afraid at my own malleability - of course terrorism isn't the catchall defined in the media. The statement follows:
"I do not deny that I planned sabotage. We believed violence by the African people had become inevitable. [T]here would be outbreaks of terrorism. Without violence there would be no way open to the African people to suceed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy.
[Umkhonto] volunteers were not, and are not, the soldiers of a black army pledge to fight a Civil War against the whites.
50 years of nonviolence had brought the African people nothing our followers were beginning to lose confidence in this policy and were developing disturbing ideas of terrorism.
As violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence
[In mid-1961] the ANC was prepared to depart from its 50 year old policy of nonviolence to this extent that it would no longer disapprove of properly controlled violence.
I say 'properly controlled violence' because I made it clear that I would at all times subject it to the political guidance of the ANC.
Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first method and to exhaust it before taking any other decision. Sabotage Offered the best hope for future race relations."
It's a trivial problem solved long ago - you report what's happening, just not specifically who it's happening to. Ubiqitous surveilance is only a problem in that it shouldn't be happening in the first place. This idea that "the people" shouldn't know the real truth, and that a special vanguard should control society isn't new either. The communist movement, the islamist movement (through their founding father Sayyid Qutb) and interestingly enough the neo-conservative movement (specifically their founding philosopher Leo Strauss) expouse this view. It's repugnant and toxic to democracy. Unfortunately the traditional guardians of wide enfranchisement (ie. the political left) seem to have bought into this idea too. It seems to me like the leadership of the western world doesn't believe in democracy anymore.
Part of the value of ubiquitous surveilance is character assassination, and a key part of that vulnerability is in our own oversimplified thinking. Yes, Assange is a limelight whore, but perhaps he's making the best use of that failing. Nelson Mandela was at one time a terrorist expousing violence, could have a quick temper and had a "colourful" personal life. Reagan and Thatcher painted him as a terrorist for years before the saint image became dominant - but BOTH these images are oversimplifications. We MUST work on this "oversimplification" vulnerability in ourselves and those around us even if it seems an impossible task.
Jeri Ellsworth is taking an interesting device to manufacturing in the very near future. It does both VR and AR... and uses quite a novel approach. It can both project images into the real world, or reflect them back into the eye. She raised over 1M (their kickstarter aimed for $600,000). Apparently they've already demoed it at a couple of maker faires and people lined up for hours to give it a try... considering how yawn-worthy most 3d solutions are, that's quite a rap.
I know someone who works for an Australian company. They put in a tender for part of the NBN project but IBM won the contract at almost twice the price. IBM then subcontracted the work back to the Australian company. It's strange - Australians seem to underestimate the abilities of their own technical community, and as slaves to community perception Australian governments are particularly bad for this bias. It seems to be part of the national psyche that we're only about agriculture and mining, and local tech comes a poor second to overseas offerings. It's no wonder we're judged an easy mark and regularly overcharged for software.
Well, people are beginning to think about actual political action. OMFG!!! Those ACLU people and other freedom weirdos might get actual support if someone doesn't take charge of the narative.
Well, among my friends it has gone from seven users to one - though granted, perhaps my corner of the world is unrepresentative. Calling Mint "Ubuntu" is like calling the USA "British".
This is an honest question (I don't know much about US law) - are there any other mechanisms other than impeachment? If not, then there are only two actions left for citizens in the US, and indeed across the world... #1 is political, and #2? well, noone wants that. Political action can be boring and unpleasant, but if ever there's a time it's now... because YEARS worth of sweat are required. There are already people doing this work but they are too few. Another honest question - who are these people, and how can the average Slashdot denizen help?
Our leaders in the west might as well have organised drops of militant recruiting leaflets and saved billions while achieving similar ends - it's shameful. If any militants have had their beliefs challenged it has been through citizens more-or-less working against government policy, and against western militarism. Take for instance Maajid Nawaz... he was rescued by Amnesty International from jail in Egypt despite them knowing he considered them his enemies. Maajid is now risking his life arguing against Islamism rather than risking his life recruiting for it. That raises another issue - these guys are brave idealistic defenders of their community who would be an asset to any nation had they not been twisted by toxic radical ideology. Unfortunately the toxic radical ideology on our side has made everything so much worse - it has been the perfect book-end to prop up an ideology which was not widely supported just after 9/11 in any case.
There was an ABC (Australia) series on several drugs some time ago, and the existing evidence (at least back then) was pretty good regarding nicotine. The ABC science unit are generally decent, and I'd trust them to filter out propaganda swinging either way, so I wanted to look into this more even though I've never been a smoker.
