Thursday, May 26, 2005
Sunday, May 22, 2005
anarchy & open source
Here is a new paper exploring the Open Source / communism-anarchy-whatever stuff we studied in CIS 450 this spring. In Revolution OS (the movie), there was a little debate over whether the FSF (and by dubious extension the entire open source community) was "communist" or what. Of course, this is in many ways a silly & specious argument. Here's a paper that explores the anarchic side of the debate.
Author: Imhorst, Christian
Title: Anarchy and Source Code - What does the Free Software Movement have to do with Anarchism?
Abstract: What does the hacker ethic have to do with anarchism? Why does Richard Stallman, an outstanding personality of the free software movement, described himself as an anarchist? We should not imagine the anarchists of the Free Software Movement to be like the cartoon image: A scruffy looking lunatic, with a crazy glint in his eyes and bristling with weapons. Instead of chaos, Stallman postulates a new form of order for the intellectual property in the terms of the hacker ethic - the access to knowledge should be free, decentralized, anti-bureaucratic and anti-authoritarian.
Author: Imhorst, Christian
Title: Anarchy and Source Code - What does the Free Software Movement have to do with Anarchism?
Abstract: What does the hacker ethic have to do with anarchism? Why does Richard Stallman, an outstanding personality of the free software movement, described himself as an anarchist? We should not imagine the anarchists of the Free Software Movement to be like the cartoon image: A scruffy looking lunatic, with a crazy glint in his eyes and bristling with weapons. Instead of chaos, Stallman postulates a new form of order for the intellectual property in the terms of the hacker ethic - the access to knowledge should be free, decentralized, anti-bureaucratic and anti-authoritarian.
Monday, May 16, 2005
MSR 2005
Well, here I am at the MSR 2005: International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories in St. Louis. Today I went to the Gateway Arch and had dinner with a very interesting man from Kuwait University. In other news, I just now I realized I forgot my toothbrush, so I'm off to purchase one.
Friday, May 13, 2005
a shout out
Hey, ladies. Yeah, you! You know who you are. I *am* blogging this, after all. Thank you again. Swoon!
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
National ID Cards
Here's more on the national ID card thing that just passed the House and Senate with flying colors... but only when buried inside a spending bill that authorizes more funds for Iraq and tsunami relief. This is an editorial by US House Rep Ron Paul, considered a "friend of civil liberties": National ID Cards Won't Stop Terrorism or Illegal Immigration.
What does this have to do with technology you ask? Because the legislation requires that the Department of Homeland Security establish the standards for what IS and IS NOT a valid "license" now, biometrics and other personally identifiable information (PII) with a technology base could be used in the licenses. The one that has people really up-in-arms is the addition of RFID tags.
What does this have to do with technology you ask? Because the legislation requires that the Department of Homeland Security establish the standards for what IS and IS NOT a valid "license" now, biometrics and other personally identifiable information (PII) with a technology base could be used in the licenses. The one that has people really up-in-arms is the addition of RFID tags.
tech & privacy: "Real ID" passes in US Senate
Boing Boing: Real ID passes in US Senate
"President Bush (...) is expected to sign the bill into law this month. Its backers, including the Bush administration, say it's needed to stop illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers' licenses. When the act's mandates take effect in May 2008, Americans will be required to obtain federally approved ID cards with "machine readable technology" that abides by Department of Homeland Security specifications. Anyone without such an ID card will be effectively prohibited from traveling by air or Amtrak, opening a bank account, or entering federal buildings."
"President Bush (...) is expected to sign the bill into law this month. Its backers, including the Bush administration, say it's needed to stop illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers' licenses. When the act's mandates take effect in May 2008, Americans will be required to obtain federally approved ID cards with "machine readable technology" that abides by Department of Homeland Security specifications. Anyone without such an ID card will be effectively prohibited from traveling by air or Amtrak, opening a bank account, or entering federal buildings."
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Privacy: Circuit City Computer Loaded With Woman's Personal Info
TheDenverChannel.com - News - Store's Floor Model Computer Loaded With Woman's Personal Info: "Imagine receiving a phone call from a stranger who knew your most private thoughts, knew what you looked like, knew your Social Security number, and even knew how much you make and where you work.
That happened to a Colorado woman after she took her computer to a major electronics store.
Circuit City employees copied [her] private writings and papers onto a floor model computer then onto a disk. But they never removed Susan's personal files from that floor model computer. A few days later, that computer was sold.
"That evening I got a call from a strange man that I do not know who told me he purchased a desktop floor model computer which contained all of my personal information," Susan said.
That happened to a Colorado woman after she took her computer to a major electronics store.
Circuit City employees copied [her] private writings and papers onto a floor model computer then onto a disk. But they never removed Susan's personal files from that floor model computer. A few days later, that computer was sold.
"That evening I got a call from a strange man that I do not know who told me he purchased a desktop floor model computer which contained all of my personal information," Susan said.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
summer research plans
As the semester winds down, it is time to begin planning for summer research. Anyone who thinks professors don't do anything in the summer is dreaming! Here are my summer plans:
May 17 - present Collaboration Using OSSmole: A repository of FLOSS data and analyses to the Workshop on Mining Software Repositories at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering.
June 23-24 - present 101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom as part of the Second Life symposium at the Games, Learning, and Society conference in Madison, Wisconsin.
August 1-5 - Open Source Convention in Portland, OR. I will be conducting interviews, evangelizing about OSSmole, brainstorming incentive programs to get more developers and researchers interested, getting feedback on how to improve OSSmole, gaining insights into new techniques to use for OSSmole, and hopefully have a birds of the feather session on (a) using open source in academia, and (b) possibilities of "open data repositories" in general.
In between this travel, I will be working on taking OSSmole to the next level - OSSmole version 2, if you will.
May 17 - present Collaboration Using OSSmole: A repository of FLOSS data and analyses to the Workshop on Mining Software Repositories at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering.
June 23-24 - present 101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom as part of the Second Life symposium at the Games, Learning, and Society conference in Madison, Wisconsin.
August 1-5 - Open Source Convention in Portland, OR. I will be conducting interviews, evangelizing about OSSmole, brainstorming incentive programs to get more developers and researchers interested, getting feedback on how to improve OSSmole, gaining insights into new techniques to use for OSSmole, and hopefully have a birds of the feather session on (a) using open source in academia, and (b) possibilities of "open data repositories" in general.
In between this travel, I will be working on taking OSSmole to the next level - OSSmole version 2, if you will.
