Ideas for Codezero native L4 Implemen...

Codezero:
http://www.l4dev.org/doku.php

This next OS needs another layer on top of the UI technology that directly talks to the user. I think that to directly integrate the user into the system, there has to be some kind of mind-mapping interaction with the OS as part of the capabilities that are offered to the user in the UI. Beyond this, the user needs to integrate into the "cloud," which is the rest of society, through the mind mapping, which then becomes minds-mapping. (??)

There is a need for the user to break out of the "client / server" mode, where I see the server as master and the client as slave, a direct extension of the original Information Society that the Jews escaped from: "Let my people go!!" This necessitates one to one connections between devices of this model where the connections are only supported by services but not controlled by them (presumably for money, or "tribute").

Equally important is full support for hardware manufacturers especially with respect to plug-in modules: completing the break from monolithic architecture. Completing this break is what l4 is about. Possibly even going further, a facility could be created to easily convert existing drivers to show manufacturers "good faith" respect to the peripheral market.

In my opinion, the most "excellent" architecture belongs to the "Parrot VM," which unfortunately has stalled, and perhaps needs to fork away from its parentage in Perl towards internal support. In short its programming language resembles CPU architecture in that it does uses registers making it factors more efficient, which of course lends to miniaturization and low power use.

LISP persists as a well-perfected interpreter language, and might make a model for the next system's native management language, though I would use names like "mash-up" or "zing" to describe a language and try to base it on the most accepted and popular interpretations of OO architecture.

I feel if all the necessary architectural aspects of an essential OS are represented, expert voices can implement their architectural ideas so as to finally give the world what it really needs.

Paraphrasing Bahadir Balban:
Codezero is a modern L4 microkernel implementation written in C that targets embedded platforms and aims to implement native OS components. It has a design and API that is similar to existing L4 microkernels.

Two current services: a default pager called MM0 that supports for instance fork, clone, execve, exit, mmap, shm. The second called FS0 and implements the virtual filesystem layer supporting open, close, read, write, lseek, stat, fsync, etc.

It is GPLv3 licensee, and a copyright share agreement option for contributions. On the next few releases there will be a port of the Xynth windowing system. Only that ARM is supported as the first architecture.

Open Letters to Perl and Linux

Both hands technologically tied: Linux and Perl

Adages such as "the more people I meet, the more I like my pets," are humorous and reflect a common feeling. But despite them, most people in the world are very good, but an illusion has been created that that is not true, that most people are bad, and we, meaning most people, have to be suspicious. The reality is that the good, or mentally healthy majority, tend to keep a low profile, so to speak to stay off the radar of those who are predatory.

Update: Since I wrote this yesterday I have received insulting and threatening responses, as well as responses that fit the "acceptable" model of how open software operates (which is actually the problem I am attempting to describe).

No critical inquiry of the open software community is complete without a close look at the open software file system genius and entrepreneur, Hans Reiser, a sadist and a murderer, but the text here went on for too long--so complex is the issue. I will probably include my material about Reiser in my next writing, which will probably be book length--and exceedingly difficult to write as no normal person likes to tear others apart, no matter how damaging those others may be.

Despite the obvious US technology suicide of the 2000s, where nearly all systems development was handed-over to wealthy India, much like manufacturing was handed-over to the dominant culture of China, I was able to secure technology work during 2008. I was enthused to attempt to rekindle my technology career, and I still want to, but my enthusiasm was dampened by two encounters on line, one with a Perl developer working on a Perl application server type project, and a Linux evangelist who, as a coincidence, had insulted the memory of the best-known American boat designer on the day he died.

I wrote both these free software evangelists, the Perl writer hoping to show how Perl's insular nature is defeating its efficacy, and the highly insulting and disrespectful Linux evangelist to admonish him for his uncontrolled disrespect, and to explain to him exactly what his problem is, in a very public way.

I am working on a greater piece based on the problem with the world, a lack of empathy by those in control, from a neurological and evolutionary perspective, and these two interchanges give me an opportunity to blend the world's failing empathy with technological issues in the public domain. I think it is important the the truth be finally told, that free software is essentially no different from for-pay proprietary software, and that the free software community, such as it is, is ultimately doing the world a disservice, and must not only change, but change its people.

Driving and aggression on the highways as a parallel example:
Many, if not most drivers seem like aggressive drivers, but are not, because those are the drivers the rest of us be concerned about take up most of our attention while we are driving. The better drivers tend to lay back, to stay off aggressor's radar, and become invisible. Furthermore, good drivers, as good people, try to stay off aggressors' radar by simply staying off the road, further making road systems the domain of the aggressors. Beyond this, the very nature of the automobile prevents us from having "eye to eye" contract, or emotional communication, so we are prevented from physically empathizing with each other. This further makes the roads beneficial for predatory drivers, simply because we feel isolated and cannot rely on the good nature of others for support against the cruel aspects of those who lack empathy; who, as a result, are predatory. To solve this obvious problem, society as a whole relies on police, but all of us who have been involved in police situations know that the police themselves are predatory, and many are lacking natural empathy -- young children today do not buy the idea that "Mr Policeman is your friend," but see the police as bullies, and emulate them much as they might emulate professional wrestlers to deal with the predatory problems they experience in everyday life. We can see how good people get wrapped up in a cycle of predatory aggression initiated by a morally, or emotionally connective defective, minority. This initiating minority is tiny, but has become so successful through predatory cooperation, it has swelled its ranks, I believe to possibly twenty percent of the population by absorbing those who are not necessarily stable enough fight the misconception that humanity is necessarily bad, and that to succeed in the life, people have to be bad themselves: "good guys finish last."

The vast majority of people I know who discuss this topic with me whole-heatedly agree with this example using driving, as we have discussed it often, and would understand that to isolate aggression on the roads from other environmental experiences we have is bias. The scientific method tells us that we live under a single phenomena of nature, and even religion tells us that we are equal under God and live equally with his single creation. Because this environmental description is correct, the conditions caused by isolation aggression can be no different from other environmental experiences we have, though the exact experience will happen with in the scope of the environment. Specific conditions and results vary only based on the physical conditions we experience, but the basic mapping caused by intractable isolation and rampant aggression is the same everywhere. Technology is no exception, and perhaps the technology community environment, has examples of the most abusive control strategies that are effectively preventing technology from growing, except malignantly. The control strategy is so extreme, and has been so successful in marginalizing "normal" people, that democracy has effectively been eliminated from the Information Society since 2000, and there have been no actual social break-throughs or substantial contributions by technology for nearly a decade. The Internet is effectively as broken as Television: 500 channels, and nothing on.

I think it is a mistake to wander off into a cloud of speculation as to exactly what is causing the new Information Society to be so un-benefical, or to even try to define the problem. The problem has been well-discussed from both psychological and technological perspectives without resolution because the persons responsible for the problems, when they condescend to respond, throw out an immense defense of contradictory yet connected rationalizations that don't so much hide the problem, but swamp inquiry in a cesspool of subtle or not so subtle insults that create frustration and deliberately trigger momentary losses of self-respect for inquiring critics. Critics walk away with the sense of diminished self-esteem unable to point a finger specifically at a problem, and probably never return their inquiry. Daniel Goleman, a huge critic of technology, would probably call link this highly intelligent but malicious tendency to "pure intelligence;" I call it "rational disorder" after Heinlein's statement that humans are not rational animals, but rationalizing animals. But let me dilute Heinlein's genius a little: the controlling few are, and it is the democratic responsibility of the majority to directly deal with this problem (I am afraid it will be necessary) by repressing it.

It is also a mistake to take a positive approach, and to try to make the situation look better than it really is hoping that somehow the open software players will be led into a better frame of mind, and will somehow make the situation better. I would call that a Liberal approach--teaching peace--and has been the approach all along, and we keep falling deeper into dead-end technological approaches, faster and faster with improving microchips. What would be better is to provide for society two concrete social and psychological examples. And I feel safer in a social science venue, as nobody is accusing any computer geeks of extreme sanity, especially the Linux guy, in the context we "met," he is viewed as a complete nut and an major asshole. And Perl, I can easily show, has been a psychological cesspool itself, though the Perl writer seems normal, and perhaps because of this confirms my hypothesis that free software is in trouble.

