Freedom Dreams

Okay, so we had another ADFA meeting today, although it wasn’t much of a meeting. We’re at a point know where its no point starting any campaigns since the end of the school year is so fast approaching. Annoying thing is, we’ve not really achieved much, other than a few firefox downloads and the early victory of the trial of debian pcs. But, hey, I guess its just a bad time of the year to be starting, and hopefully we can get going again in September with full force, and do something big for Software Freedom Day.

Another big bombshell was to hear that lugradio is going to stop podcasting. omg omg, how can they? those guys are so great and the show isn’t getting old at all (imo). Well, on the upside, lugradio live should be great, and will hopefully kick of a couple of new podcasts, one teenlug are planning and one me and Joe are thinking of doing.

Sooo… watch this space.

So, yesterday I finally installed gnewsense on my two machines. It was doing some weird stuff, and I didn’t know why, so I was going to write an irate blog post. However, I now know what was going on, but it brings me to the same conclusion – Gnewsense is not a viable alternative for most people.

So, I install it on both of these machines. Well, on one machine ethernet didn’t work, but I had tested it with the livecd and expected this.  The wireless card on my other machine also required firmware, but it worked out of the box with gnewsense. Before we all give gnewsense a pat on the back for having hardware support, let my explain what happened when I installed updates – both the wireless and the sound stopped working. A package had been removed, since it contained firmware – now this makes sense, and is the way gnewsense works in order to fuffill its goal, but it means two things:

1. The gnewsense deltah-h cd I was using contained the non-free software required by my graphics card. Yes, let me say that again the gnewsense cd contains propreitary software.
2. Regreesions are happening, quite major ones where sound or 3D stops working for many or all people, which is just not something most people will accept, without caring an awful lot about the ethical issues. Not only this, but if someone asks why some of these regreesions happened, you must tell them: sorry, we lied to you – gnewsense wasn’t actually all free software, so we had to remove the bits that weren’t.
   Now, I think most of the people who are ready to use gnewsense will understand the technical difficulty in separating out all propreitary software – but for new GNU/Linux users it will just sound highly hypocrytical, and make gnewsense seem even more pointless than they already though it was.

Now, there was something that rms said in his talk at manchester about people being cowards if they don’t use 100% free software. These are words that I’ve thought about a few times – he is calling 99.99% of the population cowards. But, then again, it is in Stallman’s nature to say such things. His point is partially valid, IMHO, but it is more laziness than cowardice.

We should be trying to introduce people to free software by starting off with gnewsense, as someone on irc said – it is a journey. Think about it – fair trade and free range groups concentrate on getting people to buy increasing ammounts of ethical food, rather than saying that people should switch 100% straight away.  We need to first show people firefox, then openoffice, then ubuntu, then gnewsense.

So, yes, the message of this blog is that giving out gnewsense cds to windows users will just give them a perception of a technically inadequate and hypocritical system. Far better to give them ubutnu cds, explain its weaknesses to them, and let them realise the need for gnewsense themselves.

I just bought an old system from my friend for a small fee. Its not all that powerful, with only 256MB of ram, but thats twice as much as the pc that was in my room previously. (We do have a much more powerful family pc though).

Now, one great thing about free software is that it will run on much slower machines than propreitary software will. I could actually run compiz on this machine, but it slows everything else up – to get windows aero in a similar state you would need a machine several times more powerful.

Frustratingly, the machine is not as fast as I thought it would be. Perhaps I don’t have enough swap, or perhaps its the many services that run with (x)ubuntu (i had debian with xfce on my even older machine).

However, the thing that really got me thinking was this – how does free software’s ability to run on older hardware relate to Moore’s Law? Gradually the free software most people use regularly is requiring more memory (look at how memory hungry firefox and openoffice are). The ubuntu live cd for example wants >384MB to run, and I think there was controversy a while ago about fredora upping their requirements.