I haven't seen StorageReview mentioned. These guys were the first I'd seen who seemed to have a real clue about storage eg. they concentrated on latency rather than sequential transfer back in the day - latency is a much more interesting metric for most use cases. I don't follow their reviews as religiously as I used to, but they are the first guys I turn to when something new happens in storage technology.
I've heard it cynically said that this happened because it allows western oil companies wanted better deals on offshore oil fields - there was certainly a public outcry when the Howard government wanted to practically shove East Timor off the fields very soon after they became a nation. The boundaries are disputed, and I'd imagine negotiating with East Timor as a separate entity is much easier than with Indonesia.
This stuff is overdue in smaller shops - stay with me on this for a second. The smaller guys need to become more efficient and secure, and automation really helps. Potentially the small end could benefit MORE from automation than the big guys already have - automation is a much more disciplined and useful form of sharing information. Docs are often incorrect or incomplete - automation imposes discipline, and also allows the author to benefit from the end result. Time savings for everyone are often huge.
I'm regularly on #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (IRC) along with a few others who are working towards this kind of thing (using the Munich software as a base). Anyone else wanting to join us is welcome.
Really. In my part of the world the government which went hardest for the free market and small government was New Zealand in the 80's. It was called Rogernomics, named after Reaganomics... except Roger Douglas actually did reduce the deficit unlike Reagan (by drastically cutting government services of course). How did it work out? Well, when the following administration continued largely the same policies under Ruth Richardson it was known as "Ruthenasia". Crime, poverty and unemployment kept increasing. My cousins and a significant portion of the population left the country. My country (Australia) tightened our mutually generous immigration arrangement with NZ to stem the tide.
Sooo... you're comparing a state actor with a bunch of terrorists who flew into buildings. The Japanese had to lose a war for years to get that desperate, and even then they had vastly more resources than those (late) terrorists. In 2001 how much popular support did the terrorists have? If I remember the almost universal condemnation from the muslim world I'd say "bugger all"... those terrorists had already worn out their welcome perpetrating violence in home societies. Ten years later and their fortunes have completely reversed - they're popular, the chances of glorious martyrdom are high, and Anti-US feeling is growing even in Europe and Asia. I wonder how that happened.
If the skills aren't there to do this and/or your users don't have the support... well, don't go there. Still, Linux is already in schools (at the very least in large printers, SANs and other devices, not to mention cloud stuff) so things are moving that way even if it gets outsourced from under school I.T.
I've played a little with GOsa and its non-Munich fork FusionDirectory over the years which I believe is a major part of the infrastructure of this project. GOsa is the graphical front-end of the LDAP directory and extra RPC glue. Supported services are many, though personally I've used it to manage Samba, Cyrus IMAP, Postfix, SOGo (groupware), DNS, DHCP, rsyslog, Squid, OS installation via OPSI (for windows) and FAI (for Linux - though I don't have this bit working satisfactorally yet). There are many more plugins I've never touched. Has anyone else played with it? A community outside of Europe needs to be build around this stuff so that people can get some support - it has all the setup pain of your average enterprise software. I hang out in #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (ie. IRC chat), and I believe there is a #GOsa also. These channels keep to European working hours usually (which makes life difficult for an Australian like me).
I don't know which community you belonged to but flamewars have happened from the beginning eg. Linus vs Tanenbaum, and before Linux there was GNU. You WANT these flamewars to happen because these guys DO things, especially to prove a point. If this issue proves to be a genuine security concern in some cases then expect the argument to end with an improvement of the software you use.
As soon as law enforcement ceases to be difficult and frustrating job requiring dedication and patience the nature of police power changes. The punks and sociopaths don't get weeded, and that's just as bad for the good cops as it is for the rest of society. I've seen this happen in my home town - police murders, theft, blackmail... never proven, though it was suspected the police station was firebombed to destroy evidence after an investigation . My entire state (Queensland, Australia) was notorious for corruption - in the 80's after a Royal Commission even the police commissioner was charged as was at least one judge and members of government. Today history seems to be repeating... there are laws being enacted (bikers are our bogieman) that limit freedom of association. These are an echo (even the bogieman is the same) from the beginning of the previous period of corruption. I really don't feel this will end well.
Slashdot Mirror
...surprised that wasn't mentioned in the story.
I did some work for the local RSL (Returned Services League of Australia) - they house a small military library which at the time was maintained by a part time librarian on maternity leave. She needed my help with a migration because Koha apparently worked better on a linux platform. Said it was the best software she had used, and that it has an excellent rep in librarian circles. The only other library software I'd previously helped maintain was Dynix, and that used to get plenty of eyerolls from the libarians.
Leadership should be about expecting great things from the electorate - Mandela expected his nation to come together despite human nature, and examples from other nations failures. I believe subsequent problems are largely due to lesser leadership - small thinking and failure to expect much of the electorate.