Let me start with Perl.
The scenario is this: I actually used Perl successfully during the heyday of American technology, the 1990s. The code I wrote was practical, useful, and easy to modify by others as it was simply written. But I worked outside the scope of the "Perl community," as Perl software was not simply and practically written, and was often faulty despite a extensive testing and distribution system. I did, however, find others who coded like I did, and together we developed systems independently that we could implement as part of our jobs; we were considered "code beasts." The distribution system I mention is CPAN and gives a framework that inspired my own Thinman model that hopes to create no so much open software, systems whose internals are openly exposed to software; that function effectively and efficiently based purely on sharing. The other interesting Perl concept if the "Parrot Virtual Machine," which utilizes code internals that mimic the language of CPUs, allowing many factors of increased speed and efficiency. I also implemented this idea in the Thinman model along with Perl's effective complex structure model -- far better than the XML complex structure system widely used across the web. The idea that these Perl concepts could be implemented into a model makes me dizzy with optimism, but as I show below, the Perl writer won't even help with the implementation of his own software let alone a project that he does not control. While these problems have been affecting throughout time, they have become most extreme since 2000, and I don't mean social problems as a over-arching phenomena, but specific problems caused by gangs suffering from "rational disorder," make me skeptical that an ideal technological environment for the Information Society and exist without radical action, which I mentioned I am afraid, includes the repression of a problem that Goleman calls "pure intelligence," but what I think of as a rational disorder.

---

The letters

---

Perl:
My first email to Sebastian, the Perl writer about his "Mojolicous" project
where I try to show the need to make the project usable for the public as an ongoing developent:

I posted on the Mojo list hoping to find leads to examples of Mojo and Mojolicious, but there was no response from the list membership.

So I am writing you specifically asking for direction so I can develop and contribute to your project. From your writing, I see that you have made significant contributions.

Since the Mojo website advertises "web out of the box," I got a little nervous. When I saw my email unanswered, I momentarily experienced flash-backs to the period in my life a decade ago before the tech collapse, when I worked tirelessly to promote free software in commercial environments yet suffered at the hands of the free software community. As often as not, ignored by the entire community--not just Perl--during critical times leaving me high and dry without support in front of hostile managers. Complaints by me to the community for having been isolated in this way became rationalization for further isolation.

(I can retrieve endless examples of this behavior, and I now understand from studying Aaron Beck that it is an extension of the mechanism of social bias that describes cult behaviors.)

To resolve this problem back then I modified my free software strategy to be completely independent, creating a recursive paradigm from complex structures that was so personal that I never released it. It was, and I suppose, still is, called DepthDB.

It included its own fully secure and searchable dataserver built from frozen complex structures that beat Sybase and MySQL to triggers (but not Oracle) and long preceded XML's structures. And even then, with the migration from Perl 5.6 to 5.8, my software experienced such an extreme level of feature loss that much of it had to remain at a lower level, making integration administration a nightmare.

I am hoping that now, a decade later, I can implement Perl as part of the community, rather than having to do it as a "loner," as I did back then. And this is why I am writing you directly with this request.

First (and evasive) response from Sebastian:
Mojo is a very new project and still in the development phase.

While it is already in use by some bigger web sites, their developers are mostly involved in Mojo's development.

Because of that the currently available examples (mostly in github repos) are quite advanced and not so accessible for newcomers. (This is an example of the self-esteem stategy I mentioned above.)

http://github.com/vti/mojolicious.org.ua/tree/master

I'm working on something better, but since i'm not a professional writer it takes it's time.

http://labs.kraih.com/blog/2009/03/mojo-documentation.html

My second letter to Sebastian,where I try to explain that his (predicted but dreaded) evasion was a mistake:
Actually, I am a "professional" writer. My most recent technology work has been on test case / use case documentation for a derivative called CDS. Now we on the team know what CDS is: the infamous credit default swap.

Going with the use case paradigm, the best way to develop for humanity is to plug the technology directly into peoples' ever day tasks, which defines the use case paradigm. (Test case is simply a dissection of each use case into granular actions for testing.)

This can be explained using another popular adage, "form follows function," extending my previous email. We know that the wiki/cms model combines much of what we do on the web, so directly implementing new mojolicious ideas into a modified wiki (to keep things simple) for
testing fits the philosophy of the use case paradigm.

(This would allow you to pull away from Perl's weakness: abstraction to the point of catharsis. This we see in Perl6, where the only language that compiles under Perl6's virtual machine, Parrot, is named something like "what the fuck." It does not even compile a LISP version, and Perl5 compiling does not seem to be a priority.)

The obvious benefit for all of humanity is that the benefits of the project are adding value to humanity as each project is developed. Creating a simple but usable example would start the ball rolling in many directions, allowing experiential learning (far better than didactic O'Reilly). This would actually start creating markets right now, which is important because present economic increases may reverse.

I have been around this block many times over two decades. Resistance to a humanly supportive development model is not just futile, it is stupid. And it easily explains the successes of Java and PHP that have made Perl insignificant despite its history as the first server language, and its being the probable models for both Java and PHP.

This unfortunate phenomena is not limited to Perl, of course; it is infecting L4 as well. I may or may not be able to wrench these essentially important public projects from the obscurity of self-imposed isolation, but I can effectively document this unfortunate condition so that future programmers can avoid it.

He made no further response

---

Linux:
I "met" this Linux writer, Ben, on a Google group mailing list devoted to a radical concept that "drapes" or "folds" steel, or other metal, sheets into the shape of boat. Boats are designed by forming paper in to models by folding them and is hence called "Origami" boat building. (Any one can easily model a strip of paper into a nice canoe design.) The Linux writer, Ben, has no interest in Origami design, but it became evident, is on the list solely to "toot his horn." The very day I joined, the iconic boat designer, Phil Bolger, took is life. The Linux writer used the memorial discussion as an opportunity to trash Bolger's memory, and insult Phil's design style. The Linux writer was condemned by other people on the list but it didn't last long. I brought up a design on the list by another iconic designer, L Francis Herreshoff, for possible "origami" conversion, and the Linux writer used this as a vehicle to attack this iconic designer: two in one day. And he had help: predatory cooperation.

Here is my response to his attacks, and my description of his dysfunction in my own universal terms that are similar to the "aggressors on the highway" description above:

You are the guy who trashed Phil Bolger on his final day.

Now you are using various sneaky strategies to attack Herreshoff'scMarco Polo, and Herreshoff with it.ccYou are what I call an Internet Bozo Clown -- you keep getting knockedcdown, but bounce back up--reinforced.

You believe that we, when we criticize your attacks, are attackingcyou. And this justifies further attacks by you.

You use the typical strategies of the abuser, you mix insult with compliment.

After a few interchanges with you, I assumed that you were the "it" that attacked Phil, but I had to check. Why did I have to check, evencthough the insult strategy was exactly the same? You have acpersonality type which is exactly the same in every person who hascthis type of personality: no personality. You are devoid of thecnatural human collaborative constructs. You cannot work with otherscto create, but you can exploit. You cannot make, but you can take, in
simple terms. You are a "taker not a maker."

From your comments about Phil, most people on this list instantlycidentified you as having some kind of disorder, as many expressed it, and one person suggested that you react to "triggers." Well, I have seen enough--anything to you is a "trigger."

This conversation started as a privately, and I did not have to wonder long why. The person who asked me about the Marco Polo was nervous about abuse, and here it is, in many forms, including an insult for the American iconic boat designer, on the day he died.

Actually, social scientists and psychologists who look this disorder call it narcissism, and in the cases of Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Adolph Hitler, and possibly the entire Bush family: it is called malignant narcissism.

I believe there is a greater underlying dysfunction that binds various disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder, child abuse, "control freakism," and the many other diseases where the sufferers of these diseases actually only cause others to suffer.