So, we know that the mainstream free software distributions is gradually requiring more powerful hardware, which is not really such a bad thing, since more poweful hardware is becoming more and more affordable (Moore’s law), and free software distros don’t require the expensive specs that vista does to run decently.

This brings me to my question, is the rate at which free software “slows” (for want of a better word), the same as the rate at which propreitary software slows, and at which hardware speeds up (albeit with a certain offset)..
OR is free software slowing at at a lesser rate, which would mean that the gap between the “midrange pc” and what gnu/linux needs to run well growing. Surely the conclusion of this would be that those who run free software would only need a pc ten times less powerful than the affordable midrange pc.

Since this would be such a startling and dangerous (for the hardware industry) thing, I presume it would be the first – same rate but with an offset. After all, it turns out that our needs do grow – 640k wasn’t enough for anybody.

Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Heres an interesting thing that has croppped up a couple of times recently. Are there times when it is necessary for bad things to happen to have good in the long run. And if good is achieved through bad, how should we react to that? I guess it is kind of like the “room has to get messier to get fully tidy” paradox.

The first was with Alice (hopefully you’ll retaliate in the comments ). I was discussing how opressive our government actually was. She replied by stating the fact taht we are much better off than other places, such as China and Zimbabwe, which are both poor and oppresive. However, I pointed out that these countries had got to this point due to the immoral actings of our government upon them. The reply? You should be grateful for all of the good things that have been gained for you by war and oppression – wealth, womens rights (brought about by WWII) etc.

The second time was discussing Bill Gates and charity with someone. Although they did not bring the “bad for good” point themselves, it occured to me. After all, Bill Gates has given a lot of money to charity, yet this money has been earned by subjugating users in developed countries, and increaingly, developing countries.
One of the thing I was wondering was has Bill Gates caused net good or net bad for society (in my opinion of course). I think his contribution to computing has been undoubtably negative, due to all the use restriction. However, he has given a lot of money to geniune charity (work for combatting AIDS etc.) – but, this money has more or less exclusively been owned through taking away the freedom of computing users. Since the money has been earned this way, how can he have possibly done net good when only a fraciton of this money has been spent on charity?

I don’t think I can ever tell for sure wether the forces in either case were for net good or net bad. However, the question remains, how do I reaact to the fact that theese things have happened. As Alice points out, many of my 1st world priveleges are due to this kind of thing. But what if I was given the choice now? – if Bill Gates offered money to a charity group I ran? If there wwere no strings attached I think I would accept it. Seeing as the bad money already exists we might as well use it for something good. However, we should not be proud of the way that this money was created (as Alice seemed to be saying we should, perhaps she might clarify in the comments).

So, in the case of the Uk’s richness from force against other countries, the only remaining question is – could we have got to the point we are at now, in this amount of time, without the “bad for good” happening? Well, one of ALice’s points was that the UK has a lot of power in the global scene – we only got this through force, the UK does not have enough lands to get that much power through exports. And, in this case, I agree, the UK would not have as much power, because it should not! The UK population only makes up 1% of the world, so it shouldn’t have 10% of the power.
Also, our quality of life would probably be just as good by this point, due to money being invested in sensible ways, rahter than being used to fund agression.
Then, the question remainds, what about socially? Would we have womens rights without the war etc. This is a question I ifnd I can not answer. After all, not having agreesion means not restricting women (or slaves from African countries), in the ways that we so celebrate getting out of. So, I don’t really know. I really don’t know.

I am confused – the whole “bad for good” paradox is part of a wider issue: do we need to restrict peoples freedoms (in the way governemnt was) to ensure the freedoms of others. I really don’t know. I used to like the idea of democratic government and the welfare starte – it gave the best for all people. But, the ideal of voluntaryism sounds even better, just a bit too good to be true. I really don’t know – I really want New Hampshire to sucessfully become anarchist, just so I can see how well it really works.

Which just brings me to a little side note – am I close minded? A lot of what I say is manipulated (not malicously of course), by a particular group of people – free software advocates, especially those in #libervis on freenode, who have also made me rethink governemnt. Am I brainwashing myself, or just unbrainwashing myself? As I said above, I really do not know.