People often live up to expectations, positive or negative... although there's a negative bais because it's harder going uphill than down. I think negative caracatures get people off side, and help them confirm your worst expectations.
Apparently this statement is from one of Mandelas trials - it's an interesting read. Mandela says although he engaged in violence he was never a terrorist. Yes, the man was defending himself in court, but I had difficulty even parsing the argment. After it sunk in I was ashamed, and shocked/afraid at my own malleability - of course terrorism isn't the catchall defined in the media. The statement follows :
"I do not deny that I planned sabotage. We believed violence by the African people had become inevitable. [T]here would be outbreaks of terrorism. Without violence there would be no way open to the African people to suceed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy.
[Umkhonto] volunteers were not, and are not, the soldiers of a black army pledge to fight a Civil War against the whites.
50 years of nonviolence had brought the African people nothing our followers were beginning to lose confidence in this policy and were developing disturbing ideas of terrorism.
As violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence
[In mid-1961] the ANC was prepared to depart from its 50 year old policy of nonviolence to this extent that it would no longer disapprove of properly controlled violence.
I say 'properly controlled violence' because I made it clear that I would at all times subject it to the political guidance of the ANC.
Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first method and to exhaust it before taking any other decision. Sabotage Offered the best hope for future race relations."
It's a trivial problem solved long ago - you report what's happening, just not specifically who it's happening to. Ubiqitous surveilance is only a problem in that it shouldn't be happening in the first place. This idea that "the people" shouldn't know the real truth, and that a special vanguard should control society isn't new either. The communist movement, the islamist movement (through their founding father Sayyid Qutb) and interestingly enough the neo-conservative movement (specifically their founding philosopher Leo Strauss) expouse this view. It's repugnant and toxic to democracy. Unfortunately the traditional guardians of wide enfranchisement (ie. the political left) seem to have bought into this idea too. It seems to me like the leadership of the western world doesn't believe in democracy anymore.
Part of the value of ubiquitous surveilance is character assassination, and a key part of that vulnerability is in our own oversimplified thinking. Yes, Assange is a limelight whore, but perhaps he's making the best use of that failing. Nelson Mandela was at one time a terrorist expousing violence, could have a quick temper and had a "colourful" personal life. Reagan and Thatcher painted him as a terrorist for years before the saint image became dominant - but BOTH these images are oversimplifications. We MUST work on this "oversimplification" vulnerability in ourselves and those around us even if it seems an impossible task.
Jeri Ellsworth is taking an interesting device to manufacturing in the very near future. It does both VR and AR... and uses quite a novel approach. It can both project images into the real world, or reflect them back into the eye. She raised over 1M (their kickstarter aimed for $600,000). Apparently they've already demoed it at a couple of maker faires and people lined up for hours to give it a try... considering how yawn-worthy most 3d solutions are, that's quite a rap.
I know someone who works for an Australian company. They put in a tender for part of the NBN project but IBM won the contract at almost twice the price. IBM then subcontracted the work back to the Australian company. It's strange - Australians seem to underestimate the abilities of their own technical community, and as slaves to community perception Australian governments are particularly bad for this bias. It seems to be part of the national psyche that we're only about agriculture and mining, and local tech comes a poor second to overseas offerings. It's no wonder we're judged an easy mark and regularly overcharged for software.
After abusing his control of Australian media Murdoch got what he wanted - no NBN to challenge his cable interests.
Well, people are beginning to think about actual political action. OMFG!!! Those ACLU people and other freedom weirdos might get actual support if someone doesn't take charge of the narative.
Well, among my friends it has gone from seven users to one - though granted, perhaps my corner of the world is unrepresentative. Calling Mint "Ubuntu" is like calling the USA "British".
This is an honest question (I don't know much about US law) - are there any other mechanisms other than impeachment? If not, then there are only two actions left for citizens in the US, and indeed across the world... #1 is political, and #2? well, noone wants that. Political action can be boring and unpleasant, but if ever there's a time it's now... because YEARS worth of sweat are required. There are already people doing this work but they are too few. Another honest question - who are these people, and how can the average Slashdot denizen help?
Our leaders in the west might as well have organised drops of militant recruiting leaflets and saved billions while achieving similar ends - it's shameful. If any militants have had their beliefs challenged it has been through citizens more-or-less working against government policy, and against western militarism. Take for instance Maajid Nawaz... he was rescued by Amnesty International from jail in Egypt despite them knowing he considered them his enemies. Maajid is now risking his life arguing against Islamism rather than risking his life recruiting for it. That raises another issue - these guys are brave idealistic defenders of their community who would be an asset to any nation had they not been twisted by toxic radical ideology. Unfortunately the toxic radical ideology on our side has made everything so much worse - it has been the perfect book-end to prop up an ideology which was not widely supported just after 9/11 in any case.