These diseases exist in nature, but they are rare. When higher organisms display these symptoms, usually by violently stealing others' resources (its all about resources) they get marginalized. Most higher organisms, mostly mammals but also others such as birds,
are kind in their souls and do not want to hurt, but find it necessary such as in the "hunt." The defective kleptomaniacs are run off, or marginalized, and cannot reproduce, ending the defective gene within a generation.

I usually end this rant by saying that we, as humans, are so damn kind we make the defective into our leaders -- sarcastically of course. Our leaders, or in the case of Ben, wanna-be leaders, take power either through extreme violence such as Hitler and Stalin, or by stealing votes, such as the Bush family, or by really weird strategies such as Ben.

How do I know so much about Ben that I can draft his draft his psychological discharge from humanity? Simple, look at the bottom of his page, he is a Linux editor, and I was a Linux admin from 1992, when it started, until 2002, when all the US tech jobs were shipped to
Bhopal India.

(Note: here is important writing criticizing the efficacy of Linux for the average person.)
Linux is what is called a monolithic operating system. The other kind, which is nearly every other operating system is a micro-kernel. In short, the difference is that code to operate systems such as printers have to compiled into the a monolithic kernel, and the same
code can be simply installed on micro-kernels. This means that it is nearly impossible to support Linux as a commercial product. In effect it is nearly completely useless to the average person. What is frustrating is that Linux is the only non-commericial open, or public domain, project available for competition to Microsoft. The Mac operating system is superficially similar to Linux as it is based on Unix, but it is a micro-kernel.

This is a tremendous problem for me, because I invested most of my life in Linux expecting the Linux "community" to be able to change just as the other operating system organizations had: Microsoft, Apple.

What is important here is not the technology (as important as it is), but the profound frustration I felt. Just as the US tech economy was given to the wealthy of India with the support of the Linux community (to make them wealthier and the Indian poor poorer as a side-effect of
Indian inflation) a Wahhabi Saudi terrorist attacked downtown Manhattan, literally attacking an important open software meeting center at the Sybase offices in the World Trade Center -- the industry loved us.

Seeing most of our city clinically depressed and suffering from panic disorder, we knew something had to be done, much research was necessary. What could make a person so defective that he would do such an evil thing -- actually directly hurting his "own" people, as
downtown Manhattan was one of the most culturally open societies ever and had many Muslims in-house? Bin Laden, and his fellow Wahhabis rationalize that God will sort them out in the end, just as the American war criminals did in Viet Nam: "Kill 'em all, let God sort them out." There is no point in pointing out problems in Islam! The problem lies elsewhere.

Two years before the attack, scientists had fortunately cracked the "nut of love:" two important neurons, spindle and mirror. These neurons allow us to feel the feelings others have, and to conceptualize the effects we have on others. Ben is defective in that he lacks these neurons, or perhaps neural constructs built from these neurons. Ben's "love" is the weird love that he shows us--that's him being friendly. We do not have to know Ben personally, just people like Ben to see this.

Will Ben kill? Probably not directly, but he may kill himself and his "loved" ones by sailing that barn door out into some really bad weather. The Linux (the same fatalist frustration existed in the Perl community) does not "kill" but the community has selfishly absorbed nearly all the freely available talent into the Linux cultural monolith that occupies a social layer above the system's monolith. No competing operating system can arise because of this depletion. Google's Android you may say is competition that is not Linux. Well, if you dig you will find that it is Linux under the hood, a fact that Google hides. We are now all seriously "foobared" thanks to Ben's community as it has forced into the Microsoft camp by them, despite their derision of Microsoft. The Linux community is ultimately in bed w/ Microsoft, both organizations consist of the same kinds of organisms.

But that is not important. What is important is to understand the strategies of the those who lack personality. When you are in extreme pain or anxiety you know they in action. But
there are "tell-tales:" first you will sense extreme frustration, and when that happens you
know you cannot win, you must back off, unless you are getting paid to "deal." Another is the typical strategy, "a little nice a little nasty," as we see in nearly all of Ben's writing. Ben's obvious lies are also a good indicator; the truth for Ben is simply enough glue to make his lies stick: that is how he absorbs the resources he cannot conceptualize or collaborate to create.

Ben is a bully, but Ben (and other non-personality types) have successfully organized to show that it is the bullies who attack people like Ben, and that people like Ben, because they are intelligent and rational, are justified in causing others pain, especially the people they hurt. With this simply strategy those like Ben have successfully organized against normality by forming a very busy sub-nation nation of smelly nerds, geeks, cosmologists, astrologists, and exceptionally cruel doctors (such as Dr Mengele--just a few examples).

This is just Ben's local community, not the greater community which is far more dangerous that includes the genocidal maniacs, and this greater group has to be diagnosed and hospitalized before they kill us all.

At this point I stop and wonder why Ben has not been deleted from the list. That is a problem because Ben the bully has been abusing lots on this list, including the iconic designer, someone we will all miss dearly. That insult alone should have done it.

I do know this: Yahoo sucks and any group on it suffers because of this. And there is something wrong with this is group, as it tolerates bullyism, and fails to terminate Ben. Do I wish Ben harm? Of course not, though pulling his pants down is sort of fun--something that the bullies like Ben will never grok. We need Ben as research material, as he is harmless, to be able to defeat the real bastards out there.

Plus I am a Christian. We live for love and forgiveness, and believe it can transform even those who cannot love, and even those are who are exceedingly guilty. Proving this principle is important to keep Christianity moving forward, as well as other compassionate religions
such as Buddhism and natural tribally native religions. God loves them all.

And trust me when I guess that Ben is guilty, we just don't have any way of knowing how guilty. I am starting to worry that Ben may attack Colvin.

(Thomas Colvin in another loved traditional American sail designer.)


Ben's response to this was a litany of insults, which I expected, and I received his response before I managed to remove myself from the list, as I really didn't want to see it. But here it is, and it is useful within its scope; Ben uses the Internet phrase of bias by calling me a "Troll." Anyone who is a victim of predatory cooperation on the Internet is called that; the phrase originates in two places. The most important use of the term is for homeless victims who where bashed, and often killed, by right-leaning terrorists in Southern California in the early 1990s. This shows a "Nazi-like" heritage of the Internet, and the bias has a home in the Wikipedia, usually considered right-leaning and libertarian. The other derivation for the term shows "trawl," which is net dragging by fishermen; this referred to enforcers looking to make busts on the Internet with "stings." Another fishing technique is "trolling," which is hook fishing that is similar in a sense to net dragging. So "troll" in the dysfunctional minds of the biased of the Internet, can be thought of as someone who is "fishing for a fight," and hence "trolling." And this, of course, "rationalizes" bashing, which is what Ben does.


> You are the guy who trashed Phil Bolger on his final day.

I'm not responsible for your lack of reading comprehension. If you were actually capable of understanding English, you'd see that I said nothing negative about Bolger; in fact, what I wrote was a tribute.

(Note, he might have, but he would have had to have written it after the fact.)

> Now you are using various sneaky strategies to attack Herreshoff's Marco Polo, and Herreshoff with it.

Open the window and let out the crack fumes. I haven't said anything *at all* about your beloved whatever-the-hell-it-is; I haven't even bothered to look at the links you posted.

> You believe that we

You, jerkwad, are not a "we" - except for your multiple-personality disorder. You're a troll.

> You are devoid of the natural human collaborative constructs. You cannot work with others to create, but you can exploit. You cannot make, but you can take, in

> simple terms. You are a "taker not a maker."

[laugh] Have you noticed my .sig, you brainless prat? I run a large volunteer organization, and I've contributed a very large amount of my time to helping others - without pay, and simply for my own satisfactionin improving the world. You, on the other hand, are a loud-mouthed nothing, and your opinions count for less than whale dung.

>Will Ben kill?

Yes, without a doubt.

(He seems to end with, what I think is, a death threat; I would like to see that!)

Remembering Krishna

Remembering Krishna

Krishna was bigger than life, certainly the most thinking, emotional, and communicating cat I have ever seen. I rescued him, and probably would have found new owners for him, but he was so damn smart. He would sit with guests and try to talk. He lived with me through the Internet revolution, but I had to give him to my parents during the 2000's when conditions, including 9/11, forced me to leave NYC. They took care of him, but they are very unemotional, and that was not good for him--he often got depressed.