ADFA update: We managed to persuade quite a few people to download firefox 3. Yay for the 8 million.

Anyway, something else that came up when discussing ADFA with people was the school blacklist (she thought free software wasn’t real freedom since it followed the blacklist). Now, from the start ADFA has been very clear that it doesn’t have a major problem with the school blacklist.

Forced censorhip is a problem – computer owners should have control over what they can and can’t visit. But, in the case of school, it is schools PCs, so it is up to them to have control. People have full access to the internet at home, and it is obvious that the school is not attempting political censorship. All the most important political sites are allowed – human rights grouops, wikileaks, wikipedia etc.

Actually, an EFF site was blocked at one point, but that was accident. This brings me onto the main point of this blog – do corporate firewalls work? What is their purpose? to stop people from doing stuff that is not related to their work? A reasonable thing to do I would expect.

However, my thoughts are this – the firewall undoubtabley causes hinderance to actual work. Many sites are blocked that could be useful, youtube. I have actually seen a teacher get rather annoyed at the fact thta he could not show a youtube video. Yes, there is a system to act for stuff to be unblocked, but that takes time. No use if you want a page for your research for that lesson.

Then, there are the particular annoying things of our school firewall. Firstly, blogs are blocked simply for being Journals and Blogs. Surely many blogs will contain useful information about modern culture and technology and should not be mass blocked like this.
Secondly there is the NEW URL block. ANy url the system has not seen before will be temporarily blocked, until it is moderated. This is S T U P I D. Guilty until proven innocent. Again, it is only supposed to be temporary (sometimes refresh thrice and it works, sometimes wait an hour), but it is actually a considerable ammount of time when looking for that piece of information you want. Moreover, it looks the same as the other block messages, so people don’t realise it just hasn’t been proven innocent yet. Couple this with increased New Url failures from network slowness, and you have one big shipment of inconvenience.

And to what end? Can you ever stop people doing what they are not supposed to? It is still relatively easy to find games, videos, chat and proxys – the school has limited manpower and can not control all traffic! If anything, the sense of battle against what is blocked makes people more likely to find time-wasteful sites that they can access.

So, my question is, if the blacklist to be lifted, what problems would you have? Well, an imidiate transition would cause problems, because of the spirit of war created by having it there in the first place. But what if it was done gradually? (Perhaps start with getting rid of the stupid NewUrl rule) Time wasting in lessons would not really be any easier, and teacher would be their to stop it anyway. And if not teacher is supervising? – well, they should be! And if they don’t, even with the balcklist, people will find ways to waste time.

So, there you have it, I no longer see the point of blacklists at all. Even though in this case I do not find it unethical, i do find it a stupid pain in the derrière.

I have just got back from the first ADFA meeting. Things didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped. Surprisingly the head of sixth form seemed quite open to the idea, and when I mentioned free software, he asked if that was like Mozilla Firefox (yay, for firefox’s marketing). I was worried that he would have preconceptions due to something I did concerning the school website a few months ago.

However, I found that the place that I faced discrimination was with my peers. Fewer people turned up than I expected – only five – which would in itself be okay for a first meeting, but according to a friend, people are scared of joining the group, as they think it is somehow related to my creations of improper websites. It is not in the slightest!

How am I to overcome this prejudice? I wonder if I simply say tell them its not related, will I sound stupid and will they believe me? I think the fact that me and the IT technician have dual booted pcs without the knowledge of the teachers doesn’t help – people think we are up to no good with them. Maybe I should make a sign to say what they are, and what the importance is.

The meeting itself went reasonably well – five people were there, Joe, Andy, Matthew, Wallaa and myself. I briefly explained what digital freedom was about – although, I asked Wallaa if my explanations were good, and she said bluntly, No. In the same vein, I asked what people thought of the website and she said it had too much information on one page. I guess that is true – I have tried to stop it from getting too long, but obviously not enough – creating a short, snappy homepage would be a great place to start making the site more friendly.