There was an ABC (Australia) series on several drugs some time ago, and the existing evidence (at least back then) was pretty good regarding nicotine. The ABC science unit are generally decent, and I'd trust them to filter out propaganda swinging either way, so I wanted to look into this more even though I've never been a smoker.
I haven't seen StorageReview mentioned. These guys were the first I'd seen who seemed to have a real clue about storage eg. they concentrated on latency rather than sequential transfer back in the day - latency is a much more interesting metric for most use cases. I don't follow their reviews as religiously as I used to, but they are the first guys I turn to when something new happens in storage technology.
I've heard it cynically said that this happened because it allows western oil companies wanted better deals on offshore oil fields - there was certainly a public outcry when the Howard government wanted to practically shove East Timor off the fields very soon after they became a nation. The boundaries are disputed, and I'd imagine negotiating with East Timor as a separate entity is much easier than with Indonesia.
This stuff is overdue in smaller shops - stay with me on this for a second. The smaller guys need to become more efficient and secure, and automation really helps. Potentially the small end could benefit MORE from automation than the big guys already have - automation is a much more disciplined and useful form of sharing information. Docs are often incorrect or incomplete - automation imposes discipline, and also allows the author to benefit from the end result. Time savings for everyone are often huge.
I'm regularly on #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (IRC) along with a few others who are working towards this kind of thing (using the Munich software as a base). Anyone else wanting to join us is welcome.
The vengence of the llama. I think I know why he lost his job.
Really. In my part of the world the government which went hardest for the free market and small government was New Zealand in the 80's. It was called Rogernomics, named after Reaganomics... except Roger Douglas actually did reduce the deficit unlike Reagan (by drastically cutting government services of course). How did it work out? Well, when the following administration continued largely the same policies under Ruth Richardson it was known as "Ruthenasia". Crime, poverty and unemployment kept increasing. My cousins and a significant portion of the population left the country. My country (Australia) tightened our mutually generous immigration arrangement with NZ to stem the tide.
Sooo... you're comparing a state actor with a bunch of terrorists who flew into buildings. The Japanese had to lose a war for years to get that desperate, and even then they had vastly more resources than those (late) terrorists. In 2001 how much popular support did the terrorists have? If I remember the almost universal condemnation from the muslim world I'd say "bugger all"... those terrorists had already worn out their welcome perpetrating violence in home societies. Ten years later and their fortunes have completely reversed - they're popular, the chances of glorious martyrdom are high, and Anti-US feeling is growing even in Europe and Asia. I wonder how that happened.
If the skills aren't there to do this and/or your users don't have the support... well, don't go there. Still, Linux is already in schools (at the very least in large printers, SANs and other devices, not to mention cloud stuff) so things are moving that way even if it gets outsourced from under school I.T.
I've played a little with GOsa and its non-Munich fork FusionDirectory over the years which I believe is a major part of the infrastructure of this project. GOsa is the graphical front-end of the LDAP directory and extra RPC glue. Supported services are many, though personally I've used it to manage Samba, Cyrus IMAP, Postfix, SOGo (groupware), DNS, DHCP, rsyslog, Squid, OS installation via OPSI (for windows) and FAI (for Linux - though I don't have this bit working satisfactorally yet). There are many more plugins I've never touched. Has anyone else played with it? A community outside of Europe needs to be build around this stuff so that people can get some support - it has all the setup pain of your average enterprise software. I hang out in #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (ie. IRC chat), and I believe there is a #GOsa also. These channels keep to European working hours usually (which makes life difficult for an Australian like me).
I don't know which community you belonged to but flamewars have happened from the beginning eg. Linus vs Tanenbaum, and before Linux there was GNU. You WANT these flamewars to happen because these guys DO things, especially to prove a point. If this issue proves to be a genuine security concern in some cases then expect the argument to end with an improvement of the software you use.
As soon as law enforcement ceases to be difficult and frustrating job requiring dedication and patience the nature of police power changes. The punks and sociopaths don't get weeded, and that's just as bad for the good cops as it is for the rest of society. I've seen this happen in my home town - police murders, theft, blackmail... never proven, though it was suspected the police station was firebombed to destroy evidence after an investigation . My entire state (Queensland, Australia) was notorious for corruption - in the 80's after a Royal Commission even the police commissioner was charged as was at least one judge and members of government. Today history seems to be repeating... there are laws being enacted (bikers are our bogieman) that limit freedom of association. These are an echo (even the bogieman is the same) from the beginning of the previous period of corruption. I really don't feel this will end well.