About six months ago, his kidneys started to fail, and yesterday morning he passed on. It was an old mouth injury from abuse that hurt him the most in the end, it had been aggravated by my parent's use of very hard treats to control him through Skinner-type behavior. A week ago he could no longer eat normal food, but they kept feeding him the hard treats making him bleed from the mouth. I had to take him. I did manage to stop the problem in his mouth, but it was too late--he was too weak from not eating for a week, and his kidneys failed completely. He understood he was dying, and I struggled internally with the idea of euthanizing him, but I could see his desire to live life as best he could to the very end, so we kept him close for his final days.

I read all I could find about the issues of dying cats and ending their lives early, but nowhere could did I see any consideration of what the animal wants, animal rights not withstanding. That I thought was amazing; all these people with expert opinions, including animal rights activists, did not even consider the possibility that dying animal might have desires, one way or the other.




He did start eating his last few days, but it was of course too late. His will to live was strong.

His body was still warm when I woke up yesterday to find he had passed
on. I quickly put him in the box I had made for him, and expoxied it
shut. I then took the box downstairs and put it in the early morning
Sun. Our new cat, Missy, came over and investigated the box--she was
wondering what had happened to Krishna.



We took him in his box to a river bank along the Housatonic, where he had played as a kitten (before the lyme tick infestation), and I buried him in the sandy loam. I partly chose the spot because I don't think it will ever be bulldozed, and it will be easy to visit even if it changes hands.

I learned a lot about cat kidney disease over the past week, and also various kinds of feeding. What amazed me is that therapies for humans with kidney disease have nearly nothing in common with therapies for cats with this disease--cats and humans are not THAT different. One might think the vets are treating reptiles instead of cats. I realize it is a long stretch to memorialize a cat, but Krishna's life was significant, and if circumstances had been better, I think his life could have had even more meaning--and been longer. So I think I will create a research wiki where my empathy model is, Wikiveristy, about treating cats in their final stages, especially with kidney disease, which is their most common old-age disorder. I also think there needs to be a discussion about the morals of euthanasia from the perspective of the cats' desires: real animal rights.

I was very glad that got to know many people, and that he recovered emotionally from the abuse that he got when he was younger.

I am finding that my photography is with me to help me share, and to make more meaning from my efforts by being able to record them. Krishna does have a very nice box, and a very nice resting place. I refinished a wine box for him, and decorated the lid with two playing polar bears taken from a vodka box. I could not find the right cloth for the lid, so I used a shirt--I had to build his box on short notice, and he needed it the morning after I finished it.

OpenEOS

Open EOS: A free, universal, and "open" camera

My Open EOS idea started when I looked carefully inside my newly bought used Canon XT; the mirror is very small and set back. Furthermore, it seems that the lens mounting is artificially held outward by some hollow plastic. I was aware that Argus lenses had been set inside a digital EOS using the body cap as a mounting base, and I wondered if this plastic extender could be removed to help with adapting lenses built to shorter register standards. Since we are mostly using APS-sized sensors at this point the mounting on an EOS can be brought close to the sensor, and the register size can be lower. That would allow adapter manufacturers to accommodate old Canon, Hexanon, and other small register mounts, and possibly old school rangefinder lenses. We could re-start the Soviet camera era!

By extending the free software ideas, such as with GNU/Linux, I realized further that a camera could be built to accommodate this body modification in the public domain (or more accurately, the protected public domain of open licensing). The reason I thought of this is that I have had extensive experience with public domain software such as the Linux and L4 operating systems. These systems can be adapted to work inside a Canon in the same way Canon's DryOS works. Prior to DryOS, Canon I believe that used a Unix variant called VxWorks. It so happens that VxWorks is used in common consumer wireless routers, where Linux had been previously used, and often Linux is reinstalled into VxWorks powered routers; so equipping a Canon EOS with Linux should be a snap.

Or we could just go with a rangefinder configuration, such as with the Sigma full sensor point and shoot, which is fixed-lens--unfortunately fixed to a maximum aperture opening of f4. And we can even go back to film and manual shutter as well, but with electronic timing. Then moving the concept forward again, we can bring the fully manual shutter release to the digital SLR--all from the same chassis. This is something I have discussed (1 ,2), and debated, extensively. Various mounting adapters would fill the gaps in this scenario.



I personally find the EOS "desktop" confusing; but I like Kodak's point and shoot controls on my modest c875. An OpenEOS would allow for any interface to be developed, and it could be developed quickly. I could accommodate any style and allow for fully new concepts; it could even allow for a standard desktop from which you could browse the web, and send email--with wifi of course.

I am proposing applying these ideas to the EOS. EOS does not own the mounting interfaces; if they did we would have no M42 adapters. They do own their EOS designs and DryOS.

If Sigma's fancy point and shoot had been released with the allowance for Leica or Contax RF mounts, wouldn't you get one? I have read that the Sigma sensor is better with respect to color than the others, though that info may be obsolete. Unfortunately it does not have a 35mm sensor, it is the APS-C size that is 63% of the size of a 35mm negative, as are the most common Canon and Nikon dSLRs.

My point is that we can have that, and lots more, by opening the EOS, and as it happens Cosina lens and camera corporation is perfectly positioned to do so. But would they have the inclination and the nerve? Would Canon go for it, could they collaborate?

Open software
Richard Stallman invented the free software concept as it is used today--usually called "open source" which is actually a misnomer. Stallman will tell you that open source is a diluted version of his model, the GNU public licenses, what I call the protected public domain. His model attempts to force a pure sharing model, where modifications are "re-seeded" back into the field, making them available for other programmers, especially those who created the code concepts.

An idea would be to create an original open protocol cameras and lenses, but history has shown that it works best if it "liberates" the proprietary software that is already being used. Stallman "liberated" Unix software to create the top-end of the Linux system; the bottom end, the Linux Kernel was written independently by Linux Torvalds, and merged with the top end, and then joined socially by becoming GNU/Linux. Linux could replace DryOS, but I think L4, the advanced "micro kernel" would be a better platform to develop.

To extend the idea of free software to hardware, think of the IBM desktop computer; it was the first open hardware design, and look now, even your laptop is build from the original IBM specifications--it was developed back in early 80s! The desktop is so "compliant" that anyone can see the similarity. Open IS the way to go if you want design efficacy.

By keeping the design open, you naturally support "legacy" hardware, that has been the nature of the beast. Right now Linux is actually dumping some VERY old support, but that is being challenged by the free software community. Damn Small Linux, or DSL, is keeping the legacy flames alive. With a true microkernal such as L4, that would not be a problem because of its nearly purely modularized nature. Also, software can be created now that will survive for a century or more, in fact the older software, such as on early IBM mainframes, is better because it was written for less powerful machines. An even better example is the old LISP language that can fit on a legacy floppy.

Open development that utilizes a mutual effort, today called e-mutualism is financially very efficient, and would allow participating companies to quickly field offerings. 90% of business expenses fall to purely "parasitic" expenses: rent, parking, payroll taxes, paper clips, lawyer fees, executive bonuses--you get the picture. Health insurance is a big expense also, most governments cover it, but the US.

Another and easier way to demonstrate this "parasitic" effect by looking at higher education. The vast majority of college money is spent on things other than professors' salaries and rent for classrooms; the greatest teachers, Plato, Aristotle, the Buddha, Hippocrities all taught under a tree, though not the same tree. It is presently being proved that the old one-room school house gave a far better education than the huge faceless edifices of today's centralized school districts do. Small low-expense operations where "information" is shared, as in the e-mutualist model of the Information Society are the most efficient.

The free software e-mutualist movement is even more efficient as an extension of the concept of mutualism, the original framework for human development, and is now accepted as the evolutionary basis for the conceptualization necessary for technological development. To extend this point a little into the business sphere, As it happens, it is small business that recovers broken economies; small business creates all the new jobs; it certainly creates all the new technology--big business just annexes it and makes us pay for it, for the most part. I am not sure what big business does that I need to be thankful for.