One of the main things we talked about was the apathy problem – people don’t care about computers, or at worse try to get away from them. Apparently, apathy is a general problem, Wallaa is having trouble getting people to join the charity committee, so I think ADFA is getting double helpings. We really need to work out how to make it matter people; how to get people interested. Maybe the five debians pcs, plus a notice, are a good way to do it. Maybe I need to talk to more teachers about it, overcome the we-might-get-in-trouble-like-he-did-with-that-website prejudice by showing beyond doubt that ADFA is all allowed.

So, where do I take ADFA from here? Well I think that poster about the debian pcs is a good idea (one I only thought of whilst writing this blogpost), and tomorrow is Firefox Download Day – perhaps I can get a few people to try firefox and set a world record at the same time.

So, welcome to my new blog. I have a nice new layout and everything. And my own domain name, with some very nice hosting (which i have also moved adfa, with my archive of stuff to follow).

It should also be the proper start of ADFA, with our first meeting on Monday (hopefully the head of our sixthform doesn’t object, I haven’t spoke to him about it yet ). Hopefully we’ll have some people there, especially since one of my friends has been sending out e-mails to people, asking them to look at the website. I think that could probably do with a bit of a rewrite – it needs to be as understandable to new people as possible, but I’m not a good judge of that, since I know it all so well.

I would also hope for this to be a new beginning in general. I want to do more for software liberty, and other parts of the fight for freedom. I don’t feel so great about that, since I just installed Windows XP (the second time I ever have done) albeit in a VM. Pesky software – in this case Sibelius. My brother “needs” it for school, it doesn’t work in Windows proper, and at least this way the host OS is relatively free. Yes, I know there are alternatives, but as far as I know, none of them provide support for Sibelius’ file format. Although, I don’t know for sure.

Maybe that is something to look at. Maybe I should do something about those apps that I find people need, but there is no free software one that meets their needs. There seem to be a few that people use at school – omnigraph and Sibelius. I know there are similar free software programs, but they don’t quite compare. Since some stuff has already been done, this effort should be within my abilities, especially the omnigraph one.

So yeah, I should be starting some interesting stuff, and hopefully I’ll get results. I really need to look through some of my old blog posts and notes to make a full list.

I’m fed up. Now, I originally planned to avoid blogs about fed-up-ness, but this is for interesting reasons. Firstly, the first time fed-up-ness. GParted is being stupid. Not only is it taking an age, but its doing steps it doesn’t need to. I thought it picked the shortest way of getting to the new configuration, but obviously not. It is literally taking hours. Partly my stupid fault, partly inevitable hard-drive slowness.

Then theres the long term fed-up-ness. I’m feeling a bit disheartened about my fight for freedom, and have been doing for a bit. It seems so difficult, especially considering all the political fighting within the free software movement. Being back at school today did alleviate my despair – we have debian, yay! (only on a few pcs, and it was a bit broke, but still, a step in the right direction).

However, a couple of comments I had today are now coming back to haunt me. First is the reminder that I’m going to have a lot of ignorant people jeering at me. This was in the form of a “Don’t install Lenox [sic] on it” comment as I helped a teacher with a smart board. I’ve always known I’d have this problem, and I’ll just have to deal with it. That kind of people make fun of me anyway, so I have nothing to refuse in that respect.

Secondly is a brief conversation with one of the more considerate people. As well as the “I love Microsoft” (presumeably just to wind me up), she raised a valid issue – she odes not care about digital freedom so long as she can use msn, the internet and get songs onto her mp3 player.

I need to find a way to make these things matter to people. I know I have said it before (and didn’t follow up, I don’t think) but I’ll write another blog post about that. These issues to affect normal people, its just finding a way to show that. (I guess the mp3 player one is easy – DRM is EVIL)

Finally, I ought to point out, I’ve not got round to doing any of the things in the last blog post, partly because I didn’t feel like it.