The 4/3rds camera system
The 4/3rds camera system that is quickly being adapted for new lenses is a very marginally open system. Most recently introduced is the Micro-4/3rds system that has a very short flange-to-sensor distance. The Micro system is creating a sensation and many adaptors are being made for it already, many more perhaps than EOS because the Micro's mounting flange is much closer to the sensor. Even older 16mm cinematographic may have a new life as Micro 4/3rds lenses. The same problems that EOS adapted manual lenses will exist though; the lenses will have to be focused with the aperture wide open, and then the aperture will have to be closed again to obtain the exposure and take the shot. And there may be focusing problems; the Olympus Micro-4/3 does not have a penta-prism or penta-mirror, it has a digital viewfinder derived from the sensor. It remains to be seen if the digital viewfinder will allow for manual focusing.

Comparing 4/3rds and the EOS's common APS-C sizes
The 4/3rds protocol is only marginally smaller than the most common dSLR sensor size: the APS-C. The APS-C sensor is 35% greater in size than the 4/3rds sensor. In film photography that would equate to 1/3rd stop, not a significant difference, but perhaps there are other factors in sensor technology that may create exponential differences. The Canon EOS is considered best for low light photography, and 4/3rds not so great, so far.

My Ideal RF: Component Camera

Originally my train of thought for an open EOS was more generalized thinking about an open camera when I stumbled upon a picture of the Fuji Natrua Classica and I started creating a list of criteria for an ideal rangefinder camera, and then recently I modified the criteria to meet the OpenEOS idea. The Natura Classica is a film camera with many digital features looking very much like a digital that had been modified for film--perhaps it was. Sadly it is now discontinued.



Criteria for the OpenEOS design are in the bullets below, and would not be limited to digital; the design would be adaptable to film, in fact the design criteria would not be limited to EOS, any mount system would work whose throat would be wide enough to allow the light coming from any lens onto a maximal sized sensor, presumably the 35mm-sized sensor.

The EOS flange would be pulled back as close to sensor or film plane as possible, and the adaptor to support, say common EOS lenses, would have enough space to support a number of features that will never be found in either EOS or APS-C arrangements. One of these would be auto-focus for prime, or single focus length (or non-zoom) lenses; the choice of the perfectionist, and the majority of manual focus lenses adapted to dSLR cameras. Zoom lenses with their extra glass, and more complicated optical formulas absorb much of the brightness of the light, and reduce its clarity. This adapter could also allow the lens to tilt, as a Lens Baby attachment does.

The ideal camera would fall into two categories: rangefinder-type arrangement, much like a "point-and-shoot," and SLR.

In the rangefinder focusing for manual focusing lenses it might have to have spot-center focusing where a central spot in the viewfinder is aimed by the photographer at the subject, a "beeps" tells the photographer when he has focused the lens, and then a button allows the focus to be held: a focus lock.

The SLR version might have the same arrangement but the problem facing manual focus lens users remains the same, the aperture has to be stopped down to allow for the proper exposure. The adapter could solve this problem; it could have levers built into to "un-cripple" stop down, or even automatic, metering. DSLR cameras with their in-lens engines, have done away with the aperture closing mechanisms, and the flange adpater could bring them back. The M42 mount with its small pin to stop down the aperture might mechanically be the easiest since the mechanism would have to fit in such a small "collar."

Ultimate a hybrid of the rangefinder and SLR designs might work best, that has both a traditional viewfinder and a digital finder. By keeping the design open, components could be created independently to work within the system in different ways. The Contax G1 and G2 are considered to be among the best rangefinders but are like point and shoot cameras with their auto focusing; they use an infrared beam independent of lens for "ranging."

Manual Shutter Release
Unquestionably I would want a spring loaded mechanically released shutter, which would work well with a CMOS type of sensor. I attribute much of my best photography to the better "timing" allowed my finger by a fully mechanical release, and I have documented and debated the topic widely: here is a link to that writing: Empathy and the Photographer's Finger.



Here are my original notes that I created when I saw the Natura Classic:

Imagine this little plastic camera with the following:

• Optional
  screw-on mounting components for 39mm for LTM and early Zenit, and
  bayonet for Leica M, Contax, and Nikon, along with its presently
  available Fuji auto-focus system.
• A back that would be interchangeable for film and digital, and the
  digital back would be a retro-fit of currently available sensor
  technology, in all its various sizes: true 35mm, 4/3, and point-n-shoot
  postage stamp sensors.
• The thumb and index finger controls of the Petri Color 35 for aperture and shutter speed.
• A top-mounted rangefinder that would also be a viewfinder and would
  be removable and interchangeable. Besides the usual mirror arrangement,
  imagine it in either radar or sonar configurations form widely
  available parts that are used in robots. I am still trying to conceive
  of how the view finder controls would work for this, but they would
  look so cool in a viewfinder like my 24mm Voigtlander.
• TTL metering integrated with the on-top rangefinder.

Initially I conceived that the system would be nearly fully
mechanical, with only the meter needing battery, or photon, power. But
as my thoughts developed further I realized that mild battery power
could make the "mating" between the rangefinder/viewfinder and the lens
focusing system much simpler and easier to "swap out." Also, the
present auto-focus system you see in the picture would have to be
powered. Then there is the issue of the digital back: that would
increase the power needs I as I am proposing a full sized sensor
(unlike the tiny kind that is in my otherwise respectable Kodak c875**)

I have also been focusing thought on light meters lately, and I
conceived of a thumb and index finger arrangement that might give more
power to the photographer. Rather than having the two controls as
aperture and speed, use the electronic capabilities to make them EV
value and aperture/speed ratio. The thumb would control the brightness
or darkness in relation to the metering system, and the index finger
would control the depth of field (and level of bokeh, of course).

Key to these ideas are the component design technologies that were
introduced by IBM with the first "open systems" PC. I worked in
financial technology for the "hey-day" decade of technology, and have
since been supporting the next wave of technology with my writing in
collaboration with the L4 OS community.

Using the well proven open design philosophy, technology would allow
all these components to be built by anyone, at any level of quality
(good or bad) that would fit the system for a variety of prices. The
components each photographer would need would be limited to the needs
of the photography situation, and all components, including the basic
"chassis," would be available from secondary markets, and would be
prices according to the public's perception of quality.

Like the PC computer design, the parts would fit the
"backwardly-compatible model," within reason. PC motherboard
manufacturers, for instance, have been very supportive of older
components, eliminating "legacy" interfaces only after the components
using them have long been obsolete, if at all.



Other Links about open photography:
The RAW format is being addressed as an open source alternative:

http://www.openraw.org/

Birger Engineering has an open source EOS mount, if I am not mistaken, for RED cameras.

http://www.birger.com/

Obama's Environmentalism Embraces Destruction

Obama's "changes"
Obama is bending towards both labor and the environment, but there are "rubs" in his approaches. To many, he is appointing the old guard; his appointments are not symbolic of
change. This article attempts to show that Obama's support for the environment is support for hunting, that hunting is effectively anti-environmental, and hunting is in fundamental ways connected to our present economic disaster. I want to help influence Obama to move his
administration in ways that help him fulfill his promises to make America solid and safe for everyone, and hence improve the world. I hope he will be president for both terms, and perhaps again after a four year wait.

Obama's "changes" to the economy, as an example
Obama promised to eliminate the "trickle down theory" in his final and most important election speech, but he is still attempting a pure capital approach, albeit modified, to restore the economy (which as a resource exploitation system is anti-environmental by definition). What he fails to realize is that the "trickle down theory" is precisely how capital works, and capital is our system, unless he decides to develop alternative ideas. In capital, resources are accumulated in central
locations called capitals, and benefits from this accumulation "trickle down" to the society through the filter of the bank accounts of the very wealthy and their holdings, traditionally called trusts. From what we can see, Obama is very deliberate in his support for bailing out these "trusts" now that they are failing despite their history of terrible effects on both the general population and the environment. If this were actually a free market economy, as Obama's economic advisers say it is, then these losing "trusts" should be allowed to fail to be replaced with economic components that work.

Obama's "changes" for the environment
He is pulling together the environmentalists that support hunting, proven by his appointment to protect the environmental, pro-hunting Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado as Secretary of the Interior. The Sierra Club endorses Salazar, which brings up the issue that many environmental groups support hunting; these groups are influencing Obama.

Hunters drive bulldozers destroying forests
It is the hunting community that drives the bulldozers that knock down the trees to build subdivisions and malls: the two greatest threats to natural habitat. All bulldozers in this type of construction are driven by men wearing camouflage baseball caps: a symbol of hunting.

Once I when I was driving a concrete truck near Savannah, Georgia, I saw a family of small ground birds in a state of pure panic; they were a group of chicks being led by their mother in circles around a newly constructed house. Their home, or habitat, had been destroyed to build
"McMansions." The scene made me very sad and I wish now that I had photographed their plight. The forest had been their home perhaps for hundreds of years, and was being destroyed by unfeeling Southern contractors, who are most likely hunters.

I had taken this mixer truck driving job while I was finishing my degree. I poured concrete mostly in subdivision construction sites, though I originally expected that I would be working on building factories, and hence creating jobs. The subdivision work was exceedingly hard on my left knee as I was required to work the heavy-duty truck clutch constantly for hours while filling slow-moving curb extruders for subdivision streets. While pouring in these subdivisions I was continually saddened while I saw Latin American illegal labor creating huge bonfires more than fifty feet in height from the beautiful Georgia forests that had been destroyed the hunter-driven bulldozers.

It is this real estate speculation that now fuels endless habitat destruction; and real estate speculation is at the core of our present national economic disaster. In the early 2000's, US technology and manufacturing were ransacked and the money was invested in sub division
and shopping mall development; when the money ran out, credit replaced it. And now we are in a "credit crunch." At the core of the "credit crunch" is a financial instrument called the "credit default swap," or CDS, which is an "equity traded" insurance policy instrument for questionable loans. The institutions that insured the poor loans, including AIG, did not have the liquidity to support the defaulted loans (and hence the term "credit default swap") and went into the
red. The first action by Treasury secretary Henry Paulson's "bail-out" was to shore up the financial institutions who issued the CDSs, especially the very guilty financial insurance company AIG.

In these paragraphs I try to show the relationship between hunting and finances; I try to show that habitat destruction, the destruction of our environment, is closely related to the destruction of the economies of the world, and that Obama's intended changes may not really be changes at all, but a series of corrections to preserve the system that is destroying both the US economy and world's environment. And this despite Obama's best wishes to repair America and positively influence the world.

Hunting is a hateful sport
Hunting is a reactionary, or even "KKK," type of sport--few if any true liberals hunt, urban or rural. And Obama is a Black American. Because of this obvious contradiction, I feel the design behind his environmental strategy is probably not his, and this gives me hope that his environmentalism can be set on a proper, more empathic, track. I believe that this strategy has been architected over may years by insidious insiders occupying key policy making positions in the environmental movement: Pope of the Sierra Club is my primary example. I only learned very recently of environmental support for hunters when I saw Pope's endorsement of Salazar as Interior Secretary, where Pope specifically mentions Salazar as a hunting supporter.

After many experiences meeting hunters in the woods, I personally see any contact with them in isolation as potentially suicidal. Threats by one of them during a hike a decade ago drove me into the arms of animal activists. I have come to know them as people who enjoy killing, and have found that they often align with reactionary causes; If I had been born a Black American, my fears of dealing with hunters would increase by factors.

Instead of supporting hunting as environmentalism, Obama needs to look to great naturalists for advice, especially John Muir who founded the Sierra Club. Muir, along with my favorite writer Lewis Mumford, was disgusted by hunting. Social scientists and film makers who "embed" into tribally native cultures have shown a natural and empathic relationship with the forests by the Natively Tribal: our original human society. Cultural advancement has been away from the "blood model," which is more closely related to the ancient empire builders, and towards our roots. Look at the art in modern art museums, such as the cubists. The music of the world is increasingly tribal and full of love; the only popular hate-based music today comes from Nazis or is influenced by cocaine and crack. Even the hunters' children are all dancing to African strains in Hip-hop--there is much to be hopeful for!

My personal advice for animal activists is that they should encourage empathy in the mainstream, especially within the communities of compassion. Animal activists should go to church, for instance, and celebrate the blessing of the animals on St. Francis day. There they can see that most people are animal lovers, even conservatives. One third of the US goes into forests to appreciate nature peacefully and reverently, whereas the hunting community, which only goes into the forests to kill, is only a very small percentage. Furthermore I have found that most hunters are not actually core hunters, but simply friends of the hunters "along for the ride." They are joining their friends in the hunt mistakenly thinking that hunting is a natural human tradition.

Many environmentalists are confused by this undemocratic gap; Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society wonders how such a small percentage controls the nation, or perhaps even the world. The reason seems obvious to me; core hunters are well-armed and they obviously like to kill; they have unlimited access to ammunition. The general population is scared of them. Hunters, and other killers, are in the military where they have weapons of mass destruction; many are in police departments that allow them "reach out and touch" anybody they want with little, if any, accountability.

Obama needs us to support his promises
What Obama promised (which I believe he had to promise to beat McCain) is unprecedented change, and I believe that this level of change is desired by the vast majority of Americans. I showed that the pro-hunting environmental strategy cannot possibly be his, and I believe that few, if any, of his strategies are original; he is simply building his administration with strong available people and system components that are believed to work. Many of us are wondering where the changes will be. Many here on OpEdNews say "wait and see," while many are already disgusted and want to protest with radical activist strategies.

I think our best approach is to be critical, analytic, and to the point. There is no question in my mind that the necessary components for constructing a solid and safe America, and hence an improved world, are with us right now--we just have to look for them in Science and history. We need to find them, build on them, and refine them through our own peer review, and then submit them as serious work to policy makers--especially the big policy-maker:
President-elect Obama. From experience I suggest that the more radical submissions begin with a conciliatory introduction.

Citations and other supporting information
I very much want to get this kind of information out as quickly as possible while the administration's "concrete is still wet."

Also important to this article is the newly developed research connecting humanity to the
natural environment with empathic neurons, and also the history of hate and killing in hunting documented by Lewis Mumford in Technics and Civilization. I will also use this as the basis for bigger writing (click here).

"Bad guys" that he has appointed include former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack for agriculture and former fed chief Volcker as economic adviser. Vilsack helped build the universally hated confinment factory farms, and is said to be a puppet of Monsanto. Volcker, a former Fed chief, is every bit as stupid as his Fed chief successor, Alan Greenspan.

AFTER NOTE: The above writing above supporting Obama but decrying "false" environmentalism was submitted to OpEdNews.com as an article. Rob Kall, who owns OEN, specifically asked me to bring environmentalism to OEN, and then he, or someone there, rejected the writing. I sent him a response with more information supporting the capital connection to hunting and environmental destruction, but it was sent back to me, well, to be rid of the hunting connection.

The term hunting should bring back to many policitals the image of Cheeny shooting his friend in the face with a shotgun at a "canned" duck hunt. So my question to Rob Kall is "why protect hunters, of all people?"

Below is information supporting the hunting / capital connection coming mostly from my own experience, but supported by the very important late Lewis Mumford, who wrote Technics and Civilization.

My motivation for writing the article is to support OEN by creating a link between OEN and Care2.com, which is at the moment experiencing an exodus. Care2 is populated primarily by people seeking to protect the environment, and who actively support love over hate.

I tried to create relationships between topics that would enjoin the two groups, and I "tarred" a lot of people, including hunters, but most specifically the capital structure.

I am fully willing to remove references to the KKK from the article, but the article attempts to show reactionary support for the present trends of economic destruction, which were supported by Bush.

This is something that Obama clearly needs to eliminate to succeed, even survive, as a Black American president. There are daily arrests for assassination attempts against Obama coming from people who clearly have KKK thinking.

The basis of the present economic destruction is the conversion of the American economy from manufacturing and technology into house construction. The economy failed when many very bad housing loans came due, causing a 50% shortfall in corporate values, which is held
in the equities market.

Mass destruction of environmental habitat occurred as a result of the housing boom as well; that destruction of environment was done by hunters driving bulldozers; that I saw as a concrete mixer driver. If I had not seen it happen, I would have assumed it because I understand the rural relationship with the environment.

You asked for "empathy," and here it is. And you also asked for a connection to Care2; I am trying to build that with this article.

This information is pivotal to making the connection between OEN and Care2.com.

My personal area of study is how the human environment interconnects with the natural environment, and that is the study of empathy from the evolutionary perspective. (http://thinman.com/empathy)

The criticism surprised me. I have never met anyone else, who protects hunters, except hunters themselves. Urban people hate them because they kill for joy, which is viewed as related to hate. And rural people are afraid of them them because they occasionally kill
hikers, walkers, and joggers "accidentally."

I spent most of my life "on the fence" between hunting and anti-hunting, but was forced by a hunter into the anti-hunting camp about a decade ago when he threatened my life, and rationalized it because I was not wearing orange. That event initiated my life as an environmental activist.

The criticism says "Are some hunters borish and stupid? Clearly. All? No way"

I never implied that hunters are stupid, and I don't know what the other word means. If anything I believe that they are cunning, which requires intelligence. I am saying that they are unfeeling with respect to the environment, which is what allows them to destroy habitat without feeling remorse, and hence contribute to the housing glut that caused the liquidity shortfall that is the present recession moving towards a depression.

I know that there is widespread understanding that hunters go into the forest only to kill and this can easily be supported. And from what I have seen, most writers make an assumption that those who kill for sport are unfeeling, especially Liberals.

This makes the criticism appear to come from the Right. Do hunters support war and a high use of the death penalty? That is easily supportable. Do hunters support Bush's and McCain's desires for endless wars? That is also easily supportable.

So why protect hunters?

I have spent a lot of time observing the rural right wing during my two years as a trucker. My co-driver for a year was a former Klansman who, by the way, now drives with an Black American. I don't want to hurt rural conservatives, I want them to change -- and so does
president-elect Obama. Promoting these changes may also help protect Obama from assassination.

Notes from emails from Gernot Heiser about L4 and Education

The importance of investing into school kids cannot be underestimated, although I see them as the future technologist, not a free work force.

Particularly in the present situation where in many industrialised countries kids are losing interest in technology and science. If this trend continues we will create a society with a very strong class structure, where the majority has no understanding of technology and limited access to its benefits, and even less understanding of its dangers. Needless to say, this is also a big threat for the economic competitiveness of those countries.

I have been tangentially involved with outreach activities at UNSW. And the scary thing is that in high school, it is essentially too late. The kids have already decided whether they are interested in science and maths, and those who have decided they don't like it are essentially already a lost cause. Regrettably, this is particularly true with girls, who at this age are very sensitive to peer pressure, and are being told by their peers that maths isn't a girl thing. In Australia, there are also studies showing that high school career advisers are also discouraging girls from science and engineering.

Essentially, the battle is already lost in high school, it has to start earlier. Our experiences with running workshop for year-five pupils (especially girls) are much better, they are still open at this stage. This is the time where the interest needs to be nurtured.

The observation that "systems research is irrelevant" has been made before by Rob Pike (http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf) and indeed, OS research was by many considered dead a few years ago. This isn't the situation at the moment, though. For one, Linux has changed the game by making OS code much more accessible, students can now again do research on real systems. Then virtualisation has created a lot of interest and activity in OS issues. However, Rob's observation that people are still largely using the same 40-year-old technology is still true (and virtualisation is essentially used to hack around the limitations of broken operating systems).

The reality, though, is that some of this is the inevitable result of the commoditisation of PCs, and the resulting huge inertia in the basic architecture, processor as well as OS. I don't think there's much hope in changing the PC world in the foreseeable future.

Embedded systems, however, are a different ball game. The embedded systems industry, in different verticals at different times, is realising that they have reached the use-by date of their RTOS technology. Hence they are forced into a change of OS technology, and this is the chance to put in something that's good. I sure believe that this is L4, and that's the reason we have set up Open Kernel Labs.

Why Linux is Failing?

It isn't, look at this graph from LinuxDevices.com:




Linux rules the roost. But if you go in the street, ask any average person if they know what Linux is. I guarantee they will tell you they don't. I have been asking most of my online friends and they don't know what it is. To most people, the Internet was invented by Bill Gates; they love Bill Gates, he wants to cure AIDS.

Gates did not of course invent the Internet, in fact he accepted it in 1995 only after he realized that his CD ROM strategy for data control was going to be quashed by the open systems. Micro$oft then quickly changed tact with the "where do you want to go" campaign; what they really meant was they wanted to get a slice of every Internet transaction. In the big numbers they keep losing, but on the desktop they win. Why ??

On the Internet, the LAMP configuration: Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP (and sometimes Perl) also rules the roost in its area, the World Wide Web. For unknown reasons precise statistics are not available for LAMP as for Embedded Linux but these figures are provided comparing Microsoft IIs and Apache (free and open) Web servers:

Apache 62.96%
Microsoft-IIS 24.94%
(April 2006 Netcraft Survey Highlights)


(thanks to OS Data dot Com)


I recall seeing last year that free and open PHP (Personal Home Page) Server presented 40% of Web server pages to the Information Society. Last year was an odd bad year for PHP, but they have recovered in the last quarter. The graph shows PHP climbing steadily. I would love to discuss PHP, as it seems both perfectly designed yet hopelessly crippled, and I will in the future.


(thanks to php.net)

In others the free systems are the most influential in the world, but pure greed organizations like Micro$oft are continuously fleecing the world while damaging everybody's good intentions.

Also important is a close look at the Bill and Belinda's Gates Foundation. They are involved in AIDS; a good question is why they picked AIDS. The future of medicine is in the modeling the human body at the cellular level. Only systems like the Google search engine and the NOAA weather prediction system can do that; they run huge networks of Linux PC class servers. Curing AIDS will also take a huge open effort to accomplish.

There is no way in hell (or Hell?) that anything coming out of Microsoft's Redmond or Bangalore authoritarian control structures is going to accomplish that. My personal experience with Microsoft OS products is that they still require daily rebooting, which is unacceptable for super computing environments.



(thanks to OS Data dot Com)



Microsoft has 26% of the Web server software market share 60% of defaced Web sites run Microsoft Web server software
(thanks to OS Data dot Com)


Obviously to me is that Bill's (and his wife Belinda's, lol) involvement is to prevent Linux from solving the world's worst crisis, and with it all disease. Also, the openness of Linux is a direct threat to the very neuro-programming of Gate's mind. He comes from a culture of greed and competition, even among his family members. Linux and Apache come from a culture of synergy, and as we now know, empathy -- which seems unlikely if you know the un-empathic history of science. I should mention that I see the Bill and Belinda Foundation to be nearly the same as the Ronald McDonald House; a horrific corruption of the concept of the meme. In the case of Ronald McDonald and his "house," a child's cartoon character is used to link the high fat beef patty with both generosity and happiness; the use of a hospitality house to further the effect I find particularly repugnant. High fat food typical of the McDonald hamburger is singly the biggest killer in America.

Linux is everywhere now, all the the little micro OS's in all the little smart devices are now Linux. The Embedded Linux reporters are having trouble bringing human interest to the embedded Linux story because all the embedded Linux developers are sworn to secrecy by the non-disclosure agreements of their investors and other owners.

The question is, "what is going wrong with Linux then, why is it still unknown?" What is the open community doing to keep itself so secret? Why is Microsoft pulling so much money while having such a small effect? I discuss that below, and the overall economic arrangement, and also a cultural approach. But first I want to try to explain these strange happenings in Linux.

First you have to know that Linux is what is called a monolithic operating system. What that means, is that all the software within the system that allows the system to interact with various hardware devices, has to be compiled within the system. Every time you want to add capabilities to a Linux computer, to run different hardware, you have to recompile the key operating component of the operatingsystem: the kernel.

The other kind of system is called a micro-kernel operating system which has a much smaller control system for which software to control the hardware is added to it to as it is needed, usually by the people who make the hardware; the kernel does not need to be recompiled to add capabilities; within the free and open software movement there was a legendary battle between the two concepts: monolithic and micro kernel. On the monolithic side was LinuxTorvalds the inventor of Linux; on the micro-kernel side was Andrew Tannenbaum, the inventor of Minix.

Both were wrong as it turns out. Linus, despite revolutionizing the world by setting technology free in a way that can only be described as a phenomena, actually was wrong in utilizing the monolithic model, that is if you believe that Linux should be popular with the masses. Tannenbaum screwed up in a purely social way; instead of offering his Minix to the world as an operating system which everyone can use to their benefit, he created it as a vehicle for his Dutch university teaching program. Who made the bigger mistake? Obviously Tannenbaum did by low-balling his own child, but we suffer from both their mistakes. Tannenbaum today is attempting to undo his mistake by offering Minix, as Minix3 a decade and a half later, as a world solution. Well, it still isn't stable, and at the bottom of the Minix3 web page (one of the most uninteresting on the web) is an ad for the Dutch university that Tannenbaum teaches in -- nothing changes.

In the two industries that Linux is succeeding in elimininating the competition (server and super computer systems such as Google and NOAA, and embedded systems such as robotic systems, refrigerators, and kiosks) the monolithic kernel is not a hindrance. In the big server systems additional peripheral hardware is seldom added, and what hardware is used of the vanilla variety: disks and communication devices. In embedded systems, the same conditions exist for the most part, and when the odd peripheral device is added by a technician, that technician is given a new operating system "image" which is installed into the system along with the hardware upgrade.

Completely left out of this scenario is the common computer user. In the Linux monolithic kernel scenario, the average person that you know, your family members, are expected to recompile a kernel, which is every bit as complicated as it sounds. There is no place in the Linux environment for the average user. And unfortunately there is no available talent to effectively create and popularize a micro-kernel operating system.

Interestingly, Micro$oft has used the micro-kernel architecture since it became multitasking with Windows 95 (http://www.osdata.com/oses/winxp.htm). Mac OSX is a micro-kernel version of the original free high quality operating system: BSD.

In the end, Micro$oft wins with its joke of a system, while we open and free systems advocates are forced to continuously fail. Understanding the culture causes of this failure takes soul searching. I happen to be personal friends with many of the important people in the free and open, or public domain, software culture, and I am familiar with all the rest. I respect and admire them, but I have wonder what the hell is the matter with them. Why do they deliberately fail? Why do the put others on the line to fail? I try to answer this below.

The answer I believe is in the history of technology, science, and control. Computer scientists, as are all scientists, are high paid servants, effectively upper caste slaves. Even when they are not paid, as in the public domain software industry, they are neurally programmed to be servant/slaves.

Why do they lack enough self-respect to undo this condition and become celebrants in their success? Again the problem is in their neurological programming. Those chosen to succeed in the system are chosen through a process called "human capital." At a young age, children are filtered by society the world 'round for specific roles in life, usually at middle school age. Those testing to be very intelligent are pushed into scientific roles, for instance, and those testing stupid will work at factory machines or be cannon fodder for the army.

Those chosen by the human capital system to be scientists are chosen based on intelligence tests. What is missing from intelligence tests is the human ability to model systems -- to use the imagination. This use of the imagination is now, neurally known, as empathy. Scientists who have succeed through the human capital system, which is all scientists, have no empathy. Because of this science lay in the gutter for nearly all of recent history; until recently science did nothing for the common person; it only slaved people in factories, destroyed the environment, and started wars. There was, for instance, no social science. And there certainly is little preventative medicine for the average person. Also there is no incentive for the truth, as scientists need incentive for every little thing; they lack the empathy to know that the truth is moral and correct.

In the US this system started to change in the 1960's with the development of educational principle such as the new math, where problem solving teaching techniques replaced what is called didactic framing, or rote learning. America, or course, became the premiere nation in the world, though individual income continually reduced. In the 90s steady intellectual and information systems growth brought the US, us, to the peak of world existence, and the we tumbled.

Clearly three things caused this: the largest stock swindle in history -- Wall Street's "pump and dump" tech crash of 2000; the Muslim extremist attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001; and finally the shipping of the American technology industry to Hindu nation of India, and the Communist nation of China by US corporate executives.

Now, the US is declining in a spiral of ignorance administered by what is called the "No Child Left Behind" act of congress; the initial strategy of NCLB was to replace the biological science of evolution with the religious concept of Creationism. This was achieved in Texas through an odd annexation of this insanity to the neighboring state of Arkansas. There was actually a period of months, where Bible study replaced biology in science classes; it was struck down in the courts.

When we discuss all these problems, and especially invoke the concept of "insanity," we are obviously referring to the lamest of lame duck presidents, George W. Bush. What we need to understand, however, is that all these problems may exist for us anyway even if he and his brother, Jed (or is it Jeb?) Bush, had not corrupted the vote in Florida, giving the presidency instead to some other democratic authoritarian.

Lewis Mumford is probably the most important writer of our post-modern age. In his Technics and Civilization he predicted the tech swindle of 2000, even though he had no way of knowing that there would be such a thing as the Internet. In 1937 he said that the next major innovation would be accompanied by the greatest swindle of all time; he showed how every innovation had been accompanied by a stock swindle as long as there have been stocks, and he just drew a simple graph. He showed how RCA was the first great information system stock swindle; that figured into the great depression greatly. He just did some simple math.

When Mumford tired to talk about the future of technology, he could only talk about the past. The reason is because we live in the past; the control structure of the ancient Egyptian empire, "the first machine was built from human parts," is how the systemic structure is constructed; the ancient Roman empire dictates how business operates: "a diffuse tribute collection system, for which there is no point of interaction, and therefore no accountability."

These two empires are gone yet still alive; so let us search for other one to five thousand year old cultures that may be affecting us in purely violent and financially disastrous ways. Two in particular jump out at us everyday as they are in the news constantly for their "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" strategy of eternal conflict. These ancient cultural forces figure in at least two of the three hits America took causing the recent dive. One of these cultures, being a lot more clever than the other, is responsible for both the "cyclic rotation" (the official term for the tech crash), and the shipping of all US cash to the nations of India and China. The root cause of the third problem, the obvious dishonesty of the American executive, is a tougher nut to crack. That seems to be a product of human capital, where human capital runs parallel to didactic framing education. Which nations promote didactic framing and human capital. Germany is often mentioned, clearly all nations describing themselves as "Latin," as descendants of the ancient Roman Empire operate didactic framing through Catholic education. A major problem in the US is of course the influence of the bigotry of the KKK, and that could be a link; Germany revitalized the KKK in the 1980s by exporting to the US Neo-Nazism racism, just as Castro had emptied his prisons into Florida. The Klan, and slavery, were of course conceptual frameworks imported from European nations which had been preserving Roman concepts of slave economies. And, as the world's puppet, the US has been preserving the idea of a slave economy; even in the 1950s and early 1960s Southern writers stated that the only economy for the South was a slave economy. In 2006, as a concrete truck driver, I personally saw a resurgence in what I would call slavery; the implementation of willing and voluntary Mexican slave-type labor under Southern capital control, apparently backed by foreign investment (most likely with American capital given away by whom??).

Then when we study outsourcing, we stumble on yet another ancient empire: the Hindu upper-caste. I leave that one to you. I should also mention that I see Chinese culture as Confucian, a philosophy which confuses respect for fealty creating a population ripe for slavery-level exploitation, giving China the global edge in the downward spiral of making the wealthier even wealthier.

What is the answer to all these Information Society problems?? I also leave that to you, but I warn you the answer also lies in solving the world crisis of globalism: the Earth is a planet that can only regenerate to support one half billion to one billion people: we now have 6 billion, with the top one percent of these people benefiting from consumption of ninety-nine percent of the world's resources. I leave you with Mexico, the top illegal drug transport center, or centre, and Iran, the top illegal opium producer. And the United States, the top producer of naivete. Anybody know any killing jokes ??